Fic: Meet Me By The Water; 2/2; DW: Ten/Rose
Title: Meet Me By The Water
Author:
shootingstars88 Helen
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, Donna, Martha, Jack.
Rating: G
Genre: Mostly angst, with a side of happy endings
Disclaimer: Not mine, not even a little bit. Doctor Who et al. are property of the BBC.
Spoilers: Lots of Season Four spoilers and speculation.
He's beginning to think the question isn't whether he can take her with him but whether he can bear to leave her behind.
Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the first part of this, your comments really made my day. Without further ado, here is the second and final part of this fic and it's rather longer than the first part I'm afraid....
~
"This is where you’re supposed to be: safe, with your family, saving the world. I can’t take you away from all this. I won’t.”
Her final response is perhaps the hardest part of it all to bear.
“I know.”
~
He lets out a long breath but there’s no relief to be found in her acceptance. It’s worse, almost, to stand there, silent in the howling wind, knowing why it is she’s stopped fighting. It’s not that she agrees, he’s certain of that. It’s that she knows it’s killing him to watch her struggle, to watch her break down on his account, again. So she’s acquiescing just to stop it hurting him, even when it’s killing her.
“I wish I’d held on tighter that day,” she finally breaks the silence that’s fallen following her words, laughing to hide how much she’s dwelt on the idea.
“It wasn’t your fault-”
“I know that,” she interrupts, “still I can’t help it sometimes, y’know, can’t help thinking about how it might have been.”
He thinks of Martha, of a tiny Tudor bed and a careless remark. “Me too.”
“At first it felt a bit like I’d wandered off on some planet out there and you’d forgotten to come back for me. Like you’d be round the next corner, or maybe the next.” She laughs, though it’s clear there’s nothing funny in the recollection. When she suddenly sobers, he knows what’s she’s going to say before she says it. “And then it started to feel more like it was ... over, like even if I found you again one day, it’d never go back to the way it was. My time was up.” She lets out a quick breath, half a laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. “I’d ran out of time with the man with the time machine.”
“Rose-”
“I’ll wait though,” she says quickly, ignoring his attempt at apology. “Just in case in case you find some more time for me in that time machine of yours. I’ll wait. The void’s been stable for weeks now, promise me you won’t close it yet.” Her voice is strong again now, her tears already gone, dried in an instant by the fierce winds.
“I should-”
“Of course you should but when did that ever stop you?”
“Well-”
“Five and a half hours. Please Doctor. Give me that. Give me five and a half hours.”
There’s more in her eyes than in the whole colourless horizon on this beach and it’s starting to seem so understandable, so excusable, to need her to bleed a little colour into his world.
He answers before he can even try to stop himself. “Ok.”
“Thank you.”
She turns her back on him, dashing off to hug Donna goodbye. He can’t hear their conversation and he doesn’t care to try so he stays at a distance, staring out to sea. It’s difficult to find space to think when his head is filling with places to take her if she comes with him. He’s too tired to worry that it’s changed to an if, and is heading dangerously close to a when.
She brings him out of his reverie with a hand on his arm. She’s beside him again now, tears of a different kind sparkling in her eyes. For the first time since they started this whole conversation, she looks frightened.
She throws her arms around him, holding tight enough to hurt. “Just in case,” she whispers, her breath warm against his neck, and if he could tremble anymore than he already is, he would.
He closes his eyes against the ocean before him, transported back to so many other moments like this; his feet touch the ground of a hundred, nameless planets, against the inside of his eyes the sky turns to blue, to black, to purple and to green. When he’s opens them it’s grey again and he’s not surprised to find tears clouding his vision of the bleak horizon.
It’s oddly appropriate, that he can’t see ahead, that the simple view he’s drawn on to justify his actions is suddenly blurred, unclear, in doubt.
He glances down at her, releasing her but keeping hold of her hands in his.
“You saved the world again,” he says quietly, “the universe actually, no - both of them. The universes.”
She nods, “Had a lot of help.”
“Yeah.”
She pauses for a long moment, as though weighing up whether to say something more. Finally she gives in, letting the words out in a huff of breath, “Can’t save you though.”
“Rose,” he breaks a little more now, tears threatening to overcome him.
“You told me once,” she continues shakily, with a smile that doesn’t brighten her eyes, “to have a fantastic life. It never even occurred me to tell you to do the same. But looking at you today, I think I should have.”
He doesn’t respond, instead he simply pulls her back towards him, pressing his lips to hers.
It’s a chaste kiss, a goodbye kiss, or so he tells himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows he’s only making it harder. When they finally part, she’s smiling wistfully but he cannot match her expression. He’s sure now that a piece of him will be left on this beach with her when he’s gone and it’s going to kill him trying not to come back for it, for her, for the chance to fit the pieces back together and be as close to whole as he’s ever been.
“Five and a half hours, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he agrees, throat dry. “I - I’m not going to come back for you. I mean it, this is it Rose, this is really goodbye.”
“That’s what you said last time,” she shoots back quickly, but there’s no humour in her eyes, just the heartbreaking spark of hope.
She doesn’t follow him when he walks away, she doesn’t even watch him go. He concentrates on nothing but motion, just placing one foot in front of the other and reaching the TARDIS. Her family don’t watch him either, heading straight to where Rose remains standing, staring out to sea.
He closes the door with one last lingering look at the figures along the dreary seashore. Donna is waiting for him, crying but pretending not to be, in the chair beside the Console. Without a word, he sets the co-ordinates and pushes the TARDIS into flight.
On the beach, Rose watches the TARDIS dematerialise with dry eyes, turning to face her assembled family.
“He’ll be back,” she says firmly.
“Rose, he’s gone.” Her mother’s voice is gentle, but firm. “He said goodbye sweetheart, he kissed you goodbye. He’s gone.”
Rose merely smiles at the assembled vision of family sympathy. “He’s coming back.”
“How d’you know?” Mickey prompts, adopting the same tone as Jackie. “He did say goodbye, didn’t he?.”
“Yeah ... but the thing is there’s something else, something he didn’t say. And that’s how I know,” she finishes cryptically, too tired to explain completely, too afraid to outline everything in case it falls apart on close attention. The idea looks perfect from far away, like the waves she’s watching, and he taught her long ago that it’s always better to be hopeful.
So she waits with a smile.
~
Inside the TARDIS, Donna has her assembled luggage ready, though she hasn’t stopped glaring at him for a second. When he announces they’ve landed, she softens a little, glancing around the TARDIS one last time.
“Thank you Doctor,” she says gently, “for everything.”
He frowns at her, “You’re thanking me, after everything you’ve seen today?”
She sighs, exasperated as usual. “Of course I am! You’ve shown me so much, all the wonderful things that are out there.”
“But-”
“But nothing,” she overrides his attempted negativity. “It hasn’t all been perfect but I never asked you for that. And we fought Doctor, all of us, for you, for the whole universe out there that you’ve shown us. And y’know what? We won.”
“Yeah we did,” he agrees, unable to stop himself smiling in the face of her optimism, at how she always sees the victories over the losses. “Thank you.”
He hugs her tightly, wondering if she knows how she’s saved him, just by being around. She’s questioned him like no-one ever has and as she heads for the door and pauses, he realises she’s not finished with him yet.
“You going to go back for her?” she finally asks after a long moment of staring him down.
“No,” he responds automatically, his resolve not nearly as strong as he’s pretending. He busies himself with grabbing some of her bags, following her out the door into her street.
“You should.”
“You don’t understand,” he sighs wearily, dropping her bags when they reach her front door.
It’s raining here, heavy and relentless, seeping into his old brown suit until it’s clinging to his tall, thin frame. Despite his supposed physiological superiority, he’s cold. Still he doesn’t move, doesn’t dash to safety like Donna. He lets the rain fall until his waterlogged clothes are a physical weight on his shoulders, a welcome burden that’s physical, tangible, something real he can focus on for once.
Donna shelters under the doorway of her home, watching him sadly as he lets the rain fall, shivering with every drop. She pauses for a long moment and she looks like she did earlier, like saving him is as important as saving the world had been.
“I can’t,” he starts to justify himself, though it’s harder than ever to formulate his argument. The only thing that’s left is fear, but it’s strong enough to help him push the words out. “I can’t take her with me Donna, no matter how much I might want to. She’s got family there, a new life, she’s safe. I can’t ask her for forever.”
Donna sighs loudly, resting her weary frame against the front door of her mother’s house. For a moment she stares at him like he’s something she could never understand, something completely alien. Then she snaps.
“She’s the one asking you! She wants to go! And it's more than that ‘cause God knows why but she loves you. And it’s not selfish y’know, to take someone with you, not when they want to go. You just don’t get it d’you? Doctor, you can travel in time! I mean ... you save the world ... you save a hundred different worlds a hundred times over! You get to see the most amazing things in the universe, in any universe, every single day, see days that are nothing but pages in a history book to us. And you never, ever, stop because there’s always something else out there. And Doctor, that is the most wonderful way to spend forever.”
She finishes, breathing heavily, and waits.
He’s got nothing left, no response, no counter-argument, not when she won’t stop making sense. He stares back at her, silent for a long time. The rain isn’t easing but it’s starting to seem so utterly pointless to stand here and let it hit him when he could find a warm, dry suit back in the comfort of the TARDIS.
He wonders how he could have let the fight go out of him like this. He thinks about earlier, about how they were all there, all the humans whose lives he thinks he ruined, all fighting for him, choosing to fight for him. It scares him now, how close he’s gotten to giving up on everything, on trying, on fighting, on living this upside down existence that they were willing to die for. He’s terrified now, worse than before, but it’s a welcome feeling, jolting him into action. For the first time in a long time he’s more scared of doing nothing than he is of doing something.
He thinks about her, waiting for him on that beach. It’s unthinkable now, not going back to her, the idea almost laughable, preposterous, impossible. He could do it if it only meant hurting himself, if he thought she’d understand it one day. But she’s standing there right now, a spark of life on that dull horizon and he realises for the first time, that if he doesn’t go back, that light will go out.
“You’re right,” is all he can offer.
Exhausted though she is, Donna manages a massive grin. “Well I know that,” she responds, satisfied.
“Thank you,” he says simply, slowly, gratitude hanging on every syllable, “for everything.”
“Thank you,” she replies in kind. “And I’ll see you again some day, both of you.”
“I hope so,” he smiles at her, hugging her one last time, and laughing at how she recoils, muttering about him getting her wet.
He watches her go before heading into the TARDIS, finding the old ship ready for his destination, co-ordinates set because of course, she knew before he did, just like Donna, that he was going back to that beach.
~
It’s the longest wait she’s ever experienced, every passing second bringing another nagging doubt to hang on the weightless hope until she’s dragged dangerously close to despair. It feels longer than waiting nineteen years for her life to start, standing on that beach. The man she knew would have come back for her, but as the minutes pass she begins to wonder if the man she knew faded away the moment his image did from this beach after their first unfinished goodbye.
It’s worth every second of waiting when she hears it: the sound of the universe. Her universe.
He steps out in a different suit and when he approaches her she finally sees it, what’s she’s been looking for in his eyes since they met again. Sparkling amongst the merest suggestion of what he’s seen, amongst the pain and the darkness, the history and the adventure, is a hint of infinity.
He says the only thing he could in a situation like this.
“Did I mention it also travels in time?”
She laughs like she used to, completely, openly, honestly.
He smiles and offers her his hand, and with it the universe.
She takes it without a moment’s hesitation, stepping back into his impossible life, where she belongs.
~
Hope you enjoyed :) Comments are always appreciated.
Author:
shootingstars88 Helen
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, Donna, Martha, Jack.
Rating: G
Genre: Mostly angst, with a side of happy endings
Disclaimer: Not mine, not even a little bit. Doctor Who et al. are property of the BBC.
Spoilers: Lots of Season Four spoilers and speculation.
He's beginning to think the question isn't whether he can take her with him but whether he can bear to leave her behind.
Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the first part of this, your comments really made my day. Without further ado, here is the second and final part of this fic and it's rather longer than the first part I'm afraid....
~
"This is where you’re supposed to be: safe, with your family, saving the world. I can’t take you away from all this. I won’t.”
Her final response is perhaps the hardest part of it all to bear.
“I know.”
~
He lets out a long breath but there’s no relief to be found in her acceptance. It’s worse, almost, to stand there, silent in the howling wind, knowing why it is she’s stopped fighting. It’s not that she agrees, he’s certain of that. It’s that she knows it’s killing him to watch her struggle, to watch her break down on his account, again. So she’s acquiescing just to stop it hurting him, even when it’s killing her.
“I wish I’d held on tighter that day,” she finally breaks the silence that’s fallen following her words, laughing to hide how much she’s dwelt on the idea.
“It wasn’t your fault-”
“I know that,” she interrupts, “still I can’t help it sometimes, y’know, can’t help thinking about how it might have been.”
He thinks of Martha, of a tiny Tudor bed and a careless remark. “Me too.”
“At first it felt a bit like I’d wandered off on some planet out there and you’d forgotten to come back for me. Like you’d be round the next corner, or maybe the next.” She laughs, though it’s clear there’s nothing funny in the recollection. When she suddenly sobers, he knows what’s she’s going to say before she says it. “And then it started to feel more like it was ... over, like even if I found you again one day, it’d never go back to the way it was. My time was up.” She lets out a quick breath, half a laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. “I’d ran out of time with the man with the time machine.”
“Rose-”
“I’ll wait though,” she says quickly, ignoring his attempt at apology. “Just in case in case you find some more time for me in that time machine of yours. I’ll wait. The void’s been stable for weeks now, promise me you won’t close it yet.” Her voice is strong again now, her tears already gone, dried in an instant by the fierce winds.
“I should-”
“Of course you should but when did that ever stop you?”
“Well-”
“Five and a half hours. Please Doctor. Give me that. Give me five and a half hours.”
There’s more in her eyes than in the whole colourless horizon on this beach and it’s starting to seem so understandable, so excusable, to need her to bleed a little colour into his world.
He answers before he can even try to stop himself. “Ok.”
“Thank you.”
She turns her back on him, dashing off to hug Donna goodbye. He can’t hear their conversation and he doesn’t care to try so he stays at a distance, staring out to sea. It’s difficult to find space to think when his head is filling with places to take her if she comes with him. He’s too tired to worry that it’s changed to an if, and is heading dangerously close to a when.
She brings him out of his reverie with a hand on his arm. She’s beside him again now, tears of a different kind sparkling in her eyes. For the first time since they started this whole conversation, she looks frightened.
She throws her arms around him, holding tight enough to hurt. “Just in case,” she whispers, her breath warm against his neck, and if he could tremble anymore than he already is, he would.
He closes his eyes against the ocean before him, transported back to so many other moments like this; his feet touch the ground of a hundred, nameless planets, against the inside of his eyes the sky turns to blue, to black, to purple and to green. When he’s opens them it’s grey again and he’s not surprised to find tears clouding his vision of the bleak horizon.
It’s oddly appropriate, that he can’t see ahead, that the simple view he’s drawn on to justify his actions is suddenly blurred, unclear, in doubt.
He glances down at her, releasing her but keeping hold of her hands in his.
“You saved the world again,” he says quietly, “the universe actually, no - both of them. The universes.”
She nods, “Had a lot of help.”
“Yeah.”
She pauses for a long moment, as though weighing up whether to say something more. Finally she gives in, letting the words out in a huff of breath, “Can’t save you though.”
“Rose,” he breaks a little more now, tears threatening to overcome him.
“You told me once,” she continues shakily, with a smile that doesn’t brighten her eyes, “to have a fantastic life. It never even occurred me to tell you to do the same. But looking at you today, I think I should have.”
He doesn’t respond, instead he simply pulls her back towards him, pressing his lips to hers.
It’s a chaste kiss, a goodbye kiss, or so he tells himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows he’s only making it harder. When they finally part, she’s smiling wistfully but he cannot match her expression. He’s sure now that a piece of him will be left on this beach with her when he’s gone and it’s going to kill him trying not to come back for it, for her, for the chance to fit the pieces back together and be as close to whole as he’s ever been.
“Five and a half hours, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he agrees, throat dry. “I - I’m not going to come back for you. I mean it, this is it Rose, this is really goodbye.”
“That’s what you said last time,” she shoots back quickly, but there’s no humour in her eyes, just the heartbreaking spark of hope.
She doesn’t follow him when he walks away, she doesn’t even watch him go. He concentrates on nothing but motion, just placing one foot in front of the other and reaching the TARDIS. Her family don’t watch him either, heading straight to where Rose remains standing, staring out to sea.
He closes the door with one last lingering look at the figures along the dreary seashore. Donna is waiting for him, crying but pretending not to be, in the chair beside the Console. Without a word, he sets the co-ordinates and pushes the TARDIS into flight.
On the beach, Rose watches the TARDIS dematerialise with dry eyes, turning to face her assembled family.
“He’ll be back,” she says firmly.
“Rose, he’s gone.” Her mother’s voice is gentle, but firm. “He said goodbye sweetheart, he kissed you goodbye. He’s gone.”
Rose merely smiles at the assembled vision of family sympathy. “He’s coming back.”
“How d’you know?” Mickey prompts, adopting the same tone as Jackie. “He did say goodbye, didn’t he?.”
“Yeah ... but the thing is there’s something else, something he didn’t say. And that’s how I know,” she finishes cryptically, too tired to explain completely, too afraid to outline everything in case it falls apart on close attention. The idea looks perfect from far away, like the waves she’s watching, and he taught her long ago that it’s always better to be hopeful.
So she waits with a smile.
~
Inside the TARDIS, Donna has her assembled luggage ready, though she hasn’t stopped glaring at him for a second. When he announces they’ve landed, she softens a little, glancing around the TARDIS one last time.
“Thank you Doctor,” she says gently, “for everything.”
He frowns at her, “You’re thanking me, after everything you’ve seen today?”
She sighs, exasperated as usual. “Of course I am! You’ve shown me so much, all the wonderful things that are out there.”
“But-”
“But nothing,” she overrides his attempted negativity. “It hasn’t all been perfect but I never asked you for that. And we fought Doctor, all of us, for you, for the whole universe out there that you’ve shown us. And y’know what? We won.”
“Yeah we did,” he agrees, unable to stop himself smiling in the face of her optimism, at how she always sees the victories over the losses. “Thank you.”
He hugs her tightly, wondering if she knows how she’s saved him, just by being around. She’s questioned him like no-one ever has and as she heads for the door and pauses, he realises she’s not finished with him yet.
“You going to go back for her?” she finally asks after a long moment of staring him down.
“No,” he responds automatically, his resolve not nearly as strong as he’s pretending. He busies himself with grabbing some of her bags, following her out the door into her street.
“You should.”
“You don’t understand,” he sighs wearily, dropping her bags when they reach her front door.
It’s raining here, heavy and relentless, seeping into his old brown suit until it’s clinging to his tall, thin frame. Despite his supposed physiological superiority, he’s cold. Still he doesn’t move, doesn’t dash to safety like Donna. He lets the rain fall until his waterlogged clothes are a physical weight on his shoulders, a welcome burden that’s physical, tangible, something real he can focus on for once.
Donna shelters under the doorway of her home, watching him sadly as he lets the rain fall, shivering with every drop. She pauses for a long moment and she looks like she did earlier, like saving him is as important as saving the world had been.
“I can’t,” he starts to justify himself, though it’s harder than ever to formulate his argument. The only thing that’s left is fear, but it’s strong enough to help him push the words out. “I can’t take her with me Donna, no matter how much I might want to. She’s got family there, a new life, she’s safe. I can’t ask her for forever.”
Donna sighs loudly, resting her weary frame against the front door of her mother’s house. For a moment she stares at him like he’s something she could never understand, something completely alien. Then she snaps.
“She’s the one asking you! She wants to go! And it's more than that ‘cause God knows why but she loves you. And it’s not selfish y’know, to take someone with you, not when they want to go. You just don’t get it d’you? Doctor, you can travel in time! I mean ... you save the world ... you save a hundred different worlds a hundred times over! You get to see the most amazing things in the universe, in any universe, every single day, see days that are nothing but pages in a history book to us. And you never, ever, stop because there’s always something else out there. And Doctor, that is the most wonderful way to spend forever.”
She finishes, breathing heavily, and waits.
He’s got nothing left, no response, no counter-argument, not when she won’t stop making sense. He stares back at her, silent for a long time. The rain isn’t easing but it’s starting to seem so utterly pointless to stand here and let it hit him when he could find a warm, dry suit back in the comfort of the TARDIS.
He wonders how he could have let the fight go out of him like this. He thinks about earlier, about how they were all there, all the humans whose lives he thinks he ruined, all fighting for him, choosing to fight for him. It scares him now, how close he’s gotten to giving up on everything, on trying, on fighting, on living this upside down existence that they were willing to die for. He’s terrified now, worse than before, but it’s a welcome feeling, jolting him into action. For the first time in a long time he’s more scared of doing nothing than he is of doing something.
He thinks about her, waiting for him on that beach. It’s unthinkable now, not going back to her, the idea almost laughable, preposterous, impossible. He could do it if it only meant hurting himself, if he thought she’d understand it one day. But she’s standing there right now, a spark of life on that dull horizon and he realises for the first time, that if he doesn’t go back, that light will go out.
“You’re right,” is all he can offer.
Exhausted though she is, Donna manages a massive grin. “Well I know that,” she responds, satisfied.
“Thank you,” he says simply, slowly, gratitude hanging on every syllable, “for everything.”
“Thank you,” she replies in kind. “And I’ll see you again some day, both of you.”
“I hope so,” he smiles at her, hugging her one last time, and laughing at how she recoils, muttering about him getting her wet.
He watches her go before heading into the TARDIS, finding the old ship ready for his destination, co-ordinates set because of course, she knew before he did, just like Donna, that he was going back to that beach.
~
It’s the longest wait she’s ever experienced, every passing second bringing another nagging doubt to hang on the weightless hope until she’s dragged dangerously close to despair. It feels longer than waiting nineteen years for her life to start, standing on that beach. The man she knew would have come back for her, but as the minutes pass she begins to wonder if the man she knew faded away the moment his image did from this beach after their first unfinished goodbye.
It’s worth every second of waiting when she hears it: the sound of the universe. Her universe.
He steps out in a different suit and when he approaches her she finally sees it, what’s she’s been looking for in his eyes since they met again. Sparkling amongst the merest suggestion of what he’s seen, amongst the pain and the darkness, the history and the adventure, is a hint of infinity.
He says the only thing he could in a situation like this.
“Did I mention it also travels in time?”
She laughs like she used to, completely, openly, honestly.
He smiles and offers her his hand, and with it the universe.
She takes it without a moment’s hesitation, stepping back into his impossible life, where she belongs.
~
Hope you enjoyed :) Comments are always appreciated.