#hence my high anxiey and putting it off

[tenscupcake]

electrostatic potential (35/?)

ten/rose. teen this ch. i’m back!!! see ao3 for notes. thank you oodles to @aroseofstone​ for the beta!!! summary: as the doctor and rose traverse time and space looking for adventure, they slowly fall victim to a mysterious energy that can manipulate their emotions. though confused and unnerved by the cerebral affliction, neither of them understands its cause, or realizes that it could jeopardize their friendship. what will it take for them to discover the truth? this chapter on ao3 | back to chapter 1 on ao3

“We've got two separate worlds,” the Doctor explains, growing increasingly animated. “But in between the two separate worlds, we've got the Void. That's where the Daleks were hiding. And the Cybermen travelled through the Void to get here. And you lot, one world to another, via the Void. Oh, I like that. Via the Void. Look!”

As soon as the Doctor places the flimsy paperboard glasses on her face, thousands of green and red particles swarm loosely around him. The particles move independently and randomly, yet they’re contained to a certain area around his figure. They follow him through some invisible force of physics as he sways from side to side, lagging only slightly behind.

“I’ve been through it,” he continues. “Do you see?”

“What is it?” Rose asks. She reaches out to try to touch the particles, but they pass right through her hand undetected, further proof of their immaterial existence.

“Void stuff,” the Doctor answers.

“Like, er...” Rose quickly rifles through related terms she��s learned in the past couple years. “Background radiation?”

“That’s it.” He nods, and whirls her around. “Look at the others.”

Mickey, Pete, and Jake are all surrounded by the same speckled cloud of coloured particles, but they are conspicuously absent in the vicinity of her mum.

“And the only one who hasn't been through the Void,” the Doctor continues, pointing his index finger obnoxiously in her direction. “Your mother! First time she's looked normal in her life.”

“Oi!” her mum interjects.

“But the Daleks lived inside the Void,” the Doctor continues, unfazed, running towards the empty wall on the other side of the room. “They're bristling with it!” He gestures wildly with his hands. “Cybermen, all of them. I just open the Void and reverse. The Void stuff gets sucked back inside.”

“Pullin’ ‘em all in!”

“Pullin’ ‘em all in!” the Doctor repeats with enthusiasm, tugging down on the air with his fist.

“Sorry,” Mickey interrupts. “What’s the Void?”

“The dead space,” answers the Doctor. “Some people call it hell.”

“So, you’re sending the Daleks and Cybermen to hell.” Mickey smiles appreciatively, and looks over at Jake. “Man, I told you he was good.”

But something suddenly dawns on Rose, bursting the bubble of excitement they’d just created.

“But it's like you said,” says Rose. “We've all got Void stuff. Me too, because we went to that parallel world. We're all contaminated. We'll get pulled in.”

“Well,” the Doctor crosses his arms. “I imagine you lot will want to head back to Pete’s world.” He nods his head towards the other four. “Hey, we should call it that! Pete’s world. Anyway, you’ll be safe there. The Void’s only opening from this side.”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere without Rose!” Her mum steps out of line with the others, separating herself from the theoretical return group.

“I know, Jackie, I didn’t mean you.” The Doctor looks to be barely containing an eye roll.

Her mum sidles up next to her.

The Doctor takes a deep breath, obviously contemplating something.

“But you could both go with them,” he suggests softly, shrugging. “To guarantee your safety. Well, yours, Rose,” he amends. “Jackie will be safe either way, as long as she steers clear of the Daleks, but...” he raises his eyebrows, searching both their faces for feedback.

“That’s not gonna happen,” Rose says, chuckling at the ridiculous suggestion.

The Doctor smirks, just a little. He does look instantly more relaxed, but not yet like he’s completely accepted this decision.

“Are you sure?” He asks after a long moment, staring into her eyes, looking very much like he wishes they could hold a private telepathic conversation right now. “The Tyler family, back together again...” he trails off, glancing over at Pete.

Her mum glances over, too.

Pete’s formerly hard glare in the face of their circumstances softens into one of longing as he steps closer to the both of them.

“I really don’t want to lose you again, Jacks.”

Her mum shakes her head. “If Rose is stayin’, then I am, too.” Her tone is resolute.

Pete takes a deep breath, running his hands down his face.

“You’re gonna make this world safe again?” he asks the Doctor.

“Or die trying,” the Doctor assures him.

Rose never appreciates his apparent disregard for his own life, but knows that’s simply how he is. She knew what she signed up for when she made a commitment to him: he’d put his life on the line for one random stranger any day. The whole planet? There’s no limit to the risks he’ll take.

“’S like you said,” Jackie says. “Your ideas worked in that world. You’ve got money. You go back. I’ve had twenty years without you. I’ve learned how to cope on my own.” She stands a bit straighter and puffs out her chest. It’s not easy to watch, her mum talking to a man who looks and talks exactly like her father with something so close to rejection. But Rose understands: she doesn’t want to put herself in a position of vulnerability. To open herself up to be disappointed again.

“Yeah, I’ve got money,” Pete agrees. “But... I’m not happy. Haven’t been for a while. And, I dunno, this just feels like... a second chance. And it feels stupid to squander it.”

“Whatever you’re doing, you’ve got to decide now.” The Doctor hustles past them to one of the computer systems, hurriedly punching in some numbers on the keyboard. “We’ve got to open the breach before it’s too late. Whether or not the Daleks and Cybermen are distracted from world domination by fighting each other, either way the whole planet’s about to be caught in the crossfire of a mutual genocide.”

“I could stay,” Pete blurts out, alternating his glance between Rose and her mum. “If you want.” He shrugs. “We could give this a go.”

Her mum’s tough façade finally begins to crack again, and her eyes well with tears. “I’d like that,” she admits. “But I’m not askin’ you to. I don’t want you to regret it later. If you do stay, it’s your decision. Only yours.”

“Rose, I know I’m not your dad,” Pete address Rose in a rush, trying to obey the Doctor. “But I could be. Or I could try to be. If you want. I don’t want to stay if you don’t want me, too.”

“I want Mum to be happy.” She holds back her intense desire to have a second chance at having a dad, trying not to sway his decision either way. She wants this decision to be between the two of them, not something he does out of misplaced guilt for a daughter he never actually had.

“I want that, too,” Pete agrees. Jackie glances between them both. “That’s it, then. I’m staying.”

“Get to the TARDIS, then,” the Doctor demands. “She’s strong enough to protect the lot of you. Mickey, Jake, get ready to use your dimension jumps for the last time. Now! I’ve got to get this system back online.”

“You two are acting directors now,” Pete says to the two young men, removing the yellow button from around his neck. “The paperwork’s already drawn up. I decided this a long time ago, if anything ever happened to me.”

Both the boys nod, solemn. They exchange gruff handshakes and pats on the back with Pete, and then Rose gets a turn to hug each of them. It happens so fast; none of it feels real.

“Never thought I’d have to say goodbye to you twice,” she murmurs to Mickey, trying to swallow down the lump in her throat as she savours the two seconds she has to hold him tight.

“Me neither,” he mumbles back.

“Thank you both,” The Doctor addresses them, setting a hand on each of their shoulders. “Run that Torchwood better than this one. Please. Take care of Pete’s world.”

Jake addresses him like a military commander. “Yes, sir.”

Mickey nods. “You take care of her.” He nods toward Rose. “Bye, Rose,” he adds only to her, much softer.

With that, they press their buttons and vanish.

Rose doesn’t have time to grieve Mickey’s loss again.

“Rose, take them to the TARDIS,” the Doctor orders. “But then come back here. Turns out I need your help.”

“Doctor, how’re we not gonna get sucked in?”

“I’ve got these.” He walks into the next room and picks up a giant black clamp half the size of his body. “Once we open the breach we’ll just have to hold on tight for a few minutes. The breach itself is soaked in Void stuff, in the end it’ll close itself.”

Rose isn’t convinced those clamps will keep them safe – she’d rather have a pair of full-body harnesses bolted to the wall – but she nods anyway.

“Now go,” he commands, shooing them toward the stairwell.

Rose leads both her parents down several sets of stairs to where she knows the TARDIS is sitting, waiting for them. She commands her to open without even using the key, and once they’re both safely on the other side of the doors, she hugs her mum tightly and tells them both she’ll be right back.

“Don’t you dare go gettin’ yourself killed, Rose,” she commands, thrusting a finger at her.

“I won’t, Mum, the Doctor knows what he’s doin’. He’ll keep us safe.”

She’s back in the white control room with the Doctor in only a short minute. The giant clamps have been installed on the walls, each next to a lever.

“All right!” the Doctor shouts, running into position beside the farther of the two levers. “You take that one.” He nods to the other lever. “We’ve got to push them both at the same time for the breach to open. As soon as they’re engaged, grab onto your clamp. And hold on tight or it’ll suck you right in! Ready!”

“Ready!” she says, getting into position.

“Push!” the Doctor commands.

It’s no ordinary lever: its heavy, old-school interior mechanisms provide a level of resistance to movement she has to use her whole body weight to counteract. After a few seconds of straining themselves, both their levers lock into position with a click and a hiss of air.

“Online,” an artificially generated female voice echoes from the computer.

In that moment, a bright, gaping hole tears itself into the empty opposite wall, and suddenly the Earth’s gravity is no longer the only force acting on Rose. The breach now has its own gravity, tugging her back towards it with a gust of wind. She dashes straight to the clamp on the wall, clinging onto it with both arms as the force pulling her towards the breach increases with each passing second. Glancing towards the Doctor, she sees him glancing her way, too, ensuring she’s safely holding on.

A cluster of three Daleks smashes through the building window, their robotic squeals hurtling through the air with their metal hulls until both are sucked clear into the breach.

“The breach is open!” the Doctor yells. She can barely hear over the whirring of the equipment and the fierce wind being sucked into the Void, but he does sound rather chuffed. “Into the Void, hah!”

The force gets stronger and stronger as more and more Daleks and Cybermen pour through the broken glass and whip through the room en route to the Void. Eventually, it outweighs gravity in its potency, and she has to plant her feet on the base of the lever to take some of the strain off her arms.

The Daleks and Cybermen continue to shout as they plunge horizontally to their eternal prison, passing by in blurs of silver and gold, thicker and thicker... there must be hundreds passing them by every second now.

A long minute passes them by in this manner, her muscles and ligaments and bones aching from the effort of holding onto her clamp and maintaining her balance on the base of the lever. The blaring noise of the torrent of wind, machinery, and the cyborg screams feels like it’s gone on for so long she might have permanent hearing damage.

Until one moment, when one word is evident amongst the incoherent squeals, a familiar and harrowing word: exterminate.

A bolt of blue laser emanates from somewhere in the tornado of doomed Daleks and Cybermen, aiming straight for the Doctor.

But it doesn’t strike him.

The blast instead strikes the lever next to him, and bluish electricity surges down the length of the lever before disappearing in a flash. There’s a hiss and a heavy click and then...

“Offline...”

The current of the blast disengaged the lever. It’s slowly retreating to its default position, inching its way towards the floor ever so slowly.

She glances up at the Doctor, terror in her gaze. The determined look in his eyes confirms her worst fear.

He has to re-engage the lever. It’s like she had just thought to herself: with the entire planet in danger, there’s no limit to the risks he’ll take. Mere seconds have passed with the system offline, and the pull into the breach has already lessened significantly. Rose barely has to hold on to resist being pulled in. Any less, and the wind tunnel carrying the evil into the Void will cease and they’ll all clatter to the ground in this very room. For attempting to thwart their plans, she and the Doctor may well be the first victims of their renewed killing spree, but the rest of the world would quickly follow suit.

The Doctor lets go of his clamp, ducking behind the base of the lever for what support it can offer as he reaches his hand out for the descending lever. His fingers just wrap around it, and he plants his feet at the base of the lever and reaches back to grab onto his clamp with his other hand. He can barely reach across the distance, his long limbs being stretched with the effort to hold onto the lever. With a groan that’s audible even over the continued ruckus of the sentient metal husks flying around them, the Doctor pulls back on the lever. And slowly, an inch at a time, it moves back into position.

With a few seconds of intense exertion, and it clicks and hisses back in a vertical position.

He’s done it. He’s got it.

“Online...”

The Doctor reaches back, trying to twist around enough to grab onto his clamp with his other hand and regain a firmer grip on it, but the blast of strengthened wind and renewed gravity of the breach as the system kicks back into high gear doesn’t allow him to. He struggles to maintain his foothold on the base of the lever, holding onto the clamp for his life with merely one hand. It’s hard enough for Rose to hold on at this point, as the torrent rushing into the breach feels stronger than ever, and she still has both her arms around her clamp.

One of the Doctor’s Chucks slips on the gold surface of the base of the lever. As he tries to fix it, the hand on the clamp slips just slightly. He’s barely holding on by his fingers now.

“Doctor!” Rose yells.

She expects him to offer some small reassurance, some faith that he’s got this, that they’ve got this. He always does. He’s always got some clever trick up his sleeve to narrowly escape death while saving the world. But when he turns his head to her, his eyes are wide with pain and dread, and terror drops like an anvil into her gut.

“Hold on!” she screams, all her sense of calm lost in an instant. The force required to hear her own voice over the wind tears the lining of her throat.

The stream of villains seems to be thinning out. Turning back to the building windows, there’s only an intermittent Dalek passing through it. He only has to hold on a few seconds longer, and she’s sure that once there’s nothing left to devour, the breach will close itself, like he said. He’ll be safe.

One last Dalek tumbles through the air towards the wall, and there’s nothing but air being sucked into the breach for a second... two... it’s got to close now, right?

Rose glances over to the Doctor again. He’s still looking over at her, his face twisted up with his struggle to keep his grip. He’s barely holding on now, and his eyes are almost resigned. Like he’s... no.

Rose. His voice is suddenly in her head, clear as day.

They’d discovered they could do this from a distance several days ago, but he’s never taken advantage of it. There hasn’t been anything pressing enough to require it.

Doctor, whatever you’re thinking, don’t, she answers him, the words slurring together even in her head. Don’t, y’hear me! Just hold on!

His fingertips slip from the clamp.

“NO!” Rose screams louder than she’s ever screamed, reaching out her arm as though she can catch him. One of his feet is still vaguely balanced on the base of the lever, but the pull of the void is too strong for that to hold him: his ankle gives way.

It all happens in slow motion from there: his arms flail for a grip on the lever, but he can’t get a hold on it. Instead, he merely hits his shoulder on it as he falls past it. The impact happens to twist him around such that she can see his face as he falls away from her. Falls toward the wall just like the Daleks have been since it opened, falls straight toward hell. Meeting her eyes, he finishes the sentence he’d started in her mind.

I love you.

In his fleeting moment of emotional distress, the sentiment is carried across the growing distance between them, exploding in her mind in a soft, warm red. The eternal promise embraces her heart in a way so reminiscent of how he holds her, so gentle but so secure. He’s always loved her and always will. But instead of filling her with joy as she often dreamed they would, the words course through her veins like ice, because he’s waited until his final seconds of life to finally confess them to her.

Her only response is the continued scream ripping from her throat.

But just behind the Doctor, the giant shining hole into the Void begins to shrink. Quickly. Before the Doctor has fallen the length of the room, it’s swallowed itself up entirely with a sickening slurp. In a fraction of a second, the breach is gone, and the Void isn’t looming anymore. But it’s already too late for the Doctor. The momentum has already been built, and there’s no stopping it.

The white wall ripples violently as it solidifies back into solid concrete and drywall and paint it was before the breach was opened. As soon as it does, the Doctor collides with it, one loud thud of his body and one heart-stopping crack of his head.

He crumples to the floor, completely lifeless.

As soon as Rose’s feet hit the ground, she’s running to him, screaming incoherent pleas to the universe as tears stream down her face.

 She skids to her knees on the floor next to him, pressing her fingers into his neck to feel for a pulse.

She breathes out a sigh of relief that it’s there. Weak, and slow, but there. She places her hand under his nose, next, and there’s a soft, steady stream of air hitting her fingers.

Okay. She nods to herself. He’s alive. He’s breathing. His hearts are still beating.

“Doctor, can you hear me?” she says loudly, but receives no response.

He’s good at healing, isn’t he? He probably just needs time to recover from this. But how long should she give it?

She pulls back one of his eyelids to look at his eye, even though she has no idea what she’s looking for. She does notice that his pupil is blown wider than it usually is, and, pulling back the other one, it’s pointing in a different direction than the other one was. But she has no idea what either of those things means.

A thin stream of blood drips out of his right ear and onto his suit.

Oh, God. This is bad. The Doctor hasn’t been unconscious like this before. Not from a head injury. He’s going to wake up, right? He has to.

Rose takes off her jacket, and gently places it under his head as she carefully rolls him on his side so she can get a look at the back of his head.

She can’t see anything except for his hair and some blood, so she gently rests her hand on the back of his head, trying to feel for anything unusual. There’s not a detectable crack in his skull or any brains oozing out or anything, so she thinks blood isn’t so bad. But when she pulls her hand away, and his blood is dripping down her fingers, she starts to panic anyway.

Oh, god.

“Help!” Rose shouts, unthinkingly, turning to face an empty room. But everyone that once worked in this building is either dead or evacuated. Her mum and Pete are back in the TARDIS, completely out of earshot. But even if they were here, what could they do? Neither of them is a doctor.

She’s got to call someone.

She reaches into her pocket for her phone, but just as she pulls it out, the Doctor starts convulsing.

Rose curses, her phone clattering to the ground as she reaches for him, trying to hold him steady. He’s on his side, already, at least; she’d read somewhere that’s the best position for someone to be in when they’re having a seizure. But this is bad. From what few medical TV shows she’s seen, head trauma followed by a seizure means that without immediate medical intervention, the patient faces death.

He should regenerate. He should be regenerating right now. But he’s not conscious – does he have to be for it to work?

She could drag him down the stairs back to the TARDIS, hope the ship can tell her what to do. Heal him somehow. But by the time they got there, he might already be dead.

Rose sobs merely thinking that to herself.

Does she call 999? Risk him being found out as an alien and locked in a cell, or worse, taken away for experiments? That is if they can find a way to save him?

Once she’s certain he’s stopped seizing for the moment, she checks his pulse and breathing again. His hearts are still beating, but he’s stopped breathing now.

There’s no time left. His biology is equipped with respiratory bypass, but from what he’s told her, that will only last him a few minutes. There must be a way to get through to him, force him to regenerate.

Slowly, carefully, she rests her fingertips on his temple, closing her eyes and trying to communicate with him the only other way she knows how.

He’s in here, she can tell that much. His mind is still very much alive, even if his brain is struggling to function. But none of it feels right. Where normally she’d need to obtain his permission to reach beyond his automatic mental barriers before connecting with him, this time she slips right inside his mind. Where normally he’d greet her instantly and warmly, inviting her in closer, in this moment he’s not consciously here to welcome her. In fact, he doesn’t acknowledge her in any way.

He doesn’t know she’s here at all.

The surface of his mind is completely empty, devoid of thought and feeling and speech, and yet she can feel him, somehow, somewhere...

She concentrates on following that feeling. Delving deeper inside his mind.

In a few moments, she finally reaches a place where the Doctor’s cognitive faculties seem to be still operating. Visions are racing through his head so fast she can hardly focus on them. They’re all short scenes of the Doctor: here in the Torchwood building, back in the TARDIS... alone.

Rose quickly realises these aren’t memories. These things haven’t ever happened. This incarnation has never been on his own like this – she’s been beside him the whole time.

Is he having visions of the future? A future, rather?

Concentrating harder, it does feel jarringly similar to the other night, when the Doctor showed her the ominous vision of the ‘storm’ his time sense had conjured up beneath the fireworks. The progression of events is hauntingly realistic, threatening him with its feasibility, but not set in stone.

Rose would say it doesn’t matter what he’s seeing in here, and all that matters is getting through to him, because he may have mere seconds of life left. But it does matter, because from her vantage point, it seems like the Doctor doesn’t know these are mere mirages of an alternate timeline. She can sense the permeating fear and grief dominating this corner of his mind as it clings to life, as though he really believes he’s living out these choppy visions. And given the fact he still doesn’t recognize her presence, Rose fears the damage to his brain is even worse than she thought. His time sense has gone haywire, he can’t tell reality from these comatose visions, and many of his neurological faculties have shut down completely. Most gravely, it seems, his respiratory system and his connection with her.

She’s got to get through to him.

DOCTOR! She yells from inside his head.

Suddenly, she’s standing opposite him on a cold, unfamiliar grey beach.

“Rose? What’s wrong?” he asks. He looks distressed, but more out of confusion than his own impending death. He doesn’t look injured, or to be in any pain. His suit and hair are perfectly intact.

“You need to regenerate!” she commands, convinced she doesn’t have time to start from the beginning.

He looks around, clearly scanning the otherwise empty coastline for some evidence of danger to his life.

“Rose, what are you on about?” he asks, his brow furrowing. “I’m fine.”

“Doctor, whatever this is you’re experiencing in here, it’s not real,” Rose insists.

This seems to properly upset him. His face distorts into a sad frown as though she’s rejected him.

“Rose, I know I’m not here properly. Not physically, but… I had to say goodbye.”

His injured brain is so lost in this delusion. She has to snap him out of it.

“No, Doctor! Don’t say goodbye!” She lunges forward and grabs onto the lapels of his suit, shaking him just slightly, trying to break the illusion. The Doctor’s eyes widen in some sort of fear, staring down at her hands in shock.

“Rose,” he gasps out, breathing heavily. “How are you doing this?” He hesitantly reaches his arm up, touching her shoulder like she’s a ghost, like he expects his hand to pass right through it.

“Look, you’re hurt.” Rose gently puts her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her. If she can’t break him out of this spell, maybe she can at least rely on the fact that he trusts her. Or, he once did. “You’re hurt really bad. You hit your head. You need to regenerate.”  

“What’re you… agh!” Before he can finish whatever the sentence was going to be, his legs give out under him and he drops to his knees, replacing her hands on his head with his own.

“Rose,” he grits out through clenched teeth. “What’s happening?”

“Doctor, you need to stay with me.” She kneels down with him, fighting desperately for his full attention. “Can you feel the regeneration energy?”

“No,” he blurts out, frustrated.

He looks up at her, his eyes slowly going out of focus until they more closely resemble his lifeless eyes in the real world. “Rose, we don’ ‘ave much time. Just… needt’ tell you…”

“Doctor!” she shouts, bending down to his level. She can’t give up. “Listen! We’re not on this beach, okay? We’re at Canary Wharf. You’re about to leave me forever. You’ve got to trust me. I can feel it. The fire in your veins. You need to surrender to it.”

The Doctor’s eyes go blank as he suddenly directs his attention inward, trying to search, to focus, trying to follow her guidance.

The end result of this search, it seems, is more agony. The reality of his injuries catching up with him? The regeneration energy? Both? Whichever it is, he groans loudly as he hauls himself to his feet. She looks down at his hand at the same moment he does, watching the golden glow slowly saturate his fingers, radiating light onto his suit.

He gasps for air, and Rose knows she has to get out of here. Fast. Given the violence of his previous regeneration, she thinks holding onto him while this happens is likely to get her killed, instead. She recedes from his mind and jumps to her feet as soon as she’s back to the real world, scrambling away from him as the light bathing his still-unconscious figure burns ever brighter. She turns around and sprints for the other end of the room, sliding onto the floor behind one of the computer desks just as the explosion hits her ears.

A few seconds later she hears him, yelling in protest of the brutal process. It carries on for what feels like forever, and her heart aches for him. She doesn’t remember him being in this much agony the first time around. And that’s when it finally begins to hit her: the first time around. When he changed everything about himself and became the man he is now. Or was. He’s going to be a completely different man when she stands up to face him. And she had no time to prepare herself for that.

Still, it’s far better than no Doctor at all. They’ll get through it.

At long last, the pulsing and yelling ceases and the only sound is the Doctor gasping for air.

She stands up cautiously, peering over the desk to get a glimpse of him.

He’s still lying on the floor next to the wall in his tight brown suit, limbs sprawled out, panting, staring at the ceiling. But more than that: he’s still him. Perfectly styled and touchable brown hair, sideburns, gangly limbs.

“Doctor,” she calls softly, and he whips his head in the direction of the sound instantly, his eyes wide.

“Rose!” He bolts upright and leaps up onto his feet. But after he takes only two steps towards her, he loses his balance and belly flops flat on the floor with an ‘oof!’ With a groan, he gives up trying to move any further, content to wait for her to approach him.

She helps him sit up, and joins him on the floor, wrapping her arms around him tightly despite the awkward positioning.

“Rose, I’m... it’s me,” he says, clearly trying to reassure her. “I regenerated, but... it’s me.” He doesn’t realise it yet.

“Doctor, look.” She grins, making an effort not to outright giggle. She runs a hand through his hair, and grabs his hands and holds them up. He stares at one hand for a long moment, turning it around to view both sides, then runs his hand through his hair like she had. He shifts in his clothes, wriggles his feet inside his shoes. And, for good measure, he twists his arm behind him and reaches his hand up the back of his shirt. The moment he feels the mole between his shoulder blades is evident. Ecstatic, his jaw drops and his eyebrows shoot up on his forehead.

“It worked!” he exclaims. “It worked!”

“What worked?” she asks, genuinely puzzled by how this is possible.

“Rose, you did! You were there, when I was about to regenerate. You didn’t want me to change. I didn’t want to change. It was all I could think about.” He pauses, shaking his head. “Still, I think Bad Wolf is up to something again. This has never happened before.”

“But you said it could?” she counters.

“Honestly, I was just trying to make you feel better,” he admits. “It may have been technically possible, but I didn’t think it ever would.”

Ordinarily, she might slap him in the head for pulling a stunt like that, but it doesn’t seem appropriate at the moment.

Instead, she hugs him again, so glad that her previous hug with him several days before hadn’t been her last. She came so close to losing him.

“I know I said you might end up burning through your regenerations quickly, but this is a bit too fast,” she says, wiping tears of joy from her eyes. “We might be evening the odds too much.”

The Doctor chuckles despite himself, running a hand over his cheek, seeming as thankful it’s unchanged as she is.

“Only got one left now,” he says, his tone oddly light given the subject matter. “Maybe it’s time to retire, then.”

“Nah,” says Rose, laughing along with him this time.

“What was goin’ on in your head, Doctor?” she asks after a moment.

He takes a deep breath, blowing it out through his mouth exaggeratedly.

“I was having visions, premonitions, maybe.” He certainly seems more cogent now; she’s glad brain damage was healed just as well as bodily damage during the regeneration. “Possible timelines. Or maybe just one timeline. With the trauma to my brain, it seems like the tissue itself was having a tough time handling a Time Lord consciousness crammed inside. My time sense was going mad, and for whatever reason, that’s where it decided to send me in my final moments. I couldn’t remember what happened though. Acute amnesia, or perhaps delirium from the intracranial pressure, or some combination was making it impossible for me to tell it wasn’t real. But it did feel... off. I could tell something was wrong, I just couldn’t pinpoint what it was. It was like I was trapped in the Matrix, but couldn’t get out.”

“God.” She’d been so focused on saving him, she hasn’t paused for long to consider how terrifying it must have been for him. How long did it feel like he was trapped in there, before she got to him? Time is such a subjective thing.

“Until you showed up,” he adds with a crooked grin, nudging her with his elbow.

Rose chuckles, content to go along with his attempt to lighten the mood. “I was your red pill.”

“You were. Thank you for saving me.”

“Anytime. Anyway, it was only a few days ago you saved my life.”

“Quite right, too.” He grimaces, like he instantly regrets saying it.

“What?” she asks. The words seem innocuous enough.

“Something about that phrase is putting me off.” He frowns, trying to figure out why with more effort than it seems he should. “Hmm.”

“All right, let’s go, Time Lord,” Rose says, getting to her feet and holding out a hand for his. “You need some rest. You’re gonna get loopy on me again like last time.”

“I am not.” But he almost falls when he stands up, and Rose has to wrap her arm around his waist and support half his weight on her shoulders in order for him to stay upright. “All right, maybe a little dizzy, then,” he admits. “You try regenerating, see how you feel afterwards.”

“Would if I could,” she teases.

They slowly make their way across the length of the room, Rose taking care to avoid the broken glass and other debris littering the room so the Doctor doesn’t stumble again.

When Rose opens the door to the stairwell, both their shuffling feet stop dead in their tracks.

There’s a man waiting for them at the top of the stairs.

A tall, handsome man in a blue trenchcoat.

“Rose!” the man exclaims, smiling from ear to ear. “And... Doctor?” he says, shock distorting his features as he takes in the figure of the man she’s supporting.

Rose gasps. “Jack!”

“Jack?” the Doctor asks at the same time, his tone coloured far more with disgust than excitement.