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“He needs you, and that’s very me.”
Oh, Doctor, you knew exactly how true those words were when you said them, didn’t you? You had to have known, clever as you are. Did Donna know too? Did he know?
My you. The you that’s not you. First runner up in the Time Lord pageant, who, if the real Doctor can’t fulfill his duties… But he can’t either. Donna may have made him, but she made him a little too much like her. He needs a second heart, Doctor. And I already gave you mine.
He told me, you know. He took the time to sit me down and explain just what a Human-Timelord Biological Metacrisis is. And then he explained why it has never happened before. Why it can’t ever happen. How he’s got the whole of time and space, that great big universe, crammed into his human head, and how it’s pushing at the edges. How it’s stretching and stretching him and how eventually it’ll tear him apart.
Has it already happened to Donna? Have you already wiped her clean and stripped her mind of anything to do with you? Left her like you left Jack once he got a bit unnatural? Yeah, Martha told me all about that. I didn’t realize I’d made him immortal. I had just wanted to keep you alive.
Because I’m the one who needs you, Doctor. That’s very me. Rose and the Doctor, the whole of time and space their playground. That was how it was supposed to go! That was what was supposed to happen, dammit!
But instead you left me in another world, even after I broke through the walls of the universe to come back to you.
I was in Torchwood when I found out. Did I tell you? I might as well run the place now. Certainly didn’t want to, but I’m the most qualified, it turns out.
I was sitting outside the med center waiting. He was in being checked up by our Donna – she’s a doctor here. Doctor Donna, go figure. Not just a temp from Cheswick anymore. That had to be a bit wild, being poked and prodded by a Donna he’s never met, but who will still tell him off with an, “Oi, spaceman!”
There was no sass when she came out of the exam room. No fire, no fight in her face. She pulled me aside, out of his earshot. And she told me. “I don’t know how long he’ll last like this. It’s ripping him to shreds, and there’s really only one way to fix it. Rose, you know what we’ll have to do sooner or later.”
But I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can go back there and tell Donna that yes, I understand and yes, go ahead.
Because it would be like murder.
“Good morning, Rose!” he chirruped as he walked out of the bathroom, hair dripping and flat.
Wrong. Everything wrong. I can’t recall ever seeing the Doctor shower. He was just always clean. And always in his suits and plimsolls. Yet here he is, coming out of my bathroom barefoot and in a blue bathrobe we picked up at the shop the other day. It’s the exact same blue as the TARDIS, and that just makes things worse.
Everything he does makes it just a little bit harder, because he really is the Doctor. Well, he is but he isn’t. He’s like an echo, the same but just a little distorted, just enough to bother you if you listen closely – and believe me, I do.
I cried and kissed him and clung to him like he was dying. In a way, he was. He would die, and another man would go walking away, only this time, it would be in the same body. My new new new Doctor, not a Doctor at all.
He had never before looked like his nine-hundred odd years, but just then, as he sat in the hospital bed and wired into a dozen machines, I could see it. Which was ironic, since this Doctor was only a few weeks old. His eyes were infinitely sad, holding on to almost a millennia of experiences and knowing that they were killing him, and that that was killing me. His hands rested on my cheeks and he pressed a single kiss into my hair.
Just one kiss. The very last from my not-quite-Doctor.
“Rose, listen to me,” I swallowed the sobs threatening to bubble up and listened to what he had to say, “When I wake up, I’ll still be me. I’ll still be a mad man, with or without my box. But you know that I won’t know who you are.”
I couldn’t hold back a choked noise at that. Knowing didn’t make it any less horrible.
“At least, not who you really are. This isn’t just a wipe; it’s a fabrication of a life. And Donna said that she’ll work you into that life. But you can never, ever mention anything about the real me, or you, or us. Daleks or Cybermen or life in the TARDIS, nothing. Clever as I am? I’d figure it out in a wink, and that would be it. I would be properly dead.
“So here’s the hard part, Rose. You can’t let me find out you work for Torchwood. You can’t let me start sniffing around about your work. Because I am a brilliant sniffer. I - ”
Donna walked in just then, bright and businesslike – no doubt for our benefit.
"Alright, you two. Everything is prepped and ready to go when you are. All that's left is for us to plug in a new name for you, Doctor. Since we can't very well just call you the Doctor anymore."
"No," he shook his head, "No, I don't imagine you can."
And just like my real Doctor, here he is, trying to hide what he's really feeling behind a manic grin, "Well, I always did like 'John Smith'. Got a lot of use out of that name."
"Really?" Donna made a face, "Any name in the entire universe, and you pick 'John Smith'?"
"Oi, what's wrong with it?"
"It's boring is what's wrong with it!"
She stopped short when she saw my face. I thought I had been holding back my tears until I felt one land on my hand. She gave the Doctor a long look and nodded, scribbling down his new name on her chart.
"I'll just give this to the boys then. Spaceman, I need you to follow the nurse to the OR. And Rose?"
I took a deep breath and looked up.
"Come with me? I can fix you a cuppa after I drop this off."
And just like that, my almost Doctor left with some strange woman. As soon as he was out of sight, something in me tore wide open. Tears poured down my cheeks and it was all I could do to keep from sobbing loudly as I followed Donna, feeling farther from everything I'd ever known than I ever had in space.