Not This Time

Chapter 10

Doctor's POV

Rose stares at me sincerely. I know she's serious about this. She thinks I've replaced her with Yaz. I want to tell her how much I love her, how I never stopped thinking about her, how I love her way more than Yaz.

But Yaz is standing right beside me. I can see she's about to cry. This is exactly why I don't usually involve myself in romance, someone always ends up getting hurt and try as I might I can't keep everyone happy.

Yaz is beautiful and smart and I know she will make someone very happy one day, but I just don't feel the same way about her as she feels about me. Everything is just too complicated and I wish things were a different way but I don't have two hearts.

"Are you gonna answer me?" asks Rose. My beautiful, perfect Rose. I can't stand for her to be angry with me.

"I haven't replaced you, our time together meant the multiverse to me, you have to believe me"

"But you clearly have a new companion now, don't you?" 

"She's not my companion"

I wince as I look over at the broken expression on Yaz's face. I've had so many people give me that look over the years but somehow it hurts the most to see Yaz look at me that way. But I have to be honest.

Rose sighs "I don't know what's real with you, Doctor, you lie to people and you guard you're past like it's a precious jewel that no one can touch. Who are you really?"

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

"You run off and leave you're friends to pick up the pieces, you leave in you're blue box and you don't care about the people you leave behind" says Yaz.

I left her behind in 1883, I left her for four years with nothing but a hologram of myself. I wasn't my fault, there wasn't another way.

Excuses, excuses.

"Who exactly are you, Doctor?" says Yaz.

I could stall for time. I could mention some exotic location on an alien planet and pull a lever and transport us there, leaving Rose and Yaz stunned and giving me time to plaster up the cracks in our relationship. I could bury all their questions in whimsical anecdotes until we can all pretend to forget this ever happened. I could do it. I've done it so many times before.

But I'm tired of constantly hiding behind a facade, tired of constantly pretending their questions don't exist. So I give the two women the most honest answer I've ever given anyone.

"I don't know"

Just three small words have the power to break apart a front and rock the foundations of everything I've spent centuries building up. The image of someone who knows the secrets of the universe and always knows what to do in a crisis is stripped away and hiding behind it is a person who has no idea where they came from or who they are.

Yaz and Rose both look at me for a long time. I can't stand the silence so I go on, filling the void with my words like I always do, running on autopilot, trying to keep the plane from crashing.

But Yaz and Rose have seen a flicker of the real me and they easily see through me. I can see Rose questioning everything she thought she knew about me.

"You're scared" she says quietly.

"Nooo, not me, I'm totally fine" I say frantically. Maybe I can still save this.

"You're running from something"

"No I'm not"

"You're running from....yourself?" The way Rose phrases it makes it sound like a question, I'm The Doctor, I don't run away from anything. I face my problems head on.