Work Text:
“You don't talk. You never say. Why not?”
“I lied to you, because I liked it. I could pretend. Just for a bit, I could imagine they were still alive, underneath a burnt orange sky. I'm not just a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. The Face of Boe was wrong. There's no one else.”
“What happened?”
“There was a war. A Time War. The last Great Time War. My people fought a race called the Daleks, for the sake of all creation. And they lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now. My family, my friends, even that sky. Oh, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, and the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver, and when they caught the light every morning, it looked like a forest on fire. When the autumn came, the breeze would blow through the branches like a song.”
The words he exchanged with Martha run on repeat through the Doctor’s mind as the haunting hymn comes to an end. He glances at Martha for a moment before standing and walking slowly to the TARDIS. Leaving the door open for Martha, he sends them into the Vortex once she’s inside.
Martha stands awkwardly next to a coral strut, several paces away from where he works at the console. “I’m sorry. For pushing you. It’s just…” She shrugs. “I don’t know you. I just left everyone behind without even thinking about it. You're still a total stranger, you are, and I just left! In a spaceship that travels through time!” By the time she finishes, Martha is breathing heavily with slightly wild eyes, mostly likely with the belated realization that she's left her life in London behind without a second thought.
The Doctor sighs, well familiar with this initial panic from his companions and others who travel with him. “You were right to ask me who I am,” he admits, absently fiddling with buttons and knobs on the console. “But what's out there,” he gestures around in a wide arc, “it's all more interesting than who I am and who I was. I've lost… more than you will ever understand.” He swallows heavily as an image of Rose flits unbidden through his mind. “So why would I talk about that when the mysteries of the universe are at our fingertips, waiting to be discovered?”
For several long moments, Martha plays with the zipper on her leather jacket. “Is there… Is there a room on this ship where I can sleep? Maybe take a shower?” She wrinkles her nose as she gestures to her body, clearly willing to drop their previous topic of discussion. “I slept only a few hours after Shakespeare, and I stink.”
As she changes the subject, the Doctor realizes, with a good deal of shame, he's not even thought of finding Martha a room, since in his mind, her presence on his ship is only temporary. Rose would have sighed at him in exasperation “for forgetting the basic needs of us silly apes” before confidently marching through the TARDIS to present Martha with her own room. They'd have gotten along well, he thinks, despite their very different personalities. The fact that Rose is not here to welcome a newcomer to the ship makes his hearts clench.
Martha continues to wait for his answer, and he’s pulled from his painful thoughts of Rose when she quietly clears her throat. “Oh! Yes!” he says, hiding his agony – the raw hysteria that’s never far from the surface these days – behind a cheerful facade in the form of a fake grin. “The TARDIS will set you up with a room, no problemo. Head down the corridor, take two rights, and it'll be the…” He closes his eyes and waits for his ship to show him the room. “The third door on the left!”
Looking vaguely concerned at the manic grin on his face, Martha nevertheless refrains from saying anything as she bids him goodnight and heads out of the console room.
The Doctor exhales loudly in relief as soon as she's gone and walks over to the jumpseat, slumping down with a heavy sigh, leaning over to rest his head in his hands. He's not angry with Martha, not really, but her prodding about his identity forced him back into that place where he dwells in the pits of self-loathing about his losses. And despite the loss of the Gallifrey, he's plagued more acutely by the recent and devastating loss of Rose and the regret that’s wormed its way under his skin in the wake of the things he didn’t say.
Rose had dulled the ache in his hearts and mind after the loss of his people and planet with her compassion, forgiveness, her smile, and, more recently, the sharing of her mind and body with him. Squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the memories that will inevitably hammer his mind, the Doctor tries desperately to shift his thoughts off this dangerous path of grief.
The unexpected appearances of Donna and Martha have both been a welcome distraction from the almost manic darkness into which he’d fallen after the loss of Rose and his unsuccessful attempts to find a physical way across the void, but now that his newest companion is sleeping, he’s unable to distract his mind with one consuming adventure after another.
The Doctor pushes himself off the jumpseat and stalks into the corridor, unwilling to allow himself to drown in his own sorrows in the relative lack of privacy of the console room. He trusts the TARDIS will provide Martha with all her needs for the next several hours, and he walks on, searching for the room he often uses after regeneration to ease the process of healing and sickness. It might tamp down some of his senses currently feeling significant discomfort, offering a temporary solution to dulling the ache of grief that currently overwhelms him.
For several minutes, due to the chaos of churning thoughts inside his mind, he fails to notice the TARDIS repeatedly leading him to one specific door. But after turning away in irritation from the same door for a fifth time, the Doctor stops and finally pays attention to his surroundings. It’s the only door left in the corridor, and it’s the door to that room, the Gallifrey room, the one room he’s avoided with all conscious intent since the events at Canary Wharf.
“No,” he says, the word forceful and commanding, his panic making him angry. “Not that room.”
Ever persistent, the TARDIS closes off his only exit down the corridor, leaving him no choice but to enter the room. He stands stubbornly outside the door until the TARDIS sends gentle waves of comfort through his mind. With a sigh of defeat, he steps forward and gently traces the circular Gallifreyan on the surface, murmuring the words reverently, before opening the door and stepping inside.
Much to his relief, it’s nighttime in this fabricated world, but after a while, the silence of the place presses in around him until he finds it hard to breathe. The lack of Rose’s cheerful chatter beside him is achingly apparent, and his hands clench into tight fists after he unconsciously reaches for her hand one time too many.
She’s not there.
It’s only him.
The glaring absence of Rose screams at him louder than the silence surrounding him, and he’s helpless to avoid a cascade of memories from the time spent with her in this room, the room that meant so much to the both of them. The Doctor slowly reaches the copse of silver-leaved trees he and Rose favored and stands on the outside edge looking in. A blanket still covers the ground by their favorite tree, and he staggers back when a vivid image – one of his most cherished memories – assails his mind.
Rose, on her back and fully bare to him, illuminated by reddish glow of the two moons, her beauty almost overwhelming him as he hovers over her form.
Though they’d made love countless times here, he’ll never forget the first time he saw her before him, her mind and body eager to embrace the intimacy he’d finally been willing to accept with her. It’s bittersweet, now – the lingering hint of what they could have had fresh in his mind – and the Doctor finds himself making his way toward the blanket. He falls to his knees on the edge and pulls it to his face.
The blanket still smells like her, of them, of sweat and sex mixed with the earthy metallic tang of Gallifreyan soil. Memories crowd his mind, vying for dominance, and he sits back with an anguished cry, balling the blanket in his hands.
Realizing it’s futile to avoid the memories of this place and of Rose, the Doctor finally allows himself to truly face them head-on for the first time since Rose fell through the Void.
The first time the TARDIS led him to this room and the unexpected and emotional encounter with Rose. Her acceptance and compassion, even then, had allowed him to embrace a new kind of hope for the first time in a long time.
The first time he’d felt her mind brush against his… and the following joining of both minds and bodies… The way their bodies fit together, the gasps and moans of pleasure, the promises she’d made, that they’d made to each other.
That moment the following day in the medbay when, much to their astonishment, they’d discovered the changes to Rose involved far more than her unexpected telepathic abilities.
The following minutes when he’d explained to Rose that not only did she have telepathic abilities, but her genetic code also showed it was in the initial stages of change due to her exposure to the heart of the TARDIS and the Vortex… lingering remnants of Bad Wolf… and that these changes might, quite possibly, allow her forever to match his.
This, he realizes with derision, is perhaps the most cruel fate the universe has ever handed him. The promise, the tempting taste, of a forever with Rose – the one this self was born into existence for – taken from him in the blink of an eye.
And she’s not even dead.
No, instead, she lives on – forever – in a world that is not her own, and the path between universes is closed, sealed just outside his grasp.
He’s not prone to violence, this him, constantly seeking atonement for his actions during the Time War through less violent means, always determined to give everyone at least one chance for redemption. There’s always another way. But now he finds he wants to throw something, to channel his grief and anger into beating an inanimate object into submission.
“She always knows what we need, I love it.”
Rose’s former words flash through his mind, and despite himself, the corners of his mouth twitch into a wry grin when he looks over his shoulder toward the river and finds a pile of boulders roughly the size of a football, perfect for throwing. “You really do always know what we need, don’t you?” he says out loud to the TARDIS.
Dropping the blanket to the ground, the Doctor sheds his jacket and walks to the river’s edge, his simmering rage and anger and grief clammering to find a means of escape, and without thinking, he picks up a boulder and heaves it as hard as he can into the water. It eases the ache, ever so slightly. Breathing heavily, he stares at the rest of the stones, momentarily waylaid by long ingrained Time Lord propriety, but then decides to shove the Time Lords and their rigid rules to the side. He’s always run from them, as far as he can get, and as the last one, he’s no longer bound to what should be, even if it means demonstrating emotions undignified of a Lord of Time.
Time passes as the Doctor continues desperately heaving the boulders into the river, his anguished cries filled with all the pain he’s kept bottled up for so long. Over and over, his body throws the rocks with practiced precision. Exerting such energy in the form of hard labor is the kind of release he’s needed for so long. He’s breathing heavily from the repetitive physical activity, but slowly, the pain in his hearts loosens, and tears stream silently down his face as he mourns not only Rose, but his planet and people.
After a while, he feels a certain warmth radiating from the TARDIS. He can sense her grief as acutely as his own, but when he allows their telepathic presences to commune together through their bond, the intensity of his feelings lessens, and he’s able to experience some measure of peace.
The Doctor staggers back from the river’s edge and wipes his hands on his trousers. He sits down on the edge of the grass, dries the sweat off his forehead, and sighs. He feels somewhat empty inside, the kind of emptiness one experiences after an explosive emotional release. But strangely, there’s a lightweight sensation in his hearts, one that gives him the slightest sliver of hope. He can’t explain where it comes from, but nevertheless, it’s there.
Maybe, just maybe, he can go on; maybe he can find a way to move forward, day after day. The TARDIS agrees with this revelation but refuses to elaborate further when he questions her on the matter. Time and time again, he’s trusted his ship above anything else in the universe, and so, he tells himself to let it go and allow himself to be for now.
Standing up, the Doctor surveys the area where he stands before nodding slightly and walking away from the copse of trees. Perhaps a future visit won’t cause the agonizing grief this first return has, and he finds he looks forward to returning here to reflect on his adventures. Still, he knows he won’t take Martha here; it’s still too private to share with someone else, and if he’s honest with himself, he doesn’t want to.
The loss of everything, of Rose, is still too fresh.
After a shower, the Doctor wanders into the console room and finds a sleepy Martha sitting on the jumpseat, gripping a mug of tea or coffee. “Hello,” he says, “I didn’t expect you for a few more hours, yet.”
“Well, I didn’t want to keep you waiting,” Martha admits.
“Hmm,” the Doctor replies, not looking at her as he adjusts the monitor. Finally, with a deep breath, he turns to her. “So, what do you say? Set the coordinates to random and see where the TARDIS takes us?”
Martha shrugs. “Sure, that sounds fun.”
“Well, then, Martha Jones,” the Doctor flicks some buttons and pulls the lever to set the ship in motion, “Allons-y!”