Heart, Like Head, Leads Helplessly

[preserved_ginger]

Title: Heart, like head, leads helplessly
Rating: PG
Character(s): Rose. The Doctor (off-camera, but referred to throughout). An un-named character.
Pairing(s): Ten/Rose
Spoilers: Deals with that Season 4 spoiler, but only obliquely. If you know about Doomsday, you're golden.
Setting: The parallel universe.
A/N: This deals with the beginning of the way back. Unbeta-ed, so any and all mistakes are mine. The title (from the poem Should Lanterns Shine?), and the quote at the beginning of the fic (from the poem And Death Shall Have No Dominion), are both by Dylan Thomas.
Disclaimer: I'm neither Dylan Thomas nor the BBC.
Dedication: For requialexa
Summary: I promised him, didn't I?

“Though lovers be lost love shall not”

“What would you do, Rose, if you could go back? Would you go?”

I'd made my choice a long time ago, I'd told him, and I was never going to leave him. I'd stay with him for ever, I said; had Torchwood not messed with things they didn't understand, I'd be with him still.

Thinking about that too often brings the pain back as if it had happened yesterday, so I don't often travel down that road; it hurts too much. But if I could go back, if there was some way that I could return to him and keep those promises, as far as I ever could, would I? Could I?

“It's impossible, he said so.”

I remember that conversation very well indeed; too well, I think. The resigned defeat that swamped him, and the barely leashed agony that seemed burnt into his eyes, haunt my nightmares even now.

“And he's never been wrong, ever, in all the time you've known him?”

I, of all people, should know this, better than anyone - he's right more often than he's not, but even he's not perfect; not that I would ever have told him that! That “impossible” planet, for starters - he kept saying that was impossible even though the fact he was standing there saying it ought to have been enough to prove to him that it was anything but 'impossible'.

“Fair point.”

And I'll not get into remembering the whole business surrounding Madame de Pompadour, for what would be the point? Enough to remember that he came back to me; he never told me how he'd managed it, and I'm not about to wreck my head trying to figure out how!

“So, Rose, stop fudging the question. If you had the chance, what would you do?”

Time was, not so very long ago as all that, you'd not need to ask me that question. At the time, I'd burned any bridges holding me to my old life - my mother, my best friend, the man who is my father's doppelgänger; everything I'd ever wanted, I gave up for him.

I don't regret that choice. I'd do it again - for him - in a heartbeat, but it was a huge, huge thing for me to do.

And was he grateful? Was he hell. He spent some of the last moments we'd have together shouting at me, going on about how I'd never see my mother again (did he think I was so stupid I hadn't worked that out?)

And some things don't ever change; it took me mere seconds to make my decision. The easiest decision I've ever made, in some ways - and in others, the hardest. But the choice I made is the only one I could live with myself for making.

“What sort of question is that? I'd go back to him in a heartbeat; you know I would.”

I promised him, didn't I? I'd meant it, then; I mean it now, just as much. More. And if there's a chance, any chance at all, that I can go back to him? I'd have to be mad not to take it.

The others will be all right without me: Mum has Pete, and my baby sister Hope. Mickey has Jake. There's nothing here for me without him, there never was.

“Then I have good news for you.”

This can't be what I think it is, it can't be. Can it?

“What is it?”

Oh please, oh please.

“We think we've found a way back.”

Comments

[theorclair.livejournal.com]

*delurks*

Reading through your fic, I had to comment on this one. Dylan Thomas and Doctor Who in the same piece, yay! And two of my favorite poems of his as well. (Wish you could have worked the last line of "Should Lanterns Shine" in there, though...)

[bananasandroses.livejournal.com]

I like Thomas’ poetry (Do Not Go Gentle and Eli Jenkins’ Prayer being my most favourite). I’m not sure about the last line of Should Lanterns Shine in a fic, but never say never!