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Chapter Text

The Doctor stood at the top of the famous cathedral of Plontoosh, glaring at the unsuspecting passers-by down below, going about their tiny, insignificant existences with barely a care in the world. He was angry; not a new emotion for this regeneration which seemed to have been born with rage in his blood, but the intensity certainly was. His mind twisted and seethed with it. He wanted to scream his fury at the selfish, uncaring universe that just kept on taking, taking, taking from him until there was nothing left but the angry fizzing in his veins.

He’d come here to forget, but it hadn’t worked. If anything, the peaceful zen-like atmosphere for which Plontoosh was famed just made him remember all the more; his memories crowding in at him until he felt suffocated.

He wanted peace. Needed peace. Needed something after the atrocious week he’d had, but, as usual, the universe wasn’t keen on paying up. Here he was on what was widely considered the most peaceful planet in the galaxy and yet peace was the last thing he felt. He should demand his money back. Well, if he’d paid to be here, which he hadn’t. But the point still stood; he’d been promised peace and Plontoosh had failed to deliver.

He was brooding… that’s what Clara would say. Not that Time Lords brood, because they don’t. Brooding was for vampires and anti-heroes in horrible Hollywood teen films. He was just standing there at the top of a very tall building… contemplating. Yes, contemplating. He was contemplating the shitness of the universe, which was definitely not the same thing as brooding.

Not for the first time recently his thoughts turned to the past. His mistakes, the errors of judgement he’d made, what he’d turned into; the person he’d become. An emotionally distant, angry old man who lied and twisted and used emotions as weapons to control those around him.

He was a meddling, mendacious, manipulative misanthrope.

A mad man in a box who caused death and destruction wherever he went.

Who’d have thought the Daleks would finally be right about something, but they’d been spot on about him all those years ago. The Ka Faraq Gatri, they’d called him:  the bringer of darkness and destroyer of worlds.

Names he’d always rejected and yet had never been so appropriate – especially after his last stop.

He’d come here straight from Darillium and the singing towers; from sending River off to die in his past.

It was a period he tried hard not to remember, as a general rule, as it just made him think of Donna… and Rose. Two of his greatest regrets. Brilliant Donna and her non-nonsense approach. His best friend. And Rose, the woman he’d spent two regenerations trying to forget.

Part of him wondered, and not for the first time, whether Rose could have accepted, could have loved the man he’d become.  

He doubted it.

The man he was now, what he’d become after losing her a second time; the angry, closed off, practically amoral man who routinely left ruin in his wake…he doubted even Rose could have loved that.

Round and round his increasingly despondent thoughts twisted, encircling and squeezing him like a giant boa constrictor. Memories that he’d carefully packed away were forcing their way to the front of his mind, clamouring to be heard; faces he’d hoped he’d finally succeeded in forgetting tormented him. The faces of those he’d failed. The faces of those he’d hurt. The faces of those he’d betrayed.

SusanKatrinaSarajamieAdricSarahJaynePeriJackMarthaAstridDonnaAdelaideBrookeRiverAmyRoryClara, RoseRoseRose

So many names. So many people. So many losses. Some had left on their own. Some he had left behind. And then there were those who’d been taken from him, who’d been killed. It was a lesson he’d learnt early on - never look back, never stop running.  

It was his time sense that finally knocked him out of his morbid thoughts, alerting him to the fact that something had changed; something big.

Something that definitely didn’t belong on Plontoosh, the most peaceful planet in the Rose Nebula.

Buoyed by the promise of a mystery to distract him, the Doctor promptly abandoned his morose musings and set off; trotting down the nine-hundred and ninety-nine steps that led to the ground floor at considerable speed in what he thought was an impressive display of agility, motor coordination and stamina.

Given the condition of the staircase, and the speed he’d been going, he was fortunate he’d made it out of the cathedral in one piece and without any broken bones. That, however, was where his luck seemed to end.

His time sense was still tingling, so whatever it was hadn’t left, or stopped; but as far as he could see nothing had changed in his immediate surroundings. Nothing. Nadda. Zip.

He spun around. Nope, still nothing caught his attention. Until, that is, he saw her. She was just standing there by the central fountain as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Even if every other sense of his had been shut off in that moment he’d have known who it was.

It was Rose. His Rose. His impossible girl who couldn’t be here, and yet was.

For a moment he remained frozen. How could she be here. It was impossible. It had to be a trick of his stupid brain – a hallucination caused by his recent thoughts. Yet…

Instinct took over then, and without conscious thought, he found himself hurtling towards her, desperation driving his stupidly impulsive actions.

Her name was a gasp when he finally reached the fountain, breathless and hearts-sore. It was her. Truly her. She was real and really here. His Rose. His eyes fell the device strapped to her wrist; Rose during her dimension hopping days before he did the unthinkable and lost her again.

In a distant part of his brain, his mind screamed at him to say something, do something, anything rather than stand there looking like a gobsmacked space idiot.

“Doctor?” She asked, her uncertain tone at odds with the confident spark of recognition he could see in her eyes.

“Rose,” he whispered, his voice finally working again, and then she was in his arms, and they were hugging.

“You’ve found me too late, precious girl,” he babbled, stepping back slightly so he could see her, drinking her in like a man dying of thirst. “I’m not the Doctor you’re looking for.” And didn’t that admission just break his hearts all over again.

Rose tilted her head back to stare at him sadly, her fingers tracing the angry lines around his eyes. “I know,” she said softly. “You’re so much older than my Doctor, so much more angry. You’ve lost so much, I can see it.”

Her assessment hit home with all the force of a Zilotian exploding arrow, and with just as much devastation.

“I’m still your Doctor,” he half demanded, half pleaded: because it was true, he’d always been her Doctor, every one of him, and suddenly it was essential that she understood that. Despite what was coming in her timeline - or perhaps because of it - he needed her to know just how much he lov-cared about her. Needed it like he needed his next breath, like an addict needed their next fix.

“I should go,” Rose said instead, eyes troubled. “It’s dangerous me being here. Future knowledge and all that.”

The Doctor closed his eyes, squeezing them shut against the onslaught of pain that rushed through him at the thought of her leaving him. She was right, this sort of meeting was dangerous, and yet he didn’t care. He’d given enough for the universe, surely it owed him this: one more day with the woman he…

“Time Lord me,” he said, dodging her point, determined not to think of the risks. “Think I might know a thing or two about maintaining the timelines.”

Speaking of which, he suddenly realised that something strange was going on with his time sense. It was singing, for lack of a better word. A joyous melody that confused him. He’d only felt this once before, millennia ago when he stood in front of the Untempered Schism. He frowned, prodding at the misbehaving sense, but it continued its strange dance.

Something was happening, something odd, something big; and he was buggered if he knew what. It was a mystery. A huge, potentially world ending mystery, and yet for once he had no desire to stick his nose in.

What he wanted, all he wanted in that moment, was to steal as much time as he could with his Rose before he inevitably had to send her back on her quest to find his stupid hedgehog self. His stupidest incarnation yet - and that was saying something considering the competition from some of his previous selves.

“Okay,” Rose agreed reluctantly, clearly torn between doing what she thought she ought to do and doing what she wanted. It was a dilemma he knew only too well, but beneath the indecision he could see her desire to stay, to be with him, knew that she felt the same pull he did. They were like magnets, he and Rose, hopelessly drawn to one another by forces too great to resist.

It’s what he gambled on when he offered her his hand.

There was a second when he feared she’d refuse, but then she moved, and for the first time in two regenerations he felt Rose Tyler’s hand in his. It was still a perfect fit. He suspected it always would be.

She checked the dimension canon strapped to her wrist. “I’ve got a couple of hours before the automatic recall triggers and takes me back. You can buy me a drink,” the grin she aimed at him was bright, cheeky, and stopped his hearts for three whole seconds.

He gripped her hand tighter in response, a manic smile flashing across his face. “Run.”

Chapter Text

Finding somewhere on Plontoosh turned out to be more difficult than he’d expected. The first bar he spotted was too full to give them the privacy he craved, so he ploughed on down the streets in search of a quieter spot, chatting while tugging her along.

“I’m Scottish now, that means I get to complain about things. And have you seen these eyebrows?” he pointed at his forehead as he dodged around a badly positioned merchants stall, “these are attack eyebrows.”

It was like his mouth had developed a mind of his own and he couldn’t for the life of him stop babbling about his newest regeneration. He sounded like a teenager with a crush, eager to impress the object of his affections.

Rose laughed, her hand never slipping from his as they raced down the twisty, cobbled streets that surrounded the market square where he’d found her. 

For the first time in this regeneration he felt alright, as if he’d found finally got his sea legs after a particularly nasty storm. He felt balanced; no longer like a whizzing top that was spinning out of control.

It was as he was digesting this novel feeling that he felt a tug on his hand and Rose pointed at a small bistro type place. The name was partly obscured by the awning and all he could see were the last three letters -olf.

It was no matter though, and he quickly discarded the issue of the name, as the place his companion had found was just what he’d been looking for: small, quiet and without a gaggle of patrons who might disturb this precious time with Rose.

A few steps and they were inside and being directed to a table towards the back of the establishment. The booth they selected was set back in a small alcove off the main room, granting them more privacy than if they’d sat at one of the more popular tables. The server came, a pleasant young Thenian who blushed purple when Rose directed one of her charming smiles in his direction, to take their orders and then they were alone. Finally, blessedly, alone.

The first round of drinks was spent catching up. Rose told him about her life in Pete’s world (mostly spent working on the dimension cannon) and then it was his turn to tell her some heavily edited highlights of his life over the last millennia or so.

Highlights which somehow led to them arguing about temporal mechanics, of all things, over roast gruchak burgers.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Rose said between mouthfuls, “about fixed points.”

The Doctor just stared at her, torn between bemusement and outrage that a human would try and school him on the laws of time. His Rose hadn’t even known what temporal mechanics were when she’d travelled with him. More than that, the Rose he remembered wouldn’t have dreamed of arguing with him about academic theories. Morality, yes. The ethics of his decision making, definitely. But the mechanics of time and space travel. No. It wasn’t that she was stupid – far from it – more that Rose, for whatever reason, had always lacked confidence in her intelligence, and so had tended to shy away from anything scholastic.

This Rose, though, had clearly put her years in Pete’s world to good use, as evidenced by her knowledge of some very advanced quantum theories, and the confident poise she showed in arguing her point.

“The problem is you’ve conflated a lot of separate things into one catch-all term – and I can see why your people did it, because on the surface it makes sense, yeah? If you’re setting up rules to make sure people don’t mess things up too much when they’re mucking about in a timeline it’s better to be overly cautious. But it’s actually wrong. They created absolute rules to understand Time when Time is always relative. It all depends on where you’re standing. For a time-linear species, everything is fixed as soon as it happens: the past is the past and only the future is in flux. Time travel though, complicates things. From a time traveller’s perspective what’s fixed or in flux depends on where and when you are in your personal timeline.

Rose pushed her plate away and pulled a biro out of a pocket so she could scribble something on the napkin. “See, Time is like a tapestry; each life, each decision, is another thread that makes up the pattern of Time itself.” She tapped one end of her drawing, “if you look at it backwards then everything is fixed, yeah? The pattern is complete, but if you look at it from the start, or the middle…” She paused and looked at him expectantly.

His brow furrowed as he stared at the napkin, thinking through her words.

“That’s true, but it doesn’t change the fact that somethings are fixed. I can sense them.” That should really have ended the discussion.

Rose though shook her head. “Britain’s golden age under Harriet Jones, or how about the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire,” she snapped her fingers, “gone like that. You can’t tell me that there weren’t a whole load of fixed-points that were changed there.”

Well, she may have a point there, the Doctor conceded reluctantly. Time had been rewritten – giant, great, universe changing chunks of time, and Time had just compensated and adjusted. Enthralled, he leaned forwards, listening intently to Rose casually rewrite the Laws of Time.

“Things become fixed for a time traveller when the timelines get knotted, so C literally could not have happened without A occurring first, and vice versa.”

“Yes,” The Doctor agreed, slowly, “the circular temporal link between the two points creates a paradox.” It was a trap he knew only too well, courtesy of River.

“Exactly,” Rose crowed triumphantly, her hands waving with enthusiasm. “My Dad is a good example. He had to die on that day because if I’d saved him my life would have been different and I wouldn’t have been in Henricks to take your hand, which would have meant I couldn’t have been there to save him in the first place. That’s a true fixed point.” She levelled a glare at him, “that mess with the uncrowned queen of France though, that was a temporal tipping point, not a fixed point.” Rose held up a hand to stop the objections she could see brewing in his stormy eyes. “Yes, she was historically important,” she agreed with a thin smile, “and she played an important part in 18th century France, and it would have made some pretty big changes if she’d been killed by clockwork droids. Buuut,” she drew the word out, her amber eyes firm and determined, “the timeline would have coped just fine. Her premature death wouldn’t have caused a tear in the space time continuum, not like me trying to save my Dad.”

“Precisely. You proved my point for me.”

A wicked little grin flashed across Rose’s face, making his hearts skip another beat. “Not quite. ‘Cos it’s about timing. I couldn’t save my Dad but doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t have. Oh, it would have changed my entire life, probably meant we never met, but if a bystander had pushed him out of the way, or if the car had swerved, or if you’d saved him before we met the timeline would have been fine. My whole life would have changed, but the reapers wouldn’t have come.”  

The Doctor leant back into the soft padding of the booth, his mind whirring as he considered Rose’s theory. ‘Well, yes, when you put it like that. That didn’t mean there weren’t fixed points though, because… oh. Bugger.’ The Doctor thought as his mental rant derailed faster than a Hornby train going round a bend. Rassion’s frilly knickers, Rose was right and he was a thrice cursed idiot of the highest order! Fixed or flux, it was all a matter of perspective.

What she said went against everything he’d been taught in the academy - and yet… and yet, it made sense. It felt right. How else could he crash through all the adventures he’d had, destruct testing Time as he went on his merry way; and didn’t it make him feel like a total dunderhead that he hadn’t considered Time like that before. The thing that niggled at him though was how did Rose know. This was more than advanced physics theories; not even the experts at the Time Agency in the 51^st Century had this sort of understanding about timelines.

It was while Rose continued chatting through other examples to reinforce her point, that an idea started to unfurl in his mind, sparked by their discussion. A crazy, completely mad idea. Totally bonkers. Nuts. Insane.

It would mean breaking the first law of time.

And yet…

This was Rose.

Rose who within a few jumps would find him only to lose him again. Rose who he would take back in Pete’s world with some cockamamie plan to dump his genocidal clone there for her to keep an eye on as some weird parole officer cum consolation prize. His unprecedented clone who he had no idea how he would turn out: had he treated Rose well, were they happy together? For all he knew his clone could be the bloody Valeyard. The point was he didn’t know. He’d just left them and run…

But if Rose was right then there was a chance to… what exactly, mess with time even more than he already had? The Doctor scoffed mentally. Just because he might be able to do something didn’t mean that he ought to. For all he knew, Rose had been deliriously happy in Pete’s Word with his twin. He couldn’t – shouldn’t – jeopardise that just because he was a miserable sod who hated what his life had become.  

It struck him as he sat in the booth, drinking in the sight of the woman he thought he’d never see again and pondering things that he definitely shouldn’t be thinking about, that his time sense was singing even more loudly. It was starting to give him a headache with its irritatingly noisy insistence.

Reluctantly, he parked his thoughts and focussed on the annoying sense, exasperated at the interruption. Of all the Rassilon cursed times. While he was more psychically gifted in this body than he had been for several regenerations, and more aware of Time as a result, it still wasn’t a talent he used often. Unlike his seventh and eighth selves, who had relished it and practically lived in the temporal realm, he preferred to avoid it. Knowing the future, in his experience, only seemed to be borrow trouble he’d rather not know about.

There was no avoiding it now though – not with the racket it was making. He must have been really out of practice, as opening his mind to the temporal realm took several moments longer than it really should have. Things didn’t improve much once he’d succeeded either, as he promptly knocked his glass over in shock and felt like a total idiot that he hadn’t realised before.

The Master had told him he was a sorry excuse for a Time Lord, and now it looked like he’d been proved right, because he should have known, should have seen before now.

It was Rose.

His Rose was what – who – was making his time sense go crazy.

Sitting across from him was a golden goddess, Time was literally wrapped around her, caressing her lovingly, adoringly.

It was the shock he blamed for his motor mouth once away getting away from him as he blurted, “it’s all over you,” before reason was restored and he shut his gob with a click.

“What’s all over me?” Rose asked, looking bemused.

He met her eyes, allowing the two disparate images of the temporal and physical plains to overlay, knowing that having already opened the can of worms he had to tell her. “It’s Time, Rose. All over you, wound around you, through you. It loves you.”

If asked what he expected, the Doctor would have said confusion, probably tears, anger, denial – you know, the usual gamut of human emotion. What he would not have said was weary resignation… as if she already knew, or at least suspected.

“You already knew.” The Doctor’s question came out far more accusatory than he’d intended.

Rose’s nod was hesitant, her beautiful amber eyes cautious and confused.

“Because you see Time.” It was meant to be a statement, but his emotions were fluctuating like crazy, and he couldn’t help the slight inflection that crept in, turning it into a question. That explained how she was so certain when arguing with him about temporal mechanics. Rose didn’t just know because of books; she knew because she saw it.

Rose paled. “You said that like it’s a question - like you don’t know,” she blurted out, teeth sinking into her bottom lip. “Oh my god, I don’t find you. I don’t succeed. That’s why you don’t know.”

“No, no, precious girl,” he almost tripped over himself in his haste to reassure her, sliding out of his seat and then squeezing onto her bench, so he could pull her into the safety of his arms. It was odd just how much he relished the feeling of her there, her head resting in the crook of his neck. He was the least tactile he’d ever been in this body; hated touch, in point of fact, yet he hadn’t been able to keep his hands to himself since he saw Rose by the fountain, and now with her pressed so close she was practically on his lap, he felt none of the usual antsy-angst that contact made him feel. There was only peace.

Eventually though he had no choice but to let go; and Rose shifted away, taking a sip from her glass to help restore her tattered composure. “Sorry about that,” she said, pressing her hands to her eyes, “s’just been a lot, these last few years.”

Oh, Rose. His hearts ached.

“You do find me, and soon,” he whispered into her hair, pressing a kiss there as if it would somehow ameliorate the pain he knew was coming for her.

For a moment he wasn’t sure whether Rose had heard his words, but then she shifted away so she could look at him and he frowned at the pain he saw blooming in her eyes as she correctly interpreted what he hadn’t said. “Oh.”

Rose glanced away, eyes hollow and unfocussed as she struggled to assimilate the clue he absolutely should not have given her. She was clever, his Rose, and he knew she’d already put the pieces together and reached the right conclusion.

What he should do at this point was give her another hug, then send her on her way before he irrevocably damaged his past and her future. Rose needed to leave and go do humany-couply things with his metacrisis in Pete’s World. It didn’t – shouldn’t – matter that Time was woven around her in a way he’d never seen (or heard) of before, a way that defied everything he’d ever thought he knew about Time. It didn’t matter that it was a mystery and a puzzle and a conundrum all wrapped in one Rose Tyler shaped parcel; or that he loved all those things.

What he should do is run in the opposite direction to the temptation seated within arm’s reach next to him.

What he should do is leave well enough alone.

What he does, though, is poke the bear. “You might have died before I got a chance to find out,” The Doctor suggested, curious as to why Rose had jumped to the conclusion that she hadn’t found him.

“S’not that simple,” she answered with a shrug, still not looking at him.

The Doctor felt like he was underwater. He… but that… it was impossible. She couldn’t mean… could she? He stretched out all his senses, but all he felt was Rose. There was none of the discomfort he felt around Jack. He checked again, and again, but nothing. Rose was just – Rose. She felt the same as she always did.

He stared thoughtfully at the blonde, turning the puzzle over in his mind. Maybe she meant something else, and he was just jumping to conclusions. But then another thought intruded, one which had clearly been waiting for him to get his shit together for some time: how did Rose know so much about temporal mechanics and Quantum Theory. Being able to see Time would undoubtedly help, but that sort of advanced knowledge took years to build, a decade at a minimum – and that was more time than she’d had in Pete’s World, going by her youthful, unchanged features.

That led to another question he’d not asked in the original timeline: who had actually designed and built the dimension cannon.

Mickey had said something before leaving about it being Rose’s baby, but the Doctor had brushed that off as proud hyperbole from her friend. He’d made an assumption. An assumption, which given all the evidence before him, could very well be wrong. He’d assumed that while Rose may have been the driving force behind its creation, that someone else had designed and built it - that someone probably being the same person/people who had built the hoppers that had saved Rose from the void. It was an assumption made on the premise that the Rose he knew had lacked both the advanced knowledge and the technical genius needed to build a device as brilliant as the dimension canon. A device which now he thought about it was much, much more sophisticated than the dimension hoppers Pete’s team had used before.   

Another question hit him with all the force of a black hole. Time moved faster over in Pete’s World, that was how they’d known about the stars going out.

Time.

Moved.

Faster.

Fuck!

How much time had passed over there. How long had Rose been trapped in that other world before she made it back, and what did that mean for…

“How long has it been?” He asked abruptly, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen. She paused and finally looked up to study him, visibly uncertain.

“Rose,” he prompted, attack eyebrows beetling with displeasure at her hesitation.

Her gaze held his, caramel coloured eyes full of something he couldn’t understand. “Ten years,” was her quiet answer.

The Doctor nodded. Guilt curdling in his stomach. Ten years, a further four travelling with him. Rose should have looked like she was in her mid-thirties; she should look older. Instead, she looked identical to her 20-year-old self.

He’d noticed it during that dreadful day on the Crucible but had dismissed it because it had only been a couple of years for him and he’d assumed she hadn’t been in Pete’s World for very long. He’d thought that universe was only running a couple of months ahead of the prime one not… not eight years.  

The puzzle pieces started to drop into place. Rose’s sudden knowledge of advanced physics. The confidence and maturity he could read in how she held herself. A large part of him – the part that ran from his mistakes – wanted desperately to believe that Rose’s youthful looks were down to good genetics, or Pete’s World having some sort of amazingly advanced age-reversing technology, but he knew in his gut that wasn’t the case. He recalled Jackie as he’d last seen her on the Tardis before he’d dropped them off on that bloody beach. She’d looked older, much older, with new wrinkles and lines on her face and hands. If such technology existed in that universe, Jackie would have been one of the first to use it.

That left only one explanation – the one that made his hearts stutter and eyes sting. Rose wasn’t aging.

But if so… if that was the case, then he’d trapped her in a universe not her own, with a version of him she would outlive, a man she’d have to watch grow old and die while she remained the same. Desperate for reassurance that he was wrong, the Doctor turned inwards mentally searching for the Web of Time, looking for the thread that was Rose Tyler.

He’d never seen her timeline before, had never even glimpsed it. Seeing it now, he was blinded by the truth he should have seen already, and he wished he’d been brave enough to look.

There had been good reasons, solid reasons why he hadn’t tried to peak. Reasons he cursed now. His time sense had been too badly damaged when he’d first met her to even try looking at her timeline, and by the time he’d regenerated and could have done so, he’d lacked any desire to know in case it confirmed his greatest fear; that he would lose her.

Idiot. If he’d only looked back then all of this could have been avoided, because the truth was undeniable, unavoidable and explained what his time sense had already tried to tell him, what he’d been too stupid to understand. Rose wasn’t wrapped in Time. She was Time.

Suddenly her being what he’d thought was the Moment’s interface made sense; because Rose – his Rose – was a goddess.  

And not just any goddess.

He finally knew her for who she really was: the legendary Daughter of Time.

Chapter Text

What had he done?

Before today, he’d thought his battered hearts had grown too cold to break anymore. He knew he was wrong when he felt his hearts crack, shattering into a million tiny shards. His precious girl. What had he done.

Painful as those realisations were, however, there was another that gnawed at him: why hadn’t she told old him – the him she was looking for now – about the changes before he’d dumped in her Pete’s world? He’d never have left her there if he’d known.

The answer when it came to him did the impossible and made him feel even more guilty.

When had there been time during that mad adventure for Rose to tell him. Their reunion had been cut short by a badly placed Dalek; then it was all him regenerating, or sort of regenerating, more Daleks, reality bombs, old friends and frenzied terror, topped off with the Doctor-Donna catastrophe.

When had there been time. Certainly not on the Dalek crucible, and then afterwards when they’d been dropping everyone off he’d been distracted by the problem the metacrisis posed and heart-wrenching fear for Donna. Rose had tried to talk to him a couple of times, he suddenly remembered, but each time he’d brushed her off. Determined to avoid a conversation he worried would make him doubt the plan his alternate self and Donna had proposed.

Fuck.

He really was a moron.

Rose had tried to tell him.

But why hadn’t she said something on the beach? That had been her final chance, zero hour, why hadn’t she spoken up. His fingers pulled at his hair as he ransacked his dodgy memory for any clue. Oh, the kiss. It had been part of the plan, well, Donna’s plan.

He’d wanted to give her a choice, he really had: Rose had fought so hard to get back to him that she deserved to have a say in which Doctor she got to spend her life with. The other two had reluctantly agreed and that should have been the end of it. The problem was they were too much like him and they’d seen the obvious loophole: that agreeing to give Rose a choice didn’t mean they couldn’t stack the deck, make it so in reality there was only one choice: his clone. 

Which was exactly what they’d done – and he’d known it. So long as he played his part then whatever happened his conscience would be clear, and he could toddle on his merry way with the knowledge that whatever happened it was Rose’s decision.

However, it was only just occurring to him now that he hadn’t exactly given Rose a choice, heavily influenced or not. Oh, he’d said the words intending to do just that, but then other him had kissed her, and he’d taken that as her decision – and instead of waiting and actually asking her, he’d cut and run like a giant space baby. Just left them on the beach; no goodbye, no ‘are you sure’, and no chance for Rose to tell him.

Double fuck.

Their collective selfishness really was quite astounding. Jaw dropping. Mind boggling. If there were an Olympic medal for twattery he’d take gold.

He’d seen her on the view screen, chasing after the Tardis as she started to disappear, and it had been Donna’s voice which had firmed his resolution when he’d wavered; “Rose will be fine, it might hurt now, but she’ll understand it’s for the best.” The redhead had said perkily and with apparently no empathy whatsoever for the distress visible on Rose’s face. “Good thing he kissed though, thought she might have chosen you for a moment there.” That was the moment he realised just how corrupting his mind was – because Donna, beautiful, compassionate, caring Donna, would never have said that. She wasn’t callous or cruel or manipulative or deliberately dismissive… that was all him.

Donna before the metacrisis would have been the first to smack some sense into him and yell at him for even thinking of letting Rose go. Donna would have called him a giant space dumbo and made sure he and Rose actually talked: that he actually gave her a choice.

Before he contaminated her, that is. Because Donna had been wrong; she hadn’t just got his knowledge, she’d got the rest of him as well.  

Her mind had started melting soon after that realisation though, and he’d had to put Rose out of his thoughts to concentrate on Donna. By the time he’d got her stable and returned her home the walls between dimensions had closed and he was stuck with a decision he was already regretting.   

His chickens really were coming home to roost now, weren’t they.

He looked up, stricken, to meet Rose’s concern. He didn’t deserve her, didn’t deserve the worry and compassion he could practically feel radiating from her.

“I’m so sorry, Rose,” he pleaded, hands now covering his burning eyes. This body wasn’t prone to leaking – the closest he’d got was that last night on Darillium with River – but, oh, he was crying now. “Oh, Rassilon, I’m so sorry.”

Rose frowned, reaching over to touch his arm. “Doctor, what’s wrong?” she questioned worriedly, once again prioritising his wellbeing over her own feelings and concerns.

“Everything,” he replied, dragging a hand down his face, and then pinching the bridge of his nose in a feeble attempt at regaining his scattered control.

What he should do is send her on her way before he did any more damage either to her or the timelines. What he should do is absolutely not tell her anymore about her personal future than he already had. What he should do is let her go. Their past was set, after all. He needed to let it play out.

Unbidden, he thought of River, the extraordinary woman he’d just sent to her death. He thought of Amy and Rory who had both lost so much because of his mistakes and hubris. He thought of Clara, the latest in the long line of companions he’d hurt more than helped.

He thought about where it had all gone wrong. The damage to his psyche caused by rejecting the nascent bond between him and the woman he’d imprinted on when he’d been all big ears, leather and longing for death. The bond which meant he could never love River the way she wanted or deserved. Always second best, and she’d known it at the end. Not a proper wedding, no telepathic bond sealing their love and commitment to each other, just his name - grudgingly forced out of him to preserve the paradox that had started the whole bloody mess. He’d told her his name because he’d had to. Just as he’d taken her to see the singing towers for their last trip because that’s what she’d told him in The Library.

What kind of man did that? Not a good one, certainly.

The idea prodded him again, this time joined by his time sense, which was shouting at him that he was approaching a temporal tipping point. He closed his eyes and focussed on the potential timelines. Of the hundreds of tiny off shoots zipping in every direction there were three paths that stood out:

One, he leaves her at the bar determined not to muck about any further with the past. This led to only minor changes in the timeline; a colder, sadder reunion, and this him walking away with even more guilt.

Two, he takes her memories of this stolen time together. It would be the ultimate violation as he already knows Rose won’t agree to it; and in doing so he will lose what’s left of his battered morality, and probably his sanity (such as it was) as well.

Three, he tells her everything and gives her a choice whether to try and fix it.

His Time Lord training shouted at him that only one and two were real options, and that the latter was preferable to preserve the timeline. It was only a little betrayal, after all, and it wasn’t like Rose would remember it afterwards. How much harm could it really do.

It brought back the memory of that awful scene in his bedroom, where Donna and his clone had ambushed him while he’d been getting changed out of his damaged suit.

Up until that point he’d very deliberately not thought about what his metacrisis had just done, or what would happen to him after the dust had settled. Donna and his clone had evidently been talking and planning though, and they had it all mapped out.

“We both know I can’t stay here on the Tardis,” the other had told him, sounding oddly resigned to a fate the Doctor himself would have rebelled against kicking and screaming. Put on the spot though, he’d just nodded in agreement, surprised relief keeping him quiet. He’d already reached the same conclusion, even if he hadn’t quite worked out what to do with his twin, but he’d assumed that whatever the solution was would have to be achieved through force, as he’d certainly never willingly give up the Tardis – even for himself.   

And then came the judas deal. “Leave Rose with me in Pete’s World,” the clone had continued, “I can give her the life we both know she deserves, and she’ll have her family as well. If she stays with you she’ll never see them again.”

They must have seen his reluctance, as Donna had then chipped in. “Doctor, I know you don’t want to, but consider what this means. He’s half-human with one life - a life he could live with Rose, he could give her a normal life: marriage, kids, family. All the things humans want, all the things you could never give her.”

Still he’d wavered, uncertain. The nascent bond between them screamed at him to ignore Donna’s words, but louder than that was the omnipresent doubt and fear that had stopped him from acting on his feelings in that precious time before he’d lost her. Rose was still human; she’d wither and die, that hadn’t changed, nor had his deep seated fear that in loving Rose he somehow harm her.      

And then had come the final carefully delivered hammer blow: “There’s also River Song to consider. You said she knew your name… think of the timelines.”

Donna’s timely reminder had done its job… just as she’d intended. Whatever protest he might have made, whatever fight he had left in him, had deserted him with her words. He’d felt trapped by a future he’d only glimpsed. Trapped and out of options. So he’d given in.

And in doing so had betrayed the love of his lives.

He growled. Bugger that. He’d let her go once to protect the timelines, he’d not make that mistake again, not when there was another way. Oh, they’d have to be clever, very clever – and sneaky – two things this incarnation fortunately seemed particularly adept at… but it was doable.

His hearts sped up in excitement. It could be done because Rose had unknowingly already given him the tools to fix this mess. Fixed points were relative to where you were in the timestream. Ha!  

The server arrived with the next round of drinks. It was the same one as before, and just like earlier he was obvious in how taken with Rose he was, gushing about something or other and promising that this round – which they hadn’t ordered – was on the house. It was then he spotted it, the tiny motif embroidered on the server’s apron of a wolf howling with the words, The Bad Old Wolf Inn.

There was a cosmic sign of approval if he’d ever seen one.

It did make him wonder though why, if Rose had foreseen this as Bad Wolf had she not stepped in earlier and stopped him from abandoning her in the first place. The answer when it came to him was enough to make even his magnificent brain stutter and stop. Because it wouldn’t have worked, he realised. They both needed time to grow up - evidently him more than her, given that it had been only a decade for Rose but over a millennia for him.

Rose had been so very young when they’d met, just starting out, and no matter how brilliant she’d been at that age her youth and inexperience had been against her – had been tools he’d been able to wield like a finely honed weapon to stop her getting too close. The sad fact was, there’s no substitute for life experience, as the Rose beside him was demonstrating only too well. This Rose was more his equal – one who was used to leadership, used to making decisions and one who evidently had no qualms or hesitation about calling him on his bullshit. 

Another thought occurred to him, one which sent icy shards of dread into the mangled remains of his hearts. There was another reason wasn’t there, a very good reason for Bad Wolf to have let their separation play out as it had done. Bloody, buggering, fuck!

The Master.

It didn’t bear thinking about what would have happened if Rose had been with him for the year that never was.

The Master been fascinated by her.

In that year he’d spent as his insane former friend’s ‘guest’, Rose had been one of the deranged man’s favourite methods to torture the Doctor. He’d spent hours lamenting over her absence, obsessing about what he’d overheard in the camp, and telling his prisoners all the ‘fun’ things he’d like to do to the Doctor’s human girlfriend if could find her. The Master’s soliloquies had been so terrifying that they achieved something the Doctor had previously considered impossible and had him thanking his lucky stars that Rose was stuck in another dimension. The silver lining to a cloud he’d long written off as having no redeeming features.

The irony was that if Rose had been anywhere other than where she was, the Master could - and most likely would – have found her.

It had been a cold comfort during the year that never was and something he’d clung to with all the desperation of a drowning man throughout that horrifyinglonelyawfulgodsforsaken year.

He grinned manically, relief and excitement rushing through him in a heady, intoxicating cocktail. Badwolf had seen this. Seen it and planned accordingly. She’d set it up to give him a choice. One last chance, should he need it, because Rose was right, fixed points could be changed. But just as she’d given him the power to choose, to fix the mistakes of his past, now he had to do the same for her.  

Which meant he had to tell her – even if it risked her finally giving up on him.

As if she’d read his mind, Rose chose that moment to ask, “are you going to tell me what’s going through that big brain of yours? I don’t understand, what are you sorry about?”

Instead of answering, the Doctor’s gaze fell on the dimension cannon. “How much longer do you have left?”

Rose glanced down, squinting at a display only she could see. “Long enough, I reckon. Why?”

He nodded, grabbed the new glass and downed half of it in one gulp. “Because, Rose Tyler, I’ve got quite a story to tell you, and then we’re going to need to make a decision.”

Chapter Text

The problem was that deciding to tell Rose everything and actually telling her were two very different things, and truthfully, he’d always struggled with honesty.

It didn’t help that it wasn’t going well either. Why he’d chosen to start at the end and work backwards was anyone’s guess, as he had no idea. So far, he’d covered Clara, the Master, River and the Ponds. He’d even told her about the encroaching madness that seemed harder to control with every regeneration; explaining about the Time Lord Victorious, the damage he’d willingly done to the timeline because he’d decreed that Time was his bitch to do with as he pleased. Adelaide’s suicide had righted history and scared him back into accepting some limits, but that was all. His next regeneration had the same lingering darkness. He’d stared into the abyss… and found a reflection of himself.

He'd told her all of that, but the thing that had him coming out in hives, fear twisting his stomach, was what he knew was coming next. Bad Wolf Bay Mark II.  

~*o0o*~

“You. Utter. Wanker!” Rose seethed, angry tears coursing down her cheeks. “You complete and total arse! How bloody dare you! I promise you forever and you leave me behind every bloody chance you get! How could you, Doctor? How could you just leave me like that? Leave me with…with a facsimile of you like you were somehow doing me a favour!”

Well, that answered the question of how she’d take what he’d done. Not well. Very not well, if he was brutally honest with himself. Not for the first time that day he cursed his previous incarnation for his unforgivable stupidity, and now it looked like he’d actually managed to make an already terrible situation even worse.

Her hand smacked the table and he flinched reflexively. He could still feel that slap her mother had given him three bodies ago, and he had a strong suspicion that slapping was a Prentice family speciality.

“Well! What do you have to say for yourself?” Rose demanded, her hands now clenched into tight, little, white fists in her fury. She glanced down at the device strapped to her wrist before meeting his gaze with a hard glare. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just press the recall button now and give up – seeing as you’re just goin’ to dump me back there anyway. Seems like had it all in hand, so it’s not like I’m needed.”

Oh, he’d really cocked this up. He’d noticed it straight away that her accent had softened during her time in Pete’s World, but now the cockney was back and bleeding through in a sure sign of her growing distress. Well fuck! And to think the worst outcome he’d been imagining from his harebrained plan was the love of his lives deciding to let the original timeline play out. This? This was worse than terrible. This was apocalyptically bad. More to the point, what was he to do. As things stood, all he’d achieved so far with his confessions was to change the timeline in all the wrong fricking ways.

‘Fix it you ape brained idiot,’ a suspiciously northern sounding voice growled in his mind. ‘This is Rose. Stop fucking around and get to the point, before you completely muck things up.’  

He groaned internally, there was only one thing for it – honesty it was; no matter how uncomfortable he found it. This was too important to mess up. It was time to pay the piper.

“What do you want me to say, Rose – that younger me was an idiot, because he was! Worse than that, he was a thick idiot. A total pudding brain,” the Doctor growled fiercely. “That me, Rose, he only thought he’d been through the worst life and the universe could throw at him. But he was wrong!” he grabbed her hand, eyes filled with wonder at the feeling of Rose that flooded his senses even if she didn’t entwine her fingers with his as he so desperately hoped she would. “So very wrong – and he doesn’t know it, won’t know it, not until he’s me and he’s seen what I’ve seen, done what I’ve done, and he discovers like I have what we become.”

He sighed, the anger draining out of him, and used his free hand to rub his eyes tiredly, never had he felt so old; stretched thin by time and pain. “I thought I was giving you your happy ever after – a Doctor with one life that he could live with you. Someone you could grow old with, have a normal life with: you know children, house in the country, picket fence,” he waved an expressive hand, “all those things that humans want.”

There was stunned silence for a moment, and then Rose said in a deceptively bland voice, “did I say I wanted that future?” She met his gaze with a carefully blank look.

The Doctor paused, trying to remember if Rose had ever expressed an opinion or desire for a normal life, and came up with nothing.

Correctly reading him, Rose’s lips thinned in displeasure. “No,” she continued, “because I don’t want those things. You just assumed and made the decision for me. Again!” She lent back in the seat, glowering at the table like it’s very existence offended her. “So what was it then; thought I was too thick to know my own mind, or too stupid to understand what you thought I’d be giving up?”

Oh, that was a damning summary, wasn’t it. Damning… and spot on. It was no wonder Rose was angry and hurt. The Doctor was even more rubbish at reading human-y emotions this go around than he was usually, but he’d always been fluent in understanding Rose Tyler, even if it didn’t help much with controlling what came out of his gob.

“Yes, I did,” the Doctor admitted, swallowing the angry recriminations at his previous incarnation that threatened to choke him. What a goddamned idiot he’d been. He took a deep breath, “and I was wrong. I’ve always been terrible at letting people make decisions,” especially ones where he felt he knew best, and wasn’t that the understatement of the century. He should tell Rose about his seventh self and Ace at some point: how he’d destroyed their relationship to the point where she had refused to speak to him even now. Ace, a girl who had been like a surrogate daughter.

“That me though,” he continued, determined not to screw up this once in a lifetime chance the universe had given him, “was one of the worst,” especially with the Doctor-Donna acting as a fucking echo chamber, pushing for him to leave Rose with his metacrisis.

“I shouldn’t have done it – and I’m definitely not excusing it. I regretted it the moment I left, and I’ve regretted it ever since; but, if it helps at all, that me was acting out of love and honestly believed he was doing the right thing. I knew River Song was going to crop up in my future and she knew my name, which I thought meant-”

Rose tugged her hand away, crossed her arms and met his gaze square on with a self-confidence that was missing in her younger self. A confidence that allowed her to stand up, nose to nose, and challenge him. His hand felt bereft, lonely, without hers holding it, and he waited for the axe to drop.

“The right thing for who?” it was more a demand than a question, one full of suppressed anger and a healthy dose of frustration.

She was spot on the money, as usual, the Doctor mused. Always asking the right questions, his Rose.

“Clearly not for you,” he agreed, “not given the changes you’ve gone through – and it should have been your choice,” he quickly tacked on when he spotted her brow start to furrow and her eyes fizz with renewed anger. Not for River either, come to that, or himself. He really had made a colossal balls up of this hadn’t he.

Although stupidly inarticulate, something he’d said must have been right, as Rose relaxed slightly, her tensed muscles unclenching,

“Why’re you telling me this?” Rose said, asking the question he’d been dreading. “Seems to me you made your choice centuries ago. What are you hopin’ to get out of this?”

He took a deep breath. “A chance.”

“What?” She looked baffled.

“A chance,” he repeated, flinging caution to the wind and cupping her cheek. “I want a chance, Rose.”

“A chance for what?” Her eyes were narrowed, suspicious, but she allowed the contact, which was something he supposed.

Mentally castigating himself for the very good cause she had not to trust him, he looked her in the eye. “A chance to make it right.”

“Make what right?” The stubborn set to her jaw told him that she wasn’t going to let him off the hook this time, that he would actually have to say what he meant, and after all the times he’d let her down, he couldn’t blame her.

“A chance to change the past and correct the greatest mistake of my lives.” He inhaled. “A chance to have the life we would have had together if I hadn’t been such a prat. A chance to prove that I’m more than just the selfish wanker who made an Olympic sport of dodging. That I’m more than the git who broke your trust and-” He grit his teeth and forced himself to say it. “Left you.” He exhaled. “A chance to prove that I love you.”

He paused to draw in a deep shuddering breath as he tried to steady his nerves. Talking about his feelings had never been his strong suit – especially for this him – and that admission had been centuries in the making.

Whatever he’d been planning to say next though was rapidly forgotten at Rose’s ragged, “you love me?” He could hear the disbelief in her tone, the confusion and incredulity. Not exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for, he had to admit, but it didn’t take a genius to understand that it was completely his own fault, especially given what he’d just told her. He was the one who’d made an art form out of avoidance, he’d been the one who’d pushed her away, who’d never told her what she meant to him. Not for the first time he cursed his tenth self for being a pig headed pudding brained idiot.

Without thinking, he closed the gap between then and pressed his forehead against hers, longing for the closeness and a way to show the feelings behind his inadequate words. Such a move was considered unspeakably intimate on Gallifrey, not the sort of thing you did in public or with anyone other than close family or your bondmate.

He took another deep breath. “I love you. I should have told you back when I first realised just after Downing Street, but I thought we had more time.” His ninth self had always meant to tell her, but they’d run out of time so quickly, and then he regenerated into a hyperactive hedgehog and it had all gone to hell in a handbasket.

First, she hadn’t trusted him, and then when they were finally back on track, along came Sarah-Jane who’d promptly terrified him into making like road runner. Sarah-Jane who’d aged, who looked so old, who’d wasted her life waiting for him to return. It was like seeing into Rose’s future and he’d… panicked.

The worst mistake though, without doubt, was the one he’d committed on that bloody spaceship. It had taken months for the hurt to disappear from her eyes after that one. Months to rebuild the torn tatters of her trust in him. Months in which he’d realised what a colossal arse he’d been in wasting the precious time he had with Rose by fearing what the future would bring. A point which had only been reinforced when only a few months later he’d lost her to the parallel universe.

He'd wasted his time with her, and for what? Having that distance hadn’t lessened the pain he’d felt when she was gone; it had worsened it, as all he had left were empty, endless regrets.

His shields must have been weak, he realised in surprise, when he felt Rose shudder against him; her mind warming against his own, the icy distrust thawing as his thoughts leaked through the nascent bond and she felt his sincerity. Dual feelings of acceptance and understanding brushed against his shields in a feather light telepathic touch that almost had his eyes rolling back at the pleasure of it. 

And there was another thing about Rose that had changed. Gallifreyans were powerful touch telepaths, yes, but even with poor shields she shouldn’t have been able to detect, much less understand and respond to his telepathic overtures. 

It was bliss though, feeling her mind resting against his. Blissful and, oh, so very tempting, and he longed to reach out and deepen the contact.

“Okay,” Rose said, easing away from him and the tentative mental connection he’d inadvertently created, “okay, I get what you’re trying to say. But no more, yeah. If you want me to trust you then whatever happens in the future, Doctor, you need to talk to me and be honest. You need to respect me and the decisions I make. No more making decisions for me because you think you know best.”

Tension he hadn’t even been aware of rushed out of him at the contact and her words. He hadn’t mucked this up: he – they – still had a chance to fix the worst mistake he’d made.

His nod of agreement was sharp and decisive. “Agreed,” he said, then, in the interest of honesty, added, “with this me, anyway. Can’t speak for past me’s – especially that prat, all that hair gel must have been seeping into his brain and clogging it up. But you’ll set him right, Rose Tyler.”

That made Rose laugh, a proper, full, Rose Tyler laugh. His hearts skipped another beat.

“Yeah, okay,” she giggled. “Point taken, past you’s haven’t lived your life, of course they’ll need training. But that’s something we can work on.” Rose squeezed his hand, sending shivers of longing racing down his spine. “I’m not expecting miracles, Doctor. I know you’re an old man who’s learnt a lot of bad habits; all I’m asking is that you commit and try. What you did to River was wrong, just like what you did to me was – and don’t get me started on Donna. But I’m not worried, and you know why?” he shook his head, “‘cos we’re stronger together. Hope and Glory.””

Oh, Rose. Saving him, even when he least deserved it. Hearts full to bursting, he pressed a kiss to the knuckles of her free hand, trying to convey through touch what his useless brain couldn’t get his mouth to say: I love you. Don’t leave me. Save me. Love me. Stay. Just stay.

Instead, what he said was, “shiver and shake.”

Rose’s grin could have lit up galaxies it was so bright, the golden flecks in her eyes glowing like miniature suns. “Who’s shiver?”

“Oh,” the Doctor breathed, excitement thrumming through him along with something else, something new. Something that felt a lot like… peace. “I’m shake.”

It was a glorious feeling and he longed to stay in that moment forever. But there was more that Rose needed to know; he’d made a promise, and if he was going to stick to it then she needed to know everything.

Before he could continue though, Rose with her usual perspicacity hit on the key to how this whole sorry mess had started.

“I get you thought you were doing the right thing, that this was like a tailor made happy-ever-after for me and the other you; but what I don’t get is why did River knowing your true name scare you so much that you were convinced we-“ she waved her hand between herself and the Doctor, “couldn’t have a future together?”

This was the tricky bit. Or rather, another tricky bit. One with great honking big pitfalls and here be dragon signs, because the truth was it was just yet more evidence of what an idiot he’d been and how rubbish he was without someone to knock some sense into him. “There’s only two times a Time Lord is meant to reveal their true name, Rose,” The Doctor said, eyes dark and serious. “If they’ve run out of regenerations and need the last rights…”

“and,” she prompted when it was clear he didn’t know how to continue.

He swallowed uncomfortably, reluctant even now to put it into words what he’d thought. It’d felt blasphemous almost, back when he was his tenth self, to consider marrying anyone other than the precious girl sitting beside him now. It was even worse now, knowing what he’d done.

He fiddled with the sugar spoon, then spat out, “the only other person who should know it is my wife.”

The hand he’d been holding, which had been squeezing his in reassurance, froze, as did the rest of Rose.  “So does that mean you and River were…” she asked carefully, her expression neutral, but the Doctor could feel the thrum of her pain and the bitter tinge of betrayal leaking through the contact.

The Doctor shook his head, desperate to reassure her. “No. That’s what I thought it meant back when I was a manic hedgehog with more hair gel than sense, but I was wrong. River was… complicated,” another understatement.

Rose sat back, her expression shuttered and so distant he could only be pathetically grateful she hadn’t let go of his hand like he feared she would. Like he knew she would once he had finished confessing all of his sins.

“Then how did she know it.”

It was a good question, and he couldn’t blame Rose for the slight disbelief he detected in her tone.

“Because I told her.” He ran his free hand through his salt and pepper hair, tugging on the ends in frustration. “Telling my wife my name is meant to be done during the bonding ceremony. There were two types of marriage on Gallifrey, Rose.” He squeezed her hand again, bringing it to rest between his hearts. “I told you I was married before, yes?” she nodded. “That was the first type – it was arranged between my house and hers for political and genetic benefits. The contracted children were loomed from genetic donations from me and my wife, and that was pretty much all the contact we had. We were never close, and she later divorced me after I stole the TARDIS and ran away with Susan.”

The Doctor shivered slightly at the memory.  “The second type was rarer, and impossible to dissolve, as it involved a telepathic bond. The bond was literally until death do you part, it was – is – the highest form of commitment and intimacy,” and oh, how he wanted it with Rose. Longed for it. Desperately.  

Taking a deep breath, he continued, “it was common between Gallifreyans, but those of us trained to be Time Lords were taught that we were above that sort of primitive emotional nonsense. Time Lords were meant to be remote, distant, objective and under good emotional regulation at all times.” Which was all a load of rubbish, really, and while Gallifrey had existed he’d delighted in rebelling against their stuffy, outdated and stupid rules. But then he’d lost it, and suddenly things that hadn’t mattered before mattered a lot.  

“But then your home was gone,” Rose said sympathetically, once again uncannily echoing his inner thoughts.

“I was a sentimental prat back then,” he agreed. “Nostalgic about a place I largely hated… I forgot that the naming bit was convention only. It wasn’t socially acceptable – but I could choose to tell other people if I wanted to.  Hedgehog me assumed that because River knew my name it meant she was my bondmate.”

“And that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been with you?” Rose guessed, the gold flecks in her eyes glinting strangely.  

The Doctor nodded sadly, “You feel it, don’t you, when we touch?” he asked quietly, stroking his finger down the apple of her cheek to make his point, watching as she shivered beneath his touch, her eyes sliding shut.

“It feels like home, yes.” At her cautious nod, he sighed, “that’s the nascent bond we have. I knew back then that it was only a matter of time until the siren call became too hard to resist and I would ask you to bond with me. If you’d stayed with me after we returned the Earth to its proper place we would have bonded.”

“Which you assumed would have created a paradox with River knowing your name as well,” Rose mused, fingers tapping the table as she considered his words. “Hang on though, you thought I was still human then, with the life span of a human. You knew River Song was from your future – couldn’t it have been a time after you lost me?”

That almost made the Doctor smile – there was his Rose, puzzling it out, questioning him, making him think.

“That’s true,” he agreed gently, “but it’s extremely rare for bonded Gallifreyans who lose their bondmate to form another bond.” He’d known it even back then, there was no getting over Rose, and the last two regenerations had just proved his point.

“So you didn’t bond with River?” Rose checked, sounding troubled.

“No, I just gave her my name. Told her she’d need it the next time she saw me and left it at that.”

“Did you love her?” she asked, that hateful blank look back in her eyes.

His mind raced with a thousand ways of answering a simple question that had such a complicated answer: he could say ‘yes, just not the same way she loved me’. He could say, ‘she believed that I did’. He could say, ‘at one time I hoped I would’, and that he’d clung desperately to that belief because it meant that there might be a day somewhere in the future where his hearts wouldn’t ache with losing Rose. He could reply with: ‘how could I, when my hearts belong totally and completely to you, my pink and yellow girl’.

He could give any of those answers because they were all true.

But what it boiled down to was “no”, which was what he told her.

He’d expected relief, even pleasure, but instead what he got is anger.

“So you manipulated her then,” Rose stated, looking distinctly unimpressed. Well, he’d walked into that one hadn’t he. Of course Rose hadn’t been asking for selfish reasons. Compassion personified, his Rose. Of course, she’d take umbrage over how he’d treated Professor Song, never mind that River, if she’d known what he was up to here, would have been only too happy putting a bullet in Rose’s head, especially before her stint in Stormcage had mellowed her.

He nodded and closed his eyes. There had been a reason - a huge honking great reason, not that he expected it would earn him Rose’s forgiveness. It was wrong what he’d done, and he knew it now just as he’d known on Darillium.

“Because of the paradox,” Rose said, startling him and proving again just how well she knew him, really knew him, and understood how his mind worked.

He nodded again.

“A paradox she kicked off, and you just thoughtlessly went along with, because?”

“Because he - I - was an idiot,” the Doctor admitted. “By the time I saw how deep the trouble was it had gone too far, and I couldn’t see a way of fixing it.” It hadn’t helped either that River was partially insane, completely fixated with him, and had a possessive streak a mile wide.

The truth was he’d been in over his head, and he hadn’t known how to deal with someone like her or their temporally complicated relationship.

The watch on her wrist beeped, and Rose checked her watch, whatever she saw causing a grim smile to twist her mouth.

His time sense rattled again, zero hour was approaching. It was time to do or die, they were running out of time and he doubted the universe would be kind enough to give him another chance if he bolloxed this one up.

If there was one thing he believed in in this cruel universe though, it was her. Always, and only, her.

He took a deep breath and leapt. “But that’s why I’m telling you this. I know what I did to River was,” he paused, searching for a word that could convey the depth of his mistake, then gave up knowing that Rose would know what he was trying to say. “I want to fix it. I want to fix all of it-” he waved an expressive hand. “I’ve spent years regretting the mistakes I’ve made, Rose. Centuries of regret. But worse than that I know what I’ve become. The universe needs saving, sweetheart, only this time it’s from me.”

“Which brings me to that choice I mentioned,” he gripped the hand entwined with his own, using the contact to draw the courage he needed to continue. “Precious girl, you know I love you,” he waited for her cautious nod. “There’s a decision to be made, and it’s your choice. Whatever you decide, I’ll honour it.”

“Option one: you walk out that door and let things play out as they will.” She knew what would happen now, and he could comfort himself that if this was what she chose, at least she’d chosen it with her eyes wide open.

Rose glowered at him, “What’s option two?”

“We do a reckless, stupid, ill-advised thing…”

Her head tilted slightly as she looked at him consideringly. “What’s that involve?”

He swallowed thickly, his mouth suddenly drier than the Lethrian desert on Goba. “We turn back time and wipe this whole timeline out of existence.”

Time was in flux. His time sense was singing with all the potentiality cascading from this moment. It started here. The moment where Rose either agreed to help him or walked away, back to the future he had chosen for them all those years ago.  

It was almost ironic. Here he was, about to break the first and most sacred law of his people, and all he felt was relief. Either way, the nightmare of his life would soon be over. He was tired, so very tired of everything. There was no future for him, not now. If Rose picked option two, his life as he knew it would disappear – rewritten – lost down the plughole of maybes and could have been timelines.

With Rose by his side, holding his hand, the future would be so much brighter, so much happier for all involved. 

A new life, a new future, this time with the woman he loved. He didn’t deserve it, not after everything he’d done, but that wouldn’t stop him from grasping this once in a lifetimes chance with both hands. A timeline where Rose got the choice she should always have had. 

“So what’s it to be?”

There is a third option,” Rose said quietly, watching him intently.

The Doctor bit back the bitter laugh that wanted to escape and let his eyes slide shut. This was Rose. Of course she’d spotted what he hadn’t said. The option he didn’t want to acknowledge. The option he knew in the grand scheme of things made the most sense; it was certainly the safest way forward for the universe. And it would be so easy, oh, so easy, to agree. His selfish hearts cried out for it. He could keep her now and together they’d run across the stars.

But it wouldn’t be right. Not now. Not with this him. He was too damaged, too broken, too… wrong. He’d wandered so far from the path that he no longer deserved to use the name ‘Doctor’.

Never cruel nor cowardly. Never give up. Never give in.

That was the vow he’d made when he’d taken the name. Keeping Rose with him now would be the worst kind of violation of that promise.

It was why - assuming she chose door number two - he was already planning for someone else to do what was necessary to change the timeline.

This him wasn’t quite right, not quite sane, and frankly he wouldn’t trust this him anywhere near an impressionable, younger Rose. Just as he’d helped to mould River, so she had shaped him. This him was her creation, the monster to her Frankenstein. This him, this was the one she’d talked about in the library, he was sure of it. The him who could turn whole armies with just a look. Who caused devastation and destruction and then carelessly swaggered back to the Tardis. The him to whom compassion and forgiveness were foreign concepts. The him who was most like her.

No, what he needed was an intermediary, someone less damaged who could teach past Rose what she needed so that she could come back earlier. It needed to be him, that was a given, but which him. All the pre time war incarnations were out - most would never agree to break the first law, let alone stamp all over it as he was planning. His ninth was out as well as with his time senses damaged he’d never believe Rose. Worse, the dumbo might try to avoid Satellite 5 in a ridiculous attempt at protecting their precious girl from what he would see as a curse.

That just left his tenth and eleventh selves. Of the two, hedgehog him was too caught up in his own brilliance, too certain he was right. Even if he could be made to see Rose for who she really was, he’d probably still try to find some way to weasel out of it - especially if he’d already met River. No, it needed to be a him that understood what the loss of Rose had done to him, who’d had the allure of the mystery River presented fade and who was scared of the future.

That left his eleventh self. Lucky eleven. Even more fortunate, he knew the perfect moment to stage this little intervention.

He opened his eyes and met Rose’s steady gaze head on. “Not for me,” he said simply, without his normal prevarication. For once what he said was the raw, honest truth.

“I’m old, Rose. So very old, and so very tired of the life I’ve been leading, of seeing what I’ve become.”

He watched as she drew in a breath, clearly intending to argue, but he shook his head and placed his fingers over her mouth, stilling whatever she’d been about to say.

“Please, love,” he entreated. “Let this selfish old man do this one final act of good in his life. I’ve caused so much harm,” he thought of Madam Kovarion, and the extraordinary lengths she’d gone too to try and stop him. “I’ve hurt so many people,” a vision of River and the Ponds swam before his eyes, the latest in a long line of failures. “I don’t want to be this sort of Doctor!”

He sat back, reluctantly relinquishing the contact with his precious girl. “But worst of all is the knowledge of what I’d do to you.” And he could see it so clearly. The unwitting, unthinking harm this him would do to Rose as he dragged her down to his level.

“Please let me do this. Please let me give you a life with a Doctor who deserves you.” A Doctor who could be worthy of her in a way he no longer was, he almost said; worthy of the sacred bond he had once abandoned.

The Doctor had never believed in the concept of soul mates, not really. He was a scientist - an empiricist - at heart, and the statistical improbability of there being only one perfect match in the whole multiverse for someone was simply mind boggling. It was impossible. And yet, how else could he describe what he felt for Rose. How else could he explain the way she consistently defied his understanding of the universe.

After two regenerations and over a millennium she ought to be nothing more than a fond memory, someone he could look back on and be happy to have known like his other companions. It shouldn’t be like this, and yet it was.

Four bodies, four faces, four personalities, four sets of feelings, and it had stayed the same.

He’d loved Rose Tyler when he’d been all war torn and with satellites for ears. He’d loved her when he’d been a hyperactive, cowardly hedgehog. He’d loved her when he’d been a bow-tie wearing buffoon, even when he pretended he didn’t. And he loved her now when he was a cantankerous old curmudgeon with a decidedly dodgy moral compass.

He’d loved her for so long that loving her had encoded itself into his TNA: and if that wasn’t a soulmate, he didn’t know what was.

Which was why the option Rose had presented wasn’t an option at all. He had to let her go, no matter how much he wanted to keep her with him. He needed to let her go so his brave girl could meet his eleventh self and change their future.

For a long moment she was quiet, her eyes searching for something. Okay,” Rose said at last, a hint of a smile playing around her lips like he’d passed some secret test.

“Okay. Option two it is.”

He exhaled, his hearts almost bursting with love for this pink and yellow not quite human even as her courage shamed him. She’d always been so much braver than him.

It felt like a goodbye - and he’d always hated those. Except, he realised suddenly, this wasn’t a goodbye at all. It was a hello.

A new beginning. A new adventure.

Hope bubbled through him, bright and shiny: two words no one had ever attributed to his current incarnation. He liked hope. Hope was a good emotion.

Right, it was time to get to work. Rose had once asked him to show her his moves, well he’d show her moves. He rubbed his hands together gleefully.

“So, here’s the plan…”

“It’s risky,” Rose said after he’d finished explaining the barebones of a plan that was really more of an idea it was so skeletal.

“Yes,”

“With lots that could go wrong.”

“Certainly,”

“Things that could destroy the universe.”

“Indeed.”

“Still sure you wanna go through with it?”

“Oh, yes!” The Doctor grinned.

“It’s not much of a plan,” Rose pointed out. “Means you’ll have to trust me.”

The Doctor gazed into her eyes, “there’s no one I trust more.” The slow smile that stretched across her face at his words could have eclipsed the sun.

“Better with two?” Rose asked, her smile growing with the realisation that they are really going to do this.

“No,” The Doctor contradicted, shaking his head. “Better with you.”