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By Any Other
by Casira

The new man who's been wearing his name has not been wearing his coat.

Rose went to the wardrobe one night to look for it again. Hangers spun by, bearing dresses and furs, strange old shirts, ancient costumes; once she saw a scarf, which never came back. She pushed everything past, moving faster as she went, and then screamed at it in sudden, desperate frustration; the wardrobe finally offered one more reluctant spin of the racks when she'd stopped crying. From the back, the jacket slowly emerged.

It looked old, somehow. It had only been a few days since the new one stashed it away, but it looked like it had been mothballed, hidden away for decades. Rose pulled it off the hanger, brushed her hand down one leather sleeve, then quietly, slowly shrugged it over her shoulders.

The room was silent. She could barely hear her own breathing. She slept there curled up in his clothes, and wouldn't answer the next morning where she'd been.

It's now become a habit, because there's still that blank in her mind—that handful of hours lost under white-gold light, and a song that still lingers in nobody's voice. I sang a song, he'd said, but he'd explained nothing else; she wants to scream now at his successor to say what he wouldn't tell her, what he should have said before he —

—changed....

But she doesn't. She wears his coat instead, in private, and she wonders, because sometimes there's a hint of memory in the way the leather brushes her skin. She imagines touches, remembers his fingers lacing through hers, but can't make it fit; there's no sequence. There's only light, strange singing, the sense of the ship, and someone who isn't here.

She wants to know, but can't make herself ask him, even if it isn't his fault.

There's just something odd about it still. Sometimes Rose almost sees the wrong silhouette when she glances his way, since even with that unfamiliar voice, the altered accent, she recognizes his words. But she can't shake the strangeness when she faces him. My Doctor, she thinks to herself once, trying it out; she can't help but wonder why the phrase resonates so oddly.

When he smiles at her in silent reply, she turns away trembling.

And so she retreats into privacy, huddles into his forgotten coat and dreams—dreams of the hands she remembers, warm and steady on her arms, and that light pouring through them like molten gold.

One night, finally, the dream tells her something else.

She doesn't know how she could have forgotten this. It's too bright and sad and complicated not to have been real—he's bending to kiss her, the touch so soft against her lips, and it feels like a goodbye, like apology, like healing and benediction; she wants to sink into his arms and never let go. The pain she's been carrying is pouring out of her, leaving her fragile, too light, floating—everywhere he touches her, she aches with wanting, but she's falling too soon, too soon —

When she wakes with a gasp, she sees his eyes. The expression is just right no matter whose face it is.

"Rose?" he says softly.

She doesn't stop to think. She closes her eyes and reaches out, and his arms wrap tightly around her, pulling her close. Through the heavy leather of the coat it's easy not to notice how different his hands feel, and that double heartbeat against hers is just the same, just the same....

"Doctor," she whispers, holding on tighter, and feels him press his cheek against her hair.

Rose doesn't remember falling asleep again, curled up against his shoulder. Even her dreams feel vague when she wakes, tucked back into her own bed—he must have carried me, she thinks, slightly disconcerted. All around her, lights are softly adjusting while she blinks. The Doctor. My Doctor. But—

She pauses, and looks at the newly-illuminated foot of the bed.

He'd left the coat folded up atop her blankets (which makes her put one hand to the thin shirt she'd slept in, realizing he'd undressed her; she wants suddenly to blush). Rose stares at it for several seconds before taking it in both hands. She can feel him in it still—the warmth, the manic energy, the shelter and the quiet—and breathes it all in before sliding off the mattress and tiptoeing towards the door.

When she peers outside, the halls still look empty. Rose makes her way to the wardrobe room, retracing her steps from the night before—or his steps, really, she thinks, trying to picture it. Me in his arms—

The door opens silently. Rose steps inside, returns the coat to the hanger, slides it back and waits.

My Doctor, she thinks, while the racks turn and the coat slides away. Not yet. Not quite. But....

"You'd look gorgeous in that," she suddenly hears him say.

Rose yelps and spins around, to see the Doctor grinning as he points. The wardrobe's offering up a long, simple dress—of a dusty, muted shade of pink that must have been called by a predictable name—and this unfamiliar man is giving her a very familiar smile about it.

"Oh, don't you dare," she hears herself reply, one hand going to her hip. "What is this, some kind of dress-up game?"

They're right on the verge of joking banter, but he's careful. "Only if you want," is what he says. Rose looks at him for a good long while, turns back to the wardrobe, and sees only the dress—one he's picked for her, she'd guess.

He'd have liked it before, too.

"Fine," she says, without turning around. She's not quite sure why she's agreeing—yet it feels like something known, something wanted, despite it all. "No peeking."

She can almost feel him smiling in reply. There's a quiet sound of footsteps, like he's turned around. Yet from what she knows of him—if it's really still her Doctor after all—he might look anyway, just once... almost innocently, but not quite.

She wonders what she'll find if she turns, too.

Rose reaches one hand to the dress, drifts it across the fabric, remembers how it felt when he touched her like this—then lets it fall. Fine, she thinks again. Her fingers go instead to the hem of her shirt. We'll both see.

And when she slowly, slowly pulls her shirt over her head—with a wordless song beginning to echo again in her mind, sounding like the ship and a starburst and both of his voices—she realizes she's holding her breath.