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The light is coming.
It whispers her name…it always has.
Now, intricate and ethereal phosphenes and spinning galaxies whirl through her vision as though she were a child again, pressing on her eyelids with the heels of her hands, counting down the days when she’d get to travel in time and space.
They’re manifested by her consciousness, this time though.
Her vision is blurred, like looking through droplets dragged down glass.
Each burst of light bubbling, rippling up her skin and into her periphery; each crawling snarl of pressure, each pulse in her muscles, each grasp by gnarled hands attempting to tug her across, and each alternating, fluttering palpitation of her hearts scream out that it’s time for change.
The gasp of regenerative hemoglobin pulsing through her veins due to the Master’s violent act is much like an allergic reaction— like a rash, only add dynamite instead of red, itchy bumps.
It gets more painful every time, standing on this precipice and refusing to fall in.
The manifestations of her consciousness- some of her most outspoken incarnations one could say—had just gotten done telling her NOT to regenerate, and now she’s being left with no choice.
She’s being forced to the edge of that cliff anyway, skidding past all of them and giving a tiny wave and a powerless shrug as they continue to alternate between forms, shaking their head.
Still, having her first ‘Doctor-shaped’ incarnation there, grabbing his snappy lapels and telling her to hold it off was a bit odd given their last encounter—like he was still very much against the whole regenerating business (but he’d still yank out a lifeline in a pinch).
She’s losing hope. She needs more time. More time. Why is it that she can’t ever get more time when she really needs it? She’s a TIME LORD for Rassilon’s sake. Her designated occupation is gift wrapping Time to the rest of the universe, but she always gets tangled in its thorny trap on her own. Like she’s breathing life into the cosmos, reducing her own existence until she’s degenerated to that warped, jagged timeline in the mangled TARDIS on Trenzalore, all those centuries ago—because what is she, really?
She’s always managed to make this process bloody complicated by purposely holding it off, though. Like sticking her finger inside the spout of a shaken can of soda, watching as it trembles heedlessly with potentiality, even though she knows exactly what will happen because she does it every time she regenerates.
Like a bomb that’s not only suppressed, it’s expanded and gone nuclear, and there is no one to blame but herself.
This incarnation had felt so much different from all the others. It had been brilliance, and colour. So much lighter than carrying the burdens of her other bodies. It had almost felt easier to bear. She’d been able to laugh and smile more easily. To love more readily.
And she had. This incarnation really was special.
Partially because she’d been the one reunited with Rose Tyler— and this was the incarnation still carrying her scent on her skin.
Her mind works in overdrive again, just like the first time she had regenerated in front of her. What if Rose didn’t love the person on the other side of this? Of course, that was ridiculous, Rose had gotten over the last time this happened fairly quickly. And yet, she had rejected that incarnation at first….
As she stands limp in Rose’s arms, Rose leaning heavily on the TARDIS console for support, she’s helpless.
She’d had just enough strength to say goodbye to Yaz. Enough resolve…but then it had broken her. And it had broken Rose, too— Yaz was like a sister.
But it’s much like the universe is serving her an eviction notice. Again. Get out of that body, or else.
She feels sick...her flesh feels like it’s no longer her own, like she’s being forced to give it to someone else. Like it’s smudged onto someone else’s canvas, and she’s no longer in control of the brush.
She’s sick with sadness, sick with worry, sick with the energetic phenomenon that’s happening to her body, sick with this fever, sick with exhaustion…
And sick with the knowledge if who inhabited and completely changed the blueprints of this body, even temporarily. She feels dirty, tainted—he had worn her clothes. Her coat, and her earring. Her shirt, with the rainbow of hope across her chest. Her skin is already burning from being the Master, even a brief period, his hatred suffocating her. She had BEEN the Master. For the first time, she understood. Because sometimes the night falls and doesn’t stop unravelling.
And at times in her life, she hadn’t been that far off from him. The warrior. The one-time Destroyer of Worlds, as Davros had once said, as she remembers the timeline where she had left a trail of obliterated Gallifrey all across the Medusa Cascade, then continued to believe that as her reality for centuries.
And she had FELT herself screaming at the TARDIS, and at Yaz, and then at Rose.
And all of this had happened in a glass booth, no less. The irony was almost as suffocating as the terror clawing up her back..
What if she regenerated into HIM again? All the information was already in there, now.
First of all, he would kill Rose, now that they were alone. Or he would enslave her and make the Doctor—still in his consciousness—watch.
He would take over her TARDIS.
She has to get a grip on herself, and start examining logic.
It is going to be just like every other time.
Maybe she could tell the TARDIS… or signal to Rose if that if something bad happens, to remember the TARDIS always looks after the Doctor and her companions.
She can’t speak, words are torn from her mouth like useless birds, rising with a violence against the original translation. How she’s feeling now involves transfer across too vast of a spatial dimension, across territory that is currently hijacked, and she is helpless to do anything about it.
She asks Rose telepathically to remind the TARDIS to look after the next one— as though she needed to ask. However she’s robbed from saying it out loud, which would give it agency…more sincerity, transferring it into the performative.
She is waiting for the moment that she can’t hold it off any longer and the ancient instinct etched in her DNA starts to erupt. But not yet. Not with Rose’s lips against her ear, whispering reassurances. Not with her soft fingers in her hair.
Not with the taste of her skin still fresh on the Doctor’s lips from the previous night. Not with the press of her shape, and how the planes and curves of this body fit oh, so beautifully together with Rose’s. Not with the dance between their two bodies nearly written in the stars.
Rose herself seems quite calm as she holds her, slowly rocking, although there are tears in her eyes. It’s partially because they’d said goodbye to the extended Fam, and unsure when or if they’d ever meet again.
Although Rose says nothing, everything is written on her face, in her red, tear-streaked eyes as she slowly rocks her, feeling her double pulse against her chest as she’s done innumerable times. Part of her is begging her not to regenerate. She fell in love with this body. She fell back in love with this body, even when she was unaware she was the Doctor. Begging this veritable event horizon not to sweep violently over them, and begging the pendulum to stop swinging. To stop dragging Time with it.
To not pop open that fob watch this time.
But the TARDIS must go on, and so must the Doctor, and so must the Doctor’s wife.
She finally is able to form words.
“Rose, I…I want to go outside. I want to see the sun with these eyes, one last time.”
“Of course.”
The Doctor musters her strength, standing up on her own, pulling back. Rose won’t take her hands from her. Her legs wobble like a newborn animal— or like a sickly, old one— she isn’t sure yet.
Together, they walk the last few steps she will ever take, like this. She pushes away so that she’s able to do it on her own despite the fact that everything is burning, and she’s hobbling, but she grips Rose’s hand nonetheless.
The door squeaks open, and she’s not sure if she’s seen a more magnificent sight. The sea below is a deep blue as though someone had rubbed pigment on it. The sky is lit up like flame from a candle, spilled across the horizon and catching in a chain reaction, making the rays almost dance.
This incarnation had fallen out of the sky in the middle of the night— a beacon of hope in the darkest night. It was written into this body...and this body would burst into the light at sunrise.
She remembers her friend, writer Dennis Potter, who himself had worked furiously to finish writing a book whilst dying from cancer. He'd taught her about immediacy and what really matters. She remembers his description of a blossom… the “blossomiest blossom” he had ever seen. It had reminded him that everything that matters in life is NOW.
It doesn’t matter what you did in the past. You are who you are NOW. She speaks it out loud, that phrase. And then she looks over at Rose, who is glowing all on her own.
Rose is attempting to speak, but tears are preventing it, nearly gasping.
Eventually she manages, framing the Doctor’s face with her hands.
“I love you. I love you for who you were, who you are right this second, and who you will be in five minutes, no matter who that is. I will always love you, my Doctor.”
The Doctor can’t respond in words, but she puts her hand on Rose’s cheek and pulls her in, kissing her, immediately winding her arms around her, and Rose does the same. The kiss quakes with intensity, the grief that was forming slowly in both of them, now reaching its peak. Because they know it will never be like this again. They connect telepathically, and their two signatures swirl around one another, weaving and soaring— Rose’s golden and the Doctor’s brilliant rainbow.
As their mouths move deeply against one another, tongues sliding, Rose shows the Doctor flowers. Huge, beautiful flowers blooming one after another. Dahlias opening infinitely, more and more petals exploding. Magnolias. Hydrangeas. Plum and apple blossoms.
What matters is now. Always. For all her graceless chaos, for the darkness that still resides somewhere within her gray matter. Now is what matters. And now, there is light. This incarnation was born in light, and it would end in light. It had quasars and pulsars and nebulas, and a whole, wide universe of love, in all forms.
Graham. Ryan. Yasmin. Dan. And Rose.
She remembers Van Gogh, in life and after. His canvases stretched and filled with colour, existing forever. Colours that danced and meshed close up, like chalk scrawled over a sidewalk, blurring under the fall of rain. But when you back up, shapes flood your imagination…
What matters is now, held in a painting. She can almost see it like he did…it’s even easier to do when her senses are muddled like this. She shows Rose…the light blazes, the wind swirling, bursting, the stars beginning to peek out, roaring and screaming with life.
She remembers the last time she had regenerated within Rose Tyler’s vicinity— watching her fade into the distance up the stairs to her flat, purple cap bobbing merrily, and a helping of what looked like stardust at her heels.
This time, Rose is in her arms. She feels renewed as the regeneration energy surges. She pulls back, looking at Rose like it’s the first day she saw her, all those years ago, in that basement. And the first time she saw her again with these eyes, after a thousand years.
Like she’s the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.
She reminds Rose of their song.
And all along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me
I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more…
It’s time.
She can’t hold it off anymore.
“Rose, love, step back a little ways, the regeneration energy will overcome you.”
Rose responds immediately with an intensity the Doctor is all too familiar with.
“There is absolutely no way I’m moving from this spot. I was reborn in artron energy and assimilated the Time Vortex when I was nineteen years old, and the same energy still resides in my body if you remember correctly. Regeneration energy is a joke compared side by side….I am your wife, and I’m not going anywhere, so you can put up and regenerate, or shush.”
The Doctor nods, knowing better than to argue with Rose Tyler. She can do this, now. Because the only person who could possibly bandage the chasm between the numbers Thirteen and Fourteen was Rose Tyler.
It’s time. Her body is glowing, itching, burning, shifting. It is screaming to just give in.
“Shh, I’ve got you, Doctor….just let go.”
She doesn’t release her hold on her, holding tight to everything she ever was, absorbing it. Assimilating and welcoming it. Pressing their foreheads together and holding her like their lives depended on it….
And everything around them becomes infused in light…
Her body, Rose’s.
And it fades to white as she’s released like a flock of Doves, high, towards the light…
The regeneration energy pushes Rose back a few feet despite her fighting it.
She's changing, twisting, growing, morphing.
The air returns to her lungs as though she'd never breathed before, and the sentience returns to her body. Blood pumps through her veins. Both of her hearts start pounding in a healthy cadence. Her bones grow longer and lankier. Her hair shortens…her feet grow. Her earring disappears…and...her clothes start to change?
A tie?
Her chest flattens and becomes more broad.
Her hair stands on end….and oh?
Oh.
Okay...
Definitely male again, no way to mistake that.
But this feels…familiar. The hair, the teeth.
He runs his tongue over his teeth. He tests out his voice.
“I know these teeth!”
He looks at his hands. He knows the hair on these hands. The moles. His wedding ring has grown in size.
The mole on his back!
No.
It couldn’t be.
Rose actually shrieks as though she's seen a ghost. Because that's not far from the truth.
And WHY is he fully dressed in an odd golfer-ish interpretation of the suit he once wore?
He looks down at himself, pulls on his suddenly darker jacket.
He hears Rose gasp, and begin breathing erratically.
“What…”
He inspects the suit…the colours…
“What…?”
He puts his hands on his face.
Same nose, eyebrows, sideburns.
It couldn’t be true.
“WHAT??”
From Rose, all he hears is…
“Holy SHIT.”
He looks over to Rose, who looks like she’s going to pass out… possibly from the regeneration energy that’s rolled in a wave over her body, but more likely…this face.
This Doctor.
He feels something heavy in the inside pocket of his suddenly-there waistcoat, hot against his chest. Burning.
He reaches in and pulls it out by its chain.
It’s the fob watch, glowing like a red-hot ingot.
He looks at Rose, who is still utterly speechless.
The fob watch cools immediately, so he tucks it back in his pocket.
His hands are shaking, and he sees Rose begin sobbing. Actually sobbing. She can’t get a breath, but he takes her hands, pulling her in. This time she’s sobbing in relief.
Yes, he remembers holding her from this height.
The feeling comes back.
Hits him like a tsunami.
He remembers what it was like to love her in this body.
It was an all-consuming, desperate, clenching need. Every cell in him is responding, now. Even more than it always has.
Because this is the body that was made for her…then recreated for her and had grown old with her, despite her not ageing. And then had simultaneously mourned and ached for her, withering slowly over two millennia until his five-minutes-ago incarnation had found her again, used the fob watch, and reunited ALL of him.
He remembers. Before the changed timeline, this body had been fresh from stifling billions of collective screams on Galllifrey, and puzzling on why he hadn’t been permitted to die along with the rest of them.
I've seen a lot of this universe. I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods, and out of all that…. out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing, just one thing… I believe in HER.
Rose throws her arms around him, still crying and trembling.
He’s once again wrapped in her smell, in the warm press of her body, and he just doesn’t care anymore. He picks her up and twirls her around and around, just like he used to when he was this height.
He’s delighted he’s able to do this again.
This disbelief on his face slowly converts itself, and before he knows it, he’s absolutely beaming, to match this gorgeous sky that had etched his previous incarnation into the stars.
He can’t fly, Time Lords typically couldn’t and therefore had to engineer their way upwards. But he might just float up and away too, just like a balloon, soaring with Rose with him.
The worry is gone.
He sets her down, sinking his hands into her hair, and he kisses her with an urgency that has no indication it had been just minutes ago he’d done it before. Slow fire curls through his limbs, squeezes and scorches his hearts, and burns out through his lips as Rose slides her tongue along his bottom lip.
It cannot be chronicled.
He needs more.
He draws her in, Rose winding her arms tightly around his back as she melts into him. Tiny cries escape her lips as he feels her tears fresh on his cheeks, now falling as his tears. They’re both unsure whose belong to who, but they don’t care.
Every shift of his muscles screams with the torrent of the need he’s felt for over two thousand years, shuddering heedlessly into yet more millennia, as Rose presses her entire form to his, clinging desperately.
He archives and remembers the shape of her lips against these lips, as she scratches her nails through his sideburns, remembering as she cries.
He can’t help it now, relief washing over him like the ocean below.
He’s here, he’s real, and he’s come back to her and stayed forever all at the same time.
His breaths come out laboured against her neck, and he is overtaken by sheer euphoria, and he shudders, gooseflesh rippling across his very sensitive, brand new skin.
Rose pulls back and looks at him, giving him a dazzling smile.
“Hello!” she says, delirious.
“Hello!” he returns, grinning like an absolute idiot.
They’re utterly speechless, so he just kisses her again, slow and gentle. Time seems to slow around them, swirling in their own realm, water droplets bleeding into one another.
She pulls him in when he pauses, lips parted to find his already waiting for her, his tongue already sliding along her bottom lip, and a deep, clenching need begins to form in his lower belly. Every nerve is bare, aching at the feel of her.
They then have first telepathic contact with this incarnation, though when it comes down to it it’s exactly the same…just like him. Same Time Lord, different casing. Same signature. It’s the signature Rose calls home and it’s brand new and humming with energy.
Rose feels as though she’s falling, tumbling thorough a kaleidoscope of colours left behind by the Doctor’s beautiful predecessor. She had been the sun. Rose’s heart aches as she feels her, always there, now. But then the signature morphs and folds around her in brilliant, burnished gold and deep burgundy, turning to wings, to flame, scorching everything, curling outward and he's born again from his own ashes.
Suddenly, he’s had enough.
He scoops her up, the TARDIS doors open automatically, and he carries her inside.