In My End Is My Beginning

[preserved_ginger]

Title: In my end is my beginning
Character(s): Ten, Rose, mentions of Jackie and alt!Pete
Pairing(s): Ten/Rose
Rating: PG-13
Setting: Doomsday
A/N: Set post-Doomsday but looking back at events therein, this ficlet examines the Doctor's motivation for sending Rose into the parallel universe. The title is from the motto (translated into English) of Mary, Queen of Scots: En ma fin est ma commencement. The italicised dialogue is all from the episode.
Disclaimer: Borrowed, without permission.
Summary: It had almost killed him to let her go.

It had almost killed him to let her go.

“I'm opening the Void, but only on this side. You'll be safe on that side.”

The Daleks and the Cybermen, two of his oldest and most powerful enemies both at once, had been the final straw; he hadn't been able to take it any longer. It had been the umpteenth time that he had almost got her killed. He hadn't been able to tolerate it, not any more – and so he'd decided that he had to let her go, with her mother and the man who was-but-wasn't her father, into that father's parallel universe.

He'd had so little time to think it through (no time at all, really) that his head had spun with the utter madness of his decision, but he hadn't cared. He'd not cared about anything much any more, by that stage, save the overwhelming psychological need that was over-ruling even his common sense - that she be kept safe from all harm.

He'd believed, at the time, that although the pain of letting her go (letting? No, there had been no “letting” involved; even that original half-thought-through decision to send her away from him had felt, to him, similar to how it must feel to have a limb amputated) would crucify him, he would gladly suffer it if he could keep her – the woman who had taught him to live, and love, again – away from mortal danger.

It had almost killed him to let her go.

“I've had a life with you for nineteen years. But then I met the Doctor and... all the things I've seen him do for me. For you. For all of us. For the whole... stupid planet and every planet out there. He does it alone, mum. But not any more. 'Cos now he's got me.”

He'd had to listen to her effectively telling her mother that she was going to stay behind, with him; had to listen to what was tantamount to a declaration that she loved him, when he had known all along what he was going to do; he had hoped that, one day, she'd forgive him for it. God knows it would have taken an age before he could have begun to forgive himself.

Even as he'd dropped the device around her neck, his mind had been howling at him to stop, howling at him to not be so stupid as to think this was going to solve anything; but he had over-ruled himself and done it anyway. For a few blessed minutes he'd been able to think of something else, had been able to come up with some kind of plan – but at the price of having to try to ignore the persistent screaming in his head. Worse than after Gallifrey, that screaming had been (still was, still was), and he'd never thought that possible.

Then again, he'd never thought – after the Time War and all the hellish painful emotional torture that that had brought him – that he'd ever be able to love again. He'd been wrong there, too; Rose had shown him that. Hell; for the longest time Rose had been the one thing, the one person, keeping him from finding a way of dying and then choosing not to regenerate (still was, still is; only the fact that she is alive out there, somewhere I might someday – somehow – be able to find her again, makes this damn existence worth the while); Rose – his steadfast, loyal Rose.

It had almost killed him to let her go.

“I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you.”

And after those few blessed minutes, when he was just beginning to get used to the loneliness that would characterise the rest of his existence, were over he had the shock of all his lives. She had come back. Stubborn to the last, and he had loved her – I love her – all the more for it, knowing that she had willingly given up everything for him. (He still remembers, even now, the stabs of painful, disbelieving joy that had all but swallowed him then; how he had almost started to believe in “for ever”.)

He had barely had time to process what this meant – was barely able to accept that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have to be alone any more – when he'd found himself shouting at her (almost screaming, in fact) about how, once the breach was sealed, she would never be able to see her mother again. Why he couldn't have let himself be happy that she loved him enough to come back, why he couldn't have seen what this meant, he will never know. His self-hatred had blinded him to so much, so much.

So much, that he had not been able to appreciate the gift the universe had given him until it was too late. “I'm never gonna leave you,” she'd said, yet he hadn't quite been able to let himself believe in it - or himself - enough to believe her.