Work Text:
The Doctor had known he was in trouble the second he’d met Rose Tyler in that basement. Her tenacity, her innate curiosity, it all gave him the inkling that she would make a great travelling companion.
It was the last thing he wanted.
After all he had witnessed, after all he had done in the Time War, the Doctor did not want to involve yet another innocent person in his time travelling shenanigans. He no longer felt it right.
Still, when Rose had innocuously asked him if he wanted coffee, the Doctor couldn’t help but be reminded of the first time he met Sarah Jane and her indignation that he would even suggest that she make the coffee.
His hearts ached at the thought of Sarah Jane Smith. The journalist posing as her aunt to get a story and she had ended up travelling the universe with him. He had been much younger then (although he had appeared much older by human standards) and more careless. He thought back to when he had left her to go to Gallifrey, never to come back for her.
He couldn’t do that to someone else.
Still, he had taken Rose’s hand and he’d felt it. A connection of some kind through time. The same that he had felt with Sarah Jane and others before and since her. The Doctor knew it was pointless to try and fight it, but he had to try. For Rose’s sake.
For the sake of everyone he had taken with him only to hurt them in the end.
“Forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.”
As he walked away from Rose to the TARDIS, the Doctor thought back to his adventures and Sarah Jane’s brilliant smile and couldn’t help but feel like he was doing the wrong thing anyway.