"…and the baby," she finished.
To the untrained eye, the Doctor probably looked mildly invested in what she had to say. A quirk of the eyebrows, a half-smile, a crinkling at the corners of his eyes, all things designed to show polite interest. He was telling her, and the rest of the universe, that he was all right with this. He was always all right.
Rose knew better.
"You're not…?" he asked. His voice hitched almost imperceptibly. He let the question die on the salty sea air.
Rose thought for a moment, and that moment expanded into a dreadful eternity, compressed into a few tense milliseconds.
She could tell him the truth. Maybe she should. She considered it.
Maybe if she told him the truth, he wouldn't leave her here. He'd find a way to get to her, to bring her and her mum back, and Mickey and Pete if they wanted, and maybe, just maybe, there would be a way for him to do it that wouldn't cause the whole of reality to come crashing down around them. He would find a way.
Or no, she realized, looking at him—at his face wrecked with a desperation she'd never seen before, an underlying intensity that would frighten her if she wasn't already so bloody miserable herself—no, he might not find a way to make everything work. He might not consider the big picture this time. He talked a big talk, but Rose knew that even he had his limits. He could only sacrifice so much.
He'd already lost one family. Could he lose another?
Rose felt that she owed him the truth, but if he knew everything, he might pull her through the last few cracks anyway, the rest of reality be damned and burned. Then she remembered that he sent her away, purposefully and deceitfully threw her into a whole other universe, to deal with this burden all on her own.
She didn't owe him anything.
"No," she lied.
She was, if she was being honest with herself, a little disappointed that he believed her.
"Forever."
That was when it happened, the first time.
The lead-up wasn't a particularly exciting event. Rose had always imagined, when she allowed herself to think of such things, that if their relationship had ever transcended to anything else, it would have been after a hair-raising adventure, a heart-pounding escapade, something writ in the fierce clashing of lips and limbs and skin after they narrowly escaped death. But instead, it happened in one of the small and quiet moments in-between.
The trip to Ralcyon IV had been surprisingly calm. The Doctor had promised Rose a trip to a lovely sightseeing area, and, upon landing, was visibly disappointed when there was no uprising to join, no villain to thwart, no Big Dangerous Thing to stop.
"I'm starting to think you look for that stuff on purpose," Rose teased upon seeing the pouty look on his face.
"What? Me? Never," the Doctor protested, his voice just a little too innocent and his eyes just a little too big. He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked back on his heels, surveying the landscape around them.
"All the same," he said, "You're not going to get bored of this, are you?"
Rose looked all about them. Ralcyon IV was, in its current state, unsettled and unsullied by any other sentient creature. There was nothing green or lush or verdant on this world, or anything shining or exciting or new. The landscape bore nothing but harsh, cragged stone; Rose and the Doctor's only company was the occasional lonely bird-creature that flew by on leathery wings. But there was still something breathtakingly beautiful in the planet's empty desolation, in the sound of the forlorn wind whistling through the canyons, in the sharp rocky peaks that pierced upward into the heavens, where a glowing sunset bathed the sky in rich gold light. It made Rose think of the light of the TARDIS, of a song she had heard once, now half-forgotten.
"Are you joking?" Rose asked, watching the sun set over the jagged horizon. "I'll never get tired of this."
"You seem very certain," the Doctor chuckled, looking down at his plimsoll-clad feet. "I suppose I'll have to take your word for it."
"I already told you I love it," Rose said firmly. "Traveling. With you."
The Doctor shifted in his shoes. "So," he said. He stopped. He fidgeted. He watched the sunset for a few moments longer.
"How long are you going to stay with me?" he asked eventually, his eyes still trained forward.
After a moment, he chanced a look over at Rose. She smiled.