Doctor Who Fic: Lullaby Lost

[kyizi]

Lullaby Lost
By Kyizi


Disclaimer: Doctor Who and it's related characters and ideas do not belong to me; only the story and any original characters are mine.

Rating: PG13/12A

Spoilers: Everything up to and including Season 2, episode 6.

Email: kyizifanfic [at] hotmail [dot] com

Notes: This is a ficathon response. My muses were refusing to cooperate and then, all of a sudden, this happened. This is not a direct sequel to Forgotten Roses, in that you don’t have to have read it or have any knowledge of it, but I always felt like it was the sequel when writing it. There are a few references to FR, but it’s nothing you’d need to know.

This is for theemdash as a late birthday present and because it was her that got me to sign up for the ficathon in the first place. She waved it in front of me like a big bar of Galaxy Chocolate and I couldn’t resist! I’m so sorry; I tried to write you a Stargate fic, but my muses wouldn’t cooperate, so I hope this’ll do.


The Ficathon: I have no idea what songs my lyrics came from and I resisted the urge to google them and find out. I did, however, manage to put all three in my fic, so feel free to give me brownie points. Or just brownies would be nice, actually, big chocolate ones. The lines are listed at the end, because I found that, when you knew what they were, they might as well be highlighted in neon colours with huge arrows and speech balloons shouting, ‘look, ma, here it is!’

Oh, and another note for those of you who stuck with me through Forgotten Roses, I want to say thank you and also to add that I’ll try my best to make sure that this one doesn’t end with the same depressing feeling some of you so vocally expressed at the end of FR! Sorry, about that! ;)


This is mostly from Rose’s point of view, but the Doctor makes an appearance at the end. Italics are, well, you’ll see ;)


~x~x~x~x~x~

Lullaby Lost

~x~x~x~x~x~


Death flutters by, barely at the edges of her consciousness, and she wonders if this is the way it’s supposed to happen, slipping slowly into an abyss that you didn’t even see coming. She wonders if she’s supposed to hear and see the things around her with sharp focus, or if the world’s supposed to dull into grey monochrome, either way she knows it’s nothing like ‘people say’. She wonders why her life isn’t flashing before her eyes, why there’s no endless and eternally welcoming tunnel of light to walk towards, no focus, just aimless existence.

A small part of her knows that she’s floating somewhere outside of reality, neither dead nor alive, and she thinks she should be scared and that maybe she would be if she hadn’t lived the last year or so of her life. She’s seen too much to let something like this scare her, not now when she’s lost everything.

Lost; that’s it. She’s lost. She’s waiting to be found, or maybe she’s the one who’s supposed to be searching. She can’t really remember anymore.

She wonders if maybe she’s trapped, wandering in some kind of dream, or her own mind, or maybe even someone else’s. The thought that she still exists should comfort her, but she’d already got used to the idea of death and isn’t sure what she’s meant to do anymore. Her life, or consciousness, or whatever existence she’d had before was never this confusing; everything in its place and a time for everything, a perpetual spring where everything was new and bright and cheerful. Then autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she'd made and she wonders where summer went, because surely that was meant to come first. A time to enjoy everything she’d first created. She hadn’t wanted to skip right to the part where the things around her began to die. She wonders what she did to deserve this.

Just as she resigns herself to perpetual nothingness, she thinks she hears a cry for help. There’s something pulling her, a gentle wind she hadn’t noticed before leading her to something, or someone, and so she follows. She doesn’t know her purpose, wonders if she has one, but she thinks this might as well be it. If nothing else, it’s something to do.


~x~x~x~x~


“Oi! Watch it, you!” Rose tries not to let her laughter upset the mock indignation on her face.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” His grin says otherwise and she narrows her eyes, but finds she can’t stop herself smiling back at him. She sets the offending…thing back where it’s supposed to be (although, she often wonders whether anything has its place inside the TARDIS; it all seems rather haphazard to her) and turns her attention back to him.

The room is new. Yet another mysterious doorway appearing from nowhere, called only when needed. It stretches before her like a museum, but Rose has never really had much patience for those. With him, though, she thinks she’d give anything a go, at least once.

“So, what is this place?” she asks, frowning as she peers underneath the closest sheet-covered item.

“This, Rose Tyler, is my collection.” His perpetual grin is, as always, infectious.

“Your collection of what, exactly?” She tugs at the sheet, uncovering the item she hadn’t been able to distinguish and tries not to laugh when she sees it. “Is this supposed to be art?”

“Yes. No. I have no idea.”

“Then what did you collect it for?”

He shrugs. “I dunno, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She can tell there’s more underneath the quirk of his mouth, something more serious, but this new doctor of hers never gives anything away easily. Not that the old one did, but she knew how to read him so much better. She tries her best not to get frustrated with his ability to hide himself behind his boundless energy, his ardent affection for everything fun, but, mostly, she tries not to get frustrated at his being almost a different man. In many respects, she knows that he is different; it’s the fact that he’s also the same that makes it so much harder.

The things he says she knows he would have said before, if only with a different inflection, a different mood or method to the madness. She so often sees parts of who he was before pushing forward and arching back behind a different face, a different voice, even though she knows it’s the same soul behind his eyes and, not for the first time, she wishes he’d let her really see him.

“Rose?”

She smiles. “Sorry, was miles away.” He looks at her in that way that asks if she’s all right and she winks at him cheekily, refusing to play yet another round of Old Doctor vs. New Doctor with herself. He’s the same man and, so long as she keeps telling herself that it’s okay then it really is.

Sometimes.

“So,” she asks, quickly moving on to the next sheet and giving it a sharp tug. She laughs at the white, not-quite-marble statue and turns back to face him. “Why are you showing me this place? Or is this just your way of telling me something?” She doesn’t have to clarify the word ‘kinky’ to him in any incarnation.

His eyes sparkle, but he doesn’t answer her second question.

“We’re heading towards Terra Prime IV circa 21550 and I just thought this might give you a few ideas for your wardrobe.”

Or perhaps he does.

She quirks an eyebrow at him. “I seriously hope you’re joking.”

“I’ll have you know that this is considered the finest art collection of that century.” He clears his throat. “Well, give or take a few hundred other collections, of course.”

“’Course.” She eyes the statue warily. “So…I really have to dress like…that?” She tries to point at the female (or what she hopes is the female), but the figures are so intricately intertwined that it’s really too hard to distinguish where one begins and the other ends.

“Well, it might help you fit in.”

“And I guess you’ll be wearing the loin cloth then?”

“With a suit like this? Fits in anywhere.”

“Sorry, Doctor, not this time. If I have to dress like that, you’re wearing the tea towel.”

He looks her up and down and she tries not to blush at his close scrutiny. By the time their eyes meet she can see the amusement and, perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, the appreciation in his gaze.

“I guess you’ll do.” He winks and holds out his hand. “Come on. Got a planet to explore.”

She clasps his hand in hers, trying not to compare it with the old one, because either way his touch still sends the same shiver of excitement and anticipation right up her arm.



~x~x~x~x~x~



She likes things ordered, easy to reach and easy to explain, because her problems never are, or were. She wonders if she’s reached the point where past tense is appropriate. She still sees a vast nothingness and, for a moment, wonders how nothingness can be vast, or perhaps how it can be the opposite. She worries that sanity is slipping away from her or if she ever had it to begin with and if it even matters in this vague existence.

Something sparkles in what would be her peripheral vision if she had an edge to what she could see. It moves slowly, arching in snake-like movement, spreading into an aurora of possibility. She should be there, at the brink. At some point she needs to be in those shades of grey that dance just out of her reach. She thinks it should have colour. Maybe, when she reaches it, it will.

So she moves, or thinks she does, at least. Nothing happens quickly here, or maybe it happens so quickly it stretches as such moments of momentous occasion often do, seeming to spread out and prolong those seconds before the inevitable. Time was something she had once understood, she had known it, existed within it and between it and because of it.

No, that wasn’t right. It had confused her. Or is she confused now? Here, as she slowly approaches the glimmering edge of darkness, she wonders if counting will help her keep track of the seconds. She no longer knows where she is, or where she’s going, or when.

Suddenly the aurora flares to life in a cacophony of colour and sound and emotion and…death. Inevitable, she thinks, but this one is different. It lingers, as such spirits ought not to do, just above the aurora, which flickers and sputters with greens and purples and blues before it too dies and becomes grey once more. But still the spirit hangs at an impasse, unable to decide whether to move on or stay such as she has. She doesn’t remember the choice, but she’s here and that seems to be answer enough.

It, no, he, she thinks, reaches out to her, tests her, tries to understand. He’s different, older than most, but not as old as the largest part of her. She thinks he might be a part of her just as she thinks she might reach eternity and still exist.

A yellow light erupts from within the swirls of grey, pulls him, twists and turns; engulfs.

And he’s gone, leaving her almost bereft.

She wonders if she was meant to follow.



~x~x~x~x~x~



She smacks his arm. Hard.

“What was that for?” he asks, but his indignation is clearly unwarranted.

“Loin cloths and slinky bikinis?” She doesn’t even know why she bothers clarifying; he knows what she’s talking about. “Nuns,” she says, poking him in the ribs. “They wear more clothes than nuns and you tried to dress me like a Bond Girl. You said this place was a ‘real party zone’ and we were ‘just here to relax and have a bit of fun’. You said ‘party zone’!”

“I did. And in 21550 it was.” He pulls one of his hands from his pockets and sweeps it across in front of him. “In 21550 this was all pubs and bars and dancing and, well…” he wiggles his eyebrows at her.

“It’s a church.”

“So, it’s a little less rowdy, yeah.”

“It’s a church,” she repeats, before smiling playfully at him. “This isn’t 21550, is it?” but it sounds like ‘You messed up again, didn’t you?’

“I thought we’d take a little look at the culture that came after,” he says, his mouth only briefly turning upwards at one end. “You know, see how they coped with all the…diseases and stuff.”

“Lovely.”

“Well,” he says, starting to walk towards the main gates that separate the grounds of the large building from the barren land surrounding them. She hurries to follow. “You humans never do things by halves, do you? It’s got to be all or nothing. Can’t have a bit of fun-” he tugs hard on the chain and a bell tolls, “-and then something a bit more serious to balance it out, can you? You’ve got to have all the fun until someone starts a movement, half the population dies in conflict or of some sexually transmitted disease, and then, rather than learning from your mistakes, you set yourselves up to do it all over again, by making everything fun illegal. Absolutely fascinating, really; you’re all completely barmy.”

“Oi! Not all of us,” Rose says, shaking her head. His smile says ‘you especially’ and she laughs as the gates slowly open before them. She turns to look at the rather imposing building in front of her and takes a moment to figure out who opened the courtyard to them. Tall, male, muscular, and quite a nice face under the hood of his robe, but she wonders when, exactly, humans grew whiskers and fangs.



~x~x~x~x~x~


Endless, she thinks, is something she might just have the patience for. A slow, continuous nothingness that poses no threat and offers nothing; she wonders when her expectations dropped so low. The edge of the universe opens beneath her, but nothing sparks her interest. She used to have such fun with existence, what little she remembers, that is. A small part of her used to revel in it, used to love those heart-stopping moments of pure terror and excitement that lit up her eyes.

She wishes she could feel that again, even just the once.

Voices cry out to her once more and she remembers her purpose, remembers that something sent her in this direction. She hopes she’s not late, but isn’t even sure where she is let alone where she’s meant to be going.

The aurora flares to life again, surrounding her with colour and life and she remembers what it felt like to feel the breeze on her face, to look up into a bright sky, to catch the rain on her tongue…she wants to feel that again.

Without thinking, without time, without anything but what’s left of her sense of self, she leaps forward and prays for a safe landing.

Something inside tells her that she’s never had much luck with that before.


~x~x~x~x~x~


“Human, you said.”

“Well, mostly human.”

“They tried to eat us.” She glares at him.

“That was a misunderstanding. A couple of billion years of evolution, Rose, you can’t expect everything to be the same,” he says, shaking his head and she wonders if he knows how stupid that tone of voice makes her feel sometimes. She wonders if he even registers that he was flirting with the High Priestess right in front of her. Men, she thinks, are the one thing that won’t change with either evolution or race.

“Everything’s fine now. Look!” he spreads his hands wide and grins at the world before them, a seemingly endless marketplace of produce and prayer mats and meditation kits. “Something different for a change, eh?”

She smiles and nods. She finds she’s been doing that a lot lately.

They stroll down the street, nodding politely at the passers by and taking in the new culture that surrounds them. She feels stifled, claustrophobic even, and glances at him to see if he feels the same. She used to be able to read him better, she thinks.

“You okay?” he asks and she can see his concern is genuine.

“I’m fine.” She shrugs it off, still trying to shake loose whatever nightmare has plagued her dreams and early mornings lately. Last night seemed so much worse and something tells her that it wasn’t the strange surroundings, because she got used to sleeping in odd places a long time ago. She knows, deep down, that there’s something more going on, but she doesn’t want to think about it. She has too many bad memories to focus on just the one, but something about her dreams offsets everything, upsets her precarious balance between ‘don’t think about it’ and ‘it’s not real if you don’t want it to be’. She knows her dreams focus on everything she doesn’t want to think about.

Her life used to be so much simpler.

She looks at him again and he seems to have accepted her answer, but she can tell he’s filed away her response for later. He’ll bring it up again. Now, however, she knows that something else is taking precedence in his mind. She used to think she’d always come first. He frowns and stops walking, glancing around her, over her head, but not at her. He used to look right at her, right through her. She misses that.

“Have you noticed anything strange about his place?” the Doctor asks, absentmindedly, shaking Rose from her reverie

Her eyebrows shoot up. “You mean aside from the fangs and whiskers?”

“There’s just something…off,” he continues and she wonders if he even required a response.

She glances around, taking in the slow moving world around them. The cloaks and lack of communication make it seem almost like being surrounded by Jedi, a small part of her thinks, and she smirks, somehow knowing that the people here would dislike the analogy immensely. The streets are silent, much like everything in this place and she strains to pick up parts of conversations at the stalls on either side of the road, but nothing more than necessary is ever said. She thinks this existence seems very lonely. Almost without thinking, she moves her hand, gently grasping the Doctor’s fingertips and he turns to look at her questioningly.

Slipping his hand into hers and tangling their fingers is enough for her to turn and look at him. He frowns at her and gives her the look she’s missed. Almost as if that familiar stare brings her back to life, her surroundings sink in and she glances around again, realisation slowly begins to sink in.

“Rose?”

“Children,” she says softly. “There’s no kids anywhere.”

His head jerks suddenly to the marketplace, scanning everything the eye can see, and a moment later he squeezes her hand. “I knew I kept you around for a reason,” he says softly and she smiles at him.

He winks and pulls her hand and before she knows it they’re running again. She wonders if she’ll ever be able to live without this.


~x~x~x~x~x~


She’s trapped; lost in some kind of prison that she cannot escape, because it has no beginning or end. She tries to move, tries to scream, tries to do anything to get out of the box she cannot see. She thinks it would be better if the walls were tangible, if they were right in front of her, instead she simply feels.

Anger. Sadness. Loss.

She’s never felt loneliness or grief like this before.

She thinks her prison full of eternity was better.


~x~x~x~x~x~



“What is it?” she asks, frowning at the cricket-sized ball in his hands.

He’s managed to pull it apart, put it back together, mumble odd things under his breath, but even if he’s discovered something she’s still none the wiser. Between the wires connecting it to the TARDIS and the strange sounds it’s emitting, she finds it hard to even begin wondering what it does or what it was doing following them from street to street, finally hovering over them as the Doctor walked right into the lake.

She tries to forget that she said anything to him when he rushed ahead of her, racing back to the TARDIS with his prize in his hand instead of her fingers. She’s not sure if she’s angry, upset, or just grateful that he didn’t seem to hear her.

“Doctor, what is it?” she repeats.

“Just a minute,” he says, tweaking one of the ridges with his multi-purpose sonic screwdriver that seems to do everything she could possibly think of. If the screwdriver’s this good she wonders if a sonic spanner could blow up a solar system.

She sighs, wondering why his elusive nature, his playful ‘I know everything’ essence, changed for her. She’s not sure what it was that made it seem different before. She wonders if it was his face, or his voice… Sometimes she wonders if maybe she’s the one who changed.

“What did you mean back there?” he asks softly, but he doesn’t look at her, just continues to tinker with the sphere. She can tell he doesn’t want to look at her in case she doesn’t respond, as if it’s somehow easier this way. She thinks he’s right, because she’s not sure what she’d say if he was looking right into her eyes.

"Don’t listen to me. I say a lot of things sometimes that don't come out right."

“But this did.”

She takes a deep breath and nods, before stopping herself and shaking her head. He’s watching her in the reflection of the blank screen before them. “Not really. I mean, I know you’re the same, but…sometimes…you’re not. You know? Sometimes that’s hard.”

He nods. She wishes he’d say something, but doesn’t think he knows what to say to that. She wishes that she could see what Sarah Jane obviously had; him. She wishes she could always look at him and see that he was staring back at her, no matter what face he had.

“Hard how?” he asks, a moment later.

“Well,” she says, shrugging and shifting on her feet, “just the way you say things sometimes.” She shuffles a bit more and looks at the floor, not really wanting to continue the conversation. She thinks it might be better that way, even though she knows she needs to say it. “I know you don’t mean it, but, well…you know…” He frowns and she sighs, offering him a small smile. “I know you know more than me, and I’m okay with that, but sometimes you sound a bit too chuffed about it. You always did, but before it was funny and exciting and I was learning. Now…well…”

“Are you trying to say I’m arrogant?” he asks indignantly, the sphere suddenly uninteresting. He frowns after a moment and she hopes he’s not about to start the ‘is that the sort of man I am now?’ game again. It had been funny at first, but after over two weeks of it she’d calmly informed him he’d better stop if he wanted the one thing that defined him as a man to remain in tact. He’d stopped, but his smirk had silently teased, ‘how do you know I don’t have more than one?’

“Oh,” he says softly and she instantly regrets saying anything.

“It’s not bad all the time, I just…I dunno.”

He sighs and places the sphere on top of the ledge in front of him, before leaning and turning to face her, arms crossed. He regards her silently for a moment, taking a deep breath and leaning his chin against his chest. She’s instantly reminded of her cousin, Simon, when he was little and being forced to admit to something he didn’t want to, or say sorry.

“Regeneration isn’t easy,” he starts softly, “and this one didn’t exactly go swimmingly. I don’t know what sort of man I am,” he says, looking up at her with a smirk. She can’t help smiling back, even though she feels the urge to smack him. “I don’t remember everything.” He frowns and she finally starts to wonder what it’s like to die and come back as something new, something the same and yet completely different, wonders what it’s like to come back with the remnants of an old life still surrounding you and so achingly familiar and knowing you’ll never quite fit into it in the same way. She wonders why she never stopped to think about what he might have forgotten because he always seems to know so much.

“Like what?” she asks, instantly cringing and waiting for him to point out that if he knew it wouldn’t be forgotten. But he doesn’t. “Doctor?”

“I don’t know. I remember so much, but I know there are gaps, bits that haven’t been filled in. When I know something…when I can remember how things work and what they are,” he shrugs, “I guess I’m just pleased I can remember at all.”

“I never thought about it like that before,” she says, finally resting against the TARDIS with him. They’re inches apart, but, for once, she’s barely aware of their proximity. “D’you ever think that…”

“What?” he prompts and she glances up at him.

Slowly she takes in his features, the face she thought she’d never learn anything about now seems less foreign. She smiles at the gentle familiarity, realising that somewhere amidst her protests she no longer looked for his old face. Somewhere, the two became one and she realises that it’s only the inside she’s been searching for. Looking into his eyes, she thinks she sees that too, thinks it might be time to see him as both.

“D’you ever think that maybe, if you keep looking so hard, you might miss what you’re trying to find?”

Slowly he begins to smile.

“You humans always manage to surprise me,” he murmurs, his smile widening still. “And you, Rose Tyler…sometimes I think you most of all.”

She’s not sure how long they stand there, just staring at each other and smiling, but she doesn’t care. She thinks she’s found her Doctor. Not the old one, or the new one, just him, all of him. Just looking out at her.

She’s found home.


~x~x~x~x~x~


The noise gets louder, grows and twists around her. She feels cocooned in a desperation she cannot escape. The walls grow thinner around her, but still she’s lost inside.

Memories float around her, just out with her grasp and she wonders if she’ll ever find them, wonders if she’ll ever know them, wonders if she’ll ever find freedom.


~x~x~x~x~x~

“I still don’t understand how this thing works,” she says, stifling a yawn and waving the sphere around with one hand as she rubs at her eyes with the other. She feels claustrophobic, trapped in the small tunnel they’re following. The Doctor is crouched in front of her, leading the way by the small blue light of his sonic screwdriver.

“It’s an information and recon device,” he says, not turning to look at her, but reaching for her. She takes his outstretched hand and allows him to guide her along the slippery tunnel to avoid the oil running down one side. “The map I brought, well, the TARDIS, brought up on the screen showed an area that wasn’t scanned.”

“The red bit?” she asks, blinking profusely and trying not to yawn again. The headache she’s had all day is gone, but she can feel it fluttering behind her eyes.

“Yeah, the red bit, are you all right?” He stops suddenly and she almost falls into him. The small blue light doesn’t stop his penetrating gaze.

“I-I’m fine.” She doesn’t even believe herself.

“This is more than…what we talked about earlier, isn’t it?” She shrugs and he lets out a breath. “You haven’t been sleeping well.”

Surprised that he’s noticed, she doesn’t even bother to deny it. “Can we talk about this later, yeah? We’ve got a mystery to solve.”

His voice is so quiet she almost misses it. “More than one, I’d say.”

But she doesn’t acknowledge him, just continues walking, knowing he’ll let it slide.

For now.


~x~x~x~x~x~


The memories come to her slowly, almost like water flowing into a dam and building until it feels complete and full. Snatches of space and time become whole and she knows she isn’t one person; she’s more than that and her contradictions make sense. She makes sense again, if only to herself.

She sees him again, sees the soul that reached out to her and knows he followed her only to be snatched away again. He doesn’t have a face she can recall, too many to love just one, but she remembers who he was and what he taught her and how he guided and shaped who she is.

Desperation closes in on her again and she hears the cries of pain. Her need to help comes from her very creation and she cannot ignore the sorrow around her any more than she can wish for her empty, endless eternity. She listens, hears the desperation and grief and knows she cannot disregard it.

The call becomes a scream and she breaks free before she begins to lose herself all over again.


~x~x~x~x~x~


“Oh, God.”

Rose’s breath catches in her throat as she forgets how to breathe. She’s clutching at his hand almost as tight as he holds hers.

Before them the room stretches endlessly, seems to go on in all direction save for the pipes behind them. The ceiling stretches up until it reaches a point and she briefly wonders just how far underground they’ve travelled.

The glass caskets stretch out for miles; rows upon rows, columns upon columns, so many that even the thought of counting them makes her dizzy. They’re clear as crystal and she wishes they weren’t. She doesn’t want to see what’s inside.

“What…?”

“Test tube babies.” His voice is both soft and hard and his fingers twitch in hers.

“No,” she says shaking her head and reaching towards the nearest one, her fingers leaving marks in the condensation caused by her breath. “It can’t be.” He’s let go of her and wandered along the row and, in her peripheral vision, she seems him at a computer consol, but she can’t take her eyes off the tube in front of her. “These aren’t babies,” she says, her voice cracking and her headache suddenly screaming back to life. “They’re too old.”

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice suddenly seems faint, but she forces herself to listen and breathe deeply. “They get released when they’re eighteen…” He taps at another consol and looks up at her. She can see the barely-contained anger beneath his gaze. “When they know better.”

“What do y-” She stumbles, blinks as her vision blurs. She gasps for breath.

“Rose?”

The pain is almost unbearable and she can hear things, hear things tugging at her mind. She steadies herself, watching the hand mark she’s leaving as she slides to her knees, and focussing on the wetness under her palm. She’s never noticed the hairs on the back of her hand before.

“Rose, look at me!”

His voice is faint, but somehow she knows he’s shouting. Fingers clutch at her face, force her to look into his endless eyes.

“Can’t you hear them?” she asks. “Can’t you hear them screaming?”


~x~x~x~x~x~


“Rose!”

Her eyes roll back and he feels his hearts stop in that instant before her eyes flutter open again. He’s clutching at her head, holding onto her as if to let go would be to lose her. Seeing the emptiness of her stare, he wonders if he already has.

“Rose?” His voice catches in his throat and suddenly she blinks. It’s not the first time he’s looked into those eyes and just known it wasn’t her looking back at him.

“You cannot hear,” she says and suddenly her eyes light up; literally.

He knows her. He’s seen her like this before and he isn’t sure he can save her again.

“Too much pain of your own to bear,” she continues, reaching out to him. “What do thousands matter when he hears millions of worlds screaming in lost existence?”

“Oh, Rose.”

“She’s here, but she cannot survive this.”

“I don’t understand,” he says softly and suddenly he knows what Rose was talking about earlier. Even if he knows he sounds less maternal when he tells her something she doesn’t know.

There are noises around him, voices of people shouting, threats and weapons, but he doesn’t care. His grip on her head is tight, but she seems to barely register that he’s there. Her eyes remain alight and he wishes he could understand what it is that she sees.

“Move away and keep your hands up!”

He can feel them, creeping around, surrounding him and Rose. He pays them no mind.

“What can you hear?” he asks her softly, not calling her Rose for he knows that’s not who she is; not completely. “Tell me,” he intones, wishing he could spare her whatever she’s going through.

“The children,” she continues, “can’t you hear them screaming?”

She doesn’t continue and he waits, waits until she’s ready to tell him. He’d wait an eternity to make things right again. For so long he’s watched her, wondered how to reach out to her in the way he once had, but she’s shut that part of herself off from him. He understands why, because he’s never been good at losing people either. Rose wears her heart on her sleeve, loves wholly and forever. It’s why he let her save her father, why he puts up with her mother and with Mickey, because she needs them, needs to give herself to the people around her. He thinks he’s lucky enough to be one of them.

“You will comply!”

He spins around, his grip on her barely loosening. “We’re busy!” he spits out, trying to hard to contain the righteous anger he feels, the contempt these people spur in him.

Rose stirs and he helps her to her feet, holding her tightly and not wanting to let her go. He wishes he’d known how to talk to her before, how to make her tell him what was wrong. Perhaps he couldn’t have prevented this, but he would have tried. He’s wanted to reach out to her for so long, wanted more than anything to share everything with her. The Doctor knows he can’t just blame her for the fact that he failed. They both reach out for each other, but continue to hold back who they are. He knows he hides behind his adventures as much as she hides from the image of who he is now. The dreams should have stopped him from hiding.

He doesn’t sleep, not really and not in the way that she would understand, but he does watch over her from time to time. He’s often wondered if she knows when he’s there. Sometimes she says his name and that’s when he has to leave, refusing to violate that element of privacy, but he cannot deny that he smiles when he hears it. Sometimes, she reaches for him, not holding her hand out in a general direction, but always directly at him, as if pleading for him to join her. He never does, but he wants to. Her nightmares make him wish that she’d ask.

He can’t see what goes on behind her fluttering eyelashes and he knows it’s not the same as the aching loss he feels for everything he’s ever lost, but to him it’s worse, because, win or lose, this isn’t something he can fight for her. She dreams of things he’s never seen and some things he knows he has. She dreams of a kiss he knows she doesn’t remember in her waking hours and the companion they left behind. She dreams of monsters that aren’t real and of castles that are. He knows she gets lost in a grey, soundless world where all she can say is ‘no’, but this time he can’t help her. Her dreams aren’t real, but the light glowing from her eyes in this moment is. He doesn’t know if he can wake her up this time.

She moves from him, standing slowly and looking around until her gaze falls once more on the test tube in front of them. The young man inside reaches to her, his fingers pressed against the glass and his eyes imploring. She walks to him, pressing her fingers against the glass between his. She sighs to the sound of weapons powering up.

“Stand back!”

“Look at you!” he cries, his anger bubbling to the surface. His rage has their attention and they train their weapons on him. “Hiding behind your robes and prayers; do you even know what life is?” They seem confused, but he’s on a roll and doesn’t stop, but his senses are all focussed on ‘Rose’, even if he’s not looking at her. “You are literally surrounded by thousands of your young; hundreds and thousands of children bottled and brewed and ready-made for your convenience! Can’t let them out until they know better, not until they’ve learned to obey, isn’t that right? Because that’s what all this is about, isn’t it? Control. Silly, silly little word, really, but to you? You humans seem to think that’s what it’s all about. But look around you. Life! Life is meant to be lived, meant to be experienced, but anyone can be in control.

“Look at me. Yesterday I was just a little man in a big pond yelling at a wee teeny tiny circle in the sky, but today, today!” His arms spread out, he turns in a circle. “Today I could destroy a way of life.”

“No, Doctor, not today.”

He turns to see her walking towards them. A beautiful feline masterpiece he had called her yesterday, but here, in this clinical prison, she seems sinister and deadly. He’s dealt with that before.

“Really, because I think you might want to check your timers.” He grins smugly as the High Priestess stalks towards the consoles. He turns when he senses that ‘Rose’ has moved. She tilts her head to one side and turns to look at him. No, he thinks, she’s looking through him. He’s never felt this sense of scrutiny before, as if his very morals are being thrown in his face.

“Still you cannot hear,” she says. She walks towards him and he sees the guards training their weapons on her once more. She reaches out and he takes her hands in his, letting her pull them onto her, resting just above her breasts. She doesn’t speak again.

“What can I do?” he asks softly and she smiles.

“You must do only what you can, nothing less.”

He clenches his jaw. She’s told him nothing more than he already know, but he doesn’t know if he can make everything right and save Rose as well. Glancing around, he sees them reaching out to him and, even if he cannot hear them, he knows he can’t ignore them. It’s not who he is. But he can’t fix this one with a hug.

He turns back to her. “I won’t lose you.”

“You shut yourself off,” she says, “but so does she.”

He wonders when they became a separate entity, wonders why he didn’t realise.

“You cannot see of you will not look,” she continues.

“I won’t let her die.”

“She will not let you sacrifice yourself this time. I will not.”

The noise behind him makes him turn and he sees the anger on the feline face as it hisses and spits on approach. He turns to ‘Rose’ and leans towards her, bringing her to his eye level. “I’ll do what they want me to do,” he says, nodding his head towards the test tubes. “Let me hear them.”

She smiles. “You know the way.”

He nods. Wonders if she can sense the butterflies in his stomach. 900 years and she’s not certain anyone’s made him feel the way she does.

“Keep her safe,” he says and pulls her into his embrace.

As he kisses her, he thinks he feels death nearby.


~x~x~x~x~x~


He doesn’t cry. Isn’t certain he even remembers how. Pain, he thinks, used to blend into one sensation; never really beginning or ending, just an eternal ache that he couldn’t rid himself of. Now he feels it acutely, feels it roaring through his blood and rattling in his lungs.

He doesn’t know what happened, isn’t sure how he got from one place to the next, but life will always find a way. He frowns. That sounds familiar, but, then, everything seems familiar since his last Regeneration; familiar and yet completely out with his reach. Like a word resting on the tip of your tongue and refusing to be spoken; you know it, but you can’t remember it or get it to come out. Life, he thinks, is always like that.

He walks slowly, watching the children running around in the park in front of him. It’s crude by human standards of Rose’s time, but he never really understood why Hopscotch went out of fashion anyway. Lots of…hopping. And chalk, he thinks, don’t forget the chalk. You get to draw on the pavement with chalk. He wishes he could share that thought; like hopscotch, it’s not fun with just one.

The children he can see, running and playing as if their parents weren’t their captors, amaze him on so many ways. They possess a resilience he wishes he had. Their telepathic synapses were cut when they were released and he wonders if the loneliness in their head rivals his own. He can’t tell if it does and he wonders if he hides his pain that well or if, like is lost Rose, he’s wearing his heart on his sleeve.

He wishes he could find her, could look into her eyes one last time and see just her. Not ‘Bad Wolf’, just his Rose. She could smile with just one look in her eyes. She could smile and laugh and tease…but he knew she could cry as well. He wonders if it makes him a bad person to wish he could see her even then. He doesn’t care if it does. He’d do anything to have her back. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

“Hey, mister!”

He turns around, somehow just knowing he’s the one being called on. The society around him has changed all at once and is struggling to reintegrate its youngest members, the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ have not been resurrected and he doubts familial relationships will be the same for a long time, but if there’s one thing he knows will always be certain, it’s the cheekiness of teenagers.

“What?” he responds, taking a little pleasure in putting just as much impertinence in his own voice.

“She told me to tell you to get your arse moving.”

His eyes widen. “What did you say?”

“I didn’t say,” the boy says defensively and that’s when the Doctor recognises him. The youth seems more animated now, although the Doctor supposes the lack of being trapped in a six foot test tube is likely to be the cause of that. “I said, I didn’t say,” the boy repeats and the Doctor shakes his head bringing himself back to the presence. “She said.” He points to the top of the hill and she’s there, leaning against the TARDIS.

The Doctor’s face breaks into a grin and he rushes past, ignoring the boy’s muttered, ‘don’t say thanks or anything’. He doesn’t care. She’s laughing at him as he clambers up the incline and he lets out a huff of laughter.

“You, Rose Tyler, are one lucky, lucky woman,” he shouts at her, wishing she’d move towards him as well and make their time apart disappear quicker.

“Am I really?” she asks, tongue between her teeth.

“You know, anyone else would have just left and not bothered waiting on you. Took your time, didn’t you? One more day and I’d be gone.”

She smiles as he reaches her. “Nah,” she says softly, reaching up to fix a wayward hair on his head. “You’d wait for me.”

His smile fades. “Yeah,” he says softly and nods. He pulls her into his arms, feeling a puff of air on his cheek. Her arms wrap around his neck and she holds on tight. “I will always wait for you, Rose Tyler. Always.”

“You don’t get rid of me that easily,” she says and he’s reluctant to let her go, even though he wants to look into her eyes. Instead, he spins her in a circle, her feet kicking out as he lifts her. She squeals and he can’t stop himself from laughing with her.

He lets out a pleased grunt and puts her back on her feet. He pulls away, but doesn’t let go. Instead he looks at her, taking in her red cheeks, her smiling face, her glistening eyes. He doesn’t want to ever let go.

“We’re forever,” she says softly, “right?”

He wishes he didn’t have to answer. “Nothing’s forever, Rose.” He remembers what it feels like to kiss her and to feel her energy coursing through him. If he tries hard enough, he can still feel her inside him. “But you’ll always be with me,” he says softly.

Somehow, he knows he’s right. And, because he might not get to do it again, he does the only thing he can think of to reassure himself that she’s really there.

He kisses her.


~x~x~x~x~x~

The End

First off, I need to say PLEASE DO NOT MENTION THE FINALE OF DOCTOR WHO IN YOUR COMMENTS!! I’VE STILL ONLY SEEN HALF OF SEASON TWO AND I DON’T WANT SPOILED!

That said, hey there! Hope you enjoyed. I realise it was bitty in places and I apologise, but I was having a few issues getting out what I wanted to. As the Doctor said, it was on the tip of my tongue, I knew it, but it wouldn’t come out! Hopefully, I’ll get it betad at some point (any takers?!) and will repost.

In the meantime, hope you enjoyed!

Oh, and here they are:

LYRICS I HAD TO USE

"Pushing forward and arching back"
"I say a lot of things sometimes that don't come out right"
"Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she'd made"




Feedback is always appreciated.