Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The BBC owns all, I am merely borrowing.
Spoilers: 4x13 Journey's End
Character/Pairing: 10.5/Rose

As the most amazing blue police call box in the multiverses disappears, Rose Tyler decides that this is now the worst day of her life.

She knows that this time forever is real.

The creeping sorrow is interrupted by the pressure of a very familiar hand wrapping around her own. She realizes it's the first time she's held the hand of this new man, but at the same time it isn't. This is the hand she started with, the one she grabbed when he said, "Run." This is his real hand, not a lucky replica grown in the midst of battle. Not a fighting hand. But the rest of him, this him, was forged in battle. Did that make this him a fighting man? He'd certainly fought for her on the beach. Saying the one thing he'd never ever been able to before.

The symmetry is not without irony. His hand is warmer now, no longer quite so alien. Their eyes meet for a second and she sees reflected the same pain and longing, now tempered with the limitations of a human existence.

She looks away. "Never got to say goodbye."

He gently squeezes her hand, but it's not reassuring in the way he wants it to be. "That's because you don't have to. I'm still here."

She pulls her hand away from his grip and he lets her, watching her carefully as she turns from him and finds a place to sit amid the outcroppings of rock.

Jackie's voice echoes from further down the beach, where she's explaining things to Pete over a frequently disrupted connection. "Yeah, we're on that bloody beach again! Norway. Coulda left us anywhere but only this beach would do." She shakes her head firmly. "I don't know anything about that. You'll have to ask him to explain. Of course he's still here! Well, almost. Somehow there were two of 'em and this one's stayin' with us. And he's human. Can you believe it?" She frowns, studying him at a distance. "Well, I don't know what we'll do with him."

He doesn't know what they're going to do with him either.

He can see that his prevailing assumption of human relationships as ridiculously simple might be a bit of an understatement. His other self had tossed them together, playing both jailer and matchmaker without hesitation. Oh, he'd suffer for it later, when he was alone. Rose meant just as much to both of them. But there were promises to be kept. To Jackie that he would always keep her daughter safe. And to himself, that she'd have a fantastic life waiting for her when she left.

If the dimensional cannon was any indication, fantastic wasn't good enough for his brilliant stubborn girl. She wanted him. The solution was very straightforward.

Having one heart, one life, turned out to be what made all the difference.

He'd been able to finally tell her the truth, sharing those three words that had tormented him since he'd last seen her on this windswept beach. Then she'd kissed him. Quite forcefully, in fact. He'd reveled in the surge of feelings that crashed through this new body. This human body. For all his extra senses, he'd never been so attuned to the press of her body against his or had his heart rate escalate so easily. 90 bpm, he'd noted, and quickly rising.

And now she isn't speaking to him.

He wonders if this is it. The straw that breaks the camel's back. The drop that causes the glass to overflow. If this is just too strange, too alien, for Rose to cope with. She's always done so well for a human. He grimaces. He needs to stop his habit of insulting humans. They really are very clever. After all, he's one of them now.

It's wonderful and strange at the same time. Disheartening too, since Rose appears to prefer watching waves crash against the shore to celebrating their reunion. Of course she does, he thinks bitterly. If she stops, she'll have to face him. Have to deal with him, whatever that entails. He's a different man to her. An unwanted gift that she can't return or trade in for the real thing.

Neither he nor the other Doctor considered that she might refuse him. After all, it's really still him underneath. They've done it before. Adjusted. And this time he hasn't even changed his face. Although he is cheekier now, thanks to poor Donna. Had Rose noticed? Maybe she doesn't like cheeky. He can't remember if she ever expressed a preference.

A gift! That's what he needs. Flowers or chocolate or something. Isn't that a human tradition? Now that he's human, he'll need to keep track of things like that. He certainly can't continue to watch the painful emotions flickering across her face without doing something about it. Oh, Rose. No matter what the other him said, he won't force Rose to take him on as her responsibility. He'll be fine on his own. Isn't he always?

"There'll be a zeppelin tomorrow," Jackie says, coming to stand beside him. "She'll be all right, Doctor. Just needs time to think. Sit with her."

He hesitates and Jackie gives him a little push.

"Go on, you daft git. She needs you."

"She needs him," he stresses.

"Well, if you don't believe you're him, she certainly won't."

It's not the first time he's been surprised by Jackie's wisdom and he suspects it won't be the last. Jackie plants her hands on her hips and he doesn't want to be nearby for the tirade she's preparing. "Right. I'll just..." He stumbles backwards and follows a meandering path across the sand to where Rose still sits.

Her skin is flushed pink from the cold and the wind that's quickly tangling her hair. She's thinner now and he wonders how long, how far, she had to run to find him.

"Thought I'd imagined you," he says softly.

Her eyes flit to him for a second, so fast he barely catches it.

"When I...came into existence as it were...the last thing I could remember was dying, starting to regenerate. And you were there. Holding my hand until the very end. But it wasn't possible, was it? Just Donna and I in the TARDIS when I came to. Everything was burning. The TARDIS was being ripped apart. It was like waking from a dream to be faced with a nightmare."

He hears her sharp intake of breath and thinks that might be getting through to her.

"Did he...you...know this would happen?" she asks finally, not looking away from the horizon. "That you would happen?"

"I knew it could happen. Not the same thing."

"Did he want it to?"

"I'm him, Rose," he reiterates. "And no. Not exactly. But it was a wee bit beyond my control. Up to Donna in the end, really."

"He's still got Donna."

She sounds so relieved that he can't bring himself to tell her the truth.

"He does, doesn't he?" She turns to him, demanding, "Doesn't he?"

He grimaces. He'd been without Rose long enough to forget how well she can read him. "Not for long. Her human brain won't be able to cope with a Time Lord consciousness. She'll forget. Everything. I'll have to take all those memories away. She'll burn if I don't. And I wouldn't let that happen."

She looks away again, focusing resolutely on the waves and distant shores beyond. It's Jackie who finally breaks the silence that stretches between them, her patience running out as the sun begins to sink beneath the horizon.

"Rose, sweetheart, we've got to get to that village. Before it's dark. Then we'll never find our way." She crouches in front of her daughter, coaxing her back to the present. "Remember what it was like last time? And we had a car then."

"No. M'not going anywhere," Rose declares in a voice that's far from steady.