It sits on the tip of her tongue, burning in the back of her throat like bile; Bad Wolf Bay. A constant buzzing in the back of her mind since she heard the words, a desperate need to make them mean something. Because they do, they must. Why else should they exist in a parallel universe that the TARDIS should never have fallen into, if not for a purpose? A message to lead her back to the Doctor once before, why not once more? There were coincidences that couldn't be ignored here. Her memories of destroying the Dalek emperor returning to her as she stared down the cult of Skaro. The werewolf in Scotland recalling her as the Bad Wolf. Twice was a coincidence, thrice was a pattern. The pieces had been laid out for her.
There was a way back. There had to be. Why else would she have left a message for herself? She had seen all of time and space, every timeline conceivable and deemed it necessary to leave these pieces for herself. It had to mean something. She couldn't allow herself to ignore this glaring neon sign if there was even just a possibility that she could save the Doctor in some way.
'The whole thing would fracture. Two universes would collapse.'
So? Absorbing the time vortex should have killed her, but it hadn't. Instead she'd left messages for her future herself, her life secured even in that moment of burning. And in return the Doctor had burnt up a sun to give her once last message.
She was dead. Back home, Rose Tyler had officially died. But she should have died the moment she became the Bad Wolf. She should have died a dozen times over. A ghost couldn't be killed so what did she have to lose now? She was already gone.
Ah, wonderful choice, Little Wanderer! Browse the stories, take your time. If there is something else you would like to read, just come back to me. If you don't find what you're looking for, make a request to the librarian.
[1k followers celebration!]
➳ >DOCTOR WHO playlist<
➳ Imagine getting hurt and keeping it a secret from him until he has to take care of you
➳(Part 2)
➳Imagine being a regular girl in love with him. You can't always travel with him, so he keeps a little keepsake of you
➳ Imagine being his old alien friend
➳ Imagine him not wanting to admit to himself just how much you mean to him
➳ "The Dancer and her Doctor" -> Imagine being an alien warrior who becomes Doctor's champion in a trial by combat, beginning an extraordinary friendship. (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8)
➳ Imagine that there is one door on TARDIS that is to remain closed
➳ Imagine having a rough past and the Doctor being the first person to love you gently and patiently
➳ Imagine being a siren whose singing entices the Doctor
➳ Imagine all companions asking him why he travels with a bird, only to find out you are under a curse
➳ Imagine being an eldritch witch who used to travel with him
➳ Imagine having sworn to protect him with your life
➳ Imagine being a tomb raider who, somehow, manages to change his opinion about archaeologists
➳ Imagine travelling with him and Amy. Your lenient treatment of rules makes him realize what happened to one of his tools
➳ "It's not supposed to happen, right?" -> you were born a time traveler who became friends with the Doctor. You never expected to meet three of his regenerations at once
➳ "Unfair" -> it's not right that one man has to make such a difficult decision
➳ "Junes are for reflection" -> [TW: mentions/descriptions of self-harm and suicide] you allow yourself to be vulnerable and honest with him, while he tries his best to say the right words
➳ "A street magic trick" -> he encounters a street magician who might just not be a simple illusionist
➳ "While we wait, you want a biscuit?" -> Good things just don't happen to you. So Doctor offers to wait with you for one to happen. Meanwhile, would you like a snack?
➳ "You cut through all the noise" -> He can't imagine functioning without you but it takes a life-threatening danger to make him say it.
➳ "But I woke up the same again and again" -> He promised himself not to drag any more humans into his mess but you make him break that promise.
➳ Imagine being Doctor's companion and accidentally meeting a man investigating him
➳ Imagine being Doctor's companion and discovering two brothers who have accidentally broken the laws of time
➳ Imagine being Doctor's companion and meeting two brothers in a (kind of) similar line of work
➳ Imagine meeting the "previous" him
➳ "Fixation" -> He finds you years after the war has ended and tries to fool himself into believing you can fill the hole in his heart. Some things just come to an end, without any closure.
➳ Imagine the Doctor finding your drawings of him
➳ Imagine feeling insecure but the Doctor is there to reassure you
➳ "Pacify Him" -> You attend your boyfriend’a birthday party with the Doctor. Not to point fingers but someone might be jealous…
➳ "Milestones" -> your first hug, kiss, honest heart-to-heart and "i love you" with the Doctor
➳ "Blessing me" -> [chubby!Reader] You and the Doctor have to attend a charity ball so you need to wear something else than a sweatshirt and jeans. He can’t look at you but not for the reason you thought.
➳ "Cold feet" -> Learning about your anxiety, the Doctor is determined to make sure you’re not panicking in the bathroom at a party. He also comes up with an escape plan.
➳ "Stone walls" -> [touch starved!Reader] He’s more of a winner, you’re more of a loser but he doesn’t quite agree on that. What if I told you that ge actually does want you around?
The timelines churning around him, swirling, changing—
It’s been six months since the Angels and the Ponds and it’s been three months since She came back.
She can’t stay.
“Were you alone?” She asks when it’s just them under the stars, naked and entwined together. “When you...changed?”
She has to go.
She’s been here long enough—too long—and if She never tells the right him about the stars going out—if She never appears on that empty street—if She never gets left behind again—with Him—
“Doesn’t matter now,” he tells her. “You came back.”
He wonders if he’s ruining her life even more.
“I’m so glad I finally found you,” She whispers.
This isn’t the first time, his mind screams. You found me before. The right time. The right...me. You have to go—
Hey! Could I request a song drabble for The 10th Doctor/Companion Reader + Starman by David Bowie, please? Thanks so much!
gif // a/n: i hope you like it!
To you, it had always seemed as if the Doctor had fallen out of the sky, crashing into your life like a meteor, on fire the entire time, and yet something you’d wish upon if given the chance. Even on your worst days, you knew that the next visit from the Doctor would come around, and all would be right with the world, at least for a little bit, even if the world was ending at the same time.
Tonight was one of those nights. You sat in the open door of the TARDIS, wrapped in a blanket pulled from inside, watching as the Doctor set up some sort of futuristic telescope in the grass in front of the police box, completely occupied with studying the stars above, almost unreachable at that moment until he turned back to you. “Holding up? Should be just a few more minutes until that cloud passes.”
You smiled and nodded in response, eager to see what he had been so excited to show you.
“It’s magnificent what’s up there,” he said. “And we could go anywhere, but tonight, the best view is from here. I mean, the things you haven’t seen yet.”
“But you’ll show me, right?” you asked, leaning your head against the doorframe of the box, as you yawned, the hour late. “All of it?”
He paused, his expression changing for a moment as he looked away from you and back up at the stars. “Course. As much of it as I can.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice softening for a moment as he sat down with you, back up against the open door, tucking the blanket over you a little tighter. “Promise.”
New tools, he thinks. Some of these aren’t quite right. Calibrated wrong, or don’t fit my hands right. Just a hair off. I can do better.
His mind is off, running in ten different directions. His body may be slightly human now--he can actually feel himself aging, a horrifying experience he tries to ignore as much as possible--but his mind is all Time Lord. He can still do all the complex calculations he needs for whatever new thing he’s currently working on in his head, all while reciting A Christmas Carol and trying to figure out what to give Rose for her next birthday.
It’s late. Two fifty three am. He’s still got a perfect sense of time, too. Only it’s less comforting now. For one thing, he doesn’t like to think about time passing, because now time is finite. For another, he knows he should be asleep, or at least in bed with Rose. Holding her. Listening to her breath, to the beating of her heart.
Her single heart, now so like his own.
*
Rose wakes up alone. There’s a painful stab, but only for a moment; she knows it’s hard for his Time Lord half to do the completely human things, and sleeping is at the very top of that list. She doesn’t have to wonder where he is. He’s in his workshop, the spare bedroom that had never held a bed--at least not since they’d moved in. Most nights when this happens--and there are many--she just closes her eyes and goes back to sleep, missing his warmth and his touch. But tonight she decides she needs to see him, even if only for a few minutes. She doesn’t think he’ll mind.
From the doorway she watches as he tinkers, and her heart swells, remembering how many times she watched him in the TARDIS, standing at a distance, as he built or rebuilt or took apart this or that. Sometimes she’d thought he just did it to keep his hands busy, but other times she saw the genius things he created out of what looked like piles of nothing.
He doesn’t look up, doesn’t say her name, but she knows he’s heard her just the same. He always knows when she’s near. She could go in, but for now she just stands there, watching. It’s like a dance, the way he moves around the workbench. He chooses a tool for his partner, spins it gracefully, sends it on its way and chooses another. His feet on the floor make barely a whisper of sound.
Just when she’s thinking of going back to bed and leaving him to it he says, “Don’t go, Rose. I like when you visit at night. Reminds me of times in the TARDIS.”
She slips in beside him, rising on her toes for a kiss. “Would you like some tea? We’ve got chamomile in the cupboard.”
He breathes a satisfied sigh. “That sounds brilliant.” He kisses her lips again, then ducks down further to nuzzle at her neck.
“None of that,” she says playfully, sidestepping. “I’ll never get to the tea if you start that up.”
He pretends to pout, but she can see in his eyes that most of his brain is already back at his tinkering. “Go on,” she says, waving him back toward the workbench. “Get on with it. I’ll be back in a mo.”
When she gets back with the tea he’s still working at the assembled bits of metal and wire that he’d been attending before, but there’s a place cleared for their tea, with two stools placed side by side. Her heart leaps--he’d gladly take the tea and drink it standing up while he works. This is for her.
“I brought biscuits too.” She loves the gleam in his eye when she says this. He’s an ancient being, but sometimes he’s as advanced as a toddler. “Shortbread.”
“Fantastic,” he says. He pulls a face, same as he always does when he says that word.
“Still doesn’t taste right in your mouth?” she asks, trying to bite back a giggle.
“It’s just wrong,” he says.
They sit down for tea, and Rose can feel a bit of the tension easing from her Doctor with the first sip. She leans into him, just resting her head on his shoulder. “Couldn’t sleep again?” she asks softly.
“I don’t need as much sleep as a full human,” he says.
“But you need to sleep sometimes.”
He kisses the top of her head then rests his head on hers. “I do. And more than I did when I was...well...before. But my brain is still fully Time Lord, and it’s hard to slow it down enough to sleep.”
He sighs, his breath warm on her head.
“But tinkering helps,” he says, brighter. “Spending time in my workshop, it’s comforting. Reminds me of the TARDIS, in some ways. There’s so much they don’t have on this earth, so there’s always something for me to build, or to build better. And there are things here I’ve never seen that are perfect for taking apart.”
“Show me,” she says.
*
“Show me,” Rose says.
“It’s nothing all that special,” he says, but his heart warms just to have her here, to have her ask, to have her see. He leads her to stand before the pile of plastics and metal and wires. “It was an ordinary radio, for listening to music. I’m trying to see if I can boost the signal to catch radio waves from space--passing ships, maybe even other planets.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Don’t you need satellites and things for a signal like that? There are whole arrays on earth aimed at deep space.” She tilts her head, thinking. “Or, there were on the other earth. I don’t actually know about here.”
“There are,” he says, grinning. “But I don’t need ‘em.” He taps his temple. “Time Lord brain. Very clever. Always building a better mousetrap.”
“We don’t have mice,” she says dryly. “The neighbors have a cat.”
He huffs, but it’s in jest. “I’m building a better radio, Rose Tyler. Just you wait.”
She bites her lower lip, hesitating. Then, “Could I help?”
Again, that ping to his heart. He stands behind her, his chest pressed against her back, and guides her hands with his. He speaks softly into her ear, giving directions and encouragement and occasionally just telling her how much he loves her. Under their hands the radio begins to take shape--wires are twisted and soldered, tiny chips placed just so.
After half an hour she yawns, a huge, jaw-cracking yawn, and he calls a halt. “Bed. No arguing.”
She turns in his arms and looks up at him. “But this has been so… I just don’t want to leave you.”
He kisses her softly, holding her close. “That’s alright then, since I’m coming with you.”
*
They spend the rest of the night tangled up in each other, fast asleep.
***
for @doctorroseprompts 31 Days of Ficmas || Day 1 - Workshop
“They’re people?” “They were, until they had all their humanity taken away… All emotions removed.” “Why no emotions?” “Because it hurts.”
She thinks about that sometimes over the years. After everything. After the walls have sealed them universes apart. After she sees the Doctor one last time but only to say goodbye, to tell her that this is the end, that she can never come back. After everyone moves on and carves a space for themselves in this new world that had left a gap just for them.
She thinks about the Doctor stood before a cyberman’s head as he told her, “An old friend of mine. Well, enemy.” She thinks about the way he couldn’t distinguish between the two for a moment. She thinks about the way he’d spilt about old monsters and the world he’d burned to destroy them. She thinks about Sarah-Jane, an old friend he’d never been able to speak of.
She thinks she understands some of that now. She wonders if he keeps silent about her the way he did Sarah-Jane. Thinks she’d understand that too. She thinks about Sarah-Jane telling her the Doctor had been called home by the Timelords, how she’d never seen him again. She thinks about the way the Doctor never talks about them; talks about the beautiful planet, the trees, the grass and the two suns it used to orbit.
She thinks about the Doctor screaming at the Nestene, trying to bargain with it even after it’s shown itself to be hostile. She thinks about the Doctor and how his pity for the Gelth had made him blind to their intents. She thinks about the way he wears his scars and if she’s one of them now, or if he keeps her hidden away with his memories of people. She wonders if he still lets his pain and his anger fuel his need to save another planet, another people. She wonders if it still burns a hole through his hand the way there’s a burning in the back of her mind.
She thinks she understands him in a way she never could before as she fights to prove him wrong. Words and numbers falling from her lips in a way that reminds her of Jack, remind her of him. Things come to her easier these days, things she’d never understood before when they’d gotten lost in techno babble back before. Before she’d gotten stuck. Before Jack had stayed behind to fix the Earth. Before they’d left him alone, despite their best intentions.
Things slot into place for her now in a way that she doesn’t understand how but comes from the golden, burning place in the back of her mind that she knows shouldn’t exist. Should be locked behind fortified doors. Shouldn’t still be glittering, but hollow and cold. Shouldn’t leak secrets of the universe into her ears. Should leave her clueless and frustrated, grasping at dead ends in a way that’s expected of a girl off a council estate that never finished her A levels. A girl that had followed a stranger to the stars and picked up a few more along the way because she hadn’t understood then; but she’d seen the same lonely shadow in him that she’d felt in herself.
But she understands things now that she shouldn’t. She understands dimensional travel. Understands the cracks in the walls and the scars in the void that never completely heal if you press just right. Understands the physics and theory better than anyone of her time period should, let alone her. Understands why monsters are easier to face than the ones you’ve lost. Understands why there had been locked doors on the TARDIS in the same way she can’t bring herself to decorate the blank room she’s found herself occupying.
And she wonders if the fire ever burns out for the Doctor in the way the universe feels a little too heavy for her sometimes. She wonders if he sees her in the way she hears his words in her mouth. And the shadows she’d seen him seem heavier in her own eyes these days. She thinks about her mum’s words on that fateful day.
“You even look like him.” “How do you mean? I suppose I do, yeah.” “You've changed so much.” “For the better.”
She thinks about how it had filled her with pride at the time. She thinks about how she’d thought she was fitting into this new world that he’d shown her. How she’d become more than just another nineteen-year-old girl from the Estates. She thinks about how she doesn’t bother to fit into this world. How she doesn’t try to force this world to make space for her where there is none. She thinks about how that sentiment has become even more true in his absence. She does look like him. From the way she carries herself to the way she carries her scars and her secrets, lets them make her someone else.
She thinks about the worlds she’s seen dying as the stars blink out of existence across reality as she fights her way back to him. She thinks about the way she’s let every single one of them harden her when she couldn’t save everyone. She thinks about the nonchalant way the Doctor had spoken of the empty Earth before the sun had swallowed it whole. She thinks she understands how he’d focused on the survival of the species of the planet living amongst the stars instead of fixating on the planet he couldn’t save. She thinks about the lone survivor of a planet with its twin suns and the little blue box that remains its planet’s only reminders of its existence after the universe moved on.
She thinks about all the people they hadn’t been able to save. About how every single one of them had burned deep inside of her, fueling a resolution to do better next time. She thinks about how the first few fires had burned her before she learned how to put up the appropriate armour up. She thinks about the Doctor and his own armour. She wonders what taught him to put walls up between himself and the fires.
But mostly she thinks about the ways the years slip by her unnoticed, despite her mortality and the way she feels as though she’s never getting any closer to what feels just out of reach. And she wonders if it’s the same for him. She wonders if his immortality weighs on him the way her humanity weighs on her. She thinks she understands now the adamant way he’d spoken of humanity and how it hurts, the way there’d been no room for argument. The conviction in his words as a man burned too many times.
Imagine that there is one door on TARDIS that is absolutely not to be opened. It's not that there is anything objectively dangerous inside, no, it's just a room filled with things the Doctor cannot make himself let go of: it's a room filled with things you had left behind.
There were many doors on TARDIS: probably more than even the Doctor had known of. The corridors twisted and turned, creating a complicated net that only an experienced set of eyes could navigate. The biggest problem with said navigation was the lack of characteristic traits: all corridors and doors looked exactly the same.
The only pair of doors that were the exception to that rule was quite difficult to find but very easy to recognize. Among gray, metal doors there was the only one that stood out: it had a sticker in the middle. The decoration was small, maybe a square inch of surface. It presented a cartoon character that resembled a dragon or a dinosaur with a donut. The sticker was still clean, glue keeping it in place. It couldn't have been old but considering it was on a time-traveling machine, who could be sure?
Although those doors stood out to anyone who discovered them, there was something ominous about them. Why was there a sticker on them in the first place? Who left it? And why is this the only sticker on the entire TARDIS?
It was a rarity that the Doctor walked past these doors. In fact, he would take a longer route to his destination just to avoid the said door. But on those uncommon occasions when he did, a sad smile crept on his face when his eyes stared at the sticker.
All these doors look exactly the same. I want to remember where my stuff is.
And although there was no one around, the Doctor could swear he heard your voice just as vividly as the day you left the sticker. At first, he thought it was corny, the dinosaur with a donut, but later on, he grew to be very fond of it: it wasn't just a sticker anymore, it was your sticker.
He could not remember the last time he had the courage to open those doors. Perhaps, that's what made him the saddest: the door would stay closed until he opened them. And that meant you really weren't around anymore.
In his darkest moments, he wanted to throw everything out of that room. That lingering remains of you were slowly eating him alive. It was like a dehydrated human finding a rock that water was dripping from but only one drop every few seconds: never enough to quench their thirst but just enough to remind them how much they needed that water and how dry their mouth felt.
It was even more rare that the Doctor entered the mysterious room. Only then could nosy eyes see into the secrets sealed away from the known universe:
The inside of the room was kept very clean. A perfectly folded grey blanket was kept on the bed. Right across the room was a desk. It was mostly empty aside from a small lamp, an alien plant, and a leather-bound journal that was set in the center. Considering the thin layer of dust on top of the notebook, it wasn't used very often but also wasn't completely abandoned. The wall above the desk was decorated with flamingo fairy lights. Small wooden clips were holding polaroids on the wire. The pictures presented many things: most of them were monuments, statues, and markets that did not exist on Earth. In other pictures, there were people: a few different alien species, the Doctor, and an unknown woman. There was only one picture with both the Doctor and the woman in it: he looked quite uncomfortable despite his smile, while she was just beaming happiness.
Please, just one! Only one picture and I will never bother you about it again. Promise!
The Doctor could never help himself and would mindlessly put his hand on the journal. Whenever his shaky hand pulled the string tied around it, he felt like a voyeur. At the same time, his selfish longing pounded in his mind and made him open the diary that he was not the owner of. His guilt, however, would kick in the moment his eyes found the handwriting that he knew so well. The Doctor could never bear reading through the whole book, no matter how much he had wanted to, and skipped to the last entry.
The pages at the end of the journal were clearly more used than any other: the corners of the paper were bent, the pressed flower was falling apart and, most importantly, the black ink was blurry as if someone had accidentally left the journal open in the rain. Next to the very last page of the journal, on the inside of the cover, was taped a picture. It was a fuzzy polaroid of the Doctor fixing something around the TARDIS. The photographer must have been very sneaky, as he could not remember that photo being taken, although after all the times he studied that diary, he has grown very familiar with it.
There was also a wardrobe in the room. As one might have expected, it was filled with clothes but the Doctor had little care about them: the more important thing was at the very bottom. It was a cardboard box with Treasure written on the lid. It always earned a laugh from him.
The inside of the "treasure" box was filled with very random items. Most of them could be simply called knick-knacks. Others, however, looked like jewelry or artifacts of historical value. But all of them belong to the "treasure hunter" that used to live in those four walls. Going through the contents of the box always caused the same hurricane of emotions inside the Doctor, although he had known every curve and bump on every item. He could name each of them blind, simply by touching the surface.
At the bottom of the box was that one item that always took his breath away. Not because of its beauty, no, but because of how many emotions and memories, it held. How much nostalgia, grief, and guilt was packed into it.
The object was everything but impressive. It was a simple plushie, a stuffed yellow dog with long ears. The years that have passed were not kind t it: the material was slightly grey, probably because of dirt, there were random stitches on the dog - remnants of the material ripping open. One of the plushie's eyes was hanging on a single thread as if threatening to fall off any second.
My dad bought it before I was born. I've had him my entire life. It feels weird to leave him behind, you know? You're never too old for plushies.
"But you did, in the end," The Doctor whispered to himself. "You did leave him behind."
He was always a moment away from adding You had left me behind but his broken heart was never strong enough to actually say it. The Doctor had this silly belief that if he were to say it out loud, it would become true. And that wasn't the "true" he wanted; it wasn't the "true" he was willing to accept.
________________________
Author's note: I'm an adult that sleeps with a plushie. If someone ever tells you it's embarrassing, just drop kick them.
