Work Text:
Every universe is cruel in its own way. Some have inventors dying before their time or wars that tear planets apart. Some have both and then some. This universe was even worse than most.
In the entire history of universe 13.712, there was not a single humanoid who did not have, on the heel of their left foot, a mark. This mark varied depending on the culture, but it always had something to do with the person’s soulmate. Some places had names written, other places had no writing system and instead there was a crude picture of a face. A long, long time ago someone from a happier universe had fallen through the void. He hadn’t stayed long, but he had asked why soulmates weren’t a good thing.
“Just because they are your soulmate, doesn’t mean you are theirs,” was the answer. The man who had asked had looked at the answering man questioningly. The man’s young eyes had been unbearingly old and sad as he continued, “The lucky ones don’t ever meet their soulmate.” Then the man had sent the adventurer back to his own universe and trudged back to his TARDIS, where he put on a smile and started rambling to the three travellers waiting for him.
This was true. If Alice’s soulmate was Joe, Joe’s soulmate could easily be Mary or Susie or Greg. And, to make matters worse, Greg, Susie and Mary might all also have Joe’s name on their heel. But, naturally, Joe could only have one of their names on his foot. This was all a recipe for disaster and there were many ways that people dealt with the potential heartbreak.
One of the most common responses was to go searching for the person the name belonged to. Humans made movie after movie about the Soulmate Search, but those tended to be romanticised. People who went looking were no more likely to find their soulmate than someone who didn’t.
Others actively avoided running into the person. These people usually ended up lonely, but they certainly avoided falling in love with someone only to see them die.
Of course, others wanted to speed up the dying process. The Master was notorious for this. Some historians claimed that most serial killers and mass murderers and genocidal people were all trying to avoid heartbreak. Heartbreak isn’t an excuse for murder, but that didn’t stop people.
Probably the happiest humanoids in the universe were the ones who did nothing and went about their life. If they met their soulmate, they were happy. If they never did, they were still happy.
Theta Sigma was only a century old, but he had long understood what the words on his foot meant. Heartbreak. Humans and Gallifreyans were too different for a relationship like that to work out. This woman, this Rose Marion Tyler, would die after only living for a few decades, while he would live for centuries longer.
He might have asked what to do about this, but interspecies relationships were strictly frowned upon. If one of the higher-up Time Lords found out, he would never be allowed to graduate from the Academy. So he kept his shoes on whenever possible and stayed grateful that talking about soulmates was also strictly frowned upon.
The Doctor had been shocked the first time he went to Earth. People were so… so blatant about their soulmates. Talking about it! Walking around without shoes! Bragging! Did they have no sense of decency?
He never really planned to go to Earth, but it always happened anyway. First it was because Susan wanted to see the humans before they started adventuring space. Then it was those two teachers. Then it was Vicky and Ben and Polly and Jamie and getting banished.
That was all behind him now. Now his companion was another Gallifreyan, someone who knew about Gallifreyan customs and decencies. Having Romana around was nice because, no matter how much he liked Sarah Jane, her glances at the circular writing in the TARDIS always made him nervous. Especially when she looked at him in certain ways.
All did not go to plan, and the Doctor kept ending up on Earth even when he didn’t have a companion who lived there. It was during an unfortunate trip to some small asteroid that landed him and Romana in jail that he found out something.
Romana, wearing a thin but opaque prison dress, sat opposite him in the cell. He wore a pair of trousers made from the same material. As they sat and quietly discussed escape plans, Romana’s bare foot moved and he got a glimpse at the small circles inscribed there.
“Oh,” he said. She looked down, made a haughty noise, and moved her foot so he could no longer see it.
“You act like this is a surprise,” she said. “I cannot possibly be the only one of your acquaintances-”
“Well, no, but… you…”
“Yes. Why did you think I was chosen? Besides my intelligence, I mean. The White Guardian decided I was the Gallifreyan least likely to kill you.”
“That’s worrying.” He was still confused. Why was Romana so nonchalant about this?
“Who’s your soulmate, then?” Romana asked. He looked askance at her. “It’s only fair, Doctor.” She grabbed his leg before he could protest and looked at his heel. “Oh.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. She released his leg and looked at him.
“Is this why we end up on Earth so often?”
“Heavens, no. I’ve never met her. I’m not planning on doing so, either.”
“Why not?”
“She’s clearly a human,” the Doctor said. “They hardly live at all before they die.”
“So you’re never going to meet her?” Romana asked. He nodded in agreement. “Why don’t you just wait until your last body to meet her? Then it won’t be as bad.”
“But then we’ll have a ridiculously large age gap,” the Doctor argued. “Though, at the rate I’m currently going through bodies… why are you so calm about this, Romana?”
“I’ve known your soulmate wasn’t Gallifreyan for a long time, Doctor,” she said. “You act like you’re running away, but you could never resist knowing what made that person so special. You’d look for her.”
“I’m not searching for her.”
“If you say so.”
He was in his eighth body now. For most Gallifreyans that would make him well over a millennium old. But, being the Doctor, he had lived barely eight centuries.
His memory was slowly but surely returning. There was something about the name on his foot that made him worried. He spent a lot of time thinking about this person, he could tell. But why? She was his soulmate, right. Why would that make him worried?
The Doctor, who had somehow ended up in some cheap human café, looked down at the holo-computer he sat in front of. “Search for Rose Tyler,” he told it. An android waiter brought him a drink as he looked at the results.
Rose Tyler: decea s- “Turn off,” he told the holo-computer.
There was a war.
He grabbed the girl’s hand. “Run,” he said. They fled the mannequins and dashed for the lift doors. After being questioned by the, honestly very clever, blonde he introduced himself. “I’m the Doctor, by the way. What’s your name?”
“Rose,” she answered. One of his hearts stopped. Only there wasn’t any time for panicking and what were the chances that she was the Rose anyway so he shooed her away and blew up the building and managed to survive and somehow ended up staring at the girl through a cat-flap because of course the signal led to her. She let (forced, to be more accurate) him in and he wandered through the flat, looking at the various things and making remarks as she ignored him.
“Rose Tyler,” he read off an envelope. Oh. Oh no. He played it off just in case she was listening and looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in this body. Not too bad, could be better though. He looked so old compared to her! Not that that was an issue, of course, because he didn’t care how old she was. She had to be the wrong Rose Tyler. There must be millions in the universe. There’s no way he of all people would meet his soulmate accidentally and there was certainly no way his soulmate would be some girl from before humans had even discovered aliens.
(But, if she was, she did feel rather nice on top of him even if there was a plastic arm in the way.)
A while later, after defeating the Nestene and saving Earth, he decided that this Rose Tyler, whether or not she was his Rose Tyler, was clever enough that he should ask her along for a ride. So he did, but she refused. Her reasons were valid enough, but he still found himself coming back after only a brief, lonely, adventure and asking again. This time she said yes and, though he wouldn’t admit it, his world brightened.
He found her full name out easily enough and she was indeed Rose Marion Tyler. This didn’t surprise him. And when she looked at the Circular Gallifreyan scribbled on post-it notes with wide eyes hope swelled in his chest. Had be been one of the lucky ones? The ones whose soulmate matched? It was too good to be true.
Even though they clearly were each others soulmate, the Doctor, and Rose too, was too scared to do anything. They flirted, sure, but that was it. After he regenerated he was sure there was no way she could trust him enough for their relationship to go anywhere. He was wrong. This new, younger, body enjoyed flirting with Rose more than before and he loved touching her too.
“Doctor?” Rose said after an adventure to a pretty planet covered in flowers (some of which happened to have sharp teeth, unfortunately). He looked up from the console.
“Yeah?”
“I… why don’t we do anything?”
“What do you mean? We do stuff all the time.”
“No, I mean about us. We flirt all the time, but that’s it. Is our relationship ever gonna go anywhere or,” she looked terrified as she continued, “or is that all we’re ever gonna do?”
“Do you want more?”
“It doesn’t matter what I want. If flirting’s all you’ll ever be comfortable with, that’s fine, but at least tell me.”
“Rose, I,” he swallowed, “I want more than flirting. Really. But I’m an alien hundreds of years older than you. You should be with-”
“What, someone my own age? Mickey? I don’t want him or anyone else but you!” Now with determination flaming in her eyes, she marched up to him and pulled his head down for a kiss. And oh it was glorious. One hand came up to cup her head while the other went to settle on her waist. She made a sound into his mouth and pulled him closer.
They didn’t have sex right then, not when they had only just progressed past flirting, but the heated looks Rose gave him grew even more frequent and were often followed by a passionate snog. A while, several weeks according to Rose’s sleep schedule, passed before he wound up half-naked on his back in her bed. He was trying to take her bra off, but she wasn’t making it easy on him by moving down his body to pull down his trousers. Although, having her down there was nice too…
She got his trousers (and pants!) off and rolled her eyes at him when she made it to his feet. “You’re still wearing socks?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “You were going to have sex while wearing socks?”
“I was going to take them off!” he protested as he sat up and pulled them off. “I was a bit distracted by someone taking her shirt off.” She stared at him, not looking at his feet. She was worried, almost. “What?”
“I dunno,” she said quietly. “Guess I’m just afraid to look.”
“Look at what?” he asked, and then it hit him. “Oh! No, don’t be afraid. See,” he said as he tried to lift his foot up to show her without kicking her in the face. She giggled and grabbed his ankle.
“Oh,” she said with a smile. “I hoped, but I didn’t think you’d really…”
“As if anyone else could possibly be my soulmate,” he said as he took her by surprise and rolled her underneath him. “And who are you to judge me for wearing socks when you haven’t even taken your boots off yet?” He made his way down her body, deciding not to unclasp her bra for fear of distracting himself, and unlaced her boots. He tugged them down, followed by her socks, and looked at her left heel so he could know once and for all that she belonged to him just as much as he belonged to her.
It wasn’t his name.
Some part of him died then, a large part, but an equally large part became focused on not letting Rose Tyler know that he wasn’t hers. What if she left? What if she got up and left and hated him for murdering her soulmate along with the rest of his people? She probably wouldn’t actually do that, but he couldn’t risk it. He grinned and crawled back up her body to kiss her.
He spent a long time researching the Gallifreyan archives, searching for some ‘noble human’ (what kind of name was that, anyway?) to figure out who Rose Tyler was destined to love. Why did he do this? Was it some kind of torture? And what would he do when he figured it out; would he show Rose the truth? No, he wouldn’t, would he? The Doctor was a coward, a selfish coward who would rather die than lose Rose Tyler.
He didn’t have a choice. He almost lost Rose to another universe with her father, but instead she lost Mickey. Part of him felt guilty. Another part of him assumed Rose was staying in her home universe because of her mother, not because of him. There started being signs that his time with Rose was limited and the Doctor grew more and more frantic. Would she object to being locked in the TARDIS for the rest of her life?
He was just about to implement his plan of tricking Rose into never leaving the TARDIS again (this plan involved a lot of sex and chips) when she asked to visit her mother. Sure, why not, he figured. So they did. There was a ghost problem, but he wasn’t too worried until he and Rose got separated. It was as if he had been standing under an umbrella only to have it yanked away leaving him stranded in the storm. He was going to lose Rose. Today.
As Rose let go of the handle to grab the lever one heart stopped. As her grip on the lever began to falter the other heart did too. He screamed her name and tried to reach her, but it was futile. She was going to die and he would watch her fall into the void, powerless to help.
He was just about to let go of his own handle, to follow her into death, when Pete appeared. He looked the Doctor in the eyes as he and Rose disappeared to the other universe. The void collapsed on itself. The Doctor was alone.
He spent several Earth months desperately trying to get Rose back, but in the end all he could do was have one final talk with her. It looked like she stood in the TARDIS with him, hair blown by some unfelt wind, but in reality she was so far away not even he could reach her.
“I… I love you,” she said with a sob. He realized that, somehow, they had never said those words to each other. That had to be remedied, even if this was the last thing he could ever do for her.
“Quite right, too,” he said. “And, I suppose, if it’s my last chance to say it, Rose Tyler-”
She faded away. No. NO! She couldn’t be gone, she couldn’t. He hadn’t even told her he loved her.
It’s a good thing the bride arrived when she did because the Doctor was about to tear apart the multiverse.
He liked Donna Noble, honestly. She was loud and rude and slapped him a lot, but he liked her. She made him take a step back and think about how he had been acting.
“Can’t believe I almost married him,” she said in the TARDIS after they had drained the Thames. “Don’t even have his name on my foot.”
“What, really?”
“Yeah, but I’ve never cared for that soulmate stuff. Why should some scribbles on your heel determine who you love?” He stared at her. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said and looked down. Donna was right. Romana hadn’t loved him even though he was her soulmate. Rose could love him even when he wasn’t hers. Maybe, just maybe, love and soulmates were different things.
He wasn’t planning on having another companion so soon, but Martha Jones came into his life and she was clever and kind and deserved to see more of the universe. It was only supposed to be one trip, but it ended up being more. He was glad that she didn’t seem fazed by the circles around the TARDIS, other than curiously wondering about them once or twice. They weren’t familiar to her, at least. The Doctor couldn’t handle being someone else’s soulmate.
Martha was definitely interested in him, though. He tried to let her down gently, but that wasn’t his strong suit. Finally he decided to be outright.
“So, who’s your soulmate?” he asked one day as they ate breakfast together. Her eyes widened.
“What?” she asked. He repeated himself and she shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It’s never done my family any good,” she said. “Mum and Dad are each other’s soulmates, but you’ve seen them. Why’d you ask, anyway?”
“I figured, you know, time machine. I could look up your soulmate and find them for you. But if it doesn’t matter to you…”
“I’ll find him in my own time, ta,” she said with a half-smile.
There was a bit of trouble with the Master (and Jack) shortly after that conversation, but after a long year that never happened the universe was saved by Martha Jones, who was very brilliant indeed, brilliant enough to leave the Doctor when she’d learned all she could from him.
Donna returned shortly after the Titanic fiasco. She and the Doctor went about the universe and had a great time, though the Doctor always felt like someone was watching him. More than once he had turned his head only to see an empty dead end and sometimes a blue shimmer as though someone had just teleported away.
He was setting the coordinates for a beach when he got a message on the psychic paper. It was rather strange. Maybe it was from the mysterious person that kept watching him? He didn’t know, and the only way to find out was by following the message and hoping for the best.
What had been a visit to the greatest library of all time turned out to be a disaster. A woman from his future, River, had called him there and ended up dying before his very eyes. She knew his name. He must have told her, either that or she knew Gallifreyan (it was obvious he was her soulmate and she could have read it off her foot if she knew the language). He was hoping for the latter because the only reason he would tell anyone his name would be if he was married to them. This River woman wasn’t his Rose, and Rose was the only person he could ever dream of marrying.
Donna came back from the computer and un-handcuffed him, and he helped her look for a man named Lee McAvoy. “That’s the name,” she told him. “The name on my heel. I met him in there. Don’t let him be some computer generated person. I couldn’t bear it.” Their search was fruitless, and they both went back to the TARDIS feeling empty inside.
A few adventures later Donna got trapped in a bubble universe. She came back talking about some woman in a blue jacket, some blonde woman who had told her two words.
“Bad Wolf,” Donna said. His eyes widened and he bolted from his seat. Rose. The marketplace was covered in her words, even the TARDIS was affected, and they rushed inside his ship. The Doctor started pressing buttons and yanking levers on the console, barely even noticing Donna in his determination to get back to Earth, where Rose would probably be. Eventually, Donna had enough of calling his name and smacked his shoulder.
“What, Donna? We don’t have time for-”
“Who was she?” she asked. “The woman? What do those words mean?” He stared at her silently, swallowing.
“Bad Wolf,” he repeated quietly. “Those are her words. The words she used to get back to me, to save me.”
“Who? The woman?” He nodded. “Who is she?” He didn’t answer, just stared at her until the pieces came together. “Rose?”
“Yeah.”
“Rose is back?” She said with wide eyes. “Your Rose?”
“Yes.” He slammed down a lever on the console and they spun through the vortex, almost crash-landing of Earth. He stumbled outside, half-expecting Rose to be waiting for him with open arms. She wasn’t.
When he got the message from Earth he had hoped and prayed to everything he had never believed in that it was Rose calling for him. When she wasn’t there, but the message was instead from Jack and Martha and Sarah Jane, he had to try as hard as he could not to let on to how disappointed he was. Another message from another non-Rose happened before he and Donna went to Earth and landed in front of a church.
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
He turned. There, in the distance, Rose. She had changed and carried a large gun, but she was still his Rose. He started to run for and she did the same, but he stopped in shock when he heard the Dalek. Jack was a second too late to save him from getting shot, but at least it didn’t hit Rose. She rushed for him and cradled his head.They exchanged words, none of them the things he really wanted to say, and then she and Donna dragged him into the TARDIS. He saved himself, not thinking anything of it when he directed the spare energy into his hand, and finally got to see Rose up close again. She was glorious and perfect even if she now carried a gun.
They walked out of the TARDIS, none of them even realizing Donna’s struggle until the doors slammed shut.
Things with the Daleks happened and the day was looking bleak until out of the TARDIS came… the Doctor. Wearing a blue suit and carrying some strange weapon that the Doctor (the one in brown) knew immediately wouldn’t work. The other Doctor went down, but Donna stepped in and saved the day. Then the metacrisis committed genocide (even if it was on the Daleks, it was still genocide) and didn’t even look upset about it.
The Doctor had been planning on letting the metacrisis off on some planet somewhere with a Vortex Manipulator or even a bit of TARDIS coral, but he realized with a sharp stab to his hearts that someone with the Doctor’s mind and a human’s emotional instability wouldn’t be able to face the universe alone. But he sure as hell couldn’t stay in the TARDIS.
As he pondered he chanced a look at Rose. His Rose. He’d realized some things while she’d been away and he was no longer so worried about lifespans and soulmates matching. Sure, he’d be crushed when she died, but they were going down that path anyway. There was no way he could lose her without dying inside. He might as well enjoy the time they had. But he would keep her safe. No one would stop him! He was meant to be with her, and her soulmate, whoever that noble human was
“Part Doctor, part Donna Noble,” he heard the metacrisis saying to Rose, who was looking up at him in interest. He looked straight at the Doctor. “Half Gallifreyan, half human.”
The Doctor had realized that Donna was a Noble human, of course, but it had never occurred to him that she would have anything to do with Rose’s soulmate. She was human and the words on Rose’s foot were clearly written by someone who knew Gallifreyan. That person would have to be a noble human and be Gallifreyan. The metacrisis.
“I need to speak to you,” the Doctor said quickly. The metacrisis nodded. “Doctor stuff, you know.” They walked off to a small corridor that the TARDIS then hid from the rest of the group.
“You’re her soulmate, aren’t you?” the Doctor said quietly. The metacrisis paused before nodding.
“I’m the only one who fits the bill. And her name’s on my foot.”
“You belong together.”
“You belong to her too.” They stared at each other silently. They couldn’t stay together on the TARDIS; he could barely stand himself when there was only one. And he couldn’t leave the metacrisis alone somewhere; he would come searching for Rose and that, from experience, wasn’t a fate the Doctor wished on anyone. Nor could he leave Rose with the metacrisis in this universe. She would never allow it and he doubted he had enough restraint to not come running back. No, there were few options, none of them good. The best one wasn’t too awful, so he told the metacrisis. He nodded.
“Rose won’t agree,” he warned.
“I’ll have to trick her,” the Doctor said miserably. “But this is a good idea, right? She’ll have her family and her soulmate.” The metacrisis didn’t answer. “Here,” the Doctor said suddenly. He sonicked off a bit of a nearby coral and threw it at the metacrisis.
“It’ll take thousands of years to-”
“This too.” He dug a water bottle out of his pocket. “Don’t drink this.”
“I forgot I had this,” the metacrisis said in awe. “With this it’ll only take, what, three years?”
“Give or take.”
They walked back to the console room and sent most of their friends, including Mickey, to Earth. Now it was time for the goodbye that would kill the Doctor.
They landed on the beach. Words on the tip of his tongue were replaced with harsher things meant to drive her away from him and toward the metacrisis. They kissed. For a few moments, such a small time but so eternal, she forgot about the two-hearted Doctor. He and Donna walked back to the TARDIS. He chanced one last look at his love. She would be better off in Pete’s World than she ever would be in his TARDIS.
So the Doctor did what he always did. He left her behind.