AN: Just a little response to the end of Season 4.
It's not a place from a fairy tale, although it is a world where zeppelins swarm the skies of London and the once-dead live and the Tylers are rich beyond imagining.
There are some alien invasions, of course. And the dead have been known to walk on occasion. There might very well be a new rift in time forming somewhere in Germany, as a large number of children there seem to have developed some extraordinary psychic talents (although it doesn't lead to another universe.) It seems as though Rose and the New New Doctor (or, as he says, the New and one-half New Doctor) run into some sort of life-threatening situation at least once a week.
Thank god.
There's a way you see the world, when you're running- even if it's a world you've seen a thousand times before, even if it's your own world; even if it's only your (previously) very ordinary street (before it was invaded by aliens). Events are highlighted in metaphorical neon yellow marker in your memory. Geography whizzes by so that you notice the wonders and the exotic and not the rat droppings in the corner by the dumpster. Even the people are different- their souls, compressed into that crucible of fear and terror and certain death, turn the most beautiful colors (show their true colors.) There's either not enough time, or only just enough.
There's too much time here, sometimes.
There are washing machines and hair dryers and wet socks when it rains. And it's not even wet socks in the name of exploring, or- or saving the world, or just not caring about his socks. They're just wet. And rather dull.
Not that life with Rose is dull, or uninteresting, or somehow unfulfilling.
He loves Rose.
(He does.)
It's just that sometimes time stretches during the random minutes when Rose is out picking up milk at the grocery store or something and he just… wonders. About the days when every second counted, and every minute could have been their last.
And then he remembers the poor sod out there living that life in the alternate universe (without Rose) and he is very happy to be where he is. And what he is. (A human. Really sometimes he can't get over that. It's just so weird.)
Besides, it's not like this whole domesticity thing isn't something of an adventure, and adventure completely separate from their weekly alien encounters. (Which is, now that he thinks about it, really more of a comfortable routine.) There's excitement, and new things to discover, and even unique human miseries he's never experienced before (like the flu.) There's joy and surprise and extreme, acute nervousness (and a ring in his left-hand pocket he's been fiddling with for days now.)
It's not a fairy tale world. But to the extent that their story ends, the ending is a happy one.