The Doctor groaned as a harsh, white light pierced through his half-closed eyelids, sending jagged spikes of pain through his skull. He scrunched his eyes closed and tried to remember where he was and how he got there, but his mind was drawing a terrifying blank. He hadn't suffered memory loss this badly since he was his former self.

He was faintly aware of voices talking, but one voice in particular broke through his fuzzy brain

"…can you hear me?"

If there was one thing he remembered, it was that voice, and the beautiful human that owned it. Rose. He weakly called out for her, but his voice sounded all wrong. Didn't he have a Northern accent this time 'round? Why the hell did he sound like a Londoner, with an Estuary accent?

Unless…

"Rose, Rose what happened?" he asked, panic filtering through his system.

Had he just regenerated? Was Rose okay? Did she recognize him? Was she going to stay with him?

"Rose, something's wrong!" he said, trying to sit up but struggling to do so.

Blimey, this regeneration must've been a tough one.

He opened his eyes, ignoring the harshness of the lights, and looked around. Sterile white medical equipment beeped all around him.

"Bloody hell. Why the hell did you bring me to a bloody hospital?" he asked angrily, feeling his voice slip back into his familiar Northern burr. "Blimey, Rose, do you have any idea how stupid that was? 21st century doesn't know 'bout aliens yet, and you've just hand-gifted them the most important alien in the universe!"

He finally caught Rose's eye, and upon seeing the hurt, shock, and tears there, he finally realized how rude he sounded (and he idly wondered if he was a ginger this time 'round.)

"Look, Rose, I'm sorry," he said, lowering his voice to sound more contrite. "I know how scared you must be. You've taken good care of me. I feel fantastic. Ooh. Fan-tas-tic. Doesn't fit the teeth anymore. No matter, billions of other brilliant words I can use. Ooh, brilliant! I like that. Brillllliant."

Rose was still staring at him in muted horror, and he only now realized that his gob seemed to be linked to his emotions. He was terrified, and he'd rambled on about vocabulary.

Slipping into silence, the weight of his situation fully hit him. He'd never explained regeneration to her; he never thought he'd have to.

"Doctor?" she asked tearfully, her voice wavering.

He grinned at her. His brilliant human. His brilliant human who looked very different, he finally noticed. She looked older. Not old, but older. A few years older. Her hair was shorter, and less bleach-blonde and more natural-blonde. She was leaner and sharper, and her face wasn't as full. His hearts sped up in horror at the possibility that he'd missed out on years of her preciously-short life.

Wait…not his hearts, his heart. Singular. One heart. Upon further internal diagnostics, he realized his new body was part-human. Blimey, that had never happened before.

"Rose, something's gone wrong," he said, resting his palm over his chest to verify that, yes, he only had one heart. "Time Lords have this little trick, you see. I don't really remember much, but I must've been dying, and to save myself I had to change every cell in my body. I might not look the same, but I am the same. I'm still your Doctor. I promise."

Rose was staring fearfully at him, and the more he spoke, the more upset she became, until she choked out a sob and ran from the room.

His one heart seemed to give out on him, and he unconsciously reached out for his respiratory bypass, only to remember this body wasn't equipped with one. The Doctor's vision swam as he gasped for breath.

She ran away from him. She didn't want him like this. He was just too bloody alien for her.

"Easy, there, mate."

A pair of unfamiliar hands pressed against his shoulders, forcing him to lie back. He didn't want to lie back, dammit, he wanted to find Rose. He needed Rose.

"M'fine," he said, still feeling a bit woozy and lightheaded. "M'fine, let me up."

The nurse rolled her eyes and scoffed, but helped him into a sitting position. The Doctor made to stand, but the nurse put her foot down and said, "No, no, Mr. Tyler. You can't go wandering off. You've taken quite a blow to the head."

Mr. Tyler? A blow to the head?

What the bloody hell happened to him?

The Doctor struggled to make sense of the little information he had, but truthfully, he didn't quite care at the moment. Rose was upset and crying, and he needed to go to her.

The Doctor waited until the nurse was busy rummaging through a nearby drawer to make his escape. He quietly pushed off the bed, relieved when the nurse kept her back to him, and quickly darted out of the room.

"Rose?" he called out once he was in the hallway. "Rose!"

He heard his name (well, the name Rose must've given when she'd admitted him) being yelled by a rather irate nurse chasing after him.

"Bugger," he mumbled, darting down a new corridor in hopes of escaping the nurse. And of finding Rose.

"Rose?" he whisper-shouted. "C'mon, Rose. Please. I'm still me. Promise! Rose?"

His head was aching and he was absolutely exhausted. This new body was a bit rubbish. How did humans cope? He was just about to give up and head back to his room when he heard her voice echoing through the corridors.

"Doctor?" she called frantically. "Doctor, where are you? Doctor?"

He followed the sound of her voice until he nearly ran right into her as she was rounding the same corner he was. He steadied her by placing his hands on her hips, surprised by his boldness yet feeling as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

The Doctor looked down at her. Her eyes were red and puffy, and naked fear was written across her face. He knew she most likely didn't want him to, but he wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her in for a hug. He was surprised when she returned it fiercely, clenching her fingers into his hospital gown. He balked when he realized he was practically naked.

Rose must've felt him stiffen, because she pulled away and swiped her fingers at her eyes. A sparkly glint caught his eye, and he realized she was wearing a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. A familiar ring, at that. His hands were shaking as he reached for hers, and he brought the ring closer to his eyes for inspection.

To the untrained eye, her ring would've looked like a simple silver ring with a sapphire set into the hilt. But he saw it for what it was: the band was made of audentium, a sturdy metal found only on one planet, his planet; the stone was a rare gem whose name had been lost eons ago, but that his people referred to as the river-stone. He idly twisted her hand from side to side to watch the fluorescent lights glitter off the stone.

It was one of the only relics from Gallifrey he had, and it was intended for when a Gallifreyan wanted to claim a bond mate, yet Rose was wearing it. It didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense.

"Easy, there, Doctor," she soothed, cupping his cheeks in her palms. "Breathe. In, and out. In, and out."

He breathed with her for a few seconds until his vision was no longer spotty. Her fingertips stroked his cheeks as she dropped her hands and twined her fingers through his.

"C'mon," she said softly, guiding him towards his hospital room again. "I can explain everything. Well, almost everything."

Rose slowly guided the Doctor back to his room with her arm firmly wrapped around his torso. He hadn't realized how exhausted he was, and he was grateful for her help. They made it to his room and she helped him into bed, seemingly unbothered by the fact that his arse was practically hanging out.

She tucked him in and handed him a cup of water, which he drank greedily. Really, this half-human body was absolutely rubbish.

"Right," she said softly, taking the empty cup from him. "I'm sorry about earlier. I was just surprised, is all. I didn't mean to run off like that. Do-do you think I could try again?"

She was chewing on the red, raw cuticle of her thumb. If she didn't stop that, she'd make it bleed.

The Doctor reached over and lightly tugged her finger away from her mouth and rested their clasped fingers on the mattress.

"I'm assuming something a little more than regeneration has taken place?" he mused softly.

Her hand tightened in his for just a moment before relaxing.

"You didn't even regenerate," she said softly, her thumb stroking his soothingly.

The Doctor felt his eyebrow rise of its own accord in confusion.

"You've been like this for years," she said, gesturing to his body vaguely. "You regenerated ages back, while I was still travelling with you."

The Doctor's lungs seemed to stop functioning and he could barely squeak out, "You mean you're not with me anymore?"

Rose's eyebrows furrowed until she finally realized how what she said could have been interpreted.

"Oh, no, no, no," she said quickly, gripping his hand tightly. "Sorry. Yes, I'm still with you, but no, I'm not travelling with you anymore. But you're not exactly travelling, either."

The Doctor nodded slowly, trying to absorb what she was saying, but to be honest, he didn't care as long as she was still with him.

"Does that have something to do with me being human?"

Rose nodded and said, "That happened about four years ago, now. You called it an instantaneous biological metacrisis."

"And we're…you and I…?" the Doctor trailed off helplessly, nodded down to the Gallifreyan ring that adorned her finger.

Rose followed his gaze, and her face softened with happiness.

"Yeah," she whispered, twisting her ring around her finger. "Last year. It was beautiful."

The Doctor smiled wistfully, and his brain supplied him a quick image of Rose in a simple white gown walking towards him as the sun made a golden halo of her hair.

"I'm sure it was," he murmured absently. "Blimey, never thought I'd end up here. Human. On Earth."

Rose's face pinched off with sorrow and she glanced down at her clasped hands and said, "Yeah. Not our Earth, though. We live together on a parallel Earth. A parallel Earth where my dad never died. He and Mum have been married almost eight years. They've got a son, Tony. I've got a little brother. We go round for tea every Sunday, and you play footie with him all day and Mum yells at you for tracking mud through the house, and…"

Rose's voice choked off, and she buried her face into her hands to hide the tears. His heart broke for her, and yet he was so confused, and his mind felt awkwardly empty, which he now realized was because the TARDIS wasn't there. But Rose was crying, and that was something he could fix.

"C'mere," he said before he could think about it.

He scooted over to the far side of the bed and opened his arms up to her. She crawled into the bed with him, and buried her face into his chest as she sobbed. He held her tightly and ran his hand up and down her back, trying to soothe her as best he could.

When she quieted several moments later, he softly asked, "Why can't I remember?"

Rose sniffled and rubbed at her nose and said, "You were fiddling with something at Torchwood – that's where we work – some sort of weapon, we thought. It backfired and a great cloud of smoke came out, and it knocked you unconscious. You hit your head on the floor, but I don't think that's what did it. I think whatever discharged from that weapon was some sort of memory-loss drug or something."

The Doctor listened to her confident evaluation of what had happened, and he felt so proud of her. She'd really grown into herself, and was the beautiful, self-assured woman he'd always known her to be. His heart seemed too full of joy and love for this woman, and the warmth he felt in his chest seeped down into his stomach, into his very bones.

"Did you run a sample for analysis?" he asked, brushing rogue strands of hair from her face.

She nodded against his chest and said, "The results should be by any minute. Pete's personally overseeing the analysis."

The Doctor nodded wordlessly, still a bit in shock over his present situation. He was no longer a Time Lord, but a half-human version of himself. He didn't have the TARDIS, and he was earth-bound, but he was surprised when he didn't feel panicked, as he once would have. It was probably all Rose's doing. She'd been his balm, ever since she first came on board. She made him better, and showed him that the universe was still a beautiful place, and that he deserved to be happy, too. If he was human and stuck on Earth, there was no one he would rather be stuck with than Rose. His precious Rose. His precious human Rose.

The Doctor's heart pounded in his chest. He was human, and Rose was human, which meant that his lifespan now matched hers. He wouldn't have to watch her wither and die and then live on without her.

His eyes stung as he crushed Rose to his chest once more, breathing in her familiar scent of jasmine and vanilla. In his mind's eye, he saw a flash of images, ranging from happy to devastating, to everything in between. He saw Rose, and people that weren't Rose. He saw unfamiliar planets, and familiar old London. The images were too fleeting for him to make any sense of, and the more he tried to lock onto them, the faster they seemed to slip away. He finally stopped trying, instead convincing himself that his memory would fix itself in due time. It already seemed to be in the process of repairing itself, because it felt like second nature to be spooned this intimately with Rose.

"Doctor, you okay?" she asked worriedly, her fingers stroking through his hair.

He nodded silently against her, feeling happier than he ever thought possible.

"I'm human," he murmured, his voice muffled against her neck.

"Yeah," she said, unsure of the point he was trying to make.

"I'm human," he repeated, "and you're human. We're human together, Rose. Together."

The penny finally dropped, and Rose pressed her lips to the top of his head.

"Forever," she whispered. "My Doctor."

He made a happy noise deep in his throat and cuddled impossibly closer to his Rose, his wife, completely content.

"Dunno 'bout you," he mumbled thickly. "But I'm knackered."

Rose giggled beside him and said, "Me, too. Sleep, Doctor."

"You're staying, right?" he asked, tightening his grip on her hip.

"Of course," she said, readjusting to make herself more comfortable.

"Good," he said, feeling the first tendrils of sleep overtake him. "Love you."

Tears of joy ran down her face as she brushed her lips across his.

"I love you, too," she whispered, draping her leg across his.

She'd been absolutely terrified when she learned that he had been rushed to the hospital earlier that day. She'd feared the worst. She'd been so happy to see him wake up, but then devastated as soon as she realized he'd lost all of his recent memories. He'd reacted to the news far better than she would have, if she were in his place, but she wasn't about to question it. Instead, she hugged him closer and let herself succumb to her exhaustion.

oOoOo

"Hey, Rose, Doctor, I've got the results! You should be in there clear in a few hours, Doctor. Your body is metabolizing the compound at an exponential rate. I wouldn't be surprised if most of your memories have already been restored. Anyways, you should be good as new in just…"

Jake pulled open the curtain to the Doctor's bed, and stopped mid-explanation when he stumbled upon the two sleeping adults. He grinned at the couple, and at the way they were completely twisted together. He didn't have the heart to wake them, and so he placed the file folder at the foot of their bed and quietly exited the room.