preserved_ginger

Title: Encore Une Fois
Characters: Ten. Rose (off-camera).
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine (sadly).
Spoilers: Nary a one, if you’ve seen Doomsday
A/N: Straightforward angst this time, unfortunately. The title’s French, and loosely translates (if I remember right) to “once again”. Another story in the To Days To Come ’verse.
Summary: He might have known he would end up here.

He might have known he would end up here.

He’d not checked the co-ordinates when he’d landed (a softer landing than usual, which had seemed weird to him at the time but he’d ignored it), because today of all days he didn’t much care what awaited him. A wind-swept desolate beach had very much not been what he had in mind.

Particularly not this one.

He’d not seen this beach since that day a year ago – was it really so long ago? – when he’d sat here orbiting that supernova and wishing the impossible could be true. It had almost killed him to act his normal nonchalant self that day but, so badly had he wanted her to have a happy last memory of him, he’d pasted some class of smile on to his face and done it anyway. Afterwards he’d never wanted to see the place again, in either universe; he thought he’d made sure he’d deleted any co-ordinates that would ever lead to him landing anywhere near a Norwegian beach.

Yet obviously, he hadn’t; for here he was.

He was glad now that he’d practically forced Martha to go and spend a little time with her family; this was his own private agony, his time to wallow for a while in memories of Rose that were beyond precious. Memories of his beloved girl that he didn’t want to share with anybody.

He shivered slightly, despite not really feeling the cold. The humans had an expression for the feeling he had. “Someone walking over my grave”, Rose had called it. A species that knew nothing of regeneration, that thought that their one life was all there could be? Only natural that they’d believe in ghosts, because that way they could keep those they loved with them even after they died.

And he should know.

He had a ghost himself, if he was honest, that haunted his mind and his hearts and even his TARDIS. Problem there was that this “ghost” wasn’t dead. Or not literally, anyway. For all the likelihood that he’d ever see her again, though, she might as well be. The pain of that skewered him in ways he hadn’t thought possible.

He started to walk along the beach, listening to the wind whistling past and the sand crunching beneath his feet, trying to think about something else. But it was no use. He was never going to be able to be free of her in any meaningful sense – and, even if he wanted to be (which if he was honest with himself, a rare occurrence these days, he didn’t), he was never going to be able to manage it here. He could feel the tears pricking the back of his eyes and he closed them, throwing his head back and walking straight into the wind. That way he could blame any moistness on the weather.

He wouldn’t weep for her. He wouldn’t. To do that would be to give up all hope, and although he admitted it was unlikely he’d ever see her again he couldn’t give up on her. How could he do that, to either of them?

Then the memory resurfaced from where he’d buried it, deep in his mind, of her standing on a beach the mirror of this one and reaching towards his face with her hand. He’d had to stop her. Had had to warn her that although he looked real, he was only an image; he couldn’t bear the thought of watching what would happen – her hand sliding through the air – because he wasn’t physically there.

The wind went right through you on this beach. That would be why his eyes were watering so badly. Nothing to do with tears, nothing whatsoever.

And then the image of her telling him that she loved him resurfaced, too; so clearly that for a minute he thought he was hallucinating her stood right in front of him. The pain of having to listen to that confirmation of what he had always suspected, and not being able to act on it in any way, had been in a different league to what he’d suffered over Gallifrey. Different in the depth of it, and suitably exquisite in just how excruciating it had been.

“I love you,” she’d said, doing her best to verbalise what the two of them had been to each other because words were all she’d had.

“Quite right, too,” he’d said, and even now at this distance he can’t for the life of him figure out why he said that, why he hadn’t swallowed his pride and – just for once – done what had been expected of him. He’d known what she’d expected in return, he’d been just about to say it – expected or not, it didn’t make it any less true – when the connexion broke.

“Rose Tyler …” and he’d disappeared before he’d had the chance. He’d never forgive himself for that. And since he had still been able to see that beach, even though the link wasn’t strong enough any longer to project him through, he’d seen her disintegrate into a paroxysm of weeping. He’d been unable to comfort her in any way, and the scar from that experience remained with him.

The sob that shuddered through him shouldn’t have been the surprise it was. He’d bottled everything up, like he always did, after she’d … gone. Refused to deal with any of it because it hurt (and because if you’re always looking forward, then what’s the past but prologue?) He was always moving forward because he did not dare go back, did not dare see what damage he’d left behind. But he couldn’t get away from this, not when it followed him everywhere he went.

Another choking sob followed the first, and then more in quick succession. His legs didn’t seem to want to hold him up and he sank to his knees on the sand; he stayed there, buffeted by the wind, weeping inconsolably for what he had lost. She’d made him a whole person, had taught him to live again, after the mess he’d been in from the destruction of Gallifrey. He wept for all of that.

But most of all, he wept for the girl who had stolen his hearts and had taken them both with her when she’d left.