A/N: This has been sitting on my computer for ages, but after re-watching a few Rose/Doctor episodes last night, I was inspired by their absolute adorable-ness to revisit this and share it. Please share any comments or criticism in a review! :)

Homeward

"Well. I guess that's it, then."

The sound of the universe hasn't yet faded from her ears when she turns her back on that empty beach. Her fingers are still wound around his. She's not yet sure whether all this is an ending, or a beginning.

"Biological metacrises are notoriously unpredictable." This one can certainly chatter as much as the other. Rose thinks he hasn't stopped for breath since they began their long walk up the beach. Everything in the scene is monochrome—the grey sky, the grey rocks slipping and sliding beneath their feet, the grey waves flecked with white foam. The only exception is his blue suit. "I mean, regeneration is a risky business, when it's just your own genes, and the quirks of your own species, that you have to worry about. But when you throw in the biological makeup and structure and predispositions of a whole different species—well, there's no telling what you're going to come out with."

Despite his grim words, his voice is cheerful, enthusiastic, even. There's nothing the Doctor loves more than anomalies, and she feels sure that, as soon as he can get his hands on some proper equipment, he'll be running tests on himself with as much gusto as if he were a specimen from some mysterious new planet. As they've been walking, he's been interrupting himself with outbursts like, "How do you cope with only one heart?" and "I think I've a couple less ribs than I used to have! Can you help me count them?"

It's a bit surreal, Rose thinks, walking with this man she should know, but doesn't, watching him learn himself. How must it feel to become new, to change in every way except the ones that matter most, to not know oneself? She mulls his words over in her head as they walk, their footsteps making a beat on the rocky shoreline—no telling what you're going to come out with. What have they come out with, exactly? That's the question, she knows, on both of their minds.

"Like no head?" Rose suggests, finally, because she's remembering another man—a different man, but the same man—and the way he had tried to reassure her then, in his clumsy, only half-explaining way, and she understands that he's trying to do the same for her now.

He waggles his eyebrows, and she giggles, in spite of herself. "Possible. And could you imagine, me losing this head?" He shakes the aforementioned head solemnly. "Travesty."

"And after all the work you've put into that hair," she agrees, bringing her hand upward to rumple said hair. She means it to be teasing, and she ignores the little voice that reminds her of just how long she's waited to touch his hair again.

He seems momentarily distracted. "Exactly! No, wait, that was meant to be an insult, wasn't it?"

Bantering is what they do best, and it's easy to fall back into that rhythm, easier than she might have thought it would be. Certainly easier than saying the things that really need saying. But she knows he's trying—trying harder than she is, at any rate. She knows him well enough to be able to cut through all the rambling and the techno-babble to know what he's really trying to say—that what's happened, this biological-metacrisis-whatever, was a one-in-a-million chance. That he's kept his mind and memories, that his body is now just as fully human as hers, that he's right here with her now.

She doesn't have words for how she's feeling, not yet. She thinks that's probably why she kissed him, back there on the beach. This man in a strange suit had said the words she'd crossed universes to hear, said them out of a different mouth, and yet the same. What could she say? There was somehow too much to say, and not enough. In the midst of her thrill and her confusion, there had seemed only one thing to do, and that was to tug him closer and push her lips against his. For just one moment, with him pressed against her, everything had seemed so gloriously right—and then she'd heard the door of the TARDIS slamming shut, and the whir of engines, and now she doesn't know what's right or wrong anymore.

"Is that your mother, way up there?" He is squinting ahead with evident difficulty. "It's either her, or a fuzzy pink blob. Blimey, my eyesight's become rubbish—I might actually need glasses now. How'd Jackie get so far ahead of us, anyway?"

Rose ignores the fact that he's just confessed he's never needed those glasses—something she'd once spent weeks trying to coax him into admitting—because she still has the memory of that moment, on the beach, the TARDIS disappearing, heavy on her mind.

"Where do you think they've gone?" she asks abruptly. She doesn't look at him, just the expanse of beach ahead of them, the pink blob in the distance that is Jackie. "Donna and . . . Him? Where will they go first?"

He is quiet so long that Rose finally does end up looking at him. His face is properly solemn this time, and she remembers that she's not the only one feeling a sense of loss.

"He'll take Donna home," he says finally.

She isn't sure what to make of that, or how to read the emotion on his face. "You'll miss her, won't you? Donna?"

He coughs, rubs his left eye with his finger. "Yes. Yes, I suppose I will."

Rose stops pressing. She doesn't tell him what she's thinking, which is that she'll miss him, because it seems silly, when he's standing right there beside her. But it's hard to imagine that other Doctor, already sailing off across the stars, without her hand to hold.

"Oi, hurry up back there!"

Jackie's waving at them from the summit of a hill which, if Rose remembers correctly, marks the end of the beach. From there, they should be able to reach the road, and further on, the town. Jackie is standing to wait for them to reach her. Rose is grateful that her mother had left them some space on their walk, but she's sure that Jackie's distance was due to her determination to get home to her son and husband, rather any display of tact.

It takes them longer than Rose had expected to catch her up—they must have been talking more than she realized. As they approach her, she sees him tensing up.

"What is it?"

"Your mother's got that look on her face."

Rose resists with difficulty the urge to roll her eyes. "Yeah? What look?"

He doesn't answer, only mutters, "Brace yourself" as they get within earshot.

Sure enough, Jackie's first words are barbs, and Rose wonders if she should be frightened by how well he knows her mother.

"—s'pose it would've been too much to ask for him to drop us a bit closer to London, or at least somewhere with decent public transport—"

She can feel him stir beside her, the way he always does when he's irritated that people aren't fully appreciating how clever he is—or, at least, how clever he believes himself to be. "Travel between parallel universes isn't exactly a hop, skip and a jump, Jackie. The TARDIS requires a little more finesse than your hole-punching dimension cannons, and with the walls between the worlds reclosing, I—we—he—had to travel to wherever those holes were still widest—"

Jackie waves a hand, apparently disregarding all this. "Yeah, yeah—well, it's inconvenient, that's all. If I remember right from the last time we were here, it's still a good mile at least into the closest town."

She looks to Rose as though for a second opinion, but Rose chooses not to weigh in on that—she honestly doesn't remember much of anything from their last trip to Bad Wolf Bay. Meanwhile, he catches Rose's eye and mouths, "Inconvenient?" with a clearly disgusted look, and Rose has to fight down the urge to giggle.

"Mobile still not working?" she asks, biting her lip, and Jackie shakes her head.

"No, nothing. It's weird, I don't remember having this trouble last time. You think traveling with the cannon messed it around?"

He shrugs. "Could've done." His tone is snippy, and Rose knows he's still annoyed at having to defend himself (well—sort of himself) to her mother. "Either way, it doesn't do us any good to be standing around. Allons-y, eh?"

He sort of cocks his head to the side, clearly questioning, and Rose reaches out and takes his hand in hers. Their fingers wrap around each other instinctively, a perfect fit, like always. "Allons-y," she repeats, firmly, and her words make him smile, his irrepressible, face-splitting, brilliant smile, the one she crossed universes to see again.

And with that, they're off—he's tugging Rose after him, swinging their hands between them as they go, and talking at a million miles an hour. "Speaking of, have I mentioned that I met an Alonso? I didn't really know him long enough to fully utilize the whole alliterative potential, but if I ever find another—"

Rose lets his voice wash over her, her mind focused on the feel of his hand once again in hers. For just a few moments, she can forget all the things that are wrong, the sadness and loss that she's sure she'll have to confront sooner or later. Because even though he is gone, there's certainly no denying that he's right there beside her, too. Everything about this man at her side is pure him, and that's heart-breaking and terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

It's Jackie that finally interrupts his ongoing chatter. "We'd better find that village soon, because so help me, if I get stranded in the wilderness with him—"

"Don't worry, Mum, we'll get home," says Rose. "The Doctor always gets us home."

She tilts her face upward to smile at him, and, at her side, the Doctor smiles back.