"Can I-" Rose looked at her Doctor and reached out, hoping beyond hope that he was really standing there. When she had heard him whispering her name in the night she had thought that when she found him, when she finally saw him, that he would take her back with him, but this…this was…it hurt more than anything she had ever felt before.

And yet she wouldn't give it up for the world.

"I'm still just an image. No touch." He said, pokerfaced.

And with those words shattered heart into tiny fragments. "Can't you come through properly?" She asked with her last piece of hope.

"The whole thing would fracture. Two universes would collapse." Was his answer.

She almost choked at that. "So?" She repressed the urge to cry.

He smiled a little bit at that, making the tears well up in her eyes.

He, on the other hand, seemed a bit distracted as he looked around. "Where are we? Where did the gap come out?"

"We're in Norway." She said, calming herself down, putting her emotions back to normal.

"Norway. Right."

She repressed her own little smile. "About fifty miles out of Bergen. It's called 'Darlig Ulv Stranden.'"

"Dalek?" He looked at once confused and a little bit worried.

"Darl-IG. It's Norwegian for 'bad.'" She repressed her smile again. "This translates as 'Bad Wolf Bay.'"

The look on his face stopped her heart before it slowly fell, making her own smile disappear despite her best efforts.

She started to worry and looked around before looking right back at him. "How long have we got?" She asked at last, her biggest fear finally coming out.

"About two minutes."

She had to push down her tears again. Or she tried. But then they started to ocme out. "I can't think of what to say!"

She let out a nervous little laugh, a laugh that she didn't even know he was capable of, a laugh that killed her a little bit inside.

"You've still got Mr. Mickey, then?" He said at last, looking over at her family standing by the jeep.

She swallowed a suddenly nervous lump in her throat as she looked over, but figuring that she had to say it, she continued. "There's five of us now. Mum, dad, Mickey…" a thousand thoughts flickered through her mind in the little pause that she took before saying, "and the baby."

The Doctor's face lost all of its walls and boundaries and his entire guard came down in one moment of complete horror. "You're not…"

She looked at his face. It was the face of a man who was terrified that the girl he loved was pregnant. And not pregnant with someone else's baby, pregnant with his baby. Pregnant with his child and stuck in a different universe and he couldn't be with her.

She forced a smile and a laugh out of her lips. "No…it's mum."

The look on his face was one of pure relief as he looked at her and then squinted as he looked over, trying to get a good look at her mother.

As he looked away from her, she let her face fall. One little white lie. One little white lie was worth that beautiful look on his face…because if he knew the truth… she didn't wasn't to think about it.

She put her right arm across her stomach as she lied to the Doctor again. "She's three months gone. More Tylers on the way."

His eyes went back to her and she quickly removed her hand from her stomach. Maybe a little too quickly, she thought, as his eyes flicked downwards as they detected the movement, but he said nothing.

"And what about you? Are you…?" He said, the look on his face nothing she had ever seen before. It was like he just wanted…just wanted to look at her while he could, and the thought that maybe even her Doctor could feel that way made her blink back more tears.

"Yeah, I'm back working in the shop."

"Oh, good for you." He said, but she could tell that he didn't really mean it.

"Shut up. No I'm not." She let herself smile. "There's still a Torchwood on this planet, it's open for business. I think I know a thing or two about aliens."

The Doctor's face lit up and melted her heart. "Rose Tyler. Defender of the Earth."

The look on his face, the way that he said that, made her reconsider telling him, taking back the lies. She was just about to open her mouth and tell him the truth before he spoke.

"You're dead, officially, back home." His voice had turned harder, hateful almost. "So many people died that day and you've gone missing. You're on a list of the dead."

His voice was almost dangerous and she bit her tongue again, remembering why she wasn't going to tell him, why she didn't tell him in the first place. And why she couldn't.

"Here you are." His voice softened and made her look back up at him. "Living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have."

That set her off. "Am I ever gonna see you again?" He voice was mostly steady, albeit a couple octaves higher, despite the tears streaming down her face.

"You can't."

She flipped her hair out of her face impatiently. "What're you gonna do?" She squeaked before clearing her throat, trying to get her voice back to normal.

His face was back to full guard, full blocks between him and the world, poker face back up. "Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life. Last of the Time Lords."

"On your own?" Rose asked, fingering the hem of her shirt.

Even his guards couldn't completely block out his emotions and his face fell a little bit as he nodded.

"I love you." She said finally, so sure of herself, so sure of her words, more sure than she had ever been of anything. She had said it to him before, and she had meant it, but never had she meant it as much as she did now.

"Quite right, too." The Doctor said, smiling a little bit.

He had never been able to say it back. She knew he did, but he had never said it. From what he had said, she thought it was some sort of cultural thing.

"And I suppose, it it's on last chance to say it…"

She looked up into his face and into his beautiful, beautiful eyes, once more drinking in the face that she held so dear to herself.

"Rose Tyler…"

And he faded.

For the first moment she couldn't believe it and then she broke down in tears, holding her stomach tight to her and just crying. It was worth the little white lie that she had told. It was all worth it. But it killed her.

He would never know his child.

And she would never see him again.