A Hand To Hold

The first time he had ever held her hand was in the basement of a shop, surrounded by living shopwindow dummies, and he had told her to run. The second time, he had done it during his enigmatic explanation of who he was, gripping to her hand for dramatic effect.

After that, it had all become a natural habit. She had become his hand to hold.






When he takes her hand with his, his new, fresh, different hand, it feels the same as it always has–as if her hand belongs there, intertwined with his own.

But her expression, the look in her eyes, it’s all wrong. Even the very first time, she had gazed at him in awe, in wonder, but not fear. He had been a complete stranger that had just blown up her workplace and rambled on about living plastic mannequins and she hadn’t been afraid of him. Now, though, there was harsh disbelief and doubt stabbing at him through dark eyes, the lines of her face hardened in fear.

It was just all wrong.

“I said one word,” he whispers to her, voice low against the hum of the TARDIS. “Just one word, I said...”

Her eyes meet his slowly, her breath stills, she waits.

“Run!” he finishes in a dramatic yet airy whisper. A gentle smile pulls on his mouth at the memory.

The shadows veiling her eyes pull back slightly, revealing some of the light he has grown accustomed to finding there. “Doctor?” Her tone is barely audible, laced with realization and disbelief at once.

His name on her lips, captured by her voice, is something he would never grow tired of hearing, a beautiful, soothing melody to his ears. She was still frightened, still unsure about his new body, he could see that, but at least she has acknowledged that it is in fact him, the Doctor. As long as she really believes that, he could wait.

His hearts soar and his lips pull back into a relieved smile, its light reaching his eyes, his new chocolate-colored eyes. “Hello!”





Wiggling his fingers enticingly at her, a wide, welcome grin stretching over his face, her hesitation scares him into thinking she won’t want to touch him anymore. But her hand slides into his just as it always has, her soft, delicate fingers grazing along his palm, sending sparks of sensation snapping along his fresh, new skin. Her hand curls around his–familiar, warm, firm.

He holds on possessively, absolute relief and joy at their normal gesture burning through him. His fingertips press into her knuckles in welcome, giving her hand a gentle squeeze, a silent message being sent through the contact. Her eyes meet his, glistening, honey-warm, bright with awe and affection. She smiles, her rosy cheeks and full lips like silk against the white ash falling across her skin, glowing with warmth and beauty. The sensation it sparks in him surfaces on his face in a broad grin, one that makes her blush, adding to her elegant, youthful beauty.

“So, where’re we gonna go first?” she asks, stepping in against him, her free hand coming up to affectionately stroke his shoulder.

Her nearness, her warmth, the familiarity of it, makes his hearts jump, something strong fluttering inside him, and he glances at her. “Um...” Tearing his eyes away from her, he looks upward to the night sky, sprinkled with bright, glistening stars. Removing his hand from his pocket, he reaches up, pointing. “That way,” he says, indicating a particular star, before gears shift and he changes his mind. “No, hold on...” His gaze sweeps the map of the universe, and settling on a new spot, he redirects his hand. “That way.”

Rose follows his gesture and imitates it shyly, her hand pointing along with his. “That way?”

He looks to her, searching her face for any sign of what she’s thinking, feeling, hoping for approval. “Hmm?”

He waits with baited breath, fear and anxiety beginning to squirm in his stomach as she gazes a moment longer at the sky.

Facing him, her golden eyes settle on his, lit with a renewed excitement that sends off a surge of his own. “Yeah,” she nods, “that way.”

In this moment, he knows that she’s come back to him. For a while, she had drifted, uncertain about the new him, his new face and body and personality, and he had feared that he had lost her for good this time. She had stuck by him through Slitheen, Daleks, and now his regeneration. In her eyes he finds the same familiar warmth and affection, the same flickering dance of joy and awe and excitement, and something slightly teasing, something distinctly Rose, and he’s happy beyond words to see it again.

Tightening his hold on her hand, he knows now that she won’t be leaving his side any time soon. It both excites and terrifies him.





Without even having to look, his hand finds hers, fingers locking protectively, desperately, around hers. He tugs, knowing that she’ll follow without question, that she’ll keep up with his brisk sprint.

Adrenaline courses through him as he leads her through the crowd, dodging people and the metal clanking horrors that were terrorizing the party. Glancing over his shoulder, he catches a glimpse of the complete confusion and fear displayed across her features, and his chest tightens.

A set of bottomless black eyes lock onto her, a threatening, sparking hand swinging toward her, and a rush of horror cascades over him and he yanks her forward. The hand swipes at air, blue sparks snapping at nothing, reaching hopelessly out at her blond hair. His legs pick up momentum and he tugs her hand in closer to his body, his fingers constricting relentlessly around hers and she returns the gesture.

As they leap out the broken window together, her hand wrenches out of his, and for a moment his world shatters and darkens; whirling around, he expects to find her falling to her knees, a scream of sheer pain and agony ripping out of her throat, blue lines of energy ravaging her body. But instead, he finds her standing numbly by the window, eagerly glancing back inside the building, her eyes darting around, looking, searching.

His fingers clamp over her hand once more, drawing her attention back to him. “My mum’s in there!” she calls to him pleadingly, desperately, and he hates the absolute fear and loss that’s swirling and burning in her gaze. It feels like a brutal punch to the stomach and his hearts go out to her.

He understands her pain, but he isn’t letting her go.

His raging concern and fear for her own safety comes out in a harsh snap. “She’s not your mother! Come on!”

Again, he runs, pulling her along beside him. She follows him without protest; not because she knows that he’s right, or because there are heartless, murdering machines at their heels, but because she goes where he goes, never leaving his side, never allowing him to be alone, letting go of everything and anything just to be with him.

He realizes this when she grips his hand tighter without looking back again; leaving behind the dying innocence and a woman that is but isn’t her mother, and a man that is but isn’t her long-dead father that she never got to know. He wonders with awe just what he has done to deserve such undying loyalty and love from the most amazing woman in the universe.

He’s immensely vexed by it, but flattered, pleased, joyed–yet totally and completely horrified by what it could do to her.





“Fear, loneliness, they’re the big ones, Rose.”

He’s speaking from experience now, but whether or not she knows this, he isn’t certain. He’s known loneliness his entire life; he doesn’t even remember a time when he’s been without it. But over the last couple years, he has almost been released from its clutches–all because of one little human girl that he kept running into one day. She’s changed his life in monumental ways.

“Some of the most terrible acts ever committed have been inspired by them,” he continues, circling around the TARDIS console. “We’re not dealing with something that wants to conquer or destroy.”

He realizes, now, that he’s never really told her what she means to him, what she’s done for him. There are many reasons why he hasn’t, why he won’t, but mostly because words are too insufficient to capture such emotion. Words are nothing.

But, she is human after all. Humans need words.

“There’s a lot of things you need to get across the universe,” he says as he twists knobs and flips switches and pulls leavers. “Warp drive, wormhole refractors,” he points to each one even though he knows she isn’t watching. “But you know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold.”

That was her–his hand to hold. The person he could trust so implicitly and be so trusted in return; who, no matter what happens, would always love him and stay by his side; who’s very smile and laugh brightens his world.

Looking up at her to see her reaction to this confession, hoping she understood his underlying meaning, he finds her hand outstretched to him, palm upward, fingers welcoming. Unbound, indescribable joy and love well inside him, expanding so far he feels he might burst, and he smiles. Drawing his eyes up to hers, he reaches out to her hand, his palm resting perfectly against hers, his fingers caressing her wrist.

She turns to face him fully, mild surprise in her expression. Seeing their hands, a gentle blush graces her cheeks, and for a moment, a radiant, dancing light makes her golden eyes look like priceless gems.

She laughs. “No, look,” her hand slides away from his, her finger stretching toward the monitor, “I’m pointing.” He follows her gesture to the bleep on the screen, and she giggles.

He could have felt embarrassed, but he doesn't, because he knows that she had understood his message. She is far more than his companion, his best friend, but his confident, his trust, his rock–a hand to hold and be held in return by as they traversed the endless expanse of space and time.





“You know what, they keep on trying to split us up, but they never ever will.”

A sharp, painful chill bites at his spine and he comes to an immediate halt. His fingers slide in tighter around hers and he squeezes firmly, fighting back the building ache in his chest at her statement. “Never say never,” he advises grimly.

Because one day, inevitably, she will be gone. They will be separated by her mortality, her frailty, her human biology, and no matter how hard either of them would try to fight it, she would wither away into death. It’s a reality that he must struggle to forget every day.

Rose looks over at him dubiously, her chin raised confidently, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “Nah!” She nudges his shoulder with her own. “We’ll always be okay, you and me.”

He doesn’t make a response, pulling his eyes away from her to gaze up at the fireworks illuminating the night sky. Her body goes still beside his, her fingers tensing in discomfort, her eyes trained on him as she waits for a response. In this brief moment of silence between them, an odd sensation pricks the back of his neck, trickles down along his bones and tickles at his instinct.

“Don’t you reckon, Doctor?” Rose’s voice pulled him partially back to reality, but his focus was still set on the foreboding sensation washing over him.

“Something in the air,” he begins in a soft, ponderous voice. “Something coming...”

She glances up at the sky, following his gaze, then looks back to him. He can feel the beginnings of fear in her skin, in her eyes as she stares at him. “What?” she asks tentatively, her voice quiet, touched with a tone of mixed feelings, both wanting to know, and not.

“A storm’s approaching,” he announces, and he feels her shudder and tighten her hold on his hand.

Tearing his eyes away from the stars and fireworks, he studies her profile, the crease of her brow, the frown of her mouth, and fear unlike any he has felt in a very, very long time spreads through him. His skin prickles with it, making him shiver, and he swallows the hard lump constricting his throat.

Tightening his hold around her hand and tugging her in closer to him, he knows he’s scared her. Silently, he promises her that he won’t let anything happen, that no matter what happens, he won’t let go.





They run because they can.

For once, death is not at their heels. For once, he takes her hand just because, and he leads her into a joyful run full of life simply because it makes him feel alive–her hand in his as she runs besides him, laughing, her hair dancing in the wind.

He has a grin on his face, so large and genuine that his cheeks are starting to hurt; but he doesn’t mind, because he hasn’t smiled like this in ages.

Turning to look back at Rose, he finds his grin reflected on her face, and his stomach flip-flops. In this moment, he almost stops and kisses her, she’s so beautiful, so perfect, so amazing. But he doesn’t want to ruin this moment, nor does he want to sit still. Life and joy and exuberance is pumping through him endlessly and he needs to keep moving, keep running, stretch out and enjoy the new fresh energy coursing through every fiber of his body.

This is what she does to him, makes him feel alive, more alive since...so very long ago.

His fingers brush across hers as he tightens his hold, and she squeezes back, gazing up at him with eyes so full of love it takes his breath away.

They share a smile, both feeling the same excitement and joy over nothing except just living, being together, life.

As he pulls her along beside him, her hand carefully, firmly, lovingly wrapped in his, he thinks of all the ways Rose Tyler makes life worth living, and he wonders if she knows.





“Doctor?”

The hand in his shifted in discomfort, fingers stretching out to readjust the link.

Snapping out of his thoughts, he turned to face her and is somewhat startled to find dark skin, eyes and hair. Shaking it off, he blinked and cleared his throat. “Yes, Martha?”

“You alright?” she inquired, looking at him with a furrowed brow, concern written over her features.

“Of course I am! I’m always alright! Why d’you ask?” He pulled his gaze away from her and looked anywhere else as they continue their stroll.

“You’ve been quiet ever since we got here,” she pointed out. “You’re never this quiet. What’s the matter?”

Looking down at what was occupying his hand, and finding dark skin tangled with light, he frowned, thinking that he had found the problem. He brushed the pad of his thumb over her skin; it was different, new, unfamiliar. Her hand was gentle and warm, loving and welcoming, trusting, but it didn’t fit in the way that he had grown used to. It didn’t feel like it belonged there, like it had been created and shaped and tailored just for him. It didn’t feel like home.

Martha had come to mean a lot to him, he cared for her deeply, appreciated her dedication and trust and love, her friendship; she was a hand to hold through his travels, giving him a center, an anchor to keep him grounded, to push away some of the ache and loneliness that had been devouring him. And for it, he was more grateful and appreciative than he could ever say.

But it just wasn’t the same–she wasn’t Rose.

“Doctor?”

“I’m fine,” he said, his tone significantly lower, colder. He pulled away from her hand, running it first through his hair, then shoving it deep inside the pocket of his jacket. He could sense her confusion and hurt, and he was sorry for it, but he couldn’t possibly explain it to her.

Looking up at the midday sky, he wondered what Rose was doing now, hoping that she was living a fantastic life. He wondered, and hoped, if she had found her hand to hold in that parallel universe. Despite how much he wanted it to be him, always him, forever, it couldn’t be–he would rather she had someone to be there for her than no one at all. And he knew, somehow, that Rose would want the same for him.

Find another hand to hold, Rose, he prayed silently. Looking over at Martha, he pulled his hand out of his pocket and once more took hers, his fingers sliding softly along hers. She looked up at him surprised, but smiled, her fingers curling comfortingly, unquestioning, around his. He returned her grin with a soft one of his own. Find another hand and hold onto it, he continued in prayer to Rose, because it’s a rare thing to find. Don’t ever let it go and don’t be alone. And know that I’m not alone either; I’ve found another hand to hold.

And he knew, deep inside, that Rose would be happy for him.


End