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John Smith

Pairing: Tenth Doctor x f!reader

Warnings: canon divergence, angst, fluff, smut. I have a love-hate relationship with the John Smith episode.

The first time you saw the fear in his eyes, real, cold, hunted fear, you knew this was different.

“They can find me anywhere by my scent,” the Doctor said, hands flying over the TARDIS console with a frantic energy that set you on edge. The central column wheezed and groaned, the ship shuddering through the vortex as alarms you’d never heard before blared in discordant tones. “Every time I set foot outside, every time I even think about running, they lock onto my biodata. Time Lord biology. It’s like a beacon.”

“So we don’t run,” you said, gripping the railing as the TARDIS lurched. “We fight. We always fight.”

He stopped then, hands stilling on a lever, and looked at you across the glowing console. His brown eyes, usually so bright with manic energy, were grave. Haunted. “Not this time. If we fight, people die. Innocent people. They don’t want conquest. They don’t want resources. They want me. The last of the Time Lords. They want to be immortal. And they will tear through anything, anyone, to get what they want.”

You swallowed hard. “What are you saying?”

He straightened, tugging at his tie in that nervous way he had, then ran a hand through his already mussed hair. “I’m saying I need to stop being the Doctor.”

The words hung in the air like a death sentence.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Completely serious.” He was already moving again, circling the console, pulling up holographic schematics you couldn’t begin to understand. “The TARDIS can do it. Rewrite my biology on a fundamental level. Suppress every memory, every scrap of Time Lord knowledge, every regeneration. Make me human. Properly, genuinely human. One heart, one life, one unremarkable biological signature the Family of Blood can’t track.”

Your heart was pounding so hard you could feel it in your throat. “And your memories?”

“Gone. Locked away. Not destroyed, I’ll need a way back if things go wrong, but buried so deep even a psychic probe wouldn’t find them.” He paused, fingers hovering over a crystalline interface. “There’s a catch, though.”

“Of course there is.”

His mouth quirked, just slightly, a ghost of his usual smile. “The process needs an anchor. Someone to hold the key. The TARDIS can create a biodata module, a fob watch, something innocuous, that holds my Time Lord essence. But it needs to be kept safe. And I need someone to watch over the human me, make sure they don’t find me, and…” He hesitated. “And if they do, if it all goes wrong, someone who can bring me back.”

The weight of what he was asking settled over you like a shroud. “You want me to be that someone.”

“You’re the only one I trust.” He said it simply, without artifice, without the usual theatrical flourishes. “I know it’s a lot to ask. I know it’s not fair. But...”

“Yes.”

He blinked. “You haven’t heard the rest of it. The human me won’t know you. Won’t remember anything about our travels, about who I was, about any of it. You’ll have to start from scratch. You’ll have to lie, every day, to someone wearing my face. And it could be years. Decades, even, before it’s safe.”

“I said yes.” Your voice was steadier than you felt. “Tell me what I need to do.”

He stared at you for a long moment, something raw and unreadable flickering in his gaze. Then he pulled you into a crushing hug, his face buried in your hair.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

You held on tight, memorizing the feel of him, the lean strength of his frame, the double beat of his hearts against your chest, the faint scent of ozone and tea that clung to his suit. You didn’t know if you’d ever feel it again.

When he pulled back, his eyes were suspiciously bright. “Right. No time to waste. There’s a few things you need.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver, pressing it into your palm. Your fingers closed around the cool metal automatically.

“Keep this safe,” he said. “It won’t work for the human me, well, it might, if he’s clever enough, but he won’t know what it is. You’ll need it if…when the time comes. And this.”

From another pocket, he produced a simple silver fob watch, unadorned except for delicate circular Gallifreyan script etched into the casing. It felt warm in your hand, almost alive, pulsing with a faint rhythm that matched the Doctor’s hearts.

“My essence. My memories. Everything I am.” His voice was carefully controlled, but you could hear the terror underneath. “When the process is complete, I’ll just be a man. An ordinary man with an ordinary life. The TARDIS will create false memories, a background, a history. She’ll choose somewhere safe, somewhere quiet, somewhere no one would ever think to look for a Time Lord.”

“Where?”

He smiled, properly this time, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Knowing her? Somewhere spectacularly boring.”

The TARDIS materialized in a narrow alley between a bookshop and a bakery, the scent of fresh bread and old paper wafting through the doors when you opened them. Outside, a typical English street stretched in either direction, all red brick and gray sky, bicycles chained to lampposts and a postbox on the corner.

The Doctor, no, not the Doctor anymore, not really, stepped out beside you, blinking in the watery sunlight. One moment he’d been standing at the TARDIS console, the fob watch open in his hand, golden light pouring from his eyes and mouth. The next, he’d crumpled to the floor, and when he woke, the watch was closed, and the man looking up at you had only confusion in his brown eyes.

“Where am I?” he’d asked, and your heart had broken clean in two.

Now, standing in the alley with a bewildered expression on his face, he looked so ordinary it hurt. The same sharp features, the same lanky frame, the same ridiculous hair, but the weight was gone. The centuries of grief and guilt and impossible knowledge that had always lurked behind his smile had vanished, leaving behind something lighter.

“I think I’m supposed to be here,” he said slowly, patting his pockets. He pulled out a wallet, flipping through it with growing confusion. “John Smith. That’s my name. I’m…I’m a librarian? Apparently I have a job interview at the local library this afternoon.”

“That’s nice,” you managed, your voice coming out strangled.

He looked at you properly then, and something shifted in his expression. The confusion didn’t exactly fade, but it was joined by something else. Recognition, almost. Like he was trying to place you and couldn’t quite manage it, but knew, somehow, that you were important.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck in a gesture so achingly familiar that you had to look away. “This is going to sound mad, but…do I know you?”

Your fingers tightened around the sonic screwdriver in your coat pocket. The fob watch was nestled beside it. “Not exactly. We’re…I’m new in town too.”

“Oh.” He smiled then, a shy, tentative thing that was nothing like the Doctor’s manic grins, and your heart did something complicated in your chest. “Well, that’s a coincidence. Or maybe not. I can’t really remember how I got here, to be honest. Everything’s a bit fuzzy.”

“You hit your head,” you said, the lie sliding off your tongue with practiced ease. You’d rehearsed it with the Doctor before the transformation. “On the train. Concussion, the doctors said. You might have some memory issues for a while.”

“Right. Right, that makes sense.” He nodded, seemingly satisfied with the explanation. Then his gaze drifted back to you, and that strange, searching look returned. “I don’t suppose you’d want to…I mean, I know we’ve just met, technically, but I feel like…” He trailed off, flushing slightly. “This is going to sound completely insane, but I feel like I know you. Like I’m supposed to know you. Is that mad?”

“No,” you said quietly. “It’s not mad at all.”

The first year was the hardest because of the sheer, grinding normality of it all.

John Smith got the librarian job. He rented a small flat, all creaky floorboards and windows and a tiny kitchen that always smelled faintly of cabbage. He bought secondhand furniture and started wearing cardigans and joined a local book club that met every Thursday evening in the back room of the local pub.

And you, tasked with keeping him safe, had to build a life beside him.

You found a job at the bakery next to the alley where the TARDIS still sat, hidden behind a perception filter that made it look like an old police box that had been decommissioned years ago. You rented a flat of your own, two streets over, and learned to bake sourdough and make small talk with customers and pretend that you weren’t a time-traveling companion of a centuries-old alien who was now shelving books and recommending Agatha Christie novels to pensioners.

It should have been unbearable. It was, in many ways. But there were also moments that caught you off guard, moments that made the lie feel almost worth it.

Like the first time John asked you to dinner.

“It’s not a date,” he’d said quickly, his ears going pink in a way the Doctor’s never had. “I mean, unless you want it to be. Which you probably don’t. We’ve only known each other a few weeks. But I was going to make pasta, and I always make too much, and you mentioned you don’t cook much, and I thought...”

“John.” You’d touched his arm to stop the ramble, and he’d gone very still under your hand. “I’d love to have dinner with you.”

The smile that broke across his face was like sunrise.

It was nothing like the Doctor’s smiles, which always held a hint of darkness, of secrets, of the terrible knowledge of all the things he’d seen and done. John Smith’s smile was just a smile, and somehow that made it devastating in an entirely different way.

Dinner was pasta with a slightly burnt sauce and cheap wine from the corner shop and conversation that meandered through books and music and childhood memories that had been fabricated by the TARDIS but felt real enough to John that he told them with genuine fondness. He asked about your life, and you spun half-truths from the fragments you could safely share, and when you left that night with a container of leftovers and a warmth in your chest that had nothing to do with the wine, you knew you were in trouble.

He asked you out properly a week later. A film at the little independent cinema two towns over. Then dinner again. Then a walk along the river, where he’d reached for your hand like it was the most natural thing in the world and held it like he was afraid you might disappear.

“I know this is fast,” he’d said, his thumb tracing circles on your knuckles. “And I know I’m not…I mean, I’m just a librarian. I’m not exciting or adventurous or anything particularly special. But being with you feels right. It feels like the most right thing in the world. Does that make sense?”

You’d looked at him, at this gentle, earnest, utterly human man who wore the Doctor’s face and spoke with the Doctor’s voice but held none of the Doctor’s impossible weight, and felt your heart splinter into a thousand pieces.

“It makes perfect sense,” you’d whispered, and when he kissed you, soft and sweet and trembling slightly, you let yourself pretend, just for a moment, that this could last.

The second year was easier. Routine set in like weather, predictable and comforting. You saw John nearly every day: lunch at the bakery, dinner at his flat or yours, weekends spent exploring the countryside or curled up on his sofa reading books he’d brought home from the library. He’d read passages aloud to you, doing voices for the characters, and you’d laugh until your sides hurt, and then he’d look at you with such open adoration that you’d have to excuse yourself to the bathroom to pull yourself together.

The TARDIS sat in its alley, untouched. You visited it sometimes, late at night when you couldn’t sleep, running your fingers over the weathered blue wood and feeling the faint hum of life still pulsing within. The fob watch you kept in a locked box under your bed, wrapped in velvet, its warmth a constant reminder of what you were guarding. Of who you were waiting for.

Some nights you took it out and held it in your palm, watching the Gallifreyan script gleam in the darkness, and wondered if the Doctor was still in there. If he could feel the passage of time. If he knew what you were doing, what you were becoming to the man he’d made himself into.

Some nights, lying in John’s arms while he slept peacefully beside you, his single heart beating steady and slow against your back, you wondered if you even wanted the Doctor to come back at all.

Because John Smith was good. John Smith was kind. John Smith brought you tea in bed and remembered how you liked your toast and left little notes in library books he thought you’d enjoy. He had nightmares sometimes: fragments of the Time War bleeding through in dreams he couldn’t understand, images of fire and screaming and a red desert under an orange sky, and you’d hold him until he stopped shaking, murmuring nonsense reassurances until he drifted back to sleep.

“I feel like there’s something I’ve forgotten,” he told you once, in the gray light of early morning. “Something important. Something terrible.” His brow furrowed, and for just a moment, he looked so much like the Doctor that your breath caught. “Does that sound mad?”

“No,” you said, your voice steady despite the ache in your chest. “Everyone has things they’d rather forget.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned to you, propping himself up on one elbow, his expression soft and searching. “Whatever it is, I don’t think I want to remember it. I like this. I like my life. I like…” He trailed off, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

You’d known it was coming. You’d seen it building for months, in every look and touch and unguarded moment. But hearing it aloud, in his quiet, earnest voice, still hit you like a physical blow.

“I know,” you whispered.

“You don’t have to say it back. I just wanted you to know.” He smiled, that gentle, uncomplicated smile that still undid you every time. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

You didn’t say it back. Not then. You kissed him instead, pouring everything you couldn’t say into the press of your lips against his, and when he pulled you closer with a surprised, pleased sound, you let yourself fall into the warmth of him and tried very, very hard not to think about the fob watch ticking away under your bed.

But eventually, you said it. Of course you did. You’d loved the Doctor for years, silently, hopelessly, watching him flirt and charm his way across the universe while you stood in his shadow. Loving John Smith was different, easier in some ways, impossibly harder in others, but it was still love. Still real, still yours.

And he was so happy when you finally said the words. So incandescently, transparently joyful that you almost, almost convinced yourself it could be enough.

The proposal came at the end of the second year.

It wasn’t grand or dramatic. John wasn’t grand or dramatic. He took you to the riverbank where you’d first held hands, spread out a blanket, and produced a picnic basket filled with slightly lopsided sandwiches and a bottle of wine that was far nicer than anything he usually bought.

“What’s the occasion?” you asked, amused.

“Do I need an occasion?” But his ears had gone pink again, and he was fidgeting with the edge of the blanket in a way that made your heart stutter.

Halfway through the meal, he set down his sandwich, took a deep breath, and turned to face you fully. His brown eyes were bright with nerves and hope and something that looked terrifyingly like certainty.

“I know we’ve only known each other a couple of years,” he said, his voice slightly unsteady. “And I know I’m not…I mean, I don’t have much to offer. I’m a librarian. My furniture is secondhand and my cooking is mediocre at best.” He let out a shaky laugh. “I’m not exactly a catch.”

“John...”

“Let me finish, please, or I’ll lose my nerve.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box. “The thing is, every good thing in my life, every happy moment I can remember, has you in it. You’re the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. And I know it’s fast, and I know it’s probably mad, but I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to waste a single moment we could have together.”

He opened the box. Inside was a simple silver ring, set with a small, glittering stone that caught the afternoon light and scattered it into rainbows.

“Will you marry me?”

The world stopped.

For one long, crystalline moment, you let yourself imagine it. Saying yes. Marrying him. Building a life in this sleepy little town, growing old together, surrounded by books and bad cooking and the quiet, steady love he offered so freely. You could do it. You could lock the fob watch away forever, let the Doctor sleep for the rest of John Smith’s mortal life, and take this happiness for yourself.

It would be so easy. So terribly, temptingly easy.

But even as the fantasy bloomed in your mind, you felt the weight of the sonic screwdriver in your bag, the ghost of the fob watch’s warmth against your skin. You remembered the Doctor’s face, grave and trusting, as he handed you his entire existence. You remembered the aliens, still out there, still hunting. And you remembered that this man, this sweet, gentle, ordinary man, wasn’t yours to keep.

“John.” Your voice came out cracked, barely a whisper. “I can’t. Not yet.”

The hope in his eyes flickered, but didn’t go out. “Is it too soon? I know it’s only been two years...”

“It’s not that.” You reached out, cupping his face in your hands, memorizing the lines of him. “I love you. I love you so much it terrifies me. But there are things…things about my past, things I haven’t told you…”

“I don’t care about your past,” he said fiercely. “Whatever it is, whatever you’ve done or been through, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“It matters to me.” You stroked your thumb across his cheekbone, feeling the faint stubble, the warmth of his skin. “Just…give me time. Ask me again. Not now, but someday. Ask me again.”

He searched your face for a long moment, and you saw the exact instant he decided to trust you. It was in the softening of his jaw, the release of tension in his shoulders, the way his hand came up to cover yours.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “I’ll wait. As long as you need. I’m not going anywhere.”

He tucked the ring box back into his pocket and pulled you into a kiss instead, and you let yourself melt into him, hating yourself just a little for the tears that slipped down your cheeks. He mistook them for happiness, or maybe just emotion, and kissed them away with a tenderness that made your heart feel like it was being wrung out like a dishcloth.

That night, alone in your flat, you took out the fob watch and held it in your trembling hands.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered to it. To him. To both of them. “I’m so sorry.”

The watch said nothing. It just kept ticking, marking out the seconds of a borrowed life, waiting for the moment it would all come crashing down.

The moment came on an ordinary Tuesday in spring.

You were closing up the bakery, wiping down the counters and trying to decide what to make for dinner, when the bell above the door chimed. You looked up with your customer-service smile already in place, and felt the blood freeze in your veins.

Three people had entered. They looked human, two men and a woman, all dressed in unremarkable clothing, all wearing pleasant, unremarkable expressions. But their eyes were wrong. Flat. Cold. Empty of anything resembling genuine emotion.

And they moved wrong, too. Too smoothly. Too precisely. Like puppets being operated by someone who hadn’t quite mastered the strings.

“We’re closed,” you said, your voice remarkably steady given the terror clawing at your throat.

The woman smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “We’re not here for baked goods.”

“We’re looking for someone,” one of the men added. His head tilted at an angle that was just slightly too sharp to be natural. “A very particular someone. We’ve been searching for a very long time.”

“Sorry.” You gripped the edge of the counter, your knuckles going white. “Can’t help you.”

“Oh, we think you can.” The woman took a step forward, and you caught a flicker of something beneath her skin, a ripple of wrongness, like something was moving underneath the surface. “You see, we can’t find our quarry. We’ve searched every corner of this galaxy, every dimension, every timeline. And then it occurred to us, perhaps our quarry isn’t our quarry anymore. Perhaps he’s become something else. Something…human.”

Your heart was pounding so hard you could barely hear them over the rush of blood in your ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” The second man spoke this time, his voice a flat monotone. “You’ve been here two years. You arrived at precisely the same time our quarry disappeared. And you spend an extraordinary amount of time with a man who, according to all records, didn’t exist until that exact moment.”

“Coincidence,” you managed.

“There are no coincidences.” The woman’s smile widened, “Not where the Doctor is concerned.”

They knew. They knew, and they’d found you, and John was probably at the library right now, shelving books and humming to himself, utterly unaware that death had come to his quiet little town wearing human skin.

“We’ll find him eventually,” the woman continued, as if reading your thoughts. “We can sense him, faintly. The trace of what he was, buried deep. It’s only a matter of time. But it would be so much easier if you simply told us where he is.”

“Never.”

The word tore out of you before you could stop it, and the woman’s expression flickered into something that might have been satisfaction.

“Loyal,” she observed. “Touching. But loyalty can be…painful.”

You stumbled backward, reaching blindly for anything you could use as a weapon, and your hand closed around the handle of a rolling pin.

“I wouldn’t,” said the woman, almost gently. “It won’t do you any good.”

“Maybe not.” You lifted your chin, meeting her flat, dead eyes with as much defiance as you could muster. “But I’ll make sure it hurts.”

For a long, suspended moment, no one moved. Then the woman laughed.

“We’re not going to kill you,” she said. “Not yet. You’re going to bring him to us. Tomorrow, sunset, at the old church on the hill. Make sure he hands us his essence of immortality. If you don’t… well.” She smiled again. “This town is full of fragile little humans. It would be a shame if something happened to them.”

She turned and walked out, the two men following in perfect synchronization. The bell chimed cheerfully as the door swung shut behind them, and you stood there in the empty bakery, clutching a rolling pin and shaking so hard you could barely stand.

You didn’t go home that night. You went straight to the TARDIS.

The old police box was still there. You pressed your palm against the wood and tried to think.

They’d found you, and they’d find John sooner or later, and when they did, they would tear him apart. There was no running this time. No clever escape. The only option was the one you’d been dreading for two years.

You had to bring the Doctor back.

The fob watch was in your bag, along with the sonic screwdriver. Now you pulled out the watch and held it in your palm, watching the Gallifreyan script pulse with soft golden light.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, for what felt like the hundredth time. “I’m so sorry, John.”

Then you squared your shoulders, wiped your eyes, and went to find the man you loved to destroy him.

John was at his flat, as you’d known he would be. He opened the door with a smile that faltered the moment he saw your face.

“What’s wrong?” He pulled you inside immediately, his hands gentle on your shoulders. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Come in, sit down, I’ll make tea...”

“John.” You caught his hands, holding them still. “We need to talk.”

He went very still. “That’s never a good sentence.”

“Please. Just…come with me. There’s something I need to show you.”

You led him through the darkening streets to the alley where the TARDIS stood.

“What is that?” He stared at the blue box, his brow furrowing in confusion that was rapidly becoming distress. “I’ve walked past this alley a hundred times, I’ve never seen…why have I never seen…?”

“Because you weren’t supposed to.” You pulled out the sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the TARDIS doors, which swung open with a familiar wheezing groan. “Come inside.”

He followed you in a daze, his eyes darting around the impossibly large interior. The central column glowed softly, a slow, sleepy pulse that spoke of deep hibernation. The Doctor had programmed the TARDIS to maintain basic functions but nothing more, keeping her hidden and dormant until she was needed again.

“This is…” John turned in a slow circle, his face a mask of bewilderment. “This isn’t possible. This is…”

“It’s a spaceship,” you said quietly. “It’s also a time machine. And it belongs to you.”

He laughed incredulously. “That’s mad. That’s completely mad. I’m a librarian. I’ve never even been on a plane.”

“You’re not a librarian.” The words tasted like ashes in your mouth. “You’re not even human. Not really.”

And you told him. Everything. The Doctor, the transformation, the two years of lies. You spoke until your voice went hoarse, and through it all, John stood motionless, his face slowly draining of colour.

When you finished, he was silent for a long moment. Then he whispered, “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t a joke, or a prank, or…or some kind of nervous breakdown?”

“No.”

He turned away from you, his shoulders hunched, his hands shoved deep into his pockets in a gesture that was so Doctor-like that you had to look away. “Two years. Two years, and everything I remember, everything I thought I was…”

“Some of it was real.” Your voice cracked. “We were real. We are real.”

“Were we?” He spun back to face you, and there were tears in his eyes, bright and angry and devastated. “You’ve been lying to me since the day we met. Every moment, every conversation, every...” His voice broke. “Every ‘I love you.’ Was any of it true?”

“All of it.” You stepped toward him, reaching for his hands. He let you take them, though his fingers remained stiff and unresponsive. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I know it’s not fair. But I loved the Doctor, and then I met you, and I loved you too, and I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“The Doctor.” He said the name like he was tasting it, trying to find himself in the syllables. “That’s who I am. Who I was. Some kind of...alien hero?”

“The last of the Time Lords. He’s saved countless worlds. Countless lives.” You squeezed his hands. “And right now, he’s the only one who can stop the alien parasites from destroying this town and everyone in it.”

He looked at you then with devastation in his eyes. “What happens to me? If he comes back, what happens to me?”

You couldn’t answer. You couldn’t tell him the truth, that John Smith would cease to exist, absorbed back into the vast, ancient consciousness of the Doctor like a drop of water into an ocean. That the gentle, ordinary man you’d spent two years loving would become nothing more than a dream, a footnote, a brief flicker of humanity in an impossibly long life.

But he saw the answer in your silence, and his face crumpled.

“No.” He pulled his hands from yours, backing away. “No. I don’t want this. I don’t want to be him. I want to be me. I want to be John Smith, the librarian, who burns pasta sauce and loves you more than anything in the world. Doesn’t that matter? Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“It means everything,” you whispered, tears streaming down your face. “But they are here. They’ll kill you, and everyone else, unless the Doctor comes back. I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.” His voice cracked on the words. “Please. Please, don’t make me do this. We can run. We can hide. We can find another way.”

“There is no other way.” You pulled out the fob watch, holding it up between you. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, John. But I made a promise.”

He stared at the watch, and you saw the moment understanding truly hit him. The moment he realized that the thing in your hand contained everything he’d been, everything he really was, and that opening it would mean the end of everything he’d become.

“I love you,” he said, and it sounded like a goodbye. “Whatever else was a lie, that wasn’t. I love you, and I was happy. For two years, I was so happy.”

“I know.” You stepped closer, reaching up to cup his face, memorizing the lines of it one last time. “I was happy too. And I love you. Both of you. All of you. The Doctor, and John Smith, and every version of you that’s ever existed or ever will.”

He closed his eyes, leaning into your touch. A tear slipped down his cheek, warm against your fingers. “Will he remember? The Doctor? Will he remember us?”

“I don’t know.” It was the most honest thing you’d said all night.

“I hope he does.” John opened his eyes, and there was something almost like acceptance in them now. “I hope he remembers that he was loved. That he was happy. That he was a good man.”

“You were a good man,” you said fiercely. “You are a good man. The best man I’ve ever known.”

He kissed you then: soft, desperate, trembling with all the fear and love and grief of a man saying goodbye to his entire existence. You kissed him back with everything you had, pouring two years of stolen happiness into the press of your lips, trying to make him understand without words how much he’d meant to you.

When you finally pulled apart, he was crying openly, and so were you.

“Do it,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Before I lose my nerve.”

You opened the fob watch.

Golden light exploded outward, filling the TARDIS, filling John, filling you. He arched backward, his mouth opening in a silent scream, and you watched as two years of false memories were stripped away, replaced by centuries of impossible knowledge. You watched John Smith dissolve into the vast, ancient, terrible consciousness of the Doctor.

And then the light faded, and the Doctor opened his eyes.

They were the same brown eyes. The same face, the same body, the same hands that had held yours a thousand times. But the expression in them was different. Older. Harder. A universe of grief and fury and cold, calculating rage. “Where are they?”

“Old church on the hill,” you said, your voice hollow. “Sunset tomorrow. They’re wearing human skin.”

He nodded once, sharply, and strode past you to the TARDIS console. His hands flew across the controls with the practiced ease of centuries, waking systems that had been dormant for two years. He didn’t look at you. Didn’t acknowledge the tears still wet on your cheeks, or the way your hands were shaking, or the shattered expression on your face.

“Doctor?” you asked hesitantly.

“Not now.” His voice was clipped, distracted. “I need to think. These are dangerous, but they’re predictable. If they’ve taken human form, they’ll be vulnerable. I can work with that.”

And just like that, John Smith was gone. The Doctor was back. And you were standing in the middle of the TARDIS, clutching an empty fob watch, feeling like your heart had been ripped out of your chest.

The Doctor dealt with the Family of Blood.

You didn’t see him do it. He told you to stay in the TARDIS, and you did, because you couldn’t bear to watch him be the Doctor, cold and brilliant and terrifying, when all you could see was the ghost of the man you’d lost.

He came back three hours later, his suit slightly rumpled, his expression grimly satisfied.

“It’s done,” he said. “They’re in three separate eternal prisons, scattered across three separate dimensions. They won’t be bothering anyone ever again.”

“Good.” You were sitting on the jump seat, still holding the empty fob watch. You hadn’t moved since he left.

He looked at you then uncertainly. “The danger’s passed. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m not going with you.”

The words came out before you’d consciously decided to say them, and once they were out, you knew they were true. You couldn’t go back. You couldn’t climb into the TARDIS and fly off to new adventures and pretend that the last two years hadn’t happened. That you hadn’t fallen in love with a man who no longer existed.

The Doctor went utterly still. “What?”

“I need time.” You set the fob watch down on the console, your fingers lingering on the cool metal. “I need to…pack up my flat. Say goodbye. I’ve been here two years. I have a life here. I can’t just leave.”

“You don’t have a life here,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice now. “You had a cover story. A role to play. The role is over.”

“It wasn’t just a role.” You stood up, finally meeting his eyes. “I worked in that bakery for two years. I made friends. I built a life. And I loved John Smith, and he loved me, and now he’s dead, and I need to grieve him. Can you understand that?”

Something crossed his face, too fast to read, there and gone in an instant. “I remember it,” he said, and his voice was quieter now. “The transformation. Two years of memories, all at once. I remember everything.”

“Then you know why I can’t come with you tonight.”

He didn’t argue. He just stood there, his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable, and watched you walk out of the TARDIS and into the darkening evening.

Your flat was exactly as you’d left it. The half-finished cup of tea on the counter. The pile of library books on the coffee table. The photograph of you and John at the riverbank, taken last summer, his arm around your shoulders and his smile so wide and bright and happy.

You sat on the edge of your bed and finally, finally let yourself cry.

You cried for John Smith, the gentle librarian who had loved you simply and completely. You cried for the Doctor, who had trusted you with his entire existence and come back to find that you’d fallen in love with a version of him that no longer existed. And you cried for yourself, for the impossible situation you’d been put in, for the love you’d found and lost and would never quite get over.

At some point, exhaustion overtook you, and you fell into a fitful sleep, still fully clothed, still clutching the photograph.

You woke to the sound of the TARDIS materializing in your living room.

The wheezing groan was unmistakable, and you bolted upright, your heart pounding. The blue box solidified in the corner of your flat, looking utterly incongruous next to your secondhand bookshelf and the potted plant you’d been nursing for eighteen months.

The door opened, and the Doctor stepped out.

He looked…different. Still the same body, the same suit, the same ridiculous hair. But some of the coldness had gone from his eyes. Some of the fury had ebbed. He looked at you, and for just a moment, you saw something that might have been vulnerability.

“You didn’t come back,” he said.

“I told you I needed time.”

“It’s been three days.”

You blinked. “It’s been one night.”

“Time moves differently in the TARDIS. You know that.” He took a step toward you, then stopped, as if unsure of his welcome. “I waited. Outside your flat, at first, and then inside, when you didn’t come out. And then I…I started thinking.”

“That’s usually where the trouble begins.”

His mouth quirked, just slightly. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was closer than anything you’d seen since he’d come back. “You said something. Before you left. You said you loved John Smith, and you loved me. Both of us.”

You looked away. “I was emotional. I didn’t mean...”

“Yes, you did.” He crossed the room, stopping just in front of you. Close enough that you could smell the familiar scent of him. “You meant every word. I know you did. Because I remember. I remember everything, and I remember how you looked when you said it.”

“Doctor...”

“I’m not him.” The words came out harsh, almost angry. “I’m not John Smith. I’m not gentle or simple or uncomplicated. I’ve done terrible things. I’ve made choices that would horrify him. I carry the weight of a billion billion lives, and it’s made me hard, and cold, and sometimes cruel.” He reached out and caught your chin, tilting your face up to meet his eyes. “But I am not a different person. I’m just…more. Everything he was, I am. Everything he felt, I feel. And I am tired of pretending that’s not true.”

Your breath caught. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” He paused, struggling with the words in a way the Doctor rarely did. “John Smith was a simpler version of me. Unburdened. Free. He could tell you he loved you without the weight of centuries pressing down on him. He could ask you to marry him without hearing the screams of everyone he’s ever failed.” His grip on your chin gentled, his thumb brushing across your cheek. “I can’t be him. I can’t be that unburdened. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel what he felt.”

You stared at him, barely daring to breathe. “You remember loving me.”

“I remember everything.” His voice dropped, rougher now. “Every moment. Every touch. Every word. It’s all in here...” he tapped his temple “...and it’s not just memories. It’s not just data. It’s real. It’s as real as anything I’ve ever felt. And I have lived a very, very long time.”

“Then why did you...”

“Push you away?” He laughed, a short, humorless sound. “Because I’m an idiot. Because I was furious at my enemies and terrified of what I’d put you through and convinced that you couldn’t possibly want me...the real me, the whole impossible mess of me, when you’d had him.”

“John Smith was you,” you said, your voice breaking. “Just you. Without the pain. Without the weight. But still you.”

“And you loved him.”

“I loved you.”

Something shattered in his expression. The cold mask cracked, and underneath it was everything you’d been searching for, the Doctor, raw and open and terrified, his ancient eyes bright with something that looked very much like hope.

“Then come back,” he said. “Come back to the TARDIS. Come back to me. We can figure out the rest as we go.”

You didn’t answer with words. You reached up, grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket, and pulled him down into a kiss.

It wasn’t like kissing John Smith. John had been gentle, hesitant. The Doctor kissed like he did everything else: with intensity, with focus, with the barely contained energy of a man who had lived too long and felt too much and didn’t know how to be gentle even when he wanted to be.

He made a sound against your mouth, something between a groan and a growl, and his hands slid into your hair, tilting your head back to deepen the kiss. When you gasped, he took advantage, his tongue sliding against yours, and the taste of him was familiar and alien all at once.

“I’ve got two years of memories,” he murmured against your lips, “and two years of wanting. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To remember wanting someone and not being able to touch them?”

“I think I have some idea,” you breathed.

He pulled back just far enough to look at you, his pupils blown wide, his breathing ragged. “This isn’t going to be gentle. I’m not…I can’t be gentle. Not right now. I've too much burning in my head.”

“I don’t need gentle.”

Something dark and hungry flashed in his eyes. “Good.”

He kissed you again, harder this time, and walked you backward until your shoulders hit the wall. His body pressed against yours, lean and solid, and you could feel the double beat of his hearts thundering against your chest. His hands left your hair to trail down your sides, gripping your hips with a force that would probably leave bruises.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, the sensitive spot just below your ear. “Tell me to slow down. Tell me you need time.”

“Don’t stop.”

He made a sound that was almost a snarl and hoisted you up, your legs wrapping around his waist instinctively. The wall was cold against your back, but he was warm, so warm, warmer than a human should be, his body temperature running high with Time Lord biology and barely restrained desire.

Clothes became an impediment. Buttons were undone with frustrating slowness, fabric pushed aside rather than removed entirely. His mouth was everywhere: your throat, your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder, and his hands were everywhere too, mapping your body with an intensity that bordered on desperation.

“I remember,” he kept saying, the words pressed into your skin like prayers. “I remember everything. Every moment I wanted to touch you like this. Every night I lay beside you.”

“I know.” You tangled your fingers in his hair, pulling his mouth back to yours. “I know. I was there.”

He laughed, a real laugh, surprised and almost giddy, and kissed you again, and this time there was no more talking.

He took you against the wall, then on the floor, then finally in your bed, the TARDIS abandoned in the corner. He wasn’t gentle. His hands gripped hard enough to leave marks, his teeth scraped against sensitive skin, his rhythm was demanding and relentless and utterly, impossibly him. But there was tenderness too, in the way he whispered your name, in the way he paused to check that you were alright, in the way he held you afterward like you were the most precious thing in the universe.

You lay tangled together in the wreckage of your sheets, the Doctor’s arm wrapped around your waist, his face buried in your hair.

“I’m still not him,” the Doctor said quietly, after a long silence. “I can’t be. I can’t give you the simple life, the quiet happiness, the white picket fence.”

“I don’t want a white picket fence.”

“You wanted him.”

You turned in his arms, facing him. His expression was guarded, but his eyes gave him away, ancient and afraid. “I wanted you,” you said firmly. “Every version of you. John Smith, the Doctor, whoever you are tomorrow and the day after that. I didn’t fall in love with a librarian. I fell in love with you. The impossible, infuriating, brilliant, broken, wonderful you.”

He stared at you for a long moment. Then he smiled, a real smile, not the manic grin he used as armor, but something softer. Something that looked almost like John Smith’s smile, but deeper, older, more complicated.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said.

“Probably not. But you’re stuck with me anyway.”

He pulled you closer, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Good. Because I’m never doing that again. The transformation. The forgetting. I’m never giving you up. Not for anything.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” His arms tightened around you. “Now get some sleep. We’ve got a universe to explore in the morning.”

You closed your eyes, listening to the steady double rhythm of his hearts, and let yourself believe that maybe, just maybe, you could have both, the Doctor and John Smith, the adventure and the love, the impossible and the real.

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