#and somewhere very far away. gallifrey is burning. it is new years again.

[quietwingsinthesky]

i think i should let Even get possessed by that dalek in resolution actually

[might-be-a-zygon]

Ohhhh Thasmin and "are you kidding me?! you're not 'fine'!" OR River/13 and "i can't believe i almost lost you

This one got away from me a little, I’ll admit. It’s pretty angsty and features a lot of (canon) character death, so fair warning on that one.

I’ll add an AO3 link in the reblogs!

---

The Ghosts That Broke My Heart

Sleep had always been a funny thing for the Doctor.  She certainly needed a lot less of it than her human friends, but it had always been a reliable break from whatever life chose to throw at her that week. She had dreams, like everyone did, but there was one thing which the Doctor didn’t really do.

She didn’t have nightmares.

Really, what would she have them about? The Doctor faced the creatures of nightmares every day. To some species, the Doctor was a creature of nightmares.

Still, after what had happened on Gallifrey? She’d found the creatures that could jolt her awake screaming.

Ghosts.

Whatever she’d done to overload the matrix had broken centuries of carefully constructed barriers, holding back the people she’d lost, and now her mind saw fit to make her relive each dark moment whenever she let her guard down to try and sleep.

It had started out right away- that first night in the Jadoon prison she’d laid down on the slab that passed for a bed, and closed her eyes to sleep.

“What does that mean?”

Jenny was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet, all wide-eyes and excited smiles. The Doctor could recognise a lot of her own nervous energy in the young woman- ready to go off and explore the brave new world that awaited them. She also saw the gunman poised to take all that away in a moment.

It was like she was watching through thick glass. Poised on the sidelines, watching her past selves getting it all wrong over and over, but helpless to interfere. She slammed her palm against it, sending a too-real shooting pain through her arm, but making no audible sound.

“It means a new world.”

Sandshoes was grinning now, more genuine hope than she could ever really remember feeling shining in those eyes. He’d burned in the end- she remembered that much. He’d been angry. Vengeful.

The Timelord Victorious.  

How different might things have been if he’d just turned around? The Doctor tried to speak, to shout for him to get her out of the way. Her voice didn’t make a sound.

She watched the happiness melt from Jenny’s face, even as Sandshoes maintained his stupid, complacent grin. The Doctor was pounding on the glass now, silently screaming that it wasn’t worth it, but of course she couldn’t change it. Jenny shoved Sandshoes out of the way, the bullet striking her square in the chest. Martha- brilliant Martha who she’d never once deserved- she knew right away there was no chance. She watched her past-self hold their dying daughter, and tell her of a future she’d never see, already knowing she was beyond saving. Lies had always fallen too easily from her tongue.

“You’re gonna be amazing, you hear me, Jenny?”

Had she even heard?

 That first night, when she woke with a whine, curled up into a tight ball on her uncomfortable prison bed, the Doctor had attributed it to stress. She’d jumped haphazardly from Byron, to the cybermen, to Gallifrey, to prison with no time to clear her head. The Master always did funny things to her mind, anyway, it was normal there’d be some aftereffects.

Her hand ached from where she’d been slamming it into the ‘bed’.

She tried to shake the traitorous vision of Jenny- bright, young Jenny with so much potential sacrificing herself for the father she hardly knew. The father who would go on to do so much damage.

Against her better judgement, she’d turned over, and tried to get to sleep again. It was the last time she made that mistake.

 The first thing the Doctor heard this time, was screaming.

She was on a ship, which certainly wasn’t her TARDIS. It took her a minute to recognise the place- but, maybe that made the whole thing even worse. Somebody was screaming for her help, and she couldn’t even remember who it was.

She stood there, behind whatever barrier her mind had constructed to stop her interfering, and watched the doddering old fool she’d been back then just stand there while a good woman was in trouble just feet away. She could have reopened the airlock doors- she’d known how- but she’d been so desperate to look for a way around it, that she’d left Katarina there screaming.

“Change course.” The Doctor in front of her finally ordered. “Take him back to Kembel. Take him back to Kembel! Let the Daleks deal with him.”

In that moment the Doctor looked into her own eyes and saw a spark of that ruthless fire which would one day burn galaxies. It was that same fire that made her risk tearing time apart for Clara Oswald- the fire that burned too brightly. If she was feeling generous, she might have called it admirable, that she was willing to fight so unbelievably hard for the people she loved.

Right now, she called it selfishness.

Steven stepped towards the old Doctor, his anger doing a poor job at masking his fear. “Yes, and us!”

“Don't worry, dear boy, We'll find a way out.” The Doctor cringed at her first face (or, the first face she remembered), while standing in her glass prison. Her methods of comfort hadn’t come on any in three thousand years. She was still a liar.

Both of the men who’d been with her bck then had been afraid. Bret had even tried arguing with her, but the Doctor had never been an easy person to argue with.

“I can't sacrifice everything for the sake of that one girl.” He argued, still at the controls. Luckily, she was spared the embarrassment of having to watch her former self argue by Steven stepping in.

“Listen! Without us you wouldn't have got off Kembel at all, and nothing would be worth bothering about!”

“All right, so we all go back together. But without me, I doubt that you would have got this far either.” Bret had given in quickly enough, and all the while the Doctor just stood and watched, and listened to Katarina’s frightened screaming in the airlock.

She watched as Katarina broke free and hit the release for the airlock. She watched as both her and Kirksen were sucked out into space. She watched, and knew that that girl- that girl who was so brave in the face of so much danger- had sacrificed herself so the three of them could get away.

Her hearts ached, as she thought of a dozen ways she could have saved her, if she’d tried harder.

“She wanted to save our lives and perhaps the lives of all the other beings of the Solar System.” The old Doctor in front of her began to make his silly speech, and the Doctor turned away, revolted at her own self-importance. “I hope she's found her Perfection. Oh, how I shall always remember her as one of the Daughters of the Gods. Yes, as one of the Daughters of the Gods.”

Rule one.

She hadn’t thought about Katarina in centuries. That poor, brave woman, who had made the ultimate sacrifice to keep them all alive, and the Doctor hadn’t even bothered to remember her.

 The Doctor had awoken, still curled up on that cold stone slab, unable to shake the revulsion at her own actions. Was she still like that man? So pompous as to think that every being in the universe made their decisions based around her.

She hadn’t tried to sleep again, after that, shifting to lay on her back, staring at the celling, and trying to shake what somewhere, deep down, she knew.

There were very, very good reasons, she was in prison.

 At first, it was always death. Faces she’d remembered, and ones she’d long since forgotten, all meeting their end because the Doctor had failed to save them.

 “It snapped my neck, Sir. It wasn’t as painless as I expected, but it was pretty quick, so that was something.”

Angel Bob.

The Doctor had forgotten all about Angel Bob. He was young, and clever, and he was so scared, and she had just walked away and forgotten all about him, as though he’d never even existed.

She could see the look on the faces of the others- the muted horror on River’s, and the more pronounced look of it on her mother’s, as well as the well-managed grief of the soldiers who’d fought with him. They were all ghosts, now. Amy, River, the soldiers. All blown away like smoke on the wind.

“If you’re dead how can I be talking to you?” She tried not to think about the genuine interest her former self’s voice held in that moment- a man had just died, and Bowtie was curious about the mechanics.

“You’re not talking to me, Sir. The angel has no voice. It stripped my cerebral cortex from my body and reanimated a version of my consciousness to communicate with you. Sorry about the confusion.”

She tried her absolute best not to think too hard about how conscious the original Bob was at that moment. Had he known what had happened to him? Had he felt the angels turn him into their puppet?

She watched as Bowtie told them all to run- to run into the maze of weeping angels with no plan, and to just trust him, and she watched as he stopped behind to defend himself.

“Yes, I called you an idiot, and I’m sorry-“ He didn’t sound sorry at all, but the Doctor in her glass cage watching it play out certainly was, “But I couldn’t have saved your men.”

“I know that, Sir. And when you’ve flown off in your little blue box, I’ll explain that to their families.”

She watched, sick to her stomach, as Bowtie smirked.

 “I’ll have to tell his mother.”

Seeing Rose, even after all this time, was still painful. This was only the second day they’d met, back before they’d travelled together.  Before she’d managed to soften the war ravaged Doctor standing in front of her now.

The Ears had been one of her shortest lived, and angriest faces, and the ways he’d treated people were downright cruel at times. She saw the questioning look he gave Rose, clueless in the face of Mickey’s apparent demise, and why she’d be at all upset.

Why Rose hadn’t walked away then and there would forever be a mystery to the Doctor. She’d never once deserved that kind of love.

“Mickey” I’ll have to tell his mother he’s dead, and you just went and forgot him, again! You were right, you are alien.”

Alien didn’t have to mean cruel, though. So why did callousness seem to come so easily to her? Maybe it was just the sheer amount of death she’d witnessed, but it still hurt to see. She had to keep reminding herself that this death, at least, hadn’t been real- that Mickey was alive and living on earth, raising a son with his dad’s eyes and his mum’s brains who’d have the whole world talking in a few years.

At least it was a good reminder of why she was staying away from August Smith.

“Look, if I did forget some kid called Mickey-“

“Yeah, he’s not a kid-“

The Ears cut Rose off before she could keep speaking, but the Doctor watching from the side-lines found herself nodding in agreement. Rose was right. Of course Rose was right.

“It’s because I’m busy trying to save the life of every stupid ape blundering about on top of this planet! Alright?”

“Alright!”

“Yes, it is!” Ears sounded insufferably smug.

The Doctor shook her head in disgust, glancing at Rose and quietly muttering, “Why did you ever put up with me?”

 “Look out!”

It was another voice she hadn’t heard in a long time, and one she’d frankly been dreading hearing. If Nyssa was here she had a good idea of what she was about to see. She saw the cybermen coming up behind her back, while her fifth-self fumbled with the controls. It was as good as useless.

A cyberman lumbered up behind her, and her past-self ignored it completely, leaving Nyssa to have to shoot it down with a discarded cyberweapon. She was once again saved by a more competent friend, and her own hypocrisy when it came to guns.

She wasn’t sure she’d ever even thanked Nyssa for saving her life.

“I must save Adric!”

Stuck in the corner, exhausted and emotionally drained, the Doctor was just glad that, while she was having to watch another of her failures, this version of herself was at the very least trying.

“Look!”

“Adric.”

The screen came to life, and the Doctor tried to shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to watch, but of course it didn’t work- in her dreams she wouldn’t be allowed to block out the parts she didn’t want to see. The only consolation was that she wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes.

She’d always been cowardly like that.

She watched as the ship began to come apart- watched as Tegan and Nyssa held each other, and Celery just stood there gawping like a fish who couldn’t believe his own incompetence.

She still remembered that feeling- like someone had clawed the hearts out of her chest and shown them to her. Back then, it’d been such a long time since she’d really lost someone that she wasn’t used to the pain of it anymore.

When had she become careless enough that death just bounced off of her?

 It only took ten days of reliving her worst moments before the Doctor had begun actively fighting sleep. Prison, at least, was a safe enough place to do it. She’d pace her cell at night to keep herself from drifting off- reciting books she knew by heart, or just talking to herself to keep her eyes from closing for too long. During the day, she’d do the same- chatting to the other prisoners, pacing, never letting herself remain still for fear of finally giving into the exhaustion which seemed to have seeped into her bones.

Of course, even a Time Lord (if she could even call herself one anymore), couldn’t stay awake forever. After weeks of forcing her eyes to stay open, she’d eventually collapse, usually when she was in her cell, if she was lucky, and she’d endure another walkthrough her past- too exhausted to even wake up- before being woken by the prison systems to begin all over again.

After a while she’d slip into waking dreams, too exhausted to even think straight. She’d sit in her cell, nutrient block in hand, while her sleep deprived mind played out snippets of her life, a few seconds at a time, while she fought to wake up enough to dismiss the visions.

 At first, when she next saw herself- sitting on a bench, eating chips, she thought maybe this was just her mind crying out for some real food. It was easy to forget the specifics of what had been discussed all those years before, after twenty years sitting in a cell.

“She scares me.” Came Bill’s voice from next to the older-Doctor, quiet in its honesty. Admitting you were scared was something so few people ever did- least of all when they were around the Doctor, and being brave was so important, but Bill had never been afraid to admit it to her. She’d been strong like that. “Like. She really scares me.”

As much as she still, after all this time, wanted the Master to be everything she knew he could be, it was hard to deny how right Bill had been to be afraid. After all- it was the Master who’d handed her over to the cybermen, in the end, just not the version she’d feared.

“Okay. Just, promise me one thing, yeah? Just promise you won’t get me killed.”

“I can’t promise you that!” Eyebrows had laughed at her, as though her concerns were something flippant. As though her fear was something worth laughing at. He’d been right, in the end, he hadn’t been able to keep Bill alive, but it was horrible looking back at it now.

The Doctor had managed to shock herself back into reality, but she hadn’t been able to shake the self-contempt that settled in her hearts.

 Most of the time, those waking nightmares came while she was stuck sitting around, waiting for the time to come that she’d be allowed out into her tiny cube of the exercise yard, just for something to break up the routine of sitting alone, and thinking about death.

 “I keep remembering all the people I’ve killed. Every day I think of more. Being bad- Being bad drowned that out. I didn’t know I even knew their names. You didn’t tell me about this bit.”

“I’m sorry, but this is good.”

“Okay.”

The Doctor watched herself hold her self-ascribed goodness over her oldest friend, and couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t what had driven the Master to the depths of madness he’d displayed on Gallifrey. She might have lorded it as a good thing back then, but she was quickly learning the types of things that isolation, imprisonment, and guilt could do to the mind. If she got out of prison with her sanity, she’d count it a blessing.

 She’d dreamt about Missy a lot, after a while. The longer she stayed locked up, the more her guild-addled mind saw fit to remind her of her stint as jailor.

On those nights she was too exhausted to keep her eyes open, the Doctor saw herself through the glass again. It was her twelfth face- well, the twelfth she remembered- the one with the angry eyebrows and the trusting nature. She saw Missy standing there, looking more dishevelled than she had before the vault, standing so close to the forcefield that it was rippling. She looked strangely earnest despite the pantomime of madness she put o- as though she was proud of herself for actually helping.

She watched as Eyebrows shoved Bill back away from Missy, not seeming to care much about how what had just transpired had clearly affected her. She’d never been good enough for Bill- the kind, inquisitive girl who’d gone out of her way to buy the Doctor Christmas presents and who’d called her grandad, and who she’d promised she wouldn’t get killed. Bill who had been so strong, who had fought off the monks and the cybermen by sheer force of will. Bill who’d deserved so much more than what the Doctor had given to her.

She watched Eyebrows walk up to that rippling forcefield, and look his oldest friend in the eyes like she was still the monster she pretended to be.

“Even if that was the truth the fact that you’re suggesting it shows that there’s been no change. No hope. No point.”

Eyebrows sounded angry, and the Doctor winced slightly at that. How was the Master ever supposed to change with the Doctor constantly telling her that her progress meant nothing? Was that why she’d given up in the end? It had to be easier to go back to what you’d known before rather than being constantly strung along and put down by someone who had promised to help you become better.

Missy’s face contorted for a moment. The Doctor left her here for months, all alone in this dusty room with almost nothing, and then he’d turned up just to talk to her like this? Her Twelfth face was one of the few she’d always thought of as good- or, if not good, at least kind. Sandshoes had been angry from the war and from everything he’d lost, but Eyebrows had tried so hard to be kind. Was this really what her version of kind did to people?

After her own stint in prison, leaving Missy trapped like this for so long was beginning to seem more and more cruel. She’d wanted to help people, she really had, but it wasn’t as though her friend had come to her and asked. She’d saved her, and then abused that power, keeping her prisoner for decades to try and make her into something she’d never tried to be. It was hard, knowing what had later become of the Master, not to wonder what all that time in the vault had done to their already fragile mental state.  How much had she contributed to his snapping and destroying their home?

Looking at it like that how was the Doctor any better than the Jadoon? And how was Missy running off with the Master much different from her running with Jac They’d both been escaping jailors who kept them confined alone for long enough to drive them half-mad.

“We don’t sacrifice people.” The scene playing out in front of her was hardly easy, but the Doctor laughed anyway, because the irony of that wasn’t lost on her. She’d let so many people die for her as Rainbows that Eyebrows’ words felt hollow. “It’s wrong because it’s easy.”

“Back in the day I’d burn an entire city to the ground just to see the pretty shapes the smoke made. I’m sorry your plus one doesn’t get a happy ending, but like it or not I just saved this world because I want to change.”

There was a forced lightness to Missy’s voice, almost undetectable unless you really knew her well- and the Doctor knew her better than anybody. It’d been a cry for help, of sorts- she’d wanted her friend back, and Eyebrows had ignored her. She’d saved the world- the Doctor would have likely spent months searching for infected water supplies and food chains following up his own stupid theories, and Missy had told him the answer freely, and without reward. She’d saved the world and he’d told her there was no hope for her- no wonder she’d run.

“Your version of good is not absolute.” She continued, her fingers pushing slightly against the forcefield now. The Doctor watched it ripple from behind he own glass patrician, and she knew the look in Missy’s eyes far too well. If that forcefield had been replaced with glowing blue bars it could have been her in her own cell. At least during her imprisonment she hadn’t had to live with the knowledge that her oldest friend was her jailor. “It’s vain, arrogant, and sentimental.”

Vain, arrogant and sentimental.

She always had said the Master knew her soul a little too well.

 Once the spectre of death faded, somewhat, it was her own shortcomings her subconscious decided to force onto her. Those moments when she’d forced others into complying with what she’d wanted- as though that was always her decision to make.

She was the Doctor, after all. Who would ever dare to question her whims as anything less than genius?

 “You know you can fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hot-wiring the fragment links and superseding the binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary-“

Not this. Not Donna. How was this fair? At least with Jenny she hadn’t seen the gunman. She could see it in her past-self’s face that he knew this was killing her, and he was just standing there like an idiot, watching it happen. He could have stepped in sooner.

“I’m fine.” Donna was showing off that big grin, back to talking a mile-a-minute. The Doctor had always wondered if on some level she knew what this would do. She had all of that knowledge inside her head, it must have been somewhere in her all along that she’d become an impossible thing.

She didn’t pound on the glass or scream this time, watching her own past unfold with her hand pressed up against it. She mouthed I’m sorry, but no sound came out.

“I bet he’s great, Charlie Chaplin. Shall we do that? Shall we go see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chester. Charlie Brown- no he’s fiction-“ She watched as Donna pranced around, playing with the console and the phone. This wasn’t quite Donna- not really. This Donna was far too Doctor- maybe that was why she found it so unsettling, seeing her charming, funny, irreverent friend talking like someone she hated.

“Friction, fiction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton-“ Donna cut off with a gasp, and the Doctor wanted to slap Sandshoes for leaving her in this state. She had to be scared, and he wasn’t even bothering to explain it to her. Of course, with that much of the Doctor’s mind burning through her own, Donna had probably understood it all already, but there was still something to be said for compassion in a situation as horrific as this one.

“I was gonna be with you forever.” The sadness in Donna’s eyes spoke volumes. She’d trusted the Doctor so much, had so much planned for them, and it was all the Doctor’s fault.

If her hearts hadn’t already shattered they did now. Nobody ever stayed with her forever- not really. Even if she wanted them to, she’d always destroy them before they got a chance.

She was on the floor, kneeling on the dirty floor of a TARDIS she’d long since tried to forget. When had that happened?

“I know.”

She screwed her eyes shut, grateful that this time, at least, she managed to block out the visuals- maybe because this time, the sound of Donna begging for something the Doctor was too selfish to give her was enough. She wouldn’t watch Sandshoes lie to her like that- like he’d lied to Jenny, and to Bob, and to Steven. Pretty words to ease the pain she was about to put her through.

“I can’t go back. Doctor. Please. Please don’t make me go back.”

Listening to her beg wasn’t any easier than watching it. Or living it- especially now she knew just how painful it was to have your memories taken from you. Gallifrey may have erased her path, but she’d run roughshod over her friend’s mind just as carelessly.

“Donna Noble. I am so sorry. But we had the best of times.” Was that supposed to make either of them feel better? She’d been so self-righteous back then. The Doctor opened her eyes again, and regretted it almost immediately, curling in on herself behind her little partition. “Goodbye.”

“No. No! No please! No. No! No!”

 Staying awake proved easier once she’d left prison.

During her incarceration, it had only been the thought of getting home to her fam which had really kept her going, so having Yaz back at her side was a real boost to her mood, which kept those waking nightmares at bay.

The running helped too- adrenaline in her system keeping the more dangerous effects of her sleep-deprivation at bay. Still, it didn’t mean that nights didn’t come where she came down from that high of finally being able to help again, and her tiredness came crashing down on her like a crushing weight.

This time, it came after a particularly harsh day.

She was getting sloppy in her exhausted state, and that sloppiness had put Yaz in far greater danger than she’d ever wanted to risk again. She’d told herself, that after the cybermen, and the daleks, she’d be more careful, but then all of a sudden there they were, stuck in a trap she should have been able to spot, if she was thinking clearly.

They’d been held hostage for longer than she was willing to admit- some scrapper who was very keen on getting hold of the TARDIS- not that he really knew what it was or what significance it held. No, for this man the greatest ship in the universe was worth some spare parts, and whatever the scrap value of its base components was.

They’d gotten out, in the end, but it wasn’t as though she could even take credit for that- it was quick thinking on Yaz’s part which had distracted their attacker for long enough for them to get to the TARDIS. As impressive as it was, it was still terrifying to see Yaz be so like her in the way she acted. The last person who’d wanted to be the Doctor had gotten killed trying to do so.

She’d hardly said a word once they returned to the ship, trying her best to ignore the furtive looks of concern she kept getting. She slipped off to the library alone when Yaz went to make a cup of tea, getting there on her fourth attempt (since the TARDIS seemed insistent on placing her room behind every door she opened), and counting on the near-infinite nature of the TARDIS rooms to hide her for a while. She needed a little space while she cleared her head and tried to get rid of some of the overwhelming guilt that was eating her up inside.

She could have gotten Yaz killed today with her carelessness. If Yaz wasn’t as good as she was, she would have gotten them both killed.

No matter what horrors from her past her brain decided to drudge up, a world without Yaz was still a terrifying thought.

 “I’m not asking you for a promise. I’m giving you an order.”

She really didn’t want to see this.

The Doctor had not gotten her memories back just so she could watch Clara Oswald face the raven all over again. Even in prison her mind hadn’t been cruel enough to remind her of that particular death. She remembered the others- Oswin, and the governess she’d met in London, and a hundred other Clara’s who’d died to save her- but this one had never come up.

Evidently, her subconscious thought she needed a reminder of what happened when she took her eyes off things for a moment too long.

“You will not insult my memory. There will be no revenge. I will die, and no one else here, or anywhere, will suffer.”

Well there was a promise the Doctor hadn’t managed to keep. She’d tried to tear time itself apart to save Clara, and worst of all, she’d never even known if it succeeded. Testimony didn’t remember whether Clara had lived or died- it’d been taken the moment before the raven hit- before the Doctor had tried to pull her from her timeline. She had no memory of anything that’d happened with Clara after this, and while she knew they’d been together on Gallifrey, she didn’t know how permanent that salvation might be, or what about it had taken her memories to begin with.

“What about me?” Eyebrows asked, and the Doctor who was watching him managed a harsh, bitter laugh. Clara was dying, and as usual her former self was there to be selfish and make her comfort him.

“If there was something I could do about that I would. I guess we’ll both just need to be brave.”

“Clara-“ He was trying to argue again, but all at once she was pulling him into a hug, and looking at the desperation of it from the outside, the Doctor just knew that Clara was trying to pull some comfort from it too, since Eyebrows hadn’t been offering her any.

She’d been human, and she’d been dying, and she’d been scared, but she’d forced herself to be brave so her friend didn’t have to be.

Looking back on it, Clara had always been so much stronger than the Doctor had ever been.

“Don’t run.” It had to be the first time she’d ever said that to one of her friends in a bad spot. “Stay with me.” Eyebrows was practically begging her now. Worse than that, the Doctor knew that if she had to go back and do it again, she wouldn’t be any stronger.

“Nah.” She could see how heard Clara was working to keep her tone casual, not wanting to hurt the Doctor any more than this whole thing already would. It was heart breaking, really, knowing that even in her final moments she’d had to suppress her own feelings to try and save her pain. “You stay here. In the end everybody does this alone.”

She shouldn’t have had to do it alone.

“Clara-“ Eyebrows tried again, and if the Doctor wasn’t stuck in her self-imposed cell, she might have hit him. This was his last chance- why couldn’t he say something to her? Why couldn’t he make sure that she died knowing how deeply she was loved.

“This is as brave as I know how to be. I know it’s gonna hurt you but- please. Be a little proud of me?”

There was a hopeful note to Clara’s tone despite everything, and in the end that was what really broke the Doctor. Her hand was pressed against the glass, desperate to say something, but unable to- the sands of time separated them more surely than the glass ever could.

“Always.” She promised, because if Eyebrows wouldn’t say it, then this new Doctor would. “I’m always gonna be proud of you.”

Clara turned away from her, and walked towards her grave.

 “No no no no…”

The Doctor’s eyes blinked open, giving her a hazy view of the warm purple walls of the TARDIS library. She was curled up in one of the armchairs near the fire, her eyes still heavy with sleep. How long had it been since she’d last slept? Weeks, at least. Maybe months. And since she’d last slept properly? Well that had been decades.

Her hands ached from where she’d been clutching onto the arms of the chair.

Her eyes were already falling closed again, too exhausted to even force herself to stay awake.

 “If you die here it’ll mean I never even met you.”

She’d never really appreciated how true that statement was. Without the Doctor blundering through her mother’s life, River Song would never have existed. Melody Williams (would she even have been called Melody, with the paradox of her name?) would have grown up safe and happy, the human daughter of the journalist and the nurse. She’d have had a normal life. She’d have been raised by loving parents, and have had a happy childhood, and maybe even brothers and sisters- maybe she’d have still written books, or taught archelogy, and had a much happier marriage than theirs had been.

Melody Pond would have been so much better off if she had never met the Doctor.

“Time can be rewritten.” For once, she seemed to be in agreement with Sandshoes. He was selfish, but at least he’d have been doing her a favour.

“Not those times. Not one line. Don't you dare. It's okay. It's okay. It's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You and me, time and space. You watch us run.”

Live great lives. That’s what she’d told her fam. If anyone had lived up to that, and lived a great life despite the Doctor’s meddling, it had been River Song. They’d had some amazing times, saved so many people, so many planets. There were stars out there still burning because River Song had been there to save them.

If the Doctor had found a better way around getting the people out of there, there might have been so many more.

The computer counting down the seconds left of her life in the background wasn’t helping the way that the Doctor’s hearts were pounding. She was crying, now- she wasn’t sure when that had begun.

From her cell, she watched Sandshoes babble on about his guilt- his suspicions, being expertly put down by River. She was so used to shutting him up when he was talking about things he didn’t know anything about- she could really use that, right now.

She should have saved her.

“Hush now. Spoilers…”

River smiled, and the Doctor lunged at the glass in front of her, shouting words that even she could barely comprehend. She was still clawing desperately at the glass when the room flashed bright white.

 The Time Lord didn’t even fully wake that time, despite having thrown herself onto the floor at some point during her anguish. She was barely drawn out of her nightmares for a moment, a noise that sounded awfully like a whimper escaping her. Her eyes were shut too-tightly, and she had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, fingernails digging into her arms as though that would protect her from the horrors of her own mind.

 “Who decides they’re so unimportant? You?”

The Doctor knew where she was this time without even looking up. Somehow, this scared her even more. She wasn’t watching a loved one die, she was watching her own stupid power-play blow up in her face. This hadn’t been a mercy mission, it’d been her trying to prove to the whole Universe that the Doctor had power over all.

“For a long time now I thought I was just a survivor, but I’m not. I’m the winner- that’s who I am. The Time Lord victorious.”

“And there’s no one to stop you?”

“No.”

“This is wrong, Doctor. I don’t care who you are. The Time Lord victorious is wrong.”

Captain Adelaide. She’d been so brilliant- she’d understood more about this than her idiot younger self ever could. The Doctor just about managed to give her a smile from behind her glass wall before she resumed staring at Sandshoes in disgust.

“That’s for me to decide. Now, you better get home.”

It was chilling. Watching her old face shift so quickly. Darkness turned cocky in an instant as he pointed his sonic at the door. Unlike with the other dreams, The Doctor wasn’t shouting. She didn’t try to say a word, just watched on with self-loathing and dread weighing down her hearts. A silent spectator of her darkest moment since the Time War.

Sandshoes smirked at that brave, doomed woman, challenging her to argue her fate further. He’d set himself up as a self-styled God. “Oh it’s all locked up- you’ve been away. Still, that’s easy.”

“Is there nothing you can’t do?”

“Not anymore.”

She watched as the great Time Lord Victorious turned his back on Adelaide. She watched as the captain drew her gun. She braced herself for that flash of blue light and the thud of a body hitting the floor.

“Don’t do it, Adelaide.” She was talking to nobody, but she still couldn’t help herself trying to butt in- trying to fix the damage she hadn’t noticed until it was too late. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t-“

 “Doctor?”

A hand on her shoulder drew her out of there before she had to watch that, jolting her awake. She came to, immediately caught off guard by the shadow of someone standing over her, and the scent of a familiar perfume hitting her. It took her a moment or so to place it, but when she did her hearts picked up a little. Yaz. Brilliant, wonderful, human Yaz who’d probably just heard her rambling all sorts of scary nonsense in her sleep.

“Doctor are you alright?”

The Doctor swallowed a little too hard and sat up quickly enough to make her head spin, forcing a familiar, false grin to spread across her face. Her body was aching from sleeping on the wooden floor, and she was pretty sure she was going to be bruised from where she’d fallen off the chair.

“Yaz! Yasmin Khan- Sorry, must have nodded off-“ Her voice sounded a little false even to her own ears, and she did her best to pass it off with a yawn.

“Sorry, just, you were talkin’ in your sleep an’ I thought-“ Yaz looked a little sheepish about waking her, and her eyes were full of concern.

“Oh, yeah. Sorry- Time Lord. Vivid dreams- I was…” She forced another yawn, trying to give herself time to think of a lie. “Did I ever tell you about the time I met a real life siren on a pirate ship? That was a good one, that. Dream about that one a lot. M’fine, though. Really.”

Yaz shot her a look that showed she didn’t believe the Doctor for a moment. There was a beats pause, before she exploded

“Are you kiddin’ me?! You’re not ‘fine’!” She drew air quotes around that last word, straightening up, to stand over the Doctor, showing she was serious.

“I’m-“

“I swear if you say ‘fine’ I’m gonna-”

The Doctor shut her mouth before Yaz could finish the threat.

There was a tense moment, almost like a standoff between the two of them, before Yasmin’s hard eyes softened, and she bent down to help the Doctor to her feet.

“I’m worried about y’.”

Suppressing her initial urge to insist that she was fine, the Doctor bit her lip.

“You shouldn’t be.” She eventually managed.

“When was the last time ‘y slept?” Yaz asked.

“About a minute ago.” The Doctor tried to make a joke. Yaz laughed weakly.

“Before that.” She clarified, glancing at the floor where she’d found the doctor collapsed.

“…I don’t remember.” The Doctor admitted.

Yaz sucked in a surprised breath through clenched teeth.

“Doctor-“

“I’m not human. I don’t need as much sleep as you lot.”

Raising an eyebrow, Yaz gave her another of those easy, disbelieving looks. “And that’s why I found you passed out on the floor cryin’?”

The Doctor blinked, bringing her hand up to her face. Sure enough, she’d been crying- she hadn’t even realised. Waking up with tears in her eyes was just normal by now.

“What’s so bad that it’s keepin’ you up?” Yaz leant forwards, taking one of the Doctor’s hands in both of her own. “Please don’t lie to me.”

There was an earnestness in her eyes that reminded the Doctor of all the people she’d loved most. Rose, Amy, River, Clara. Even Koschei. She’d always liked the people who could be honest with her the best- she needed honest people to stop her tearing herself apart and taking everyone else with her.

“I’ve lost a lot of people, Yaz.” She said, resigned note in her voice. “You saw Gallifrey. My home world is gone, my wife is gone, my children are gone, my granddaughter is gone. I’ve lost most of my friends, and- since Gallifrey, I can’t block them out anymore. I see them die every night.”

All at once, Yaz leaned forwards, just like Clara had in her dream, wrapping her arms tightly around the Doctor, holding her grounded to the spot. Even that brief contact allowed some of the tension in the Doctor’s body to loosen, her shoulder’s slumping as she leant into the contact.

“’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

Yaz pulled herself back from the hug, keeping her hands firmly on the Doctor’s arms, so she could ground her while looking her in the eyes.

“Have you got a bedroom on board?” She asked.

“Somewhere. How come?”

Yaz smiled, “Because you’ve gotta sleep sometime, and I think it’s probably comfier than the floor.” She let one of her hands fall, the other moving up to brush the hair out of the Doctor’s eyes. “Come on.”

She caught Yaz’s wrist in her hand, suddenly looking nervous. She was really worried where her subconscious would go from what had to be one of the worst things she’d ever done. “I don’t wanna. Not yet.”  

“Y’ need to.” Yaz insisted, still trying her best to smile. The Doctor recognised that look from how often she herself wore it- that false-cheer that just barely covered the worry. “I promise I’ll sit with y’ the whole time- I can wake you up if you start makin’ noise.”

The Doctor thought about that for a minute. It’d certainly been easier to deal with the dream about Adelaide since she’d been pulled out of it before she actually had to hear the shot go off. If Yaz could pull her out of the bad moments before she had to see anything too bad- Maybe it would let the Doctor get a bit of sleep. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, and it didn’t seem as though it would last too long, but- it was an infinitely better one than her current plan of depriving herself of sleep until she could hardly stand.

“You really wouldn’t mind?” She eventually asked, her fingers still resting around Yaz’s wrist, though she wasn’t trying to use them to push her away any more.

“I love you. Let me take care of you, for once.”

There was another slight pause, before the Doctor let go of her hand, nodding. “Okay.”

Yaz let out a relieved breath. “Thank you.”

“For what?” The Doctor turned to her, genuine confusion etched across her features.

Yaz took another step closer, cupping the Doctor’s face in one hand, and giving her the most genuine smile either of them had shared since they’d reunited. “For letting me in.”

[lizzy-bennet]

An Eternity of Unspoken Things Fandom: Doctor Who Pairing: Whouffaldi Length: 2,500 words Rating: G Also on Ao3

Summary:

“Everything you’re about to say I already know,” Clara tells him on trap street. “Don’t say it now.”

So the Doctor doesn’t, and the words he never says get buried like a seed deep down in his chest, and they blossom there, blooming against his ribcage like roses, their thorns piercing his skin, and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts.

Which is why, in all those billions of years he’s trapped in his confession dial, sometimes, (when the stars change or when her painted portrait weathers yet again with age or he finds himself drowning with grief and rage), he’ll try to say those unsaid words to the Clara in the TARDIS in his mind.

He loves Clara.

This is a fact the Doctor knows, like how he knows that daylight lasts on Filea IV for exactly fifty-three minutes, or that the rain on New Saturn sounds like a song.

It’s just a simple thing. An obvious, everyday notion. The TARDIS travels in time and space, his two hearts beat, and he loves Clara Oswald.

But he doesn’t say it.

# “Everything you’re about to say I already know,” Clara tells him on trap street. “Don’t say it now.” Outside, the raven is waiting, but here, she pulls him into a hug and he stands there in her embrace, feeling the weight of her arms around him, like she is his anchor, holding him steady in a world that’s nothing but a stormy sea.

But then all too soon, her arms unwind from around his neck and his anchor leaves him.

His anchor dies.

And all he can think is:

He didn’t get to say it.

# He is in his confession dial, and every day he slams his fist into the wall and every day he burns himself up and leaves blood on the stairs while grief eats away at his bones because Clara’s in his mind but she’s not in the world. And then there are those words, the words he never got to say. They got buried like a seed deep down in his chest, and now they blossom there, blooming against his ribcage like roses, their thorns piercing his skin, and it hurts and it hurts and it hurts.

Which is why, when he’s at his weakest, when the stars change or when her painted portrait weathers yet again with age or he finds himself drowning with grief and rage, he thinks about saying those words to the Clara in the TARDIS in his mind.

It never quite works out.

# Once upon a time (so, so, so very long ago now) he stood in an arena, with a guitar in his hands and sunglasses slipping down his nose, and stared at the (wonderful, beautiful, impossible) girl standing in front of him and said: “When do I not see you?”

And he meant it then and he still means it now because it’s true. It’s true, it’s true, it’s true.

“I see you,” he says again, and it’s slightly different than the three little words his two hearts beat out, but it still has the same meaning.

He’s spent at least a thousand years inside his confession dial and yet Clara’s still as clear as day to him. There was once a time - when he had a different, boyish face - when he couldn’t see her. He had thought she was a trick or a trap, a ghost or a riddle. And he had been wrong, she was just a girl, an ordinary girl with an extraordinary heart and he had been blind. So when that old body died in golden flames and this new body was born, he’d made sure it was born with the promise that he would always, always, always see her.

He’s never broken that promise.

He thinks maybe he should say this to the Clara mirage in his mind. That he should tell her what he never told the real Clara on trap street, confess what he’s kept locked up tightly. The words wait there, beneath his breastbone, wanting and waiting to be said.

But he’s not that sort of man, not really. He’ll have to let her know how he feels the long way around.

So what he says out loud is:

“There is an emperor, and he asks the shepard’s boy, ‘How many seconds in eternity?’”

# “I figured out it was you, you know,” he tells his imaginary Clara in his imaginary TARDIS. (He’s not entirely sure how many centuries it’s been since he’s started this conversation with her. It’s hard to keep track.)

“You were the voice in my dreams, when I was a child in that barn on Gallifrey. You were the one whispering those words in my mind. Did you think I’d never put two and two together?” Clara raises an eyebrow. She has just as much sass as the original, this mental copy of Clara, always ready to cut him down to size.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

(Stars, he misses her.)

“Well,“ she says, “it did take you this long.”

He exhales a laugh and closes his eyes. He still remembers her soft whisper in the night; her voice curling out from the darkness like music, speaking words that’d get woven into his dreams and sewn into the idea behind the name he calls himself.

He’s always loved her, he thinks. Right from his very first face.

But he doesn’t say it.

“’Fear is a superpower,’” he says instead, repeating her exact words from that night. “‘Fear can bring us together, fear can bring you home.’ And that’s exactly what I’m going to do, Clara. I’m going to bring you home. I swear it.”

(He dies with that promise on his lips, and he comes back to life with it written into his bones.)

# “Look at you, with your eyes and your never giving up and your anger and your kindness,” he’d told her one time, when she was by his side and breathing, when they were somewhere back in history. “One day, the memory of that will hurt so much that I won’t be able to breathe, and I’ll do what I always do. I’ll get in my box and I’ll run and I’ll run.”

And he’d been right back then, but he’d also been wrong. Because it’s true that the pain of his grief is gut-wrenching, true that it’s blinding and leaves him breathless. But instead of running, he’s staying. He’s staying here in this nightmare, for Clara. Because tasting death every day for billions upon billions of years all in the hope of seeing her again is nowhere near as frightening as the idea of running and dealing with the fact that she is gone and he cannot get her back. He wonders if Clara ever knew how far he’d go for her, and even more than that, he wonders if he should just say it all now, out loud, so the words can be out there in the world.

But it’s like he’s on the edge of a cliff, tips of his shoes right over the precipice, and he just can’t jump. So he doesn’t say those things. Instead, he continues to tell her the story he never finished from before.

“And the shepard’s boy says, ‘There is a mountain of pure diamond…’”

# “Have I ever told you the story of the shepard’s boy?” he asks her. Clara looks at him sadly.

“Yes,” she whispers, “you have.”

(Of course he has. He has every day for thousands and thousands years.) “I’ll tell you another story then,” he decides.

“Doctor,” she says gently, “you’re dying.”

He ignores her.

“There is a story,” he continues, “about how the sun loved the moon so much, he died every night just to let her breathe.”

He sighs, shuts his eyes, feels the pain pulsing through his mind.

“I suppose, Clara, what I’m trying to say is…” he’s only got seconds left, ticking away. “What I’m trying to say is…”

The seconds slip away, he closes his eyes, and as he dies, he thinks:

I understand the sun.

# He’s dying. Again.

He thinks it might be for the five-hundred-thousandth time. And he’s not sure he can go through everything again. All the pain, all the dying, and the way his mind screams and his skin bleeds. He is so, so tired. How easy it would be, he thinks, to just stop. To just sleep.

But he can’t sleep, not peacefully, not yet, not until he tells Clara what he never did.

Which is why he finds himself back in his mental storm room, staring at her. Her back is to him, and there is white chalk in her hand and a blackboard in front of her bearing the sentence, “How are you going to win?” and for once, he ignores it. He is too tired to strategize, too weak to spend the rest of his life here in his mental TARDIS storm room, trying to think his way out of this impossible maze. He just wants her to listen.

“Clara,” he says quietly, as he feels his breath getting shallower, the space between his two heartbeats getting longer, “I’ve got to tell you something before I die again, before it’s too late.” But Clara isn’t interested, she just taps those familiar words on the board again. How are you going to win?

“This is important, Clara.”

She shakes her head, a motion that sends her dark hair flying around her shoulders, making it look like raven feathers, and he inhales sharply at the sight, his hearts twisting painfully in his chest.

“No, Doctor,” Clara says, and she still won’t turn to face him, won’t let him say what he needs to so he can go in peace. “What’s important is this: How are you going to win?”

“You don’t understand, Clara,” he says, and he hears the frustration in his voice, hears an almost feral sort of desperation there too. “Maybe this is how I win. Maybe it’s by finally, finally telling you what I should’ve told you before. Now, before I fade away.”

He loves her, loves her like she is the sun and the moon and then stars. Loves her so much that it hurts, hurts so badly he cannot breathe. And perhaps this is what victory is, what winning feels like: getting to say these words to at least one Clara, even if it’s not the one that counts.

“Look, Clara - “

She still won’t face him, so he reaches for her then, trying to take her shoulders, spin her around to face him, to listen just for once, but the Clara in his mind slips through his fingers like smoke, and he’s left holding a handful of air as he realizes once again that she is not there, not really, not in the way she should be.

He shuts his eyes, sinks down to the floor, puts his head in his hands, and thinks:

She’s right. She’s always, always right. What’s important is that he win. And then he’ll tell her everything after.

# It’s been four billion years, he thinks as he stares at the sky. Maybe, maybe almost four-and-a-half billion. So the stars have changed, the constellations been broken and reformed, and every star is unrecognizable. Every star except for her.

You’re my North Star, Clara Oswald, he thinks silently as he looks at her. You’re always going to be guiding me home.

And out loud he says, “Not much longer now.” # This is it. He knows it. He can feel it in his bones and in the beat of his hearts and in the steady way he breathes. All the wall needs is one more punch. Just one more. He can see the daylight coming through it already, all golden and bright and promising that tomorrow will come and tomorrow will be better.

The Clara in the TARDIS in his mind takes his hand in hers for the very last time. “‘And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed,’” she says, finishing the story he started oh so very long ago. “Today’s the day. First second of eternity. Got anything to say to that, Doctor?”

He glances over at her. There are so many things he aches to tell her, so many things he wants her to understand. But they’re close to the finish line now. So, so close.

So he simply says:

“See you on the other side, Clara Oswald.” And for the first time in what feels like an eternity, he smiles.

# Clara, Clara, Clara. For all those years, her name was like a never-ending melody, always winding its way through the back of his mind, and now she is here, with him. They are kneeling together, side by side, in the cloisters on Gallifrey, darkness wrapped around them like the night.

And the universe, well, the universe is burning. Time is fractured and stars are dying and the universe is burning, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all, because he’s got her back. Clara - his Clara - is there beside him, and that is all that matters.

He’d do anything for her.

(No, the back of his mind corrects him, he’d do everything.)

”What is it?” Clara asks (and oh, how good it feels to hear her voice out loud and outside his mind). “What were you bargaining for in that confession dial?” He nearly laughs at that. He’s died every day for a sliver of eternity; broken each of his precious, pithy rules; killed a man (and perhaps, he thinks idly, time itself); and the notion that he’d do all that for anything less than her is incomprehensible.

He looks up, and he expects Clara to be teasing him or testing him, but he’s surprised to see that she is not. She is serious, her eyes studying him, waiting for an answer. He falters for a second, feeling lost as his light blue eyes search her questioning dark brown ones.

“What do you think?” he asks.

She shakes her head, and he frowns, because Clara is clever. So, so very clever. But she can’t see it. Why can’t she see it? “You,” he tells her, like the answer is as simple to him as breathing, as obvious as the moon in the sky. He can’t imagine a universe where he wouldn’t die every day for her. “I had to find a way to save you.”

He can’t fathom his words being a total surprise to anyone. (It’s obvious, isn’t it? he thinks. Obvious he’d go this far - farther, even - for her.) But Clara sits there, speechless and stunned by his words. Then she blinks, inhales sharply (she needn’t, her lungs no longer need air, but muscle memory is there), and says, “l have something I need to say.”

So does he. He’s filled with sentences he never said, with words he’s held inside for longer than stars have been alive.

But he can’t say them, not now, not when they’re so close to escaping, “We don’t have time.” “No, my time is up, Doctor, between one heartbeat and the last is all the time I have,” Clara says. Her fingers curl around his wrist, and he is struck once again with the sensation that she is his anchor, holding him steady in the eye of the storm. And slowly, under her touch, he stills, letting his anchor stabilize him.

“People like me and you, we should say things to one other,” she tells him. “And I’m going to say them now.”

And, finally, after four-and-a-half billion years…

So does he.

[tenroseforeverandever]

Dear Father Christmas... Chapter 22: December 24, 2037

MASTERPOST

Characters:  Tentoo; Rose Tyler; Jackie Tyler; Pete Tyler; Tony Tyler; OC Hope Tyler-Noble; OC Charlotte Tyler-Noble; OC Wilfred Tyler-Noble; OC Therin Thomson; Javic Thane; Gray Thane; Tianza; the TARDIS

Rated: Teen

Tags: Family!Fic; Kid!Fic; Pete’s World; Letters to Santa; Christmas Fic; Family; Fluff; Hurt/Comfort; Angst; Romance; Love; gun violence; violence resulting in death; life-threatening injury; life threatening situations; life threatening illness; original characters

Summary: When Rose Tyler was little, she always wrote a Christmas wish list to Father Christmas. As she grew older, the wish list became more of a letter to someone she could confide in once a year, but she fell out of the habit somewhere along the way. Now, as a new mum, celebrating her daughter’s first Christmas, Rose takes up writing her Christmas letter to Father Christmas once again.

Rose’s Christmas letters are excerpts from her life with her beloved Tentoo and their children in Pete’s World, written once a year, for each of 31 years.

Chapter Summary: As much as Rose loves her Doctor, sometimes his fears, preconceptions, and prejudices result in a stubborn and obstinate attitude, but when Wilfred presents him with an extraordinary Christmas gift, the Doctor is given the chance to face his greatest fear head-on.

Notes: Wow! This chapter turned out to be super loooooong. I played around quite a bit with the concepts of Gallifrey and TARDISes. I tried to do some research, and develop a world that made sense given the circumstances I’ve envisioned for this universe. In the end, it is my (only partially informed) imagination that is to blame… for better or for worse. I hope you like where my muse took me.

***Trigger Warning for a near drowning early on in the chapter.

To my betas, @rose–nebula and mrsbertucci: you talked through my visions and concepts with me at length and helped me flesh them out, and you were always there when I called on you in a panic. I hope we managed to create something unique and magical, and that I was able to do it justice. I can’t thank you enough, my dear friends, for your creativity, talent, and patience.

Thanks to @doctorroseprompts for their 31 Days of Ficmas prompts. The prompt I used today was Lights.

Also read at: AO3; FF.net; Teaspoon

December 24th, 2037

Dear Father Christmas,

What a year! It’s been equal parts frustrating and wonderful! And all because my bloody, thick-headed, obstinate, lovable idiot has a lot of trouble getting past his long-standing fears, preconceptions, and prejudices.

It didn’t start out so bad. Me and the Doctor, in the TARDIS (with Snowflake), just as it should be. We’ve had so many brilliant adventures. We did some ambassadorial jobs for Torchwood, but mostly, it’s just been us flying by the seats of our pants all through time and space, finding trouble and doing our best to fix it wherever we go!

We have company sometimes, though. Hope and Gray are settling into their positions on Lunar Base Shepard, and loving it (no real surprise that Gray decided to get a position there, too.) But on their days off, they sometimes join us on our jaunts in the TARDIS. Gray’s quickly learned the ropes. He’s even picked up a few words of Gallifreyan from listening to the Doctor and Hope natter on. I was certainly impressed, even if the Doctor wasn’t. I’ve tried for years to speak and write it. The Doctor started teaching me back in the Prime Universe, and I love the songs; sing them all the time (my own special remixes which irk the Doctor no end!) But I’ve never been fluent. Not properly. The kids all speak it though. The Doctor spoke Gallifreyan to each of them whilst they were still in the womb, and he kept on with it after they were born. He’s so proud of them, and I can feel him positively gushing contentment and joy over our bond, all because he’s able to communicate with his children (and, of course, listen to his wife sing!) in his native language.

But, he didn’t feel that way toward Gray at first, even when the poor boy had just spoken a full sentence in Gallifreyan and managed to optimize some TARDIS manifold or other. Nope! That’s when protective-Dad syndrome kicked in with a vengeance, and all he could think about was “Jack Harkness’ brother” corrupting his daughter. Now admittedly, as much as he’s become a dear friend, Javic Thane is every bit as erm… sexually unrestrained as his counterpart in the Prime Universe. But I have to say, his brother is a very different creature: not at all a flirt (in fact, a bit too serious if I was to find any faults) and any idiot (with the exception of the Biggest Idiot of All…) could see that he’s utterly devoted to Hope. Devoted!

We all just had to ride out Oncoming Daddy-Storm for a few months until we visited Prebvok X-wani. That’s where a certain dafter-on-the-inside mindset had a complete makeover! Hope had requested we go there to collect certain medicinal herbs that grow at the edges of the swamps in the rainy season. I had stayed in the TARDIS because, bloody hell, the rain was bucketing down and it was flipping cold (kinda like Prime-London winters but with more swamps), and I figured I could stay warm and dry and make a nice hot stew for the intrepid adventurers. Gray had happily joined Hope, and so of course the Doctor just had to tag along as well. Blimey, I could feel his possessiveness absolutely bristling in my mind.

Anyway, not half an hour later, our bond went on full Mauve alert: pure panic from the Doctor. It was an agonizing 8.35 minutes (when you’re bonded to someone with time sense it rubs off on you after a while) before the calming green of relief started to trickle through my mind, and at least another ten before they all burst back through the TARDIS doors, covered in muck, and Gray carrying Hope bridal style, following the Doctor into the infirmary.

After making sure Hope’s airway was clear and after doing some dermal regeneration on her ankle, the Doctor looked at Gray and his gratitude practically glowed. He held out his hand to Gray to shake, but ended up pulling him into a full-on Doctor-hug.

I finally heard the whole story as we all sat eating supper in front of the fire, after everyone had cleaned up and changed into cosy jimjams. Hope had jogged on ahead, looking for her herbs, and had tripped on a vine across the path, twisting her ankle, and sending her headfirst into the swamp. It had been a sort of quicksandy material and having basically dived in, however unintentionally, she had disappeared below the surface almost instantaneously. The Doctor had had some rope in his pockets (never leave home without it, Rose Tyler; and thank God for that!) and without hesitation, Gray had tied it around himself while the Doctor tied the other end to a tree. Gray dove straight in there after Hope. It had taken three separate tries to find her, but he finally latched onto her fingertips and then her arm and then he’d signaled the Doctor to pull them up.

“Just goes to show,” (here goes my Doctor impersonation again), “all you need to get across this universe is a hand to hold… weeell, that and a good length of rope. Good man, Gray! Good man!”  And with that, one bit of the Doctor’s pig-headedness had been swapped for something much more rational.

But, Santa, the year was young… Turns out, this year was ripe with opportunities for the Doctor to dig his heels in and act a bit thick. And, as I’ve come to realize (not for the first time) the apple sometimes doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Here’s an example…

So, Hope and Gray weren’t the only ones who travelled with us from time to time. Wilfred was around quite a bit. Javic started to drop by on a regular basis, usually timing it to skive a few hours off work here and there, and filling our days with laughter at his tall tales of his (usually naked) adventures with the Time Agency.

Therin was also a regular visitor, especially over the summer before he started graduate school, and he never failed to be there if he knew Charlie was visiting. The poor baby; he wore his heart on his sleeve, and Charlie (Daddy’s little girl in so many ways for all that she looked like me) was completely oblivious. She sometimes flirted and held his hand, but she never once let on that Therin was anything more to her than her best mate. And I don’t think she had any clue he felt any differently. Oblivious! And oh, Santa, my heart broke for that boy. I knew everything he was feeling: desperate for more but never truly believing their friendship could ever develop into romance, and yet just so pathetically grateful to be a tiny speck of importance in Charlie’s brilliant, manic mind.

I tried to hide my thoughts about Therin and Charlie from the Doctor. I love that man more than life itself, and I didn’t want him feeling guilty about something that had happened ages ago, but those thoughts were so interwoven with other thoughts, it was difficult to keep them all separated and contained.

“You were never just a speck of anything, Rose Tyler.”

He’d caught me completely by surprise as I watched Charlie, Therin, and Wilfred from my place on the picnic blanket as they all tried out the new Wing-Gliders Charlie had developed. I’d been caught out and felt my face burning. Somehow I managed to tear my eyes from the kids cavorting in the sky overhead to look at my husband. His eyes were so sad, Santa.

“And you were never in any way pathetic.”

I knew I had to be honest and opened my thoughts to him, sharing all those old insecurities. I’d often wondered, especially in recent years now that my hair is peppered with grey, how it would have worked out had the Metacrisis never happened and I’d stayed on with the Time Lord Doctor. Would he ever have been able to slow down for me? Would he have eventually drawn away, unable to bear to watch me wither? Would he have resented me? Would he have dropped me off for my safety, for his sanity?

“I always loved you. I would have cherished every moment with you. I’d gotten past all of that awkwardness, but then I came along… and when Pete’s World presented itself, it was so easy to… weeell…”

He filled my thoughts with his love for me, past and present, and I snuggled against him. He was an idiot sometimes, but he was my very own idiot. It seemed, however, he’d passed the idiot gene on to Charlie.

“She’ll be all right.” He’d nodded at Charlie.

“Not her I’m worried about, is it? She doesn’t understand how she affects those around her. Once you have a taste of that… charisma, that allure, you can’t ever go back. Trust me.”

He just chuckled at me and booped my nose. “Oh, I know, my precious girl.”

“Shut up…”

“Now Wilfred… that’s who I’m concerned about. There’s something going on with him, I just don’t know what.”

The Doctor was quite right. There was something Wilfred was keeping from us. I’d thought so too. He’d always been a bit secretive, happy to quietly puzzle things out, but he also loved a great adventure and was never happy to be sitting still for too long. Now that he was out of our daily lives, travelling the world, it was difficult to figure out just what he was up to. Until we did, all we could do was keep our ears to the ground and wait to see what happened.

--ooOoo--

Santa, over the years, we’ve travelled to many wonderful places and the adventures never seemed to end, whether we were having a quiet day to ourselves or whether we had our entire extended family along for the ride. But, in all that time, there was one place the Doctor refused to even entertain trying to visit: Gallifrey. He wouldn’t even speak of it. To be quite honest, in all our travels, on any of our adventures, the name never even came up in rumours and stories, and for all we knew, it didn’t exist in this universe.

Whether it did or not, was irrelevant. The subject was taboo. I knew it, and the kids all knew it, so I nearly fainted when Wilfred brought it up at supper one day, a few months ago.

He’d been travelling with us for several weeks, tinkering in his own little workshop and learning as much as he could about the workings of the TARDIS, quantum mechanics, relativity, and the structure of space-time. He was most definitely up to something, but what it was, we still had been unable to determine.  At least he was home with us for the time being.

Javic had dropped ‘round for a visit and was staying for supper that day. Wilfred always really enjoyed Javic’s company, peppering him with questions about time travel and his vortex manipulator. But none of us were prepared for the question that carelessly slipped out just as we were starting on our pudding.

“Hey, Javic, just a thought…” (oh, so casual-like) “…have you ever heard of a planet called Gallifrey on any of your travels?”

I literally felt faint, though it was probably as much to do with the Doctor’s instant panic and anger hammering over our bond as it was the shock of the subject matter.

Javic, not ever having been briefed on our planet-who-shall-not-be-named situation, of course answered in his usual laid-back way, totally missing the electric mood around the table. “Can’t say as I have… but I could do some invest−”

Oh. My. God, Santa! The Doctor completely lost his trolley. Exploded it, more like. Pounded on the table; shouted; completely lost it! The Oncoming Supernova! He was properly frightening, demanding that Javic not do any investigating and that if he heard about anything to the contrary…

Well, you get the idea: threats were made.

I was trying to reach him over the bond, but the force of his emotions was preventing me from making contact. All I could do was keep trying and hope he would calm down, but then he turned on Wilfred, raging like something possessed. And my poor, stupid baby, despite being nearly as tall as his dad and sporting some wispy facial hair, suddenly seemed very small and vulnerable, you know? He took off to his room in a panic and slammed the door.

The Doctor’s mental walls finally crashed into place (saving me from the psychic fallout, thank God! My head was pounding with the mental barrage I’d been enduring!) and he stomped off into the bowels of the TARDIS. Like father, like son.

“Well, it’s been a slice,” Javic broke the silence, “but I think that’s my cue to vamoose.”

I was suddenly babbling and apologizing for the Doctor’s outburst and for not warning Javic beforehand, assuring him that it was a sensitive subject and things would smooth over in no time. (I hoped I was telling the truth.)

He gave me a hug. “I get it. Don’t worry, Rosie. I should be getting back to work anyway. I’ll check back in in a few weeks. You mind dropping me at these coordinates?” He showed me the display on his vortex manipulator.

I made him promise it was somewhere safe and told him to enter them himself. A few seconds later, he was stepping out the TARDIS doors onto a rowdy, seedy street. “Perfect!”

“You call this safe?”

“I call this a good time! Best hypervodka in the universe right through those doors, not to mention the servers…” He gave me a cheeky wink. “A bit of a pick-me-up before I head back to my current assignment.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’ll just bet you get picked up!”  I waved goodbye, and heard him calling out, “That’s the plan!” just as I was closing the TARDIS doors. I immediately sent us back into the Vortex.

--ooOoo--

I was furious at both my boys. Wilfred… well I don’t know what had gotten into his head, but he knew the rule, blatantly broken it, and had paid for it. The Doctor though… I was going to give that one a piece of my mind, treating friends and family like that. This situation had gone too far. Absolutely ridiculous! It was time we had a proper talk about Gallifrey. And to be honest, I was gutted he felt he couldn’t confide in me and trust me. I mean, he’d been completely excluding me on this for years… forever!

I decided to clear away the dishes, giving my lads a bit of space before I went to talk to them, and giving myself some time to work things out in my mind. Wilfred was brooding in his room, head buried in some gadgets on his desk. I didn’t say much to him. He knew why he was in trouble; no need to add salt to his wounds. So, I just gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek and assured him that his father still loved him very much. I did quietly suggest he apologize.

I found the Doctor much later. The great plonker was hiding, faffing about deep in the workings of the TARDIS, among the mysterious glowing orbs and curtains of cables that dangled from the branches of the beautiful coral tree. I couldn’t imagine anything really needed repaired; he was likely just skulking. Anyroad, he never bothered to look up when I came in, just offered a gruff, “What do you want?”

“Oi!” I was stunned, and I hope I sounded as pissed off as I really was. “You don’t get to speak to me like that! I deserve better. Me and Javic… and Wilfred.”

“Wilf was out of−”

Oh, he was not going there! I wouldn’t let him. “He’s seventeen years old, for God’s sake! He’s curious about his heritage… your heritage. Don’t you dare put your hang-ups on his shoulders. You had no right to treat him like that!”

He growled at me. (I had to bite my tongue, Santa. He actually growled.) Then he muttered something about how I didn’t know anything about it. (Seriously? And whose fault was that?)

“Time you filled me in then, yeah?” I held my temper. It took every ounce of control I could muster, but I did it. I told him to meet me in the library in ten minutes, and to leave his attitude behind. So I walked out, and went to make us a cuppa and a couple of plates of the pudding we’d never managed to get to because of his tantrum. I reckoned he’d be much more approachable with loads of good ol’ free radicals, tannins, and a good dose of sugar in his system.

I hope you don’t think I was just being flippant or insensitive. I really wasn’t. I won’t say I completely understood why this affected him so deeply; he’d refused to speak about it for so long so there was no way to know for sure. But I know that man, and I had my suspicions. What was clear was that he needed to talk about this. It wasn’t healthy or safe for him to have kept all of this bottled up inside for so long. I love him so much. I’m his wife, his bondmate: I shouldn’t have had to stage an intervention for him to speak to me about this, and yet, there I was, doing just that.

--ooOoo--

Just over an hour later, he’d finally collapsed into sleep. We were sitting in front of the fire; me with my toes stretched toward the flames and my back against the sofa, and him curled into a foetal position next to me with his head cradled in my lap. I ran my fingers through the soft, lush mess of his hair, the rich brown shot through with wild sparks of silver. The stain of tears on his cheeks darkened his freckles, and I brushed a remaining droplet from the corner of his eye. He was so beautiful and vulnerable… my precious man.

He’d come into the library as I’d requested, looking all guilty and not meeting my eyes. He looked almost physically ill, with his fringe hanging over his pale face. I stood to meet him, and he threw his arms around me, clutching to me as though I might disappear. He was in a right state, sobbing and apologizing, and all I could do was hold him. Eventually, I drew him over to the sofa and got some hot tea into him, and gradually he became more coherent.

He’d never gotten over the Time War. Of course he hadn’t. How could anyone ever accept the fact that they had to destroy billions of lives, including all their own people, even if it was for the greater good, the salvation of the universe? Even after all these years, there were still nights when he would awake drenched in sweat, crying out in despair, after something during the day had triggered the memories to resurface. He told me he’d always felt at peace with me holding him, and so that’s what I would do in those times, for as long as he needed me.

Now in this universe, still unable to face the scars of his past, he was running from what-ifs and maybes. “I can’t sense the Time Lords,” he told me, clutching at his temples. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not there, it just means… I can’t sense them. Different universe of origin; not a full Time Lord… loads of factors. Maybe I just don’t want to sense them.”

What it all came down to was the Doctor did not cope well with loss, he never had, and just the thought of getting his hopes up only to have them shattered again was unbearable. He’d already seen too much sorrow associated with that planet: friends and family lost forever; memories and emotions, darkness, rage, and guilt, kept under lock and key deep in a fortress in his mind.

He couldn’t stomach the idea that the ruins of Gallifrey might be out there somewhere, the remnants of another Time War where everyone had perished, history unfolding the same way as it had in the Prime Universe. But equally, he admitted, he was terrified the Time Lords were actually alive and thriving, lording it over the rest of the universe, power misused through anger and pretensions.

At one point during our talk he’d snatched my hand in his and held my gaze. We’d moved to the floor by that time to be closer to the fire, hoping to find comfort in its warmth. “If the Time Lords are alive,” he confessed to me, tears pouring over his cheeks, “there’s a possibility there could be transdimensional travel again. You could… you could… maybe you’d want to… to go back to him. Me. Him, now. Different experiences. We’ve been different people from the moment I was created. But we started off pretty much the−”

“Stop!” I insisted, ending what was sure to be a long, self-deprecating babble. I locked my eyes on his (I was crying too, a right mess), so he would know how sincere I was. “I’m not going anywhere.” I felt so guilty for not realizing he thought I could ever consider abandoning him.  “Forever. I promised you… I love you, you muppet, and I’m never gonna leave you.”

--ooOoo--

The Doctor was much more settled after that night. Gallifrey wasn’t exactly on his top ten list of conversation topics, but he no longer flew into a rage at the mere mention of the name. Nightmares woke him often, but I was always there to hold him close to me, and they gradually dwindled away, becoming fewer and less intense as time went on. He apologized to Javic the next time he dropped by, and although things were a bit awkward between him and Wilfred, they were family and loved one another, and any grudges were shoved aside to make room for happier memories.

After another week or so, Wilfred returned to travelling on his own, and although other friends and family joined us on the TARDIS, we didn’t see him again until today when he, quite literally, blinked back into our lives.

We were back home in our little blue house, and I was sitting by the Christmas tree, wrapping gifts, when I felt a strange change in the air pressure near me. There was a whooshing sound, and a distortion in the air. I sensed something… something infinite. All that is; all that was; all that ever could be. The words were like a whisper in my mind. A memory? Perhaps…

And then, suddenly, Wilfred stumbled out of the distortion, beaming away like he had just walked through the front door. “Fantastic! Hey, Mum! Happy Christmas!”

“What the bloody hell was that?” The Doctor came thundering down the stairs, sonic drawn, ready to do battle. He stopped short at the sight of Wilfred. “When did you get in?” He didn’t wait for a response before he activated the sonic, whirring it all around the space in front of the Christmas tree.

I managed to stammer out some incoherent response. Then Wilfred piped up: “Hello, Dad. Don’t worry. Jus’ me!”

“What? What? WHAT?” The Doctor swept around Wilfred, sonic humming, then paused to examine his findings. “Local distortions in the Time Vortex… not just any distortions, not randomized. These are specific… programmed. What the hell is that on your wrist?”

My eyes snapped to Wilfred’s wrist where there sat something that looked suspiciously like a Vortex manipulator. Well, that cleared up a few of my questions. Generated a few more… but, yeah, what else could I expect when my child just popped out of the Vortex, directly into our living room.

“Been travelling, me! ‘S a Vortex manipulator.”

The Doctor pinched his nose, collecting himself. As for me, the initial shock of my son suddenly appearing in front of me dissipated rather quickly and I just slipped into my standard roll-with-it mode I usually applied in situations involving my children (and/or husband) doing something, erm… unexpected. “So how long have you been travelling… this way?”

“Since I saw you last, really. It took a little getting used to, travelling without the TARDIS shell to protect me…”

“Riiiight…” (What every mother wants to hear.)

“…but I made some adjustments to my original design…”

“Your design?” (Definitely our child.)

“Yeah! So, I made adjustments to the shield harmonics and I adapted the Chrononplasm flow regulators ever so slightly, and bam! Just like that, a fifty-seven percent increase in stabilization and a one hundred eighty-two percent increase in overall shielding!”

“Impressive…” (I had no idea to be honest, but it sounded pretty good.)

“Sort of, yeah. Aaaand it can transport a mass of up to a tonne now… that’s about six humans, give or take. The design the Time Agency uses can only take three people… and then only in a pinch. Not recommended. I’m hoping to get a patent on my design and sell it to them.”

The Doctor had been uncharacteristically silent throughout this exchange, which boded ill, so I went straight over to him and took his hand in one of mine and stroked his sleeve with the other. I soothed him over our bond, and he glowered at me, knowing exactly what I was trying to do. And it was working!

Wilfred watched our silent exchange, and I could sense the tension growing in him.

Just hear him out. Nothing we say is going to change anything. He’s smart. And he’s a good kid. And right now, he’s safe. I’d like to keep him that way.

The Doctor grumbled at me, and I just arched my eyebrow at him.

Nothing’s going to be solved with shouting and driving him away.

This time he huffed out a great sigh. (Victory!)

He’s so much like you.

I assume that’s meant to be a compliment. He nudged me with his shoulder, and threw me a cheeky smirk.

Always, love.

--ooOoo--

December 25, 2037

Oh Santa, since Christmas Eve so much has happened! I didn’t get to finish this letter because I’ve been so busy.

After the Doctor had agreed to call a truce with Wilfred, he was full of questions and the two of them disappeared into the Doctor’s workshop to tinker with the Vortex manipulator until it was time for our traditional Christmas Eve supper. Tony and Noah arrived with their arms full of my brand new (adopted) niece, Abby; and Mum, Dad, and Therin dropped by too. Mum couldn’t keep her hands off the baby all night, which gave Abby’s Dads a welcome break by the look of the dark circles under their eyes. (I remember those bittersweet days!) The girls and Gray were set to arrive tomorrow, which meant Charlie was going to be able to kick off the Festive Feast for the first time in quite a few years. We’d have the whole family together for Christmas! It had been so long! Even Javic said he’d try to make it.

I was thrilled!

But Christmas was only going to get better for us this year. Wilfred had a surprise gift for his father, which he wanted to give us once everyone had left after Christmas Eve supper.

He bustled us onto the TARDIS. He’d offered to use his manipulator, but he admitted with a fond stroke of the TARDIS’ walls, he thought she would enjoy this trip too. (I was, honestly, relieved. I didn’t much like the sound of travel by Vortex manipulator!) He pushed the Doctor away from the console. “Let me enter the coordinates, Dad. This is a surprise! You just can’t stand it, can you?”

The Doctor was glaring at him. “I don’t want to go.”

“Daaaad…”

“What the hell do you mean, you don’t want to go?” I wasn’t honestly surprised by his reaction. I’m pretty sure we both knew where Wilfred was taking us, and the Doctor was being bloody-minded and obstinate. Mind you, with perfectly good reason. His emotional distress over his home world had been festering for years, maybe all his life, and he’d only recently managed to get it back under some semblance of control.

“I mean, I don’t want to go! Full stop! Kaput! Fertig! Klaar! And just NOPE!” He fixed me with that I’m-not-compromising-so forget-it look of his.

I gave Wilfred a kiss on the cheek, stopping what was likely to be an outburst he would regret, and told him to give us a minute, maybe longer... maybe a lot longer. Then I went to the Doctor, and took him down to our bedroom. “How about a kip, yeah. It’s been a long day. It’s well past bedtime.” I tossed him his jimjams, and we got ready for bed.

A few minutes later, I snuggled up to him under the covers.

“I’m not going.”

“I know, love.” We lay there, just cuddling for a few minutes, and a memory of a previous Christmas drifted into my mind. “Hey, do you remember that Christmas when Wilfred gave you the transparency setting for wood? He was so proud. He’d been planning the reveal all day.”

The Doctor chuckled.

“He’s always so thoughtful, yeah. What a great Christmas that was! We all bundled out there with hot chocolate and ended up spending the whole evening stargazing and telling stories.” I felt his body relax. “I was so shocked when you pointed up to the sky and told us that’s where Gallifrey was supposed to be.”

“Weeell…”

“And then you even told that story about running through the grass, flying your little kite.”

“It got stuck in a Cadonwood. A gust of wind just took it off course.”

“But you got it down. You flew that little kite again.”

“I know what you’re doing.” He always knew… and I wasn’t being terribly subtle.

“Yeah? Is it working.”

“Absolutely not.” But he rolled his eyes and gave me a long, lingering kiss.

“Just sleep on it for a bit. That’s all I’m asking.” I stroked the stubble on his cheek and tucked my head under his chin and we gradually dozed off.

A few hours later, he was dressed, stubble-free, and back in the console room with a brand new attitude. “All right, son. It’s time I faced my demons…”

Wilfred grinned. “You’ll love it, I promise. Ready?”

The Doctor nodded and with that, Wilfred threw the last lever in the dematerialization sequence. The landing was gentle, and with a flourish of his hand he directed the Doctor to the doors. “Happy Christmas, Dad.”

I saw the Doctor hesitate as he moved to go out, and sensed he was going to turn back. I couldn’t let that happen. This was something he needed to do. Whatever he found on the other side of those doors, it would no longer be a product of his tortured imagination. It would be real, something he could deal with head on. Together, love, I suggested over our bond, and I took his hand. He was shaking. I did my best to reassure him. Love, he would never have brought you here if he thought it would be a bad thing. Come on. I tugged on his hand and we stepped up to the doors. “Together!”

With that, we pulled the doors open.

The Doctor gasped and squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. His emotions rushed over me as he took in the vista before him: apprehension, joy, sadness… and a lot of hope. I nudged him over the threshold, and we stepped out onto the soil of Gallifrey. We were on a little rise in the middle of a field of beautiful, long grass… and such a deep, rich, gorgeous red… spread out before us. Here and there were little groves of slender trees (the kite-snatching Cadonwoods, I guessed) with silver leaves, flickering in the breeze. And beyond all that… mountains. I can’t describe them properly: rugged and capped with snow, and all sorts of colours… purples and browns. The sky was amber, but as we stood there, everything began to grow brighter, and the sky began to turn more blue. Birds (I think they were birds or something like them) started chattering in the trees.

“The second sun rising in the south…” The Doctor whispered the words, and I when I looked up at his face, Santa, it was more beautiful than any of that scenery. Tears sparkled on his cheeks, but his expression… I’ve only ever seen that expression a few times before, and that was when he’d held each of our children for the very first time. It was wonder and disbelief and joy all mixed together.

He looked at me and beamed, his grip on my hand tightening again. “RUN!” And suddenly he was dragging me down the little hill, leaping and bounding through the grass like a puppy, and I couldn’t help laughing at him, even as I tried to catch my breath. He was so happy! He dropped my hand and danced around me, whooping and cheering. After a few minutes, he bounced his way back to the TARDIS, me tagging along behind, and Wilfred stepped forward to greet him. He handed him a kite, a simple diamond design.

“You once told us the story of how you would run through the red grass, flying your kite. (Just what me and the Doctor had talked about before our nap!) I thought you might like to give it another go.”

“Oh, yes! Oh, Wilfred! This is…” He pulled him into a hug, then gratefully took the kite and waved it at me. “C’mon, Rose Tyler, help me fly it!” I skipped over to him, and he handed me the kite as he let out a length of string. “You hold it up and I’ll run ahead! You know when to let go!”

Yes, I did. The Doctor loved to fly kites and we had done this a thousand times if we had done it once. In seconds, he was tearing across the field again, his exhilaration bursting like fireworks in my mind, and I was holding tight to the kite and stumbling along behind him until I felt the wind catch and tug at my fingers.

And then I released it, and watched it soar into the air, the words “Welcome Home” emblazoned in Circular Gallifreyan onto the kite’s wings.

I suddenly realized I was releasing him too, and a cold dread settled in my gut: I closed my emotions to him as I panicked and selfishly felt the need to keep him right beside me, as though if I didn’t he might abandon me and disappear into this world, into Gallifrey, never to return. That scared the hell out of me.

But how could I deny him this? Even if he left me, just knowing he was happy… that would be enough. I forced back my tears and watched him wading through the grass, gazing up at the dancing kite as it went higher and higher into the brightening sky. I don’t know if I’d ever seen him so alive. Oh, I love him so much; I know I’ve said it a lot, but I do, I really do!

Eventually, he reeled in the kite and jogged back to the TARDIS where Wilfred and me were waiting. He was beaming and his hair was wilder than ever and his eyes were glowing. “I can’t believe it’s here! Gallifrey!” He picked me up and whirled me around. “And I can feel them… the people… in my mind, their voices in my mind!”  

Oh god, Santa, my jealousy just flared at the thought of anyone else in his mind. I felt horrible but I couldn’t help it, and I bolstered the mental shields I’d thrown up earlier. “I thought you were touch telepaths?”

“Oh, we are… were…, but there’s a sort of a telepathic field, nothing specific, just like distant chatter, background noise I suppose you could call it. I’m aware of them, but not of who they are or what they’re thinking. Just that they’re there. And the Time Lords… weeell, we were all telepathically linked, like a sort of hive mind when it was needed, but that was stronger, and deliberate. This isn’t anything like that. This is just innocent whispers, nothing meant for power or manipulation.”

“Like the TARDIS in my mind?”

“Weeell… yes and no… not so specific. Not so intimate or intense.” I hoped he couldn’t feel my sense of relief at hearing that. I was desperately trying to push all my negative emotions aside and just enjoy the adventure. I certainly didn’t want to ruin this experience for him. And yet here I was doing just that…

“What are you doing with your shields up?” He touched my face, concern chasing away his joy. I felt like such a cow, worrying him like that, when all he wanted to do was share this experience with me. “Actually, you should be able to sense them as well. You’ve become quite a strong telepath. But first, you need to let them in.”

“I’ll try,” I wanted to reassure him so I relaxed my mental walls a bit, tucking my jealousies and fears behind a doorway in my mind, and opened myself to welcome the Gallifreyan voices. It was like a choir singing very faintly, very far away, just on the edge of my awareness. It’s lovely… I told him truthfully. It was, but he’d noticed my tight smile and I knew he sensed something in the turn of my thoughts. I couldn’t really hide my feelings from him, such an experienced telepath.

He didn’t say anything, just drew me into a hug and kissed my forehead and made me feel so incredibly loved.

“Oi! Yuck, you two! Break it up!” Wilfred’s voice cut into our intimate little moment, and we pulled out of the hug, chuckling.

Wilfred pointed out the footpath that meandered through the field and suggested we walk into town. He told us there was a small community at the end of the path where we could stop to get a bite to eat and meet some people.

“Allons-y!” The Doctor snatched up my hand in his again, and grinning from ear to ear, pulled me along the path. I couldn’t help laughing, my fears dissipating, knowing he wanted me with him. Besides, the prospect of an adventure with my two boys… what could be better?

As we walked, Wilfred admitted to having travelled here several times, often staying for long periods. He told us some of what he had learned about this Gallifrey. First off, there were no Time Lords, and the Gallifreyans had no active time sense that he could discern. (The Doctor seemed especially interested in this fact, and immediately began taking readings with his sonic.) They were an intelligent, hard-working, and thoughtful people from all walks of life. Regardless of their profession, everyone was encouraged to continue to learn and challenge their mind throughout their life. Many attended schools of higher learning in the major cities, like Arcadia.  

They were a philosophical people who were very open to offworlders visiting, and welcomed new opportunities for learning with open arms, but only a very few ever sought to leave Gallifrey. And it was no wonder. They had turned it into a virtual paradise. Through ingenious methods, they extracted water from the atmosphere, creating oases of civilization even in the driest parts of this dry planet, beautiful, lush communities where life thrived. They nurtured their world and it nurtured them.

They were quite long-lived, living about 250 Earth years on average, though they didn’t have the extended life span the Time Lords had enjoyed, even without the ability to regenerate.

“But why not? Why didn’t they evolve into Time Lords?” The Doctor was muttering happily to himself, thrilled to have a mystery to solve along with his enjoyment at just being able to experience this version of his home planet again. It seemed without those Time Lords, Gallifrey was a much kinder, gentler place, and he was truly quite delighted by that fact.

His obsessive questioning suddenly transformed to awe when we arrived at our destination, a little town called Flanx. The grassy plains morphed into farmland around the town. Flanx itself was… I want to say quaint, but I don’t think that’s quite the word. It was clean and modern, highly efficient. But it was also a comfortable, welcoming place. It was so pretty, flowers everywhere, and fruit trees and vegetables growing in every garden. There was nothing outlandish or snobby about it, nothing like the stories I’d heard from the Doctor about the Gallifrey he once knew.

The main street was quite busy with people going about their business, and a huge, colourful, open air market was set up in the town square. I was drawn by a vendor selling some of the gorgeous tunic dresses worn by the locals. The fabrics were exquisite: soft and durable, and dyed in beautiful colours and designs.

“They recognize UCS [that means Universal Credit Sticks, Santa] as currency,” Wilfred whispered in my ear, giving me a nudge.

The Doctor came up behind me, placing a hand on my lower back, stroking. He nodded to a tunic I had been eyeing: flowing and knee length, soft blue with a gauzy amber overlay. It looked like the dawn sky. Stretchy mid-calf leggings came with it. “Would you like it, love?”

I bit my lower lip, a habit I had never outgrown, and nodded. “But you need one too…” I smirked at him, “to blend in. Not that I mind the jeans and jumper, but it’s just that these tunics look so comfortable, and if I’m going to go native, you are too!”

The Doctor pursed his lips. I could sense his annoyance… mild annoyance. He hadn’t expected me to turn the tables on him like that, but I have to admit, it was nice to know I could still pull one over on him once in a while. I watched as he perused the selection available.

“Weeell, as long as it doesn’t come with a ridiculous headdress I suppose… Ah-ha!”

I followed his eyes and burst into gales of laughter. I couldn’t believe it. He’d found one in brown fabric with a dark blue pinstripe running through it. Soft brown trousers were worn underneath. “Oh my God! You have to buy it!”

“Oh, yes!” And with that, the Doctor spoke in Gallifreyan to the woman at the stall, and purchased all our items, including some sandals for me. He insisted on sticking with his trusty Chucks. I wrapped my arms around him and planted a kiss of thanks at the corner of his mouth.

We wandered through the market some more. The Doctor insisting on buying me a circlet for my hair (they seemed to be all the fashion): a simple design of silver metal, woven into infinity knots. I suddenly felt shy and self-conscious, worrying about how ridiculous it would be to waste it on my greying hair. “I should probably listen to Mum and go blonde again, yeah.”

“Don’t you dare! I love the silver in your hair, and this circlet will complement it perfectly. My precious girl…” He placed it on my head, and leaned in to give me a rather wonderful kiss.

“All right, love birds!” Wilfred had an annoying habit of interrupting us when we were having lovely, romantic moments. “How about we grab a bite to eat. I know a fantastic little restaurant just down the street…”

True to his word, the restaurant was fantastic and the meal was delicious. I had a sort of stew made with some mildly spiced, succulent meat, marinated in Ulanda fruit sauce and served with a wonderful flatbread, perfect for mopping up the last bits from the plate. The Doctor went completely mental when he saw the dessert menu, though. “Oh, oh, oh, Rose! They have Karmine pudding! You have to try it! This fruit! There’s nothing better in the universe! I used to have it all the time when I was a child.”

“What? There’s a fruit in the universe better than bananas?”

“Rose Tyler! Karmine is more bananas than bananas!”

“You’re bananas!” Wilfred muttered, and I laughed. I admit, I’d been thinking the same thing.

“Karmine is the original banana! Sweeter, richer… more banana-esque. Where do you think bananas came from, Rose?”

I shrugged. What else could I do? But it turned out he was right; the pudding was gorgeous!

As we stepped out of the restaurant, I sighed. I reminded them that Christmas was tomorrow… erm, today. We needed to get home. It was already nearly six in the morning, our time.

The Doctor’s face fell. “Oh, well all right then… allons-y!” he said, trying to be upbeat, and failing miserably.

My heart broke, and when Wilfred groaned, “Muuuuum! I have something really special to show you! Time it, Mum! Just this once! Time it!” I found myself questioning when I had become such a “rules” sort of person. I always used to be the first one to break them: go wandering off to find an adventure, or leap into a stranger’s “London Hopper” without a second thought for those I was leaving behind. I reckon that’s one of the ways being a parent changes your life.

“Well, I suppose…” I was grinning from ear to ear at the thought of this tiny rebellion. “And this way, I get to say Merry Christmas to you twice,” I crooned into the Doctor’s ear.

“Blimey, Mum! Child present!”

--ooOoo--

We camped out that night under the stars. After snuggling into sleeping bags from the TARDIS, the Doctor regaled us with the names of all of the constellations we could see. I eventually fell asleep to the sound of his voice and the familiar thud of his heartbeat against my cheek. I don’t think he slept at all, himself. He was far too excited.

Wilfred was excited too, barely able to contain himself the next morning. He was dying to show us the “really special” place he had mentioned the previous day. He didn’t want to give too much away so it would be a surprise, but he did mention we’d have to take the TARDIS to get there. It was much too far to walk.

We dressed in our new Gallifreyan tunics, and when the TARDIS landed, the Doctor flung open the doors and stepped out, open-mouthed. I came out behind him and found myself in the middle of a spectacular mountain vista. We stood in the foothills by the banks of a rushing river. Everything was lush and covered with all kinds of plants with leaves in purples, reds, and golds.

“Where did you say we came out?” the Doctor asked Wilfred as he joined us.

“We’re right at the edge of the mountain range, in the valley between the mountains Solace and Solitude. The view is spectac−”

“It’s gone!” The Doctor staggered forward, clutching at his hair, and my heart just leaped into my throat. “Completely and utterly… gone!” He was projecting an aura of what I could only describe as emptiness.

I asked him, as gently as I could what he meant, and when he turned to me his eyes were wild. “It’s gone. It was right here… weeell, I suppose it was never here. Not in this universe…”

“What wasn’t, love? What did you expect to see?” I turned to look at Wilfred, who was just as concerned as me, by the looks of him.

“The Citadel… the Capitol… beautiful city, majestic. Enclosed in a mighty glass dome, the entire city. And it’s just not here...”

I wrapped my arms around him from behind, my cheek pressed against his shoulder, and I tried to let him know how sorry I was, how sad.

He told me he wasn’t sad, not really. Just shocked. “Completely floored, to be honest!” The city had been a symbol of power and dominance, beautiful, yes, but full of corruption. It had been built on the bones of the original Capitol, and below that were the Vaults and Cloisters where the Time Lords guarded some of their darkest secrets. “But I think the saddest thing of all was deep in the Vaults, an Undercroft. It was a huge natural cave, reworked and modified by the Time Lords…” A single tear rolled down his cheek, and I felt how his heart ached. He gulped back a sob. “They sent TARDISes there to die. Discarded. When it was deemed they had outlived their usefulness.”

Our TARDIS hummed a melancholy little sound, and I could feel her stroking the Doctor’s mind, desperate to reassure him, bolstering my attempts to do the same.

“Maybe just as well it isn’t here. A pretty bauble to look at, but…”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t know…”

“Not your fault. And yes, I can’t help but think this world, this universe is better off for the absence of the Time Lords. They were sworn never to interfere, only to watch. But they couldn’t resist the temptation of power in the end. The Time War itself was the ultimate evidence of that, the ultimate interference, and coupled with their disdain for “lower” lifeforms, weeell…”

“What I brought you here to see,” Wilfred said softly, “I think will make you feel better about all of that. It’s beautiful too, but in a natural way. You’ll see. C’mon, it’s up this way a bit.” He gestured upstream. We hiked up the river bank along a faint foot path until we reached a cabin that peeked out from a little grove of Cadonwoods. Wilfred explained that there was someone he wanted us to meet, a guide who would be able to take us further. He stepped up onto the little porch of the cabin and knocked on the door.

A young woman opened the door, and after a brief hesitation, threw her arms around Wilfred’s neck. “Wilfred! You returned!” Me and the Doctor just looked at each other, stunned.

“Course I did. Said I would, didn’t I?”

“And these must be your parents…” She pulled away from Wilfred and stepped toward us. She was petite, with dark, caramel skin and long, straight black hair, and her eyes were an extraordinary, piercing blue.

“Uh… yeah. Yeah…” My poor baby. I think he’d almost forgotten we were there, but I could hardly fault him for that. The girl was beautiful. “Erm,” he stammered in Gallifreyan, “this is my mum, Rose Tyler, and my dad, the Doctor. This,” he nodded at the girl, “is Tianza.”

“Tianzadruxdomdivaradamas,” (obviously her full name) “but you can call me Tianza. Nice to meet you.”

“Well, I see some things haven’t changed,” the Doctor piped up, even as he took Tianza’s hand to shake. “You lot still have ridiculously long names.”

I elbowed him in the ribs and admonished him over our bond: Rude! To Tianza, I spoke aloud using the best Gallifreyan I could manage in an effort to be polite, even though the TARDIS was happily translating for me (the Doctor had long since made sure Gallifreyan was included in her translation matrix.) “Sorry about him. Nice to meet you Tianza.”

She just laughed and invited us in, and offered us some fruity biscuits and cold spring water for a snack. “So you want to see the Chanting Caverns of Consolation, is that right?”

For a second there, I thought maybe the TARDIS had mistranslated what she had said, but Wilfred quickly agreed with her. The Chanting Caverns it was then. Soon we were off hiking again, with Tianza leading the way. We climbed higher into the foothills, continuing upstream along the river. As we walked, she told us a little about herself. She was a student at the Advanced Biological Academy in Arcadia, and was stationed here to study and protect the flora and fauna in the Chanting Caverns of Consolation. I couldn’t help but notice how Wilfred hung on her every word. Besotted. She seemed quite fond of him too, but whether she was as taken with him as he was with her, I rather doubted. Still, I reckon she seemed like a nice enough girl.

We stopped to eat lunch at a spot where we could no longer follow the river. It flowed out from below ground at this point. Underneath us were enormous caverns and a great underground lake, fed by the river from further up the mountain. This was to be our destination.

“Just wait, Dad! You’ve never seen anything like this!” Wilfred was practically vibrating in anticipation.

An hour later we were standing at the large entrance of a cave. A soft droning sound drifted up to us, a melodic humming, so familiar, but so wild and strange at the same time. I felt a gentle prickle at the edges of my mind, someone, something attempting to make contact. Me and the Doctor found one another’s hands. “Is it safe? The telepathic field?” I blurted out, feeling silly. Nothing about this felt hostile, but I’d experienced enough deception in my life to know to proceed with caution.

“You can sense them?” Tianza sounded impressed. “They’re curious about strangers, that’s all. Purely emotional communication. Very safe.”

We descended into the cave, the narrow passage sloping gradually down to the underground lake. We could hear the humming better as we got closer. It wasn’t loud but it trembled, almost like voices in vibrato, not high pitched, though, but not deep either, lots of songs all at once… chanting… the Chanting Caverns. It was… I can’t think of a word to properly describe to you how beautiful the songs were, Santa, but combined with the telepathic field, they were just so powerful and wonderful and gave such a feeling of wellbeing. The Chanting Caverns of Consolation.

As we drew closer, I could hear the lake water sloshing against the shore, giving rhythm to the chorus of humming voices, and I realized I was able to see quite well even though we were deep underground.

“Do you have lights set up down there?” the Doctor asked.

“No, that’s just… them.”

“Who? Who or what is down here?” I could feel his nervous energy, held tightly under control, his imagination running wild with endless questions.

“Just wait, Dad,” Wilfred said. “Just around this corner and…”

“The Shimmering Coral Forest.” As Tianza spoke those words, the passage opened up and before us was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. All along the shores of the lake were lovely, little coral trees, draped with glowing fruit that dangled from their branches on long vines. Some were just little saplings with tiny bioluminescent buds, while others were strong, fully-grown corals. No matter their shape or size, I recognized them instantly.

“Those… those are…” The Doctor was stammering, at a loss for words. “But that’s impossible. I never considered…” Tears rolled freely down his cheeks and I held fast to his hand, leaning against him, and just took in the marvels of the Shimmering Coral Forest. “They’re TARDIS corals…”

“TARDIS? What word is this?” Tianza asked.

“Now that, that is a long story…”

“I’d like to hear it sometime, if you are willing to tell it, but we know these entities as the Consolation Corals. We believe they are unique to these caves. To date, they have not been found anywhere else on Gallifrey.”

I asked if we could walk among them, touch them, make contact. Tianza gave her permission, and hand in hand, me and the Doctor moved forward to meet these beings, who were so reminiscent of the entity who was our beloved TARDIS. I was drawn to them, and as I reached out to touch one, they seemed to bend toward me, and connect with my mind in a much more intimate way. Touch telepaths of sorts. It all felt so familiar, so much like how I communicated with the TARDIS, but less intense, less precise.

The Doctor felt it too. “These are the same caves where the TARDISes were sent to die. And look, here they are in their natural state, brim-full of life, Rose! These brilliant beings!” He pondered how they, like the Gallifreyan people, were so similar to those in the Prime Universe, yet they had evolved no sensitivity to time.

We spent hours wandering among them, marvelling at the beauty of the bioluminescent lights reflecting on the ripples of the water and listening to the peaceful songs that surrounded us.  Wilfred helped Tianza collect data for her studies and then the two of them left us to explore alone. We sat down at the base of a large coral, deep in the centre of the forest, and felt its strength fill us.

As comfortable as we were, eventually we had to leave the Shimmering Coral Forest, but Tianza invited us to come back any time. On our return trip to the cabin, we told her the far-fetched tale of our lives in a different universe and the fate of the corals and the people there. And we told her about our TARDIS.

She came back with us to meet the TARDIS, and I thought she handled the shock of experiencing the bigger-on-the-inside business very well indeed. She was intrigued that she could communicate on a rudimentary level with the TARDIS, and how familiar it felt to her. We asked her to supper and after pudding took her to see our very own Consolation Coral deep under the central console. She expressed understandable concern about the way the TARDIS was all wired up, how she was (as she saw it) enslaved to this life of being a space and time vessel, but we explained how much love there was between us and our beautiful girl, how we considered her family, a partner, and how we trusted her to keep us safe, and we did our best to protect her as well.

The Doctor did admit that not all TARDISes had been treated with the same respect we had for ours, and that “slavery” was probably not too far off the mark in many cases. He was just so happy that this Gallifrey had evolved so differently, though he still had to discover why that was the case. He asked Tianza about the Untempered Schism, and she had just looked confused. She’d never heard of it.

The next day we took her on a trip to see her planet from space. She and Wilfred sat in the doorway, with their feet dangling, watching the rusty orange planet spin before them. I didn’t miss Wilfred covering her hand with his, and the way she leaned her head against his shoulder. Maybe she was fonder of him than I’d previously realized. I couldn’t help but smile at the two of them. It was a romantic location, that doorway. Me and the Doctor had spent many an hour there, taking in the sights, both in this universe and the other.

The Doctor took the opportunity of being in space to perform a proper scan of Gallifrey using the TARDIS’ scanners. It showed him what he had suspected all along: the massive rift in space and time, known as the Untempered Schism, had never formed on Gallifrey. Without prolonged exposure to the naked Vortex, Gallifreyans had never evolved into Time Lords and the corals had never developed the potential to manipulate time and space.

Later, we took the TARDIS into the Chanting Caverns to meet her kindred. She warbled and hummed with the corals, and we could feel her joy and contentment absolutely bubbling over our bond. Me and the Doctor looked at one another and we knew what we had to do, what was only right to do. She could have friends of her own kind now, and it was with no small amount of trepidation that we offered to let her stay here, if that was what she wanted, to allow her the freedom she deserved for the rest of her days. It made my heart ache and brought to the forefront of my mind how I’d been feeling about the Doctor, losing him to this world, too. If I was to lose them both…

But the TARDIS enveloped our minds in what could only be described as a hug. We were her family, her life. Her freedom was exploring all of space and time with us, and she intended to spend her life looking after us and our family. Forever, she hummed.

We said goodbye to Tianza (Wilfred did too, though I suspected he would be visiting her a lot with his Vortex manipulator), and we ended up spending another entire week exploring Gallifrey: the universities and academies; Arcadia; the mountains; and many of the smaller communities around the planet.

I often took my easel and paints with me and let my muse run mad. There was inspiration everywhere, from scenes of everyday life to spectacular vistas. My favourite of my paintings, though, is of a little boy, running through an immense field of long, red grass, dragging a ragged little kite in his wake. I’ve managed to keep that one a secret from the Doctor. I still have a bit of work to do on it, but I hope to give it to him as a gift one day.

One night over supper, the Doctor sadly declared he thought it was well past time we return to our own timeline and celebrate Christmas with our family. This had been a brilliant, life-changing Christmas gift, one he would enjoy for many years, but for now, it was time to go home.

As we curled up to sleep under the Gallifreyan stars, I knew it was time to face my fears once and for all. Just as we had done for the TARDIS, I had to set the Doctor free, to give him that choice. “Are you sure? You’re certain you want to go back? You don’t have to feel obliged, you know…”

He gave me an odd look and arched his eyebrow at me. “What are you on about, eh?” He probed over our bond, and found the unfamiliar door in my mind where I had hidden all my feelings of jealousy and possessiveness and my fear of losing him on our first day on Gallifrey, and every day since, to be honest. “What’s going on in that beautiful mind, hmmm? May I look?”

I felt so guilty for having any feelings at all that would make it seem I didn’t want him to be happy I couldn’t look him in the eye, but I nodded and allowed him access to that room behind the door. The second he opened it, all my repressed fears and emotions came rushing out at once, before I was able to rein them in.  

I couldn’t hold the tears back any more than I’d been able to hold back that rush of emotions, and within moments I was blubbing away like a big baby. “When I saw the words on the kite Wilfred gave you when we first got here… welcome home… it made me think, yeah. I was just so afraid I’d lose you to this planet. I mean, it’s your home. I’m so sorry! You’re having the most brilliant experience of your life, and here I’m being such a cow. But, honestly, I just want you to be happy, even if it means having to lose you; I don’t care what the cost. I mean it, I really do.”

He was crying too, now, and holding me so tight, rocking me and repeating like a mantra, “You are my home.” Finally, our tears had calmed a bit, and he said, “I thought you knew that.”

“I did. I do. I guess I’ve just never had to compete with an entire planet before.”

“There was never any competition, love. Gallifrey was where I grew up, and I have some very fond memories of it, but it never really felt like home, no matter how hard I tried to make it that way. It’s why I ran away. The TARDIS and all my friends were the closest things I had to that. Then you came into my life. You gave me a future and a reason to live. You gave me the one adventure I always thought I could never have. And, yes, I do want to come back and have more adventures here, on this Gallifrey, but only if I have you by my side every step of the way. You’re it for me, Rose Tyler. My home. Forever.”

Santa, I don’t know what I’ve ever done to deserve him. Yes, there are certainly times he’s so bloody thick-headed he makes me want to pull my hair out, but honestly, I wouldn’t have him any other way. He’s my home, too.

I hope you found your way back to your home safely this year, Santa, and that it was filled with love. Give my love to Mrs. Claus, the elves, and all the reindeer.

Love, Rose.

[fyrepen33]

You were the Doctor on the one day when it was impossible to get it right.

As he regenerates, it tears him apart. He heard the chaos around him, feeling it tear the universe apart, taking Gallifrey in its wake.

In his mind, the presence of the Time Lords, all those stars in the night slowly blink out, one by one, until all at once they’re gone. He’s left alone in his mind, in the silence that’s more deafening than the pulsating presence of life that used to be there. There is one light left, one star still in the sky, and he reaches for it and finds the comforting light of his TARDIS, her light the only one still shining. There is shock in its light, shock at the horror he has just committed, but a resolution. Even now, when he has committed this terrible act against his own people, she will not abandon him.

           I’m ready he thinks as the darkness overcomes him, and he turns to accept what he believes is his punishment

           In that moment, time is suspended, and he sees their faces in the darkness. Those who came before this moment, the friends who became family before they passed to time. The friends who became foes. He closes his eyes, because, while there were many times that he thought were the end, he never imagined it ending this way. He accepts it though, because he sees it as the last justice in the universe. That the killer of the Time Lords dies too. For some odd reason its comforting it what he believes to be his last moments, that the universe is just in some way.

  My planet's gone. It's dead. It burned like the Earth. It's rocks and dust before its time.

           It’s the first time he’s said the words out loud, and they taste like ash in his mouth.

           There was a time, a very long time ago on Gallifrey, when his wife had died, and he had still lived in the house that the two of them had shared together. He had moved through the rooms quietly, as though not wanting to disturb the ghost that lived there with him. Ghosts and memories had painted the walls, and it had seemed to die with her. It was not his home, it was their home, and it had no chance of being anything different. Once she was gone, it was time for him to move on, and find somewhere else that had room for new memories.

           This was the universe he had existed in after the war.

           Everywhere he ran, trying to escape the knowledge of what had happened, he could only see it for what it had been before the war, not what it was now, or what it could someday be. The universe was a place of memory, a place that would no longer see TARDISes and Time Lords and countless other species.

           Until he meets Rose.

           She sees a different universe than he does. He sees a dying universe, but she sees one that is unfolding and expanding before her eyes. She asks all questions that he would have asked before the war. As she travels with him, he starts to see it again. An expanse of universe full of potential and hope. Not alone anymore, he sees the universe through her eyes and the ghosts are chased away.

  Does it need saying?

           The question was the answer.

           By asking, he said everything that he couldn’t bring himself to say. That he loved her, and that he loved her enough to let her go, if that’s what she chose. Actions spoke louder than any words he would be able to offer her, and this moment where he was to say goodbye to her again, any words he spoke would not speak the volumes he wanted to communicate. It had been a real question too. Did it need saying? Did the happiness that threatened to consume him when he was with her really need a name? Was it something that needed saying? Was it something that she really didn’t know already?

It was later that he knew that it had been a mask, he had been hiding. Fear. Afraid of losing her, of time taking her away the way it had his people. Afraid of the universe once more becoming a place of ghosts.  He had pushed her away before time could take her, pushed her to a place where he wouldn’t have to know the end to her story, and where he could always imagine a better one. It wasn’t until later that the volume of his cowardice truly dawned on him. It wasn’t until he was regenerating that it hit him, and it crushed him. He likes to think he would have said more to her when he said goodbye to her, the her that was there on New Years on 2005, but words failed him the way they did that day on the beach.

 I dream about where I’m going.

           He had done it, he had crossed the stars, sometimes twice, sometimes more. He had lived the dream that he had once had as a child watching the constellations outside the window of a lonely barn. The stars had been more than he could have ever imagined, more beautiful, more radiant than a child ever could have anticipated. Sitting alone, watching from the clock tower on Trenzalore over the silent starry expanse of sky, he supposed that was all anyone could ever hope for in life. Be kind, live the dream, and love those you met along the way as best you could.

           He had loved. Loved with both his hearts. Hated too, as evidenced by his enemies outside, made mistakes, gotten messy, done terrible good, and spectacular evil. Things that it was too late to say, and others that couldn’t be taken back. A life. In its sum, a normal life. It was the most he could have hoped for.

           But, he supposed, not all he would have asked for, had he been allowed to ask for more.

           He does think about her, and while he does not regret the journey that led him to her, he regrets letting her go. As he reaches what he knows to be the end of his life, he tries to rationalize the choice he made again, but it doesn’t stick, and it doesn’t convince even him anymore. Alone now on Trenzalore, he wishes, selfishly, that she were with him now. The empty feeling, the feeling of being half aches more than it usually does. A part of him far away, in another dimension only part of memory and history.

           His biggest mistake and his biggest regret. 

  I’ve seen this face before.

Old tired eyes. Eyes that witnessed the birth of stars and mourned their death. Eyes that have smiled, laughed, mourned, and condemned. Eyes that have died twelve times, and will be reborn again twelve more times.

Eyes that, when they see her again, weep.

[chasingthecosmos]

By Any Other Name

Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: T Pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler, Eleventh Doctor/Rose Tyler (The Doctor/Clara Oswald, Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswald) Chapters: 33/33 Read on AO3 here.

“Rose Tyler was dying - or, at least, she was relatively certain that that’s what was happening …” A Season 7 AU where Rose returns to her home universe only to find that 100 years have passed and nothing is quite the way that she remembers it. She wakes up with a new body, a new life, and a new Doctor. What has the Bad Wolf gotten her into this time? The 50th Anniversary will be included in this story.

"Doctor!" a familiar, grating voice shouted, immediately interrupting Rose and the Doctor and striking fear into their collective hearts. "The Doctor will be brought! The daleks demand the Doctor!"

"Doctor, what are we going to do?" Rose asked quietly as she stared up at his defeated, weary expression.

"We aren't going to do anything," he stated resolutely as he grabbed for the cane at his side and heaved himself upwards onto stiff, aching limbs. "You are going to stay here. Promise me that, Rose - promise me you will."

Rose could feel hot, angry tears welling up behind her eyes once more as she relinquished her hold on the Doctor's hand and stood up to her full height to glare at him in response. "You've been here all of this time ..." she muttered quietly as she leveled her eyes on him. "All of this time, all on your own, because you lied to me again." Rose's jaw tightened as she raised her chin in stubborn defiance and stated, "Well, not this time. This time, I'm not leaving you, no matter what you say." When the Doctor's gaze dropped from hers in bitter defeat, she added, "And when we both get out of this alive ... I'm definitely installing a truth field in the TARDIS - don't think I won't!"

That, at least, startled a small chuckle from him as he slowly raised his eyes to hers once more. He took a few stuttering steps forward, his gaze and his movements hesitant as though he wasn't quite sure how to approach her anymore. He slowly raised his shaking hand to the back of Rose's neck and pulled her forward into his arms as he buried his face against her should. "My impossible girl ..." he whispered bitterly into her hair. Too clever and too beautiful for me by far, he added silently I've missed you.

Rose squeezed her eyes shut tight as she wrapped her own arms cautiously around his middle and felt the first of her tears begin to seep out onto the familiar tweed of his jacket. Don't do this, Doctor, she begged him silently across their bond. Please don't say goodbye.

"It's time," he muttered definitively in response, stepping back and looking down on her with those wide, green eyes that betrayed all of the anguished longing that he wouldn't admit to, not even across their telepathic connection.

Rose answered those unspoken words in the only way that she knew how - she stood on her tip-toes and pressed a gentle, desperate kiss to his lips as she filled his mind with all of the bold confidence that she could possibly muster in that moment. She knew that she would have to let him face the daleks alone - the Doctor would never allow it to be any other way - but she also knew that there was no way that she would just let him give up and die the way that he clearly wanted to, not while she still had anything at all to say about it.

"Go," she whispered against his lips when she finally stepped away, not failing to catch the way that he subconsciously leaned back into her, clearly not ready to separate from her just yet after so long of being apart. "Give them hell," she added with a small, watery smile. "And don't you dare give up."

He smiled as he laced his stiff, wrinkled fingers through hers one last time and gave her hand a parting squeeze. She was pleased to note that there was a new, determined look in his sad green eyes that hadn't been there a moment before, and Rose felt hope flare through her as she allowed herself to believe that perhaps she had finally managed to get through to him after all.

She waited until the Doctor had completely left the room, his footsteps fading into silence as he slowly ascended the winding stairs towards the top of the bell tower, before she narrowed her eyes back on the glowing crack in the wall behind her. She glared at the jagged, golden line as though it were the sole source of the danger currently threatening her bondmate's life as she rushed forward and bent down to meet the thing at eye-level.

"Listen to me, you lot," she growled menacingly. "Listen! Help him. I know that you can, and I know that you can hear me right now, so just do it!" Rose had to bite back the many other hateful, bitter words that she could feel welling up within her chest as she contemplated all that the Time Lords had done ot the Doctor and the many, many things that they still owed him for. She closed her eyes and forced herself to take a deep, calming breath before she continued. She knew from long conversations with her husband about his people that irritating the pompous elite of Gallifrey would win her no favors.

"You've been asking a question ... and it's time someone told you you've been getting it wrong," she declared quietly. Rose knew that she could have given them the Doctor's true name just as easily as the Doctor himself could have done back when they had first arrived here. It would be such a small, simple thing to do in order to put an end to all of this chaos and destruction for good. But Rose decided in that moment that she would follow the example of her bondmate and not give either side the satisfaction of actually having their plan work out the way that they had intended it to. No, she had a plan that was even better - and an answer that would go far beyond what anyone else would have expected, just like the Doctor would have wanted.

"His name ... his name is the Doctor. All the name he needs - everything you need to know about him," Rose stated resolutely. "And if you love him - and you should - help him. Please." She hung her head as the tears began to flow once more and she felt the rest of her words being strangled into silence around the lump of emotion in her throat. She leaned her forehead wearily against the wall above the crack as she silently counted the seconds that ticked by.

When she got to number seven, there was a faint, shifting noise that had Rose's eyes immediately snapping open in alarm. She gasped in surprise as she was met with the sight of the swirling, golden haze that was currently seeping through the crack in the wall and slowly engulfing her in its embrace. She only just managed to reach out over her mental link to the Doctor in startled panic before the cloud of golden dust infiltrated her mouth and nose and quickly silenced all else with its overwhelming power.

The sensation that suddenly filled her was similar to that of the Bad Wolf as time steadily pulsed within her, but the energy was more concentrated this time - more purposeful. There was still a sense of eternity and endless possibility to it, but the burn that Rose felt in her bones felt as though it was coming from a single flame instead of that of every sun in all of existence.

Rose, what have you done? the Doctor demanded, his thoughts running wild and panicked through her own mind as he desperately sought out the cause for her sudden pain and uneasiness.

Doctor, hurry ... she called back distractedly as she gazed down in wonder at her own hands, which were now reflecting the same golden light as the crack in the wall.

Everything after that happened in a blur of light and sound and movement as Rose fought to separate the mess of glowing timelines converging and unraveling all around her. It was difficult to tell what was real and what was imagined as she dashed desperately for the stairs in an attempt to reach her bondmate. She didn't know what was happening to her, but she had a deep, instinctual need that seemed to be pushing her forward, moving her faster in an attempt to find the Doctor - now, before it was too late.

She eventually did find him - of that, she was certain - though the details of the process seemed to elude her. She didn't know if she had managed to rush up the stairs, or if he had ran down them. She didn't know if his face was old or new as his features seemed to blur and swirl together before her very eyes. She didn't know which one of them it was who eventually kissed the other in the end, either - she just knew that when their lips connected, there was a burning, searing pain that felt as though everything inside of her was exploding and reconverging all at the same time.

Rose knew that she lost consciousness somewhere along the way, but even in her sleep, her mind was filled with golden light and fiery combustions that seemed to go on into eternity, destroying and reforming her world into new, constantly shifting configurations.

When the haze finally lifted and she was able to see clearly once more, the steady sound of her rapidly-beating heart was the only sound that she could hear pounding away in her ears and filling her with a quiet sense of foreboding. Rose quickly realized that she was no longer in the town of Christmas, either, as she sat up and hesitantly gazed around the familiar setting of the TARDIS console room. The ship was groaning ominously in the back of her mind - almost as if the she was holding her breath, as though she were waiting for something to happen.

"Doctor?" Rose called out instinctively as she slowly raised herself to her feet. Every single one of her muscles felt sore, as though she had just finished running a marathon, but at the same time, a cocktail of endorphins were rushing through her system, flooding her with the type of manic, eager energy that she normally only ever associated with the Doctor.

As she fought to steady her erratic breathing and regain her bearings, Rose noticed that the console room floor around her had been littered with piles of old, worn clothes - chief among them, the Doctor's jacket, which looked as though it might have been serving as some sort of blanket or pillow for her while she had been lying on the floor.

"Doctor?" she called out again, her voice a little louder and more concerned as she peered at the glowing console controls and caught sight of the half-empty bowl of what looked like custard, with long strips of something that had been battered and fried floating in it. She turned her nose up slightly at the strange sight as she turned her gaze away and focused instead in the direction of the sound of quiet boot steps on the stairs before her.

"Doctor!" she sighed in happy relief as she finally caught sight of the familiar features of her bondmate as she knew him - the bright green eyes and floppy dark hair restored over a fresh jacket and bowtie.

"Hello," he replied quietly as he flashed her a small smile that refused to meet his eyes. Rose's own cheery grin began to falter and fall as she mentally reached for him and was met with nothing but a solid, cold wall of denial. He was purposefully shielding his thoughts from her in a way that he almost never did, and it instantly made her nervous.

"Doctor?" she called his name again in question as she hesitantly stepped closer. "What's wrong?"

"It's started," he stated, still watching her with that blank, empty smile on his face. "I can't stop it now, this is just the reset. A whole new regeneration cycle." His gaze dropped to his boots as he paused to gesture lamely at himself. "Taking a bit longer - just breaking it in."

He took a few steps forward, but ended up half-collapsing against the TARDIS console as he struggled to keep himself together against the weight that seemed to be pressing down on him. Rose was immediately at his side, one hand on his back and the other on his arm as she attempted to steady him further.

"Doctor, no, please ..." she whispered desperately. "This can't be happening. Please tell me this isn't happening ..."

"It all just disappears, doesn't it?" the Doctor murmured distractedly as he turned his wild, unfocused gaze back to Rose. "Everything you are, gone in a moment, like ... breath on a mirror." Another strange, empty smile began to turn up his features as the Doctor's gaze scanned over Rose's features, eventually settling on her lips. "Any moment now ... he's a-comin'."

"Don't say that, Doctor, stay with me," Rose begged, reaching out and twining her fingers around his neck to bring him closer. "Please, stay with me," she breathed in desperation as she pressed her forehead against his.

"Always," the Doctor replied with a small huff of unamused laughter. He leaned in to kiss her, but his lips just barely managed to brush against her own before his breath hitched and his head whipped around to focus on something that Rose couldn't see.

"Amelia!" the Doctor called out excitedly.

"Doctor?" Rose asked questioningly as she peered up at his wide, unfocused eyes that seemed to be tracking something invisible through the upper levels of the console room. "What's going on? Who's there?"

"The first face this face saw," he explained distantly as he turned away from her in order to follow the phantom that only he could see. Suddenly, his hand reached up as though to touch something - or someone - and Rose felt the tears that she had been fighting against finally break loose and slip down her cheeks as she watched a wide, heartbroken smile light up the Doctor's features.

When he finally turned back to her, there were tears in his eyes as well as he reached up and slowly unwound the old bowtie from around his neck. He rolled the stip of fabric into a tight ball and then pressed it firmly into Rose's hands, both of his gripping hers tightly as he stared deep into her eyes. "Keep an eye on it, Rose," he told her, his voice cracking quietly with emotion as his gaze roamed over her features once more. "And keep an eye on him, too."

Rose found that she could do nothing but gaze up at him in horror as his skin slowly began to glimmer and glow gold, just as hers had done earlier. "No, no, please don't change!" she cried as he stepped out of her reach and her hand raised automatically in an attempt to grab him back again. "Doctor ... don't go ..."

He was watching her with a small, sad smile on his face as he silently filled her head with devotion and reassurances, but his thoughts were immediately cut off as he threw his head back with a jolt and their bond flared between them. Rose gasped as a flash of fire shot through her and simmered like an ember in the back of her mind. When she was finally able to focus once more, she blinked and realized that there was a new man standing in front of her.

He was tall and skinny with a severe-looking nose and a pair of sharp eyebrows to match. His gray hair was cut into short curls around his head and his eyes were a bright, startling blue that were currently staring at her with an expression of wide-eyed shock.

Once again, Rose could do nothing but stare as she matched his look of surprise and watched as he slowly stepped towards her, his head tilting to the side slightly as though he were some sort of wild animal trying to assess if she was dangerous or not.

She held her breath as she counted the strange man's footsteps as he grew closer and closer until all of a sudden, she could feel the Doctor's presence in the back of her mind once more as he slowly eased himself back into all of the places that he had occupied before, as though he were slowly testing out the waters of her thoughts.

Doctor ...? Rose called out hesitantly to him, desperate to grasp onto any small reassurance that she could find that would convince her that her bondmate wasn't completely gone for good.

The strange man before her seemed to freeze in his tracks at her tentative mental touch and then his entire body convulsed as he bent backwards once more and grabbed painfully at his side.

"Kidneys!" he cried out through clenched teeth. "I've got new kidneys!" He was still staring at her, as though he were waiting for her to say or do something, but Rose had absolutely no idea what was meant to happen next. She had already been through a regeneration with the Doctor once before, but she found that it hadn't quite adequately prepared her for this. There had been no flames, no fire, no watching as his face slowly rearranged itself into new and unfamiliar features. He was just there one moment, and the next ...

"I don't like the color," the man before her declared, his already-severe-looking eyebrows coming together in a dark scowl as he glared at her.

"Of your kidneys ...?" Rose asked in quiet confusion. She furrowed her own brows as she noticed for the first time that this man seemed to be speaking in a Scottish accent - just one more new addition that managed to set her whole world slightly off-kilter.

Just then, the TARDIS gave a mighty jolt around them, sending them both rocking into the console as they fought to maintain their balance.

"What's happening?" Rose cried out in terror as the old ship groaned and rattled dangerously beneath their feet.

"We're probably crashing!" the strange man called back as he turned his scowl to the TARDIS controls and roughly flipped a few switches. "Stay calm," he commanded as he continued to focus down at the buttons near his hands. "Just one question - do you happen to know how to fly this thing?"

[chasingthecosmos]

By Any Other Name

Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: T Pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler, Eleventh Doctor/Rose Tyler (The Doctor/Clara Oswald, Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswald) Chapters: 28/32 Read on AO3 here.

“Rose Tyler was dying - or, at least, she was relatively certain that that’s what was happening …” A Season 7 AU where Rose returns to her home universe only to find that 100 years have passed and nothing is quite the way that she remembers it. She wakes up with a new body, a new life, and a new Doctor. What has the Bad Wolf gotten her into this time? The 50th Anniversary will be included in this story.

"I don't suppose we'll know if we actually succeeded," the youngest Doctor murmured thoughtfully after they had finished locking Gallifrey away into a single moment of time and had reconvened for a cup of tea back at the National Gallery. "But at worst ... we failed doing the right thing, as opposed to succeeding in doing the wrong."

Rose smiled brightly up at him from where she sat at his side and reached forward to take his free hand in her own. The youngest Doctor leveled his gaze on her pensively for a moment before he continued, "I won't remember this, will I? I won't remember that I tried to save Gallifrey, rather than burn it ..."

"The time streams are out of sync," Rose's Doctor agreed quietly from where he stood before them. "You can't retain it, no."

"It'll all work out in the end, though," Rose reminded him, giving his hand a comforting squeeze and flashing him another bright smile. "You'll grow up and turn into them and get to relive it all over again from the other side." She nodded her head encouragingly towards where his two future selves stood, but the Doctor in leather didn't bother to spare them a second look. He was too busy staring intently at Rose - it was as though he were putting the last few pieces of his mental puzzle together and he had finally caught a glimpse of what the final picture looked like.

"I also suppose that I have you to look forward to as well, my dear," he added quietly, his brown eyes gazing at her searchingly, as though he were looking for those last few, misplaced pieces.

"That, too," Rose agreed, giggling lightly as she leaned forward and placed a firm, lingering kiss to his cheek.

Before she realized what was happening, her bond flared instinctively, not seeming to be able to make any sort of differentiation between the man who barely knew her and the man that he would one day become. Rose and the Doctor both gasped in surprise as a jolt of electricity shot through them at the exact same moment, and Rose was distinctly aware of the fact that the two older versions of the Doctor were staring at the two of them in wide-eyed wonder.

She ignored them, however, as another smile stretched over her face and she leaned in to place another light kiss against the Doctor's cheek in the exact same spot as before. "To the days to come," she whispered quietly, her words meant just for him. "They're gonna be absolutely fantastic."

"Oh, I don't doubt it," he murmured appreciatively as she finally leaned back and met his gaze again. Rose was pleased to note that the youngest Doctor's voice had gone a bit breathless and he seemed to have to force himself to meet her eye as he slowly scanned over her features one last time, as though he were attempting to memorize each and every single detail. After a moment of this, he gave her hand one last final squeeze, nodded his goodbye to his future selves, and then stepped back into his TARDIS.

"Thank you," he murmured as he met Rose's gaze one last time. He opened his mouth as though he wanted to say more, but seemed to think better of it and simply let his ship's doors fall closed with a small, parting grin instead. The TARDIS's engines groaned to life a moment later, and within seconds, the Doctor in leather was gone.

"I won't remember, either," the Doctor in pinstripes piped up as soon as the room around them had grown still once more, "so you might as well tell me."

"Tell you what?" Rose asked, meeting his assessing gaze cautiously as she glanced up at him from where she sat.

He took a step closer so that his intimidating height was even more pronounced as he stood before her. "Who are you?" he muttered quietly. Rose could feel his mind just on the edges of her thoughts once more, as though he longed to reach out and seize the answers for himself, but he couldn't quite seem to force himself to cross that line.

Rose immediately dropped her gaze in response to the younger Doctor's direction question before chancing a look at her current Doctor from out of the corner of her eye. He sighed heavily in resignation, but eventually nodded, indicating that it would be safe to reveal this one, final secret.

Rose stood shakily to her feet, her gaze hesitant as she glanced up at the man who she had dedicated a whole lifetime to back in her old world. Unable to meet his narrowed, curious gaze for very long, she dropped her eyes to the tie that she had so admired back in the prison cell in the Tower of London.

"That really is a great tie," she muttered thoughtfully, stepping forward and raising her hand so that she could trace the petals of one of the blue roses with her fingertips. "I'm assuming you're pretty far along in your timeline. I think it's probably already all happened for you ..."

"What has? What's happened?" he murmured, watching her expression warily as Rose continued to stare intently at the tiny blue flowers.

"The metacrisis," she finally replied, her voice little more than a whisper.

The Doctor stiffened and Rose immediately let her eyes snap up to his once more, her heart pounding in fear of what she might see in his expression. He was watching her with the same look of guarded suspicion that he had been wearing ever since she had first laid eyes on him back in that old prison cell, but there was something else to it now, too - something like recognition.

"How can you know about that?" he whispered breathlessly.

"That woman ... the one you left behind on that beach in Norway," Rose replied haltingly, "she lived out the rest of her life with your clone. They had a long, happy marriage doing what they always did - helping people and saving the world in a hundred different ways. They loved each other very, very much, and they had decades of joy that they shared with one another."

"How? How can you know that?" the Doctor demanded, his voice turning desperate as he stared down at her with dark intensity.

"Because ... that woman died," Rose explained slowly, feeling tears welling up in her eyes as she forced herself to meet his gaze. "And then ... she became me."

"You?" the Doctor repeated, furrowing his brow at her in confusion.

Rose nodded and bit her lip nervously, feeling the first of her tears break free and slip down her cheek as she stared up at the man who she loved and desperately begged for him to accept her.

Suddenly, the Doctor's eyes widened in shock and one of his hands raised to her cheek as he stared deep into her eyes, as though he had found something precious there that he hadn't even dared to dream could be possible. "Rose ...?" he breathed in quiet wonder.

Rose choked on a sob before she threw her arms around his neck and brought him in to a crushing hug, which he immediately returned as soon as he had recovered from his numbing shock.

"How can it be you? How can you be back?" he asked in breathless disbelief as he wrapped his arms tight around her middle and buried his nose in her hair.

"Long story," she muttered, laughing through her tears as she clung tight to him. "Doesn't really matter, anyway." She forced herself to release her hold on his neck as she took a step back to look up at his familiar features once more. "What matters is that you have a lot to look forward to."

"It certainly looks that way," he agreed, his gaze turning suspicious once more as he turned to narrow his eyes at Rose's current Doctor.

"I'll be seeing you soon," Rose promised, standing on her tiptoes to place a kiss on his cheek, just as she had done with his younger self. "Be safe," she sighed, wondering exactly how far along he was in his timeline and when, exactly, he would be turning into the man in the bowtie who was currently standing behind her.

The Doctor stared at her for another long moment in silence before bending down and pressing a quick, chaste kiss to the very edge of her lips. However, the brief touch was all that he needed to instantly find the mental bond that she had been teasing him with all day, and he quickly ran his thoughts over it in a gentle caress that made Rose's knees go weak.

"To the days to come," he whispered, his breath ghosting across her face as Rose felt the sharp stab of his yearning in her own gut. Before she could attempt to reach out and reassure him as she wanted to, he stepped back, flashed her a quick wink, and then sprinted back into his own TARDIS before he became too tempted to do something reckless and really screw up the timelines.

"Thats them gone, then," the Doctor muttered as the second TARDIS slowly blinked out of sight and disappeared. "Everything back to normal."

"'Normal'?" Rose repeated, turning to flash the Doctor a sarcastic look as she crossed her arms against her chest and spun around to face him. "Since when do you do 'normal'? Since when have you ever done 'normal'? I just said goodbye to two different versions of you who are probably off to go regenerate into to more different versions of you. Not a whole lot of 'normal' in that."

The Doctor smiled and nodded in agreement, but there was still a deep, profound sadness in his eyes as he turned once more towards the painting that stood on the opposite wall - it was the one depicting the fall of Arcadia, the battle filled with fire and smoke that was now frozen forever somewhere up there in space where no one would ever find it.

Rose heaved a soft sigh as she stepped up to his side, slipping her hand into his and resting her head against his shoulder. "It's still out there, somewhere," she reminded him quietly. "We could go and look for it, if you wanted to."

"Maybe ..." the Doctor muttered, his voice giving away nothing at all as he flashed the painting another small, distant smile.

"Doctor?" Rose asked as she quietly studied the frozen image of war before her. "Back on Gallifrey, when you were freezing the planet ... I heard you talking to the others. I saw all of the other TARDISes on the monitor."

"Mmm?" the Doctor hummed leadingly as his gaze continued to roam over the bigger-on-the-inside Time Lord painting before them.

"Doctor, there were thirteen ships ..." Rose reminded him pointedly. "All eleven different versions of you, plus the Doctor I met today, and ... one more. Thirteen different Doctors ..."

"So there were," he muttered quietly, his voice sounding vague and disinterested.

"So?" Rose continued to press him, squeezing his hand and tugging at their mental bond as she quietly begged him for more. "Who was that last one? The thirteenth Doctor, who was he?"

"Don't know," the Doctor murmured, turning to press a kiss against her hair as he filled her thoughts with peace and contentment and silently urged her to stay here in the present with him. "That's kind of the point, isn't it? He's the future. Those are spoilers."

"So ... you're not even the least bit curious?" Rose asked, refusing to let him simply brush off the dangerous possibilities that loomed before him. It was clear that there was another man coming to replace the Doctor who was holding her hand now, but neither of them could possibly know how far down the future that was or what would happen that would trigger the events of his next regeneration.

"Why should I be curious?" the Doctor asked teasingly. "Are you? Afraid that he'll be more handsome than me? Or are you worried that I'll go all old and gray?"

Rose tugged playfully at the Doctor's arm as she giggled into his shoulder. "Come on, Doctor - surely you know me better than that by now," she muttered jokingly. "You're gonna have to do a lot worse than 'old and gray' to get me to leave."

The Doctor chuckled as he gently squeezed her hand in his and then slowly turned to face her. The smile that he gave her was soft and almost rueful as she felt him quietly bottle up all of their collective fears for the future and store them away to contemplate on another day.

"To the days to come?" he asked, his eyes sparkling as he smiled down at her as though she were the answer to a long, lost prayer - a prayer four-hundred-years in the making, if his measuring of time was to be believed.

"To the days to come," Rose agreed quietly, filling their shared bond with enough love and devotion to last them both for at least a few more centuries to come.

The Doctor leaned forward and sealed their promise with a long, lingering kiss and Rose found that she really didn't fear for the future after all - not as long as he was guaranteed to be in it.

[chasingthecosmos]

A Hand to Hold

Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: G Pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler, Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler Chapters: 10/12 Read on AO3 here.

“The Doctor realized - far, far too late - that this hand-holding thing might be becoming a problem …”

A (sort of) season re-write centering around the Doctor’s touch telepathy and the many inconvenient ways that it gets in the way between him and his new companion, Rose Tyler. First half will be centered around Season 1 with Nine and the second half will be centered around Season 2 with Ten. Chapters will vary in length. Rating may go up as the story continues. Tags will be updated as I go.

Chapter Ten: The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances (Part Two)

"So ... there are social rules and legal rules," Rose muttered thoughtfully, her foot tapping some nonsense rhythm into the air as she stared up at the TARIDS ceiling. "So it's not so different from normal communication, really."

"Yes, Rose, that's what I've been trying to tell you," the Doctor sighed exasperatedly, rolling his eyes dramatically even though he knew that she wouldn't be able to see it from his current position under the floor grating.

They had been in the console room for the past few hours talking about everything and nothing as he worked on basic TARDIS maintenance and Rose kept him company. They were parked in an alley somewhere in 33rd century Canada where they had just finished helping the locals deal with an outbreak of a deadly alien virus hiding in the soil. They were waiting on Jack, who had begged for a few hours of shore leave to finish "cleaning up", as he put it, but he wasn't fooling anyone with the eyes he was making at one of the pretty young police women who had helped them save the community.

So it was just the two of them again (as it should be, the Doctor thought privately to himself) - Rose laying out on the battered jump seat with her legs crossed in the air above her and the Doctor below the floor grating buried under three different layers of TARDIS pipes and wiring.

After about an hour of this, she had started demanding that he make good on his promise to tell her more about telepathy and he had spent the time since giving her the basics that every Gallifreyan child knew.

"It's so different, though," Rose went on eagerly. "Like, how do you keep everyone separated in your head? Do they sound different, like with normal speech, or is it a thing that you feel? And how do you do things like plan surprise birthdays and parties and stuff? There wouldn't be any way to keep a secret!"

"Believe me, there are plenty of secrets on Gallifrey," the Doctor murmured as he scowled at the bit of wiring in his hand. "Not many surprise birthday parties, though," he added blithely. "Shame, that."

"And what if ... well, what if you fancied someone?" Rose asked, her tone taking on that bright, gossipy quality that he knew she had learned from her mother. "Oooh, bet that's rough. How would you hide it?"

"There are easy ways to block things," the Doctor explained, making his tone as factual as possible as he silently thanked the floor grating for concealing his suddenly-heated cheeks. "It's something we're taught from a young age, so it's not hard. Goes hand-in-hand with telepathy, really. Can't just be a walking, talking open book."

"So you're saying that being cagey is inherent to all Time Lords?" Rose asked teasingly.

"What are you implying?" the Doctor asked in mock offense, secretly wondering how this one human girl had managed to peg his people so accurately when she'd never even met them.

"I'm just saying that all that talk about 'dancing' the other night wasn't exactly the most straightforward way to come out with your feelings," Rose replied, keeping up her teasing tone.

"But ... we danced for hours!" the Doctor protested childishly. "What more could you want?"

"Yeah, danced around the subject," Rose drawled quietly to herself.

The Doctor silently gritted his teeth as he struggled to find something else to say. Was she really expecting him to just come right out and say it? To admit that he wanted her - needed her - in a way that he hadn't wanted anybody in more years than he could count?

She had teased him about the world imploding if the Doctor danced, but he was beginning to wonder if that was entirely untrue.

What good would it do either of them, anyway? It would certainly cause more problems than solutions. No, he decided, Rose Tyler had absolutely no idea how dangerous this fire was that she was playing with, and he was determined to keep her from getting burned.

"Hand me those extra cables and that bionic wrench," he commanded, desperately needing a change in subject. Rose could accuse him of being cagey all she liked, as long as it kept her from the one truth that he could never tell her.

Rose sighed heavily as she dropped her feet to the grating and strode over to the pile of gadgets and circuitry that were piled near the opening above him. She made her best guess at what he needed (he didn't bother mentioning that she had grabbed the pliers instead of the wrench) and passed them to him.

He didn't look up from the wiring wrapped around him as he raised his hand to meet hers, so he was entirely unprepared for when their fingers connected and something like an electrical shock jolted through him. She was projecting again, and he knew that it had to be on purpose, because there was deliberate intent with the thought that she pushed so forcefully into his mind.

I want you.

But it wasn't want in the primal, basic sense that someone like Jack Harkness might have used. It was so, so much greater than that. It was a desire for more - a promise of forever. It was a want to be close and to never let go. It was a want for everything that he had to give and to give everything that she had in return. It was a want for his good days, his bad days, and everything else in between - a want for his past, present, and future. It was a nameless, hope-filled desire that swelled his hearts to the point of bursting.

He had felt similar things before in his many lifetimes, but not in the fiery, overpowering, human way that Rose did - and never had he felt it coming from someone else and directed at him.

He was frozen in place again, blinking up at her in shock as she slowly withdrew her hand from his, keeping her dark eyes trained on him the entire time. It took everything in him to keep his grip on the wiring and pliers as the rest of the world seemed to fade away and all that was left was Rose.

"You ... you should really warn me before you do that," he finally muttered, his voice ragged and rough around the edges.

"Why? So you can block me out?" Rose countered fiercely. Her tone was hard and insistent, but he could see the vulnerable question in her eyes - she was waiting for his response.

He did drop the wiring and the pliers, then. He let them clatter down into the depths of the TARDIS without a care as to where they might scatter off to. In one quick motion he lifted himself out from under the console to sit on the edge of the opening beside her, his eyes boring into hers the entire time.

"Doctor ...?" she asked slowly.

But he couldn't answer - there were no words for all that he needed to tell her. He needed to show her - she needed to know - that what she was asking for was impossible.

He raised his hands to her temples and hesitated for only a second before silently cursing himself and forcing his fingers to make contact with her delicate, human skin.

You have no idea what you're asking for, Rose, he insisted, his expression screwed into a scowl as he forcefully filled her head with the sounds, sights, images, and feelings from the 900 years of his life. It was really only the merest glimpse and he purposefully left out all sensitive and potentially dangerous information, but it was still enough to make her startle and she gasped loudly as she instinctively attempted to jolt away from him.

But his fingers remained solidly connected to her temples as he let the weight of the last of the Time Lords ghost over her mind. He hung his head in shame and refused to meet her eyes as he let her see for the first time just how deep and dark his mind was.

This isn't even the half of it, not by far. So please don't ask for more.

He heard as well as felt her shaky exhale as the first shock of surprise finally left her and she began to relax once more. Her thoughts were going a mile a minute - racing to keep up with all of the things that he was attempting to show her. He realized with a sickening sense of dread that she wasn't pulling away in fear as she was meant to. In fact, she was filled with as much awe and wonder as she was whenever he showed her a new alien planet or took her to a fascinating point in history.

"I'm not afraid of you, you daft old alien," she sighed, her voice sounding as rough and weary as he felt.

Then, before he could stop her, she leaned forward and pressed her forehead gently to his, pushing his own dark thoughts out of the way and replacing them with warm feelings of love and acceptance. It was enough to make him choke on the sudden lump in his throat and his hands moved of their own accord to wrap around the back of her neck and draw her closer.

He knew that he was a fool for letting himself be drawn in by her siren's song - a promise of forever that he knew that she would never realistically be able to keep - but he was old and weak and so very, very tired. He had been running ever since the Time War, and he was ready now - finally - to stop running and begin to pick up the pieces.

He didn't know how long they sat there like that (his time sense were completely drowned out by her), and he certainly didn't know what was meant to happen next, but that issue was quickly resolved as a tall figure came swanning in through the TARDIS doors and completely interrupted the tense atmosphere hanging between them.

Rose finally pulled away, blinking hard and refusing to meet his gaze for a moment as she looked over his shoulder to greet Jack with a small, watery smile.

"Oi, took you long enough!" she called jokingly.

"Right," Jack replied slowly, clearly hesitating as he took in the vulnerable scene before him. "Sorry. I could go back and visit the bar again if you two needed more time for ... TARDIS calibrations ..."

The Doctor didn't have it in him to scold Jack for his damned insinuations. In fact, he couldn't do much in that moment other than sit there and stare up at Rose, needing her to meet his eye and tell him what to do next. This was entirely new, unstable ground for him. And just like with all new things, he was equal parts excited and terrified.

Finally, she hesitantly met his gaze, blinking nervously at him as though she expected him to jump up and forcefully push her away. When he did nothing but continue to stare, she offered him a small, shy smile and it immediately sparked him back into action.

"No chance, Harkness," he called, popping up to his feet and throwing the ex-time agent a cheeky smile over his shoulder. "If you go back to that bar we'll be stuck here for at least another few days waiting on you. Best get going. There's things to do, people to see, worlds to save, civilizations to build ..."

He only paused in his lighthearted, chattering banter to lean down and offer Rose a hand, which she took without a second's hesitation and possibly the brightest smile that he had seen from her yet.

He really had no choice but to mirror it, and if they looked even half as foolish as he felt, at least Jack Harkness had the (surprising) decency to not say a word about it.