Work Text:
When people left, they didn't just leave, they took things with them. Things he never fully got back, even after all this time.
Heathrow airport. An innocent playing card, no number at the top, no title, just a simple "A". Bagpipes. John Smith and the Common Men.
Sometimes the universe felt very small. A list of places to avoid. A list of places he could not go back to.
He was afraid for the day he had nothing left.
So he kept something for himself.
They half fell into the TARDIS, laughing.
“Did you see the look she was giving you?” she got out.
“Me?” he asked in disbelief. “She was looking at you!”
“What? Why would she be glaring at me? I'm not the one who ruined the party with fire breathing rodents!”
“It's not like I was the one who brought them in!” He frowned, trying to burn away the traces of his smile from his face. “And not a party - a funeral. A man died, Rose.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell that to the celebrating crowds out there. That was way more of a party than a funeral. And they’re right for it, that 'man' enslaved thousands. From that woman's perspective, you just ruined a perfectly good time with charred rat tails.”
"From that woman's perspective, somebody snuck into a funeral to eat all the nibbles."
"Oh. You saw that, did you?"
"Yes." He looked at her, aiming for disapproval, knowing he landed in affection, maybe somewhere beyond that.
"Oh," she blushed. "Well, they were good. I want those at my funeral too."
"Fire breathing rodents?"
"No! The little rainbow... puff… things."
"Deriyms."
"Yes. Those."
"Mm."
"Maybe a fire breathing rodent, too. Certainly memorable."
"I'm sure Jackie would love it."
She laughed. "Can you imagine?"
"I'd rather not."
"Fire breathing rodents, Sontarans, Daleks - nothing to you. But one irate Jackie tyler? Now you're scared," she grinned.
"Mm," he said again. He stared down at the console, trying to find the vibrant happiness he had walked in with.
Woman Wept was his. He wouldn't call it his favourite place, but it was his place. It was empty. Desolate. He had discovered it not long after leaving Gallifrey and hadn't shown it to a single other soul. There had never been people on it, and there never would be. The planet would die only 100,000 years before the end of the universe and it had frozen in time only 9,576 years after its beginning.
It was a place just for himself. A place he didn't talk about, or mention, or even have to defend.
When he was on Woman Wept, he did not think about his name spoken in a broad Australian accent, he did not wonder whether Izzy had worked it out with her parents, he did not worry about the amount of regenerations a professor at Cambridge had left. He didn't have to, because they did not exist here.
In the curve of the ice, he didn't see faces, he saw ice. In the white, sandy snow that pulled down on his boots (often boots, sometimes dress shoes, sometimes trainers), that was all the snow did - try and pull him down. It did not speak with a voice taken from his past. The sky was always empty space, just a few dots of light, not a single constellation to try and find a familiar shape in. But if there had been, he was certain all he would see would be stars.
It was a frozen moment in time, and it was his frozen moment in time. No one else knew, and no one could take it from him.
“Scale?” The Doctor threw his jacket over the railing.
Rose followed him back into the TARDIS, still riding the high of seeing the infamous Janis Joplin. “Better than Ian Dury. Better than the Dave Clark Five. Better than Duran Duran. Not better than ABBA.”
“Hold on - you said Duran Duran beat ABBA, last time.”
“No no no,” she pointed at him to make sure he understood. “I said that specific show, with those specific songs, beat the ABBA we saw in the future. ABBA overall? Unbeatable.” She hopped up the ramp to join him.
He leaned backwards on the console, spreading his arms open. “Is that a challenge? Because you know we literally have all of time and space at our fingertips. The greatest composers of your world - Beethoven, Copland - live! The Legendary Three on Venus - now that's rock.” He leaned down so the next part brushed conspiratorially over her ear. “We could even see The Backstreet Boys.”
“Mm. We could. We so could.” She nodded, her eyes glittering inches from his. “So I could finally prove to you that ABBA is unbeatable.”
He twisted away from her, shaking his head in mock disapproval.
She laughed, swinging around to block his escape in the console controls.
“I’m telling you, ABBA is as good as it gets -”
“This is what I get for picking up a human in 2005 -”
“Oh come on, take a chance on them!” She laughed.
“I have just a notion there are better bands in existence -”
“Nope. Not to me. Not to the world, even. ABBA is the height of humanity. I want it played at my funeral, so -”
“Okay, Rose.” He cut her off, finally reaching the controls.
The laughter died on her lips. She stared at his sudden change in demeanor, confused. Usually mentioning anything even close to the ‘height of humanity’ and he was all: “You haven't seen anything yet, Rose Tyler,” and then they’d be off.
“Okay,” she said.
His fingers floated around, twisting various levers and wires. "I'm thinking the Argrous constellation. Lots of pretty asteroids, some great cheese sandwiches."
She flicked a switch back and forth, playing the conversation through her head.
The realization hit her along with a sharp spike of fear.
“Doctor,” she started. He didn't look at her.
She swallowed. But the horrible thought had bitten her, and she had to know. “Even if - even if there’s no body, to bring back -”
His left hand missed a button he had been aiming to press. “Rose -”
“I need to know that you’ll tell my mum. She needs a funeral, even if you...” she swallowed again. “You don’t have to be there.”
He closed his eyes, gave himself a moment. Then he opened them, but before she could see what they contained he was turned away. “It lied, Rose. Do you understand?”
“Okay. It lied.” Her heartbeat rose, thinking of her Mum, just waiting and waiting, forever. “But please, I need you to promise me that when I -”
The TARDIS shook, her legs came unbalanced. The Doctor had pulled down a lever, hard, and they were in flight.
“Okay,” he said. His back was still facing her.
He went to Woman Wept, once, while Rose was at her mother's.
His boots were hard, crunching and dipping into the white snow. Some of it crumbled away, down the crystalline cliff face on his right. The snow, or maybe the miniscule, sandy shells from a long forgotten ocean, fell endlessly through the chasm. It was so silent, he could hear it when they eventually reached the end, clinking at the bottom.
Heading in a diagonal line, toward the shadow of the wave, the snow, or the sand, thinned and made it easier to walk. The snow never melted and he had never seen any fall, but at some point, the wave had had the chance to protect the ground underneath it from getting too thick. It created a path, as if specifically for him.
The wave was curved unnaturally, a sinister calm slicked through. All of it about to crash down on him, thousands of meters of height and breadth and water, suspended forever. It hung there, icicles licking what was once white froth, snow blanketing the top in thick layers.
He looked upwards, and felt impossibly small against it, smaller than he felt looking out into the dark, vast reaches of space.
He was very alone. There was no one here, not even a memory.
He touched the ice of the wave, felt along its ridges. His broken reflection copied him.
It was still just his reflection.
It was just ice.
It was just snow. Or maybe sand.
She wasn't there.
He was alone, on a frozen, dead planet.
And he should have felt relief, then. That was what he had been worried about - how much of an exception she was, how much she would be taking when she left, if he still had this, if there could still be places without her once she had gone.
And now he knew.
There could be.
He just didn't want there to be, which was worse.
It was ten minutes past when she said she'd meet him.
He sat at a cafe, and watched his dirty red trainer drum under the glass table.
Another two minutes passed.
He watched a line of potted flowers sway in the breeze. The same breeze painted lines of white on a pink sky, long, wispy tufts of clouds. A single sun shone through them, above everything, and it created bright reflections on his table.
When she left, she would take it all.
The breeze glided over him, and although she was not there, it glided over her golden hair, tangled and whipped it around her face. The sunlight sparkled in the glass, but it sparkled out of her eyes and smile and crinkled around her whole face.
The barista was talking loudly, happily, to someone sitting two tables away. Earlier she had looked at him kindly, given him his tea for free when he remembered he had no money. He appreciated her, thanked her, and had the horrible free falling realization Rose was going to take kindness itself, too.
Across the courtyard and tiny cafe fence, there was a block of shops, complete with frosted windows, housing bakery and mannequin displays. The buildings were made from something smooth, a sort of white, clay brick.
Rose would probably buy him a cake, as she often did. She prefered chocolate flavoured things, and he liked fruit, but regardless, he saw her face with poorly hidden delight, closed around the chocolate croissant in the display, he saw her eyes darting back and forth between the caramel apple and himself, wondering if it really was true, about an apple a day. He saw her twirl in the flowery summer dress, just two doors down, he saw her trying on the hat, frowning, and putting it back because it was too floppy. He saw her in the flowers, not only in the thin stems and yellow petals, but in the dirt, how it got so easily under her fingernails, he saw her in the pink sky, he saw her in the cracks of the walls, he saw her in the cursive, looping, shop sign, he saw her in the sudden laugh from two tables down, he saw her in a bug inching its way down his own table, he saw her in the soles of his shoes, he saw her in the veins of his hands. He saw her in the dregs of his tea, how she would sit suddenly beside him, finish it in one go without looking.
The dark, shallow pool in his cup remained.
He swirled it around.
She was going to take it all.
He had let this happen. He'd known this was going to happen, and he had let it.
Abruptly, he got up. His metal chair made a scraping noise on the brick courtyard, and he felt the barista and her friends pause their conversation to look at him before he was gone.
He checked the bakery first.
She wasn't there. He didn't stop to buy anything, not that he had the money. He went further on, planned what he was going to say, maybe something about this planet being boring, maybe something about being annoyed she had taken too long. He walked casually, though his head was darting about.
The high street was peaceful, hardly a soul around. He looked into the boutique two doors down, and she wasn't there, and he imagined telling her he had gotten up because he hated sitting still. Gotta keep the blood pumping - aerobic exercise, Rose, I have double the hearts.
He looked into the next few shops. She was not in those. He turned onto the street over.
His eyes fell on a large grey sweater inside a display. He thought the colour made her hair stand out. It was just slightly too big for her, so she had to pull the sleeves back to expose her palms.
But she wasn't there.
Nearing the end of the empty street, the horrible truth pounded and pounded around in his head. He walked slowly, through everything inside him wanted to run - to her, and far, far away. This is how it will be, without her. This is how it will be, every day.
“Doctor?”
Rose, in front of him, holding two large white bags. Her eyes wide in pleasant surprise.
“I thought we were meeting at the cafe?”
“You were late.”
“Nothing new,” she smiled, but there was a question in her voice.
“I missed you,” he said, and it was the truth, even though there was nothing new about that either.
The smile, the surprise, the pleasantness all increased on her face.
“I got you a cake,” she said, and he heard exactly what she meant by it.
It was raspberry flavoured.
He took Rose to Woman Wept.
She spoke softly at first, embarrassed by the quiet, how well her voice carried inside it.
But he spoke loudly, and grinned, and by the time they were underneath the wave (his wave), they were kicking up snow together, and some of her laughter vibrated, shaking through the planet’s time (not its night, it was never night, and not its day, it was never day, it just was. The sky was an empty opening to the space above). He didn’t tell her the truth of it, that this was his first time having a voice here too, that it was just her and him and nothing and everything.
She wore a purple hoodie, slashed with bright blue around the edges, and jeans. She was the only bit of the colour in the entire world. He would see that image forever - her hair falling out of her beanie, her face red and loud, reflected over and over in the glass of the wave.
Later, they circled it in the TARDIS, the blackness and tiny dots of stars holding it tight in their grip.
“Kinda looks like a woman crying,” Rose said, staring down at the continent below.
The Doctor looked down at it. She was right.
“That’s why it's called Woman Wept,” he decided.
They watched a movie. It was a musical, and Rose knew all the words, even the spoken ones, and he knew this because sometimes her little quotes brushed over his ear. Somehow she had wrapped around his back, her chin on his shoulder. Somehow they had found their way here, and although it wasn't a regular occurrence, it wasn't awkward or tense or strange. They fit. They fit in all the places people usually fit, and they fit in all the dull places he had never thought twice about, but would now be empty without her. Every bit of him (nose, hands, hair, chest, hearts, blood, lungs) had decided she was it. They didn't know. They just fit into where she was, followed the rules of hydrogen and oxygen, blindly trusted she was the other eternal half. They couldn't know what was to happen to her. That was supposed to be his job.
But he had been handed a shovel, and he had dug, happily, even with his name marking the tombstone above. Now he was inside a deep, bottomless thing, and all he could do was look up at the pinprick of light that marked the surface - hardly visible anymore - the place he was expected to reach when she was gone. There were no footholds, just slippery walls, places to claw at desperately with his fingertips.
"They called her the sparkling diamond," Rose quoted with a quiet air of performance. Even this close to her, the words were barely a breath, possibly meant only for herself, but shared anyway in the nonspace between them.
Don't leave me here, he thought. Please, don't leave me down here.
Her hand, draped over him, weaved into his. She couldn’t see it, and he didn’t look, but their fingers knew. They instinctively knew the shape and the texture of fingers and palms and ridges, and of the air that hung between them, the places where it could be crushed completely.
She would leave. She couldn’t help it.
At some point, an hour later, maybe, he looked down at where they were still connected. He would’ve liked to say there was no rational thought in his brain, that it was all his lips idea to bring her hand up to them. But every part of him was deliberate in the choice to brush his mouth over the back of her hand, to feel the emptiness when it was over.
You don't choose the people you fall in love with, someone had told him once. Clara, maybe. Maybe to justify the way they always came back together, no matter how much they brought out the worst in each other.
Or maybe it had been River, who really hadn't had a choice, and hadn't given him one either.
Maybe it had been Susan. Or Vicki. Both had been young and innocent and in love.
It didn't matter who had said it. It was true, and yet it wasn't.
There was a sort of love that came against your will, and there was a sort of love that came with it. And as much as he liked to blame the initial fall, he had looked Rose Tyler in the eyes and said: You. You are it.
He had chosen her. He had seen the endless amount of years without her and still he had chosen her. He had lived those years and still she would choose her, and still they were choosing her.
They might reach the end of this endless abyss, heave fresh air at the top, body sprawled in exhaustion.
They might.
But if Rose Tyler was up there, if she looked down at them, blotted out the sun with her own beam of a smile - they would let themself be pushed back in, gladly. Just a single touch from her is all it would take, then the breathless fall, the painful, eternal climb up.
It was worth it. Always.