Ten II x Rose fanmix - Life Among the Distant Stars [Part 2] [Series 4 Spoilers]
Go here for part one. Week Eight: KT Tunstall - Heal Over (12)
I don't wanna hear you tell yourself That these feelings are in the past. You know it doesn’t mean they’re off the shelf. Everybody sails alone, But we can travel side by side… “Daddy,” Tony asks one day, as they sit around a too-big table in the too-big Tyler mansion, eating Sunday lunch, “Is Rose going away again, Daddy?” Pete's paid for a holiday for them both, a round-the-world trip to land them anywhere they want. He says they need it, won't take no for an answer. Their single suitcase stands in the hall, unforgivably shiny and new, just waiting to be covered in the dust of a hundred new worlds. You haven't seen it yet, remember? Rose had told him late one night when he'd expressed reluctance towards the whole idea. He wasn't sure how he'd get on with travelling like a proper tourist. She'd kissed his eyelids and laughed. Not with these eyes. At the table, Jackie shushes her son before Pete has time to finish chewing his vegetables and answer. “Not like last time, sweetheart. She's just going on holiday, like when we went to the beach, remember? She's coming back.” And she fixes Rose with a glare that clearly says you'd better. There's an easy silence while everyone chews until Tony pipes up again, this time addressing Rose. “Are you goin' to the special beach? I don't like it when you go an' see the special beach. You come back sad and you never play.” The Doctor privately thinks that everyone else finishes quickly on purpose, because in ten minutes he and Rose are left to finish their carrots alone. He lets his fork drop to his plate with a clatter. “You used to visit - ” “Every year,” she interrupts, looking down at her plate and concentrating a little too diligently on her food. She clearly wants this conversation to be over as quickly as possible, but this isn't about competition or jealousy. He is still the man who lost her to this world, and it is his heart that aches to think of her returning to that beach, year after year, in the vain hope that he might return to her before she fought her way back to him. He lifts her fingers from her fork and pulls them into his own, tugging gently on her hand when she still doesn't look up. “Were you waiting?” “No. Yeah. I dunno,” she stumbles, looking up briefly before turning her eyes away and shaking her head, more in an effort to clear it than as a denial. Time might run differently in this universe, but he knows it's coming up to another year. “Do you want to go again?” “No,” she says, too quickly, snatching her fingers back and rubbing her hands together awkwardly in her lap. “No,” she repeats, quietly. “Got you here, haven't I? And he's... he's...” Not coming back anymore. No, he's not. The Doctor studies the dark mahogany dining table for a long moment before speaking again. “Do you still - ?” He sees her reflection blink in the table and raises his eyes. She thinks she knows what he's asking but she won't risk a reply without being sure. He sighs and forces himself to say it, not quite recognising the words as they come out of his mouth. “You still love him.” Almost defensively, as though daring him to tell her not to, that she can't, that she shouldn't, she answers exactly as he feared she would. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He has always known that there are - and always will be - three people in this relationship. Considering the third person is, well, himself, and as long as one day Rose will belong fully to the here and now rather than the what ifs of the past, perhaps that is something he will just have to accept. “I'm always gonna love him,” she says, carefully, shyly, “ 'cause he gave me you.” Perhaps it's not going to be so hard to accept afterall. Week Nine: Darren Hayes - So Beautiful (13)
You know they can have their universe; We’ll be in the dirt designing stars.
Somehow, somewhere along the line, supermarkets and babies and nine-to-five stopped being more terrifying than the Daleks. Realising this one morning while brushing his teeth, he looks at himself in the mirror and laughs until he gets toothpaste all down his tie and Rose has to dig him out another one from the pile of washing for the day. The TARDIS has grown since they've been away, the change more obvious when they haven't been around to check her hour by hour. There’s a soft hum emanating from the garage as he walks past, new tie in place, making his way towards central London and three reported sightings of giant talking shrimps. Perhaps he’s a little bit crazy, but he wouldn’t change this for the world. Week Nine: Lucie Silvas - Breathe In (14)
Wipe the dust from your sweet smile, And breathe in life.
They stopped the shrimps. For a long moment, they simply stand there in the street, stunned and disbelieving, until reality sinks in and they begin laughing like maniacs. Real laughter, full of adventure, the kind she's been waiting to hear from him for so long, and he's spinning her around and around just like old times. There's a gooey medley of exploded seafood in his hair, but his lips taste the same and for once she's not looking for the differences. This moment is theirs. He's been waiting for her to kiss him without sadness since the day they met. He has this feeling that as long as they keep going, they'll be OK.
Week Ten: The Feeling - Kettle's On (15) [Time Lord Doctor]
I'm hoping you remember what I taught you, Hoping you remember me at all.
Their mutual Time Lord connection isn't exactly what he'd call specific. Whether his counterpart is spending an evening naming the new constellations for Rose, or yelling as she splashes him with humanly cold water in the English sea, or getting up early to fetch the Sunday paper before she's awake, he does not know. What he can feel, even a universe away, is their happiness. It's tentative, certainly, but a certain kind of peace is developing where before he had only felt the sharp rebuke of a guarded heart and cautious mind. There are frequent, teasing glimpses of emotions in which he can never partake, and besides that, felt for and by a woman he has lost through his own design and who he will never quite be able to leave behind - certainly not in this body. These hands, this skin, both his hearts, they all belong to her. He died for her, reborn with a share of her enthusiasm for life, infected with her hope and love and compassion. She even gave him her accent. Rose Tyler near enough created the Doctor. As long as this incarnation lives, he will carry part of her with him, and try as he might, he can't let that go. He's scared of who he might become if he does. You made me better. But he's not better. Not really. He accused her Doctor of genocide, but only hours after he had lost Rose, he himself had murdered the Racnoss. He can move on, now, in a way he never used to - walk away from tragedy as though one more knock can't hurt him anymore. He has almost always lost more, faced worse. Done worse. But at night, when he wakes screaming with no-one beside him, and often in the day, when he sees something that makes him remember all he has lost and all he is responsible for, he is not quite the healed man he was when he was with her. He won't deny it. He wants her back. Maybe he even needs her still. The temptation to peek into their life is strong, but he never looks back. He doesn't dare. Davros was right. He leaves his mind open, though, ever-receptive to the roaring silence out there in the vain hope that perhaps one day more of his own kind will emerge, and sometimes emotions trickle through. He likes to check up on them in this way from time to time, make sure they're both OK. Likes to feel as though, somehow, he's not alone, not the last anymore. He'd like to know, just for one day, how it feels to love Rose Tyler with a human heart.
Week Eleven: Natalie Imbruglia - Honeycomb Child (16)
I got all those shells And put them in a box. How far would you go If I didn’t want to stop?
He'd thought, until now, that the day was a perfectly ordinary one. He'd spent the morning having a chat with the friendly, largely misunderstood Ablebrox Beetles who had somehow teleported themselves into several capsules of the London Eye in the height of the tourist season. Lunchtime was dedicated to enlightening them on the better dung-heaps of the universe and the afternoon spent shuffling the relevant paperwork onto someone else as he watched them fly back home. No, all in all, it's been an entirely regular day. That is, until he returns home to find Rose at the windowsill in her bedroom, carefully putting something he can't see into what looks like an ornate jewellery box. She turns around when he enters, almost dropping the tiny objects in her hands. Her hair is full of the wind and there's a broken-up, tell-tale mascara trail staining her left cheek. “I just wanted to say goodbye,” she tells him, voice hitching slightly, rubbing the items in her hands nervously. It's not until she drops one that he realises what they are and where she has been. Shells. They've lined the windowsill ever since he got here, but he's never questioned what they were, where they came from. He should have known, really. Today must have been the end of another year. Wordlessly, he walks over and picks up the shell from the carpet, placing it on the windowsill where it belongs. But Rose takes it back again and puts it in the box, dropping the others in too, one by one, never saying a word. Finally, she reaches into the neck of her tshirt and pulls out a long chain with a too-familiar key at the end, placing it in the box without looking at him. She closes the lid, takes a breath and turns around. “I'm sorry. I had to go, just one last time. I wasn't waiting, I just...” Tears start to roll down her cheeks and he can see it all too clearly, her standing there with her feet sinking into the sand, the water on her cheeks as salty as the sea lapping at her toes as she says her goodbyes. When he drops his eyes, her knees are muddy, sandy, just as he expected. “Why did you stay?” she asks, drawing his eyes back up. “You could've gone with him. You could've, I dunno, nicked his TARDIS, run off with that bit of coral, gone travelling on your own. Why did you stay with me?” Because I love you. Unwilling to stutter his way through an unsatisfactory explanation, he says nothing. The answer to that question is one he will never truly be able to put into words, because there are none - human or otherwise - that can sufficiently express the hold this once insignificant little shop girl has over his heart. “Rose,” he tries, almost laughing, “If you really don't know the answer to that, then I don't know why you've let me stay here with you for so long.” Her cheeks stain ever so slightly pink. She dusts the sand from her palms and takes his fingers up in hers, swinging their hands in the space between their bodies. “D'you mind, that I went today?” she asks anxiously, chewing on her bottom lip. He stays silent, not entirely sure whether he minds or not. After all, it is him that she's visiting, year after year, in a way. “I'm not gonna go again, not if you don't want me to.” No matter what they've been through and how much they've both changed, the Doctor knows Rose Tyler, and he knows that no-one on Earth could stop her going to that beach if that's what she really wanted. He has no doubt that Jackie's tried to do exactly that every year without success. It's almost as if she's asking him to make her stop, asking him (as he is the nearest thing to the man she is so close to leaving behind, shutting away in that box with all her trinkets) to tell her that it's alright to move on now. That the other Doctor won't resent her for it. Choosing his words carefully, aiming for a middle ground, he says, “Go any time you need to,” hoping, almost knowing, that she won't need to anymore. He refuses to ban her from going to Norway - she's a free person and she can do what she likes. He doesn't own her. The whole notion is ridiculous to him. No, he's not going to stop her from returning there, one day, if she ever needs to. Afterall, he still wakes up almost every night and climbs onto the roof to stare at the stars. No, he's just going to put faith in the idea that perhaps she won't want to go back now. “Well, that's the thing, isn't it?” She drops one of his hands and trails her free fingers up his arm, tiptoeing up to press her lips to his. “'Cause I sort of reckon,” she whispers, barely pulling back - he can feel the words across his lips, “I sort of reckon that I don't need to anymore.” She traces kisses along his jaw and down, reaching his collar before he realises that her fingers have moved to the knot of his tie, the buttons of his shirt, the hem of her top. He swallows, the air suddenly tight in his lungs. It's him, completely him that she's seeing. And this time, she doesn't pull away.
Week Eleven: Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved (17)
She always belonged to someone else. [...] I know I tend to get so insecure, It doesn’t matter anymore. […] It’s compromise that moves us along.
He doesn't say it, the first time. They've both reverted to old ways since they left that beach, finding certain things near impossible to voice. Instead, she finds the words scrawled across a tiny scrap of paper that falls out of his jacket pocket as she folds it away. It's faded and crumpled from the wash, but she can make the words out enough to know what he's been trying to say. It's there, in four or five different languages, French and Welsh, she thinks, and maybe something alien next to the swirls and clockwork she recognises as his own tongue. Three words, every single time.
Week Twelve: The Corrs - Humdrum (18)
I wanna take you for granted - Drift while you’re talking, Bathe while you’re downstairs And chat on the phone. Fall asleep before bedtime, Pass in the hallway, Forget your birthday, And shrink all your clothes.
If this is what he's been missing all these years, he thinks, early morning tea steaming on his desk, Rose's arms looped loosely around his neck, smiling into his mouth between him and the wall, then he wonders why on Earth he didn't get around to it sooner. She tugs on his tie, turning him around so that he's against the wall and she can wriggle away. “I reckon,” she says, as stern and prim and proper as she can manage, “That it's about time you got to work. I know for a fact that you've got eight reports to file today, Mr Smith.” “Oh, do I have to?” He hangs onto her hand, trailing after her like a plaintive puppy dog as she makes her way to the door. “Yes, or I'll tell Mum that it was you who broke the tap in the kitchen last week.” The Doctor's eyes go wide, his mind racing through the various ways in which Jackie Tyler would be prepared to murder him. Not stabbing. That's too messy. But he doesn't think she's beyond slapping him to death. “You wouldn't!” “I would.” She tugs her hand from his, using her now-free index finger to point at him sternly. “Now get to it!” “Oi, you have work too,” he reminds her. “What about that translation system you're supposed to be working on, hm?” She's almost at the doorway, her back to him. He strides over, grabs her by the elbow and spins her around. “Are you going without saying goodbye, Rose Tyler? That's rude.” She tugs him down by his tie. “Get,” she says, punctuating each word with a quick kiss, “To - work. Or - else. Mmf!” she protests, as he grabs her by the waist and pulls her back for a longer kiss. For a second, she curves into him, sighing in the back of her throat, before pulling away, whipping around and walking straight into the poor startled tea boy and squeaking in fright. “Sorry, Ianto!” she gabbles, backing out into the corridor. “Don't tell my Dad!” The Doctor is left to grin sheepishly, blushing as he straightens out his tie. “No, really,” he adds. “Don't tell her father.”
Happily Ever After: Gregory and the Hawk - Boats & Birds (19)
But you could skyrocket away from me And never come back if you find another galaxy Far from here, with more room to fly.
Underneath it all, behind all the guns and blue suits and growing up, they’re still the same people. She still has the same insecurities, is still worried that one day he’ll up and leave her because the idea of houses and children and jobs - even jobs chasing aliens - will get too stifling. The Earth isn’t big enough for him, it never has been, and now she’s finally accepted him she spends half her time watching him for signs of restlessness or wanderlust, desperate to hang onto him and make up for all these weeks she hasn’t been able to appreciate what was right in front of her. Feeling as though they’re living on borrowed time and terrified of waking up and finding nothing but an empty bed and a few missing pieces of technology at work, she considers it almost inevitable that he will eventually leave. One day, standing making tea in the kitchen, she stirs the milk in his cup and asks him - seriously, this time, uncertain of his answer in a way he never doubted hers - “How long are you gonna stay with me?”
Catherine Feeny - Forever (20)
I can say without fail that love has been fleeting But I know you don't want the truth, So I'll say forever.
He can’t give her the perfect, journeying, never-ending fairytale she’s wanted ever since she met the Doctor, the two of them standing hand-in-hand at the edge of the universe for the rest of time. They will age, both of them, and die as all humans do. As far as he’s concerned, though, the rest of time doesn’t have to stretch on into eternity. It can be here and now, the rest of their time, fighting countless aliens, growing their TARDIS, raising their children and spending every last year of his life with the woman for whom he gave up the stars. So, just for now, he abandons his purist sense of time and tells her forever. He knew he was going to lie before she’d even finished asking the question. But something in the slowing beat of his heart says that maybe, just maybe, this time it’s true.
To tell you the end of the tale would be cheating. Bonus Track: Life Among the Distant Stars, Doctor Who Series Four Soundtrack.
Comment?
I don't wanna hear you tell yourself That these feelings are in the past. You know it doesn’t mean they’re off the shelf. Everybody sails alone, But we can travel side by side… “Daddy,” Tony asks one day, as they sit around a too-big table in the too-big Tyler mansion, eating Sunday lunch, “Is Rose going away again, Daddy?” Pete's paid for a holiday for them both, a round-the-world trip to land them anywhere they want. He says they need it, won't take no for an answer. Their single suitcase stands in the hall, unforgivably shiny and new, just waiting to be covered in the dust of a hundred new worlds. You haven't seen it yet, remember? Rose had told him late one night when he'd expressed reluctance towards the whole idea. He wasn't sure how he'd get on with travelling like a proper tourist. She'd kissed his eyelids and laughed. Not with these eyes. At the table, Jackie shushes her son before Pete has time to finish chewing his vegetables and answer. “Not like last time, sweetheart. She's just going on holiday, like when we went to the beach, remember? She's coming back.” And she fixes Rose with a glare that clearly says you'd better. There's an easy silence while everyone chews until Tony pipes up again, this time addressing Rose. “Are you goin' to the special beach? I don't like it when you go an' see the special beach. You come back sad and you never play.” The Doctor privately thinks that everyone else finishes quickly on purpose, because in ten minutes he and Rose are left to finish their carrots alone. He lets his fork drop to his plate with a clatter. “You used to visit - ” “Every year,” she interrupts, looking down at her plate and concentrating a little too diligently on her food. She clearly wants this conversation to be over as quickly as possible, but this isn't about competition or jealousy. He is still the man who lost her to this world, and it is his heart that aches to think of her returning to that beach, year after year, in the vain hope that he might return to her before she fought her way back to him. He lifts her fingers from her fork and pulls them into his own, tugging gently on her hand when she still doesn't look up. “Were you waiting?” “No. Yeah. I dunno,” she stumbles, looking up briefly before turning her eyes away and shaking her head, more in an effort to clear it than as a denial. Time might run differently in this universe, but he knows it's coming up to another year. “Do you want to go again?” “No,” she says, too quickly, snatching her fingers back and rubbing her hands together awkwardly in her lap. “No,” she repeats, quietly. “Got you here, haven't I? And he's... he's...” Not coming back anymore. No, he's not. The Doctor studies the dark mahogany dining table for a long moment before speaking again. “Do you still - ?” He sees her reflection blink in the table and raises his eyes. She thinks she knows what he's asking but she won't risk a reply without being sure. He sighs and forces himself to say it, not quite recognising the words as they come out of his mouth. “You still love him.” Almost defensively, as though daring him to tell her not to, that she can't, that she shouldn't, she answers exactly as he feared she would. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He has always known that there are - and always will be - three people in this relationship. Considering the third person is, well, himself, and as long as one day Rose will belong fully to the here and now rather than the what ifs of the past, perhaps that is something he will just have to accept. “I'm always gonna love him,” she says, carefully, shyly, “ 'cause he gave me you.” Perhaps it's not going to be so hard to accept afterall. Week Nine: Darren Hayes - So Beautiful (13)
You know they can have their universe; We’ll be in the dirt designing stars.
Somehow, somewhere along the line, supermarkets and babies and nine-to-five stopped being more terrifying than the Daleks. Realising this one morning while brushing his teeth, he looks at himself in the mirror and laughs until he gets toothpaste all down his tie and Rose has to dig him out another one from the pile of washing for the day. The TARDIS has grown since they've been away, the change more obvious when they haven't been around to check her hour by hour. There’s a soft hum emanating from the garage as he walks past, new tie in place, making his way towards central London and three reported sightings of giant talking shrimps. Perhaps he’s a little bit crazy, but he wouldn’t change this for the world. Week Nine: Lucie Silvas - Breathe In (14)
Wipe the dust from your sweet smile, And breathe in life.
They stopped the shrimps. For a long moment, they simply stand there in the street, stunned and disbelieving, until reality sinks in and they begin laughing like maniacs. Real laughter, full of adventure, the kind she's been waiting to hear from him for so long, and he's spinning her around and around just like old times. There's a gooey medley of exploded seafood in his hair, but his lips taste the same and for once she's not looking for the differences. This moment is theirs. He's been waiting for her to kiss him without sadness since the day they met. He has this feeling that as long as they keep going, they'll be OK.
Week Ten: The Feeling - Kettle's On (15) [Time Lord Doctor]
I'm hoping you remember what I taught you, Hoping you remember me at all.
Their mutual Time Lord connection isn't exactly what he'd call specific. Whether his counterpart is spending an evening naming the new constellations for Rose, or yelling as she splashes him with humanly cold water in the English sea, or getting up early to fetch the Sunday paper before she's awake, he does not know. What he can feel, even a universe away, is their happiness. It's tentative, certainly, but a certain kind of peace is developing where before he had only felt the sharp rebuke of a guarded heart and cautious mind. There are frequent, teasing glimpses of emotions in which he can never partake, and besides that, felt for and by a woman he has lost through his own design and who he will never quite be able to leave behind - certainly not in this body. These hands, this skin, both his hearts, they all belong to her. He died for her, reborn with a share of her enthusiasm for life, infected with her hope and love and compassion. She even gave him her accent. Rose Tyler near enough created the Doctor. As long as this incarnation lives, he will carry part of her with him, and try as he might, he can't let that go. He's scared of who he might become if he does. You made me better. But he's not better. Not really. He accused her Doctor of genocide, but only hours after he had lost Rose, he himself had murdered the Racnoss. He can move on, now, in a way he never used to - walk away from tragedy as though one more knock can't hurt him anymore. He has almost always lost more, faced worse. Done worse. But at night, when he wakes screaming with no-one beside him, and often in the day, when he sees something that makes him remember all he has lost and all he is responsible for, he is not quite the healed man he was when he was with her. He won't deny it. He wants her back. Maybe he even needs her still. The temptation to peek into their life is strong, but he never looks back. He doesn't dare. Davros was right. He leaves his mind open, though, ever-receptive to the roaring silence out there in the vain hope that perhaps one day more of his own kind will emerge, and sometimes emotions trickle through. He likes to check up on them in this way from time to time, make sure they're both OK. Likes to feel as though, somehow, he's not alone, not the last anymore. He'd like to know, just for one day, how it feels to love Rose Tyler with a human heart.
Week Eleven: Natalie Imbruglia - Honeycomb Child (16)
I got all those shells And put them in a box. How far would you go If I didn’t want to stop?
He'd thought, until now, that the day was a perfectly ordinary one. He'd spent the morning having a chat with the friendly, largely misunderstood Ablebrox Beetles who had somehow teleported themselves into several capsules of the London Eye in the height of the tourist season. Lunchtime was dedicated to enlightening them on the better dung-heaps of the universe and the afternoon spent shuffling the relevant paperwork onto someone else as he watched them fly back home. No, all in all, it's been an entirely regular day. That is, until he returns home to find Rose at the windowsill in her bedroom, carefully putting something he can't see into what looks like an ornate jewellery box. She turns around when he enters, almost dropping the tiny objects in her hands. Her hair is full of the wind and there's a broken-up, tell-tale mascara trail staining her left cheek. “I just wanted to say goodbye,” she tells him, voice hitching slightly, rubbing the items in her hands nervously. It's not until she drops one that he realises what they are and where she has been. Shells. They've lined the windowsill ever since he got here, but he's never questioned what they were, where they came from. He should have known, really. Today must have been the end of another year. Wordlessly, he walks over and picks up the shell from the carpet, placing it on the windowsill where it belongs. But Rose takes it back again and puts it in the box, dropping the others in too, one by one, never saying a word. Finally, she reaches into the neck of her tshirt and pulls out a long chain with a too-familiar key at the end, placing it in the box without looking at him. She closes the lid, takes a breath and turns around. “I'm sorry. I had to go, just one last time. I wasn't waiting, I just...” Tears start to roll down her cheeks and he can see it all too clearly, her standing there with her feet sinking into the sand, the water on her cheeks as salty as the sea lapping at her toes as she says her goodbyes. When he drops his eyes, her knees are muddy, sandy, just as he expected. “Why did you stay?” she asks, drawing his eyes back up. “You could've gone with him. You could've, I dunno, nicked his TARDIS, run off with that bit of coral, gone travelling on your own. Why did you stay with me?” Because I love you. Unwilling to stutter his way through an unsatisfactory explanation, he says nothing. The answer to that question is one he will never truly be able to put into words, because there are none - human or otherwise - that can sufficiently express the hold this once insignificant little shop girl has over his heart. “Rose,” he tries, almost laughing, “If you really don't know the answer to that, then I don't know why you've let me stay here with you for so long.” Her cheeks stain ever so slightly pink. She dusts the sand from her palms and takes his fingers up in hers, swinging their hands in the space between their bodies. “D'you mind, that I went today?” she asks anxiously, chewing on her bottom lip. He stays silent, not entirely sure whether he minds or not. After all, it is him that she's visiting, year after year, in a way. “I'm not gonna go again, not if you don't want me to.” No matter what they've been through and how much they've both changed, the Doctor knows Rose Tyler, and he knows that no-one on Earth could stop her going to that beach if that's what she really wanted. He has no doubt that Jackie's tried to do exactly that every year without success. It's almost as if she's asking him to make her stop, asking him (as he is the nearest thing to the man she is so close to leaving behind, shutting away in that box with all her trinkets) to tell her that it's alright to move on now. That the other Doctor won't resent her for it. Choosing his words carefully, aiming for a middle ground, he says, “Go any time you need to,” hoping, almost knowing, that she won't need to anymore. He refuses to ban her from going to Norway - she's a free person and she can do what she likes. He doesn't own her. The whole notion is ridiculous to him. No, he's not going to stop her from returning there, one day, if she ever needs to. Afterall, he still wakes up almost every night and climbs onto the roof to stare at the stars. No, he's just going to put faith in the idea that perhaps she won't want to go back now. “Well, that's the thing, isn't it?” She drops one of his hands and trails her free fingers up his arm, tiptoeing up to press her lips to his. “'Cause I sort of reckon,” she whispers, barely pulling back - he can feel the words across his lips, “I sort of reckon that I don't need to anymore.” She traces kisses along his jaw and down, reaching his collar before he realises that her fingers have moved to the knot of his tie, the buttons of his shirt, the hem of her top. He swallows, the air suddenly tight in his lungs. It's him, completely him that she's seeing. And this time, she doesn't pull away.
Week Eleven: Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved (17)
She always belonged to someone else. [...] I know I tend to get so insecure, It doesn’t matter anymore. […] It’s compromise that moves us along.
He doesn't say it, the first time. They've both reverted to old ways since they left that beach, finding certain things near impossible to voice. Instead, she finds the words scrawled across a tiny scrap of paper that falls out of his jacket pocket as she folds it away. It's faded and crumpled from the wash, but she can make the words out enough to know what he's been trying to say. It's there, in four or five different languages, French and Welsh, she thinks, and maybe something alien next to the swirls and clockwork she recognises as his own tongue. Three words, every single time.
Week Twelve: The Corrs - Humdrum (18)
I wanna take you for granted - Drift while you’re talking, Bathe while you’re downstairs And chat on the phone. Fall asleep before bedtime, Pass in the hallway, Forget your birthday, And shrink all your clothes.
If this is what he's been missing all these years, he thinks, early morning tea steaming on his desk, Rose's arms looped loosely around his neck, smiling into his mouth between him and the wall, then he wonders why on Earth he didn't get around to it sooner. She tugs on his tie, turning him around so that he's against the wall and she can wriggle away. “I reckon,” she says, as stern and prim and proper as she can manage, “That it's about time you got to work. I know for a fact that you've got eight reports to file today, Mr Smith.” “Oh, do I have to?” He hangs onto her hand, trailing after her like a plaintive puppy dog as she makes her way to the door. “Yes, or I'll tell Mum that it was you who broke the tap in the kitchen last week.” The Doctor's eyes go wide, his mind racing through the various ways in which Jackie Tyler would be prepared to murder him. Not stabbing. That's too messy. But he doesn't think she's beyond slapping him to death. “You wouldn't!” “I would.” She tugs her hand from his, using her now-free index finger to point at him sternly. “Now get to it!” “Oi, you have work too,” he reminds her. “What about that translation system you're supposed to be working on, hm?” She's almost at the doorway, her back to him. He strides over, grabs her by the elbow and spins her around. “Are you going without saying goodbye, Rose Tyler? That's rude.” She tugs him down by his tie. “Get,” she says, punctuating each word with a quick kiss, “To - work. Or - else. Mmf!” she protests, as he grabs her by the waist and pulls her back for a longer kiss. For a second, she curves into him, sighing in the back of her throat, before pulling away, whipping around and walking straight into the poor startled tea boy and squeaking in fright. “Sorry, Ianto!” she gabbles, backing out into the corridor. “Don't tell my Dad!” The Doctor is left to grin sheepishly, blushing as he straightens out his tie. “No, really,” he adds. “Don't tell her father.”
Happily Ever After: Gregory and the Hawk - Boats & Birds (19)
But you could skyrocket away from me And never come back if you find another galaxy Far from here, with more room to fly.
Underneath it all, behind all the guns and blue suits and growing up, they’re still the same people. She still has the same insecurities, is still worried that one day he’ll up and leave her because the idea of houses and children and jobs - even jobs chasing aliens - will get too stifling. The Earth isn’t big enough for him, it never has been, and now she’s finally accepted him she spends half her time watching him for signs of restlessness or wanderlust, desperate to hang onto him and make up for all these weeks she hasn’t been able to appreciate what was right in front of her. Feeling as though they’re living on borrowed time and terrified of waking up and finding nothing but an empty bed and a few missing pieces of technology at work, she considers it almost inevitable that he will eventually leave. One day, standing making tea in the kitchen, she stirs the milk in his cup and asks him - seriously, this time, uncertain of his answer in a way he never doubted hers - “How long are you gonna stay with me?”
Catherine Feeny - Forever (20)
I can say without fail that love has been fleeting But I know you don't want the truth, So I'll say forever.
He can’t give her the perfect, journeying, never-ending fairytale she’s wanted ever since she met the Doctor, the two of them standing hand-in-hand at the edge of the universe for the rest of time. They will age, both of them, and die as all humans do. As far as he’s concerned, though, the rest of time doesn’t have to stretch on into eternity. It can be here and now, the rest of their time, fighting countless aliens, growing their TARDIS, raising their children and spending every last year of his life with the woman for whom he gave up the stars. So, just for now, he abandons his purist sense of time and tells her forever. He knew he was going to lie before she’d even finished asking the question. But something in the slowing beat of his heart says that maybe, just maybe, this time it’s true.
To tell you the end of the tale would be cheating. Bonus Track: Life Among the Distant Stars, Doctor Who Series Four Soundtrack.
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