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The Doctor stands at the edge of the beach, staring out at her ruined home.
She recognizes this vision. She’s seen it before, Arcadia destroyed. Not quite like this, but, well—does it matter? She’s not about to do a compare and contrast of every single war she’s seen.
Because that’s what this is. It’s war. It’s war, and the Doctor’s back to being a soldier, something she swore she’d never ever be again. Or, not quite a soldier— more than a soldier, even. A general. The Doctor is in charge of this fight.
She closes her eyes.
A red button flashes in her mind.
And she marches into battle.
The Doctor’s never been a good soldier. She hates following orders.
She has always, however, been a good general. Good at telling people what to do. Good at finding creative ways of killing, at making the tough decisions. It leaves a sour taste in her mouth, but it’s still true.
This time around, it isn’t much of a battle until the very end. There’s what feels like hours of shattering revelations about the Doctor’s past, all while the Master grins and laughs and the Doctor grimaces, frozen. It’s only after that that the Doctor stands, alone, in front of a TARDIS.
She did not go into battle.
She took the coward’s way out, in the end. Or really, someone else took the hero route for her.
And yet, she’s survived another day, no matter how completely eviscerated she feels, and now she’s standing alone in the middle of her ruined not-really-her-home, wishing things were different. Wishing, maybe, that she’d never been tossed into this universe, wishing that some other Time Lord had been the survivor of the Time War, wishing that her dearest, oldest friend hadn’t turned out a murderer, wishing that she weren’t the one who has to make the difficult choices time after time after time.
She looks out at the red dirt. She has lost this place so many times already. Not only that, but her feelings about her home have always been complicated. It shouldn’t hurt this much.
But war always hurts.
The Doctor is caught up in her memories, new and old, when she hears a noise behind her. Startled, she takes a moment to force herself into some kind of composure, just in case it’s the Master, somehow back again to see the aftermath of the Doctor’s worst moments, and then she turns around.
Rose Tyler stands before her, her hair in a ponytail, wearing a black leather jacket.
Immediately, the Doctor loses any composure she might have had. She’s had tears in her eyes all day; she can’t be expected to hold them in any longer. Especially not when someone she thought she’d never see again stands in front of her, a worried look on her face.
“Doctor?” Rose asks, not so much making a guess but confirming something she knows is true.
The Doctor can’t help it. She pulls Rose into a hug to hide her sob, but then Rose pulls her closer and the Doctor’s tears start to leave wet tracks on Rose’s skin as well as her jacket and there’s no hiding anything after that.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor mumbles into Rose’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Rose.”
Rose pulls back at that, looking into the Doctor’s face.
“Sorry?” she asks. “What for?”
“This,” the Doctor says, stepping out of Rose’s arms to gesture out at Gallifrey. “I always said I’d never be a warrior again. Never a soldier. And here I am, back in battle, and I was a coward. I let someone else die for me, Rose.” She stops in her tracks. She was so caught up in her own issues, she forgot to think about how Rose even got to Gallifrey to begin with. “Sorry, backing up.. Why are you here? Or, better question. How?”
“I’m immortal,” Rose says. “Or as far as we can tell, I’ll live pretty much forever, anyway. We think it’s because of Bad Wolf.”
“Are you—”
“Not a Time Lord,” Rose explains quickly. “As far as I can tell, I’m unique.”
“Makes two of us,” the Doctor mumbles.
Rose takes that in stride and continues: “Anyway, it turns out that when you have unlimited time and not much else to do, it’s not as impossible as it once seemed to figure out travel between universes.” She shrugs. “So I got my dimension cannon working safely, and I came here, and I ran into Jack, who told me you needed someone right about now.”
The Doctor starts to say something, but once again Rose anticipates her question.
“He didn’t say why. But I’m here for you, Doctor, if you’ll have me.”
“How old are you?” the Doctor asks.
“Sort of stopped counting. Not nearly as old as you, I’m sure.” Rose pauses. “Where are we?”
“Gallifrey,” the Doctor says, her voice hushed.
Rose does a double take.
“I thought it was gone.”
“Not anymore,” the Doctor says. “Or, I suppose it might as well be, with what the Master did to it. It’s complicated.”
“What happened?”
The Doctor takes a deep breath.
“I’ve got this friend,” she says. “Or, arch-nemesis, really, but we started out friends. He used to be so—” Her breath catches. “Anyway. We were mates in school. Dealt with our problems in very different ways. He embraced the villain thing, I tried to go the hero route. And he just found out—” The Doctor shakes her head. Rose puts a soothing hand on her shoulder, and the Doctor blinks, trying to figure out how to continue. She breaks eye contact, looking up at the ceiling.
“He found out about something important that the Time Lords were hiding,” she explains. “About our whole history, but also about me. And because of it, because they were hiding it, he decided to destroy all of Gallifrey. I came here with my friends to stop him. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, I didn’t want a war, but there was already a war, and I just sort of jumped right in. Easy as breathing, it turns out. And then I let a man I don’t know die for me while my friends escaped.”
She doesn’t know what to expect when she looks back at Rose—confusion, maybe, or possibly disgust—but Rose is looking at her with an almost impassive calm.
“You did your best,” she says. “That’s all anyone can ask.”
The Doctor takes a deep breath.
“We should get out of here,” she says, and leads Rose into the unfamiliar TARDIS.
The TARDIS is stark white on the inside, just like the Doctor’s used to be, just after she’d first stolen it. Rose in her black jacket stands out when she leans against the console, looking with interest at the walls around her.
“Thought it’d be like yours,” she says. “All grungy and metal.”
The Doctor shakes her head.
“This is the default,” she says. “Mine changes every so often. It’s loads different now.”
“It’s been so long,” Rose murmurs.
The Doctor nods. She goes to the console, ready to take off, but then she hovers—words come up in her throat, so many different things to say, but she can’t decide what to bring up first. For a moment, she is silent, bathing in anticipation.
And then she straightens up, looks at Rose, and says, “I’m sorry.”
Rose looks bewildered.
“For leaving you in that universe,” the Doctor explains. “Without asking you.” She takes a deep breath. “I understand better now, what I was doing by not giving you a choice.”
Rose just stares.
“I didn’t, for a long time,” the Doctor explains. “I thought it was better for both of us, to shut you away with someone who could grow old with you.” The Doctor nods to Rose’s still-young form. “Should’ve realized that wasn’t going to happen. But still. I should have asked you first. Given you a choice.”
“Thank you,” Rose finally says. “If you’d given me a choice, I might have chosen it, you know. Wasn’t half bad. Living with my family. Had a husband who loved me, for a time. Kids and grandkids and so on. But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and be angry. I get why you did it, but I also know why I’m mad.”
“Why, then?”
Rose shrugs. “Feels like everyone was trying to control me, back then. My mum. Mickey. And I had this beautiful escape, where I always had at least a little choice, but then whenever things got bad you were doing things that affected me and not telling me what they were, and—” She breaks off. “The other version of you—we talked about it early on. He got it a little better, I think. I mean, he hadn’t chosen it anymore than I had.”
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor repeats. “I’m trying to be better. Always trying to be better. Don’t know if it’s working.”
“Best you can do is try, isn’t it?” Rose says. “It’s funny, years and years I planned what I would do if I saw you again, everything I could think of, yelling, hugging, the whole nine yards, but I never really thought it would be like this.” She looks at the Doctor. “You’ve been through a lot.”
At that, the Doctor feels the energy drain from her. She slumps against the console, and Rose touches her elbow.
“You all right?”
“I’m tired of being a general,” the Doctor says, leaning her head on Rose’s shoulder. The contact is comforting, the most touch that she’s had since regenerating, practically. “Tired of war.”
“Well,” Rose says, “I can’t say you’ll never be at war again, but you can get some rest for now, at least.”
They stand like that for a long time.
“I’ve got to pick up my TARDIS,” the Doctor says eventually. “Stuck on a little planet across the universe a ways. Care to come along?”
“I’d love to,” Rose says, and the Doctor can tell she means it, the thrill in her voice. “Missed your old girl, haven’t I?”
“She’s redecorated,” the Doctor warns. “It’s brilliant, you’ll love it.” She looks at Rose for another moment, then adds, “Come on, then, don’t just stand there.”
Rose approaches the console, brushing against the Doctor. Her hands on the blank white controls look strange, almost washed out, when the Doctor has only ever seen them pressed against gold and glowing blue. The Doctor calls out instructions, and Rose carries them out almost faster than the Doctor can say them. This unfamiliar TARDIS responds a little too easily, lifting away from Gallifrey and landing in a moment. The Doctor straightens up.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” Rose agrees, grabbing the Doctor’s hand, laughter in her eyes. Something sparks deep inside the Doctor at that. She lets Rose lead her out of the strange TARDIS, which has morphed itself into a tree— “So that’s what the chameleon circuit is for,” Rose murmurs as they step out—and then her TARDIS, her beautiful ghost monument, is sitting right there, ever faithful, waiting for her return. Next to her, Rose lets out an audible breath.
“Come on, then,” the Doctor says, and moves to her ship, pushing the doors open and letting Rose walk in. The ship seems to wake up as they enter, and Rose gasps, looking around the space.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
The Doctor smiles up at the domed ceiling, absorbing the familiar glow. Her TARDIS feels so much like home—always has, and always will.
“Good to see you, old girl,” she breathes.
“I bet your old room’s here somewhere,” the Doctor says, looking carefully at Rose, who’s by the console, staring at the central crystal. “You know, if you wanted to stick around for a bit. I’ve got to pick up my friends and all, and you could come with me.”
But then everything floods back into her, all her sadness and anger and confusion, and her voice goes dull. “Although seems like I might just— need a moment first—”
“’Course,” Rose says, turning back to the Doctor. “We can stay here as long as you need. It’s all right.”
The Doctor opens her mouth to say something, but then there’s a clatter behind her, and Rose’s expression changes. The Doctor turns to see two Judoon, both staring at her.
“What?”
The Judoon heft their guns.
“Judoon Cold Case Unit,” one of them said. “Fugitive, the Doctor. Sentence, whole of life imprisonment, maximum security facility.”
“What?” the Doctor asked. “Rose, find Jack! Take the TARDIS if you can—she likes you—”
But she’s already been teleported to a cold, dark room, alone with nothing but her thoughts. A situation she’s avoided from the beginning.
She’s slated for a different kind of war, then.