The Doctor edged out of the TARDIS warily. He could tell by the viewscreen that they'd landed, of course, but after all the effort it had taken to get them there, he and Donna both needed to feel the solid ground beneath their feet.
"It's like a ghost town," Donna said in a hushed tone that befitted the abandoned street.
"Sarah Jane said they were taking the people," the Doctor observed in the same tone - it was certainly unnerving to be anywhere in London without a soul in sight. "What for?"
He turned to Donna without waiting for a response. "Think, Donna. When you met Rose in that parallel world, what did she say?"
Rose would know. Rose is coming back. She is returning. It had taken monumental effort for the Doctor to focus, even with the scale of the current crisis - the only thing keeping him going was the knowledge that Rose would be right in the thick of things.
"Just… 'The darkness is coming,'" Donna said uncertainly. The Doctor fought the urge to yell.
"Anything else?" he asked, not entirely successful at keeping the impatience from his voice.
It wasn't fair to Donna, he knew her memories of the bubble universe were shaky at best, but he found it hard to believe that Rose would have been so vague with the fate of the multiverse at stake. It didn't sound like her at all, and it was taking every ounce of his self-restraint not to be resentful of Donna. He needed Rose, with an ache that sharpened every day, and yet Donna was the one who had seen her, spoken to her…
He dragged his errant thoughts back to the present, the way he'd needed to do with increasing frequency since Shan Shen. Donna looked like she was about to answer, then she stopped and stared at a point over his shoulder with eyes softer than he'd ever seen them.
"Why don't you ask her yourself?"
The Doctor's brow furrowed, feeling for a second as though he'd lost the ability to understand English. Donna was still looking over his shoulder, and while his mind rebelled briefly in self-defense, he knew Donna would never joke about something like this. She'd been there right at the beginning, after all.
Hearts pounding fit to burst in his chest, like they were about to take flight, he turned before he was consciously aware of doing so, already scanning the empty street for the woman he'd been missing for every second of the last four years.
He spotted her an instant later, the figure he would recognise anywhere, in the midst of a crowd of people let alone a deserted street. Illuminated in the beam of a street light, she might have been an apparition, a product of his fevered mind, and his feet remained glued to the ground, unable to believe that it could be true, that the universe would finally allow him this respite.
Then she smiled at him; not the cheeky tongue-touched grin that had haunted his dreams, but a wide, true smile that lit up her face brighter than any dingy street lamp could hope to match. He'd seen emerging stars that shone less brilliantly than the light of her eyes.
Rose Tyler was running toward him, and it took him a moment to realise that his body had not flown across the distance between them the way his hearts just had - or had that feeling been his hearts returning after so long locked away with her? But like a string snapping, suddenly it was all too much, still not enough, and he was running down the street faster than he'd ever moved in all his lives.
Rose's smile grew impossibly wider, as if she could have been unsure of his reaction, and somewhere far away from himself the Doctor was certain his face looked something utterly daft, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, except sweeping Rose into his arms and catching up on the four years' worth of kisses and touches that he'd been saving for her since they'd been parted.
With each step, as the distance shrank from a universe away to still too bloody far, always too far, his hearts burned with anticipation, their bodies compressing the space between them, transmuting it to fire.
When they were only a few feet apart, Rose tossed away the contraption slung across her shoulder, scarcely breaking stride. The Doctor's body was already humming with remembered energy, her lines fitting against his, the echo of a phantom pain that he was never going to suffer again, because he was never letting her go so long as she lived. Sod the universe, he decided, watching Rose's arms open for him, he would have this whether he deserved it or not.
"Doctor!" Rose cried as they closed the final few steps, the second syllable no more than a rush of air as they collided, neither bothering to slow, the Doctor lifting her feet from the ground before they could falter.
Then there was nothing but the heady relief of her body pressing against his, fitting perfectly the way their hands always had together. Her hands, which were everywhere, lighting all over his body, and he was created anew by her touch, frantic and desperate like she was trying to keep him from flying apart at the seams. He couldn't have said it wasn't necessary.
And then her legs were wrapped around his waist like they'd choreographed it, like they belonged there (which they did) and his own hands were cradling her like his third heart was made of glass and not of stuff tough enough to cross universes. One caressed her leather clad shoulder and the other sank into her glorious hair as their lips closed the last remainder of distance between them.
It was not a pretty kiss: it was messy and sloppy and perfect. Noses pressed against cheeks, teeth clacked, lips warred against each other as neither wanted to slow down. Eventually they reached a sort of rhythm when Rose sucked on the Doctor's bottom lip, not at all gently. He gasped and rocked in place, drowning under her human heat and the heavenly bouquet of her scent.
Rose unlocked their lips long enough to gulp for air and he retaliated by plunging his tongue into her mouth. She tasted of the Void, of metal and ashes. The Doctor couldn't have cared less. He kissed her again, and again, and again, drunk on the unconscious sounds she made, until the acrid taste disappeared, giving way before her natural ambrosia.
He growled low in his throat, drinking her in, a dying man at an oasis, fully prepared to continue until every universe collapsed around their ears. By the way Rose clutched him ever closer with as much strength as she could muster, she had no objections.
Only one thing could have disrupted the endless dream of their moment together, and of course it did; a voice ripped directly from his nightmares, the abhorrent cry of "EXTERMINATE!" shattering the Doctor's soul.
He would have liked to have said that it was a noble and heroic spirit of self-sacrifice in which he acted, but it was pure instinct, the instinct to protect Rose at all costs, that drove him to spin away from the sound's point of origin, shielding Rose with his body. The calculation was effortless: the distance to the ground was too great and carried a greater chance of Rose getting hurt if he got hit on the way down.
He could feel the sound ripple through Rose as well, but the Doctor refused to break the kiss even as he prepared himself to take the shot that would cut it short.
The Doctor heard a weapon discharge but it wasn't the high-pitched whine of a Dalek ray.
The shock of being alive was what it took to finally break him out of their embrace as Rose reacted a second slower, extricating herself from his weakened grip to face a threat that no longer existed. Their hands met and clasped unconsciously as they both turned to face Jack Harkness, who was holstering his weapon just beyond the smoking ruin of the Dalek.
"Jack!" Rose exclaimed, and the former con man (and current holder of all the gratitude the Doctor had left in the universe) raised a cocky eyebrow.
"What'd I miss?"
Rose and the Doctor exchanged an involuntary glance and the Doctor promptly forgot every other concern. Rose was here!
"Yeah, Doctor, 'm here," Rose replied, and the Doctor realised he'd spoken aloud. "I missed you. God, I missed you so much!"
There were tears standing in her eyes, and he gently freed his hands to caress her cheeks before they could fall.
"I missed you too, Rose. Oh, Rose." Her name held all the agonies of the past four years. There were tears in his own eyes, the Doctor knew, but Jack joined them then and reminded the Doctor of how exposed they were even as Rose gave the other man a huge hug.
Then she turned to grin up at the Doctor through fresh tears, her tongue teasing him from the corner of her mouth, and his happiness was complete. She knew it as well as he did: they were back together at last. The Doctor in the TARDIS, with Rose Tyler. No threat in the universe stood a chance.
He grinned back at her, a proper smile like his face had never borne since she'd been gone, and he reached down to fit Rose's hand into his again, where it had always belonged, feeling the shattered pieces of his hearts putting themselves back together as he did so, and whispered one word: just one word.
"Run!"