A/N: Just a little something that has been burning my brain for a long while. I hope you like it.

"Ssh, spanners!"

He was dreaming again. The customary restless twitching under the blue, silk bedding that twisted around his bare legs. It was, so far as Rose could tell, the same dream he had denied having for the last month. The one that made sweat bead on his forehead and shook him awake with a choked sound that may have been a sob, but was cut off so sharply it was hard to tell. Rose looked at the bedroom clock. 02:17. Drawing her dressing gown tight she eased her tired body onto his bed, back resting against the bedstead.

The man beside her was not the Doctor, but he was her Doctor. Bad Wolf Bay was a fading memory now, months had passed since their return to Pete's World. They had not been easy times. The Doctor had changed, and if she was honest Rose knew she wasn't the same woman he had lost at Canary Wharf. The dimension cannon had been a crude tool, blasting holes across the universe. Its lack of precision left Rose with her own wounds, which she would bare in time. But not tonight. Tonight was about her Doctor.

Beneath the sheets his body trembled. His features, childlike in repose, contorted. Rose rested her hand on his naked shoulder, her touch feather light. In his sleep he murmured a name, twisting the bedding with his fingers until his knuckles turned from pink to white and the muscles locked in their grip.

Rose whispered soothing words into his ear and brushed the damp hair from his forehead.

"It's all right." Her voice drifted into his dream. "I'm here, love."

He woke with a stifled sob, brown eyes wide and wet. Jerking upright the sheet dropped to his waist, the top of his red sleeping boxers just visible. The hair on his chest bristled in the breeze from the open window and goose bumps rippled along his arms.

Her Doctor blinked, clearing his vision for the glistening salt water that brimmed on the cusp of his lower eyelid.

"It's okay."

Rose's softly spoken words made him jump, and he spun round, tangled legs tying him in an untenable position, nose down to the mattress eyes raised to his unexpected bed mate.

"Rose," he managed not to sound surprised, "Sorry, did I wake you?"

She shrugged, "Something did, not sure if it was you or the cat from number 5. I heard you dreaming when I went to the loo."

He sighed, head dropping to rest on the bed undeterminable words muttered into the sheets.

"You could just talk to me," Rose stroked his bare shoulder with a single finger, tracing the line of his shoulder blade making his skin tingle.

He rolled over, feet knotted in the tangled sheets, and struggled to free himself. Air escaped from his lungs in a short curse of frustration. "I've been tied up with metal chains easier to escape than these bedsheets."

"What do you dream?" she asked, loosening the ties that bound him.

"Oh, nothing much," his reply forcibly light, his eyes directed anywhere but her face.

It was a dance they had practiced until the moves were almost perfect. Concern, enquiry, diversion, avoidance, frustration and the final return to separate rooms for sleepless nights.

"You called out," Rose deviated from the choreographed moves. With an arm across his stomach, her weight into the palm that tensed on the mattress, she blocked his escape. "Every night. Always the same. Just before you wake."

"Rose…" he pleaded, his fingers entwining hers, taking the pressure out of her barricade.

Pre-empting his next move she squeezed his hand, shifting her weight onto her thigh and lifting their joined fingers to his chest, pressing into the place where his second heart should have been.

"You don't have to pretend," she whispered, her voice wavering. "I can see you're hurting."

Her Doctor lowered his head and Rose leant forward, kissing his matted hair and whispering reassurances against his skin.

"I miss her," his voice was raw, earthy.

Rose nodded, her lips still pressed to his head. She squeezed shut her eyes and prayed he would forgive her for what she was about to do.

"Who?"

In her arms Rose felt his muscles tense. She could hear him swallow, breath catching in his throat. Every cell in his body begged her not to ask again.

"Who do you miss?"

He fought her embrace but Torchwood had taught Rose about restraints, and she held him firm, not hurting him but refusing to let go. Her Doctor rallied against the tears that broke his voice.

"Donna," he choked, "I miss Donna."

A sob broke free, strangling his words and forcing hot tears to spill down his cheeks. Rose's arms enveloped him and he drank in her scent, his arms wrapped around her, fingers knotted in the material of her dressing gown.

"I know you do," Rose cooed, her own throat tightening.

"She was my best friend," his words were thick and hard to decipher. "And she's gone. Forever."

Rose smoothed his hair, "She's with the Doctor. Safe and sound."

Against her shoulder she felt him shake his head and stifle his tears. "Except she's not."

"Don't be daft," Rose lifted his head and kissed his forehead, "The Doctor won't leave her."

"She's a human-Time Lord meta-crisis," her Doctor spat the words as though they burned him, "She can't survive that. No human could."

Rose felt her insides recoil. "He'd find a way."

Her Doctor shook his head and raked an unsteady hand through his hair. "There was no choice. He will have wiped her mind of everything we... they... did together. Without that her brain would burn and she would die."

Rose sunk back and he pushed her away, stumbling to his feet and staggering to the window. Outside the moon and the stars mocked him with their distance.

"It's not fair!" he cried, spinning back to the bed, beating his chest with a single fist. "Everything she was, all the brightness she discovered, it's gone! I can see her now, back as her mother's favourite source of complaint. That silly girl laughing on the phone to her mates, missing the big picture. Getting drunk down the pub and temping in a London office for some jumped up businessman that gets his rocks off looking at her breasts!"

Her Doctor threw his arms wide, his face contorted. "That's not a life! That's not the life she deserves."

Rose rolled from the bed, bare feet landing on the floor making the boards creak.

"She'll be okay," her words were no longer certain. "The Doctor will make sure she's okay."

He snorted with derision, "He can't! He can never see her again. Never."

For this there was no answer. Rose crossed the distance between them and reached for his balled fists, holding them in her soft palms. Her hands slid along his bare arms and felt the chill of his sweat dampened skin.

"She's part of me," he whispered, "I'm not just Time Lord with all his memories, Rose. The meta-crisis didn't just give me one heart. Part of me is her. Donna's memories. Her essence. Her shouting at the universe, her insecurities, her brilliance. It's all in here."

He beat his chest again with the ball of his hand. His anger dissipating and despair sweeping in to take its place.

"To be crushed back to the person she was..." his voice broke again and fresh tears slid across his skin. "To remember nothing of a whole year. A lost fiance, a void that can't be filled. And she still believes that she's just a temp. Nothing special."

His eyes found Rose's and his bottom lip shook.

"Donna is so much more than all of that."

"Donna is brilliant," Rose said, wiping the tears from his face with tenderness. "She will always be brilliant."

A sobbed laugh hauled its way from her Doctor's chest and Rose gathered him into her arms. His skinny, half naked frame, shivering against her warmth.

"What would you do if you were him? If you were the Doctor?" Rose's voice was soft in his ear. "What would you do to save her?"

Her Doctor withdrew from the embrace, red eyes damp, lips wet with tears. "I'd make her safe, from aliens and enemies. A psychic defence, to protect where I couldn't."

"What else?" Rose asked, her voice gentle, encouraging.

"I'd tell her mother to be kind. I would make sure Sylvia knew how many people Donna saved, how much she is loved, how special she is, even if I had to drag that woman into the TARDIS and carry her halfway across the universe to prove it!"

Her Doctor's back straighten. His feet slapped against the wooden boards as he paced the length of the room, spinning on a heel at each end and moving faster with each rotation.

"I'd get Gramps... grandad... Wilf... I'd get Wilf to make up a good cover story. One she'd believe. Oh and he'll look out for her, Wilf will never let her down."

Rose smiled at him, "And what makes you think the Doctor wouldn't have done all those things?"

His stride hesitated. He stopped, turned, and stared at Rose as if seeing her clearly for the first time. She walked to him, slipping her hands through his hair and linking her fingers behind his neck.

"Because you and he, you're almost the same. And if he loves her as much as you do…"

"Eugh! She's human, and he's a Martian that's just disgusting…" his words trailed into silence as Rose's eyes danced with laughter.

"There she is," Rose wiggled her eyebrows, "That little bit of Donna Noble just creeping out at the edges. Not quite understanding and shouting at the universe."

His face dropped, wiping the smile from Rose's lips.

"And if Donna Noble's words can be spoken," Rose pushed on against her own anxieties, "Then perhaps her insecurities, her fears, are making you doubt things you know to be true."

"What things?" his face curled into a frown that stretched from his chin to his eyebrows.

"Deep down Donna always thinks she isn't 'good enough'; why would a stupid spaceman waste his time on her? He would just dump her and run off to find someone new to travel with."

A look that wasn't the Doctor's crossed his face, a locked jaw with a burning fury in the eyes. "He would never do something like that. Not ever."

Rose smiled at him and smoothed the worry lines from his face with her thumbs.

"Rose…" his eyes begged for understanding, "Who am I?"

"You, are you," she told him gently, "All his lives, and her life, rolled into one. You are unique and complex. Beautiful, fragile and brave."

"I don't know who I am," the confession felt like lead on his tongue.

Rose lifted his chin and met his eye, "You're not four months old yet, most of us as still trying to figure that out in our thirties."

He shivered and looked down at his own bare chest and legs. "Human's get cold easily."

From the back of the bedroom door Rose lifted another dressing gown, wrapping it over his shoulders and smoothing his hair once more.

"Donna will be okay. The Doctor will make sure of that." Rose promised, "It might not be the life she dreamt of, but this isn't the one we planned either. We will all muddle through, the best we can."

"And that's why he left me with you," her Doctor raised a hand, brushing stray hairs from her cheek. "Because none of us can have the lives we hoped for, but you and I… we can have this one. Together."

She smiled through a veil of tears, "It's good enough for me."

"I'm not him," he said softly.

"That's okay," Rose replied, "I'm not a 19-year-old shop girl anymore either."

His hand wrapped around her cheek and drew her to him for the first time since Bad Wolf Bay. Their lips touched not with desperate passion but with the hesitation of new lovers, gentle, cautious, soft.

"Sleep with me," she whispered, pressing her cheek against his she felt him freeze. "No, really, just sleep. Beside me. Tonight. I'll be there, for the nightmares."

Her fingers knotted with his and she led him back to bed, sliding the dressing gown from his back and dropping her own to the floor. She sat on the bed edge, and wriggled backwards. Catching his hand again Rose guided his cold, tired body down to the sheets. He placed his head on her shoulder, and curled against her, the silk bedding covering them.

"I love you, my Doctor," Rose's drowsy voice whispered into his hair.

"Rose Tyler," he whispered against her chest, "I love you too."