Delicate (Rose/Tentwo)
Rating: General Audiences Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Doctor Who (2005) Relationship: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Characters: Metacrisis Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Car Accidents, Near Death Experiences, Near Death Experience leads to explorations of the Dr no longer being as invulnerable as he was, and also potentially babies?, also heartfelt talk about death and life and futures Summary:
"Try a lorry," she said shakily. "A small lorry—but still. A bloody lorry ran into you." "Well, if its bloody, at least I mucked it up being brilliant on my way down," he said with a grin, trying to make the heaviness of the moment feel just a smidge lighter, but any levity he felt vanished when he looked at her. Rose Tyler wasn't laughing.
Or: Tentwo gets hit in a traumatic car accident. Rose is there when he wakes up.
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For a moment, and only that, he thought he heard the TARDIS. That soft, ancient wheezing, as familiar as his own ancient hearts' beat. He laughed, almost giddy. He reached out toward her, his mental muscle memory of a thousand years automatic.
Hello, old girl, he thought. Long time no see.
He expected a warm greeting, the soft glow of the TARDIS’ consciousness touching his own. Instead, he felt...Nothing. Don't be like that, he thought at her, pleading. It felt like the psychic equivalent of being forced to knock on a door that had once always opened.
"Stop that, it's not funny." Rose. That was Rose. Rose’s voice cut through everything. Consciousness stirred; he opened his eyes. Automatically, he took in his surroundings: white popcorn ceiling. Bright White fluorescent lights. Odd anti-septic smell. Bugger. Hospital. He was in hospital; he hated hospitals. The gentle whirr he had taken for the TARDIS’ time rotor was a machine hooked to several diodes on his body—taking vital signs.
He tried to sit up.
The universe objected.
A million new and absolutely fascinating human pain responses loudly screamed DON'T.
"Rose?" He muttered, feeling lost. His lips felt parched—how long had he been out? He felt disoriented, in a way he never had been as a time lord. He felt cast adrift; he felt too human. He needed Rose. He needed the comfort, the balm, the...reassurance. "I'm here." She swam into view as he strained to turn his head toward the right; at his side, as she always was. His pink and yellow girl, in a pink hoodie and baggy blue jeans. Quite right. He relaxed a bit, his anchor secured, and stared at her.
A memento of their past—her TARDIS key—hung around her neck. She had it gripped like she had been praying to it. He tried not to take offense to that; that meant she was nervous, scared for him. He wondered if his time lord self had felt this pain, had woken up a parallel universe away with a wretched headache. Then he wondered if the other Doctor would burn up a sun to come to his funeral and decided after half a second that that wasn't a question he particularly wanted the answer to right now. "How do…how do you feel?" She asked, bringing a cup of water up to his lips.
Full up on pain, thanks was the obvious and honest answer. His human brain was now registering—rather impressively, at three times the speed of his time lord one—how much pain he was in.
Which was, statistically speaking, a lot. He ran down a quick inventory: Ribs? Cracked. Right arm? Unnaturally stiff and heavy. Skull? Felt like a Sontaran had headbutted him, then spat in his eye for good measure. The odd emptiness in his skull that came from being human, the lack of spatial and temporal resonance? Still there, still aching, as it always had. Ta. Great day. Very wizard.
"Been better.” He said. She looked unimpressed by his answer.
“Okay, been a lot better. Right now, feels like I said something particularly foul and the TARDIS smacked me clear across the console room for it.” He tried to look at her pretty face, but it was too hard to keep his head up, and he fell back onto his pillow, landing with a rather undignified soft thud. He winced.
“How long was I out?” He muttered. She looked like she’d been here a while. He hated not knowing. As a Time Lord, he’d always known roughly where he was, how much time had passed in a given place. But now?
Human. All too human.
“You were out a day. They called me around half past noon yesterday.” He glanced toward the window; the sun was out, so Rose had stayed overnight. “They put you in surgery right away, but you wouldn’t wake up after, so you’ve been in the intensive care unit since.”
"What happ…?" He tried to ask, but the question faded as he looked at her, taking in her condition. She had been crying. Hard. Rose Tyler was a gorgeous woman, but she was not a particularly pretty crier—her face was red and blotchy, her masterfully applied eye-liner swirled out in a thousand directions down her cheeks.
Like galaxies, he thought, but swallowed his runaway gob's urge to say it out loud; not the time.
"Try a lorry," she said shakily. "A small lorry—but still. A bloody lorry ran into you."
"Well, if its bloody, at least I mucked it up being brilliant on my way down," he said with a grin, trying to make the heaviness of the moment feel just a smidge lighter, but any levity he felt vanished when he looked at her.
She wasn't laughing.
"You coulda died." Her voice cracked on the word died; he winced. "You know? You could have died, and it's not—it's not like before. You don't just get up with a new face and walk away."
"Rose." He tried to sit up again, to get closer to her, and immediately regretted it, as a thousand shards of white-hot pain shot through his chest. Oh, that was a bad idea. Very bad idea.
Flopping back down onto the bed, he tried to at least reach out his hand to her, but realized that he couldn't move his wrist—his right hand was in a cast. Blimey. Hadn't even noticed that. That was annoying. He'd had plans for that hand! Half his favorite hobbies involved that hand! He stared down at it as if he could force it to heal. "What happened to my hand? I liked this hand. ‘S my favorite hand.”
"You got hit by a bloody lorry!” She snapped. “They said—the paramedics said they don't know how you survived. That you must have had superhuman reflexes or a guardian angel or something."
He thought: got both, thanks. His reflexes, if dull by the standard of his time lord perspective, were still sharper than most humans could ever hope to have. And as far as guardian angels went, he was quite sure the woman who had traveled through numerous parallel universes just to help him save the world counted. He smiled at that thought. Rose dried her eyes on a well-used Kleenex, then moved behind him, fluffing up his pillows so he could sit up slightly more comfortably.
"Rose,” he said softly, looking at her as she sat back down. “I did not die. Evidence: one particularly sore metacrisis, talking to you right now. Still here. Hello!" He wiggled his fingers that weren’t in the plaster. It hurt. A lot. He smiled at her anyway.
"You could have though." Rose’s head bobbed as she angrily flicked a tear away. "You could have, and that would've been it. Our happy ending, gone in a blink."
"Rose...That's new, I know, but..." He sighed. How to explain? It was difficult to make the old-time lord rhetoric work here, when all the time they could ever have as two humans together would have felt like a mere blink to a time lord. "Life is...Precious. No matter how long or how short it is."
"I know, but...you don't understand how much it scares me. To think..." She paused, drawing her knees up to her chest on the hospital chair. "To think you might just...be gone."
He sighed. He had to figure out some way to comfort her while dealing with a truth that held few, if any, comforts.
"Look..." He muttered. He tried to reach for her—the muscle memory to reach out to her physically as automatic as the mental pull to touch the TARDIS at this point—but forgot about the cast. He bit back a curse and offered his other hand to her; she took it immediately. As his Rose always did. "I can't promise you forever. Either of us could die at any point, Rose. The wrong turn, or the too-clever enemy, or...or a Lorry driver who was too busy texting his ex that it's not over to check the traffic lights."
He blinked. "Huh. Bit too specific. Think that crash jarred a little bit of the psychic back into me."
"I don't care who he was texting!" She scooted her chair closer. "I can't lose you." A beat. "And I almost did, and now I'm just..." She started to cry again, and that was worse. Nothing broke this new, frail human heart so much as Rose Tyler crying.
"Rose," he muttered, his voice scratchy. "Listen. Please…just listen. Truth was, back then...when I wasn't..." He gestured at himself with his one unbandaged hand. "Well, this, I was scared.”
She looked at him, eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Not of dying. Been there, done that, bought the new t-shirt, jumper, or Victorian waistcoat, depending on the incarnation. Not of getting hurt—occupational hazard for meddling time lords. Any day in my old line of work where you could walk away without getting used to new teeth is a win.”
“Okay,” she said, but he knew what she meant was where are you going with this.
“But…This?” Gesturing to herself, then to him. “You, me, us? Terrifying.”
“Terrifying?!”
“I knew, then...I knew how little time we'd get together. And that part hasn't changed, really. Just my perspective. Used to be I always knew I'd have to watch you grow old, and eventually watch you go someday. Now..." He gave her a shaky smile. "Well, now I might not. Which, frankly? Is terrifying in all new and horrible ways for me. But I hope that you'll outlive me. Then I won’t have to worry about it." He gave her a little half-smile, but she didn’t return it.
"That's not funny." She snapped. "Not funny at all."
"I know. I'm sorry." He closed his eyes, sighed, and reopened them. "Rose, no matter how much time we have—or how little—know I've never regretted a moment. And I never will. This time I get to spend with you? This is a gift. The greatest I'll ever get.”
He squeezed her hand.
“All things end. You know that. Every adventure, every story. That's how it works. Nothing lives forever, and nothing should. Everything ends.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Well, whenever my story ends...I will always be happy I shared it with you. Better with two, you know. Truth is? I’m better with you. Our story? Worth reading, no matter the painful plotlines, no matter the length, no matter the ending. You're worth every word." His throat bobbed; human or not, being vulnerable still felt...uncomfortable.
"You didn't end before. I guess I just...never thought of you as being..."
"Human?" He raised his eyebrows.
"No, not that just..." She paused. "Delicate."
He laughed a bit woodenly. One heart, one face, one go. Delicate. He could be killed by something as unremarkable as a biscuit going down the wrong way and cutting off his oxygen. Certainly, if he were still the time lord he had once been, he would consider himself delicate.
But then, he had always considered Rose delicate, and look where it had gotten him during his time with her as a time lord. He’d doubted her, back then: too young, too human, too fragile to live his life forever. He’d let those thoughts stop him from all the things he should have said to her; he had been so afraid of how their story would end that he had almost refused to let it properly begin.
"Rose," he whispered. "There is no point living afraid of what might happen. It’ll happen regardless of whether we worry or not."
She rolled her eyes, but he shook his head. "I'm serious. If anything, ever happens to me, if I die before you? Please know that I never regretted our life. I've lived many lives, Rose Tyler, and I'll tell you something. This one? My favorite."
She was silent for a long moment, staring at his hand. Then, quietly, she said: "But I don’t want you to die."
"Not a fan myself. Nope, don’t think that’ll go on the old checklist," he said. "Very long list of "human life" things to do yet, can’t possibly fit in “dying” right now. Very busy, me! But there's no guarantees." He stroked her hand gently. "You're the world to me, Rose Tyler. Honestly, solar system. Maybe a couple asteroid belts for good measure. I do love an asteroid shower. But...even if I were to...pass…" He hesitated. "Well. It wouldn't be the end."
His eyes glanced toward the TARDIS key she still wore around her neck, then up to her eyes.
"You have somewhere to go," he whispered.
Her head snapped toward him.
"You think I'd just go back? Just...pretend the last couple of years didn't happen? Go back to a time lord that can’t even say how he feels about me? Whose only response to that question was that his emotions towards me ‘didn’t need saying?’” Ouch. He was surprised by the fury of her words. She had never been cross with his other self before, had never said a single bad thing about him.
"I loved him, once. But it's not the same. He gave me a choice. I made it." That, he knew, was a bit of a lie—she still loved the time lord him, or she would have forsaken wearing that TARDIS key long ago. But he couldn’t resent it. That life had been his, as well. “I chose you,” she said softly. “I chose you.”
He gave her a sad, watery smile.
"Maybe you've moved on," he rasped. "But time lords...don't really do that. We just...compartmentalize." It was not quite accurate. But his human brain struggled with concepts so large as the perspicacity of time: the near-perfect recall, and the ability to summon all the emotions that came with it whenever a situation involving the same variables swam into view. It was something dulled by human memory; he could still feel his memories, but they had faded, in this human form. He wasn't certain whether or not he was thankful for that.
"...And..." He hesitated a moment, unsure how weird she'd find this. They'd never really talked about what happened to his prior incarnations when he regenerated; he'd thought they would, someday, after his first regeneration she'd witnessed, but she had adjusted quickly and hadn’t asked, so he hadn’t said.
“And?”
"My memories...Well, they're going to be his memories, too. When I die, I'll..." he tapped his head with his good hand. "Rejoin the rest of me. In his head. We've always been one being, him and me. I split off when the Sycorax cut my hand away from his body, but I didn't stop...being the Doctor."
He scrunched up his face, thinking about it further. "Well, I think, anyway. There's...not really any documentation on what happens to a metacrisis. Very rare. But that’s what I think will happen. That's the afterlife I've always...expected. Do you understand?"
"Oh." She paused. "So, he'll know...everything. About this life. Like how ten knew everything about how we met as nine."
Clever girl, his Rose.
"Yes. He’ll know. All of it. Not just your time with Ninth us or Tenth us, but the whole ride, me included. So if or when you go back, he'll...understand everything. He’ll have experienced every bit of our story in my memories.”
She nodded and squeezed his non-bandaged hand; it hurt, but he didn’t let go. "That's the afterlife I've assumed, anyway. Reintegration. Big cosmic bickering session in my head. Like a family reunion, but worse.” He grinned. “But there’s other options. Maybe I'll just disappear into the ether, or find out which of your many human belief systems is right. Or maybe I'll just haunt you."
He stuck out his tongue, trying to tease her, and she smiled, but she didn't laugh. "I've done the homework to be a proper ghost, too, thanks to our pal Charlie. Rattle your chains, rearrange your cupboards. Turn your doorknockers into one of my faces and leer suggestively at you."
She rolled her eyes and smiled, even if she didn't laugh.
A smile was progress enough.
"Point is, Rose Tyler, you'll never lose me. Not really. I'll live on in your memories, and in the good things we'll have done together.”
Her chin wobbled.
“Whether I’m there or not, you'll still get a card from the Sandersons every holiday," he said, referencing the refugee family from Vachiphus Prime that they'd helped relocate to Brighton. “And each and every one will still be a glitter bomb.”
She shook her head; she’d loved that job. He’d seen her carry two little Vachiphusians down to get their first glimpse of the ocean; one of his favorite memories of her.
“Or, if you miss me, you can walk through Torchwood’s ridiculously successful alien flora division. Can you believe we were good at gardening? Us? Two adrenaline junkies? Never would have discovered my green thumb without you.”
“’S not the same,” she muttered; stubborn.
"Well, if you really miss me, you can mix up some of my patented banana curry pudding recipe." That had been one of his first human culinary creations, and one of his best.
She winced, but he grinned; he thought of how she'd watched him lick the spoon and the unmistakable look of heat that had flared in her belly at the sight—he hadn't needed to be a time lord to see her interest then. “My masterwork, that,” he mumbled.
He didn’t necessarily mean the pudding.
“The problem is… I don't want just memories," she mumbled, and squeezed his hand again. "And... I mean..." She paused, seemingly conflicted. "That afterlife is comforting for you, but…I can't follow you into his head. For me, our story would just...be over." She squeezed his hand. "And I know it always ends. I do. But..."
He frowned, staring at her. Of course it ended. Everything ended. They were always going to end, whether in the everlasting life-span of his timelord body or the relatively tiny one of his human one. Everything ended. Civilizations. Stars. Time Lords themselves.
Sometimes, he wished he understood better, that he was a touch more human. All his wiring had been built for another life and this life—this precious, homunculus life—at times, he understood it not at all. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, unsure of what to say.
"I've been thinking about something," she muttered. "I've been thinking about it for a while."
"Okay," he said, but his mind whirred faster than the TARDIS ever had. He was not a human male, not entirely, but he was human male enough to know a woman saying I’ve been thinking about something was dangerous ground.
Rose looked away, gathering up her courage, and his heart dropped. Perhaps she was regretting it now; regretting and rejecting him, this all too delicate him, this alien brain trapped in an all-too-human body.
Fear gripped his mind, and he thought: strange. The lorry accident didn't scare him. Becoming a human hadn't scared him.
But the notion of Rose Tyler choosing to leave him—oh, that he feared. That he feared very much. His breathing grew shallow, and he hated it, how little control he had over his respiratory system now.
"Been thinking, you know...about memories...and what'll live on, after we're..." She faded off again, and his heart, despite his recent injuries at the hands of a particularly desperate lorry driver, managed to leap well into his throat all the same. His heart barely seemed to know it had taken a tumble.
"Rose," he said, his voice soft. "If this is because today was a shock, we don't need to make any big, life-changing decisions right now. Think clearly, you know. We're both rattled. Might even be concussed, me, and I've read humans should never make any big decisions on a concussed mind. No buying time shares, no committing to which family members we’ll see at Christmas, no…no walking away." It was a desperate bid to keep her longer. He had no doubt she would see through it but he prayed to every god he could think of the name of and even a few he could not that she would stay.
He wouldn't know what to do without her.
And he didn't have the endless years the time lord version of him had to try to figure out how to live without her.
"I want to have a baby." She blurted out.
He paused.
Rose paused.
The world paused.
For one impossible moment, the Doctor felt the entire world around him winnow to a singular point of contact: Rose Tyler looking at him, with a complex number of emotions framing her face, those big doe eyes silently looking to him for his answer. He could see nothing else, just her: just his bad wolf girl, his pink and yellow girl, blurting out that not only did she fancy him enough to marry him, ta, but also evidently wanted to become the mother of his child. Maybe children? She wanted to have a baby. With him. A hybrid child, half her and half him and all theirs.
"Oh," he said, and the world expanded to the whirring and the humming and the antiseptic scent and bright white popcorn ceiling, his senses enduring a big bang as potent as the galaxies of black eyeliner that pooled under her eyes. "Oooh!"
He seemed unable to say anything else. "Oh!" His mouth uttered again. Finally, he got out: "That's not a small thought, there, Rose."
"Yeah," she muttered, looking down. "I know you've been a dad before. And I understand if you're...past that, you know, or you just...don't want to. Again. With me. I get it. I do. It's alright. I don't need it. But..."
"I was a father as a Time Lord," he muttered. "Different. Entire species development is...different. Less three in the morning feedings and midnight nappy changes, more looming desired characteristics and sending them off to academy to study with the occasional stern lecture about destiny and meddling in time streams. Human babies are...sticky. Helpless. Loud. Significantly less likely to quote vorgon love poetry at you as a toddler."
He looked at her, and tried to imagine it: the three AM feedings, the temper tantrums, the thought of Rose walking hand in hand with a little sunshine child that would smile just like her, and what he felt in his chest—that was not a no. It was an expansion; a big bang that said yes in a thousand different spiral arms and milky ways.
"Oh Rose," he rasped. "You've got galaxies in you, you do."
"...What?" She blinked. "Is that a yes or a no or a try again later?"
"Romantic attempt at phrasing," he muttered. "Clearly didn't work."
She smiled, but he could tell she was still waiting for an answer.
"And as far as the answer to your question..." He huffed. "Well. I did just get hit by a lorry. I still think it's best we wait before we make any multiple decade commitments. But...It's not a no, Rose Tyler. Definitely not a no."
She did laugh at that, and he patted the bed next to him.
"You sure?" She shook her head. "You got hit by a lorry. Don't need to get taken out by an overenthusiastic Rose Tyler, too."
"Oh, your thorns were never too prickly." He grinned, but it hurt. "But I am a doctor, you know. And my medical advice for myself is...Hold Rose Tyler's hand. Worked out for me so far."
That won her over.
Her warmth as she climbed up on the bed next to him was glorious, and even with an arm in a cast and several diodes on his chest beeping out his vitals, he felt himself relax as she leaned against him. He wasn't a time lord, not anymore, and his sight was so much less attuned than it had been. At times, he mourned it.
But today, thankful to be alive in a too-bright hospital room with a woman who burned in his heart as bright as a star, for a moment—he swore he had a bit of the old vision. Swore he could see their timelines as they intermingled, knotting together over and over again. It was probably his imagination, or perhaps a bit of the accident jarring his senses, making his brain think he could see things he could not any longer.
But he hoped it was a portent of the future, none the less, as he saw a new potential thread of life bud off from their own: bright, golden, and terrifying in its fragility.
But beautiful, that potential future.
In all his many lives, he was quite sure: he'd never seen anything so delicate and beautiful.
