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The Doctor rubbed at his wrist absently as he stared at the time rotor. He was trying not to think about it, trying not to think about the girl who had turned his universe upside down the moment she’d gripped his hand in that shop basement.
He’d felt the surge of sparks travel from their joined palms up to the inside of his wrist where the sensation had settled into the words that had been inscribed there across all his lives. It was like liquid fire but it didn’t hurt, only warmed.
But he hadn’t stopped to examine the life-altering event when in happened, too focused on getting Rose out of the shop and being oddly proud of her rather logical conclusion that it had been students.
He didn’t stop to examine that feeling either, just bundled her out the door and away from the explosives that were primed to go off. He barely even remembered to introduce himself before running off.
From that first moment until right now, the Doctor had refused to push up his sleeves to confirm what he already knew. Did it even matter now? She’d turned down his invitation to travel with him.
Figures, he finally meets his soulmate, the one he’d been looking for for centuries, and she breaks his hearts without even trying.
The Doctor gave into temptation and shrugged his leather jacket off and slowly pushed up the left sleeve of his jumper. The words that had once been black and lifeless on the skin were now glowing a warm gold.
They were written in English, in a tight spiral on the inside of his wrist. The words were the same as they always were, a Virginia Woolf quote in a messy script:
“& I said to the star : Consume me.“
But now the words seemed alive, like they had been awoken by the one they were meant to describe.
(It would take time to really understand why these words were the ones on his wrist but he’d seen her smile with all the power of a supernova, had felt the pull of her gravity, and he wasn’t afraid to be consumed by a star like her.)
The Doctor traced a finger along the path of the words once before pulling his sleeve back down and donning his jacket. Maybe he would cross paths with Rose Tyler again someday and would get the chance to get to know her better, give her a chance to recognize the connection between them as the one belonging to soulmates.
After all, humans didn’t have the advantage of an instantaneous indication that they had found their soulmate so she hadn’t known. A soulmark only appeared for them after they met their soulmate and even then it usually didn’t become clear until they had spent a significant amount of time with their mate.
Time. The Doctor thought, sitting upright with a jolt. That was it! He’d forgotten to tell her that the TARDIS was a time machine! Maybe that would overcome those few little hesitations that had kept her back on Earth the first time he’d asked.
He flew around the console, sending it back to right after he’d left Rose in the alleyway, ready to throw himself at the star that was Rose Tyler, ready to learn what it was like to be consumed.