Wow... so I posted the first part of this FOREVER ago and never posted the epilogue.
So if you did NOT see the original story, please read that first. It will make so much more sense. Honestly. Otherwise there will be questions and I'm okay with that. But I like this whole story, so you could just read it all...? Then we can still talk if you have questions.
Also, you should know that half of this story belongs to Cait. Because we rite together sometimes and it is quite brilliant.
All right. Let's sally forth then...
...
It's dark, late when she makes her way home. She keys into her flat only to be greeted by darkness. She leans heavily on the door as she closes it behind her, resting there for a moment. She closes her eyes against the pulsing she still feels in her head. Even before she’d left, she’d known that going out tonight would be bad decision, but she’d done it anyway. Still, she can’t bring herself to regret it, not a single moment. She pushes away from the door, making her way through the dark flat to the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothing in her wake. Her red cape flutters to the ground soundlessly.
She looks in the mirror. She barely recognizes herself – perfect curls, dark makeup, red lips and cheeks and nails. She looks beautiful, predatory, every bit like a wolf, a huntress. No wonder he hadn’t recognized her. And why should he have? After all, it was dark and he was more than a little intoxicated. Uncharacteristically so. Perhaps he’d changed more than she’d thought. The man she’d known would never have gone to a bar – let alone with another woman – looking for nothing but a good time. Yet the man she’d seen tonight had been perfectly willing to flirt with her - a purported stranger – to take her hand and let her lead him away without so much as a moment’s hesitation. He’d been willing to dance – the Doctor, dancing—and that should have been enough of a cue that something was wrong.
But maybe she was the one who had been wrong. Maybe he hadn’t missed her as much as she thought, as much as she missed him. Maybe he had finally gotten over her. It certainly seemed that way. All those times she had mentioned Bad Wolf… Nothing. No reaction. Maybe that phrase had meant something before, but they were just words to him now, now that she was out of his life. Maybe that’s all they’d ever been – words. Words that meant something to her, but nothing to him. Maybe he’d never really cared at all.
She slams her fists on the wooden surface of the vanity, making the entire thing shake. How could she have been so stupid? She looks up into her reflection again to see angry tears forming in the corners of her eyes, falling and smudging her meticulously applied makeup. She knows she has wasted her time and energy, and time energy on something that she never should have fooled around with. She picks up a brush and starts combing out her curls, picking out bobby pins and throwing them to the floor as if they were burning her fingers.
A sob breaks from her chest and she wants to take back every word she has ever said to him, to get back every feeling he has ever taken from her. She feels hurt, feels lied to, betrayed. All she had wanted was to see him again, even if for a moment, for a chance to see him during the time they’d been apart. She had just wanted the chance to tell him it would all be all right, to comfort him, to let him know that everything would turn out fine in the end. That’s all.
But he hadn’t recognized her at all. Not even for an instant.
Her blood boils in her veins, and she cries harder, hating herself for making such a colossal mistake, hating him for not realizing what she had done. Hating him for lying to her all this time. Yes, right now she is most angry at him, her Doctor, the one with the single heart, the one who stayed. In their time together in this universe, he has told her many things about the time they were apart, the big and the small, about the adventures he’d had, about Martha Jones and Donna Noble, about how much he’d missed her, about how he’d always loved her, always. Had those been nothing more than pretty lies? Just the words he’d thought she wanted to hear? Perhaps all this time he has been lying to her about everything, about wanting to stay with her, about how much he loves her.
Anger clouding her thoughts, she doesn’t know what to think. Wiping away her tears, she takes a deep breath and tries to be rational, for just a moment. Of course she believes he missed her. He must have. He’d been so devastated to lose her, and so relieved to see her. This she knows for a fact. She’d seen it on his face – the Doctor’s face, before he had split into two men who were the same but oh so very different. So he had missed her. That hadn’t been a lie. And it isn’t that she wanted him to be miserable without her, it’s just that it was such a shock to see him so willing to flirt with a stranger, so willing to move on when she spent all those years in misery trying so hard to get back to him.
But it’s not fair to blame this him, she knows, the Doctor sleeping in her bed. He is not the same man. He is not the one who has hurt her. He is everything to her now, everything she ever wanted and more. She has let him so fully into her life and her heart, this Doctor who loves her, who is not afraid to tell her he loves her or go to dinner at her parents or go trick-or-treat with Tony or make love to her like she’d only dreamt he would.
No. This man has not lied to her. He loves her with all of his single, human heart and he would never do anything to hurt her. That she believes without question. Yet even as she absolves him, feels her anger slipping away, guilt and shame rises within her.
In crossing universes, she has put the fabric of reality in peril. Though this is not the first time she’s done so, she cannot compare it to the last time she sought the Doctor. Everything had been in danger then – every world – and she had needed to find him not just for herself, but for everyone. Last time, she had used the resources of Torchwood and a team of specialists to ensure her safety. This time, she had used a confiscated vortex manipulator and relied on nothing more than blind hope to reassure her that she would end up in the right place in the right time. By all standards, it is nothing short of a miracle that she has made it there and home again. What’s even more astounding is that she hasn’t irrevocably damaged the whole of time and space. That she knows of.
For the first time she is afraid, of what she has done, of how he will react. She knows that travel between the universes is forbidden, and that he will be both hurt and horrified that she would do such a thing, knowing the potential repercussions. She also knows the danger of what she’s done this night – she’s risked a paradox, crossing into his timeline like that. She doesn’t know how she’ll ever be able to explain to him what she’s done, wonders if she even has to. If she has altered his timeline… She had known where he would be because of a memory he’d shared with her, of a Halloween spent with Donna at a club in London. But will he remember the night differently now, when he wakes, when prompted? Will remember meeting a lovely blonde with smoky eyes and a predator’s smile? If she doesn’t tell him, will he ever know?
The weight of her action rests in her stomach like a stone, a sinking heavy burden that she fears will fill her up and swallow her whole. She doesn’t want to keep this a secret from him, but she doesn’t know how to tell him either. Maybe she can just wait. Wait and see how it plays out. If he asks. Why would he ask? Will he know? Will he be able to smell the time travel on her, taste the void stuff that must be clinging to her skin?
She has a desperate, sudden urge to shower, to cleanse herself of everything she’s done tonight, to erase it. She knows she can’t, knows what she has done is permanent. There is no way to change things, not anymore. She has to live with what she’s done. They all do – she, the Doctor, and her Doctor.
She feels tired, then, all the way down to her bones. She just wants to sleep, forget that this happened for at least one more night. In the morning she will face the reality of what she’s done, but not now. Not now. She decides against the shower, unsure she has the strength to stand upright for that long, and settles for washing her face and hands. In the pale light of the bathroom, she looks impossibly old and tired, nothing like the huntress who stalked the night just an hour ago. She strips off her clothes and stuffs them in the hamper, hiding all evidence of her outing. She’ll do the laundry in the morning. He’ll never realize.
Shutting off the bathroom light, she steals quietly into the bedroom, grabbing one of his discarded t-shirts and slipping it on. Skinny as he is, it is still quite big on her, oversized and soft and smelling of him. The familiar comfort is more than she thinks she deserves, but she needs it right now, some sort of reassurance that things are going to be all right, that she hasn’t fucked everything up.
She reaches the bed and finds him exactly as she left him, sprawled out in the adjacent bedroom, fast asleep. She leans against the doorway and takes a moment to study him. He lies on his back, one arm flung out, and his hair in wild disarray, partially from sleep and partially from their earlier, amorous activities. She feels a sharp pang of regret for what she has done tonight. How could she put any of this, of their life, of him, in danger? She is more selfish than she ever knew.
As gently as possible, she pulls back the covers and lies down beside him, tense, waiting to see if he’ll notice. He does. Almost immediately, he stirs, rousing and reaching for her. He rolls towards her and pulls her back against his chest, wrapping an arm around her waist.
“Rose?” he mumbles, voice rough with sleep. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere important,” she whispers back, hoping he can’t feel the racing of her heart, her treacherous pulse beating out a lie. “Just go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” he sounds content and his stubble feels like sandpaper as he nuzzles into her shoulder, dropping a kiss on her smooth skin. “I love you.”
Tears fill her eyes as guilt floods her veins, stopping her heart and smothering her breath. He still loves her. Despite all she’s done this night and all the things she may have changed, he still loves her. Always has, always will. She doesn’t deserve him, she knows. Knows it deep down in her bones and the knowledge is a weight she will carry with her for the rest of her life.
