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Donna looks past him, and she smiles.
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
The Doctor’s mouth goes dry. His insides turn to sand and spill out of him as if he is an hourglass. His limbs feel hollow, weightless. He hears the sound of footsteps behind him, echoing across the silent street. His breath catches at the sound. Donna’s smile widens. She inclines her head. Hearts pounding, he turns and follows her gaze.
There at the end of the street, limned in gold by the streetlights, is Rose. She’s older than she was the last time he saw her, and thinner; her hair is longer and she’s carrying a gun so large it makes her look tiny by comparison. But if he has any doubts they wash away when their eyes meet and she smiles, that wide grin that lights up this dark street the way it lit up his hearts at his darkest hour.
Impossible, he told himself, and her, not because it was but because the consequences would be catastrophic.
Standing there by the sea, unable to touch him, she let out a sob and asked, So?
She didn’t mean it. She wouldn’t be Rose if she had. Like him, she has come to understand that sometimes—most times—you must put the universe before yourself. But here they are on the edge of catastrophe, and just for a moment, he doesn’t care. The universe—every universe—is coming apart, but Rose is here and that’s all that matters.
He takes a step toward her, and another, and then he is running. The shell that has held him together for so long cracks and he imagines that the impact of their bodies meeting will break it open completely and the force of his joy will shine as bright as the sun. As bright as two suns. He feels as though he could fly.
Even he can only run, but he can run fast. His long legs carry him toward her. He can already feel her in his arms again, because that is the moment he’ll know this is real: When her arms wrap around him; when he lifts her up and spins her around and buries his face in her hair; when he tells her what he should have told her on a beach in Norway, so long ago. She knows, she’s always known, but this time he will say it.
Rose’s step falters just before the crushingly familiar mechanical voice reaches his ears. He slows and twists toward the sound. Davros’s face on his scanner should have prepared him for this, but it hasn’t. That copper sheen in the dark fills him with despair.
They always survive, and I lose everything!
He is going to lose her. And so it will continue: the Doctor and the Daleks, locked in the Time War forever, and he will fight them alone. Always alone. An image of Rose on the the Game Station flashes before him, haloed with the light of the Vortex and the heart of the TARDIS shining in her eyes, and he remembers the hope and the terror of that moment: that this extraordinary girl had come back for him. That she had chosen him. He began to believe that maybe, just maybe, he was worth it.
He lost her once. Now the universe is breaking down and he should have known better than to think that his wouldn’t, too. He always loses everything.
But the Dalek’s shooting arm doesn’t aim toward her. He has just time to see its cold, blue eye. There is a flash of light, and then there is darkness.
***
He can’t feel his body. Only seconds pass, but he feels as if he hangs in the air for a hundred years, for a thousand, before the sound of an explosion brings him back. He sucks in a breath. He is lying on the ground. There are shouts and the sound of footsteps. The chill from the pavement seeps through his clothes and there is pain wrapped like a vise around his chest, but right now he can’t feel any of it because Rose is kneeling over him, cradling his head in her hands.
“I’ve got you. I missed you. Look, it’s me, yeah?”
He floats in a strange place between joy and agony. Her eyes are welling up with tears but she’s smiling down at him, and he finds he can still smile back. “Rose.” Alive. She’s alive. Her tears threaten to spill over so he smiles again and quips, “Long time no see.”
She laughs a hysterical, half-sobbing kind of laugh and says, “Been busy, you know.”
“Yeah.” The vise tightens and he gasps. Stars dance across his field of vision. Rose hunches protectively over him.
“Don’t die. Oh God, don’t die,” she says, cradling him as another spasm of pain wracks his body. There is a flash of copper hair and he knows Donna is beside him. He tries to say her name but all that comes out is a strangled moan.
Distantly he hears Jack’s voice. “Get him into the TARDIS, quick!” Donna and Rose wrap their arms around him, lifting him up. He tries to help but his legs won’t move. He is blind and mute with pain. When he is aware again he is looking up at the domed ceiling of the console room and he can hear Donna, frightened and bewildered. “What do we do? There must be some medicine or something...”
“Just step back!” Jack’s voice. “Rose, do as I say. He’s dying, and you know what happens next!”
“What do you mean?” Panic now from Donna, and he wants badly to talk to her, to reassure her somehow, but he is afraid himself.
He’s not ready to give up being this man. Rose isn’t ready either; he can see it in the tears running down her cheeks. She touches his face again.
“Not now, I came all this way...”
His last incarnation loved Rose but he couldn’t tell her. Neither, it seemed, could this one. But he wants to. His next self could be anything, could be ginger, could be even ruder than this one, but he doesn’t care about that anymore. He wants to keep this face. He’d still be himself, but he wants to be this self. He wants to love Rose as this man, wants Jack to know him as this man. Jack’s friends, Sarah Jane’s son—he wants to meet them as this man.
He wants to be this man for Donna, who brings out the best in him; who’s helped him finally begin to heal.
The regenerative energy pulses through him. He struggles to his feet and looks at his friends, huddled together on the far side of the console. “I’m sorry,” he gasps, not sure whether he’s talking to himself or to them. “It’s too late. I’m regenerating.”
Donna hides her face in Jack’s shoulder.
I’m not ready to give up being this man.
He clings to that thought.
Then the power surges through him and he can’t think at all.