Rose can't make her fingers let go. She'd clamped them so tightly onto the lever, that now she can't make them let go. The Doctor, who'd been rather stunned that they'd both made it through, finally gets neurons firing in his brain again beyond 'we made it, we made it' and heads over to help here.
There is much hugging and clinging and later that night, when it really sinks in that she won't ever see her Mum again, there is crying and more clinging and she goes to sleep in the jump seat of the Tardis and wakes up with him in his bed, fully clothed, but still clinging.
He's clinging right back, so she isn't worried.
Weeks later, and he burns up a sun, just so she can say goodbye to her Mum. It's painful and wonderful and her Mum is going to have a baby and she and Pete are glowing with happiness, while Mickey stands off in the background a bit and looks forlorn.
The message ends and she succumbs to one last soul cleaning bout of crying pinstripe covered arms holding her close.
Then there is a runaway bride, a spider demon lady, teleported hospital, Shakespeare, New Earth, and on and on. The adventures and companions just keep coming but the Doctor and Rose Tyler are constants.
She gets to see her Mum and Mickey again, Jack too, one last time. Even Sarah Jane is there and she's the one who draws the Doctor aside and asks him what he did to her. She says and he realizes it's true when he really pauses to look, that Rose doesn't look a day older than she was when he first grabbed her hand in Henrik's.
After that adventure is over and thanks to an untied lace on his trainer's he didn't get shot, he'd almost rather that as busted nose and swollen top lip are not heroic looking injuries. At any rate, he asks Rose if he can do some scans for 'research purposes' and she lets him, looking a tad confused.
All the tests say the same. Rose, his lovely Rose, who should be in her early twenties, is physically nineteen years and three month old. The same age she was when she looked into the heart of the Tardis.
She isn't going to get older. She's going to live, and from what his tests say, she'll easily live as long as he will. He tries very hard not to start throwing things in the air in manic joy. He gives up after Roses lips twitch and tosses the papers he's holding up before the pair of them dance their way around the med bay and off to the console room.
The kissing, which had really been the only thing lacking from their oh so very close relationship happens swiftly after that. Soon they have the same room on the Tardis and he usually introduces her as his wife.
They do have a discussion about this change in their relationship, and he assures her that he loved her before; it's just that now he doesn't have to be as afraid of that love, that he'll actually have time to enjoy it.
Three month later and they seal the deal and she's really his wife.
His first regeneration after their marriage is harder for him that her. She had braced herself for it; even as his last words besides 'I love you' were 'I don't want to go' she mourns the body/personality that is no more even as she tries to welcome the new one.
The new one though, with his even floppier hair and square jaw is very nervous around her. He doesn't even pick out his own 'outfit' for three weeks until she realizes that he's terrified to change anything more about himself for fear of upsetting her.
She quickly sets that to rights, pointing out that she loves the inside and will 'endure' whatever he decides to put on his outsides. He pouts a bit at the 'endure' part but all she has to do is key up pictures of ruffled shirts or rainbow coats and he subsides.
The bowtie and suspenders are really just plain cute though and he grins proudly when she agrees that 'bowties are cool'. A few months later and she simply pleads the 5th on the fez.
She changes herself too. New wardrobe each decade she'd decided. After her first tour with him she ditched the baggy jeans and t-shirts for fifties dresses, with legging, no need to flash anybody while running/hopping for her life. They're a breezy and pretty while being remarkably easy to run in.
Then comes the punk decade, band t-shirts, ripped jeans, bandanas. Converse, he's still his pinstriped self for that and they happily link their feet together in a 'stupid couple thing' to admire their matching footwear.
His bowtie self inspires her and she promptly gets load of skirts with attached suspenders and lots of button down shirts, she finds some really pretty Mary Jane sneakers and tad a! Look completed. She doesn't want them to completely match but she thinks a slight similarity might help him feel more secure.
Clothes of course are simply coverings and way to differentiate time and make sure her reflection never gets to stagnant.
Time passes and naturally, she doesn't get older. Other people do. It doesn't quite hit her really, until she goes to visit Martha and Mickey one day and realizes that Mickey, her one boyfriend and always best mate is a wrinkled, gray haired old man now, Martha a little old lady. She blinks in shock and throughout the visit, she studies them, finding they people the use to be underneath.
She does come to the conclusion that if she had stayed with Mickey, at least she knows now he would have aged well.
It's sobering though, and not ten years later, when Mickey is ninety-four, she attends his funeral. There are pictures up around the walls of the sanctuary, and she sees herself in some. People keep looking at her, some asking if she's the granddaughter of the girl in the pictures.
She only smiles and lets them draw their own conclusions. The Doctor is with her of course and that night she cries again, the first big cry since she was separated from her mother, part of it's for Mickey of course and part of it is the realization that if Mickey was old enough to die, then her Mum has long passed on and she'll never even know the date of her Mum's death.
She'd melancholy for awhile but soon, time marches onward and she smiles happily again. She does make a big to-do over mother's day ad her Mum's birthday though, making sure to remember those dates instead of worrying over the one she doesn't know.
It's odd when linear time catches up to some of their jumps and she sees a young Jack Harkness signing up for the Time Agency and keeps an eye on his career.
They force themselves to avoid satellite five/ the game station when the time comes, the only interference being transmat blockers for the various descendants of Mickey and Martha and Donna and others that have kept in touch. There are other wars to fight, other worlds to save and they leave well enough alone.
It's when they're floating away in the Tardis, watching the sun expand and wipe out the earth that she realizes just how damn long she's been alive. She and the Doctor sit side by side, legs dangling out of the doorway, far enough away that they won't cause any real paradoxes.
In a fit of nostalgia she's wearing her old clothes. Her original clothes and though his hair is gray and it really doesn't suit him, he's wearing the leather coat again. She sighs and she watches the shuttles leave the station. He kisses the top of her head.
"So, my Rose, happy first date anniversary." He says with a chuckle. She laughs and pulls his head down for a kiss. When they break apart she responds. "Happy first date anniversary to you too." They snuggle in again and her sigh this time is definitely happy. Five billion years there about and they've been together for all of it. She's humming 'Still the One' by Shania Twain (she'd gone through a country phase for awhile) and lets herself bask in the fact that five billion years from now, if they're both still around, odds are they'll be back here, watching this again and probably snuggling.
(just out of sight, there is another Tardis and its occupants are definitely snuggling, there is even the possibility that if you squint a bit, on the other side of the planet, there is yet another Tardis, the occupants aren't snuggling though, they're much too busy snogging, the blond girl has taken to wearing red cocktail dresses everyday and well, her (only took nearly twenty billion years for it to happen,) redheaded companion cannot be expected to resist his wife when she goes around wearing red cocktail dresses now can he?)
Later, they'll all go to the 21st century for chips.