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[spacepeterpan]

Hello, you've reached the Doctor, not at the TARDIS, well, maybe at the TARDIS, won't know until I answer, leave me a message after the TARDIS engine sound if you've got one, just a "please help" is fine although more details would probably be good, whatever you can manage, and I'll get back to you, and maybe save your planet, ta!

[Followed right after by about a second of the sound of TARDIS engines, followed by the thump of its landing.

Feel free to leave a message for the (eleventh) Doctor here!]

Comments

[spacepeterpan]

[...of all of it, the parts that really sting are those moments, those flashes of something cold in its fury and arrogant in its pride, that reminds him far more of certain horribly mistakes he'd made than of Rose Tyler. How much of that was a new way she wore her customary bravado as a mask? How much was something that had genuinely changed in her? Even if he hadn't expected her to stay forever that girl who tossed out words she'd heard him use, hoping to fend off the Sycorax, he really hoped she'd never have to become calloused, to take on those tones that were so familiar from inside his own head--familiar because he'd practiced dreading them for so long, and cringed whenever he began to hear them in his own voice.

For a moment, he almost gapes at the way she responds--but afterward, he seems more dismayed than convinced.]

Rose... ...the only way to be untouchable's to build a suit of armor to hide away in.

[Metaphorically or otherwise (although they tended to go hand-in-hand, eventually). He was pretty confident that wasn't really the case, here, but hearing her talk that way had rattled him a bit, in all honesty.]

...I'm not saying you can't take it. ...but you shouldn't have to, not from someone you trust.

[Also he really means more than just disappointing her, but...]

[bigbadrose]

[THE TEETH BARING GETS WORSE.]

[And then that statement.]

[And she just shakes.]

[And paces about her room.]

[She can't even cry. She's angry again.]

[She doesn't want to be but...]

[But letting it go is exactly like she told him.]

[Raw. Defenseless.]

[Finally:]

[QUIETLY, and not looking back at the camera phone:]

I'd rather be hurt a billion times over than give up. You know me.

And... it's too late. For the armor thing.

[Gently fingering a tack board of pictures on the wall.] That was over the second you left Jack behind.

[Finally back at the camera phone.] I'm unbreakable. Your mistake was always assuming I was fragile. Track record, Doctor. You've died a ton. Jack's died even more. I've never died. Not once. Remember what I said when I was angry? 'Bout Jack and River? That's why. Because it's stupid. [SNARLING IN SPITE OF HERSELF AGAIN, though she keeps it 1/2 under control.] I'm more durable than all of you bloody combined. [Eyes flash, truly angry again.] I've already been through hell and poured the time vortex into the dalek emperor's head. You got mad at your clone for genocide, but so what? I already did it once too, and the daleks are never evar gone for good are they? [Grinds teeth.]

I didn't get this way because of you. I got here in spite of you. And if that's part of me you can't stand ta have around you? [Throws hands up in the air.] No worries, you don't have to see it 'less you drag it out, all right? But I'm not a weapon, I'm not a soldier, I'm not a TimeLord, but I'm also a billion times tougher than all o' ya. So I meant what I said. He can't hurt me beyond what I allow. And what I allow? Is on me. And I can't allow anything, because he's too bloody fragile and broken. See? I'm not that stupid. I get it.

[She's also not so stupid as to think this doesn't kill him too. And she wished she wasn't... this way now. She told 10 before he brain-wiped himself clean of it that it was being a live wire, she'd always been this way, but now she had no insulation to protect everyone else from her. And the Doctor....]

[Just seemed so determined to grab her with both his hands bared.]

[And maybe it would shock something resembling sense into him. But probably not, it was the Doctor, after all.]