The TARDIS Tales

Run Again (Eleven/Rose)

This one is dedicated to my friend Maquita because she asked me to write an Eleven/Rose one shot long time ago. I hope you liked it, too.

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And as the Ponds walk into their house and the Doctor walks around the console of the TARDIS ready to jump into a new journey, he starts thinking. He will miss the Ponds, he always misses them when they are not with him, as he misses every other special human he has had the privilege to meet. So many lives that he has touched. So many lives he has ruined. So many lives that have touched him. But of them all, there is one person he misses more than any other.

Every companion is important for him, he remembers every single one of them very dearly but there is this one little human who touched him like no one ever did before. Someone who fixed him when he thought he was broken for good.

Rose.

She is the one whom he misses the most. She is the one who saved him when he needed it. She is the one who taught him to live again, to enjoy again. She is the one whom even the TARDIS misses every single day. No matter how many centuries pass, she will always be present in his thoughts.

He can be immersed in so many adventures and no one can see how much he misses her, but he does. He might try not to think of her, but she is there, in some place of his mind, all the time.

Every time he is alone in the TARDIS, after he drops the Ponds in their home because they have a life… a life he does not share, he thinks of her. Is she fine? Does she miss him too? Probably she is dead, probably she lived her life to the fullest, but… did she think of him during that time? Was she happy?

This day, more than any other day, his hearts ache at that thought. It always hurts to think of her, but this day it hurts even more.

He takes a seat, hoping everything will be fine after a few seconds. The TARDIS will take him where he is needed, he does not need to care. He closes his eyes as his beloved time machine travels through the Vortex and his mind is filled with memories of all the places he and Rose visited together, all those places where he learnt to know her. Places he cannot visit anymore because it hurts too much.

And the calm that reigned in the TARDIS until that moment stops, chaos replaces it. Everything moves and he rushes to the console, trying to know what is happening but he can barely get a hold. The movement is so fierce he flies across the TARDIS hitting one of pillars in the room. He slides to the floor without the strength to stand up again.

Where is the TARDIS taking him? What is happening?

And before he can formulate another question, everything stops and the peace in the TARDIS is restored. He stands up ready to go to the console to know where he is, but the doors of his time machine open showing a beach.

A very familiar beach.

No. He cannot be there. It is impossible. Yet his eyes do not betray him, the smell, the scent is the one from that beach.

Bad Wolf Bay.

Slightly trembling, he steps outside the TARDIS and almost without him noticing, the doors close again as he walks farther. He does not understand how it is possible, how his TARDIS could have brought him there after all this time. With what purpose? She cannot be there anymore. Too many years have passed for him, surely so it has happened for her.

But as he keeps walking, led by some force he cannot understand, he sees a silhouette in the distance. A feminine silhouette that looks painfully familiar.

He should stop. He should go back to the TARDIS and try to fix everything right now, but his feet keep moving closer to the silhouette until he can recognise her. The blonde hair that now is longer. The adorable features of that profile. The way the wind blows her hair.

It is she. It is Rose.

As if she could feel him, she turns around and she looks exactly like when he left her that last day. Not a year older. He has changed, but she has not.

Her hazel eyes look into his soul trying to recognise him, but he is not the same man she last saw. However, she does. Somehow, she does recognise him.

“Doctor?” She whispers as her eyes are filled with surprise and so much happiness. “Is that you? Is it finally you?”

“Rose,” he mumbles not quite believing what is happening.

She smiles, that big and bright smile so typical of her and that he has missed so much. Then she laughs as she starts running towards him but stops a few feet away. “It’s you. It’s finally you!” She exclaims deliriously happy. “You came back.”

“I don’t know how this is possible, but I’m here and so are you and–”

“I knew she was going to bring you back. I knew it,” she cuts him off, still smiling.

“You look the same,” he says softly looking into her hazel eyes, still impressed for everything.

“You don’t,” she replies laughing. “But it’s you anyways. Under this new face, it’s you and it’s all I care about.” Her eyes are still locked onto his. “I don’t age. Not anymore. I can’t age. Everyone else did, but not me.”

He takes a few seconds to process all the implications of her statement. She is alone. She cannot age. Maybe many years have passes and she has been alone all this time. But now he is there with her, his TARDIS brought him to her because that was where he was needed the most. And because he needed it as well.

He sticks out his hand, offering it to her. Rose looks at it as her smile grows bigger. “Before we go… can you, please, finish what you were gonna tell me that day? I need to hear it from you. Please,” she begs and he knows perfectly what she means. He has been regretting not having told her in that moment all this time. And when he had a second chance, he failed to tell her again. Well, it is not going to happen a third time.

“Rose Tyler,” he starts boring into her soul. “I love you,” he finally lets out the words that have been haunting him for centuries now.

She smiles, her eyes shining as she finally takes his hand. She does not say it back, but he knows it, he can see it in her eyes. As he does, she still loves him no matter how many years have passed.

After that, he says one thing. One word. The same word that tied their lives together as he squeezes her hand, tangling their fingers together.

“Run.”