Chapter Text
Chapter Three
“Sweetie, you know I’d love to stay longer but I have papers to grade. I’m a Professor now—I have a responsibility to my students.”
The Doctor can pout like nobody else, Rose thinks. At River’s declaration, he chases after her with puppydog eyes so profound, Rose marvels at River’s ability to deny him.
“Your students aren’t going anywhere,” he says. “Who wants to be an archaeologist, anyway? It’s boring. I can take you anywhere in space and time and you want to go to work?”
“Yes, Sweetie,” River says, patting him on his cheek. “I do. You can go pick up Clara and take her on a trip. I’ll see you next week.”
“I can take you back to grading papers whenever,” the Doctor argues. “Come on, one more trip. I’ll take you to the Lost Moon of Poosh.”
River arches an eyebrow. “There’s nothing on the Lost Moon of Poosh. Besides, you put it back—it’s not even lost, anymore.”
“Well, wherever you want to go, then!”
“I want to go home, Sweetie. I told you; I’ll see you next week.” She kisses him on the cheek and steps in close, lowering her voice so Rose barely catches her words. “If you don’t take me home, I’ll handcuff you to the railing again and fly her there myself, and I don’t think you want me to do that in front of Kara.” She looks up and winks at Rose. “I don’t think Rose would mind, though. Maybe she could help me.”
The Doctor splutters, exaggerated outrage spreading across his face, his hands flapping. “River!”
“Yes, Sweetie?”
Rose chokes on a smile.
“You… you…” The Doctor makes a strained noise before storming back to the controls. “Fine,” he says. “Fine. You want to go home and be boring, you go home and be boring. I’ll take Clara to the Robona Nebula and you can’t come.”
“That sounds like a splendid idea, Sweetie. And maybe next time, I’ll drive and we’ll actually make it to Darillium.”
Both Doctors stiffen. Rose recognises the cold shock in her husband’s face, though the Time Lord Doctor hides his reaction better, bouncing around a little too manically.
“Who wants to see singing towers?” he asks. “We can go to Farilon Five and listen to the universe’s largest orchestra. Or the ood. River, have you ever heard the ood sing? It’s not like anything you’ve ever heard before.”
“That sounds lovely,” River says, unflipping a couple of switches in the Doctor’s wake. “So long as you turn up on time. I’m heading off on another expedition in two weeks. Have you ever been to the Library?”
Rose’s Doctor is suddenly at her side, his hand sliding into hers and Rose hurts. She hurts because she understands now why the Doctor stiffened at the mention of Darillium. It must mean something about the Library, because she’s heard that story before.
The Time Lord doesn’t still. He dashes around the controls, giving River the biggest smiles in the world, and when they land with a familiar wheezing noise, he takes River’s hand and pulls her from the box. “What’s so good about this place, then?” he demands, the TARDIS door squeaking closed in their wake.
Rose presses a hand to her face and tries not to cry.
“Mum?” Kara says. “Dad, what is it? Why are you sad all of a sudden?”
“Come here,” Rose says, lifting an arm so Kara can slot in at her side. She holds her daughter close, pressing her nose into her hair and closing her eyes.
“I first met River Song in the Library,” the Doctor says, his grip on Rose’s hand almost paralysing. “The only time I’ve ever met her. It’s also the place that she died.”
“What!” Kara jolts out of Rose’s hold. “No. No, that’s not fair.”
“Kara—”
“But you can save her,” Kara says. “Isn’t that what you do, Dad? You and him. There’s two of you now, surely that makes it even easier.”
“I can’t risk changing my own timeline,” the Doctor says. “Besides, the Doctor wouldn’t let me.”
There’s more to the story. Rose hears it in his voice, because she knows he’s made risks like that before. Time can be rewritten. He’s made that promise to her before. There’s more to the story of River Song.
“This is bullshit,” Kara snaps, shoving him in the chest before storming off towards their TARDIS. There are tears in her voice, and Rose wants to chase her, but…
“Go after her,” she tells the Doctor. “I’ll wait for him.” She nods towards the door, and her husband nods.
“Probably best I’m not here for that bit,” he admits, before pressing a hard kiss to the back of her hand; her cheek; her lips. “I love you.”
Rose leans into him. “I love you too.”
Then she sits down in the dark shadows of the TARDIS to wait.
It’s long minutes before the Doctor returns, hair and clothes mussed up, lips swollen, eyes deep chasms of pain. Rose has seen heartbreak on the Doctor’s face. She stood by his side when the TARDIS was supposedly destroyed; she’ll always remember the way his voice broke when he said, ‘they’re all gone, Rose,’ and the weight of his loneliness had been so deep she didn’t know how he could bear to stand.
This is somehow worse. This is waiting for the finale that he knows is coming. Bracing for impact and being wholly unprepared. Rose’s heart breaks.
The Doctor scans the room.
“Kara and my Doctor are gone,” Rose says. “They’ve gone into our TARDIS. It’s only me.”
“Rose,” the Doctor breathes, sagging back against the TARDIS door. His careful mask cracks. “My Bad Wolf. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Rose leaps to her feet, crossing the space in just a handful of strides. She takes his face in both her hands and she can almost feel the misery coming off him. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“I lost you,” the Doctor says, gripping her jacket. “I trapped you there and I didn’t even give you a choice.”
“And I love you for it,” Rose tells him. “You hear me, Doctor? My life is better—unbearably better—because of you. Because you came into it and you changed me, and you gave me him and I love him, so much. You have nothing to be sorry for. I owe you everything.”
He just shakes his head, clinging tighter to her jacket. “I don’t know how to do it anymore. I try, and I try, and every time it hurts more. Oh, Amelia.”
He sinks to the floor, and Rose follows him, tears burning her eyes, sliding down her cheeks. She ignores them. “Who’s Amelia?” she asks.
The Doctor whines like his hearts are breaking—and it is. “Pond. Amelia Pond. The Girl Who Waited.”
“Your companion?” Rose asks.
“Lost,” the Doctor says. “Lost just like you. Lost with Rory, living where I can never reach them. And here I am. Looking for another person to lose.”
Rose wraps her arms around him and he shakes.
“She didn’t even cry,” the Doctor says, a long moment later. “River. They were her parents and she was too busy looking after me to even—and now I have to say goodbye to her, too, and I can’t—I don’t know—Rose, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t. I’m so tired of goodbyes.”
“I know,” Rose says. She strokes his hair back from his forehead. “You love her.”
He makes a soft, strangled noise, and tucks his face into her arm and sobs. Rose rocks him back-and-forth, remembering a thousand nights woken by nightmares; first the Doctor’s, then Kara’s. She knows the rhythm of sympathy. Knows the cadence of sobs, the gentle stroke of hair through her fingers.
She knows the beat of her heart and the cadence of the body in her arms as they ride out the wave of agony together.
She knows the gentle calm that follows the storm; the tired emergence.
The Doctor is a man like any other, in this case. An unfathomable length of time later, and not nearly long enough, he lifts his head, rubs his face, blinks as if to remember where he is. He clears his throat and pushes down his misery and tries to reassemble his broken mask.
“Rose,” he says.
“Hello,” she says.
His eyes are his own. The Doctor, really here, really in her arms, really breaking apart. He strokes a gentle hand over her cheek. “I loved you,” he says. “So much.”
Rose smiles. “I know.”
“I just couldn’t—”
“I know,” Rose says, because she does. Because in another life, if he’d let himself love her, she knows there would have come another day like this one. A goodbye that hurt more than any of the others. She supposes with River, he just wasn’t quick enough to guard his heart, or he was too tired to do so. Or—maybe—there’s still a wall up inside him.
He’s here, breaking down in front of Rose, after all.
Never show him the pain, River had said.
“Have you told her?” Rose asks. “That you love her?”
The Doctor drops his head into his hands and shakes no. “I can’t,” he says again.
“I’m sure she knows, but still—tell her,” Rose says, curling a hand around his arm and tugging. He unfurls, climbing to his feet in a wonky stumble. “Before it’s too late. Before it’s another regret.”
The Doctor’s throat bobs. “I will,” he promises.
Then he gives her a wobbly smile and shakes off a layer of melancholy. “Rose Tyler. When did you get so smart?”
Rose ruffles his hair. “I get it from my mum,” she says, and that works.
He laughs, misery falling off him like a shroud and all of a sudden, he’s the Doctor again, bright and energetic and excited. He wriggles out of her arms and bounds towards the console, all uncoordinated limbs and childlike excitement. He adjusts his bowtie and beams at her.
“Want to meet Clara?” he asks. “She’s impossible. First time I met her, she was a Dalek. Then she was a Governess in Eighteen Ninety Two. She died. And then the Wi-Fi was broken in the Twenty-First century and there she was again. Impossible. You’d love her. Promise.”
Rose wants to. But.
“Next time,” she swears. “I think my Doctor and I probably need to go find a home base of our own. Figure out being back in this universe. But here—” she pulls her phone from her pocket and holds it out. “Code is two-zero-zero-five. The year we met. Call me. Or I’ll call you.”
The Doctor slips the phone into one of his pockets. Rose knows he won’t call her.
“Thank you,” he says.
“I mean it,” Rose says, pointing at him. “Call me. If you ever need—you’re not alone, okay?”
He nods, smiles as if he’s not shattered inside.
Rose turns her back on him and makes for her own TARDIS.
Enough.
She pushes the doors open, kicks them closed behind her.
“Are you okay?” the Doctor asks, standing up from Kara’s side. Their eyes are so identical, big and brown and concerned.
“Take us out of here,” Rose orders. Then, when the initial wheeze quiets down and they’re in flight, she looks from her husband to her daughter and the love she feels for them swells inside her. “We’re saving River Song,” she tells them. “Doctor; you can either help me do it without breaking any timelines, or you can get out of my way. I’m doing it. That man has seen enough loss.”
“Yes!” Kara cheers.
Rose watches her husband. He wavers, then his shoulders relax and he leans against one of the columns. He nods. “Okay,” he says.
“Good,” Rose says. “Now, tell me everything you know about her. And take us to Earth. We’re going to need reinforcements.”