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It’s been days, he thinks. Months, even. Probably not years.
Still, he knows the second he steps out of the TARDIS, raw anticipation thrumming under his skin. He checks his hair and he adjusts his suit jacket and he sets off at a brisk pace, coat swishing behind him.
For the Doctor, visiting a parallel universe is a bit like getting high. Well. It’s what he imagines getting high must feel like to humans, at least. Everything’s slightly off, from the smells to the colours to time itself, virtually unrecognisable to a lesser being’s senses. But he feels it. He revels in it, even, the countless differences flowing past him in a current, crisp and fresh, like a new deck of cards and he’s leafing through them with ease, seeking out the aces, every step in the right direction striking against his mind like a flint, sparking.
It’s intoxicating, to say the least.
The barest hint of a smile curves at his lips. He’s spent long thinking about this very moment—longer than he would ever admit—imagining the way her eyes will light up, how that wide, wide grin will split across her face. Her Doctor, who’s done the impossible, who’s come back for her.
Not to you, he’d said.
The place is a parking lot outside a deli, of all things.
He can’t see the future, not exactly, but he can see possibilities—thousands and thousands of possibilities, borne from the most mundane of choices—and there are possibilities he’s ignoring pointedly, possibilities he’s choosing to believe in, like the fact that he isn’t too late, and that the universe has waited for him, just this once, just for him and her.
A naive hope, but fitting, he thinks, for the woman who taught him to hope again.
It’s probably why his entire world lurches sickeningly when Rose skips up right behind him and links her arm through his, cool as anything.
“There you are,” she says. “I’ve been looking all over.” Her hair is darker than he’s ever seen it, falling to her shoulders. Her face is slimmer, bare of makeup. A hair-thin scar streaks across her forehead. She flashes him a quick grin, tongue darting out between her teeth. “Miss me?”
He can’t bring himself to grin back.
If it weren’t physiologically impossible for him, he’d be vaguely afraid of going into double cardiac arrest out of sheer shock. Because it’s not just a Rose, older than he’s ever seen her, not just a Rose who’s clearly not from his time, but a Rose cradling a baby on her hip.
No, he doesn’t grin. He doesn’t move at all, in fact. He only stands, frozen, as Rose withdraws an oblivious hand to rustle into the bag slung across her other shoulder, clearly searching for something.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she says, rummaging in her purse. “I swear, I tried—and I know you said it’s good for her—but I feel daft, like I belong on the Discovery Channel or something—” Rose laughs to herself, the sound sending a jolt through his chest. She affects a posh, lilting accent, reaching deeper. “And that, Mia, lurking beyond the vegetable aisle, is a gherkin. Dada’s newest and cruellest foe, not to be purchased or stored…under….any…oh, where did I—could you…?”
There’s not much room left for interpretation as to what, exactly, she means he should do—her hip thrust towards him expectantly. She doesn’t even look at him as she does it—like this is a common occurrence for her, like the alien she used to travel with occasionally shows up often after their final separation to hold her baby while she uses both hands to scan her purse.
Wordlessly, he lifts the infant into his arms, unsure of when his mind will choose to finally, finally kick in and take his body off autopilot.
The baby comes easily, warm and pliable in his grip. She’s heavier than he expects; a fluff of soft hair adorns her head, brown eyes wide and curious as they blink up at him, eyes he looked into just this morning, when he’d examined his appearance in the mirror.
He watches, numb, as Rose finds whatever it is she was looking for—a hair tie—before proceeding to scrunch her locks up into a loose bun.
“There. That’s better.” She turns back to him, a soft smile at her lips. “You’re very quiet. Feeling okay?” He watches her gaze move down then, down his shoulders and to his chest, to the patch of striped fabric the baby has pinched together in her chubby palm.
Rose’s smile vanishes slowly. It would be almost funny, under different circumstances. “You’ve changed your clothes.” Her eyes find his, searching, and he feels a sudden prick of self-consciousness, despite everything. Did she like his hair this way? It was longer when she’d known him, less product…maybe he should’ve tried on the new suit, maybe she preferred blue—
“Sorry,” Rose says faintly, cutting across his mindless thought rambling. “I’m sorry—I—erm —we should go.” She reaches for the baby, determined, it seems, to not spare him another glance, but his thinking brain manages to kick-start into working just in time for him to catch onto her wrist, holding her to him.
His voice is low, broken. “Rose.”
“I can’t–” Rose says. Her eyes shut, her voice wavers. “I’m sorry, Doctor, we can’t be here.”
He stares at her. “How…”
Rose shakes her head. “I can’t tell you, you know I can’t—” She tugs her hand away again but he holds fast, holds for dear life.
“I’m here?” he asks, hearts in his throat, not daring to even breathe. “With you? With…”
His eyes flit back to the baby in his arms; some emotion grows inside him so fast he’s afraid his ribs might crack from the pressure. She’s his, somehow —theirs. Months old, at best—but now that he’s looking for resemblance, he finds it everywhere, in the curve of her nose, the bow of her lips, the small, bright consciousness bubbling underneath…clever, brilliant, new life…
He opens his mouth again, but the sound hitches in his throat, a mere whisper. “I find you?”
Something crumples behind Rose’s eyes at the question. The next thing he knows, her face is buried in his chest, her hands pulling him to her as tightly as is possible without squishing their daughter. He scrambles to hug her back. The familiar scent of her hair makes his eyes sting, makes his free hand clutch into her shoulder more sharply than he intends, but he can’t bring himself to let go, lest he fall off the face of the earth. He’d forgotten how perfectly she fit in his arms, how good it felt to enfold her.
“How long?” he asks into her hair, strained. “How long…until—”
Rose’s frame shudders against his. “I can’t say.”
The sound that escapes himself is something between a sob and a laugh. What does it matter, how long? For this, he thinks he could wait an eternity. Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, his mind sings. I love you, I love you, I love you, he wants to say, but his tongue won’t work.
When Rose reaches for the baby again, he acquiesces, breath hitching in his chest as he watches her brush a kiss to their daughter’s scalp. His hands tremble terribly as he raises them to Rose’s face, framing her cheeks. Three different words make their way out of him. “I find you?”
A stray tear spills down her face, swallowed immediately by his thumb. “I find you,” she tells him.
He grins at that, a true smile, the first one in what feels like forever.
Rose swallows, runs shaky fingers through the baby’s hair. “This won’t change anything, yeah? Won’t—erm—cause a paradox?”
The undercurrent of worry in her words is palpable; he rushes to reassure her. “I’ll make myself forget,” he promises. He doesn’t dare to keep this, not if it means risking any part of what he’s just seen. “I won’t remember until it’s time.”
“Until it’s time,” Rose repeats weakly. She stares at him for one long moment, eyes drinking him in almost hungrily.
And then she kisses him.
It’s only a brush of her lips against his, the softest of goodbyes, but it leaves him feeling faint, staring at her listlessly, lips parted.
“Wait for me, yeah?” Rose says. Her smile is watery. Her hand finds his, squeezes. “Be strong.”
The Doctor can only nod. He takes her in one last time, takes in his daughter—he can’t help but commit every last detail to memory anyway—and then he does the impossible. He turns on his heel and walks away from them.
-
It’s an odd feeling, the sensation of memory slipping away.
He’s only stepped back into the TARDIS and he can no longer remember the colour of Rose’s shirt, or the exact curve of his baby’s nose. In an hour, he knows he will remember nothing—not even this successful excursion into a forbidden world.
Still, he allows himself a moment, just a moment, to bask in the sheer impossibility of what he’s seen. He glances at the TARDIS doors and considers the world outside; a universe that’d gotten it right. How will it happen? There are so many factors up in the air, so many roads that might lead down the same path, so many uncertainties.
And yet it has happened. He’s seen it with his very own eyes.
He remembers the feel of Rose’s lips on his, and he thinks he cannot wait to find out.