amberfocus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amberfocus) wrote2010-02-20 04:52 pm
amberfocus) wrote2010-02-20 04:52 pm
Entry tags:
Birthday Fic: Unexpected Outcome (1/1)
Title: Unexpected Outcome (1/1)
Author:![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Genre: Romance, Timey Whimey, Angst
Rating: Light R for non-graphic sex
Betas:amyo67, jeprdyfrndly
Summary: The universe is a brutal place, but just this once it has a surprise for the Doctor. Set directly before The Stolen Earth for Rose and directly before The End of Time for the Doctor. A sort of Ten/Rose fix-it fic.
A/N: This is a birthday fic forladychi . She wanted Ten/Rose and her prompt was: surprise. This whole fic turned out to be one. It took on a life of its own and virtually wrote itself. Further author's notes at the end so as not to ruin the story, which explains the various things and a couple of authors that helped to inspire where this story came from.
He’s running. He’s running so far and so fast, away, away, away. Away from everything that pursues him, away from the pain and the memories and even the tears that he’s so rarely shed, because there’ve only been two things, two in his life that could make him cry…the necessary loss of his people and the necessary loss of…well, he can’t think about Donna right now. He’s barely holding it together as it is. But no…that isn’t true. Of course it’s not because he can lie to the world and he can lie to companions, but he can’t—he can’t—ever lie to himself. Rose. The word echoes in his head, and unlike other words when repeated incessantly, it doesn’t lose its meaning. Sometimes he wishes it would.
So he runs, he runs, he runs, but still he remembers, still he knows he can’t outrun the future, the fate set before him, the prophecy written in the stars, the clock winding down. He has to stop, eventually, he has to stop. And when he does he can’t keep those memories at bay any longer. This is the price he pays for what he’s done—leaving Rose, leaving his counterpart, in Pete’s World because he thought he knew what was best when it so clearly wasn’t. At least not for him. Never for him.
The place that he stops at is at the ends of the Earth. He’s been here before, seems he always ends up here, every time he’s at a crossroads. He’s not sure when he is exactly, it’s towards the end of the 21st century, and he’s in a little mining town in Manitoba. He doesn’t know why, either, only he likes the name, Flin Flon, Flin Flon, Flin Flon, Manitoba. Likes the way it sounds in his mouth, likes the alliteration followed by the hard consonants. Though these do lose their meaning if repeated incessantly, he finds. It also causes a lot of hard stares from the other patrons of the bar as they try to decide if he’s crazy or just extremely annoying. They’re too polite to say anything as he mutters to himself.
Sanity is something he seems to be taking leave of more and more often of late. It doesn’t matter. Neither does it matter why he’s drawn here, he supposes. It’s a resting place and in the past it’s always been enough. He isn’t sure though, knowing what’s coming, if he’ll ever rest again. He wants to rest. He’s so tired, so weary, he just wants to rest. The hands on the clock over the bar draw his eye, inevitably, continually, winding down.
The Scottish whisky, that’s whisky with a k-y, not a k-e-y, thank you, only the best stuff for him, is enough to get drunk on if he wants to and right now he wants to. Right now he needs a hole burnt through his esophagus and stomach lining and possibly his brain so he doesn’t have to think about the one that’s burnt through his two hearts. Rose-shaped holes.
He doesn’t want to die, but does he want to live?
The bar goes silent as the doors are flung open. He doesn’t turn at first to see what’s caused the sudden rumble of voices behind him until the bartender speaks, his voice startled and somewhat worried, if not for himself then for the patrons. “I’m sorry, Miss, but you can’t bring that…that weapon in here.” He’d laugh at the fact that the bartender, in the face of something dangerous, still apologizes at the beginning of his sentence, the polite Canadian through and through, if silence hadn’t fallen, ice freezing every vein in the bar. He can feel it, feel something settling through every living creature in the establishment. Fear. Fear and the ticking of the clock.
“That right?” The voice taunts. Not just the bartender, not just every person in here, but him. Because that voice…that voice is familiar. When he turns on his bar stool and confirms the face that goes with that voice he thinks he already has died because the only way to be seeing what he is seeing is if reality has been torn to shreds and everything, all of it, is finally over. “Well, I’ve got a third generation plasma cannon with AI laser sighting capabilities that begs to differ with you.” Her voice is so hard.
She looks exactly like she did the last time he saw her, dressed in a maroon shirt and tight blue leather jacket, black trousers and hair so blonde it shines like an angel’s halo. She is not an angel, anymore than he is, and her eyes, cold, hard, harder than her voice, and so alone, show him that a light that used to be there has gone out. The same light that used to make him glow.
“Rose.” The word tears through him before he’s even aware of saying it.
She swivels towards him, sees him, but she understands before she sees him because that light that was missing is suddenly shining with a fire that almost matches the madness he felt when he decided to break the Laws of Time and rescue Adelaide from Mars. But her madness is love, love being relit with a flame that burns him far deeper than the whisky has had a chance to.
He doesn’t remember moving, doesn’t remember how he got across the room to her side. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. The gun is shoved over her shoulder on its strap to bang against her back and then he is holding her, holding her so tightly that he thinks he might break her fragile little bones except that she’s holding him back even tighter than that. Maybe he’s the fragile one, the one who will break before this night is over.
“Really, I must insist—.” The Doctor whirls on the barkeeper with such fire in his eyes and rage on his face that the burly man retreats several steps before he can recover. It doesn’t matter though. The Doctor has Rose firmly by the wrist and he is pulling her out of the bar and down the street and into the TARDIS.
Once inside, he takes the weapon from her and tosses it over the rail and into the grating. She barely has time to open her coat before he’s on her, pressing her hard up against the doors to the TARDIS, arms wrapped around her body inside the jacket and mouth firmly finding hers as if he’s done this a thousand times before. He kisses her without mercy, as if trying to absolve himself of all he’s ever done wrong and find forgiveness in her kiss.
She doesn’t try to break the kiss, doesn’t try to get away, kisses him back just as fiercely, her fingers busy pulling his shirt free of his trousers and allowing her hands onto cool skin. Eventually she has to breathe and stops the kiss, burying her face in his neck and smelling him as if trying to permanently place his scent in her memory so she never risks forgetting it again.
When they finally step apart she says, “Hello.”
“Hello.”
He takes her hand and tugs her with him, through the console room and the corridor to his bedroom. He doesn’t ask, he just goes there, doesn’t hesitate in going there. She doesn’t balk, doesn’t ask him what he’s doing. They were never like this, they ran out of time before they could be like this, but it’s more than clear to both of them that they’re going to be like this now. The want hangs so heavily in the air between them they can almost touch it.
They don’t take the time to undress each other, the unfamiliarity of the task being something that would take too long and he knows, knows, that he doesn’t have much time left. That if he’s to get this one glorious chance he’s going to take it. He can feel the seconds ticking away in his mind, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, as he strips away his clothes, his eyes never leaving her body as she does the same.
The minute they are both naked he’s got her in his arms again, is backing her to the bed and she falls down heavily upon it dragging him with her. They’re kissing again and hands are touching everywhere they can reach. He wants to take his time, what little he has left, to savor her, but that countdown ticks away in his mind. The ticking drives him, drives him crazy, drives him to haste, and when she opens her legs, he wastes no time.
He’s inside her before she has time to take a breath, moving to that incessant rhythm that counts away what’s left of his life. She makes no sounds of protest, as desperate as he, and he wonders if she knows, if she has any idea, that he’s not the him she should be looking for. He erases the thought from his mind. She’s Rose. She’s Rose and even if she doesn’t belong to him for this moment she does and she’s his and he’s hers and if that’s all he ever gets than it will have been enough. Enough. Enough. He pushes, she yields, he thrusts, she takes, he plunges, she bucks.
She grabs his head, pulls his face closer and kisses him, kisses him hard, kisses him desperately as if she, too, thinks this will be the only time, the only chance, the only moment they’ll get this. The universe is unforgiving and they both have felt her wrath. So they take, and take, and take, both reaching for the ultimate pinnacle. He feels her clench and then he comes and for a moment, a glorious moment, the ticking of the clock disappears.
He waits, waits for it to come back, but it doesn’t. Not yet. It hovers, but it’s gone for now and he thinks he feels the touch of the TARDIS in his mind, soothing him, protecting him from time, the enemy now. He can lay with her in his arms, kissing, cuddling, caressing. Their first franticness is gone and slowly, gently, they bring themselves back to arousal and this time it’s not just coupling, it’s making love.
The TARDIS protects him for a day and a night and he knows as it draws to an end, as the ticking just barely begins to infringe on his senses, that it’s almost over, that it has to be over. No matter how much he wants to keep her, he cannot break the rules of time again. He wants to, he wants to so badly, but the time he spent on that Dalek ship with Davros is a fixed point in time and he’s already seen what happens too recently when he takes matters into his own hands and tries to stop what time has decreed must be so.
He turns to her in bed. He has to tell her, but it’s so hard. His hand brushes her face and he gathers the courage to break his hearts. “I’m not him,” he says. “I’m not the me you’re supposed to get back to.”
“I know,” she says.
“How can you know?” he asks in consternation.
“Because of all this.” She gestures to them naked in the bed together.
“I can take you to me. To when you’re supposed to be,” he tells her.
“How long has it been?” she asks him.
He swallows. “A long time.” It’s not quite a lie. It’s been forever without her. “I was…so much younger then.” It’s true. He’s aged so very much since he lost her, the months ticking away like the clock that’s pushing at his mind again. “I best get you there.”
“Do I die?” she asks. “Do I die in battle? Is that why I’m not here?”
“No,” he says.
She stills his body as he makes to roll out of bed. “Why aren’t I with you now?” she asks.
“You are.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“No. Not now. But you will. It’s time to go, Rose.”
“Not yet,” she says. “One more time.”
He can’t say no. He needs this. It gives him strength. He can face the future knowing how much she loves him. The ticking recedes just long enough.
The TARDIS materializes and he tells her where he’ll be. It’s a few miles away from where they are. “Can’t you go closer?”
“No. If I do, he’ll sense me. You’ll have to fight your way through. Find Sylvia Noble and Wilfred Mott. Donna’s mum and granddad. They're not far. They’ll help.” He reaches for the plasma cannon on the jump seat. “It’s okay. You’ll make it back to me.”
She loops the weapon’s strap over her body and then hugs him tightly one last time. She doesn’t look back at him as she walks to the doors. “I love you,” she says and before he can answer she’s used her personal transporter to jump outside the ship. He watches as she materializes half a block away and takes a few steps as she regains her balance. She looks up at the sky, at the Dalek mother ship, at the flying Dalek fighting ships. She steels herself and speaks again, “Alright, now we’re in trouble. And it’s only just beginning.” She sounds almost gleeful as she strides off into the night.
He collapses into the jump seat, his head in his hands. “I love you, too,” he whispers. The TARDIS pushes gently at his mind and he lets her in. She tries to soothe his grief, but all he can hear is the ticking of the clock going faster and faster as the seconds whiz by. Finally he rises to his feet and sets the coordinates for the Ood sphere.
He’s dying. He’s said his good-byes to everyone, everyone that he can and he knows that Sarah and Luke are going to be okay, that Jack will eventually pull himself back together and return to do his part in the protection of Earth, that Donna gets a happily ever after, and even Mickey and Martha—who’d have thought that?—are going to be okay. It’s only been a few days since he said good-bye to Rose, but somehow, he wants to be selfish, he wants one more chance to see her, just one. He goes back, back before they ever met and as the pain threatens to consume him he stumbles out. Time has been kind for once and she’s right there with her mum, good old Jackie. He doesn’t have to go looking. It’s only a few words exchanged and she never really sees him in the shadows, but she smiles. She smiles and he knows that for her the adventure is only just about to start.
He stumbles back into his ship, the pain firing through him now. He’s thought for so long that it’s just been too hard to live without Rose, that life has been too hard, but now he knows that he wants to live it again, to stop standing still, to move forward. He wants to live with her, but also he wants to live even without her. It startles him so much as that feeling washes through him. “I don’t want to go,” he says. It’s a shocking surprise.
The TARDIS watches as he makes that final realization and she knows that if there is one thing she can do for him, it’s to make his future better. He can go on without the pain that has grounded him for so long. And he can still have what his heart most desires. And as her beloved Time Lord regenerates she interferes. She takes a part of him, the very essence of him in this incarnation and his love for Rose and pulls it into her heart, and with every ounce of the power at her disposal she funnels it back into her past, to a time when all of her defenses were down. She trills happily as it takes and turns her attention back to the new man standing before her. She reaches for his mind, welcoming him with her singing, and finds joy.
The Doctor feels the energy exploding all around him, his eyes huge and wide as he sits up, the sight of Donna Noble filling his vision. “It’s you!” she gasps.
“Oh, yes!” he tells her, surprise filling him. The ticking is gone. He knows, as the voice of the TARDIS hums all around him, what she has done.
“You’re naked,” Donna complains staring anywhere but at him.
“Oh. Yes.” The ship explodes around them and he suddenly smiles as he bursts into action. He knows what he has to do. He knows how this story plays out. The TARDIS has given him a gift, a beautiful, wondrous, loving gift, and he knows that for once the universe will not take it back. He smiles and does what has to be done.
It doesn’t hurt so much as he views it from this side of things, and when Rose has the two of them standing there later on that beach in Norway, and she asks him how that sentence was supposed to end, he says he loves her. It is later that night that he tells her the whole story. Her grief for his other self eases, knowing that finally, in the end, he is not alone; he is here, with her. Forever. As it should be.
Additional Author's Notes: This story has its roots in a few places. Back in September of 2007 I posted my first fanfic for New Who. It was, of course, a fix-it fic for Doomsday. At the end of it, the Doctor is at the end of his last life and is granted one last life to live with Rose and gets to choose what body he gets to live in. He chooses Ten. Shortly after Journey's Endjesidres posted this wonderful ficlet: http://community.livejournal.com/whooligan/56826.html which led to shinyopals' Fourteen 'verse. So all of these things combined sort of led me down this path and inspired this fic. Although my Ten2 is not Fourteen or the Doctor at the end of his lives, just Ten at the end of his, all of this rolled together and coalesced to create this story. Credit where credit is due and all that.
Author:
amberfocusCharacters/Pairings: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Genre: Romance, Timey Whimey, Angst
Rating: Light R for non-graphic sex
Betas:
amyo67, jeprdyfrndlySummary: The universe is a brutal place, but just this once it has a surprise for the Doctor. Set directly before The Stolen Earth for Rose and directly before The End of Time for the Doctor. A sort of Ten/Rose fix-it fic.
A/N: This is a birthday fic for
ladychi . She wanted Ten/Rose and her prompt was: surprise. This whole fic turned out to be one. It took on a life of its own and virtually wrote itself. Further author's notes at the end so as not to ruin the story, which explains the various things and a couple of authors that helped to inspire where this story came from.Unexpected Outcome
He’s running. He’s running so far and so fast, away, away, away. Away from everything that pursues him, away from the pain and the memories and even the tears that he’s so rarely shed, because there’ve only been two things, two in his life that could make him cry…the necessary loss of his people and the necessary loss of…well, he can’t think about Donna right now. He’s barely holding it together as it is. But no…that isn’t true. Of course it’s not because he can lie to the world and he can lie to companions, but he can’t—he can’t—ever lie to himself. Rose. The word echoes in his head, and unlike other words when repeated incessantly, it doesn’t lose its meaning. Sometimes he wishes it would.
So he runs, he runs, he runs, but still he remembers, still he knows he can’t outrun the future, the fate set before him, the prophecy written in the stars, the clock winding down. He has to stop, eventually, he has to stop. And when he does he can’t keep those memories at bay any longer. This is the price he pays for what he’s done—leaving Rose, leaving his counterpart, in Pete’s World because he thought he knew what was best when it so clearly wasn’t. At least not for him. Never for him.
The place that he stops at is at the ends of the Earth. He’s been here before, seems he always ends up here, every time he’s at a crossroads. He’s not sure when he is exactly, it’s towards the end of the 21st century, and he’s in a little mining town in Manitoba. He doesn’t know why, either, only he likes the name, Flin Flon, Flin Flon, Flin Flon, Manitoba. Likes the way it sounds in his mouth, likes the alliteration followed by the hard consonants. Though these do lose their meaning if repeated incessantly, he finds. It also causes a lot of hard stares from the other patrons of the bar as they try to decide if he’s crazy or just extremely annoying. They’re too polite to say anything as he mutters to himself.
Sanity is something he seems to be taking leave of more and more often of late. It doesn’t matter. Neither does it matter why he’s drawn here, he supposes. It’s a resting place and in the past it’s always been enough. He isn’t sure though, knowing what’s coming, if he’ll ever rest again. He wants to rest. He’s so tired, so weary, he just wants to rest. The hands on the clock over the bar draw his eye, inevitably, continually, winding down.
The Scottish whisky, that’s whisky with a k-y, not a k-e-y, thank you, only the best stuff for him, is enough to get drunk on if he wants to and right now he wants to. Right now he needs a hole burnt through his esophagus and stomach lining and possibly his brain so he doesn’t have to think about the one that’s burnt through his two hearts. Rose-shaped holes.
He doesn’t want to die, but does he want to live?
The bar goes silent as the doors are flung open. He doesn’t turn at first to see what’s caused the sudden rumble of voices behind him until the bartender speaks, his voice startled and somewhat worried, if not for himself then for the patrons. “I’m sorry, Miss, but you can’t bring that…that weapon in here.” He’d laugh at the fact that the bartender, in the face of something dangerous, still apologizes at the beginning of his sentence, the polite Canadian through and through, if silence hadn’t fallen, ice freezing every vein in the bar. He can feel it, feel something settling through every living creature in the establishment. Fear. Fear and the ticking of the clock.
“That right?” The voice taunts. Not just the bartender, not just every person in here, but him. Because that voice…that voice is familiar. When he turns on his bar stool and confirms the face that goes with that voice he thinks he already has died because the only way to be seeing what he is seeing is if reality has been torn to shreds and everything, all of it, is finally over. “Well, I’ve got a third generation plasma cannon with AI laser sighting capabilities that begs to differ with you.” Her voice is so hard.
She looks exactly like she did the last time he saw her, dressed in a maroon shirt and tight blue leather jacket, black trousers and hair so blonde it shines like an angel’s halo. She is not an angel, anymore than he is, and her eyes, cold, hard, harder than her voice, and so alone, show him that a light that used to be there has gone out. The same light that used to make him glow.
“Rose.” The word tears through him before he’s even aware of saying it.
She swivels towards him, sees him, but she understands before she sees him because that light that was missing is suddenly shining with a fire that almost matches the madness he felt when he decided to break the Laws of Time and rescue Adelaide from Mars. But her madness is love, love being relit with a flame that burns him far deeper than the whisky has had a chance to.
He doesn’t remember moving, doesn’t remember how he got across the room to her side. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. The gun is shoved over her shoulder on its strap to bang against her back and then he is holding her, holding her so tightly that he thinks he might break her fragile little bones except that she’s holding him back even tighter than that. Maybe he’s the fragile one, the one who will break before this night is over.
“Really, I must insist—.” The Doctor whirls on the barkeeper with such fire in his eyes and rage on his face that the burly man retreats several steps before he can recover. It doesn’t matter though. The Doctor has Rose firmly by the wrist and he is pulling her out of the bar and down the street and into the TARDIS.
Once inside, he takes the weapon from her and tosses it over the rail and into the grating. She barely has time to open her coat before he’s on her, pressing her hard up against the doors to the TARDIS, arms wrapped around her body inside the jacket and mouth firmly finding hers as if he’s done this a thousand times before. He kisses her without mercy, as if trying to absolve himself of all he’s ever done wrong and find forgiveness in her kiss.
She doesn’t try to break the kiss, doesn’t try to get away, kisses him back just as fiercely, her fingers busy pulling his shirt free of his trousers and allowing her hands onto cool skin. Eventually she has to breathe and stops the kiss, burying her face in his neck and smelling him as if trying to permanently place his scent in her memory so she never risks forgetting it again.
When they finally step apart she says, “Hello.”
“Hello.”
He takes her hand and tugs her with him, through the console room and the corridor to his bedroom. He doesn’t ask, he just goes there, doesn’t hesitate in going there. She doesn’t balk, doesn’t ask him what he’s doing. They were never like this, they ran out of time before they could be like this, but it’s more than clear to both of them that they’re going to be like this now. The want hangs so heavily in the air between them they can almost touch it.
They don’t take the time to undress each other, the unfamiliarity of the task being something that would take too long and he knows, knows, that he doesn’t have much time left. That if he’s to get this one glorious chance he’s going to take it. He can feel the seconds ticking away in his mind, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, as he strips away his clothes, his eyes never leaving her body as she does the same.
The minute they are both naked he’s got her in his arms again, is backing her to the bed and she falls down heavily upon it dragging him with her. They’re kissing again and hands are touching everywhere they can reach. He wants to take his time, what little he has left, to savor her, but that countdown ticks away in his mind. The ticking drives him, drives him crazy, drives him to haste, and when she opens her legs, he wastes no time.
He’s inside her before she has time to take a breath, moving to that incessant rhythm that counts away what’s left of his life. She makes no sounds of protest, as desperate as he, and he wonders if she knows, if she has any idea, that he’s not the him she should be looking for. He erases the thought from his mind. She’s Rose. She’s Rose and even if she doesn’t belong to him for this moment she does and she’s his and he’s hers and if that’s all he ever gets than it will have been enough. Enough. Enough. He pushes, she yields, he thrusts, she takes, he plunges, she bucks.
She grabs his head, pulls his face closer and kisses him, kisses him hard, kisses him desperately as if she, too, thinks this will be the only time, the only chance, the only moment they’ll get this. The universe is unforgiving and they both have felt her wrath. So they take, and take, and take, both reaching for the ultimate pinnacle. He feels her clench and then he comes and for a moment, a glorious moment, the ticking of the clock disappears.
He waits, waits for it to come back, but it doesn’t. Not yet. It hovers, but it’s gone for now and he thinks he feels the touch of the TARDIS in his mind, soothing him, protecting him from time, the enemy now. He can lay with her in his arms, kissing, cuddling, caressing. Their first franticness is gone and slowly, gently, they bring themselves back to arousal and this time it’s not just coupling, it’s making love.
The TARDIS protects him for a day and a night and he knows as it draws to an end, as the ticking just barely begins to infringe on his senses, that it’s almost over, that it has to be over. No matter how much he wants to keep her, he cannot break the rules of time again. He wants to, he wants to so badly, but the time he spent on that Dalek ship with Davros is a fixed point in time and he’s already seen what happens too recently when he takes matters into his own hands and tries to stop what time has decreed must be so.
He turns to her in bed. He has to tell her, but it’s so hard. His hand brushes her face and he gathers the courage to break his hearts. “I’m not him,” he says. “I’m not the me you’re supposed to get back to.”
“I know,” she says.
“How can you know?” he asks in consternation.
“Because of all this.” She gestures to them naked in the bed together.
“I can take you to me. To when you’re supposed to be,” he tells her.
“How long has it been?” she asks him.
He swallows. “A long time.” It’s not quite a lie. It’s been forever without her. “I was…so much younger then.” It’s true. He’s aged so very much since he lost her, the months ticking away like the clock that’s pushing at his mind again. “I best get you there.”
“Do I die?” she asks. “Do I die in battle? Is that why I’m not here?”
“No,” he says.
She stills his body as he makes to roll out of bed. “Why aren’t I with you now?” she asks.
“You are.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“No. Not now. But you will. It’s time to go, Rose.”
“Not yet,” she says. “One more time.”
He can’t say no. He needs this. It gives him strength. He can face the future knowing how much she loves him. The ticking recedes just long enough.
The TARDIS materializes and he tells her where he’ll be. It’s a few miles away from where they are. “Can’t you go closer?”
“No. If I do, he’ll sense me. You’ll have to fight your way through. Find Sylvia Noble and Wilfred Mott. Donna’s mum and granddad. They're not far. They’ll help.” He reaches for the plasma cannon on the jump seat. “It’s okay. You’ll make it back to me.”
She loops the weapon’s strap over her body and then hugs him tightly one last time. She doesn’t look back at him as she walks to the doors. “I love you,” she says and before he can answer she’s used her personal transporter to jump outside the ship. He watches as she materializes half a block away and takes a few steps as she regains her balance. She looks up at the sky, at the Dalek mother ship, at the flying Dalek fighting ships. She steels herself and speaks again, “Alright, now we’re in trouble. And it’s only just beginning.” She sounds almost gleeful as she strides off into the night.
He collapses into the jump seat, his head in his hands. “I love you, too,” he whispers. The TARDIS pushes gently at his mind and he lets her in. She tries to soothe his grief, but all he can hear is the ticking of the clock going faster and faster as the seconds whiz by. Finally he rises to his feet and sets the coordinates for the Ood sphere.
He’s dying. He’s said his good-byes to everyone, everyone that he can and he knows that Sarah and Luke are going to be okay, that Jack will eventually pull himself back together and return to do his part in the protection of Earth, that Donna gets a happily ever after, and even Mickey and Martha—who’d have thought that?—are going to be okay. It’s only been a few days since he said good-bye to Rose, but somehow, he wants to be selfish, he wants one more chance to see her, just one. He goes back, back before they ever met and as the pain threatens to consume him he stumbles out. Time has been kind for once and she’s right there with her mum, good old Jackie. He doesn’t have to go looking. It’s only a few words exchanged and she never really sees him in the shadows, but she smiles. She smiles and he knows that for her the adventure is only just about to start.
He stumbles back into his ship, the pain firing through him now. He’s thought for so long that it’s just been too hard to live without Rose, that life has been too hard, but now he knows that he wants to live it again, to stop standing still, to move forward. He wants to live with her, but also he wants to live even without her. It startles him so much as that feeling washes through him. “I don’t want to go,” he says. It’s a shocking surprise.
The TARDIS watches as he makes that final realization and she knows that if there is one thing she can do for him, it’s to make his future better. He can go on without the pain that has grounded him for so long. And he can still have what his heart most desires. And as her beloved Time Lord regenerates she interferes. She takes a part of him, the very essence of him in this incarnation and his love for Rose and pulls it into her heart, and with every ounce of the power at her disposal she funnels it back into her past, to a time when all of her defenses were down. She trills happily as it takes and turns her attention back to the new man standing before her. She reaches for his mind, welcoming him with her singing, and finds joy.
The Doctor feels the energy exploding all around him, his eyes huge and wide as he sits up, the sight of Donna Noble filling his vision. “It’s you!” she gasps.
“Oh, yes!” he tells her, surprise filling him. The ticking is gone. He knows, as the voice of the TARDIS hums all around him, what she has done.
“You’re naked,” Donna complains staring anywhere but at him.
“Oh. Yes.” The ship explodes around them and he suddenly smiles as he bursts into action. He knows what he has to do. He knows how this story plays out. The TARDIS has given him a gift, a beautiful, wondrous, loving gift, and he knows that for once the universe will not take it back. He smiles and does what has to be done.
It doesn’t hurt so much as he views it from this side of things, and when Rose has the two of them standing there later on that beach in Norway, and she asks him how that sentence was supposed to end, he says he loves her. It is later that night that he tells her the whole story. Her grief for his other self eases, knowing that finally, in the end, he is not alone; he is here, with her. Forever. As it should be.
~End~
Additional Author's Notes: This story has its roots in a few places. Back in September of 2007 I posted my first fanfic for New Who. It was, of course, a fix-it fic for Doomsday. At the end of it, the Doctor is at the end of his last life and is granted one last life to live with Rose and gets to choose what body he gets to live in. He chooses Ten. Shortly after Journey's End
jesidres posted this wonderful ficlet: http://community.livejournal.com/whooligan/56826.html which led to shinyopals' Fourteen 'verse. So all of these things combined sort of led me down this path and inspired this fic. Although my Ten2 is not Fourteen or the Doctor at the end of his lives, just Ten at the end of his, all of this rolled together and coalesced to create this story. Credit where credit is due and all that.