amberfocus | Sacrifice (2/6)

A/N: I made Victoria cry on the third draft. And Amy said she did, too on the first draft. Bring tissue.

Chapter Two

~Blue~

He goes to find Rose. So far she hasn’t treated him as anything other than the Doctor, but he’s had very little time with her at all and almost feels like he’s stealing it from the other him, time that man thinks he has so precious little left of to spend with the girl that they love. But he’s stubborn, this other self, and he’s going to stay in the console room and hide from his emotions even now when he thinks time is running out.

But not him. The man in the blue suit is not going to hide from what he feels. He spent too much time doing that before the…change. Before he became this man. He stops outside her bedroom door, finds it slightly ajar and pushes it a little so he can peer inside. Her head rests on the pillow and the duvet rests across her body and she looks so fragile in that moment, so tiny, and so very much alone.

He does not want that for her, has never wanted that for her, and he pushes the door all the way open. “Doctor?” she says softly and he says yes and it is to her credit that she doesn’t ask him which one he is. Instead she simply holds her hand out to him and he steps towards her, nudging the door nearly to with his foot.

He reaches her in a few short strides and is clasping her hand between his and kneeling down on the floor beside her bed. “I promised we would talk,” he says and he knows in that moment she’s identified which man he is but her expression in the dim light does not change. She does not look at him like he is less than the original man he used to be.

“You did,” she tells him.

“I need to know,” he tells her, “what you want.”

“I…I don’t know. I want…”

“Don’t say chips,” he says and she laughs as the memory washes over them both of when he was a different man with a different face and everything was still so new between them and she wasn’t sure if she was going to stay or she was going to go. So much like him now.

She touches his face. “You are him.”

He leans into her hand. “There are differences.”

“I don’t see them,” she says.

“You will. One day. Maybe.” If I’m lucky, he thinks. Please let me be that lucky.

“You changed before,” she tells him. “It was hard, but--.”

“This is different,” he tells her.

She looks away from him. “I know. It’s sort of…weird.”

He gives a hollow, almost bitter laugh at the understatement. “Tell me about it,” he says. She laughs again but the sound is odd, almost choked.

“He’s going to send me away,” the Doctor admits. “That man who is me before I became this me, he’s going to send me away.”

“Is he going to send me away, too?” she whispers.

“I don’t…There’s something wrong with me and I can’t see the timelines anymore, Rose. I don’t know. Don’t…don’t let him, don’t let him send you away. If that’s what you want, to be with him, don’t let him send you away. Don’t let him cheat you out of making your choice,” he blurts out. It hurts him to say it because he wants her. Oh, he wants her so badly to be with him, to stay with him when he’s banished from the TARDIS.

“Does there have to be a choice?” she asks him.

“I’m afraid so.”

“What do you want, Doctor?” she asks him slowly.

“You. Always you,” he admits on a sigh, but there is anguish in his voice because when the choice comes he doesn’t expect it might be him.

“And you’d give it up? All of it? This life?” she asks.

“For you I would do that and I wouldn’t even regret it. I’ve lived without you, Rose Tyler and I’ve lived with you, and I know what I want. I want you,” he tells her.

Her free hand reaches out for his free hand and then they are holding all four of them together, fingers woven tightly. “I don’t know what to think,” she tells him. “What to feel.”

“We’ll be dropping the others off soon and then we have to take your mother back home to Pete’s World before the gap closes,” he tells her. “Do you still call it that?”

She nods. “Dad thinks I’m daft, but he gets a secret kick out of it.” She pauses. “Does he want me to stay?” Rose asks her voice breaking. “Does he want me?”

“We both want you, Rose. That’s never going to change.” He rests his head on the side of her bed and she frees one hand to place in his hair. She strokes him softly. He falls asleep like that.

~Brown~

The man in brown stands in a protective posture as he so often does, hands firmly in his pockets, weight properly balanced on the balls of his feet. He knows what the other man does not, that the new version of himself is already beginning to tick away the remaining minutes of his lifespan. His life is fragile, somewhat human now, and finite. He will die in a matter of years, fifty, sixty, maybe eighty if he’s really lucky and takes very good care of himself.

All that Time Lord knowledge and nothing for him to stop the forward rush of time with; nothing except maybe a hand to hold. Rose’s hand. The Doctor in the brown suit feels sick to his stomach at the thought of giving up his Rose, of sending her away again, but he has brought this creature forth into the world, this man who is in many ways his child as much as Jenny was, yet another generated anomaly, or perhaps regenerated anomaly would be more apropos. He smiles slightly but it doesn’t stick, it slides from his face as if it doesn’t belong there, as if a smile will never belong there again.

He did this when he chose not to fully regenerate, when he’d held on when he should have let go. He’d been smug and arrogant when he said there was no reason to change and why would he want to but the truth was he hadn’t wanted to make Rose have to adapt to a new him again and there’d been a way out. He just didn’t know it would make…him. And he’s responsible, responsible for making sure that dangerous version of himself is not let loose on this universe, and…and he can’t face what he sees in the timelines, has seen for the past few hours.

What is he doing contemplating giving her up? His Rose. His Rose. When she is so marvelous and clever and beautiful and she’s made it back to him against every odd in the universes. She has done the impossible and he is just going to…leave her with a human shadow of himself and wish her happily ever after with…with someone who isn’t him? Only that isn’t fair because the other man is him, identical in many ways to who he is now and in other ways so much like the man he once was, the man Rose first met, even if he is in denial about it.

Rose made her choice a long time ago. She’s told him that over and over again. She’s risked life and limb and almost died thrice now in her quest to be with him. And she loves him. She said so that day when he’d burned up a star to say good-bye and he’d been going to say it back because he’d known he’d never get the chance again and he could at least leave her with that knowledge pure and simple in her head and heart. It hadn’t ended up like that, but he’d tried.

He’d even searched madly for another sun to burn once he’d left Donna behind after the Racnoss, to try once more in the limited time left to him while that tiny little hole was still open because he knew without a doubt that she would wait on that beach another five and a half hours because he’d once told her to always wait that long. What else was a time machine for if not to allow this mastery over time? It hadn’t worked that way though, he’d found another sun but it had been too late, the seal was complete and the TARDIS tried but she hadn’t been able to do it. He’d never got to say the words.

He still feels it though, even after all this time, this mad consuming love for Rose Tyler. It burns inside him with a painful certainty that had sprung to life when he’d first seen her face again and they’d run to each other. And she still loves him. He doesn’t need to hear the words to read it in her eyes. He’s never needed the words. He’s only ever needed Rose.

The man in blue is right, though. He still needs Rose. Desperately, he needs Rose. But the timelines are clear. He doesn’t get to have her. He sees what will happen if she doesn’t stay with the man in blue and what will happen if she does. He sees it too clearly. And maybe if Rose knew the truth, she would hate him for it, but he has this one last bit of selfishness left that he is going to cling to.

He has never told Rose that he’d not quite gotten all of the Vortex out of her when she’d first looked into the heart of the TARDIS. It hadn’t made her immortal like Jack and it hadn’t killed her like it had done to him, but it had changed her. It had coded itself into her DNA, altered her enough that she is nearly as much a hybrid of human and Gallifreyan as his other self. He’d run tests on her not too long after his regeneration to make sure she was okay. He’d always known it, but it has never been something that would affect her so he’s never told her. She won’t regenerate so far as he knows. She wouldn’t have been able to have children with him because the DNA has not been altered enough and he is sterile anyway. But…

He runs his hands through his hair and stands there for a long moment without moving. But with her being part Gallifreyan and the other Doctor having the genetic coding in his system for Time Lord genes even if they were currently shut down, well…if those two have children together the possibility exists that there would be more Time Lords. It more than exists. In nearly every possible outcome at least two of their children will be like him. His people, not just the Gallifreyan line, but the Time Lord line will continue. And their DNA will win out and there will be more one day when they married and have their own children.

And if they are raised on stories of him and if their…father passes on his knowledge to them, one day they’ll find a way to make a stable gate and get back across the universes and…he won’t be alone for the rest of his life. He’ll have someone, nearly his own children and grandchildren, since a part of him would exist in them. His people will go on. He won’t be alone. But it means he can never have Rose.

He thinks again of letting the other man stay, but if he has to watch him woo Rose, or Rose fall in love with this other man, it would kill him. And there is every possibility that Rose will refuse to fall in love with the man in blue, will resist sleeping with the man and getting pregnant, if he himself is still around for her to cling to or for her to worry about hurting his feelings. And Rose wouldn’t just treat the other Doctor as a sperm donor. She isn’t like that. In fact, she’d thump him if she thought he was thinking it. It wouldn’t be fair to the man in blue anyway, to contribute his genetic donation and then watch the man in brown raise the children with Rose, watch him being the one that gets to love Rose.

He looks desperately for a way to save her for himself. He could pitch the other man out anywhere and accept that there will never be more of his kind, but every variation of every timeline he sees says the universes will be better with these children existing. They’ll be safer and thrive and prosper in ways that will never be without them. There is no other way. He bows his head deeply in his grief. The worst part is he won’t even be able to tell her the reason why. No, the worst part is she might end up hating him for everything he can’t do and everything he will do.

He knows eventually she will be happy with the blue man because he sees this, too. He knows in his hearts that he has to give her up, but how is he going to go on without her? It nearly destroyed him the last time. But she will be happy. She’ll be happy. She will. “Oh, Rose,” he whispers.

“Doctor?”

~Rose~

Rose stays with the man in blue for a while, petting his hair, he has really great hair, long after that version of the Doctor has fallen asleep at her side. It is odd that, seeing him sleep. Not that she hasn’t ever seen the Doctor sleep before, had even sat with him while she’d eased him into sleep after some sort of nightmare had broken him from the brief slumber he did need. But that was oh, so long ago and in another lifetime when he’d been a broken, lonely man on the edge of the darkness and she’d been there to soothe him.

She wonders at his deep sleep, thinks it might be part of the regeneration process or the birth process. It is still very confusing what exactly has happened despite the Doctor’s, the other Doctor’s, hyper explanation after it had occurred. She hopes his neck doesn’t hurt from that angle when he wakes up.

Rose eases herself out of bed and goes in search of the other man, the one she needs to have a talk with now she’s talked to this one. His words have not eased her fears and she needs to hear it from the first man that he isn’t going to send her away from him. She pads down the long corridor, her hand trailing against the walls of the ship and feeling the gentle singing she has missed so much in the last few years. “I missed you,” she says softly. The TARDIS overwhelms her with love but buried in it is something else.

“You’re so sad,” Rose whispers to the TARDIS as she senses grief there. The ship hums a bit louder in her mind confirming the fact that she is indeed sad. “You know what he’s planning.” Again the quiet, broken confirmation comes to her. “Can you stop him?” But the response is negative and Rose lets go of the wall, stumbling backwards at the wash of pain the time machine is feeling.

She stands there for a long moment then heads into the console room in time to hear him whisper her name. “Doctor?” she asks. The man spins about, his face quickly masking whatever he is thinking.

“Hello, Rose,” he says quietly.

“Doctor, I need to know what you’re thinking.”

Instead of replying he simply opens his arms to her and she moves into them. He buries his face in her neck and holds onto her like he is drowning. “Rose,” he says repeating her name over and over again. “Oh, Rose.”

“Did you miss me?” she asks a little cheekily when she can finally catch her breath, hide the tremor, hold back the sobs of loss that she’s forced down for so long.

“You’ve no idea,” he tells her. “Every single second of every single minute of every single hour of every single day since you’ve been gone, I have missed you, Rose Tyler.” He pulls back and looks her in the eyes. She thinks then maybe he’s going to kiss her, finally going to kiss her, not to save her life and not because one of them is possessed, but for the pure and simple reason that he wants to. She can see that he wants to. She can see him fighting with himself. Still holding himself back even now.

“Let go,” she tells him. “Please. For me.”

“I can’t.” He swallows hard and steps away from her and the moment passes. He is flicking switches that don’t need to be flicked and twisting dials that don’t need to be twisted.

She wants to ask him about her future, about their future but the words are stuck in her throat and will not come. She sits down on the jumpseat and watches him fiddle some more. “Are you going to talk to me?” she finally manages to choke out.

Instead he comes back to her and sits beside her and wraps an arm around her. She shifts and puts her head against him and they simply sit together like that until morning. No important words are spoken between them, no words at all, and her heart breaks that little bit more that he still can’t say what needs to be said. She finally falls asleep and he holds her like he can’t ever bear to let her go. She knows it’s because he can’t. She also knows he will.

When she wakes she is in her own bed and neither Doctor is by her side. She slides her feet to the side and sits up. She’ll be damned if she doesn’t end up with one of them. And the man in blue is so right when he says it needs to be her choice. It’s going to be.

Ch. 3: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/112637.html

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