#cause didn’t he fix the mistake he made by surviving the unknowing? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chasingthecosmos · 4 years

Text

Three Hearts to Own

Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: G Pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Chapters: 3/10 Read on AO3 here.

A (sort of) season re-write centering around the Doctor’s touch telepathy and the many ways that it makes his life difficult while he attempts to move on from the loss of Rose Tyler. This work is based around Seasons 3 & 4 and the Tenth Doctor. It’s the final entry in the “A Hand to Hold” series, but it can also be read as a stand-alone. The first four or five chapters will just be short excerpts from the Doctor’s time away from Rose, but there will be a Journey’s End fix-it and a happily ever after at the end. Tags will be updated as I go. Chapters will vary in length.

Chapter Three: Martha (Part Three)

---------- Utopia, The Sound of Drums, & Last of the Time Lords ----------

When the TARDIS finally made visiting modern-day Cardiff a necessity, the Doctor begrudgingly agreed to go under the conditions that he would not - under any circumstances - step foot off of his ship. He would park the TARDIS and allow her exactly twenty seconds to soak up whatever rift energy she could get, but he would not so much as glance outside at the busy city streets that held far too many hurtful memories.

However, it seemed that Cardiff wasn't quite willing to just let the Doctor leave in peace, as the TARDIS suddenly lurched back into action and immediately hurled them into the end of the universe. When he finally stepped off of his ship and into the unknown, the Doctor scowled down at the unconscious form of Jack Harkness and wished that he could feel anything other than complete and utter disgust as he squinted against the man's unnatural, unending timelines. When the rogue time agent finally came gasping back to life before his very eyes, the Doctor had to fight very hard not to be sick. Jack's blatant flirting with Martha certainly did nothing to help the matter.

"You abandoned me." Jack hurled the accusation with all of the bitter frustration that the Doctor deserved, and he absorbed it in stride, simply adding it to the pile of regrets and bad decisions that he seemed to be hoarding in the empty space between his hearts lately.

"Just got to ask," Jack continued haltingly, "the Battle of Canary Wharf, I saw the list of the dead ... It said Rose Tyler ..."

And even though the Doctor didn't want to relive that day in his memory any more than he strictly had to, he seized upon the opportunity just to hear her name being spoken out loud once more and to talk about the one person who never left his thoughts for more than a single second at any point during the day.

"Oh, no! Sorry, she's alive!" the Doctor assured him eagerly.

"You're kidding," Jack breathed in happy disbelief.

"Parallel world, safe and sound," he continued excitedly, "and Mickey, and her mother!"

Jack embraced him then, and the Doctor returned the physical touch, even though it made his skin crawl. It really was good to see him again, even if it meant having to deal with the constant, stabbing headache that the other man caused in the space right between the Doctor's eyes.

The end of the universe ended up being nothing at all like he might have imagined, though - and it suddenly dawned on the Doctor that he really would never be done saving all of these people from this one, small planet on the outer edges of some obscure galaxy. No matter how far into the past or future that he went, it seemed that there were always, always humans who needed him - just never the one human who he needed.

The Doctor eagerly took up the opportunity for commiseration with Jack - the only other being who he had met in a long, long time who now understood the sting of eternity.

"The last thing I remember, back when I was mortal," Jack muttered distractedly as he worked hard to get the rocket back up and running so that the last few stragglers of humanity could escape to the unknowable land of Utopia, "I was facing three daleks - death by extermination. And then I came back to life. What happened?"

"Rose." The only answer to any question that ever really mattered. So simple, and yet so, so important.

"Everything she did was so human," the Doctor mused quietly. "She brought you back to life, but she couldn't control it - she brought you back forever. That's something, I suppose. The final act of the Time War was life."

"Do you think she could change me back?" Jack asked, fighting and failing to hide the desperation in his tone.

"I took the power out of her," the Doctor explained, his tone as flat and defeated as his own two hearts. "She's gone, Jack. She's not just living on a parallel world, she's trapped there. The walls have closed."

"I'm sorry," Jack whispered solemnly.

"Yeah," the Doctor agreed darkly. He was sorry, too. Sorry that he couldn't have done better - been better - for her. Sorry that he couldn't seem to find a way to fix any of their current problems. Sorry for every mistake in every timeline that had ever brought them all to this.

In the end, the humans were all saved (or, at the very least, they all made it off of the planet alive) and the Doctor was left stranded at the end of the universe with Martha, Jack, a blue alien woman, and an old professor with a fob watch that was horribly, terrifyingly familiar.

The Doctor felt the exact moment that the watch was opened and a new Time Lord consciousness suddenly exploded into life inside of his head (a horribly terrifyingly familiar Time Lord consciousness ...). The Doctor couldn't remember the last time that he had run so fast as he bolted back through the station in pursuit of that strange, small spark - his footsteps seeming to match the frantic, racing pulse of his hearts.

"Professor, are you there?" the Doctor cried out desperately as he pounded against the last locked door that separated him from the other man. "Please, I need to explain! Whatever you do, don't open that watch!"

But they both already knew that he was far, far too late - too late to stop it, and too late to save him ...

The Doctor heard the gunshot a second before he got the doors open, and he felt the explosion of pain like a blast to his own gut as he rushed into the room and immediately laid eyes on the figure of the professor, sprawled out on the ground before the Doctor's TARDIS and glaring up at him with barely-restrained contempt.

The Doctor had exactly three-point-five seconds to stare into the new face of one of his oldest friends (or was "enemy" a better description? The Doctor suspected that there wasn't really one word in any language in creation that would be able to describe their relationship accurately) before the professor slipped backwards through the doors of his ship and disappeared behind them, effectively locking the Doctor out.

He didn't lock him out of his thoughts, though, and the Doctor scrambled artlessly against the mind of the one man who he had thought that he would never, ever see again as he attempted to force him to see reason.

Please don't do this, he begged silently as he grabbed his sonic screwdriver and frantically attempted to unlock the TARDIS doors. Please, please, there's so much you don't know ...

"Let me in, let me in!" he called out desperately. "I'm begging you! Everything's changed! It's only the two of us, we're the only ones left! Just let me in!"

Just the two of us ... a familiar voice sneered in silent reply, his presence stinging and biting like ice as it crept through the Doctor's thoughts. Just like old times.

The Doctor watched in helpless resignation as regeneration energy exploded from the inside of the TARDIS and the additional Time Lord consciousness within his head flared bright and began to burn. After a moment, a new voice rang out over the ship's intercom systems and the Doctor stood frozen in terror as he listened to the other man's sinister threats.

"Just stop, just think!" the Doctor pleaded through the locked TARDIS doors. Don't do this. Please don't make it be this way, not again ...

"Use my name," the other man demanded ominously. You know I like it when you use my name, Doctor.

It had been so long - lifetimes since he had last seen him, spoken to him, felt him inside of his head ... The Doctor didn't know if he was glad or disappointed to know that out of all of the Time Lords that could have possibly escaped the Time War, it was just the two of them who had somehow managed to survive. Even here, at the very end of the universe, it seemed that it all came down to them.

"Master," the Doctor replied quietly. "I'm sorry." So sorry ... I wish now more than ever that I could change all that's happened ... I wish we could go back to the way things were ... I wish I could fix this ...

"Tough!" the Master barked back in reply as he roughly shoved the Doctor out of his head and prepared the TARDIS for departure - abandoning the Doctor and his companions at the end of the universe without any chance of escape.

Well, that was the Master's plan, anyway - luckily, the Doctor chose his friends well, and Jack still happened to have his old vortex manipulator on him, guaranteeing them safe (if not a bit bumpy) passage back to the present day.

Unfortunately, the Master still had a head start on them all, and it seemed that while the Doctor had been distracted with burying his own pain and dealing with his unexpected loss, his old friend had been hard at work in the early twenty-first-century, slowly infiltrating the British government and establishing himself as England's newest Prime Minister.

The Doctor watched in consternation as the Master sealed his plans to take over the earth with the announcement of peace talks with a series of floating, orb-like creatures who he called "the toclafane". The fake name instantly brought up unwelcome memories of childhood that the Doctor had thought he had managed to suppress long ago - which was probably the Master's intended effect, and likely the reason why he had picked it.

When the Doctor finally got the chance to speak with him again, the Master asked him about Gallifrey, just as he knew that he would - but for once, he found that he didn't mind divulging the details of all that he had witnessed during the Time War. Whatever else the Master was, he was a Time Lord first and foremost, and he deserved to know what had happened to their entire planet and race - what the Doctor had made happen.

The Doctor begged for him to see reason, to understand the full scope of what it meant to be the last of one's kind, but the Master ignored him just as he had always done in favor of seizing power and control rather than settling for coexistence and peace.

Later when the Doctor finally allowed himself to relay a small part of the Master's childhood history to Jack and Martha in an attempt to somehow explain their ... dynamic relationship, he found himself growing oddly nostalgic in a way that he hadn't in a very long time. He had spent centuries doing this dance with the Master, but everything was different now, and he found himself wondering if the two of them would be forced to bend and change with the times or if one or both of them would snap under the tremendous forces that were pressing in all around them.

When Jack finally revealed the true nature of his current work to them, the Doctor had to try very hard not to feel as though he had been betrayed by yet another person who he had considered to be a friend. The Torchwood symbol still made the Doctor physically nauseous, and he heated the fact that Jack was anywhere near it after all that he had witnessed at Canary Wharf. He eventually decided that what Jack got up to in his own time was his business, but the Doctor absolutely refused to allow the organization a second thought as he made use of their collected intel and then quickly moved on.

However, his desperation only continued to grow as he, Jack, and Martha boarded the sky ship that UNIT had dubbed the Valiant. He could feel the familiar tug of his sentient ship in the back of his mind the moment that they were all onboard, but the Doctor's hope for a happy reunion was quickly squandered as he finally found that old blue box again - or what was left of her, at least. The Master had cannibalized the TARDIS into a glowing red paradox machine that was bleeding time energy and making everything around her all wibbly and incoherent.

The Master - knowing or unknowingly - had taken the Doctor's last remaining comfort, the one constant that he had been permitted to keep ever since he had lost Gallifrey and every other Time Lord. The TARDIS had been there with him through the good, the bad, and the horrific - always there, singing in his head and reminding him that he had a home and a purpose that would never fail. Now, at long last, she was gone - twisted into something so backwards and unnatural that it hurt to even be within her walls.

However, despite all that the Master had done and all of the horrible pain that he had caused, the Doctor was still willing to give him one last chance at mercy - one last offer of redemption and a life outside of attempting to enslave others and rule over them. His old friend didn't make it easy, though, as he suddenly turned the toclafane on the people of the Valiant, and then the entire earth below. The Doctor watched in helpless horror as what was left of his TARDIS opened up a rift over the skies of planet Earth and began to spew forth billions upon billions of the deadly toclafane.

The Doctor knew immediately that there was nothing that he could do - not from his current position directly under the Master's thumb and trapped within the web of his evil plans, at least. So instead, he was forced to enlist the help of his companion, and he quietly gave Martha the tools and instructions that she would need in order to put an end to all of this on her own. The Doctor knew that he would have to wait a very long time before he saw her again, and that many people would have to die before he would be able to put the world below back to rights, but he had to hold on to the hope that somehow his impossible plan would work, and that Martha Jones would be strong enough and clever enough to see it through to completion.

In the end, the Doctor did what he always did, and he used the Master's plan against him - not with violence or with weapons, but with the same quiet, patient tactics that had managed to outlast the fire and heat of the Time War and continued to persevere, even now. That, and the combined thought of every single human being linked together through a telepathic field across the earth below.

Finally restored to his young appearance and glowing bright with the power of combined, telepathic thought, the Doctor embraced the Master without hesitation and whispered those three powerful, dangerous words that he had been waiting to tell him ever since he had first found the professor hiding at the end of the universe: "I forgive you." I always have and I always will - because now we're in this together, whether we like it or not.

With the paradox machine destroyed and the Master's plan for nuclear destruction foiled, the Doctor grabbed Martha and held on tight as time suddenly began to reverse and they found themselves caught up in the whirlwind that suddenly took over the entirety of the Valiant. He could sense her overwhelming amount of relief and gratitude that he had returned to her, though she conveniently seemed to have forgotten that it was him who had gotten them into this year-long mess and sent her away to begin with. The Doctor was an ageless being who could perceivably live for centuries more to come, but he wondered if that would ever be enough time to apologize to poor Martha for all that he had put her through.

He also wondered if it would be enough time to reason with the Master and restore their relationship back to what it always could have been. The Doctor had a brief, twenty-seven-second interval where he allowed himself to truly believe that it would be possible before a sudden gunshot rang out and startled them all into silence as the Master doubled over and then sank to the floor.

"Always the women," he groaned as the Doctor rushed forward and gathered him quickly into his arms. "Dying in your arms ... Happy now?"

"You're not dying, don't be stupid," the Doctor growled stubbornly. "It's only a bullet, just regenerate."

"No."

"Regenerate - just regenerate. Please," the Doctor begged helplessly. "Please, just regenerate, come on!"

"And spend the rest of my life imprisoned with you?" the Master sneered hatefully. Never, he added silently, taking joy in the pain that that single word inflicted on the Doctor's already-broken hearts. It was the exact opposite of the "forever" that Rose had promised him not so long ago, and he found that he was just as lost now as he was back then at how to respond.

"How about that?" the Master breathed, making sure that the Doctor felt every last spasm of pain that he was currently experiencing as he embraced the unknown and stubbornly refused to tap into the regeneration energy that was building within him, just waiting to be released. "I win."

When he finally closed his eyes and the Doctor felt his life force fade away into silence within his head, he felt the bitter, crushing sensation of loss and abandonment all over again. Somehow, it was even worse than it had been when he had lost Rose. It had never really been about his own happiness, after all - the Doctor had spent centuries preparing himself to die old and alone, it wasn't something that was new to him. But the Master's death signified the death of their entire species - again - and that one, great loss was just as crushing now as it had been when he had suddenly lost billions at the destruction of Gallifrey.

He cried aloud and mourned for his friend just as he had done for them all those years ago - just as he had never been able to do for Rose. There was no one else to grieve for him, after all - even if the Time Lords had still been around, he doubted that any of them would have mourned the Master's passing. So the Doctor did all that he could for his friend, making sure to send him off right and deal with his remains properly. He needed to go through the ritualistic process in order to know for sure that it was done, and that he was really the last one left - again.

Unfortunately, it seemed that he would have to return to his TARDIS alone once more, too. Jack was back to his Torchwood team (even though the Doctor had surprised them all by offering him the chance to return - what could he say? He was a desperate, hopeless man in need of familiarity and commiseration), and Martha was back to her family. He had to admit that he was proud of her, even though her goodbye stung more than he thought it would. She was stronger than him, in the end - she was able to realize when enough was enough and to not prolong the painful process of cutting ties just because she didn't have the strength to own up to her mistakes. Unlike the Doctor, she wasn't afraid of being alone.

He thanked her, because it was all that he could do - even though, in reality, they both knew that she deserved so, so much more. When he hugged her, he unabashedly soaked up the last moment of physical contact and stored it away in the empty space between his hearts for the long, lonely nights that he knew were waiting for him.

She left him with a kiss on the cheek, a cell phone in his hand, and instructions to return when she called for him. The Doctor smiled as he watched her go and wondered if he would ever be able to live up to the legacy of the incredible, amazing Martha Jones.

#doctor who #dw #fanfiction #fanfic #dw fanfic #dw fanfiction #doctor who fanfic #doctor who fanfiction #the doctor #rose tyler #tenth doctor #ten/rose #tenxrose #the doctor/rose #the doctorxrose

0 notes