Work Text:
The Doctor stumbled out of the back door of the pub, sliding his sonic sunglasses back into his coat pocket with a scowl and wincing as he felt his digestive system begin to work on the glass of bourbon he’d just snatched and downed on his way out. Human alcohol may have next to nothing on him, but that still didn’t mean it went down pleasantly.
He wasn’t sure what he was doing, really. He felt a bit like a leaf that had been picked up by the wind–helplessly adrift and about one good gust from either crumbling to dust, drowning in a lake, or being crunched under someone’s boot.
At this rate, he didn’t have much of a preference between the options. The TARDIS was refusing to open her doors again, which typically meant there was something here that she wanted him to do, but really-–there was no world-ending crisis happening. In fact, there were hardly any aliens at any of the seven bars he’d visited so far. The second one had a bartender from the Xali system (third quadrant) and the fourth one had a rowdy group of Mlryans playing cards in the corner booth, but all of them were properly glamoured or had working perception filters and none of them seemed to be hiding any unsavory plots (or great big honking weapons).
He’d even tried the liquor at each of the pubs to see if that was related. All of it was disgusting, though he supposed he was rather spoiled. He wasn’t sure what century he was in at the moment, but it was decidedly not past the forty-eighth (not nearly enough street lighting, and no hoverbikes as far as he could see; if he’d had to take a stab at it, he would’ve pinned it as the late twenty-first) and the alcohol was all shit before that century, anyway. Hardly any intergalactic imports, either, which really closed off some of the better mixed beverage options.
The last pub had been particularly disappointing. He’d gotten into an argument with a patron who’d rather incorrectly boasted that he’d made a breakthrough while trying to create a feasible time travel device. He’d been curious then-–humans first began to experiment with time travel in the early twenty-second century, and depending on what year it was and how developed the plans were, he very well could have witnessed the unveiling of the very first footprints of human involvement in time travel. Of course, humanity would utterly wreck it, ploughing straight into bad situations and causing freak accidents for centuries, and the Time Agency would eventually be established to stabilize things (it wouldn’t), but still-–fascinating.
Or, well, it could've been. The plans that the man had drawn up on the crumpled napkin had been horrendous, though, and the Doctor hadn’t hesitated to tell him that. The man, in turn, hadn’t hesitated before dumping his entire pint over the Doctor and his current favorite coat.
He’d sonic-ed the jacket on the way out, glad that he’d gotten a decent drying setting installed during his last tinkering session. He couldn’t do much for the smell of the ale, but to be fair, he was certain his impromptu bar crawl had already left him reeking of pub scent, anyway. Laundry day it was.
The Doctor wondered if the TARDIS would take pity on him and open her doors when she recognized the state of his coat. He knew his oldest friend was fond of his outfit trends in the same way that he was fond of her various console rooms, and if he looked pitiful enough perhaps she’d even move the laundry room closer to him. Fuck, maybe he should’ve let the coat stay wet.
Quite by accident, he glanced down the street–-or maybe it was more accurately an alley, dimly-lit and empty as it was–-before turning back towards the building he’d parked behind. There was only one person down the way, and it-–
He froze.
It was a woman, an eerily familiar woman, and he whipped back around to stare at her again.
He’d know her anywhere.
A thousand years weren’t enough to erase her, even from a memory as poor as his. She’d burned herself into his mind and his hearts like a brand, had marked her presence in his life so wholly and completely that he’s certain not even a memory worm could make him forget her name.
It stood to reason, then, that his senses couldn’t be trusted. His mind knew her, knew all of the signs: he knew her shape, the curve of her waist nearly hidden by her jacket, the curtain of dyed-blonde hair falling down to her shoulders, the silhouette she made with the glow of the streetlamps around her. He knew that if she spoke he would recognize the sound of her voice, if she walked he would recognize the fall of her steps, if she slept he would recognize the pattern of her breaths.
He thought it must be his eyes that were failing him, so he closed them for a long moment and willed his senses to reset, thinking that perhaps if he rested his eyes for a moment he’d receive different sensory input upon a second glance.
He was wrong.
She was still there, impossible as ever--and something about that word tingled at the edges of his senses, but somehow it didn’t match up with what he was looking for.
Rose Tyler wasn’t impossible; she simply wiped the entire word from the dictionary, ceased to give it meaning, and blew the very letters to dust. He’d believed in the word at first, the way that one always trusts the beat of their own hearts, the ground beneath their feet, the air filling their lungs--he’d believed it to be true until it so clearly wasn’t, until his hearts had stilled and he was in freefall and the wind was knocked out of him and he was forced to confront a reality in which impossibility was a myth and possibility was the only truth.
A life with Rose Tyler in it was a new life--a new perspective, a new world, and an endlessly growing web of new paths that he’d previously been blinded to.
Could she really be…?
As if a switch had been flicked in him, a tiny, niggling part of the Doctor itched to move, to run to her until the space between them was gone and there was nothing else but the two of them, wanted to see her face and touch her skin and feel her breath meet his between them. He wanted to kiss her forehead and catalogue the results, to confirm that one of his deepest wishes had truly been granted, to be given this one gift from a universe that only ever seemed to take and take and take. He was tired, old and lonely and weary, and he wanted to fall into her arms and lay his head down to rest in the home he’d chosen so very long ago.
He was hardly the man that would do those things anymore, and instead he stood frozen, eyebrows narrowing suspiciously at the sight before him.
As if feeling the tug of his soul upon hers, she turned, her face barely illuminated by one of the nearby streetlamps, and at once the world shrank to just that one pool of light that held Rose Tyler in that very moment. The rest of the universe fell away--the noise of the pub he’d just walked out of, the dirty street they were standing in, the plans he’d had for the evening (to learn a new Queen song on his guitar while sitting in the console room, or perhaps the galley)--and he was left with just the two of them, staring each other down from afar.
If he’d barely believed it was her, he was sure she wouldn’t even know him. At best, he was over two millennia older than she’d last seen him, and at worst, well, billions of years older. Most notably, he was two bodies older, and a bit more understated at first glance than he had been when she’d known him. His ninth self had been all angles, all nose and ears and sharp edges that seemed to stand out even hidden beneath a quite ordinary leather jacket and jumper. His tenth and eleventh selves had caught eyes, all dapper and dishy with youth seeming to spill from their very beings, and sometimes he missed the energy and excitement that had run through him in those incarnations, so very enchanted by the thrill of adventure.
This current him was tired. He was sure that in the future, maybe, he’ll have a better self-perception–-hindsight being 20/20 didn’t even cover it when it came to evaluating himself from incarnation to incarnation-–but at the moment all he could possibly say was that he felt the weight of his years each day and dreaded to think he looked it, too. He did have a bit more gravitas than his last self and could appreciate that any time he needed to own a room, but he still had to attract the attention first. Not that he had much issue with that, what with the Scottish accent and the blunt, brutal, unfiltered honesty and the penchant he had for witty insults, but he still felt irrevocably changed by this regeneration. A different man, indeed.
And yet… and yet she still stared at him, seemingly as caught up in their little contest now as he was.
He approached her slowly, feeling like one of them was a wounded predator and the other reckless prey, only he couldn’t identify who was who and it made him all the more anxious as the distance between them shrank. After a beat he realized that she was drifting closer too, feet seeming to move against her will as her eyes stayed glued to his face.
He waited for her to speak first, if only to save himself the trouble of figuring out an opening line. This incarnation was better at retorts and witty quips than suave conversation starters, and instead he let himself drink in her presence as they came face to face. His other senses tingled as they all got a taste of home long lost–he could hear the breath leaving her lips from this distance, feel the heat drifting off her skin, smell the shampoo she’d washed her hair with, sense the timelines swirling around her.
The timelines…
“You look old,” she told him, a small smile playing on her lips. Her voice sounded a bit different than he remembered it, a lot warmer and fuller than anything his imagination was capable of coming up with these days.
“You don’t,” he returned bluntly, unable to help glancing down to where the tips of her golden hair just brushed her collarbone. Something vaguely familiar echoed at him from down the timelines, but he ignored it in favor of watching the light blonde strands dance across her skin. It looked more natural than he remembered it from millennia past, though he knew better–-he’d watched her dye her hair firsthand once. The TARDIS had helped her, providing longer-lasting and supposedly healthier, less-damaging dye from the sixty-third century. He’d perched on the counter, all long and limber in a younger man’s body, and chatted aimlessly while she applied the dye, only to eventually be shoved out hastily when the time came for her to rinse it all out.
“I am, though,” she countered back, and his eyes darted back to her face. And she was. He hadn’t needed to see it, really, though he’d wanted to-–the lack of lines around her face was made up for by the bags under her eyes. Her smile was more careful (though no less bright), her eyes were more guarded. He’d never really understood what his companions meant when they said that his eyes gave away his age, but now he did; he could’ve distinguished this Rose from the one that he travelled with by her eyes alone and the depth of the universe that was reflected within them.
He hadn’t needed any of it though, because the timelines…
“How old?” he asked, reaching a hand up to touch her and hesitating just slightly, hand hovering in the air adjacent to her cheek. If he would let himself sink into his time sense fully, he had no doubt that his fingers would be tangled up in sparkling golden knots hovering around her. She had the aura that only Time Lords or very, very long-lived time travelers accumulated, and the aching familiarity left him breathless. It was something he rarely felt anymore, mostly around beings like Jack or Lady Me, but even theirs didn’t twist in quite such a hauntingly beautiful pattern as the one he was sensing before him.
“Haven’t you heard it’s impolite to ask a lady her age?” Rose grinned, and he swallowed hard as her tongue peeked out at the corner, precisely the way he remembered. It was nice to know that some things never changed, even as everything else around them did.
“Not really known for politeness in this body,” he grimaced, awkwardly patting at his coat with his free hand. He’d just started to drop his raised one when she tilted her head, leaning into his touch, and he inhaled sharply as his skin met hers and his nerve endings lit on fire. “Speaking of which, how did you know?”
“Well, you’re still rude and not ginger,” she teased, though she followed it quickly with a light shrug. “I dunno, really. I’d love to tell you I’d know you anywhere, but I dunno if that’s true, either. 'S just… something about you,” she said, and his expression softened when he felt her next smile beneath the palm of his hand. “The way you stand, maybe, or the way you looked at me. The way you haven’t stopped looking at me-–hardly even blinked. The way you dress, maybe. Love the coat, by the way.”
“It’s very ‘Doctor,’ my friend told me,” he agreed while his brain worked overtime to try to process the rest of that statement. “Although she also said it’s very ‘magician,’ so maybe her judgment was a bit spotty.”
“She with you now? Your friend?” Rose asked casually, though he could see the hints of anxiety starting to creep into her eyes.
“No,” he said, and it was his turn to shrug. “I have no idea where she is.”
Rose frowned at that, and he didn’t really like how that felt so he dropped his hand from her cheek and instantly regretted it. Frown or not, he liked the feel of her skin against his.
“Are you looking for her, then?” Rose asked, gaze darting to the pub he’d just vacated, and oh, right. Most people didn't lose their friends in ways quite as convoluted and permanent as he did.
“Ah, no,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and rocking back onto his heels. “No, I’m not.”
Rose waited for a beat before raising her eyebrows. “And why is that?”
The Doctor blanched slightly. “It’s a bit… complicated.”
“You’re talking to the person who got stranded in another universe and married a sideways regeneration of yourself, birthed by your severed right hand and your best friend,” Rose said dryly, not seeming to realize that her casual words knocked the air straight out of his lungs. “I think I can handle ‘complicated.’”
It had been a long time since the Doctor truly felt jealous of his metacrisis, but all of those buried feelings were returning in full force as he continued to bask in Rose’s presence. It wasn’t a shock, not nearly–-he knew they’d marry. Banked on it, even. He would never, never have left Rose with him if he hadn’t thought the bastard would court her like a fucking queen. But it had still been a what-if, a what-could-be, a future-timeline-probably. Now it was the past, and it hurt like only the past could.
“I don’t remember her name,” he relented stiffly. “Or her face. Anything about her except the stories, really.”
Something strange flickered in Rose’s eyes, like a window shuttering closed that he hadn’t even realized was open before. He waited impatiently for her to speak, irritated that he still knew her well enough to know that something was bothering her but not enough to identify the cause on his own.
“What happened?” she asked tentatively, before releasing an exasperated chuckle. “I mean, do you remember what happened? Or why… why you can’t remember her?”
The Doctor shrugged, eyes darting to the side uncomfortably. “I know enough to know that it was not not by choice,” he managed. “That I can’t look for her right now. Maybe later. I don’t know. The TARDIS will probably help me sort it,” he sighed. “It’s hardly the first time I’ve known something was lost but couldn’t exactly go look for it, in any case.”
He was talking about Gallifrey, really–-not that he was about to bring that up; Rose Tyler was standing in front of him and he was quite sick of talking about his own life instead of pressing for details about hers. But it struck him then that his words sort of applied to Rose, too, and he grimaced uncomfortably again as he turned back to her.
“Do…” Rose shifted nervously. “Do you remember my name? I mean, I guess you did remember my face-–you walked over here and everything. Stared a fair bit, too. But… I suppose it’s been a long time for you-–”
“And how long do you think it would take for me to forget your name?” he cut her off carefully, gaze locked onto hers like a magnet. “How long would it take you to forget mine?”
Never went unsaid between them, but the word seemed to echo off the walls anyway.
It should’ve been different. He was different. She was different. Hell, they’d been reunited for about five minutes and they still hadn’t touched, albeit the brush of her cheek against his hand. A couple lifetimes ago he would’ve–-he had, in fact-–run at her at top speed upon seeing her again, crashed into her and practically tried to crawl inside her very soul in hopes of never being separated from her again. One lifetime ago he probably still would’ve run to her, would’ve hugged her by now at the bare minimum, would’ve taken her hand and tugged her along and tried to usher her into the TARDIS for fear of something coming to take her away.
But as he’d already established to himself, this him was tired. He’d been pushed to his limits time and time again; he’d lost and lost and lost again, and he had hardly any way to even begin processing that loss. He knew he’d spent billions of years trapped in a confession dial as his own personal prison, but he still couldn’t pinpoint the details as to why. He knew that he’d travelled with someone, a friend, as he’d told Rose, but he couldn’t guarantee her name or her face or her laugh. He’d guessed at the name, Clara, Clara, but it wasn’t enough. It was a name for the empty space she’d left, but he couldn’t be certain it was a name for her.
If anyone had asked him at the beginning of the night, he’d have said that he was done. With what, who knew, but he was done. He didn’t have anything left to give to the universe, to another person. His last self had drifted on his own personal cloud for a bit, and while that was a bit much for his current incarnation, he could empathize with the feeling--the need to escape any form of obligation or connection that would only leave him spurned and alone in the end.
But Rose Tyler stood before him now, thousands of years separating this meeting of theirs from their last, and everything had changed. Everything but one thing.
He used to run from her, constantly. He couldn’t lie and say that the urge was entirely gone; his ninth self had been so fresh from the brink of destruction that he hadn’t had the wherewithal to even consider losing her, but it burdened his tenth self constantly. His life was dangerous, too dangerous for a human in the long-term, and her lifespan had promised him heartbreak even as her heart promised him forever. Their adventures had offered distractions from what had been building between them and he’d leapt into them headfirst, desperate to pretend that the feeling would go away if he never gave it a name.
He couldn’t have been more wrong: that feeling had been the one singular thing to survive centuries, millennia, even, without change. It ran in his veins even still, sure and steady as the beats of his own hearts. He’d made so many mistakes, lost so many people. Millennia came and went in the blink of an eye and he still felt like half of it was spent in world-ending crises. He’d had every distraction he ever could’ve hoped for; he’d had all of the distance the multiverse had to offer; he’d had time in spades to gain closure, to move on.
And he stood before her now and felt exactly the same as he had standing across from her, locked into a war room at 10 Downing Street, thinking that he would end worlds for the woman staring back at him.
(And knowing, too, that she would never let him. That seemed important now, but he didn’t know why–that what defined them was not the good things he would do for her, nor the great and terrible things that he would do for her, but the things she’d never let him do for her. The way that they had always done the good thing together, even if it was also the hard thing.)
“So, what now?” she asked, running a hand through her hair nervously and rocking back a bit on her heels. He wondered how long she’d had with his other self. Long enough to pick up his mannerisms, at least, so he likely hadn’t died early.
No, stupid, he knew that already. Timelines. It stung a bit, then, an aftertaste of bitterness that washed over him before he was even conscious of its presence: he could’ve been with her this whole time. He’d left her with his metacrisis because his biggest fear was outliving her, and it seemed as though he’d only cursed her to facing that fear for him. He could’ve been with her this whole time, and instead they were face to face, half-strangers in an alley, and the meter of space between them felt as impossible to cross as the walls between universes.
What now? she’d asked, as if he had the faintest clue. They had so much to talk about that he wouldn’t even know where to begin. He didn’t know how she felt. He barely even knew how he felt–-no, lie, he knew how he felt, but he didn’t know what to do. They made quite a pair: the Oncoming Storm and the Bad Wolf, the Doctor and the Defender of the Earth. They’d spent so long putting the universe first that he hardly knew what to make of their current setting, notably lacking in world-threatening crises-–just him looking down at Rose dimly-lit by street lamps, rowdy pub music filtering out an open door down the street.
He didn’t have the capacity to give another piece of himself away, to let another person in that could trample through the wreckage in his chest and make themselves a home there only to leave him behind again.
But he didn’t have the capacity to pretend anymore, either. To pretend that he could ever walk away from her, that he didn’t want to be with her. To pretend that he didn’t feel everything that he’d been running from, and that it wasn’t all catching up to him now.
“Well,” he shrugged, feeling like a decision had been made within him quite without his consent, but wasn’t that always the case? He’d made his choice a long time ago, after all. “I don’t know, really. The TARDIS won’t let me leave here. Might be because of you. Might not be. But… I suppose we could start with me buying you a drink.”
“Really? Got your wallet this time?” she asked, amused, and he rolled his eyes.
“I’ve gotten served at seven bars so far, just fine,” he sniffed, scowling when she giggled at his slightly petulant expression.
“Ah, so not just old and grumpy. Drunk and old and grumpy,” she teased, and he shook his head in exasperation and started walking towards the next pub in line, assuming she would follow.
He was not prepared to feel her hand slip into his as she caught up to him. He couldn’t even remember the last time someone had taken his hand like that–not out of fear, or an adrenaline rush, or necessity. Just because. This body was not particularly inclined towards tactile representations of affection, either giving or receiving. And yet her fingers intertwined with his, and the world felt right.
She'd been back for five minutes and already everything was changing. He had a sneaking suspicion that later, he might even be ready to hug her.
By the time Rose gave his hand a tight squeeze, his steps had quickened with new spirit that he’d long since given up on finding again.
With a small smile, the Doctor squeezed her hand back.