He sees her again a few years later. Well, it's been a few years for him, he doesn't know how long it's been for her. She looks the same. Sort of. Her hair is pulled back, still blonde, with only a bare minimum amount of make-up smudged across her features. She sighs and stirs her tea mindlessly, staring out of the café window and onto the street which holds a few shops and fewer people.

"What is it?" Martha asks, her hand lightly brushing over his sleeve drawing him out of his trance.
"It's her," he says, his face not betraying his shock but his quavering voice does.
"Oh," she says. It's all she can say really.

---

Martha doesn't know what she's supposed to say. She's heard him talk of her a lot, especially at the beginning, when she would make 'newbie' mistakes and he would mumble her name and how she would never have done such a thing. Quickly that mumbling dissolved into just a look, and then it rarely happened at all. But she knows she'll never match up to Rose Tyler's standards, no matter how many times she saves his or anyone else's life.

And it is her fault that he's faced with her memory again. Well technically his- he never should've let her try and command the T.A.R.D.I.S, she can't even work the VCR let alone a time machine. She accidentally made it crash through some sort of mirror like material on some planet where the ground is made purely of ice and somehow they ended up here.

They can leave anytime. It's rather simple he had said, they just have to crash back through the material which hangs like a curtain in the middle of Hyde Park, only visible with 3d glasses on.

But sometimes, things are a lot more easily said than done.

---

He's sitting on her sofa, in her flat, while she walks from room to room searching for her hair brush. She finds it and stands in front of the kitchen mirror, pulling her hair back out of her face. He always preferred it down but she said sometimes it was more practical to have it up. She sighs in a frustrated manner seemingly more at the mirror than her reflection and runs her finger along the frame.

She can't see him because technically he's not there. He tried touching her before, just a hand grasping at her shoulder but she merely shrugged it off and frowned, turning around quickly and staring straight through him.

She doesn't have any children. Probably because she still acts like one, with her flat covered in posters of scantly clad men and fluffy bears. She has a boyfriend who is tall with brown hair and brown eyes but he thinks she just barely puts up with him, never mind love him. Her little brother comes around at times. He's nine and the spit of her but with Jackie's gob and Pete's build. He sits on her kitchen counter and natters to her about unimportant things. She just smiles.

Once he asked her to tell him about before he was born.
She just ruffles his shockingly blonde hair and changes the topic.

---

Martha doesn't think it's healthy the way he follows her about. Sometimes he drags her along as well. He talks constantly (sometimes she thinks he likes the sound of his own voice) about their adventures. Cardiff comes up a few hundred times, as well as Queen Victoria, werewolves, bad wolves, torched wood and her name. Over and over and over.

They're at her work. Martha stands behind her desk and reads what she's writing. Incredibly little, as it turns out, but at the side there's a doodle of rather large alien creature with chubby cheeks, huge black eyes, claw like hands and what looks like a cloud type thing coming out of it's bottom. The words 'SLITHEEN - smelly bastards' are written under it.

He laughs. Loudly.

Martha doesn't get it.

---

Rose Tyler gets up every morning at anywhere between eight o'clock and noon. This morning is no different. She switches on the kettle and yawns at the window which is covered in condensation. Her mother pops by later. The Doctor think she looks well, she's lost a bit of weight, wears a lot less fake tan and has regained that happy content glow she'd lost the moment he'd turned up in Rose's life.

She does a bit of nitpicky housework while Rose sits at her rickety kitchen table with her fifth mug of tea clasped in her hands and watches her. Jackie rubs down the kitchen mirror which is hung at Rose's height and has a decoration of clumsily hand painted red roses on the frame. She doesn't particularly like it but her brother gave it to her as a birthday present last year and her mother refused to let her throw it away.

"How's David?" Jackie asks, as she pauses to inspect her lipstick and teeth in the mirror.

"Gone," Rose sighs. The Doctor grins.

"Oh Rose," she exhales, turning to her daughter, her head tilted, "what happened?"

"I got tired of him," Jackie groans and goes back to cleaning the mirror, "he was so boring, mum."

"You knew that from the beginning Rose Tyler, and you know fine rightly the only reason you even considered going with him was because he looks a bit like you know who."

The Doctor frowned, while Rose ran her finger around the edge of her mug, carefully skipping the chipped bit which has been accountable for more cuts on her lip that she can remember.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rose pouts, avoiding her mother's eye.

"You need to grow up Rose Tyler … you're pushing thirty years old." Rose winces, as if this piece of information (which can hardly come as a surprise to her) is painful to hear. "I don't know why you don't just move on."

"I can't."

"Why?" Jackie asks, an edge of desperation to her voice.

"He didn't- … he didn't get to say-" she pauses and suddenly she stands up and slams the cup down on the table, starling herself more than her mum. "I'm going to work."

"You don't work on Sundays!" her mother calls after her. Rose isn't listening.

---

"We've been here a week," Martha states cautiously. He's looking at himself in the mirror, his eyes are heavy and hair bordering on greasy.

He nods, a quick jerk of the head before he splashes water on his face.

"I don't mean to be pushy bu-"

"We're leaving soon. I promise."

"We don't have to … not if you don't want to."

"I have to," he says simply as water runs off his nose and he turns around and grins at her. It isn't even a tired grin that would match his exhausted demeanour, it's an infectious one that makes the corners of her lips twitch. "I can't spend all of my life in the past, especially when there's nothing I can do." he pauses, looking back at the mirror, "Almost nothing."

---

She's looking in the mirror this time. She thinks she sees a grey hair and she's incredibly tempted to pull it out and burn it. God forbid she should show any signs of growing up. She could try dying it. Maybe she could go a different colour? Whiter blonde? Red? … Ginger. She chuckles to herself at that point but stops dead when something catches her eye in the corner of the mirror.

He's standing behind her. Him. In all his wonderful pinstriped suited glory.

He holds up a single finger and mouths 'wait' before he rummages around in his coat pocket and pulls out the telepathic paper. Holding up the paper it says in his incredibly neat handwriting (although backwards)

.yrroS. emit tsal eht yllaer si sihT

It takes Rose a second to work out what it says before she laughs, her nose nearly pressed against the mirror and her breath fogging it up.

He laughs too. She wishes beyond anything she could hear it, but the room is eerily silent and all she can here is the tick tock tick tock of the clock in the living room. He waves, and she waves back tentatively. The writing changes and again Rose makes steady progress at trying to work out what it says.

.uoy evol I

She blinks and stands back from the mirror, her throat closing up and her eyes suddenly watering. She's waited ten years to hear that sentenced finished, and although this isn't how she imagined it, she's perfectly ecstatic with it. He smiles. He doesn't well up like she does, but then again she's never seen him cry and part of her doubts he can. She nods and says, "Thank you."

He walks forward, until he's right behind her. She feels something there but she knows he isn't. He can't be. They're not in the same world anymore, or timeline … she doubts they even share the same air.

"I love you, I love you so-" she can't go on anymore, her voice breaks and he grins, that fabulously cheeky grin that makes her smile too. Her eyes flutter shut, and somehow she thinks she can feel his lips on her cheek.

She stays like that for a little while, and when she opens her eyes again he's gone. But in the mirror, in the corner of the kitchen he's left the paper. The paper which has so many memories for her with the words 'uoy evol I' clearly visible.

The mirror, she decides, is worth keeping after all.

And so is the grey hair.