Collab Fic: Revisions Which A Minute Will Reverse (4/4)
Title: Revisions Which A Minute Will Reverse (4/4)
Authors: wild_sibyl & _thirty2flavors
Genre: AU, drama, angst, romance
Spoilers: Through season 4, particularly Turn Left
Characters/Pairings: Ten2/Rose(/Ten), Donna Noble
Summary: From a dingy hotel in Norway, the Doctor and Rose realise something has gone wrong. A timey-wimey interpretation of Turn Left.
Excerpt: Rose knows she is not magical, not omnipotent. She can no longer see the future or the past. She will not live forever; her brief brush with the eternal has not granted her immortality. She is a woman, human, transient. When she thinks about her life so far, she is always shocked by how ludicrous is all seems, how much like a fairytale. Ordinary shop girl falls in love with an exiled prince, the last of his kind, only to be torn from his side by the spiteful hands of time and chance. Ridiculous.
Author's notes: We say "AU", but it could maybe be canon if you disregard a line or two in JE and squint a little. The title is a line from T S Eliot's "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock", because we're trendy like that, apparently. Much of what you recognize is borrowed from Turn Left, but this is not by any means a simple Turn Left recap. (banner by wild_sibyl)
Parts: One - Two - Three - Four
Rose feels shaky, nervous. She supposes that’s hardly surprising given what’s about to happen, what’s already happened if things go to plan. She has put a lot of effort into appearing confident these last few days, but here, standing in the thin watery sunlight of early spring, she can feel herself beginning to pull apart. She is flaking away, crumbling, and underneath her hard enamel facade, there is menace, chaos, cities aflame, bright twisted skyscrapers crashing down, anarchy... and doubt.
This world is about to blink out of existence, become a poorly remembered dream. The new fresh leaves of the trees glow neon green against the frosted grey of the sky. The air around her is soft and translucent, the pavement underneath her boots twinkles pale pink. It all seems solid enough, but if she squints, narrows her vision, she can almost see through it, as if this reality is already fading. Her legs are wobbly and the street wavers. The weak sunlight blows away like smoke.
Rose wonders exactly what Donna will remember. Enough, obviously, to give the Doctor Rose’s message. Bad Wolf. It’s almost a mystical term to her, a golden phrase from her previous life, when she was younger, more impulsive, untried, unbroken. It seems almost cruel that it should show up again now - now, after she has crossed so many universes hoping to see it. She’s analyzed every child’s chalk drawing, every line of graffiti, advertisements, and toilet stalls. She’s even walked into a hotel once and looked at the guest book, studied the scrawled row of names and dates. She had longed for those two words, yearned for them, as if they could replace the three that she had never had the chance to hear.
Rose knows she is not magical, not omnipotent. She can no longer see the future or the past. She will not live forever; her brief brush with the eternal has not granted her immortality. She is a woman, human, transient. When she thinks about her life so far, she is always shocked by how ludicrous is all seems, how much like a fairytale. Ordinary shop girl falls in love with an exiled prince, the last of his kind, only to be torn from his side by the spiteful hands of time and chance. Ridiculous.
She looks at her watch, and the little red numbers glare back at her. Not time yet.
She likes Donna, genuinely, even though she knows the woman doesn’t truly trust her, probably doesn’t even particularly like her. Still, Rose feels protective of her, and just a little jealous. She’s going back to the Doctor, after all, something that Rose has been trying to do for years.
But Donna won’t be able to stay with him, though, will she? That’s what the other Doctor had said, that she would have to forget. Forget everything. Rose can think of nothing worse. After Torchwood and that horrible day at Bad Wolf Bay, memories had been the only thing she had to cling to. Donna would not even have that. Her life with the Doctor, everything she’d seen and done, would simply be erased, snuffed out like a candle, much like this universe.
Rose thinks about the Doctor and how he will feel once he has lost yet another friend, and about the other Doctor, the blue suited one whom she has left behind in the other universe. He’s orchestrated so much of what she’s done in this world, worked tirelessly to set things right. When she thinks about him, something moves restlessly in her stomach, something new, green and soft and young.
Given half the chance, she thinks, maybe that feeling could grow, but she is so unsure. There’s guilt there, and maybe love - but is it the same? Can she feel the same love for the man in the strange blue suit as she does for the man in brown? He loves her, she knows. Is he what she’s been running towards all this time?
A blue lorry rumbles by and Rose braces herself. The air crystallizes, time seems to slow. There is the hot screech of brakes and a woman’s shrill, terrified scream.
--
Donna opens her eyes. It is effort to do even that. She feels heavy, but surprisingly there is no pain. She hadn’t expected that.
A figure looms over her, blocking out the glare of the sun. Her face is shadowed, features nearly unrecognizable. The blonde leans down, strands of hair falling across her face. Her breath is heavy and warm in Donna’s ear. “Tell him this: two words.”
--
When Rose makes it back to Torchwood, she looks drained.
Almost done, the Doctor wants to tell her, and then you can go home. Instead he hunches over the computer screen, watching as the timelines twist and converge and fold in on themselves, his left foot tapping with a nervous energy. The machines are going haywire, struggling to cope with one reality collapsing at the same time dimensional retroclosure begins.
Soon they’ll stop working at all, so he’ll have to act quickly.
“One last trip,” he tells Rose as he bounds across to the Dimension Cannon to tweak something on its console. “The walls will close soon, again - properly, this time - though I’ve said that before, haven’t I? - but we ought to make sure everything’s back on track. A quick peek to make sure the stars are where there supposed to be, that’s all.”
He doesn’t look at her, but in his peripheral vision he can see the way Rose freezes, her shoulders suddenly tense, her back a little straighter.
“Back…” She hesitates and takes a breath. “Back in the other universe, you mean,”
The Doctor busies himself with the Dimension Cannon a few seconds longer than is necessary. “Yep. ”
“Right,” she says quietly. He glances over just in time to see her turn, angling her body and her face away from him.
“I’ve set it so the Cannon will bring you back before the walls seal off for good,” he explains as he straightens. He watches her back and the way her shoulders stay tight and tense. “You won’t have to do anything - the Cannon, it’ll sense it, bring you back before it’s too late.”
Her blonde hair bobs as she nods once.
The Doctor pauses. He studies her -- the shape of her silhouette, the sheen of her hair, the set of her shoulders, the dip of her waist - and he wills every detail into his brilliant Time Lord memory. He lets out a deep breath and swallows.
“’Course, you could turn it off. Your jumper, I mean, you could turn it off and then it wouldn’t be able to bring you back because - well, because it’s off.” It’s less than eloquent, as far as sentences go, and he’s tugging at his ear when Rose turns to look at him.
Her eyes narrow as she thinks it through. “You mean if I turned it off I could… stay.”
He nods, and gives her a grin. “Yep. Well, I mean, if you wanted to, yeah. Up to you.”
Her eyes widen slowly as the implications sink in. “I can go back.”
“Yep.” He rocks on his heel, still smiling, and then bounds over to the computer, prattling away and waving one hand as he adjusts the controls. “Unfortunately I can’t guarantee much accuracy this time - it’s a pretty big event, what you just did, and that combined with the timelines converging on Donna and dimensional retroclosure, it’s all a bit… tangled. But I should be able to get you close, or close enough. Might have some time to kill, if you stay, but it shouldn’t be too bad.” He looks up just long enough to raise his eyebrows and broaden his grin. “You convinced UNIT to make you a time machine without even telling them your name, that’s not bad.”
Rose stays rooted to the spot. “What about you?”
The Doctor keeps his eyes trained on the screen. “Me? Nah, don’t worry about me!” His hand waves as he says it, shooting for flippancy.
“You’re staying.” There’s something in her voice he can’t place - guilt, maybe, or sympathy.
He nods, still staring at the computer. The whole scenario reminds him uncomfortably of trying to send her away at Canary Wharf, but he pushes the recollection aside. That was different. This is what she wants, what she really wants, rather than his own interpretation of what will be best for her.
He shoves himself upright and away from the desk, shoving his hands in his pockets. “All set! We ought to hurry, I’m not sure exactly how long the breach will last, so-”
“You’re sending me away.” She doesn’t sound surprised, either, which he thinks is the worst part.
He holds back a groan. “No. Rose - no. I’m giving you a choice. That’s all.”
She doesn’t seem to be listening. She smiles - a watery, false sort of smile - and shakes her head. “The two of you keep trying to pawn me off on each other.”
“That’s not-”
“He left me.” She smiles again but looks down at the floor. “I spent years trying to find him and he didn’t even say goodbye.”
She looks dejected, and the Doctor isn’t sure what to do. It’s not him she’s talking about, but then he’d certainly not helped matters. He’d known from the start that Rose wouldn’t be exactly overjoyed with the circumstances; seeing the aftermath first hand only makes him regret the situation further. He needs to explain, needs Rose to understand.
“He didn’t want to leave you behind.” She doesn’t raise her head, and the Doctor presses on. “Rose, he - he loves you.”
“I know.”
She looks at him then, and the Doctor, uncomfortable with the sensation that she can see straight through him, looks away. He clears his throat, eager to steer away from the subject and eager to finish this as quick as he can. Quick and easy, like a bandage.
“As I was saying, we ought to hurry. The breach isn’t likely to last long, and-”
“Come with me,” she says suddenly, and the Doctor’s stomach does a terrible flop.
It’s almost tempting. Rose Tyler on the TARDIS - he wants it so much it’s a physical ache.
But the prospect of sharing that, of feeling out of place even in the TARDIS, of spending the rest of his life as ‘the other Doctor’ -
He’d had a glimpse of that, just after the Crucible. In the TARDIS it was the first Doctor everyone had looked to for direction, and it was the first Doctor who’d seen everyone off as they went home. Even Donna had seen him as someone different, not quite the Time Lord she knew; just wait for the Doctor, she’d said. He can imagine the scenario repeating itself dozens of times, his own authority and influence and importance undermined by the presence of a man who is just like him, only better. I’m the Doctor, this is Rose, and this is what happens when you keep a hand in a jar for too long.
Living in his own shadow sounds like a daunting task.
So he smiles. “I can’t.” It comes out heavier than he means it to, sounds just a bit too much like a plea.
Her lips pull down into a frown. “Why not?”
He waves the question aside and turns back to the computer, though in truth there’s nothing left to do but press the button. “Someone’s got to push the buttons, haven’t they? And if I’ve sent Torchwood’s best operative to a different universe I suppose it’s only fair I stick around and give them a hand.” He grins lopsidedly at her for just a second. He sees her open her mouth to protest, so he carries on, returning his attention to the monitor. “Besides, like I said. A universe only needs one Doctor.”
She doesn’t have an answer to that.
He turns to face her and combs one hand back through his hair, determined to maintain complete composure until she’s gone. The very last thing he wants is for Rose to stay with him out of obligation and guilt, like he’s a pet she’s agreed to take care of. “Don’t worry about me, anyway, I’ll be fine.” He smiles tightly. “I’ve got to send you now, Rose, while I still can.”
“Yeah.” Her fists clench and unclench at her sides. She looks like she might cry.
The Doctor meets her eyes and fixes his smile in place.
It’s easier this way - easier to lock her away in another universe than to keep her with him. It’s easier to tell himself she’ll be happy where he can’t see it than to risk witnessing the opposite. It’s easier to lose her to another man than to spend the rest of his life with her right there, not wanting him.
It’ll be easier, he suspects, though it will still be hell.
He leans down to the computer, his hand hovering over the key that will send her back across the Void and back to the Time Lord with the blue box. She’ll decide to stay there, he knows; faced with a life of adventure and travel with the real deal and a few decades of carpets and mortgages with a copy, she’ll make the obvious choice. He won’t blame her, can’t blame her, will never resent her for getting the life she wants.
He’ll miss her, though.
“There’s… there’s a letter, in my office,” she’s saying. and he can hear her struggling to keep her voice level. “For my family, in case…”
He nods, finding his smile has disappeared despite his best efforts. “I’ll give it to them.”
An awkward silence settles between them, and the Doctor thinks that if this is the last time he’ll ever see Rose Tyler, he ought to make it good. He ought to hug her, ought to memorise the feel of her, ought to repeat the sentence he’d held back for so long.
Instead he stays where he is and smiles at her, weak but sincere. “Good luck, Rose.”
Rose bites her lip. She starts towards him and hesitates, her eyes soft with confusion and concern. “Doctor…” she begins, and the Doctor hits the key beneath his fingers.
She disappears with a flash. He stares at the spot where she’d been, then closes his eyes and bows his head. At least, the Doctor supposes, there are only a few decades left in his new lifespan. Not a long time to be lonely at all, in comparison.
--
Rose flashes into reality, her feet braced wide to steady herself. She has jumped so many times in the last few days that it hardly affects her now, her body is used to it. She shakes her arms, dispelling the lingering electric energy that is running up and down her limbs.
There is a large crowd in front of her, but no one notices her sudden appearance, all too busy gaping at the scene in front of them. White plastic barriers cordon off a section of pavement in front of her, where a woman’s body lies broken, splayed in the middle of the street. For one horrible moment, Rose thinks she is about to watch as Donna is packed into an ambulance and driven away. But the woman is blonde not ginger, and it is nighttime, not morning. There is no blue lorry, just a gathering of police cars, gawkers, and a few reporters who are randomly pulling people aside asking them a barrage a questions about what has just happened.
Rose breathes a sigh of relief and looks up at the sky, which is thankfully thickly peppered with stars.
Her pocket beeps and she pulls out her TARDIS detector, once again flashing red. The Doctor is somewhere nearby. Déjà vu rushes over her, making her head spin. Was it only days ago that she was faced with this same decision? She could run, find him, explain everything…
She is angry, so angry with both of them, for presuming to know what she needs or what she wants. First he had left her on that beach, passing her off on his double, and now he has pressed a button and sent her away, not even giving her a choice, assuming she’s already decided.
She softens, her shoulders slumping. He is giving her a choice, though, isn’t he? She wants to stamp her foot, cry, maybe throw something or slap someone.
What does she want? A life of running and danger? Had she loved the life or the man or had she been too mixed up in it all to understand the difference? What if she could have one without the other, just the man and all his eccentricities?
She could have all of him, go to sleep next to him at night, wake up by his side in the morning. There would be running, no doubt… trouble has a knack for finding the Doctor, and she doubts that’ll change now… but it would be different, wouldn’t it? He could let himself love her; no more choosing between Rose Tyler and the rest of the universe. And isn’t she all he has left, really? What would his life be without the TARDIS, without a universe to protect, without even her to hold his hand? A universe only needs one Doctor. She can’t fault him for that, either; she realizes now that most would only ever see him as second best, a backup in case of emergency, an expendable part to do the dirty work. Hadn’t she been guilty of that very same reasoning?
There’s a man who needs her, a man in a blue suit who still takes two sugars in his coffee and looks at her with longing, a man who’d been willing to lose the life he loved just for her.
But there’s another man, too, an impossible man with two hearts and the universe weighing him down. He needs her too, doesn’t he? Hadn’t he said as much on that beach? Hadn’t he proved as much under the Thames? She had meant it when she told him that she would stay with him forever, but she’d been younger, then, less conscious of her own mortality. She can see it clearly, now, the thing he’d always feared most -- that no matter what course their lives together took, she would always leave him before either of them were ready. Is that why he’d left her behind? Is this ending kinder than that?
The TARDIS detector continues to flash in her hand, beckoning, calling her back to a life she’d lost twice now. She could do it -- find him, step back into the TARDIS, travel, see the universe, hold his hand. Or…
There is a beep from her other pocket and she reaches in to pull out the yellow dimension hopper, fully charged, ready, waiting to take her back to the man in blue who surely thinks she’s gone for good. She shakes her head and returns both devices to her jacket.
How is she supposed to choose one over the other?
She remembers a conversation she had, so long ago now it seems like it happened in another life. Stranded on Krop Tor, no TARDIS, no way home…
Stuck with you, that’s not so bad.
She has somehow drifted up to the police barricade. There are still people standing around her, but most have started to walk away, muttering about aliens and diet pills.
A familiar voice cuts through the shuffle of the crowd and Rose finds herself turning, coming face to face with a familiar redhead who is talking loudly into a cell phone.
“Oh, stop complaining, the car's just down the road a bit. Got to go, really got to go. Bye.” The woman clicks the phone shut, sliding into her pocket.
Rose isn’t even surprised when Donna steps up to her, her cheeks flushed with excitement. There is no recognition in her gaze and Rose knows that the woman has no idea who she is.
“Listen,” Donna tells her, “there’s this woman that's going to come along, a tall blonde woman called Sylvia, tell her that bin there. Right, it'll all make sense. That bin there.”
Donna jogs away and Rose turns her back. Her throat is burning and she can feel tears starting to well up in her eyes. She looks up, forcing the tears back. This is her decision, her choice, her life. Red or yellow, brown or blue, monsters or mortgages.
She takes a deep breath and then lets it out, patting her pockets to feel the weight of both devices. The dimension hopper is still on, and she can feel the pull of the cannon starting to tug at her, guiding her back to another universe, where a new life awaits her.
She slips a hand into her jacket, clutching the TARDIS detector tightly before she pulls it out and lets it slip from her fingers. It hits the pavement and cracks open, spilling out a jumble of wires and a key, which glows golden briefly and then fades back to silver. She hopes he will forgive her, hopes he will find someone else to make brilliant, someone else to share the whole of time and space with.
Rose turns and walks away.
--
The Doctor leans back in Tosh’s chair, staring at the ceiling of the Torchwood lab. Every ounce of energy seems to have drained from his body. His arms and legs feel heavy and cumbersome, and his hands lie open and limp in his lap.
There are many things he should do. He should stand and start to shut down the array of machines that are useless now, trains without tracks. He should find Rose’s office and the letter for her family. He should contact Jackie and Pete and Tony and let them know they’re back to being a family of three. He should find somewhere he can sleep and begin the long road of recuperating his energy. He should come up with a plan, figure out what in the world he’s going to do for the next half-century.
He can’t seem to pick himself up from the chair. To do any of those things would be to accept that Rose is gone, and though he knows that, feels it in every inch of his being, he wants to linger just a little longer in the space between acknowledgment and action. Once he moves he’ll have to move on, begin the terrifying adventure of living linearly… alone. As soon as he stands, he’ll take Rose and Donna and the TARDIS and all the rest and shove them to the back of his mind, relegate them to the same distant, dusty corner that he keeps memories of Gallifrey and the Time War and the year that wasn’t. He’ll throw himself into Torchwood with reckless abandon and he’ll push himself harder and harder. He’ll stretch himself so thin he won’t have time to notice the ghosts that will follow him for the rest of his human life.
But not quite yet. For just a few more minutes, he wants to mourn.
The corner of his mouth lifts up in a small pained smile; Jackie is going to kill him. Pete too, and Tony - Tony would grow up without the chance to know his brilliant older sister. It’s not fair to them that they lose her, and the Doctor wonders if Jackie will ever forgive him for not being good enough to keep Rose. He wonders if he’ll ever forgive himself.
But she’ll be happy, he thinks, repeating it like a mantra over and over in his head. Rose will be happy, and that’s the important thing, really, the most important thing. It’s a relief, a pleasant alternative to the knowledge he was making her miserable. It’s all he’s wanted, all he’s aimed for since he met her. It’s enough, it has to be. Making Rose Tyler happy has always been enough.
His eyes start to sting, so he shuts them tight.
Just one more minute, he thinks, sixty seconds and then he’ll force himself back to work. He keeps his eyes closed and wills his heart to stop pounding. He ignores the crackle of electricity he hears across the room just as he ignores the sudden compulsion to curl into a ball and escape into sleep.
It’s not until he feels the hand on his shoulder that his eyes snap open, instantly seeking out the familiar face that looms above him. He blinks twice to make sure he’s not imagining her. “Rose?”
The corners of her mouth tilt up in a small smile and she lifts her hand from his shoulder. “Hi.”
He gapes at her, his mind reeling as it tries to explain her presence back in Torchwood. He bolts upright and tries to shake away the confusion and fatigue clouding his mind, without much success. Rubbing his eyes with his index finger and thumb, he looks from Rose to the computer and back again. “What is it? Is there something wrong? Did something go wrong?”
“Everything’s fine,” Rose says, and his brain screeches to a halt at another dead end. “I saw Donna. She seemed happy, I think she was with you.”
For a long moment the Doctor is silent. “Then why….” He trails off as he’s forced to confront the seemingly impossible truth, a possibility he never allowed himself to hope for. He struggles to find his voice. “You came back.”
Her eyes are somber as she nods, as though she only seems to realize the truth in his words as he speaks. “Yeah.”
The question is out of his mouth before he can stop himself. “Why?”
Rose smiles this time, soft and sincere. “Said I’d never leave you, didn’t I?” And then she shrugs, just barely lifting her shoulders. “You gave me a choice. That’s something he never quite got the hang of.”
There’s more to it than that, he’s sure, but prying seems inconsiderate, so instead he stares at her, completely thrown, completely incapable of stringing together a sentence. He should thank her. He should tell her how grateful he is, what this means to him, how sorry he is for making her choose. He should explain to her the way fifty years on the slow path doesn’t seem quite so terrifying if she’s by his side.
All he manages to say is her name.
The smile on her lips fades, but that faint spark of light doesn’t leave her eyes. “Come on,” she says, “I’m dead tired and you look ready to pass out. It’s time we went home.”
Rose holds out her hand, and the Doctor takes it.
--
The Doctor looks at her for a long moment, his brow furrowed. “Sometimes I think there's way too much coincidence around you, Donna. I met you once, I met your grandfather, then I met you again. In the whole wide universe, I met you for a second time.” His voice lowers and he tilts his head, studying her as if she’s a puzzle he can’t quite figure out. “It's like something's binding us together.”
Donna snorts, half-heartedly swatting at him, “Don't be so daft. I'm nothing special.”
“Yes, you are, you're brilliant.”
The Doctor is looking back down at the beetle, but his tone is warm… and familiar, like déjà vu. She shuts her eyes, just for a moment, and in a flash there is a woman standing in front of her, a blonde in a blue leather coat; a woman with sad eyes and steel in her voice…
“She said that.”
“Who did?”
“That woman.” Donna shakes her head, struggling, “I can't remember.”
The Doctor seems unconcerned. “Well, she never existed now.”
A cold fist is gripping her stomach. There is something… something that she has to remember, but images and words are slipping past her, colors and sounds carried away by a fast flowing river. But… “No, but she said... the stars... she said the stars are going out.”
The Doctor shrugs, continuing to prod at the beetle, “Yeah, but that world's gone.”
“No, but she said it was all worlds. Every world.” Urgency is pressing down on her, but it’s as if she’s trying to dig though quicksand -- the memories are there but they are buried deep and sinking fast. “She said… ‘the darkness is coming, even here’.”
Finally the Doctor looks up at her, his mouth setting itself into a fine line. “Who was she?”
Donna shakes her head again. “I don't know.”
“What did she look like?”
“She was...” A leather jacket, a ring of mirrors, a pitch black sky, a strand of blonde hair tucked absently behind an ear… “Blonde.”
“What was her name?” The Doctor’s voice is quiet and strained; all of his attention is focused on her.
“I don't know!” Her breath is coming quicker now, images flashing faster through her mind.
“Donna, what was her name?” His voice is trembling, and Donna thinks that might be the most terrifying sound she has ever heard.
She shuts her eyes again. This time a face looms over her, blurry and out of focus. Donna speaks slowly, forcing memories to the surface as she goes along. “She told me... to warn you. She said... two words.”
“What two words? What were they? What did she say?” His voice is still quiet, but it rings with suppressed urgency. He sounds almost hollow.
There is a soft breath in her ear, a rush of sound. Donna narrows her eyes, searching the Doctor’s frantic gaze for meaning. “Bad Wolf.”
FINIS.
Authors: wild_sibyl & _thirty2flavors
Genre: AU, drama, angst, romance
Spoilers: Through season 4, particularly Turn Left
Characters/Pairings: Ten2/Rose(/Ten), Donna Noble
Summary: From a dingy hotel in Norway, the Doctor and Rose realise something has gone wrong. A timey-wimey interpretation of Turn Left.
Excerpt: Rose knows she is not magical, not omnipotent. She can no longer see the future or the past. She will not live forever; her brief brush with the eternal has not granted her immortality. She is a woman, human, transient. When she thinks about her life so far, she is always shocked by how ludicrous is all seems, how much like a fairytale. Ordinary shop girl falls in love with an exiled prince, the last of his kind, only to be torn from his side by the spiteful hands of time and chance. Ridiculous.
Author's notes: We say "AU", but it could maybe be canon if you disregard a line or two in JE and squint a little. The title is a line from T S Eliot's "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock", because we're trendy like that, apparently. Much of what you recognize is borrowed from Turn Left, but this is not by any means a simple Turn Left recap. (banner by wild_sibyl)
Parts: One - Two - Three - Four
Rose feels shaky, nervous. She supposes that’s hardly surprising given what’s about to happen, what’s already happened if things go to plan. She has put a lot of effort into appearing confident these last few days, but here, standing in the thin watery sunlight of early spring, she can feel herself beginning to pull apart. She is flaking away, crumbling, and underneath her hard enamel facade, there is menace, chaos, cities aflame, bright twisted skyscrapers crashing down, anarchy... and doubt.
This world is about to blink out of existence, become a poorly remembered dream. The new fresh leaves of the trees glow neon green against the frosted grey of the sky. The air around her is soft and translucent, the pavement underneath her boots twinkles pale pink. It all seems solid enough, but if she squints, narrows her vision, she can almost see through it, as if this reality is already fading. Her legs are wobbly and the street wavers. The weak sunlight blows away like smoke.
Rose wonders exactly what Donna will remember. Enough, obviously, to give the Doctor Rose’s message. Bad Wolf. It’s almost a mystical term to her, a golden phrase from her previous life, when she was younger, more impulsive, untried, unbroken. It seems almost cruel that it should show up again now - now, after she has crossed so many universes hoping to see it. She’s analyzed every child’s chalk drawing, every line of graffiti, advertisements, and toilet stalls. She’s even walked into a hotel once and looked at the guest book, studied the scrawled row of names and dates. She had longed for those two words, yearned for them, as if they could replace the three that she had never had the chance to hear.
Rose knows she is not magical, not omnipotent. She can no longer see the future or the past. She will not live forever; her brief brush with the eternal has not granted her immortality. She is a woman, human, transient. When she thinks about her life so far, she is always shocked by how ludicrous is all seems, how much like a fairytale. Ordinary shop girl falls in love with an exiled prince, the last of his kind, only to be torn from his side by the spiteful hands of time and chance. Ridiculous.
She looks at her watch, and the little red numbers glare back at her. Not time yet.
She likes Donna, genuinely, even though she knows the woman doesn’t truly trust her, probably doesn’t even particularly like her. Still, Rose feels protective of her, and just a little jealous. She’s going back to the Doctor, after all, something that Rose has been trying to do for years.
But Donna won’t be able to stay with him, though, will she? That’s what the other Doctor had said, that she would have to forget. Forget everything. Rose can think of nothing worse. After Torchwood and that horrible day at Bad Wolf Bay, memories had been the only thing she had to cling to. Donna would not even have that. Her life with the Doctor, everything she’d seen and done, would simply be erased, snuffed out like a candle, much like this universe.
Rose thinks about the Doctor and how he will feel once he has lost yet another friend, and about the other Doctor, the blue suited one whom she has left behind in the other universe. He’s orchestrated so much of what she’s done in this world, worked tirelessly to set things right. When she thinks about him, something moves restlessly in her stomach, something new, green and soft and young.
Given half the chance, she thinks, maybe that feeling could grow, but she is so unsure. There’s guilt there, and maybe love - but is it the same? Can she feel the same love for the man in the strange blue suit as she does for the man in brown? He loves her, she knows. Is he what she’s been running towards all this time?
A blue lorry rumbles by and Rose braces herself. The air crystallizes, time seems to slow. There is the hot screech of brakes and a woman’s shrill, terrified scream.
--
Donna opens her eyes. It is effort to do even that. She feels heavy, but surprisingly there is no pain. She hadn’t expected that.
A figure looms over her, blocking out the glare of the sun. Her face is shadowed, features nearly unrecognizable. The blonde leans down, strands of hair falling across her face. Her breath is heavy and warm in Donna’s ear. “Tell him this: two words.”
--
When Rose makes it back to Torchwood, she looks drained.
Almost done, the Doctor wants to tell her, and then you can go home. Instead he hunches over the computer screen, watching as the timelines twist and converge and fold in on themselves, his left foot tapping with a nervous energy. The machines are going haywire, struggling to cope with one reality collapsing at the same time dimensional retroclosure begins.
Soon they’ll stop working at all, so he’ll have to act quickly.
“One last trip,” he tells Rose as he bounds across to the Dimension Cannon to tweak something on its console. “The walls will close soon, again - properly, this time - though I’ve said that before, haven’t I? - but we ought to make sure everything’s back on track. A quick peek to make sure the stars are where there supposed to be, that’s all.”
He doesn’t look at her, but in his peripheral vision he can see the way Rose freezes, her shoulders suddenly tense, her back a little straighter.
“Back…” She hesitates and takes a breath. “Back in the other universe, you mean,”
The Doctor busies himself with the Dimension Cannon a few seconds longer than is necessary. “Yep. ”
“Right,” she says quietly. He glances over just in time to see her turn, angling her body and her face away from him.
“I’ve set it so the Cannon will bring you back before the walls seal off for good,” he explains as he straightens. He watches her back and the way her shoulders stay tight and tense. “You won’t have to do anything - the Cannon, it’ll sense it, bring you back before it’s too late.”
Her blonde hair bobs as she nods once.
The Doctor pauses. He studies her -- the shape of her silhouette, the sheen of her hair, the set of her shoulders, the dip of her waist - and he wills every detail into his brilliant Time Lord memory. He lets out a deep breath and swallows.
“’Course, you could turn it off. Your jumper, I mean, you could turn it off and then it wouldn’t be able to bring you back because - well, because it’s off.” It’s less than eloquent, as far as sentences go, and he’s tugging at his ear when Rose turns to look at him.
Her eyes narrow as she thinks it through. “You mean if I turned it off I could… stay.”
He nods, and gives her a grin. “Yep. Well, I mean, if you wanted to, yeah. Up to you.”
Her eyes widen slowly as the implications sink in. “I can go back.”
“Yep.” He rocks on his heel, still smiling, and then bounds over to the computer, prattling away and waving one hand as he adjusts the controls. “Unfortunately I can’t guarantee much accuracy this time - it’s a pretty big event, what you just did, and that combined with the timelines converging on Donna and dimensional retroclosure, it’s all a bit… tangled. But I should be able to get you close, or close enough. Might have some time to kill, if you stay, but it shouldn’t be too bad.” He looks up just long enough to raise his eyebrows and broaden his grin. “You convinced UNIT to make you a time machine without even telling them your name, that’s not bad.”
Rose stays rooted to the spot. “What about you?”
The Doctor keeps his eyes trained on the screen. “Me? Nah, don’t worry about me!” His hand waves as he says it, shooting for flippancy.
“You’re staying.” There’s something in her voice he can’t place - guilt, maybe, or sympathy.
He nods, still staring at the computer. The whole scenario reminds him uncomfortably of trying to send her away at Canary Wharf, but he pushes the recollection aside. That was different. This is what she wants, what she really wants, rather than his own interpretation of what will be best for her.
He shoves himself upright and away from the desk, shoving his hands in his pockets. “All set! We ought to hurry, I’m not sure exactly how long the breach will last, so-”
“You’re sending me away.” She doesn’t sound surprised, either, which he thinks is the worst part.
He holds back a groan. “No. Rose - no. I’m giving you a choice. That’s all.”
She doesn’t seem to be listening. She smiles - a watery, false sort of smile - and shakes her head. “The two of you keep trying to pawn me off on each other.”
“That’s not-”
“He left me.” She smiles again but looks down at the floor. “I spent years trying to find him and he didn’t even say goodbye.”
She looks dejected, and the Doctor isn’t sure what to do. It’s not him she’s talking about, but then he’d certainly not helped matters. He’d known from the start that Rose wouldn’t be exactly overjoyed with the circumstances; seeing the aftermath first hand only makes him regret the situation further. He needs to explain, needs Rose to understand.
“He didn’t want to leave you behind.” She doesn’t raise her head, and the Doctor presses on. “Rose, he - he loves you.”
“I know.”
She looks at him then, and the Doctor, uncomfortable with the sensation that she can see straight through him, looks away. He clears his throat, eager to steer away from the subject and eager to finish this as quick as he can. Quick and easy, like a bandage.
“As I was saying, we ought to hurry. The breach isn’t likely to last long, and-”
“Come with me,” she says suddenly, and the Doctor’s stomach does a terrible flop.
It’s almost tempting. Rose Tyler on the TARDIS - he wants it so much it’s a physical ache.
But the prospect of sharing that, of feeling out of place even in the TARDIS, of spending the rest of his life as ‘the other Doctor’ -
He’d had a glimpse of that, just after the Crucible. In the TARDIS it was the first Doctor everyone had looked to for direction, and it was the first Doctor who’d seen everyone off as they went home. Even Donna had seen him as someone different, not quite the Time Lord she knew; just wait for the Doctor, she’d said. He can imagine the scenario repeating itself dozens of times, his own authority and influence and importance undermined by the presence of a man who is just like him, only better. I’m the Doctor, this is Rose, and this is what happens when you keep a hand in a jar for too long.
Living in his own shadow sounds like a daunting task.
So he smiles. “I can’t.” It comes out heavier than he means it to, sounds just a bit too much like a plea.
Her lips pull down into a frown. “Why not?”
He waves the question aside and turns back to the computer, though in truth there’s nothing left to do but press the button. “Someone’s got to push the buttons, haven’t they? And if I’ve sent Torchwood’s best operative to a different universe I suppose it’s only fair I stick around and give them a hand.” He grins lopsidedly at her for just a second. He sees her open her mouth to protest, so he carries on, returning his attention to the monitor. “Besides, like I said. A universe only needs one Doctor.”
She doesn’t have an answer to that.
He turns to face her and combs one hand back through his hair, determined to maintain complete composure until she’s gone. The very last thing he wants is for Rose to stay with him out of obligation and guilt, like he’s a pet she’s agreed to take care of. “Don’t worry about me, anyway, I’ll be fine.” He smiles tightly. “I’ve got to send you now, Rose, while I still can.”
“Yeah.” Her fists clench and unclench at her sides. She looks like she might cry.
The Doctor meets her eyes and fixes his smile in place.
It’s easier this way - easier to lock her away in another universe than to keep her with him. It’s easier to tell himself she’ll be happy where he can’t see it than to risk witnessing the opposite. It’s easier to lose her to another man than to spend the rest of his life with her right there, not wanting him.
It’ll be easier, he suspects, though it will still be hell.
He leans down to the computer, his hand hovering over the key that will send her back across the Void and back to the Time Lord with the blue box. She’ll decide to stay there, he knows; faced with a life of adventure and travel with the real deal and a few decades of carpets and mortgages with a copy, she’ll make the obvious choice. He won’t blame her, can’t blame her, will never resent her for getting the life she wants.
He’ll miss her, though.
“There’s… there’s a letter, in my office,” she’s saying. and he can hear her struggling to keep her voice level. “For my family, in case…”
He nods, finding his smile has disappeared despite his best efforts. “I’ll give it to them.”
An awkward silence settles between them, and the Doctor thinks that if this is the last time he’ll ever see Rose Tyler, he ought to make it good. He ought to hug her, ought to memorise the feel of her, ought to repeat the sentence he’d held back for so long.
Instead he stays where he is and smiles at her, weak but sincere. “Good luck, Rose.”
Rose bites her lip. She starts towards him and hesitates, her eyes soft with confusion and concern. “Doctor…” she begins, and the Doctor hits the key beneath his fingers.
She disappears with a flash. He stares at the spot where she’d been, then closes his eyes and bows his head. At least, the Doctor supposes, there are only a few decades left in his new lifespan. Not a long time to be lonely at all, in comparison.
--
Rose flashes into reality, her feet braced wide to steady herself. She has jumped so many times in the last few days that it hardly affects her now, her body is used to it. She shakes her arms, dispelling the lingering electric energy that is running up and down her limbs.
There is a large crowd in front of her, but no one notices her sudden appearance, all too busy gaping at the scene in front of them. White plastic barriers cordon off a section of pavement in front of her, where a woman’s body lies broken, splayed in the middle of the street. For one horrible moment, Rose thinks she is about to watch as Donna is packed into an ambulance and driven away. But the woman is blonde not ginger, and it is nighttime, not morning. There is no blue lorry, just a gathering of police cars, gawkers, and a few reporters who are randomly pulling people aside asking them a barrage a questions about what has just happened.
Rose breathes a sigh of relief and looks up at the sky, which is thankfully thickly peppered with stars.
Her pocket beeps and she pulls out her TARDIS detector, once again flashing red. The Doctor is somewhere nearby. Déjà vu rushes over her, making her head spin. Was it only days ago that she was faced with this same decision? She could run, find him, explain everything…
She is angry, so angry with both of them, for presuming to know what she needs or what she wants. First he had left her on that beach, passing her off on his double, and now he has pressed a button and sent her away, not even giving her a choice, assuming she’s already decided.
She softens, her shoulders slumping. He is giving her a choice, though, isn’t he? She wants to stamp her foot, cry, maybe throw something or slap someone.
What does she want? A life of running and danger? Had she loved the life or the man or had she been too mixed up in it all to understand the difference? What if she could have one without the other, just the man and all his eccentricities?
She could have all of him, go to sleep next to him at night, wake up by his side in the morning. There would be running, no doubt… trouble has a knack for finding the Doctor, and she doubts that’ll change now… but it would be different, wouldn’t it? He could let himself love her; no more choosing between Rose Tyler and the rest of the universe. And isn’t she all he has left, really? What would his life be without the TARDIS, without a universe to protect, without even her to hold his hand? A universe only needs one Doctor. She can’t fault him for that, either; she realizes now that most would only ever see him as second best, a backup in case of emergency, an expendable part to do the dirty work. Hadn’t she been guilty of that very same reasoning?
There’s a man who needs her, a man in a blue suit who still takes two sugars in his coffee and looks at her with longing, a man who’d been willing to lose the life he loved just for her.
But there’s another man, too, an impossible man with two hearts and the universe weighing him down. He needs her too, doesn’t he? Hadn’t he said as much on that beach? Hadn’t he proved as much under the Thames? She had meant it when she told him that she would stay with him forever, but she’d been younger, then, less conscious of her own mortality. She can see it clearly, now, the thing he’d always feared most -- that no matter what course their lives together took, she would always leave him before either of them were ready. Is that why he’d left her behind? Is this ending kinder than that?
The TARDIS detector continues to flash in her hand, beckoning, calling her back to a life she’d lost twice now. She could do it -- find him, step back into the TARDIS, travel, see the universe, hold his hand. Or…
There is a beep from her other pocket and she reaches in to pull out the yellow dimension hopper, fully charged, ready, waiting to take her back to the man in blue who surely thinks she’s gone for good. She shakes her head and returns both devices to her jacket.
How is she supposed to choose one over the other?
She remembers a conversation she had, so long ago now it seems like it happened in another life. Stranded on Krop Tor, no TARDIS, no way home…
Stuck with you, that’s not so bad.
She has somehow drifted up to the police barricade. There are still people standing around her, but most have started to walk away, muttering about aliens and diet pills.
A familiar voice cuts through the shuffle of the crowd and Rose finds herself turning, coming face to face with a familiar redhead who is talking loudly into a cell phone.
“Oh, stop complaining, the car's just down the road a bit. Got to go, really got to go. Bye.” The woman clicks the phone shut, sliding into her pocket.
Rose isn’t even surprised when Donna steps up to her, her cheeks flushed with excitement. There is no recognition in her gaze and Rose knows that the woman has no idea who she is.
“Listen,” Donna tells her, “there’s this woman that's going to come along, a tall blonde woman called Sylvia, tell her that bin there. Right, it'll all make sense. That bin there.”
Donna jogs away and Rose turns her back. Her throat is burning and she can feel tears starting to well up in her eyes. She looks up, forcing the tears back. This is her decision, her choice, her life. Red or yellow, brown or blue, monsters or mortgages.
She takes a deep breath and then lets it out, patting her pockets to feel the weight of both devices. The dimension hopper is still on, and she can feel the pull of the cannon starting to tug at her, guiding her back to another universe, where a new life awaits her.
She slips a hand into her jacket, clutching the TARDIS detector tightly before she pulls it out and lets it slip from her fingers. It hits the pavement and cracks open, spilling out a jumble of wires and a key, which glows golden briefly and then fades back to silver. She hopes he will forgive her, hopes he will find someone else to make brilliant, someone else to share the whole of time and space with.
Rose turns and walks away.
--
The Doctor leans back in Tosh’s chair, staring at the ceiling of the Torchwood lab. Every ounce of energy seems to have drained from his body. His arms and legs feel heavy and cumbersome, and his hands lie open and limp in his lap.
There are many things he should do. He should stand and start to shut down the array of machines that are useless now, trains without tracks. He should find Rose’s office and the letter for her family. He should contact Jackie and Pete and Tony and let them know they’re back to being a family of three. He should find somewhere he can sleep and begin the long road of recuperating his energy. He should come up with a plan, figure out what in the world he’s going to do for the next half-century.
He can’t seem to pick himself up from the chair. To do any of those things would be to accept that Rose is gone, and though he knows that, feels it in every inch of his being, he wants to linger just a little longer in the space between acknowledgment and action. Once he moves he’ll have to move on, begin the terrifying adventure of living linearly… alone. As soon as he stands, he’ll take Rose and Donna and the TARDIS and all the rest and shove them to the back of his mind, relegate them to the same distant, dusty corner that he keeps memories of Gallifrey and the Time War and the year that wasn’t. He’ll throw himself into Torchwood with reckless abandon and he’ll push himself harder and harder. He’ll stretch himself so thin he won’t have time to notice the ghosts that will follow him for the rest of his human life.
But not quite yet. For just a few more minutes, he wants to mourn.
The corner of his mouth lifts up in a small pained smile; Jackie is going to kill him. Pete too, and Tony - Tony would grow up without the chance to know his brilliant older sister. It’s not fair to them that they lose her, and the Doctor wonders if Jackie will ever forgive him for not being good enough to keep Rose. He wonders if he’ll ever forgive himself.
But she’ll be happy, he thinks, repeating it like a mantra over and over in his head. Rose will be happy, and that’s the important thing, really, the most important thing. It’s a relief, a pleasant alternative to the knowledge he was making her miserable. It’s all he’s wanted, all he’s aimed for since he met her. It’s enough, it has to be. Making Rose Tyler happy has always been enough.
His eyes start to sting, so he shuts them tight.
Just one more minute, he thinks, sixty seconds and then he’ll force himself back to work. He keeps his eyes closed and wills his heart to stop pounding. He ignores the crackle of electricity he hears across the room just as he ignores the sudden compulsion to curl into a ball and escape into sleep.
It’s not until he feels the hand on his shoulder that his eyes snap open, instantly seeking out the familiar face that looms above him. He blinks twice to make sure he’s not imagining her. “Rose?”
The corners of her mouth tilt up in a small smile and she lifts her hand from his shoulder. “Hi.”
He gapes at her, his mind reeling as it tries to explain her presence back in Torchwood. He bolts upright and tries to shake away the confusion and fatigue clouding his mind, without much success. Rubbing his eyes with his index finger and thumb, he looks from Rose to the computer and back again. “What is it? Is there something wrong? Did something go wrong?”
“Everything’s fine,” Rose says, and his brain screeches to a halt at another dead end. “I saw Donna. She seemed happy, I think she was with you.”
For a long moment the Doctor is silent. “Then why….” He trails off as he’s forced to confront the seemingly impossible truth, a possibility he never allowed himself to hope for. He struggles to find his voice. “You came back.”
Her eyes are somber as she nods, as though she only seems to realize the truth in his words as he speaks. “Yeah.”
The question is out of his mouth before he can stop himself. “Why?”
Rose smiles this time, soft and sincere. “Said I’d never leave you, didn’t I?” And then she shrugs, just barely lifting her shoulders. “You gave me a choice. That’s something he never quite got the hang of.”
There’s more to it than that, he’s sure, but prying seems inconsiderate, so instead he stares at her, completely thrown, completely incapable of stringing together a sentence. He should thank her. He should tell her how grateful he is, what this means to him, how sorry he is for making her choose. He should explain to her the way fifty years on the slow path doesn’t seem quite so terrifying if she’s by his side.
All he manages to say is her name.
The smile on her lips fades, but that faint spark of light doesn’t leave her eyes. “Come on,” she says, “I’m dead tired and you look ready to pass out. It’s time we went home.”
Rose holds out her hand, and the Doctor takes it.
--
The Doctor looks at her for a long moment, his brow furrowed. “Sometimes I think there's way too much coincidence around you, Donna. I met you once, I met your grandfather, then I met you again. In the whole wide universe, I met you for a second time.” His voice lowers and he tilts his head, studying her as if she’s a puzzle he can’t quite figure out. “It's like something's binding us together.”
Donna snorts, half-heartedly swatting at him, “Don't be so daft. I'm nothing special.”
“Yes, you are, you're brilliant.”
The Doctor is looking back down at the beetle, but his tone is warm… and familiar, like déjà vu. She shuts her eyes, just for a moment, and in a flash there is a woman standing in front of her, a blonde in a blue leather coat; a woman with sad eyes and steel in her voice…
“She said that.”
“Who did?”
“That woman.” Donna shakes her head, struggling, “I can't remember.”
The Doctor seems unconcerned. “Well, she never existed now.”
A cold fist is gripping her stomach. There is something… something that she has to remember, but images and words are slipping past her, colors and sounds carried away by a fast flowing river. But… “No, but she said... the stars... she said the stars are going out.”
The Doctor shrugs, continuing to prod at the beetle, “Yeah, but that world's gone.”
“No, but she said it was all worlds. Every world.” Urgency is pressing down on her, but it’s as if she’s trying to dig though quicksand -- the memories are there but they are buried deep and sinking fast. “She said… ‘the darkness is coming, even here’.”
Finally the Doctor looks up at her, his mouth setting itself into a fine line. “Who was she?”
Donna shakes her head again. “I don't know.”
“What did she look like?”
“She was...” A leather jacket, a ring of mirrors, a pitch black sky, a strand of blonde hair tucked absently behind an ear… “Blonde.”
“What was her name?” The Doctor’s voice is quiet and strained; all of his attention is focused on her.
“I don't know!” Her breath is coming quicker now, images flashing faster through her mind.
“Donna, what was her name?” His voice is trembling, and Donna thinks that might be the most terrifying sound she has ever heard.
She shuts her eyes again. This time a face looms over her, blurry and out of focus. Donna speaks slowly, forcing memories to the surface as she goes along. “She told me... to warn you. She said... two words.”
“What two words? What were they? What did she say?” His voice is still quiet, but it rings with suppressed urgency. He sounds almost hollow.
There is a soft breath in her ear, a rush of sound. Donna narrows her eyes, searching the Doctor’s frantic gaze for meaning. “Bad Wolf.”
FINIS.