Rose Tyler will be the first person to admit that her life with the suddenly part-human Doctor did not start out happy. Nor has it always been bliss-filled even after the two of them settled into a relationship.
But then, where would be the fun in that?
She's hurt that the Doctor would leave her behind, back on this world she tried so hard to escape, after all she'd done to get back to him. And she's confused. Very confused. She doesn't know whether to be annoyed at the half-human Doctor for what the other Doctor did to her in leaving her behind, because, as he claims himself, aren't they the same man in the end? Or perhaps she should be annoyed that he isn't precisely the same man she's fought to get back to, though that seems contradictory. Or, just to make it even harder on her, perhaps she shouldn't be annoyed at all, but should just be glad that the Doctor, even a slightly different Doctor, is there with her. To stay. With her.
Not that she says any of this aloud, of course. She and the Doctor have never been all open like that.
Similarly, he doesn't ever say aloud how he isn't comfortable in his own skin, or how he feels trapped there on Earth in the one time period, though these things don't take her long to realise. She hadn't intended to return to this world, and certainly hadn't expected to have him not be the same man. It doesn't help that she isn't quite the same woman she'd once been either. And then there's the fact that he found out that her enormous gun wasn't just a one-off because there had been Daleks and other extenuating circumstances. She thinks, in retrospect, that that might have been the thing that finally broke his resolve to let things lie.
They talk around the issues for a while as if they're a herd of elephants in the room with them, but this isn't the much-bigger-on-the-inside TARDIS, so it's not long before they run out of room.
When all hell eventually breaks lose, they have a massive screaming fight about every little thing that's been just waiting to be voiced. They yell. She cries. He gets frustrated enough that he breaks her toaster by trying to 'fix' it to distract himself.
And then they really breakthe toaster, shoving it out of the way with enough force that it shatters on the kitchen floor so that he can shag her on the counter.
The first time they have sex is angry and destructive. She worries at first that they've set a terrible precedent.
But in having a proper fight, they've finally aired the real issues between them. They can actually talk about it, once the screaming is out of the way. And neither of them has really said or done anything that a kiss in apology can't sort out.
Her father (her real father, back in the other universe, not this universe's Pete) told her once that couples have rows all the time. She therefore finds it a little amusing that the first time she really can bring herself to think of them both as a real couple is straight on the tail end of just such a row.
He's collapsed on top of her for a moment, and she thinks he might be more emotionally exhausted than physically at that moment. He breathes heavily as he pulls out and away from her, gripping the edge of the bench as if to support himself on shaky legs. She slides down, the tiles of the floor cold against the bare soles of her feet as she pulls her jeans back up.
He apologises that he's not the man she wants. She tells him not to be an idiot. There's no one in any universe she'd rather be with. They'll work it out.
It's not as simple as that, of course. It never is. It's a difficult journey, figuring each other out anew and fitting into each other's lives. It's not comfortable or quick.
But Rose knows – has always known – that this is a man who is worth knowing. She thinks it'll be worth the effort it'll take to figure him (and them, if there's going to be a them) out.
It's a bit like regeneration, she decides after a few months of knowing the half-human Doctor, though the changes aren't quite as startling as the last time she saw that happen to him. He looks the same, for one thing. With (among other things) his hair being as terrific as it is, she'll admit to being selfishly grateful for that. She'd have loved him even if he'd turned into a completely different man, though. She'd done so before. Big ears or big hair, she's always been mad for him. So it doesn't matter so much that he's not exactly the same as the man she crossed universes for.
He's got one heart instead of two. His body temperature is barely lower than hers anymore. He now has, she's discovered, a tendency to sunburn quite easily, especially on the tip of his nose, which she thinks he might have gained from Donna. And that's the least of the quirks he's incorporated from the fiery red-head that Rose met so briefly, but thought she would have really come to like. He is, as her Mum said to her just the other day, a bit more of a bloke than he ever was before. A bit more human.
Different.
Better.
The first time she thinks that, she feels a little like she's betraying the other Doctor just by thinking such a thing, since he's probably at that very moment saving his universe from yet another threat. How can anyone ever be better? She never would have considered it possible while she was with him.
If she's honest about it, it's not that the new half-human Doctor is a better man. If anything, her Doctor's maybe a little more selfish than the full Time Lord tended to be. Rose wondered sometimes whether that part was Donna's influence, or whether the Doctor himself had a bit of a selfish streak that he couldn't indulge properly when he was off being solely responsible for the continuation of the universe. She certainly had never seen much evidence of it in the past.
Once she couldn't help feeling occasionally unable to measure up to the impossible standard he set, and thus eventually unable to really question his decisions even when she knew she probably should. Compared to the way they'd been together before Canary Wharf, she initially feels upset that they keep fighting, often about little things, after that first big blow-up. But then she realises, when she's starting to come to terms with it, that it's actually good, funnily enough. It's better than good. It's healthy. They are, in all of the ways that really matter, equals. They're finally a team, not just a Time Lord and his human companion (or worse, his 'assistant', as Sarah Jane had once called her). Every time they bicker about something and she's not immediately shut down, it feels like they're finally on even footing.
She still loves the other Doctor the same way she still loves her first Doctor, all Northern and big-eared. They're a part of the man she loves now, and she thinks it's not a dishonour to them that she can love the half-human Doctor a little more freely. Feelings can grow and change over time, after all.
This new Doctor clings to her just as tightly as she clutches him. The words 'I love you' roll off his tongue with an ease that occasionally startles her, but pleases her all the same. When the word 'mortgage' comes into the conversation, they squabble about it, but the conversation doesn't just die off because he refuses to consider it. He wants a life with her, and that's a part of that life that he'll consider, even though it scares him to be stuck with doors and carpets and a home that doesn't shift about on a whim.
And, most importantly, he doesn't try to leave her behind, for her own good or otherwise. Well, not after that time during that one invasion, after which she'd given him such an earful that he probably longed for the days when the worst he was likely to get was a Jackie Tyler slap.
This Doctor might still ride a horse through a mirror to strand himself in pre-revolutionary France if it's necessary. But she thinks he'll also hold out his hand and pull her onto the horse behind him, because he'll want her stranded with him. That's the kind of selfish that he is. The good kind, as far as she's concerned.
He loves her enough that he'll fight for her and with her, but he won't fight so much against himself anymore. It's a strange concept, but it works for them.
They fight when she casually asks him to marry her, because it's so human and needlessly domestic (more so than the mortgage, even) and shouldn't he have been the one to ask her?
They fight when deciding on where to go on their honeymoon, because the Doctor's still not quite used to not always having the last say in deciding destinations.
They even fight with her standing in her wedding dress just about to come down the aisle, when he runs up to her and tries to insist that they should go off and elope away from her family, because her mum's been driving him up the wall again. But then, just a few minutes later, they're kissing to seal their vows, and he's whispering to her how much he loves her.
It's not perfect. But in a way it's better than perfect, because finally it's real.
In the end, through all those fights, they'll always be all right, Rose decides with a wide grin. She pulls him in for another kiss, to the thunderous applause of all the people who love them.
~FIN~