Rose Tyler was dreaming.
It was freezing out. They were walking back to the Powell Estate.
Jimbo was supposed to drive them, but his car had broken down. Her mom had gone to meet… someone, she couldn't remember whom.
She was almost to the door leading upstairs to her floor. And there was a noise… a groan… she was startled… turned.
There was a man in the shadows wearing a brown suit with a brown over coat. The shadows were too deep to see him clearly.
But the outfit he'd been wearing…. She would come to know it well.
She asked if he was okay. His answer came almost too quickly.
In the moment she passed it off as inebriation… "something like that…" she remembered how his voice had sounded.
She'd bid him happy new year. And him her. Then… "what year is this?"
A rueful smile crossed her lips briefly. Such an odd question to ask… but she didn't… couldn't have known.
A passing joke regarding the level of his intoxication.
"Two thousand and five… January the first."
Then he said, "Two thousand and five. Tell you what… I bet you're gonna have a really great year.
The scene shifted.
Rose was standing facing two men. The man she loved, and a man who was him, but also wasn't. She had asked a question.
"When I last stood on this beach on the worst day of my life… what was the last thing you said to me?"
A look of pain flashed across his face before he regained control.
"Go on… say it."
His answer came, "I said Rose Tyler."
She pressed… "yeah… and how was that sentence gonna end?"
He visibly choked back tears… "does it need saying?"
And it clicked. A key in her mind turned. The tumblers moving. Pushed into alignment by the only realization that could move them. And a lock opened.
The timeline of events was simple enough to figure out now. Now that she could see all the pieces of the puzzle.
The bittersweet knowledge came… he had… changed… again. She would truly never be able to see her Doctor again.
But his last act… and her first… he hadn't been drunk. Pain. He was in pain. Just like when he changed in front of her… after the Daleks… after the Wolf.
His last wish had been to see her… one last time… his Rose.
And even then… he couldn't reveal himself to her. He could only look from the shadows and speak a few fleeting words.
Her heart broke for him.
Rose Tyler woke up.
The memories of her Doctor came to her as she lay in her bed. Only this time the memories came filtered through the lens of her discovery.
His refusal to allow Cassandra to inhabit her body. His choosing her over Mickey. His handling of the Wire, once he'd learned that it had hurt her. Her name on his lips as he fell into the pit with the beast.
She remembered Sarah Jane… and how she'd had to beg for her goodbye… and he burned a star to give her hers.
The unbridled joy in his face when he saw her again after so much time apart. He knew her instantly. He was reckless… running toward her.
His final gift to her. Himself. But not himself. But a man who looked, felt, talked… like him. And he needed her to make him better. To temper his rage. The fury of a Time Lord, trapped in the body of a man.
A man who was still soundly asleep next to her.
For the first time in her life, Rose Tyler understood what love meant.
She smiled. She understood how much her Doctor had sacrificed for her. He had given her a happy ending she could call her own… at the expense of his.
Rose Tyler summoned all her will.
She thought with all her might and sent a message out into the vastness of her universe, and, she hoped, to his as well.
A man who walked as though he was in a constant state of surprise at the presence of his own limbs was crouched under a blinking console, shining a green sonic screwdriver into a tangle of wires. He stopped scanning the wires and brought the tool up to his eyes to examine the results with a practiced flick of his wrist. A small tremor passed through his body and his eyes quickly flicked around, diagnosing the source.
A voice in his mind came forth. Check the paper.
He fished around inside his coat and withdrew his psychic paper. He flipped it open impatiently, eager to be back to his task at hand. A message appeared on the page in front of him.
His eyes scanned the message several times, committing every word to memory.
Doctor, thank you. For everything. I will never forget you and everything you sacrificed for me. It doesn't need saying, but I love you. Always.
Rose
The mad man in a box pulled his suddenly damp eyes away and slowly, almost reluctantly, stuffed the psychic paper back into his pocket. As he did so, the sonic screwdriver fell from his grip and clattered loudly on the floor.
A redhead looked up in surprise from elsewhere in the room and asked if he was OK.
For maybe the first time in his life, he forgot rule number one, and answered truthfully.
"Yes."