Work Text:
Why am I awake?
Nails on the floor
And soot on my tongue
I don't know his name
But I still taste the rum
Nothing there but skin
Skeletons crawl on the ceiling
They know
That him and his aftershave hit like a drug
Don't answer me
I'm calling just to hear you scream
And you're fading
But he feels like you in between
I've said too much
In and out of wanting us
Now you're fading
And I wonder who will erase me
Who will erase me?
Race you to the end
My innocence waits like it desperately knows
That I'll crash if I don't let you go
Don't answer me
I'm calling just to hear you scream
And you're fading
But he feels like you in between
I've said too much
In and out of wanting us
Now you're fading
And I wonder who will erase me
Oh who will erase me?
Rose looked around the room. She had been up for hours, but this was the first time she was opening her eyes. He was still breathing the steady, deep breaths of a good sleep. She wished she could do the same. She hadn’t slept well since it happened, and that was months ago. Almost a year. By the looks of the place, he hadn’t had anyone over in a while. At least, no one to impress. There were clothes strewn across the floor and all the drawers were overflowing. Her room looked like that once. That was the room she woke up in the day she met the Doctor. But she shouldn’t think about that. Not anymore.
Looking at this guy's possessions, the most personal things in his life, was just so weird. This all felt weird. Before the Doctor, she had only ever been with Mickey. What was she saying? She wasn’t even “with” the Doctor. She had been on a few dates in the past few weeks, but this was her first true one night stand. His name was Shawn. Or was it Shane? Oh my God, was it Shane? Well, Shane or Shawn was nice enough. He came to the pub where they agreed to meet wearing too much cologne and too much hair gel. He paid for everything, in that old timey but green way, like his father told him that was how to treat a girl. From what she remembered about the conversation (which admittedly wasn’t much), he had never left his town until the past month. He moved to London for a job as an accountant. He was a small person, with a small mind, and a small job. The quintessence of dust, as the Doctor would quote. But when they went to bed, his thin frame and sunny smile reminded her of him. Her fantasies of a life that was impossible. Right now, he was enough.
She looked at the time on her phone. It was 3:00 am. There was an incoming text from Mickey of a funny picture he found on the internet. She thought about her time with him. She dated him from when she started high school, arguably before, yet it had been so long since she had had feelings for him, been intimate with him. She was forgetting how it felt when she kissed him, the ways he touched her, the lowered sound of his voice when they were hiding from her mother. The forgetting started when she met the Doctor. But forgetting him was harder. It was so much harder.
London. 1924. The Doctor didn’t want to run into anyone he might know. Of course, there was no guarantee, but he had never met Rose’s great grandparents, so he figured he’d be safe. The pub he had chosen was in a lively part of town. A place where someone like him could fit in. He even came with a period costume to ensure his invisibility. The girl he was talking to had the short hair common of the era. The short skirt too. But she still talked with a Cockney accent. Some things, he guessed, never change. She had informed him that she was from a very different part of town than the pub was. But he knew that. Her clothes, though in fashion, looked flimsy and she had the look of someone who was faking confidence. This wasn’t somewhere she usually went. She was scared, a runaway. And her willingness to let him into her flat showed just how desperate and lonely she was. Not much unlike himself. They drank coffee and talked for a few hours. Then came the part he convinced himself he had been waiting for. She started taking off her dress, and the reality of what was going on hit him.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” “Why not?”
“I just... can’t.”
He walked outside into the biting December air. There were Christmas decorations all around. It reminded him of his first day with Rose, the way he was now, anyway. That boyfriend of Jackie’s kept a satsuma in his pyjamas. People and their stupid little things. He bet that man’s great grandfather was in a pub right now, getting drunk with the rest of them. He wanted so bad to be able to have sex with that woman. Just do it and be rid of this gnawing, aching monster in his stomach, if only for a moment. Or maybe he’d drown it all in drink. That he could do with no consequence. The fact that he couldn’t even tell the one person he truly loved the truth, that he couldn’t spend his life with her. He would get bored, he told himself. Try to settle down and then get the urge to wander off again. Even if he didn’t, what good would that do? Watch her lose her wit and her humour and be a shadow of the woman he loved? All while he stayed young? Would that ruin her life, or his? Or would it save them? He was done thinking for the night. He bought some liquor from the pub with the loose change he found in his pocket and drank alone in the Tardis.
He couldn’t do it that night, but he did it later. With people who looked like Rose, or sounded like Rose, or even thought like Rose. But he could never erase her from his memory. Not in a thousand years.
She had pillow talk with Shawn (yes, his name was Shawn) when he woke up. One thing led to another and they were making love again. She thought of a thousand things during it; of Mickey and his newness, of the Doctor and what could have been. She knew she was trying to erase the Doctor, just like she erased Mickey. But she knew nothing would do it. He would stay with her forever, just like he did with Sarah Jane. But the Doctor would forget about her soon enough. There have been a hundred Roses, and there will be a hundred more. But who will be the first, she wondered. Who will erase me?