Part Seven: And miles to go before I sleep

by The Valiant Child

-:-

He explodes with fire in his veins and forms anew, thinking of tongue-touched smiles and a warm hand in his. The Doctor opens his eyes—new and brown now—and they focus on Rose.

Her too pale face and glassy eyes sends a chill though him, and the first sound out of his new, new vocal chords is a strangled scream.

-:-

This feeling begins just like a spark

Tossing and turning inside of your heart

Exploding in the dark

Calling your name in the midnight hour

Reaching for you from the endless dream

So many miles between us now

But you are always here with me

~Here With Me—Susie Suh x Robot Koch

-:-

He runs for the infirmary with her lifeless weight in his arms. He lays her down gently in the bed and pulls out instruments and injections and serums from cabinets with shaking, frantic hands.

"Come on, Rose," he says, even know he knows that she's gone. "Stay with me."

This is not how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to have been hidden away safely for three months, after which Rose would have opened the watch and he'd have hugged her until she couldn't breathe.

The Doctor laughs. Well, she isn't breathing now.

"Don't do this," he says, begs. "Don't you dare do this to me."

He wants to break something. He wants to scream and cry and rage because this isn't fair. It isn't fair. He'd only just got her back.

He sits down beside her and brushes a stray lock of hair from her face. He wants her back.

"You can't go," his voice breaks and his chest feels too tight. Maybe it's because of the shirt (that is now too small) digging into him. Maybe it's the loss of the pink in his life. "You promised. You promised."

Forever didn't even last a day.

-:-

He sits beside her in silence for hours until he can't anymore. The clothes digging uncomfortably into him need changing and he should probably do something about the banging outside the TARDIS doors (Jack probably). He stands up, leans down to kiss her cold forehead and drags himself to the wardrobe.

He doesn't know what to wear. He doesn't even know what he looks like yet.

There's a mirror a little ways away and he brushes past coats and trousers and an assortment of ugly hats to get to it.

Ooh, big hair, is his first thought. And then, sideburns...I've got sideburns. There's a splatter of freckles too and he's got new teeth that feel just a bit weird. He's also taller and has better hand-eye coordination.

Still not ginger.

He strolls down a row of miscellaneous clothing and his eyes catch a pinstripe suit hanging between a shirt with ruffles and that awful coat from his sixth body. As he's walking back to the mirror with the suit, he sees a long, light brown coat on the way and picks it up. He grabs a tie too, a brown one with a swirly blue pattern and when he's assembled the whole outfit together, he thinks it looks rather good as he jams one hand in his pocket and inspects his jaw line with the other.

Rose will definitely like this him, he thinks. And then a sharp pain slices though him, like shards of glass slowly slicing though the muscles of his hearts.

He pauses by the console and wonders if he should let Jack in. He's been banging away for quite a while now. He doesn't want to see anyone yet so he goes back to the infirmary and sits down in the chair by Rose's bed.

He pretends that she's just asleep. He fills the silence with meaningless one sided conversation, discussing things that they'll do once she's awake, places they'll go. He thinks he's getting used to the sound of his new voice after a while. And his new teeth. He also notes that there's a hollowness both in his voice and inside him that he's afraid will never go away.

"Wake up," he urges one last time. "Please."

He needs to see her smile again, needs to see the sparkle in her eyes and feel the warmth of her body as he holds her close. He needs to see her alive. He wants to hear her laugh at his bad driving, he wants to laugh with her, he wants to run with her and to hear what she thinks about this new body of his. He wants to discover this new him with her. If he's funny, sarcastic...sexy? Right old misery? Life and soul? Right handed? Left handed? A gamble? A fighter? A coward? A traitor, a liar, a nervous wreck?

He'll probably just be broken again. And this time she won't be there to fix him.

-:-

"Rose," he says her name because he likes the sound of it in his mouth. "Rose Tyler. I was going to take you to so many places..."

He takes her hand in his and the shards of glass in his hearts twist and dig in deeper as he notices how it fits just right this time around.

-:-

When they'd met Sarah, he had promised her that he wouldn't leave her. Not her. He never counted on her leaving him.

-:-

Rose dreams of the planet Merica-har in the galaxy of Ke'en. The Doctor had taken them there once, her and Jack. There was a harvest festival going on in the part where they'd landed. The trees were alive with purple flowers and the air laced with a curiously pleasant scent and laughter. The Doctor had taken her hand in his and they'd run with big, goofy smiles on their faces.

"Keep up, Jack," he'd added.

The local cuisine was simply horrifying, the people disturbingly rude and the sights a beauty to hold. The Doctor had bought a sort of mashed tentacle-y goo on a plate each and promised them that it tasted like chicken as they made for the park.

They sat under a weeping willow, well, the equivalent of a weeping willow in Merica-har ("It's called a Feen. Like a weeping willow but with red leaves and an appetite for Gleebs. That's an insect. Sort of an insect actually. Insect-ish. More arachnid-y now that I think about it...") and ate their goo that really, surprisingly did taste like chicken as Jack made a number of lewd jokes about the tentacles.

It was one of their very few days where they didn't have to run for their lives. It was the day before the Doctor tried to take them to Kyoto and they ended up transmatted in the Game Station.

Now, in her dream, the colours of Merica-har are muted, the scents thin and there's no laughter. Just the chirping of some Gleebs. But on the bench under the willow—the Feen—sits the girl in the red dress.

"Have you ever felt the turn of the Earth?" she asks when Rose walks over to her.

"Yes," says Rose.

"So have I," says the girl excitedly. "Just once though."

"Who are you?" Rose asks.

"I'm Clara. Or, well, I was. I'm just an echo now," she says with a rueful smile.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm dead," Clara says. "And so are you, Rose Tyler."

-:-

Her hands are cold but he holds them still.

"That's the Doctor, by the way," says Clara helpfully.

Rose knows. He regenerated. Like he said he would. He looks just like the parallel Doctor now. She yearns to reach over and run her fingers through his gravity defying hair and tell him to stop crying. He probably doesn't notice the tears that trace down his cheeks but they're all she can see.

She's never seen him like this before. So...broken.

He always hid well behind his smiles and bowties and all those other distractions. He would probably hide now too if he knew that she could see him.

"You promised," she hears him say with equal proportions of hurt and anger.

Rose feels a sick twist in her chest. It's not suppose to hurt. How can she hurt? She's dead.

But here she stands. Fading, she knows. But not quite gone.

Clara's starting at her, she notices.

"What did you promise him?" she asks when Rose turns to her.

-:-

Women Wept is beautiful, even in her dreams.

"I don't remember," she tells Clara for the fifth time.

"You do," Clara insists.

"No," says Rose, starting at the frozen waves.

"What did you promise him?" there's a sort of steady patience in her voice that makes Rose think that she could go on asking her this until they've both faded.

The ripples and grooves in the ice slowly turn into a circular pattern that sings like a language the more she stares at them. She can almost hear the song thrumming away at the base of her skull if she touches them.

"Something I could never give," she says softly.

-:-

She follows him as he walks to the TARDIS doors to let Jack in. The Captain looks almost as tired as the Doctor. There's blood on his shirt and dirt on his face. He's taken aback to see a different face from the one he was expecting for just a moment.

"You regenerated?" he asks.

The Doctor merely nods.

"And Rose? Where is she?"

The Doctor opens his mouth and pauses like he doesn't know what to say. "She's..." he swallows. "She's in the infirmary."

Jack pushes past him and runs down the console and into the corridor but the Doctor doesn't follow him. He just leans against the open doorway and closes his eyes. It's about five minutes when Rose hears sounds of Jack returning.

"...get your ass down here right now!" She can hear his voice before he appears at the end of the corridor. At first she thinks he means the Doctor but then she sees that he's talking on the phone, her phone.

By the time he's reached across the console to the Doctor, a grating noise starts outside in the Torchwood Hub and another TARDIS starts blinking in and out, in and out before settling itself just a few paces away from this TARDIS. The door opens and just as the parallel Doctor and the parallel Rose take a step out, Jack is rushing towards them.

"Save her," he says desperately. Jack grabs the other Rose by her shoulders as he pleads. "You saved me, you can save her too."

Her Doctor, Rose notices is standing very still, looking at the other Rose.

-:-

The Powell Estate looks gloomy in the fading light of the setting sun.

"She can't save you," Clara tells her. "Her Doctor took the power of the vortex out of her. She was dying. She can't save you."

"Once Mickey fell down on that bit over there," Rose says and points at the space by a large dustbin. "There was some glass there and it cut him really bad. He cried like a baby.

"Kept saying he was going to die. I was only six and I believe him and god, I got so scared that even after he'd been taken to the hospital and got all stitched up and better, I didn't let go of him for months. That was the most scared that I'd ever been."

She takes a deep breath. "But then this one time the Doctor landed us on this planet, Youn, or something it was called. It was a mistake. We were supposed to go to see the swaying mountains of Felspoon.

"There was a war going on when he landed and one of the soldiers shot him. The Doctor. He was only trying to help. That's what he always does. He helps people. It's what he's taught me. But he got shot anyway. I though he wouldn't make it. He almost didn't. And I was so afraid. More afraid then I'd been when I was six."

Clara doesn't say anything.

Rose sighs. "I don't suppose you could tell him that I'm sorry, could you?"

-:-

Little Amelia is very confused when River brings her in. The Doctor doesn't know how to begin explaining the situation to her but he tries. He tells her what happened to the Family and about his regeneration and how the man standing beside him, looking just like him is another him and that's another Rose there holding the other Doctor's hand. He doesn't know how to explain about his Rose though. Doesn't even know if he can say the words aloud.

For a second, he thinks about lying. She's asleep, he almost says. But then Amelia would want to see her and she'll ask why Rose is so cold, why she isn't breathing, why she won't wake up. He could spin more lies, of course. More and more and more lies.

But lies won't bring Rose back.

So when Amelia asks the dreaded question, the words turn ash inside his mouth but he says them anyway.

"She's gone."

-:-

Amelia tries to push past him and further inside the TARDIS where she guesses Rose is. The Doctor catches her and has to hold her back as she pushes and claws at him.

"You're lying," she screams. "You're lying, you're lying, you're lying."

He holds her tighter and pulls her into a hug.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles and she can feel him shaking. "I'm so sorry."

-:-

She stands in the console room while Clara swings her legs from the jump seat. From somewhere far away she thinks she can hear Amelia crying and calling someone a liar but when she lays a hand on the console, all sounds fade away and are replaced by a song. The song she's been hearing ever since she looked into the heart of the TARDIS.

It glides up her fingertips and runs up every vein in her body until she's all but drenched in it.

"Do you know what that song is?" Clara asks.

There are gold spots in her vision and Rose sways and holds on tighter to the console to steady herself. She nods slowly.

"It's the sound of time and the universe and the stars," she mumbles.

"It's the sound of life," says Clara.

Rose laughs. It's a bitter sound.

"And death is a part of life," adds Clara.

"Everything ends," Rose says softly, remembering her words from the Game Station so long ago.

"Yes," Clara affirms. "But sometimes, if you're determined enough, it doesn't have to."

The song grows louder and the energy rushing though the console and into her rushes straight to the beating muscle inside her chest.

Beating?

She can hear the sound, feel the thumps and the blood rushing though her veins dipped in ancient songs. She felt lightheaded and woozy and feels a great need to breathe in, like she's never tasted oxygen before.

"What's happening?" she asks shakily.

Clara smiles and there's something feral about it. "There are rules, Rose Tyler," she says. "But rules can be broken. Or in this case slightly bent. Just be careful. There will be consequences."

Her vision is blurring and black spots are merging with the gold ones. For a second she braces for the madness that had once taken root inside her but she only feels light and full of song and stardust.

"What do I do?" she tries to ask but her dream has shifted and when she blinks the gold fades into the background and the song grows silent and her feet land on the basement of Henrick's with a bag full of lottery money in her hands and Autons surrounding her.

A hand takes hers and she turns to find a woman in a blue-green Victorian dress and a head full of dark curls smiling at her.

"Run," she says and for a second Rose fancies she can feel the turn of the Earth and see a swirling vortex in the woman's eyes.

-:-

The TARDIS hums so loud that even Jack and Amelia hear her. The Doctor looks up at the console as another louder hum grows. The lights start to brighten until it's almost blinding and for a moment, just for a moment, the Doctor sees the shape of a woman in a red dress standing beside the console. She touches a lever and pushes it and before the Doctor can stop her, a section of the console falls away and streams of golden vortex energy pulse out of the heart of the TARDIS.

The Doctor yells a warning at Jack (who doesn't need it because he's seen what looking at the light had once done to Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen) and shields Amy while the parallel Doctor and Rose look away in time with River.

From the corner of his eyes, the Doctor sees the light flitter around the console, linger for a few seconds and then move away down the corridor.

The console snaps back into place and the lights dim to normal. But before the Doctor can get back into his feet, the TARDIS sends him a nudge and an image.

He freezes, and then looks up at the ceiling, barely daring to hope but his hearts start beating faster just the same. There are voices around him. He catches Jack asking a question but the TARDIS sends him another urgent nudge and the Doctor doesn't need to be told a third time.

He pulls himself back on his feet and runs after the golden light.

-:-

They run. Past the Autons, though the doors and down the corridor. The woman's hand is still clutching hers. She thinks that they're hurrying towards the lift and she's going to have to ask if those plastic dummies are students. That's what happened, isn't it?

"It is!" the woman turns to grin at her as they run past the lift. "Then my thief told you to go home and held your hand to show you the turn of the Earth," she laughs. "And you never let go."

There aren't any Autons chasing them anymore and as they turn around an unfamiliar corridor, they're suddenly inside the TARDIS. The walls turn blue-green like the woman's dress and coral features like the ones from the console room run along the top.

"Who are you?" Rose asks.

"I'm Sexy," the woman says gleefully. The corridor seems to keep on twisting in circles. "That's what he calls me. But only when we're alone."

Rose halts and pulls the woman back too. "You're...the TARDIS?"

"Time And Relative Dimension In Space," the woman says with a smile. "Yes, that's me. Hello. And you're the Big, Bad Wolf."

"I was."

"You were, you are, and you will be. Tenses are funny and so is time," the TARDIS informs her. She paused and placed a hand on Rose's cheek. "I'm rebooting your system. You downloaded the wrong vortex and your systems were failing. I'm switching you off and on again."

"What?"

"You were going to ask me what's happening," the TARDIS takes her hand again. "Now run!"

-:-

The TARDIS leads him deeper and deeper, the corridors turning round and round until the air starts getting thin and the timelines press closer to the surface. He knows where she's leading him as he rushes past the Eye of Harmony and stops right outside the last door.

His hearts are pounding so fast he feels dizzy and for a moment, he doesn't want to open the door and see what's behind it for fear of being disappointed. Rose is dead. She stopped being warm and stopped laughing and breathing and living.

She's lost and he can never go back. The laws of time don't care to bend for him and just as he will never see Gallifrey's burnt sky and hear the whisper of his people inside his head, he will never see Rose Tyler smile again, except in his memories.

But even so he opens the door and steps into the cliff face that looks all too real. And standing by the edge, the golden light he's been chasing flickers in the shape of two women. One in a long, tattered dress and unruly hair who has a familiar mad gleam in her eyes, and the other is Rose.

The woman in the ragged dress whispers something to Rose and turns to the Doctor.

"There are six impossible things to do before breakfast," she says before she fades.

-:-

"Beware of the Jabberwock, my wolf" the TARDIS tells Rose. "And start counting. There are six impossible things to do before breakfast."

Then, it's just her and the Doctor standing there by the edge of the cliff that is possibly not real.

"Hello," she says because she can't think of anything else.

He doesn't say a hello in return but stares at her with large brown eyes, hardly daring to breathe.

"The TARDIS said something about rebooting my system," she says. "Dunno how that works with people though, but I trust her."

She steps towards him and takes his hand in her semi-transparent golden one. "Can't get rid of me that easily."

"Hello," he says in a barely audibly voice that sounds like torn silk and cracked ice.

She laughs despite everything and his lips twitch in a ghost of a smile.

Rose looks back at the fog beyond the cliff and back up at the Doctor. Taking a deep breath that feels more like a sigh, she reaches up and kisses his cheek.

"I'll see you later," she says.

He smiles. His first real smile in his new face. It's not quite as bright as she wishes it was but it's brilliant. "Not if I see you first."

She steps to the very edge, closes her eyes and falls.

-:-

She wakes up, not in the infirmary, but in a white room, coughing, sputtering and miraculously alive. Her body aches, her head is pounding and her lungs feel like they are filled with ash and every breath burns but she laughs anyway. She's alive!

Then he's there, a blur of brown rushing towards her. She blinks lazily and he's old for just a moment. Old but young with grey hair and stern eyes. She blinks. His hair is different. Dark and he's younger but older. She blinks again and he's different. And again. And again. And again until his hair is like hers and there's a stick of celery on his lapel. She grins foolishly as he calls her name.

He's shorter next and as colourful as he's grumpy. Then he's shorter still with so many question marks that she's dizzy. She closes her eyes while he gently lifts her up. His hair is a craze now. All curly and wonderful.

"I like the caveat," she informs him. He looks confused as his eyes turn a darker shade of blue and his lovely hair is reduced to nothing but a black stubble.

He says something but she's too busy marvelling how his eyes turn green and familiar and he nearly tackles him in a hug even as the tweed under her fingers turn to wool.

"I think I'd like some jellybabies," she says as her vision fades to darkness.

-:-

She wakes up in the infirmary with Donna Noble sleeping in the chair beside her bed. She feels a soft pulse go through a TARDIS, a tiny nudge that she's never felt from the timeship before and in seconds, the Doctor comes running into the room.

He smiles, all crinkles and teeth and she smiles back just as wide, just as happy before he rushes forward and pulls her into a crushing hug. She can feel that this is going to be an even more recurring thing than it was before.

"Love the hair," she says. He makes a happy noise at the back of his throat and buries his nose in the crook of her neck.

"I've got sideburns," he informs her as he pulls back. "Ooh, and a mole. There's a mole between my shoulder blades."

She laughs.

"You scared me," he tells her softly. "You died."

"So did you," she says.

"I came back," he retorts.

"So did I."

He sighs but there's wonder in his eyes. "Yeah, you did."

Then Donna wakes up and pushes the Doctor away to hug her so tightly, she can hardly breathe.

-:-

They stay in the parallel world for a few more days at Jack request. The Doctor is reluctant and tries to fabricate a string of excuses that die midway when Rose bats her eyes in a way she knows he can't resist and he just sighs and nods.

They wander around the city sometimes and sometimes help around at Torchwood when they feel the loss of alien activity. They look at the stars of this world that is not theirs and make plans where to go next when they're back in their own Universe.

The Powell Estate is the first stop, of course, but Rose is a little surprised when it's the Doctor who states it first. She makes some joke about him and her mum bonding in her absence but he doesn't laugh.

"I thought she would blame me," he says with wonder in his voice. "She should have. I did. But she just cried and made me tea. And it wasn't even poisoned."

-:-

When it's time to leave, there's a long string of hugs and goodbyes as the Doctor stands by the TARDIS, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. The other Rose tells her that the other TARDIS is sorry and to take care of herself, River tells her to keep herself, the Doctor and Amelia safe, Donna gives her another bone-crushing hug and tells her to have a slice of un-sonicked cake next year, Jack hugs her, makes at least two cheesy innuendos and tells her he'll miss her.

The other Doctor grins at her, a grin that is exactly like her new Doctor's now, before he sweeps her up in his arms. She laughs and for a second she can feel the weight of the music globe in her backpack.

"Have a good life, Rose Tyler," he tells her. "Have a fantastic life."

She nods as she recalls blue eyes and leather from the time when she came back from the dead.

"You too."

Her Doctor clears her throat from behind her as does the other Rose. She grins sheepishly as she steps away from the Doctor's embrace.

She gives them all a final wave goodbye and then the TARDIS doors close behind them.

Amelia has settled herself in the jump seat while The Doctor has already started the dematerialisation process before she can take two breaths. He's all manic energy and long, long legs as he pushes that button and turns that dial.

"Remember when we went to New Earth, Rose?" he asks as he dances around the console. "I was thinking can go see the new humans we left behind, after we see your mother and say hello to Jack. Well, now that I think about it, we could postpone visiting Jackie and Jack for a bit, I suppose. We do have a handy time machine. They'll never even know we took a detour. Unless you tell them. Please don't tell them. Anyway, we could go to New Earth. Amelia's told me she wants to see an alien planet and I though, ooh, let's go to New Earth. We never really got to explore the great city of New, New York. Or well, it's really the fifteenth New York there so it's actually New, New, New, New, New, New, New, New, New, New, New, New, New, New, New York." He places his hand on a lever and pauses to lift his eyes to her. "What?"

"You're so different," she blurts out.

He raises an eyebrow. "Good different or bad different?"

She smiles and shrugs. "Just...different."

"New, new Doctor," he says and there's that grin again.

"Please don't flirt when I'm in the room," Amelia beseeches from her seat. "It's gross."

Rose colours despite herself and the Doctor grins only wider.

He looks down at the lever. "Geronimo?" he asks.

Rose tries to recall a word from her time with the parallel Doctor. She shakes her head. "Allons-y."

"Allons-y?" the Doctor repeats as she pulls the lever and then gasps, "Ooh. I like that. Allons-y. I should say allons-y more often. Allons-y. Look sharp, Rose Tyler, allons-y. And then, it'd be really brilliant if I met someone called Allonso..."

The TARDIS hums and spins away though a crack in the Universe, through the void and towards home.

-:-

A/N: There's an epilogue to come. And I'm sorry this took so long. I've been blocked for a while now. I swear I can feel college scooping my life energy and absorbing it into its cold, brick walls and meaningless double-spaced assignments. I have no idea how long it'll take me to get the epilogue done but I promise I'll do the best I can and I hope to all the gods that you don't lose interest in this fic in the meantime (if you haven't already got bored, what with this update taking forever).

Anyway, huge thanks to TheDarkDreamerSmiles, JollyRoger1, hotsasukefan, Valerie E. Mackin, The Doctor Rose, Aria Mai Olican-Wren and ran0neechan for their reviews. And thanks are due to everyone else who have subscribed to and/or added this story as a favourite. Hope this chapter was worth the wait. :)