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Vale Decem
Rose Tyler walks away, leaving a shaking Doctor to push himself off of the wall he had been using to support his weight. He could feel himself dying. He wasn’t really; he knew that, but it didn’t help. He was going to die. Not die, he just would be here. There’s a difference he knows, but what does it matter, the rules of logic, when his hearts hurt so much? When it seems like the universe is trying to tell him that his time is up.
It’s just the body, he’s been telling himself. It doesn’t help. He knows he’s lying.
He’s been putting off his regeneration for too long. He can feel it in his trembling limbs, in how each step through the snow -towards the TARDIS- is an obstacle to overcome.
And maybe he won't make it back. What if he regenerates here on the streets? It wouldn’t be the first time, like when he just had to fall from that blasted tower. This is worse.
Ad Aeternam
And he’s in the TARDIS with Rose, and she had stayed. Even with the new face, Rose Tyler -the only person he’s ever asked twice- chose to stay with him. Even though things are different now, maybe, just maybe, she’ll keep her word.
How long are you going to stay with me?
Forever
Rose, his Rose, is going to keep traveling with him, and it’s the greatest feeling in the world. Even though it’s not forever- it can’t be forever- he’s going to enjoy it while it lasts. And he’ll always smile at Rose like she’s worth more than the entire universe, because right now, she is.
Di Meliora
The TARDIS never lands where he wants it to, well it does, but very rarely. He wants to take Rose someplace amazing. Prove to her that it’s still him. Even without the blue eyes and the big ears. Sideburns were okay-
As he fiddles with the controls of the console he teases Rose mercilessly, this version of himself must be a flirt, he can’t imagine what the last him would think seeing this. “Is that a smile?” He asks Rose, and it is, she’s still smiling.
“No.” She lies, straight through her teeth.
“That was a smile.”
“No it wasn’t.”
“You smiled.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Rose Tyler, you have a terrible poker face.” And even though she rolls his eyes at his chastisement, she laughs, and the Doctor laughs with her. And maybe this can be his thing this time around. Being funny and ridiculous, because it makes Rose smile.
Ad Aeternam
And he’s facing the devil itself, the fires of hell burning beneath it. Everythings falling apart and in a few moments he’ll be gone along with the whole planet. No more Doctor, no more Krop Tor, no more beast. Maybe he’ll be gone but Rose will live on, and she’ll have a fantastic life. Wouldn’t that be great, Rose traveling the stars… without him. No, no it wouldn’t be. Rose couldn’t go home if he didn’t make it. Rose would be trapped here forever, hundreds of years from her own time. And so he talks, he rambles, because that’s what he does when he’s nervous, doesn’t he?
“That implies in this big scheme of gods and devils, that she’s just a victim. Well I’ve seen a lot of this universe. I’ve seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods. I’ve had the whole pantheon. But if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her!”
Vale Decem
There are ghosts, that’s what they call them. But they’re not, not really at least. They aren’t the spirits of loved ones like the world seems to think. They’re impressions of something forcing its way into this universe. Something bad presumably, it’s usually bad, but it’s nothing him and his Rose can’t handle.
The Torchwood building is annoyingly consistent. Where’s the fun in all this same-ness? …Same-ness, that’s a word.
He hasn’t seen Rose for a while, he should probably go check on her.
Di Meliora
Rose is gone.
He’d let himself believe - he oh-so stupidly let himself believe that he’d gotten lucky. That the universe that had taken everything would let him keep just one thing for himself. For everything he’s done, a reward for the selfish lonely god. He thought just this once he could keep someone.
He’d known they wouldn’t last for so long but he had hoped that for a few decades -at least- he could be happy. He should have been old enough to know better.
Everything that mattered to him, everyone he loved, was eventually ripped away from him. He should have known not to hope, not to let himself think there could be anything but heartbreak in store.
He had known he’d lose her one day but he hadn’t expected it to be so soon. They’d deserved more time. He’d deserved more time. He had believed in her. They were supposed to run hand in hand forever. ( ‘forever.’ she had said, her eyes twinkling in the light.) He should have been with her, and instead?
Instead he just pressed his hand against the wall and broke.
Beati
McDonnell is yelling and with everything else that’s going on it just adds to the chaos. He yells too.
“Martha, Where are you?” He can’t open his eyes. Can’t open his eyes. Can’t open his eyes. Just keep repeating that and maybe it’ll help.
“It’s all right, I’m here” Martha’s here. Can’t open his eyes. “Status chamber minus 200, yeah?”
The question is enough to jolt him back into his mind, and he moves to nod. It doesn’t exactly seem to work.
“No, you don’t know how this equipment works! You’ll kill him!” McDonnell yells, being no help to anyone. “Nobody can survive those temperatures!” And nobody could survive the Time War, right?
He can’t open his eyes.
“If he says he can survive, then he can.” Fair point. Always survives, does he. Makes the miraculous escape, finds the loophole, the secret no one else thought of. Shame really.
“You’ve done enough damage.”
He can’t open his eyes.
It’s tearing away at him. And he is burning. He is the blazing burning end that will consume everything aboard this ship. He is the inferno. He is the raging light and he will have his glory.
HE CAN’T OPEN HIS EYES.
“I could kill you all.” He can’t open his eyes.
“I’m scared.” He can’t open his eyes.
“I’m so scared.” He can’t open his eyes.
He’s going to kill them all. Every single person on this ship is going to die. Burning. Burning. Burning. There’s nothing he’s going to be able to do.
“Just stay calm.” He doesn’t know if he can.
He’s going to kill everyone and he’s going to die with them. Maybe he’ll die before he has the chance to damn everyone else.
Regeneration.
He’s got to tell Martha.
She’s not listening.
“Are you ready?”
“No.” No, he’s never going to be ready. Never.
Pacifici
And he’s sobbing as everything he thought he knew crumbles around him. John Smith, the teacher, the ordinary man, isn’t real. He never has been. He’s not even human.
He looks down at the fob watch in his hands and knows that it will all end soon. He won’t be the same man he is now. The man who chastised schoolboys for running in the hallway, who dreamt of adventure- of time and space,- the man who loved Joan Redfern.
He’ll be gone and some new man will walk away, wearing his face, but not him.
He had seen what would happen, if he could just keep living. A happy life, marriage. Why couldn’t he have that? Instead the maid- Martha was imploring him to open the watch, to save everyone. How does someone pick between their own life and hundreds of others? Oh, if he was a good man this would have been an easy choice, but he was selfish.
Was it selfish to want to live happily? To live as himself?
Vale Decem
The Master died in his arms. Everything’s falling apart again. Why is it that everything he loves is ripped away from him. Every time he thinks he’s finally found something that will make it better— that will make it all stop hurting— he loses it. Every time. Ever since the Time War every last shred of hope that he finds a way to cling to disappears.
The Master is dead in his arms. He doesn’t know what to do. The only other person who could have understood his grief had chosen to die rather than to stay. Had chosen to die rather than stay with him.
The Master is dead in his arms. There is no peace, no goodwill. There is only the persistent beating of his hearts in that oh so familiar pattern that only moments before The Master had been tapping.
The Master is dead in his arms. It would be silent but for the sound of his sobbing.
Alise Grave
“She fell. Mr. Copper. She fell.” It wasn't supposed to end up like this. He was going to take her with him. He was going to show her the universe. He was going to make it right, travel with someone he wouldn’t lose.
“We can bring her back.” He’s not going to lose anyone else. Rose is gone. Martha’s left him. He cannot be responsible for ruining anyone else’s life. He’s going to save Astrid.
The teleport unit isn’t cooperating. His sonic isn’t doing anything useful. It’s not going to work. He’s talking, but his brain doesn't want to make sense of his own desperate words.
And there she is. Maybe he can actually save her. Maybe he won’t have to leave by himself.
“I’m falling.” It’s going to work.
“Only halfway there, come on.” She’ll be fine.
“I keep falling.” She doesn’t look desperate. She doesn’t look like someone in their last moments.
“Feed back the molecule grid. Boost it with the restoration matrix. No, no, no, no, no!”
“Doctor”
“Need more phase containment.”
“Doctor.” No, no. He’s not just going to give up. He’s not just going to let her go.
“If I can just link up the surface suspension.” Come on! Where’s the last minute save. Where are the miraculous rescues now?
“Doctor, she’s gone.”
“I just need to override the safety. I can do this. I can do it.”
“Doctor, let her go.”
“I can do anything!”
“She’s gone.”
He’s falling.
Ad Perpetuam
Everything’s been too much. There’s a sort of uncomfortableness in his hearts that’s been there since the TARDIS set down. No, since just after that.
It brought back too many things he didn’t want to think about. Things he had spent a long time trying to push to the back of his mind.
Someone says his name. He looks up, trying his darndest to pretend he had been mentally there the whole time.
“Hmm?”
It’s Donna, smiling and cheerful. “Do you think Jenny will see any new worlds?” Heh. New worlds. He had taken family to see new worlds before. And how had that turned out?
“I suppose so.”
Jenny’s practically beaming. “You mean you’ll take me with you?”
“Well, we can’t leave you here, can we?” Stupid, stupid Doctor.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” She presses forwards, ahead of the Doctor and Donna. “Come on, let’s get a move on.”
“Careful, there might be traps.” Well, might. It was always more of a when than an if on these types of adventures.
“Kids, they never listen.” Donna shakes her head. “Oh, I know that look. I see it a lot round our way. Blokes with pushchairs and frowns. You’ve got dad-shock.”
“Dad-shock?” What in the world is Donna going on about now?
“Sudden unexpected fatherhood. Takes a bit of getting used to.” Oh.
“No, it’s not that.”
“Well, what is it then?” Having Jenny in the TARDIS? Is that it? What’s she going to do, cramp your style? Like you’ve got a sports car and she’s going to turn it into a people-carrier?”
“Donna, I’ve been a father before.”
That stops her, mid rant. She looks up at him in surprise, shock clearly discernible in her features. “What?”
And they talk. It’s nothing world changing, but it’s talking to Donna and that always seems to fix things. When Jenny comes running back in he can’t help but smile.
He’s already too attached to her.
Memoriam
He saved her. Professor River Song, he means. Whoever she was to him, and he has a terrible suspicion, she’s not entirely gone.
He can’t help but wonder what it will be like meeting her later, already knowing how it’s going to end. Knowing how sad she looked when he said he didn’t know who she was.
Part of him already knew that he’d lose Donna at some point, but the confirmation, the fact that River Song didn’t know her, that was enough to make it seem all the more real. Of course nothing lasts forever, it’s something he’s closer to accepting these days.
It seems he always ends up losing someone, even if it’s someone who he doesn’t even know yet. Not yet.
She’ll live there for a long time though, maybe even as long as the Doctor himself, maybe longer.
Maybe she means more than he’ll know for lifetimes. And maybe at the end of it all, he’ll come back here.
There’s no point in thinking that now, not when all he’s done is safe the life of someone who to him is a complete stranger.
Even with River Song safe in the library database, he can’t help but feel that he’s lost more than he knows. More than he’ll know for a long time.
Vale Decem
His feet are moving. He’s off of the emergency transport now. The floor tiles don’t repeat the way they should.
His eyes won’t focus. Maybe that’s not the problem. He doesn’t know.
Everything feels sort of wrong.
His mouth still moves to say “It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s gone.” No sound comes out. He’s not sure if that makes it better or worse.
Oh, Donna’s there now. Her hands are on his shoulders.
He should say something. He doesn’t want her to be worried.
“Molto Bene.” He says. He shouldn’t have said that.
Donna repeats it. He’s- He can’t-
She seems to understand when he says “Don’t. Please, just- don’t.”
He has never been so grateful to not be alone
Gratis Tibi Ago
I’m doing it for you, he wants to say. Rose looks so betrayed that he would even think about leaving her behind.
It’s alright. It’s with the other him. She’ll be happy. He doesn’t know about himself yet, but Rose deserves it. She deserves to have someone who will be able to give her everything. All the Doctor has ever had to offer was the stars, and how had that gone the first time around.
It’s fine. He’s fine.
He has to watch another man (though it is technically him) tell Rose that he loved her. He said the one thing that the Doctor never could. And he had to watch as Rose kissed him.
This was what was best for Rose. She didn’t deserve to be trapped with him. Rose can fix this new Doctor. Like she fixed him. She makes everything she touches better.
He leaves.
He can’t say goodbye again.
She’s going to be happy, and that’s got to be good enough.
Ad Aeternum
“But you said we die. For the future, for the human race.” No, no they’re not going to die. He’s not going to just disappear into his box like he always did to just let them die.
“Yes, because there are laws. There are laws of time.” Don’t they get it? “Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died.” They’re all gone. He’s not going to have a single death on his hands again.
“Do you know who that leaves!” he yells, finally understanding. “Me! It’s taken me all these years to realize the laws of time are mine and they will obey me!” He’s going to be the one in control now. He’s never going to lose anyone else. HE IS NOT GOING TO LET ANYONE DIE.
He could see Rose again.
He’s the one holding the reins.
Time and space be damned.
He could find his Rose.
Alarms blare throughout Bowie Base One. All it does is strengthen his resolve. He doesn’t have time. He has all the time in the world. More, even. Time is his to reshape as he wills it.
“We’re not just fighting the flood, we’re fighting time itself! And I’m going to win!”
Time Lord Victorious, isn’t he.
Numquam Singularis
Wilf and the Doctor sit on the steps of the ship, far above the current crisis. Soft words fill the air, anything really to distract from the state of the world below.
“You don’t want to listen to an old man’s tales, do you?” Wilf says, smiling in the sort of way that only he can.
“I’m older than you.”
“Get away.”
“I’m nine hundred and six.” It’s a rather long time, he thinks. Well, not that long for a Time Lord. He’s gone through so many regenerations in so little time. Still, he’s older than most people he meets. He can at least pretend that the morals he wields are founded in the wisdom of his years.
“What, really, though?”
“Yeah.” The Doctor’s been around for a long time, always stepping in at the last minute and all that. Who else is going to be saving the world? (The world but not all the people in it.)
“Nine hundred years.” Wilf pauses, “We must look like insects to you.”
And he remembers all those times that he’s looked into the eyes of his companion and thought they were everything. Every time he’s tried so hard to save everyone. Every time he’s seen compassion and love in humans far deeper than he could ever hope to understand. He remembers turning back and saying ‘Nine hundred years in time and space and I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.’
“I think you look like giants.” And they are. The human race that always keeps moving on no matter what happens, that always looks forward with hope and determination. And looking down at that little planet that was there for him when he suddenly no longer had one of his own, he knows it is anything but insignificant.
Wilf holds out his revolver. “Listen, I- I want you to have this. I’ve kept it all this time and I thought-” He trailed off, holding the gun out.
The Doctor gently pushes it away. “No.”
“No, but if you take it, you could-”
“No,” He says more insistently. And then, “You had that gun in the mansion. You could have shot the Master then and there.”
“Too scared, I suppose.” Wilf mutters, letting the hand holding the gun fall to the ground. Too scared to kill what must seem a god, how could anyone blame him. No one could.
“I’d be proud.”
“Of what?”
“If you were my dad.”
Numquam
There’s something in the Master’s eyes. Uncertainty. Confusion. Doubt. Whatever it is, it's enough of an edge that maybe the Doctor has a slight chance of stopping the Time Lords. Not a chance of living, he’s almost certain that he’s not going to make it out of this room. Heh, how had he never connected it. That drumming the Master had always heard sounded so much like knocking. Four knocks. Death.
He aims at the Master. “Get out of the way.” And with fear in his eyes and the word faith on his lips he fires.
The white point star shatters.
And even as Rassilon aims his gauntlet at him he can’t help but be grateful that he’s not alone. Wilfred is somewhere behind him and the Master is looking at him oh so desperately. He wonders if this time he won’t be the one begging the other to stay.
“Get out of the way.” And the Doctor does, a surprising amount of trust making itself known.
He watches as he loses the Master once again.
He watches as the Rassilon goes back to hell.
He stares at the floor.
He’s not alone. He’s not alone. He’s not alone.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Dum Spiro Fido
The Ood are singing outside the TARDIS. It’s beautiful.
Everything is quiet for a single moment.
It’s burning.
He counts the heartbeats he has left.
Vale Vale Vale Vale Vale
“I don’t want to go.”
Vale Vale Vale Vale Vale