Rating: PG/PG-13
Fandom:: Doctor Who, 9th Doctor Era
Pairings: 9/Rose, Jack/Rose, 9/Jack
Spoilers: Up though 'The Doctor Dances'
Keywords: Angst, Character Study
Feedback: Do I really have to beg?
Summary: Time isn't always kind, even to one of it's supposed lords.
Disclaimer: I don't work for BBC. You do the math. The title is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 64.
Author's Note: I have no idea where this came from. It just popped into my head last night and wouldn't go away until I'd written it. It's just an angsty little character sketch that has nothing what so ever to do with my anything else I've written.
Special thanks to steviesun for the supper quick beta.
Time is against him.
Ever since Jack joined them he can't help but see it every day. It's not in the flirting, the winks, and the innuendoes. It's in the simple smiles and in the briefest, most innocent of touches. All the little things that indicate a friendship and honest regard growing between them. Each and every time he sees that they trust each other, it cuts him deeply.
He doesn't blame Jack, of course. How could the young man not take an interest in Rose? It was inevitable. And for all his bravado and flirtations, he genuinely cares. In all honesty the Doctor can't imagine how he'd ever managed a career as a con-artist. He has far too much of a heart.
The Doctor knows what it is to be cold, calculating, and ruthless. And he knows that Jack doesn't truly have it in him. It takes one to know one, as the human saying goes; and the Doctor recognises the lack of those qualities in him. Rose was right to trust Jack, even if it was for the wrong reasons. Because it was the things in Jack that weren't like the Doctor that made him worthy of her trust. The same things that will eventually make him worthy of her love as well.
Of course, she'd laugh if he told her that. She can't imagine that she will ever love Jack, not as anything more than a friend, a brother. But she will.
Strange to think that he could have Jack himself if he wanted him. He's attractive enough and if Rose hadn't been there he may have given it some thought. Jack offers only uncomplicated release and it's been so very long. But Rose wouldn't understand. Love and sex are far too intertwined for her. She wouldn't understand what it was that was really happening and it would hurt her that he'd turned to Jack and not to her. The simple need for relief, for someone warm when you've been cold for so long...
Sometimes she looks at the Doctor with something soft and welcoming in her eyes. And it kills him to turn away, not to respond to the invitation to take what he wants so very much. But he can't. Because he knows that invitation will not last forever and he isn't human.
She doesn't really believe that in her heart. She looks at him and sees a human face, a human form. She sees what is human in his eyes; not seeing, or choosing to ignore, what is not. He knows that it has never occurred to her that there might be insurmountable differences between them. But Time Lords aren't like humans. Rose can barely comprehend what it is to have lived nearly a millennium and her short life has already been full of so many comings and goings. One love and then the next.
Time Lords don't love and move on. He's only really loved once before. She's been dead for more than five centuries and it is only now that he's ready to love again. Were he to allow this thing between himself and Rose to really be, he knows he'd have her for less than the blink of an eye and then he'd be alone again to grieve for ten times the length of the time he knew her. And he knows that his already battered heart couldn't take it.
She's so young still. Only nineteen in Earth years. The fire in her blood is burning so hotly that she thinks all the oceans in the universe won't be able to quench it. She can't imagine that this could possibly ever end, that she'd ever want to live any other life than the frantic one they live together aboard the TARDIS.
But that will change.
Youth will give way to age and innocence to experience. She'll begin to find the frantic pace of their lives too much to keep up with. She'll want to stop, just for a moment, to catch her breath before they go tearing off again. But soon another moment will be required and then another. She'll long for rest, grow too tired to keep running forever.
Time will begin to catch up with her on her visits home as she sees her friends marry, as she sees their children. It'll probably frighten her a little to think of herself as old enough for that and she'll climb back in the TARDIS and keep running. But she'll no longer be running for the joy of it, she'll be running from the age that's already creeping up on her even though she's still too young now to feel it.
And Jack will be able to understand what it is she's feeling, because the same ache will be beginning in his heart. And it will be a relief for her to be held again, to find the simple joy that only another of her own species can truly give her.
He could ignore for a little while that Rose wasn't like him, that she wouldn't be too frail in only a few short decades to keep going. But the Doctor sees Rose's future in Jack and it pains him more because he knows it will be a happy one. He's selfish enough for that; but not so selfish as to step in and take it away from her when he can't give her anything more. Jack can give her all the things she'll want, even the adventure which he knows she'll never truly give up on. There is too much in the universe and a mind like Rose's will always long for wonder. But there are other ways to travel, other ways to move through space and time. The Doctor's reckless dash from place to place and time to time won't appeal to his human companions forever. It never does.
Time is against him and every day brings him closer to the day they will move on to the next stage in human life. One that he cannot follow them into.
This is the only life he can ever have now. Ironic that it was once all he'd wanted, that the disappearance of the Time Lords from his life was all he wanted. Be careful what you wish for, the human says is; they are a wiser than they realise. Any chance for a life beyond this ended when Gallifrey burned; when he became the only survivor of his race with no home and no future beyond the restless wondering that is his life. Jack and Rose, on other hand, do have a future that stretches beyond the confines of the TARDIS. Soon, they'll move on to embrace that, leaving him alone once more.
For now, though, he grabs Rose's hand as they run and tugs her along with him, hoping somehow to outrun the parting that is inevitable.
