He's Fire And Ice And Rage

"No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been." - Adelaide Proctor

He can't save all of them.

As he stands in the darkened home, the sounds of Christmas outside and the quiet slumber of his former companion inside, he's only reminded of that fact. And it is a fact. As real and unchangeable as Jack Harkness. The Doctor can't save all of his companions.

"Jamie never spoke on ya," says the elderly woman introduced to the Doctor and Donna as Jamie's sister. "Oh, he always had fantastic dreams about travelin', but ne'er said nothin' 'bout a Doctor."

( 'He wouldn't remember me,' the Doctor says, quietly. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,444
Special thanks to goldented for the beta and for craeg_an_tuire for suggestions in this thread that lead to this story!

Prompt: What did you dream about last night? and I had a dream about you.

+`+

The Gallifreyan language has eight billion six hundred and twenty-two words. It is a very difficult language to learn if one is not a native, but more so for the words that Gallifreyan is missing that one might find in other cultures.

There is no Gallifreyan word for "dream". Because, while Time Lords meditate, they do not dream. Dreaming is a dumping of processed information, mixed with a little imagination, and such a concept is foreign to Time Lord minds. All information is processed perfectly in the Gallifreyan brain and therefore none of it is wasted or lost.

( And imagination is a simply a silly concept for lower beings. )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 3,305
Special thanks to savagestime for help with the Master-voices!

"She's getting married soon, you know," Jack says. "Or didn't she tell you?"

She didn't, but I don't tell him that.

She doesn't call me for weeks and weeks and that's fairly normal. No aliens to destroy the universe this week, at least. Not in all of 2008, apparently. Besides, she's all busy working at UNIT and planning with that Ted fellow---whatever his name was---so of course she'd just not think to call me.

So she doesn't call. The phone sits in the dip of the console silent.

I try not to worry about it. Busy man, I am. Lots of things to do. I save six planets and have lunch on Chantal 3. The soup they serve is very spicy and made with some strange root.

The phone in the console still doesn't ring. In some timeline somewhere, she's getting married. In some timeline somewhere, she's been married for years. Six kids, two grandchildren. Trying on the ring for the first time. Hasn't even met him, yet. Funny thing, Time.

I wonder what she looks like on her wedding day. I walk down the streets in Laos thinking about it.

I scan the articles in her time's papers. She gets married on a rainy day in November. The scan of her wedding photograph doesn’t come out very well.

"That simply won't do," I say, but there's no one to hear me.

I reset the coordinates to Earth, London, 2008. I consider putting on my tuxedo, but it's cursed and she didn't invite me anyway. I just want to see what she looks like in her wedding dress. It'll just be for a mo'.

I park the TARDIS away from the church and slip in 'round the back. It hasn't started raining yet, but the sky is dark with heavy clouds aching to burst all over Francine's lovely reception.

The ceremony hasn't started. I don't think I can make it to a pew, so I stand off to the side, near some of the flower arrangements. The roses are rich and red like the velvet bridesmaid's dresses. Everything looks thick and expensive.

Terry, Timothy, whoever he is, he's in a white tuxedo with a red rose at his breast. Someone pinned that to him and tore a little of the stem and it bleeds green onto his lapel.

Music starts. Everyone straightens. Tish looks nervous. Francine has already started to cry. Todd doesn't look nervous at all. He looks sure. He smiles widely and I know he sees her. That look is fairly recognizable. The wide smile, the half-closed lids. It's the sort of look you get when you see someone you love.

She walks down the aisle. Her father is at her arm. Red roses are at her waist. The white dress is slim and silky. She doesn't wear a veil. She doesn't feel like she needs to hide.

Her legs are long and slim and slip just beneath a slit in the side of her dress. It seems like only two steps until she's standing next to him. She reaches out and takes his hand. His nails are short and bitten while hers are manicured and white like her dress. Yet they fit, the two of them.

I should leave. I've seen her in her dress, I've fulfilled my curiosity.

I stay.

"We are gathered here to celebrate the union of two hearts. Martha Jones and Thomas Milligan---"

I knew his name was Thomas. I really did.

They stare at each other during the ceremony. It seems to last forever and seconds at the same time. I try to see what could be, for them. Who doesn't want to know what could be for their friends? It's hard. I'm out of practice.

I think while I'm focusing one of them (or both of them) say "I do."

"At the request of the family of the groom," the man in the suit between them smiles. "The Irish Wedding Blessing."

I know this one.

"May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon the fields."

Her gaze flicks over Tom's shoulder to me. No looking around, no hesitation. It's like she's known I was there from the beginning. She may not have wanted me there, but she smiles. I smile back.

"May the light of friendship guide your paths together."

I see it. They'll argue over their clashing decoration styles and end up mixing and matching. She'll drag him shopping and he'll drag her to football games and they'll both bounce excitedly over medical conferences. They'll fight. She'll throw a lamp at his head and break a hole in the wall and promptly get a therapist. He'll leave her once then realize he can't live without her. She'll tell him about the Year that Wasn't and he'll eventually believe her.

"May the laughter of children grace the halls of your home."

She won't have children. Something called "reset" destroyed her ability to reproduce, though they'll try for a while. They'll adopt a half-Eternal from UNIT. They'll fight about how to raise the child and they'll learn from their mistakes. Raising an alien will be a strain, but when have either of them ever lived the easy life? When the Eternals come to take the child back, the love they've shown will save the whole of the human race.

"And when eternity beckons,"

He'll die first after a long fight. Pancreatic cancer. She'll hold his hand and won't cry.

"At the end of a life heaped high with love,"

She'll look at photographs of them when they were younger and she will dream of him often. When she dreams of him, her dreams will be twice as long.

"May the good Lord embrace you with the arms that have nurtured you the whole length of your joy-filled days."

One night, her dreams won't stop and she will never be more peaceful. She won't live long enough. They never live long enough.

"May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon the fields."

She looks back to him---her husband---and they walk off together outside, Dr. and Dr. Milligan. Onwards. A linear life that I could never live and they're just starting it.

They step outside and the clouds burst. Rain pours down over them, the reception, and the entire wedding party. Everyone scrambles to get under the cover and Francine looks like she might cry at the sight of all the food and drink ruined by the rain. The whole situation is nothing short of comical.

Tom's hair is a mess from the water. Martha's makeup runs and her dress sticks to her. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses him. For them, the universe doesn't exist. The future is now.

I head out the back towards the TARDIS. My suit is soaked by the time I get to the door.

They've got a good life waiting for them, I think. Even if we never travel again. Even if she never calls. It's enough.

It's enough.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,211

"You're not really a doctor."

"Neither are you."

"Oi, I could be one day, spaceman."

"Don't call me that. That's disturbing when it isn't coming out of Donna's mouth."

"I don't want to."

"Can't have you go anywhere until I have a look at you. Have a seat."

"What are you going to do?"

"Restrain myself."

The Doctor nods to the chair in the infirmary (sickbay!) and shrugs off his brown coat. The trip between universes is going rather smoothly, but seeing as they have a few more minutes before they get there, he wants to make sure this man with his face is going to be all right when he leaves him.

When he leaves him with Rose.

The other man tosses off his blue jacket and hops about restlessly in the chair. He looks younger than the Doctor, strangely enough. It's the way he hops about, the way his eyes look clearer, like Donna's. He looks human. The Doctor wears his suit shirt like it's a uniform; the other man wears his red t-shirt like he's comfortable in it.

The Doctor rolls up his sleeves and cleans his hands in the sink. There's dirt underneath his fingernails. Rubble from the destroyed ships. Another end to the Time War. Another end that he ran away from.

He grabs a towel off the side table and dries his hands, then picks up an old blood pressure monitor. He can't remember why he bought it originally (it was 1956, though, and the saleswoman turned out to be a rabid Wildebeati), but he knows how to use it.

"Still can't believe I bought that," the other man says. "Probably to fill up space. Only barely remember how to use it. Do you even remember what human blood pressure is supposed to be? I know I don't. Isn't there a book or something---"

"Give me your arm."

"---in one of those cabinets with a list? Might want to check it. I always remember having high blood pressure, though. Do you remember that? Can't imagine why I did, must be the high stress life. Are you really going to leave me? I can't live a slow life, I don't know how! Do you think---"

"Right, now let me see your wrist." He puts the stethoscope against the other man's pulse and listens to the single heartbeat.

"---I mean, maybe it could work out? Two of us on one ship? We're likely to go bonkers. End up fighting over Rose, I imagine. Well, I mean, can't be that bad, right? You know what I think---"

The Doctor has long since stopped caring what the other man thought. All he can think is how slow one heartbeat sounds. Bump. Ba bump. Bump. Ba bump. One heartbeat, one life. He's got all of the Doctor's memories, he thinks like he does, but he's not quite. He's not a child of Gallifrey, he's a…well, he's a mistake. Rather like Jack but with better hair.

He turns the other man's right arm over and looks down at the pale skin. Pale with little freckles peppering from the wristbone up to the bend in the elbow. They're paler freckles than the ones on the Doctor, who's stood in suns the other man will never stand in. But it's not what the other man has on his arm, it's what he doesn't.

"I noticed it, too." The other man says.

The Doctor turns his right arm over. His tattoo. His brand. A snake-like dragon coiling itself upwards, mouth open, very like a question mark. There's a bend in the neck of the snake, and the Gallifreyan word for "criminal" is tattooed in tiny letters. The paint never needs touching up and unlike an Earth tattoo it will never fade, no matter how often he regenerates or cuts off his own hand. It was given to him in his third incarnation. The mark of an exile of Gallifrey.

"Funny," the other man says, flexing his fingers and looking at his arm. "The things you get used to. Don't even notice til they're not there."

"Yeah," the Doctor says. He takes a step away from the other man. The other man who is everything he is but isn't. Another of the many subtle differences he wonders if Rose will notice.

He can't see how. He's always dressed in long coats and ruffled shirts, his arms covered. He can't think of a time he showed skin beyond his wristbone, it just isn't something he wants to think about. And his companions might ask about it. Liz did, and the resulting conversation was embarrassing. No, not just embarrassing. Humiliating.

And he didn't want to suffer that conversation. Not again. Not ever again.

Oh, the Doctor. The great and brilliant Doctor. President elect of the high council of Time Lords with a Paradoxical Criminal Dragon hiding under his shirtsleeves. He wonders if any of them remembered they had him branded. He wondered if they would've removed it if they did.

"It's really true," the other man says. "I'm not really the Doctor, then? You're Him, I'm just---"

"Stop it." The Doctor shakes his head. "It doesn't matter."

"Maybe not to you." The other man stands and picks up his suit jacket, pointedly draping it over his right arm. "So, Doctor? Am I cleared to go?"

The Doctor nods, slowly. "Yep. Perfect health."

"Brilliant." The other man looks over his shoulder, then turns and leaves. Back to the console room. Rose is waiting for him---or maybe she's waiting for the Doctor, it's very obvious now that the two are not the same.

One of them has two hearts, dirt under his nails, dark freckles, and an old brand that never went away. The other is new.

The Doctor envies him. He can remember Gallifrey, but doesn't have the mark to remember that he never truly belonged there.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 987

"I have always relied on the kindness of strangers."
-A Streetcar Named Desire

1967

The Doctor is a lot of things, but a philosopher is not one of them. Therefore, when strange things happen he often chalks them up to the fact that they just do and he's got a lot of other things to worry about now, thankyouverymuch.

So, when he's found himself stranded in the middle of the Arizona desert, he doesn't question a black-painted schoolbus that just happens to drive up next to him. It doesn't stand out as anything but luck. Well, in this ridiculous heat and how hungry and thirsty he is, it's more like absolutely brilliant luck.

The door to the bus opens and the heavy smell of cannabis and sweat blasts in the Doctor's face. There are at least ten people on the bus, all sweaty and high and looking expectantly at the door---oh, right, at him. A lanky, long-haired bloke with a big, broken-toothed smile offers him a bottle of water.

( 'Hey, dude, you need a ride?' )

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count: 1,662

He's not the sort of man to give up right away.

Never has been.

Oh, he feels the initial loss like a punch to the gut. Watches her torn from his universe and at first all he can do is lean against the wall and imagine that somewhere in some other universe she's leaning up against him, too. But that's the romantic side of him he rarely lets out.

He lifts himself up off the wall and walks back to the TARDIS. He can figure out a way to get her back. He thought the split between worlds was sealed before and he was wrong. He can find her. She's not lost.

43 days, or thereabouts. That's how long he spends focusing on nothing but finding her. No traveling, no TARDIS repair (except when the life support system nearly blew on day 11), just looking for a way to travel the universes. Looking for Rose. By day 15, he's located a tiny crack left in the rift, rapidly closing. By day 35, he's figured out a way to hold it open using the power of a collapsing star. By day 42, he realizes that there's no way for him to open the rift for anything more than a glimmer of light, maybe a message. Two universes would collapse otherwise.

Time Lords don't grieve the way that humans do. There's no step system, no grief and then relief. But with this loss…maybe it's because she's so very human. Her humanity's rubbed off onto him so much that he follows the psychological path she might've.

At first, he refuses to accept that it's impossible to open it more. For five days, he rewires and kicks the console because it's not impossible. He switches quickly into anger, because the TARDIS can't open the rift (but it never had that power, he has no idea why he thinks it should). He tries to bargain, to promise to be a better owner if he could just get enough room to pull Rose back. Or maybe pull him through. Him and the TARDIS, a whole new universe to explore. Then he crumples on the floor of the TARDIS in a grieving mess.

Because, really, he's held on so long without truly grieving because he had that hope. That hope he might be able to bring her back. That even though Rose Tyler's name is on the list of the dead, he can change that. He can bring her back.

Acceptance takes a good long while to finally settle in. She's gone and all he can do is say 'goodbye' and beg her to have a wonderful life. It's better than the alternative. Better than never letting her know how much she means to him. Even once is better than nothing.

Of course, he doesn't know where the rift opens up in her universe. He sends out a message, just his voice calling out her name, keyed to her genetic code. He waits. Waits to activate the core until her code meets up with the rift signals. He doesn't want to waste a minute while she's not there. In the meantime he fixes a few neglected bits underneath the console and waits.

Six days pass, and there's a blip on the monitor. He doesn't even think to straighten his hair or suit, he just pulls out the sonic screwdriver and stands in front of the projector.

And he can't see where they are, but he can see her, suddenly, right in front of him. Just an image, but it's her. Right next to the reclining chair and the door to the back corridors. It's like she was never really gone, she just went to use the loo and got lost on the way back. But it's not really her, he has to remind himself, it's just an image.

She doesn't waste time. "Where are you?" she asks.

"Inside the TARDIS," he replies. "There's one tiny gap in the universe left, just about to close. And it takes a lot of power to send this projection, I'm in orbit around a supernova. I'm burning up a sun just to say 'goodbye'."

"You look like a ghost." The confusion in her face is so very her. She's just short of disbelieving everything she's seeing, but she's smart enough to know that her senses aren't lying. He's there.

"Hold on." He pulls out the sonic screwdriver and adjusts a few of the projectors, hopefully clearing up the sending signal. It clears up her image, and as she steps towards him in the TARDIS, it's like she's there, right there.

He's found her.

Muse: The Doctor (Ten)
Fandom: Doctor Who
Word Count 772