Fic Commentary: You That Way; We This Way

[nonelvis]

By request for papilio_luna, commentary for "You That Way; We This Way."



The first thing I want to say is that "You That Way; We This Way" is not the original title for the story. Literally a couple days before I was going to send the final draft to platypus for review, I watched Kenneth Branagh's film of Love's Labour's Lost, and the last line immediately grabbed me as the right title. The original title still appears in this story as my little joke, because I couldn't let it go.

It isn't as though the Doctor intended to visit Rose and his duplicate. At least, that's what he tries to tell himself.

When he's managed to extinguish the smoke and sparks in the console room, and his ship finally lands, he finds himself in the centre of a tiny patch of lawn in front of a brownstone, a yellow porch light illuminating the darkness. And there's a familiar face waiting to greet him: his own.

"I thought it was you," his duplicate says. He taps his left temple. "Felt it up here. You know how weird that is? All that silence for three long years, then suddenly it's hello, what's this, oh, it's only you. Well, me. You understand."

"Sorry to be such a disappointment."

The other Doctor walks towards him, stretches out a hand to caress the side of the worn and battered blue box. He touches the ship with just the tips of his fingers first, then relaxes his palm against her, closing his eyes.

I seem to recall the early draft of this paragraph being much sparser. It got a lot more Doctor/TARDIS once I knew how the story had to end.

"She's still recovering from what she went through," he says. "How long has it been for you?"

"A few days," the Doctor replies. "We left the Medusa Cascade a second out of sync, you know. I was resynchronising it when the dimensional stabiliser overloaded ..."

"... opening a tunnel to the most recently entangled quantum object."

I couldn't write this story until I had sorted out how the Doctor got there, and resynchronizing the Medusa Cascade, still left a second out of time by the time "Journey's End" concludes, seemed like a good way to handwave the Doctor's appearance. Thank you, Rusty, for your consistent lack of attention to continuity.

"It wasn't deliberate."

"I know," the other man says. "Still, you shouldn't be here."

"No. I shouldn't."

"You should turn around and leave. Now."

"I probably should."

They mirror each other, hands wedged in pockets, trainers scuffing the wet grass.

"You want to come in?" the duplicate finally says.

The Doctor nods, hesitant, then follows himself inside the house.

* * *

The foyer is lined with stacks of boxes, each carefully marked with its contents. Kitchen utensils. Good vases #1 of 4. He notes boxes labelled more cryptically: Bits and bobs. Left-threaded stuff. Purple (encapsulated). Strange, seeing his handwriting in English instead of his native clockwork circles and gears.

"Moving in?" the Doctor asks. He rubs his fingertips over brown packing tape on Kitchen linens #1 of 2, smoothing out an air bubble. The foyer smells of fresh cardboard and sweat.

"Out, actually. Most of this is going into storage," his double replies. He stops suddenly before rounding the corner, startling the Doctor, who nearly trips over him and has to stabilise himself on Brown (in stasis). The double turns to face him.

The original title for this story was "Brown (in Stasis)," meant to refer to the brown-suited Ten not having fully come to terms with having left Rose with Handy. It was too subtle, though, and I think the new title works much better.

"She knows I went outside to check on a noise, but she doesn't know what it was. If you want to leave, I'll tell her it was the neighbour's spaniel on the loose again."

It would be easy to let him lie to Rose. It's always easy for him to lie.

Instead, the Doctor takes a deep breath. "No," he says, finally.

The duplicate bows his head slightly in acknowledgement and continues heading toward the kitchen.

"Rose?" he calls. "Rose, we have a visitor."

The voice that replies is muffled by a wall and the rushing sound of water spilling into a sink. "What? I can't hear you, I'm washing up. Hang on." The rushing noise stops, and the Doctor hears footsteps drawing closer.

My husband is always trying to have conversations with me while I'm doing dishes and he's in the other room. This never works.

Rose steps out from a doorway on the left, drying her hands on a checkered terrycloth towel. "What was that? I couldn't – oh."

"Hello, Rose," the Doctor says.

Slowly, Rose drops the towel on top of a nearby box. She looks quizzically at her Doctor, now leaning against the wall by the doorway, and he strokes her upper arm, steadying her.

Rose steps forward, places a warm palm still beaded with moisture on the visitor's chest, first on the left, then on the right. "Been a long time since I felt that," she says, ending with a sound that's part laugh, part sob.

The Doctor says nothing, just gathers her into his arms. He closes his eyes, and wonders whether his other self is watching them with acceptance or jealousy.

* * *

The duplicate slips away after kissing Rose on the forehead and telling her to come to bed when she's finished. She watches him disappear around the corner, then shifts her attention to the Doctor.

Sneaky, sneaky Handy, waiting for Rose to go back into the kitchen so he can make his move on the TARDIS.

"I'll go make us some tea," she says, padding back into the kitchen. The Doctor follows along behind and snoops through the largely empty cabinets while Rose plucks teabags from a stainless-steel tin, drops them into matching blue mugs, and pours water from the kettle she must have been heating before he arrived. The kitchen counters are bare except for a dishrack with a few dripping plates and bowls, and the refrigerator is criss-crossed with square outlines; demarcations of missing grocery lists and family photos, he supposes, mapping Rose's life with someone other than him.

"On the move, I see," he says brightly, accepting the mug Rose hands him. "Bought a new house?"

"Not quite," Rose replies. "Something a bit more mobile. But we can talk about that later. Why don't we sit down for a minute?"

There's a steeliness in Rose's gaze, the same determination he's seen so many times before when she's faced an adversary. It's rarely been directed at him, but when it has, his only choices have been to give in or walk away.

He sits down at the kitchen table, Rose taking a chair opposite him.

The edge in her voice when she begins to speak is unmistakeable.

"You left us here. You just left us, and you never bothered to ask whether this was what I wanted."

"He needed you, Rose."

"And I needed you." Her palms are flat and tense against the tabletop. "You didn't even tell me goodbye."

The Doctor stares down at his tea, swirling the mug until a miniature vortex appears in its centre.

Things that drive me nuts about fanfic, part 32,592: when people assume that the Doctor talks nonstop. No, he doesn't, especially when it comes to emotional conversations. There are a lot of silences, awkward pauses, and attempts to redirect the conversation entirely, and never any long declarations of love or heartfelt discussions about his feelings.

"He said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me," she continues, "but do you have any idea what a rubbish human you make? How hard it actually is to build a life with you?"

See nostalgia_lj's utterly brilliant "Notes on the Domestication of Birds" for a good demonstration of what Rose has just told Ten.

"He's still here. You must have worked things out."

"Never said we didn't. But all the signs, they were right there in front of me when you and I were together, and I was so blind – I was so young – I just didn't see them."

"Your own little perception filter."

"Something like that."

"Rose ... I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise. You can't help being you, and neither can he." She sighs. "He's as terrible a flirt as you are –"

"I'm not a flirt! I'm friendly. Gregarious, you could say. It's hardly my fault if you humans misinterpret my affability as a sexual overture."

"There's misinterpretation, and then there's the way he was chatting up the new blonde in Accounting, sitting on her desk, rearranging all her little stuffed animals."

"Is that a sexual overture in this universe? I lose track sometimes. Do you know, on Calliope Minor, they consider shaking hands a mating ritual? Got myself into some trouble there, I can tell you ..."

Rose rolls her eyes. "Don't be thick. You want the list of people you flirted with while I was travelling with you? We could be here a while."

"Rose," the Doctor says, quiet and measured, "even if I – he – was flirting, he wouldn't have been serious about it. Not now."

I didn't plan things this way, but in my head, "Fake Palindromes" takes place in the same continuity as this story, meaning the Doctor isn't nearly as right as he and Rose think he is. (Well, he's right that Handy wasn't serious about flirting ... but the consequences are another matter entirely.)

"I know. Doesn't always make it any easier, but I know."

"Good."

"There's more, of course," Rose continues. "We travelled as much as we could, but sometimes I'd wake up with a note on the pillow telling me he'd gone off on his own, somewhere like Ecuador, or Azerbaijan. Madagascar, once. No explanations, no apologies, just a phonecall I can barely hear and 'Hello, Rose, would you like a lemur?'"

"Lemurs are fascinating creatures, Rose. They're very social, surprisingly intelligent, and ..."

"I didn't want a lemur! I wanted him to not leave me behind. And even when he didn't, when Torchwood had us out in the field, he was as reckless as you are – kept leaping in to sacrifice himself until he wound up in hospital on life support. If he hadn't injured himself so badly on his own, I'd have put him in critical care myself for that stunt."

The Doctor swirls the mug again, then takes a swallow of tea, still hot and steaming. "Ah, but did it work? What he did?"

"Of course. But he could have died, and he wouldn't have regenerated."

Rose's hand is shaking, and there's a tremble in her voice. Her skin is cool and clammy when he covers her hand with his, but his touch seems to settle her, and she fixes him with that serious stare again.

"I've learned to live with it – all of it. But the worst thing is that he forgets sometimes. He forgets that he has to be careful. He knows we've only got so many years left together, but he's still him – he's still you."

He curls his fingers under her palm. After a moment, Rose squeezes his hand in response.

"Why didn't you tell me you were such a wanker before I said I'd stay with you forever?" she asks.

"Been waiting a while to say all this, have you?"

"Sort of."

"Duly noted, then. I'm a wanker, no matter which universe I'm in."

"That's much better. Thank you," Rose says. She sips her tea with a triumphant smile. "Now, are you going to tell me what you're doing here?"

The Doctor leans back into his chair, seeing how far it will tilt before falling over. "I happened to be in the neighbourhood, thought I'd check up on the two of you. Make sure everything was sunshine and flowers instead of blood, anger, and revenge."

"Really? So what you said about parallel universes being closed off, that was just a load of bollocks?"

"Well ..."

"Go on, I'm dying to hear this."

"What happened was more of ... a mistake? A happy accident? Call it that, a happy accident. A one-time, fortuitous coincidence in which I get to see you again and you express profound gratitude for the way I gave you a chance at a normal life with me."

"Normal? Normal?"

"I suppose the fine print might read 'as normal as I'm capable of.'"

"It might. Along with ..."

He scratches his ear. "'Warning: may turn out to be a wanker'?"

Rose starts giggling then, her laughter bubbling over him like a fizzy tonic. Even when she stops laughing, her eyes still sparkle. "I missed you. I don't even know how that's possible, when you've been right here with me all along, but I missed you."

"I'd like to think that even if you're living with my near-exact duplicate, I'm still uniquely myself."

"Uniquely full of yourself, you mean."

The Doctor's still tilting back in his chair, a self-satisfied grin on his face, until he feels the back legs begin to slide out from under him. He reaches for the tabletop to stop his fall, barely managing to right himself before complete disaster strikes.

"... and uniquely clumsy," Rose finishes.

"I meant to do that." He scoots in closer to the table's rim, closer to Rose. "Look, I really shouldn't – I can't stay. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Here. With him."

There's a long pause before Rose answers, a pause during which he can hear every beat of his hearts.

"Yeah," she says, at last. "I really am. And he's happy, too."

"Good," he replies. "That's it, then." He carefully pushes back the chair and stands up.

"Don't go yet. There's so much more I want to tell you."

"Is any of it going to involve another lecture?"

"No," Rose says, and walks around the table to stand next to him. She raises a hand to stroke his hair. "No more lectures."

Rose's hand slides to the back of his neck, drawing him down towards her, and she kisses him, gentle pressure against his lips that's a hair's breadth past friendly until the tip of her tongue emerges to taste him. Then suddenly the pressure deepens and he's kissing her back, every bit as hungrily as he'd seen himself kiss her on the beach.

When the kiss ends, Rose smooths down his hair, mussed from her fingers, and leans in close to his ear.

"In case you're still confused by the quaint human customs in this universe," she says, "that was a sexual overture."

This section is the oldest part of the story. I knew I wanted Rose to confront the Doctor about having left her behind, and other than the lemur dialogue (a very late addition), it's pretty much exactly as I wrote it in the first draft.

* * *

The Doctor halts at the foot of the stairs, looking up into the dark. Somewhere up there is his other self, waiting patiently for the woman he loves, the woman who has just spent the last ten minutes leaving tooth marks artfully tattooed across another man's neck.

Rose is two steps above him, her hand in his, drawing him forward.

"Come on," she says. "He won't mind. Honestly, I think he's expecting this sort of thing."

I've mentioned elsewhere that the original draft included a slightly longer explanation of why it was okay for Rose to bring Handy to bed – she and Handy had an open relationship. platypus found this unnecessary and distracting, and she was right. (Really, sex with two guys who look like David Tennant probably doesn't need an excuse.) I was surprised at how easy it was to remove the poly content; most of the dialogue here is untouched.

"'This sort of thing'? How often do you do this with two of me, Rose?"

She shrugs. "Well, there's this bloke down in R&D, got big ears and a Northern accent ..."

What I had really wanted to write when I first thought about this story was Nine/Ten/Ten/Rose. Since I realized pretty quickly this would be too hard, you end up with a Nine joke instead.

The Doctor's eyes go wide.

"I'm kidding! It's okay!" She seats herself on the next step up and reaches for his other hand, holding them both safe. "Really, it's fine. And after all ... he knows I might still fancy you a little bit."

A hint of the old swagger returns. "Only a little bit?" he asks, waggling his eyebrows.

She rises from the step just enough to brush her lips against his, her eyelashes fluttering as she teases him with her breath and a silky swipe of her tongue. "Come upstairs and find out for yourself," she whispers.

He touches the tip of his trainer against the stair tread, and pauses again.

But when Rose tugs him towards her, he follows.

* * *

Rose pushes the bedroom door open gently, leading the Doctor in with fingers clasped tightly, as if she's afraid he'll run.

The other Doctor is seated on the edge of the bed, hunched over with his back towards them. He rises to his feet quickly when they enter, nudging a small, white box under the bed with his heel.

Handy, continuing to be Man of Sneakiness. I was very careful to establish that 1) Rose does not see him leave the house; 2) at least ten minutes, and probably closer to fifteen or twenty, have passed since Rose last saw him; and 3) he has the box you'll see later in the story.

"I wasn't expecting a guest," he says, but the corner of his mouth turns upwards.

"You're such a bad liar sometimes," Rose replies, and releases the Doctor's hand so that she can walk over to the other him, drag a finger along the centre of his chest.

His arms slide around her waist, and after Rose wriggles around to rest her back against him, he leans down to nuzzle her neck. She curls one arm up to cradle his head, and uses the other to make a come-hither gesture to the Doctor.

He stands in front of Rose and gives her the same stare she'd been giving him down in the kitchen. She knows, she must know, that he's long past leaving, yet he can't stay either; he's stuck wobbling between two states, never reaching equilibrium.

I am such shit at writing metaphor. Read enough of my stories and you'll notice I don't have nearly enough of it. I worked hard to get the equilibrium image in here, because the scene needed a metaphor to hold it together, and also because I rather like the image.

"Rose," he says. "You have him. You don't need me."

His other self stops what he's doing and looks directly at him. "If you're trying to convince yourself you don't want to be here, we both know that's not true."

"Now, that's not playing fair, you using my thoughts against me."

"I can't really help it, can I?" He presses his lips against Rose's ear. "Want to know what he's going to say next? Ten quid says it's pissing and moaning about how whenever he meets himself, he's a pompous arse."

"I could have told him that," Rose says. "In fact, I think I did."

"Right, then, Doctor," says the Doctor. "What am I thinking now?"

The duplicate covers Rose's ears. "Rose, my love, I think you're too young to hear this."

"Enough, you two," says Rose, and the duplicate drops his hands. Rose reaches for the Doctor's tie and reels him in slowly. "You're right, yeah? I don't need you anymore. But I want you, just like I want him. That okay with you?"

Rose's face is close enough now that the Doctor wouldn't have to dip down more than a couple of inches to taste her, one swift flick of his tongue against the pink of her upper lip. Equilibrium wobbles further and further away.

"Yeah," he says. "That's okay."

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I cut a line at the end of this scene, because it sucked: "Rose tastes like tea, he thinks; like tea, and sugar, and desire." I don't know what I was thinking that the line even got as far as platypus seeing it.

* * *

He is too eager, and wants everything at once from Rose now that he can have her. She tells him to slow down even as he attempts to cover every inch of her body with kisses, inadvertently tickling her and causing squirms and giggles in the process. The laughter stops only when his lips reach the taut, tender skin at her groin, and he lets his tongue explore further down still, while his duplicate muffles Rose's gasps with his own kisses.

The Doctor releases Rose before she's ready, but the mournful noise she makes only lasts a moment; she recovers quickly, drawing him up towards her, rolling him onto his back, then sliding down upon him. She scrapes her nails across his chest, and he thrusts into her, groaning softly when Rose begins rocking against him. Her motions are smooth, unhurried; she takes a deep breath every time she presses forward, as if she's prepared to keep going for hours.

His other self kneels beside them, his mouth on Rose's breast, her hand moving back and forth along his cock. He pulls away for a moment, stopping to admire the peaked nipple he's left behind, then blows on it, making Rose shiver in delight. She smiles, breathing a little more quickly now, and pushes his head back down.

Every time Rose moves above the Doctor, another burst of sensations whirls through his body, sparkling along his limbs and fuzzing out the connections in his brain. Not enough, though, that he doesn't find himself trying not to frown at the sight of Rose and his double together, or aching for Rose's busy hand on him instead, her lips grazing the pulse point on his neck.

The paragraph above, as well as some other language in this scene, appears because platypus felt that what I had originally felt too detached. As usual in matters of porn, she was right, so you get more sex in this draft. You're welcome.

He bends his knees, bracing himself, and rolls his hips upwards. Rose rewards him with a moan. Another roll; another moan, harsher this time, and Rose's breathing quickens again. The Doctor grasps Rose's hips with his hands, holding her down, and she takes the cue, grinding against him and driving him closer to the edge himself.

The duplicate lifts his head from Rose's breast and moves to kiss her, cradling her cheek in his hand. The kiss is deep and rather wet, and at first does nothing to assuage the Doctor's burgeoning jealousy, but then something inside him shifts: he realises the other man looks happy. The emotions passing across that face he knows so well contain as much joy as they do lust.

It's beautiful, watching himself in love with Rose; watching Rose, still in love with him three years on, despite everything both of him have put her through.

He lets one hand fall from Rose's hip to the point where their bodies join, and suddenly she pulls away from the kiss, her face reddening as she starts to pant. She cries out sharply, shuddering atop him, the rhythm of her body and hands faltering on both men until she's still and quiet, her head bowed while she catches her breath.

When Rose finally resumes her pace, she's quicker this time, more urgent and focussed, eliciting even harder thrusts from the Doctor in return. And when she leans over him, tangling a hand in his hair and kissing him exactly the way she'd been kissing his other self, it's more than he can bear. His hips buck against her just one more time before he comes as well.

Rose sits up, a satisfied smile on her face. She moves her hand towards her other lover's cock, but the Doctor stops her, replacing her hand with his own.

The duplicate lies down next to him, giving the Doctor easier access to apply exactly the right pressure, rough and fast, just the way he knows he likes it. The other man grabs the Doctor's head, pulls him to his lips, moaning into his mouth as the Doctor's thumb swipes drops of liquid from the duplicate's cock, gently massaging it into the skin. He's thick and hard in the Doctor's hand, so tightly wound even the brushes of his lips against the Doctor's begin to stiffen.

The Doctor knows all it's going to take now. He slips his tongue into the other man's mouth, swiping it in circles as quickly as his hand is moving, and the duplicate climaxes, shaking, against Rose's thigh.

When the Doctor breaks apart from his other self, he sees Rose staring at them, fascinated. "That was lovely," she says, her voice soft and breathy. "Do that again for me."

Okay, I have quite a lot to say about what's just happened here, so bear with me for a moment.

prof_pangaea has some excellent comments here about fetishizing M/M sexuality, and that some Ten/Rose/Handy writers are writing that Ten/Handy is "strangely" erotic, as if the weird part were that it's two guys, not that it's Ten having sex with himself. Now, I haven't read every Ten/Handy/Rose fic out there, mostly because quite a lot of what I've seen is in incomplete chaptered form, and I don't read WIPs until they're complete. I can't and won't call out any authors specifically – my memory is bad enough that I don't remember seeing this trope in any stories – but that doesn't mean it's not there.

What I am going to do is apologize for committing this sin myself, though it was entirely unintentional. All I wanted to convey was that two guys who look like David Tennant = hot, and I think Rose would feel the same way. I don't think she'd necessarily feel the same way about any two guys having sex in front of her; she's specifically attracted to those two men. But that doesn't change the fact that I should have paid more attention to how I wrote this part of the scene, and I'm sorry I didn't.

The duplicate scoots over, reaches up, and grabs Rose to pull her, squealing and laughing, between himself and the Doctor. "Give us a few minutes, and maybe your patience will be rewarded."

"Waiting is boring," Rose replies, still laughing. She runs one foot up the Doctor's calf, the opposite hand caressing the other man's cheek.

"If you're that bored, Rose, I'm sure we can find a way to occupy you," the Doctor says, flipping onto his side to face her. "For starters, there's this ..."

His left hand drifts down from Rose's waist, cups her between her legs. Rose gasps.

"That seems to have got your attention," he says.

She gasps again a moment later, when the Doctor feels the other man's fingers graze his, then dip below them, across Rose's labia, sliding inside her. The duplicate fucks her with two fingers, setting a steady, relaxed pace the Doctor matches as he rubs increasingly narrow circles around Rose's clit. It doesn't take long before Rose is overwhelmed, moaning and shuddering and calling their name.

Slowly, gingerly, the duplicate removes his hand from Rose's cunt and rests it on her hipbone. The Doctor does the same, threading his fingers through the other man's hand.

They rest quietly, eyes closed, while Rose nestles between them and falls asleep.

* * *

His other self is first to break the silence.

"It's funny, the things you joke about that you never expect to come true. Like, 'Rose, what would you do if the other me found his way back here?'"

The Doctor chuckles softly, not wanting to wake Rose. "'Ménage à trois' was at the top of her list?"

IT'S ON TOP OF MINE. *ahem*

"To be honest, in her less forgiving moods, it was 'a slap and a lecture he'll never forget, no matter how many times he regenerates.'"

Which he deserves.

"All I got was the lecture, but that was plenty, thank you."

"Once," the duplicate murmurs, "once I must have done something terrible. I can't remember what it was – maybe I went on walkabout one too many times without leaving a note, maybe I winked at the wrong girl – but she said if you came back, she'd leave me here."

He pauses to press a kiss into Rose's hair. "She apologised as soon as she said it, but I've never forgotten."

The Doctor sighs. "I can't give her what you can."

"You won't. That's not the same. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Not about that, anyway."

The Doctor releases the other man's hand, folding his arm over his own chest protectively. "Go on, then," he says. "Out with it."

"See, the really funny thing about that question is that despite the fact that all three of us are lying here, Rose and I didn't have the same answer." The duplicate strokes Rose's arm gently with the back of his hand. "I told her I might just nick the TARDIS."

"You said what? You can't take my ship!" The Doctor bolts upright, the better to loom over his duplicate, who doesn't even have the graciousness to look intimidated.

"She's mine, too," he replies, his voice calm and cool. "You left us here, but you took her from me. You can't imagine how very, very quiet it is inside my head, because at least when the Time Lords died, you still had the TARDIS. I don't even have that."

Oh, Handy. I feel so awful for him, not having his oldest friend around. (More on this topic later.)

"You can't have her," the Doctor repeats. "You know she can't survive for long in this universe – in fact, I should be going." He swings his legs off the bed and stalks across the room in search of his clothes.

The duplicate continues, exasperated. "I said I might do it. I didn't say I would. Rose talked me out of it."

The Doctor is hopping into his socks and shoving his feet into his trainers when he hears a new voice, muted and raspy from sleep, begin to speak.

"You two arguing again?" Rose asks.

"Yes," says the Doctor.

"No," says his duplicate.

"Useless," mutters Rose. "You're both utterly useless."

IT WOULD HAPPEN JUST LIKE THIS.

The double plucks his pyjama bottoms from the floor and slides them on as he rises from the bed, placing a hand on the Doctor's shoulder.

"Calm down. I'm not taking the TARDIS," his other self says. "Well, not all of her. Just a few spare parts. Nothing you'd miss. Well, I did take most of the Brindallian yo-yos, and you can pick those up anywhere; I can't."

"Brindallian yo-yos?" the Doctor says, puzzled. "The ones with the flashing lights and the transtemporal looping ..."

"... and the pure monoyoonium casings. Best stuff in the galaxy for melting and forming into –"

"monoyoonium" is a tiny shout-out to a friend who helped me with another story. (Can't provide any more details without identifying him, unfortunately.)

"– dimensional and temporal control circuitry. You're building a time machine!" exclaims the Doctor. "That's brilliant!" He throws his arms around the other man, clapping him on the back.

It takes a moment longer for the penny to drop, and for the Doctor to pull out of the hug, suspicion returning to his eyes. "Hang on ... you took my yo-yos? From the TARDIS?"

"Like I said," the duplicate replies, "she's mine, too."

The Doctor's face tightens, and he clenches his teeth. "You broke into my ship."

"She let me in. That finger-clicking trick still works, by the way."

Thank you, Steven Moffat. After all, Handy wouldn't have a TARDIS key.

"You stole things from my ship!"

Rose is off the bed in a flash, pushing the men apart. "Stop it," she says, sharply, and shakes her head. "You two were doing so well."

"He –" they both start.

Rose pokes the Doctor in the chest. "You – shut it."

"And you," she says to the other Doctor, pushing him down on the bed and glaring at him. "I thought we discussed this!"

"Rose, I took spare parts, that's all. For him, it's just debris taking up closet space." He reaches for Rose's hand. "But it's enough for me to modify the engines on our ship. We won't be able to do much, probably just forwards and backwards by a couple hundred years, but it's something."

"Nothing on my ship is just debris," the Doctor snaps. "Everything I have is useful! Perhaps not immediately, but it's all useful."

I wanted to write "Bitch, plz" here instead but knew I couldn't get away with it.

"Oh, yes, every wire, every stray scrap of metal, I'm sure they're all indispensable." The duplicate reaches under the bed and extracts a small, white box. "Here's what I took," he says. "Have a look for yourself."

The box flaps are open, and it's full to the brim of what the Doctor reluctantly admits to himself is, in fact, debris. Ceramic knobs; multicoloured coils of wire and cabling; some ancient hand tools he'd forgotten he had, including two early sonic screwdriver prototypes; a bag of Brindallian yo-yos; and still more junk, dusty and worn, but serviceable.

"This is nothing to you," the duplicate says. "It's everything to us."

The Doctor looks over at him and Rose, their hands woven tightly together. "You said something about a ship," he says quietly.

"A Chula shuttlecraft crash-landed here about eighteen months ago, no survivors," says Rose. "The Doctor's been repairing it since then. We wanted to travel while we're still young enough to outrun anything chasing us."

"If you'd arrived a week later, we wouldn't have been here," the duplicate adds. "And we'd have missed our chance at this equipment; Brindallia's a long way away for our little ship."

"We'd all have missed our chance at lots of things," Rose says, and moves her other hand to the Doctor's chest. The warmth of her skin radiates outwards from her palm, across his body, deep into his hearts.

He covers her hand with his, and waits, silent, watching Rose and his other self.

He knows they're waiting for him, too.

* * *

"I'm sure it's in here somewhere," the Doctor says, rummaging through the T trunk in one of the console room's storage bays. "TARDIS manual – fat lot of good that's ever done me – tarot decks, spare trainers, tennis balls – souvenirs from the very first Wimbledon, Rose!"

He digs deeper in the trunk, reaching for a misshapen object that's fallen into the far corner. "Ah! Here we are."

The duplicate steps forward, and the Doctor presses a craggy, porous rock into his hand.

"TARDIS coral," he says. "A few pieces came loose when the Daleks knocked the old girl about in the Crucible. The TARDIS has already mended the gaps herself, so I don't know why I kept these."

Ah, the coral. If you've read my comments on this story before, you know I think the deleted scene with the coral is pretty dumb. But since "Rise of the Cybermen" establishes that the Doctor can use his internal entergy to keep TARDIS parts alive, there's no reason you can't extrapolate that to a piece of TARDIS coral. This fixes my major objection with Rusty's take on the scene: the coral can't possibly live much longer than Handy does, so there won't be a TARDIS left on her own for hundreds or potentially thousands of years after her pilot's death. See how logic works, Rusty?

"You thought they might be useful," says the duplicate, beginning to smile as he wraps his fingers around the coral. "I can feel her. It's like an echo, or a shadow – it's a little fuzzy around the edges, but I can feel her."

"Yes," the Doctor says. "I think that piece is small enough that it'll be able to feed off your internal energy. Just keep it close, and it'll be alive as long as you are."

The other Doctor lifts the coral to eye level, rotating it in his hands. It's bathed in the aqua tint of the TARDIS' light, and he maps every blue-shadowed crevice with his fingertips, his expression contemplative and serene.

At last, he closes his fist around the coral. "Thank you," he says. "I'll take good care of her."

He turns to Rose, leaning down to kiss her briefly. "I'm leaving you alone with him again," he says. "Go a little easier on him this time, okay?"

"I will," she promises.

The duplicate heads down the gangplank, juggling the coral. The doors swing shut behind him.

"He'll never let that out of his sight now," says Rose. "I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night with him cuddling it."

"I thought you didn't mind sharing?"

"Ah, funny man."

"All part of my irresistible charm."

"Must be," Rose says, and slides her arms around his waist. Her satin dressing gown against his clothes is slippery and tempting, and he tries not to let his hands drift below Rose's lower back.

"Are you gonna be okay?" she says, then starts to laugh. "I shouldn't even bother asking. I never get a straight answer out of either one of you when I ask that question."

"Rose, if I tell you I'm fine, I mean it. Or ... that I will be fine, anyway."

She sighs and presses her cheek against his chest. "He told me about Donna, you know. I'm really, really sorry."

And now I will shoehorn a Donna reference in, just to show I haven't forgotten her. I wish I'd had a better way to work this in; it still feels tacked-on to me.

"Yeah," he says. "Thanks."

"He still talks like her sometimes. And I think he was working on a cure, for a while. Never got anywhere, and even if it had, we didn't have any way of finding you."

"Still, nice of you to try."

They stand in silence for a moment, long enough that the Doctor begins to wonder if he should let go of the hug, but Rose is warm and snug against him, and he can't quite bring himself to pull away.

It's Rose who backs off a little bit, just enough to look him in the eye. "I'm leaving now," she says. "Because if I don't, I'm going to ask you to stay, or I'm going to ask you to bring us with you."

"You said yourself you don't need me anymore," he reminds her. "And you've got that ship, that brilliant ship of yours! The stars are out there waiting for the two of you."

"That's right; they are," she says, with that glowing smile that captivated him years before. "It's going to be wonderful, isn't it?"

"Yes," he says. "I think it will be."

This final scene is a little similar to the final scene of my story "Unpacking," but hopefully they're different enough that it doesn't seem like I'm plagiarizing myself. They feel different enough to me, anyway, and are both hopeful in totally different ways.

Comments

[platypus]

Things that drive me nuts about fanfic, part 32,592: when people assume that the Doctor talks nonstop. No, he doesn't, especially when it comes to emotional conversations. There are a lot of silences, awkward pauses, and attempts to redirect the conversation entirely, and never any long declarations of love or heartfelt discussions about his feelings.

YES. Of course, he sometimes babbles to avoid saying uncomfortable things, but when something very serious is on the table he tends to shut down. I've seen some fic writers make excellent use of a small concession in the actually-saying-meaningful-things department, but the point is understanding that a small concession is a huge thing from him. Much like my husband.

I didn't plan things this way, but in my head, "Fake Palindromes" takes place in the same continuity as this story

I had wondered; I figured they were at least consistent, if not intentionally related.

As usual in matters of porn, she was right

Ha. I guess this means I should take my vague feeling that the sex scene in my WIP isn't dirty enough seriously.

[nonelvis]

Much like my husband.

I think the trait is quite common with geek men, not that I would have any first-hand knowledge of this, no.

I guess this means I should take my vague feeling that the sex scene in my WIP isn't dirty enough seriously.

Is there such a thing as too dirty? If so, can you please send me a link?

[platypus]

Not "too dirty," maybe, but I've read gratuitously, boringly vulgar porn, and porn so detailed I could no longer visualize what was going on. I doubt I'm in danger of either, but if the whole point of this story is the sex I hope it pays off sufficiently.