Welcome to the updated version of "Time Goes On"! I rewrote this story a while back to bring it up to my current writing standards, posted it on AO3, and then forget to update it here. But here it is now; enjoy!
He can't help himself.
He didn't mean to run into her, honestly. It should have been impossible. He wasn't even aiming for London, much less Earth, and even less the 21st century—fairly boring time, that century is. But there she is, Rose Marion Tyler, sitting in a café all on her lonesome. He must have set the coordinates for the wrong year, because she's younger than he's ever seen her. He can't help himself.
He sits himself down across from her, and has to remind himself that it shouldn't hurt when she asks who he is. She's yet to meet him in her own timeline, and the universe will take her from him before she can see who he is now, anyway. He introduces himself as John Smith, Doctor of Many Things. She gives him a look full of skepticism, yet laced with amusement, and introduces herself as Rose Tyler, Shop Girl. He's about to object to the title she gave herself, but she stops him with a comment on his bow tie. He tells her that bow ties are cool, and she laughs.
"So I'm guessing that the whole 'weird professor' look is by choice, then?" She teases. She gestures to his getup of a bow tie, suspenders, a tweed jacket, and trousers that are slightly too short. He only smiles. She smiles back, and the sight of her tongue poking between her teeth is so familiar that it makes his hearts ache.
The basket of chips that she ordered just before he dropped into her life arrives, and they split it as they continue to talk. He's quick to mention that, while the chips are very good, fish fingers and custard are even better. He refuses to shut up about what he considers a delicacy until she promises to give the dish a try sometime. Their conversation doesn't once hit a snare as they talk from opposite sides of table. He learns that she's seventeen at the moment, almost eighteen. She's just a couple of years away from meeting him in the basement of Henrick's, with him all gruff and big-nosed, big-eared, and blue-eyed, with a love for his leather jacket.
He doesn't want their chat to end, but it has to. He is who he is, and he has to save the city again—really, when isn't London being invaded by aliens? He takes off from the café without so much a goodbye—he hates goodbyes—and only vaguely registers her fumbling for some cash to throw on the table before chasing off after him. She follows him straight into the TARDIS, and that's when he finally fully notices her presence. The sight of her standing in the ship that's bigger on the inside fills him with happiness and pain at the same time. She's way out of her timeline now—this isn't right at all. There are no Earth-ending paradoxes right now, though, so he focuses on the alien threat at hand.
She runs out the ship after him, right into the middle of the group of aliens trying to take over the Level Five planet, stubborn human that she is. She doesn't freeze up with shock or run away screaming. Instead, she stands her ground and does her best to look big and unafraid by the strange creatures in front her. Her actions fill him with pride. When it's all over and done, he isn't ashamed to admit that he couldn't have done it without her—he's always needed her.
They're back on the TARDIS, and she still only seems a little shaken up. He's setting the coordinates for the Powell Estate when she asks him if every day of his life was like that, and he tells her that trouble is only the bits in between. He can't think of any other answer. She smiles and tells him that it sounds like a great life. The next words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and he's not sure if he should regret the words or not.
"Do you want to come along?"
She asks if he means it. He just looks at her with a twinkle in his eyes and a faint smile on his face. Her answer changes his smile into a goofy grin. He changes the coordinates.
They're off—again, for the first time, and for the last time, all at once. The Doctor and Rose Tyler in TARDIS. They run across the universe, hand in hand, getting in trouble and saving lives along the way. Their hands don't cup together like they used to—like they will soon; time travel is hell on tenses—,he notices, but if they twine their fingers together, it's a perfect fit. He savors everything about her. There's still a blessed lack of paradoxes, but he knows better than to think that his time with her will never end.
Maybe that's why, about a week and a half later, linear time, he finds that he can't help himself again. He's terrified that he'll turn away and she'll disappear, because the universe is never this kind to him. He needs more than just her hand and her hugs. So he kisses her. It's their first real kiss, even with the mismatched timelines. There's no possession involved, no time vortex coupled with impending death. It's just the Doctor and Rose. When he pulls away, he feels he's gone too far. He starts to apologize, and she just smiles. Then, to his even greater surprise, she tells him to shut up and pulls him back to her for a proper snog.
Things change. They keep running, hand in hand, getting in trouble and saving lives along the way, but now there's kissing. He's never been so happy, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, the universe has finally given him his reward.
More time passes, and again he can't help himself—what is it about this pink-and-yellow human girl that has him throwing all his rules out the window? He tells her that he loves her. He can say it in this body, with this mouth, and he could never say it before. So he tells her that he loves her. She looks at him in disbelief for a moment, and he repeats himself. She breaks out in a huge grin, grabs his tweed jacket, and pulls him in for the longest kiss of his many lives. They're both breathing a bit raggedly when they part, and, through her gasping breaths, she returns the sentiment. He grins widely and wraps his arms around her in a crushing hug. Rose Tyler loves him. Body be damned, she loves him, the Doctor himself—she said it to his tenth self, just said it to his eleventh self, and he has an inkling that she loved his ninth self.
Things are great. He can hold her hand because he feels like it, hug her because he feels like it, kiss her because he feels like it, tells her he loves her because he feels like it. So he does. She does, too. For the first time in a very, very, very, long time, he thanks the universe.
But everything ends. He refuses to accept it, though, and keep running across the stars with the human girl he loves. He lives in the moment, and doesn't once try to peek at the timelines.
Realization hits him one day, cold and hard, the same realization that he's managed to put out of his mind for so long. She's eighteen now, has been for a while. His memories haven't changed, nor have they tried to. In his memories, she doesn't know him at all when she meets him in an Auton-infested shop basement—she doesn't even recognize his name. She's still shell-shocked upon her first step into the TARDIS, and runs back outside to look at the box. She doesn't greet the sentient time-and-space ship the way she does now—stroking her hand across the blue wood of the box. He still loses her at Canary Wharf. He still leaves her in a parallel universe with his clone. And he knows why. He won't mess with the timelines—can't or won't? He has to take her home, because she has to meet his ninth self. If she doesn't meet his ninth self, then he never loses her. If he never loses her, he never takes her out of her timeline when she's seventeen, and she's never with him now. That's why he hasn't seen the paradox—the whole thing is a paradox. She can't remember being in the TARDIS, because she has to be shocked by it, and she can't remember loving the Doctor, because she can't know who he is.
"I'm taking you home," he tells her a few days later. He's landed the TARDIS on the Powell Estate; right where he used to park it on almost every visit to Rose's mum.
Her face falls and her eyes shine with disbelief and betrayal. "Why?"
"I have to." He refuses to look up and see her face. The brokenness of her voice is bad enough.
"You don't have to do anything," she argues, tugging at her pigtail braids.
"I have to do this, Rose. Time is a fickle thing." The words are bitter on his tongue as he forces them out. He doesn't want to continue, but the confusion on her face forces him to.
"You, the you two from now, will meet me when I blow up your job and you'll have no clue who I am" He watches as she tries to figure out what he means. "I took you out of your timeline, Rose. Your future is my past and it can't be changed."
She finally understands what he's talking about. "You're just going to wipe my memories, take me home, and leave me there without any memory of you." He nods, still looking at the console and not her.
"I have to," he repeats, and those three simple words nearly rip his hearts right out his chest.
She's silent for a few moments before speaking again. "Then do it."
His head snaps up and he looks at her with shock written across his feature. "What?" He chokes out.
"Look, you've taught me that time doesn't like being messed with. So if you're telling me that this is the only way to save your past, then I'm going to agree with you. But if I ever find out that is just some clever way of ditching me, then believe me, you will regret it."
He gives a weak smile at her attempt at humor, and strides across the room to where she's sitting in one of seat by the console. She stands up when he nears, and he cups her face in his hands. She leans into the touch, knowing it's going to be the last time she sees him for a long time. He leans down the few inches and captures her lips in a kiss. He's trying to say goodbye through the contact, because, no matter what kind of man he is, he can't actually say goodbye to her. She kisses him back, putting much love into the kiss as she can, trying to give him something to carry with him.
"You are something special, Rose Tyler," he says when they break apart.
He shuts his eyes, and she does the same. He concentrates for a second, reaching into her mind, and then it's all gone, locked away behind a door that's hidden and chained up. He gives her mind one more nudge, and she falls asleep. He wipes away the tears on her face with the pad of his thumb.
He carries her from the TARDIS to her room, which looks the same as it always did (and thank god Jackie's not home because he can't see that conversation going very well at all). He lays her limp body carefully on the bed, and brushes his lips against her forehead. She twitches at the contact that her body recognizes so well, but that her mind has recently forgotten. He spares one last look at her, then walks back to the TARDIS.
Rose wakes up two hours later and can't remember when she braided her hair.