He's old now, so very old.
And dying.
This is the last time, he knows, and if he only has one last trip in him, it's her he has to see.
Oh, there have been others, of course there have. Even others he has – dare he say it – loved. But she is the obvious choice, the only choice. She is the only one he could ever go back for. The only one he could run out of time with.
The whole universe is open to him. He could go anywhere; die amongst the stars. The galaxies, systems and stations he has visited before, however, bring back memories of companions long gone and time he can never reclaim. Furthermore, there are very few untouched places left in the world, and he doesn't want to end his life in unfamiliar territory, beauty utterly lacking in meaning now that he is powerless to explore it.
If he's only got one adventure left, he wants to spend it with her.
She's not there now, though. There's no-one to return to; that choice was taken from him a long time ago. Their tragedy is that all their future lies in the past, and one he can barely access without causing massive upheavals in the timeline and her life. He can't possibly go back and find her with an earlier version of himself, allow her to see that one day he will die permanently without her by his side. Not after all they promised each other.
He can't put that burden on her. She believed they were forever.
The most he can hope for, then, is one quick glimpse of her, one last memory of her face, perhaps one word (or three) and he'd return to the TARDIS, die in his only home, alone, how he should be. She can never know who he is.
And so he goes back to a time before she loved him, a time when she was young and naïve and untainted by the world he was to show her.
--
"Rose!"
She's walking down the street, on the arm of a man too tall and thin to be Mickey, and he feels the most irrepressible mix of guilt, jealousy and relief at having found her that he's quite overwhelmed.
She turns around and he forgets everything he was going to say. Most unusual for him, even now.
Her hair is long.
--
Weak and delusional, he must've been a sight stumbling down that road, clothes torn and bloody with one target lodged in his mind.
He looks about twenty years old, this time, but his eyes betray him as they always did. She's sliding her arm from the grip of the man, taking a cautious step towards him and frowning, he'd like to think, as if she knows him but can't quite place where from.
"Do I know you?"
You will. Oh, you will.
Her footsteps stop as quickly as they started. She doesn't want to go any closer, and who can blame her? For all she knows, he could be a murderer or a rapist, his injuries caused by any number of horrific things that could come after her should she get involved. But then he collapses and she loses all her inhibitions, rushes forwards and falls to the floor beside him.
"Leave him!" the Doctor just hears the man insist, his steps bringing him steadily closer to the two of them, Rose's small hands tugging him up into some sort of sitting position. After what was perhaps a little too much exertion under the circumstances, chasing after a teenager in the middle of a thronging crowd through the streets of London, he thinks his muscles have turned to jelly.
"He's got nothing to do with you," the man continues loudly, several people turning to stare now. A little hypocritically, perhaps, the Doctor can't help but think that he's far too old for someone as young as Rose. He's not entirely sure of the year, but she can't be much older than seventeen, and this man looks at least twenty-three. "Come on." And he's pulling at her, looking shocked when Rose tugs her arm from his grasp once more.
"But he knows me, Jimmy!"
Ah. The infamous Jimmy Stones, then. He knew he didn't like the look of him.
"It's not your responsibility to deal with every damn tramp that comes your way, Rose," Jimmy spits. The Doctor has just about enough energy to grimace at his leather trousers and hold back a cough at the stream of smoke issuing from his mouth every few seconds. Rose doesn't move, clearly somehow convinced – probably through the Doctor's earlier use of her name – that she's dealing with more than just an everyday tramp after 50p and a can of beer. "I'm not waitin'," Jimmy says, finally, obviously realising she's not coming with him.
"Fine, don't! But I'm helping him. Look at him."
Jimmy does, raising an eyebrow in distaste. "Exactly. He's in a right state. He'll probably gonna nick your bag the second your back's turned. Be sensible, Rose."
Being talked about as though he's not there…favourite pastime, that.
"Does he look capable of nicking off with anything right now to you?" Rose questions incredulously, heaving him up a little more. Some of the feeling coming back to his legs, the Doctor helps and shuffles upwards, hoping Jimmy doesn't notice. He could intervene, certainly, but what with his reputation for talking, it's probably best to keep quiet and let Rose do the persuading.
Apparently oblivious, Jimmy shrugs. "If he's some crazy rapist pullin' a trick, you've only got yourself to blame," he warns her darkly, chucking his cigarette down and striding off into the crowd with no further ceremony. Rose watches him go for a second, then turns her attention to the man before her.
"What happened to you?" she asks, urgently, her face plastered with guilt that she's been arguing with her boyfriend all this time instead of actually helping. "Who hurt you? I'm gonna ring an ambulance."
The Doctor reaches up and takes the phone off her, pressing the end call button. For the first time, she actually looks scared. "What are you doing?"
"No ambulance, no police. I just wanted to see you."
Rose's eyes widen. "How do you even know who I am? I've never seen you before in my life!"
Ah. He'd never thought far enough ahead to make up excuses. Thankfully, the threatening clouds overhead burst their seams and he's spared from answering by the sudden bucketing of rain. Rose cries out and throws her hood over her head, heaving him to his feet.
"What are you doing?" the Doctor shouts, bewildered and struggling to be heard over the pounding water as she begins to run, pulling him along after her. He stumbles, legs protesting, injuries screaming and his blood mixing with the rain as the renewed movement breaks the newly-healing skin.
"Getting inside. What do you think?!" she asks, turning to look at him impatiently and realising that he's struggling. With a look of guilt, she's at his side in an instant, helping him along more steadily and apologising profusely as they go.
By the time they reach the entrance to what he presumes is Jimmy's block of flats, his legs are ready to give way again and he slumps to the floor, exhausted and gasping from the pain. Rose helps him into a more comfortable sitting position before flopping to the ground herself and eyeing him critically. "Isn't there anything I can do for you?" she asks at his continued silence, frustrated and upset, but he shakes his head furiously, teeth gritted together against the tearing feeling in his stomach.
"It's just cuts and bruises, you don't have to – " he begins, but she cuts over him, her soft tone taking the edge away from her words.
"Don't be stupid."
"You don't owe me anything," the Doctor insists, wondering what sort of position he's put her in by calling her name a few minutes ago. "Just give me until the rain stops and then I'll be on my way."
He's done what he came for, after all. He's seen her, spoken to her. Scared her half to death, too, probably.
Rose isn't buying it, though. "You're not going anywhere 'til I've got you to some sort of hospital."
"No." He pushes the agony of his injuries down, tries not to let it show on his face in a pathetic attempt to convince her, even as he lies there covered in blood, that he'll be fine. "I told you. No hospitals."
"Then I'll see to you here. I learnt how to do bandages in Brownies," she warns, and he can't help but smile. Rose takes another look at his injuries, the blood seeping through his clothes having practically stained his whole shirt red. She pales, but a determined look enters her eyes. "You need help," she says, in an utterly no-nonsense tone. "Now you can either sit in here and bleed to death, or you can come and get cleaned up. I've got a flat on the fourth floor and I'm sure we've got a first-aid kit somewhere." It's not much, but it's better than nothing, she reckons.
"I'm not going anywhere," the Doctor hisses, insistent, but Rose grabs his arm painfully.
"And I'm not just gonna walk away when you're in that state! There's a bottle of water and a packet of tissues in my bag that I'm sure'll do if you won't move, but I'm getting you sorted out one way or another. So what'll it be?" She stands up and puts her hands on her hips, looking every inch her mother's daughter. She always was resourceful. And stubborn.
He sighs and gives in, allowing her to heave him off the ground. Why not let her help? If he's honest, despite the risk, a tiny part of him has been screaming to go back with her ever since she mentioned inside.
It's just for his injuries, that's all, he swears. He'll get himself some bandages and clean clothes and then he'll leave before the urge to stay completely overwhelms him.
He will.
--
"I don't know why I'm doing this," Rose mutters for the eighteenth time as they make a slow and painful path up the many flights of stairs, having recoiled dramatically from the rotting smell in the broken-down lift. "I shouldn't trust you. You could be an axe-murderer or anything. Mind," she adds thoughtfully, indicating his coat, arm around his waist as she continues to help him up the stairs and he curses Jimmy Stones for not living in a bungalow, "I don't know where you'd be hiding an axe under that. Or, you know, how you'd do much with it, state you're in."
There's a ring on her finger but it's not from the man it should be. The Doctor doesn't even know if he means himself or Mickey or some future conquest by this, but he's certain that a man like Jimmy Stones should never have a claim over her.
"You can do so much better," he tells her quietly, as though it's the simplest fact in the universe.
Rose blinks, utterly thrown off – probably still lost in thoughts about the probability of his being an axe-murderer – until he puts a hand over hers on his waist and moves her ring slightly.
"Oh," she realises softly, a pink tinge rising to her cheeks. "You think so?" And she's not defiant, as he would have expected and once knew her to be. She sounds sad, as though she's resigned to the fact that Jimmy is all that's meant for her, all that she deserves.
"I'm bleeding all over your jacket," he says suddenly, changing the subject in the awkward silence and dropping his hand from hers.
"That's OK. I can get a new one," she explains, keeping up with the rapidly changing conversation admirably, and he thinks that's probably why he doesn't recollect this jacket from their time together. He must ruin it. "Staff discount and all."
"You're a shop girl." It's not a question, and he doesn't wait for an answer. "You can do better than that, too."
--
The flat is exactly what he had expected as a result of her brief, glossed-over, cleaned-up descriptions during their original time together: two-parts disgusting, bloke-style mess of takeaways and dodgy magazines and one-part domestic heaven with rugs and tie-backs and alphabetised videos. Flippant as Rose had always been about where and how she left her clothes (he'd found them all over the place back in the day), she never could stand a mess in main rooms. Probably the result of a lifetime with Jackie Tyler.
"You'll have to be gone before Jimmy gets back," she says after having lumped the Doctor down on the sofa, poking her head through the three doors off the living room and to check Stones is not around. Is that fear in her voice? "Don't s'pose we'll have to worry about that, though," she adds, a mixture between false-cheery and unsure melancholy, "once he's gone out, he don't usually come back 'til morning."
While she, seventeen years old and barely out of school, is left to play "house" in a grotty flat all by herself. No wonder Jackie hated this man. The implications of "out all night" are very, very clear.
Rose takes a bracing breath, rubbing her hands together awkwardly and clearly about to change the subject. "Right then. Shirt off," she instructs, nodding in his direction and lifting a finger to indicate her meaning.
"…Beg pardon?"
She looks at him as though he's completely stupid. "Your shirt. Take it off." The Doctor continues to stare at her blankly as she walks off into another room, presumably in search of something. "Oh, come on. I'm not asking you to strip. How am I supposed to sort you out if you just sit there dripping wet? Besides, you can't wear that. It's covered in blood."
"I told you – "
"Yeah, well, you're here now. Might as well let me have a look, yeah? I'm no nurse, but I can at least give you some clean clothes and a cup of tea," she calls from the doorway to the bedroom, emerging with a large blue shirt. She balls it up and chucks it to him. It lands on his head.
There are no real injuries on his legs and his trousers, he claims, are perfectly fine, but she gives him some clean ones all the same. "You look like a bomb went off," Rose says. "While you were holding it."
"Something like that," the Doctor agrees vaguely, finally removing his shirt and feeling a little guilty about leaving blood all over the settee, more than a little grateful that his pain threshold and the chemicals currently pumping through his blood stream allow him to deal with this much more efficiently than a human could.
"What can be so bad? Tell me," Rose asks gently, sitting on the sofa with him and taking his hand. His mind snaps back to a time, not long after he first met her, that she had asked the very same question about the war. He blinks and snatches his hand away, not quite able to deal with memories of her when she is right in front of him, and she apologises quickly, obviously a little hurt but hiding it well. "Alright. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want."
"Thanks."
To her, the extent of his problem is entirely visual. Just wounds, just a few deep cuts, nothing that a few bandages and a good rest won't sort out. But there's something she doesn't know. She can't feel the slow creep of deadly poison burning through his veins, does not have his memories of those agonising hours looking for an antidote before finally, finally giving up and acknowledging that all he has left in the world is this one last chance with her. It is this that will eventually kill him, not the injuries he sustained during the fight before the poison was administered.
More than two millennia and he's caught out by chemicals. It doesn't seem right.
After so many times of cheating death, he thinks he's more afraid of it than she ever was.
In a way, he's glad that she was taken from him all those years ago. If they had somehow found a way to stay together, if she had somehow survived all this time across all his regenerations, then he would never have wanted her to see him give up hope like that. He's not quite sure how he could face death knowing that he was leaving her behind.
In light of all he has lost, the Doctor is suddenly overwhelmed by the desperate need to finally complete the admission that died on his lips in Bad Wolf Way, to gather her up in his arms and never let her go (had he the strength, perhaps he would have), to take her away and live out all the time they should have had together. He's knows that wouldn't be fair, though, on either of them. The Rose before him now is not the woman he fell in love with. Not yet. He can't assign to her the feelings and sensibilities of a person she won't become for another two years.
--
Rose leaves him while he changes, busying herself by making tea, and returns to find him lying across the full length of the sofa, new shirt lying over the arm lest he covers it in blood. He's still bleeding quite profusely, but it's stemmed a little since they entered the flat. Putting the two mugs down, she grabs a towel and comes to kneel before him, taking the towel to his hair, deciding to make him comfortable before beginning what will be the undoubtedly painful process of dealing with his injuries. She rubs it over his head with so much vigour that he winces and she bites her lip, running the towel over him more gently this time. "Sorry. I'm not very good at this; I don't exactly make a habit of picking up wounded strangers and drying their hair on my settee."
"Rose – " he begins to protest, but she cuts over him, flickering towel continually obscuring his vision.
"An' that's another thing. How can you know my name?" Her tone is casual, but it's obviously something that has been bothering her ever since they met.
"Coincidence?" the Doctor tries, lamely, batting the towel out of the way so he can see her face when she raises a sceptical eyebrow.
"It doesn't matter. Really. Forget about it. It's not important."
"It's important to me!" Rose exclaims, sighing exasperatedly and throwing the towel aside when she realises she's not going to get anywhere. "Why me?" she tries, resigned and a little annoyed.
"Why not?" the Doctor retorts, and the question is not as flippant as it sounds. As she fetches the first-aid kit – ridiculously insufficient, but it's better than bleeding to death, she says – and begins to wipe away the excess blood across his stomach, he asks himself if this is really all he wants from her. One last look at her face and maybe a few words if he's lucky, that's what he'd thought, but here he is sprawled out across her sofa with her hands dancing across his skin. Is he sure that's as far as it's going to go? Or did he want to claim back the life they once had, live a little longer through her, even dare to let her know who he is?
"You're gonna be fine," Rose smiles at him, breaking into his thoughts, but he can't return the expression. Even as she wipes his blood away, he is dying. She's fighting a losing battle without the slightest inkling that those wounds, those outward signs, are purely superficial. The real damage, raging away at his insides, has only just begun.
--
It's not long before she tries to engage him in some proper conversation, and he'd always known the question was coming. "What do you do, then?"
"I travel."
Rose looks up from her work, intrigued. She'd obviously been expecting lawyer or banker – or, judging by the state he's in, stunt man or possibly even member of the Mafia. "Is that it?"
"That's everything," he confesses simply, and it's about the only true thing he's said to her all afternoon.
"Go on, then. Where have you been?"
For a moment he thinks she means where did he get his injuries again, but then he remembers that she's not the type to push an issue once it's already been addressed and dismissed. She's always known when to change the subject if it gets too difficult for him. This kind of almost-reservation seems odd after so long with upfront, frank companions. He almost laughs. He never imagined he would think of Rose as reserved.
"All over the place," he admits eventually.
Rose sticks her tongue out. "Vague, aren't you?"
"A little, perhaps."
She's looking at him expectantly, waiting to hear of his travels, so he partially makes up a few stories about Rome and Italy, Vienna and Amsterdam, and she drinks it all in, false as the dates and the facts might be, a wistful look in her eyes. He always was a good liar.
"I'd love to travel. Furthest I've ever been's France, though," she says regretfully, having almost finished cleaning and bandaging him up by now. "Jimmy always said we would, when I first met him. When I'm famous, he said," and she smiles sadly. "That was the excuse for everythin', that was. We'll buy a better house, and quit our day jobs, and move so far away from this estate that we'll forget it ever existed. And we'll travel. To the moon, if we want."
"Maybe you will."
"You reckon so?" she retorts, obviously sceptical, you-don't-know-Jimmy written in giant letters all across her face.
He smiles. "Yeah."
"Maybe. One day." Not in this lifetime, though is just as clearly scrawled across her features. She suddenly remembers that she's supposed to be distracting him, not talking about himself, but somehow or another he always seems to get her off guard and twist the conversation back around to her. "Where would you go? I mean, if you could go anywhere?"
"The past," he says, without much hesitation. A day ago his answer would have been very different, but the prospect of imminent and permanent death tends to let one forgo one's rules about never going back.
That really gets her attention. "There's so much future, though!" she exclaims, and he suddenly understands why, in their very first trip, she chose forward instead of back.
"Perhaps."
Rose shrugs, not convinced. "What would you go and see?"
"Who. Not what. Who." It's all about the people, it always has been. And he doesn't just mean her.
As though this is some sort of prompt for social code, Rose sits up straighter with a jolt. "I don't even know your name," she realises, looking astonished that she could have gone so long without asking for it.
The Doctor's not going to assume an alias to die with. Maybe this means that one day she'll realise, but he won't die as John Smith. "It doesn't matter."
Well used to this sort of half-answer from him by now, Rose rolls her eyes with a laugh, soon sobering when he winces as she wipes the last of the blood away. She's become gentler, but it's obvious he's still in a lot of pain. Now well in the grip of the poison, his breathing is shallow, but she's completely unaware that this has nothing to do with his injuries.
--
"I don't have anything stronger," Rose apologises, asking if he'd like some paracetamol. "Sorry." The Doctor almost laughs at the inadequacy of the drug, declining her offer with as straight a face as he can manage. Rose frowns. "You should be in hospital. I'm no doctor, and you're obviously in a lot of pain."
"You're doing very well, under the circumstances."
"I think that's a compliment," Rose grins, and he feels his mind begin to wander. If he'd been human…
If he'd lived in her time, her city, her town, her life…if, if, if. There are far too many variables and possibilities for him to be considering this.
Yet…if he'd been human, he's sure he would have loved her even so, that they would have had the kind of chances this life denied them, but then perhaps he's biased after having seen her in all her run-for-your-life glory.
Newspapers delivered by a kid on a bike, carpets and windows and doors, lazy Sunday mornings in bed, kissing in the street. Two kids and a car, a white picket fence (though he's fairly sure that no-one actually really has one of those) and a ginger cat. Why is it suddenly so important? After more than two millennia alive, why do these things cover his death? An ordinary life, the very thing that four-fifths of this species spend their lives trying to avoid and end up wishing they'd done less of.
The one adventure he couldn't have. Perhaps that's why.
He wishes he'd tried, just for a day. Though, he knows, even with Rose, if the choices were domestic bliss or life-threatening adventure, he'd choose to run for his life one last time and he hopes, if not now then later, once she's met him properly, that she would have chosen the same.
--
"What do you do?" Rose asks, dragging him out of his reverie, and he struggles to meet her eye for a moment following such thoughts.
"I told you; I travel," he repeats, bemused. She never had a ten-second memory when he knew her.
She laughs. Not a full laugh, not even a giggle, just a slightly amused exhalation of air, but Rassilon, how long he's waited to hear that from her again. "No, silly. I mean when you don't travel. You've gotta make money somehow, yeah?"
He supposes now would be an appropriate time for her to peg him down as a master thief, but the possibility doesn't seem to cross her mind.
"I…help people."
Rose wrinkles her nose. "What, like a doctor or a shrink or something?"
"I'd prefer to go by the former."
They both grin, and for a moment he can fool himself into thinking that this is just another moment between them, that he's talking to someone who has been with him all this time rather than a stranger who has never as much as heard his name yet.
"Well, no offence or anything, but I don't think you'll be playing medicine man for a while. Not with those injuries."
--
Time melts away.
They've reached the half-light of early dawn and completely bypassed the night before she knows it. One or other of them would get up and sort the room out, but he's too weak to draw the curtains, and she's too lazy to move. Had she known these were his last few hours, she might have done more, but he doesn't want it that way.
He doesn't quite know when she moved from perching on the edge of the sofa to sitting back properly, head leaning towards his, let alone when he made the agreement to stay or his breathing began to fall out of pace with hers.
"Come on then, Mr Mysterious," Rose asks, handing the Doctor a drink around 3am. "You got a wife?" He's silent, so she fills in the gaps. "Girlfriend? …Boyfriend?" she finally offers, eyebrows raised. The Doctor laughs and shakes his head.
"What about your family?" He pretends he's not biting back a scream as the poison begins to thunder through his blood, doing more and more damage with every circuit around his body. "They'll wanna know where you are," she reasons. "Haven't you got anyone? Someone I can call?"
"Not anymore."
"Friends? Brothers and sisters? Mum?" She pauses a little before the next question, and even now he can detect the sadness in her tone. "Dad?"
"No."
"Nothing?"
"No-one."
Looking desperately sad for him, Rose squeezes his hand then pulls herself together, offering him a smile. "Well. Good job you've a talent for making friends with strangers, then, hm?"
This time, the Doctor smiles back. It's truer than she knows.
"You've never been married?" she inquires absent-mindedly, dipping a biscuit in her tea and swirling it around. He freezes.
"Well. I never said never."
Rose looks up from her tea, interested. "Oh?"
"Been there, done that, never cashed in for the t-shirt or the ring," he says, and she can't tell whether that's regret or resignation in his voice. "She's dead, now." His words cut through the air and Rose blinks, shocked. The abruptness of the sentence reminds him of another time with her, another ending. Who thought it would end up like this? Who knew, when he took her hand in that basement, that it could lead to such an ending?
Her hand is pressed over her mouth in guilty shock. "I didn't know, I wouldn't – "
"Not your fault."
"Is that…is that how – ?" Rose asks, indicating his various injuries, and he marvels at how readily she's grown to accept his utter lack of straight answers.
"No. No, I lost her a long time ago."
She doesn't say I'm sorry because it's not enough. Instead, her hand stills over a wound on his stomach and she looks at him in the half-light of a lamp and the moon, eyes slightly damp. Perhaps it's insensitive to point it out, but she wants to think of him with someone. "You might fall in love again. You're young. You've got all the time in the world, yeah? And you never know what's round the corner."
His laugh is almost a strangled sob at the irony of her words. "I don't think it's romance, somehow."
Rose smiles encouragingly. "Well…"
"You're very like her," he almost whispers, shocking her. Before she can say anything else, his hand is on her face and he's leaned forwards, the lips brushing hers conveying more desperation and tenderness in a few short, peppered kisses than she's known in an entire lifetime.
He opens his eyes and looks at her briefly, holding on to his last shred of self-control. It soon melts away when he sees her countenance, open and vulnerable, eyes just resting shut without the slightest sign of protest. She looks just as she always did. Can he really look at her and pretend?
Before he has the sense to stop himself, he leans up again, feeling her gasp ever so slightly when their lips meet once more, hesitant at first and then with more certainty and persistence as she shows no signs of pulling away.
He clings to her desperately, rediscovering old memories and making new ones as she leans down to meet him. One of her hands clutches at the front of his shirt, and the other tangles in his hair. They break apart for the tiniest of seconds and he can't tell whether it's her breath or his own that's coming so raggedly, poison and death all but driven from his mind. And is it his imagination, or is it her kissing him when their lips meet again?
Either way, there's no denying the way she's tangled up in him, his fingers gripping at her waist through her tshirt. Unable to hold himself back any longer, he loses himself to memories of nights spent beneath the stars of uninhabited planets, nothing between them and the ground but his coat spread out across the floor. A world entirely of their own, soundless except for their trembling breath and whispered promises; bare skin and arched hips and no-one to tell them it's wrong.
It's only when he gently tugs her down to lie with him that she pulls back. Shock and guilt finally register on her face, the traces of his tears on her cheeks.
She opens her mouth like she's trying to tell him stop but no sound comes out, as though somehow she can't even find that simple word. Perhaps because she's with Jimmy, then, perhaps because he's a stranger, perhaps even because of what he's just said and she's wary of becoming her own replacement, she dips her head with a shy smile, lips now well out of his reach, before disentangling herself from him in a mixture of wary gentleness and hurried remorse. When she sits up, he notices that her cheeks are stained pink. She's really not sitting as far away as she should.
The Doctor runs a hand over his face agitatedly, berating himself for making things awkward between them. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…" he begins, though he can't quite bring himself to feel guilty.
She puts her hand over her mouth, though whether to push him away or savour the feeling of his kisses, he cannot tell. "No, we probably shouldn't." She smiles softly. "I mean, you're really very…but, well, I'm sort of taken," Rose explains awkwardly, giving him the slightest of waves. Her ring glints in the moonlight. "And…"
"I told you that you can do better than him," he says simply, taking her hand and absently fiddling with the ring.
"Oh, that's not fair," she defends, blushing again and removing her hand from his. The Doctor's glad to see that she has at least some faith in Jimmy, no matter what he'll turn out to be. He couldn't bear to think of her in a completely hopeless relationship. "He's not so bad. I know he promises a lot, but he'll get there one day. He means what he says. And he loves me."
Not as much as he should. "I still think you can do better."
"You sound like my mum," she admonishes, unable to be truly angry with him and not quite sure why.
"Maybe she's right." Blimey. He never thought he'd say that.
"If I wasn't with Jimmy," she begins hastily, apparently quite unable to finish the sentence now she's reached this point.
He nods knowingly, understanding that this isn't some throwaway sympathy compliment. She really means it, but it's not a wish she can voice without feeling like she's cheating on her fiancé any more than she already has.
"In another lifetime, maybe," he suggests, sadly, and Rose smiles.
"Yeah. Definitely."
As if worried he's going to kiss her again, she moves to the other end of the sofa, sitting back against the cushions and draping his legs back across hers after she shifted them to sit down. She gazes blankly out of the window opposite, melancholy but not exactly regretful, all the awkwardness he had anticipated evaporated.
She's bathed in moonlight like the ghost she really is, her hair a silvery halo and her skin far too pale as she taps out an absent-minded rhythm on his legs. He's falling in love with her all over again, unsure of whether this is the first or the last time. He can nevertheless feel it creeping through his very veins alongside the poison, which is as yet unsuccessful in stealing his breath compared to her. He has no idea how long he has left, but he's beyond glad that he's spent these precious few hours with her.
Her head rests back against the cushions, sleepy, ceiling-wards eyes turning with her head to face him whenever he talks.
He tells her his name, eventually, when he knows he hasn't much time left. It's a long string of harmonic syllables, rolling off his tongue easily despite their lack of use, a set of alien letters he is telling her for both the first and second time. The first time – second? – there had barely been space between them for him to utter the words, and she had spent a great deal of time attempting to learn and repeat it as she lay over him in the dark, before he had leaned up and kissed the tremendously unsuccessful seventh attempt right off her lips.
It shouldn't really surprise him that this time she simply blinks and says, "Is that foreign?"
--
She ends up falling asleep at his feet, sliding down from her position at the back of the sofa in her state of relaxation. He heaves himself up and meets her halfway, preventing both her waking up and the embarrassing potential of her head landing in close proximity to his lap.
They land in an awkward pile at his end of the settee, Rose lying on him as though he's some sort of person-sized pillow, definitely aware of him moving her but apparently too sleepy to mind.
He places her hand over his now singular heart and keeps his own pressed over the top, feeling the beat thrum through her palm. He wants so desperately to kiss her once again, but he knows it's not fair, so instead he slides himself as far down the sofa as he can manage, until he can almost rest his forehead against hers, and makes himself content with the feel of her breath across his lips.
His own breathing left shallow and irregular thanks to the chemicals making their final few circuits around his body, he can barely echo her pace. Lying like this, though, he can almost believe that her life will be enough for the both of them.
--
By the time her hand bunches up in the material of his – Jimmy's – shirt, the room has dipped out of focus. Only memory keeps her face clear in his mind. He can do nothing but be resigned, and though a part of him cries out to be amongst the stars, he knows he's made the right choice. He's grateful they left the curtains open, after all – he can almost see them, this way, feel a little closer to them with her in his arms, as it always should have been, as it once was. To him, she is the stars.
Rose clutches tighter when he shifts a little, the Doctor sinking even further into the past by the second. She'd developed such a habit not long before she'd been taken from him. His arms were less weak, then; her grip stronger and far more conscious. She had tip-toed up, hands bunched in the material of his shirt – light blue, it was, that day – and administered the lightest of kisses in response to his own, her lips barely even moving against his as she pressed them together. Her cheeks were stained the colour of her name. Later, whether in hugging or bed, she had continued the shirt-clutching; a sign of the need, the fear and the possession in their relationship, a silent acknowledgement that they were hanging on with all they had because they knew it was going to end.
--
The room is light but his world is dark, and he doesn't quite know why he should be struggling to draw breath anymore. The air burns; Rose is heavy all across one side of his body, filled with the sedate warmth that he only wishes could overtake his arctic skin. He's surprised his plummeting temperature doesn't wake her up. He's sorry for both of them that it has to end like this, so very sorry, but even if he had the breath he doesn't think he could tell her the words.
He didn't mean it to happen this way. He didn't want to subject her to his death, to hurt the naivety and innocence she carried so well before he met her. All he had wanted was to see her.
He can feel her inhaling, her chest expanding against his, breath for breath. Exhale. He misses a turn as hers floats across his skin, taking comfort in her breathing even as his slows.
He should get up, he knows. Leave. He's not quite sure how he's supposed to get up without waking her, though, and that's the last thing he wants to happen. She wouldn't let him go. She would ring ambulances and police and cause the type of fuss he knows oh-so-well is very, very dangerous.
Even if he had the strength, he doesn't think he could bring himself to do it. He tries to move, but he gets no further than bending his knees before he's dizzy and full of pain, and she's subconsciously pulling him close again already, his arms around her and his legs tangled with hers. She's obviously a very tactile sleeper, something he'd discovered later – or is it earlier? Time confuses even him, now.
He's failed her again. He had tried to tell her but she brushed it off the first time, is too far gone to hear it this. His mind keeps drifting back to the last time they lay like this, all the possibilities of every star in the sky before them, a life together stretched out ahead. They were so utterly blind to the future that even he had begun to believe in forever. It seems so unfair now that, even if he tells her the truth, she can't possibly know who he is.
It can't hurt to stay here and watch her sleep, though, just for a few minutes. Can it? She's so peaceful. He envies that. He traces a finger across her face, down her nose, charting the path of her skin. She wrinkles her nose in response, still a child in many ways, always a child in comparison to him. He didn't mean to make her his nursemaid. He's weak now, so very weak, even feeling shivering to be too much exertion. He'll just stay a few more minutes, then, just give in to the drooping of his eyelids…it can't hurt. Just a few minutes, just a few more stolen moments… He'll leave before…
One more breath from both of them, life for her and death to him, and that's it.
She breathes and he fades away.
--
Jimmy Stones has to prise her from the cold, stiff arms of a stranger that morning.
He's livid when he stumbles in and finds them, drunk and shrouded in smoke. Not much changes once he realises the man "stealing his bird" is actually dead, except perhaps his level of inebriation. Finding corpses in one's living room does tend to be a sobering experience.
She weeps, scared, hysterical, betrayed, confused, and he shouts, tears for a man she never knew preventing his words from sinking in.
--
Rose dreams of him that night, though whether it's a recollection of his waking moments or a product of her imagination she'll never quite know.
Is it right that she lay closer to him even in reality than her sleeping form lies to Jimmy now? Is it right that she should miss a man she never truly met?
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he tells her, and she runs her hands blindly through his hair, across his pale face. Her fingers dance across his wounds, salt-water splashes landing on his skin as she lies over him still.
"What for?" she asks, her tears cascading down her cheeks, her voice a higher pitch than it should be. He wants to wonder at her compassion, attribute emotions to her that she cannot possibly be aware of yet, but he knows – or at least he hopes, for the sake of the human race – that most other people would feel the same put in such a situation.
"Everything, Rose."
--
Immeasurable years – though she'd argue it's been four – and a distance so far it's silly to measure it in miles, an older, wiser, happier Rose Tyler is revisited by a dream whose hauntings had previously long since forsaken her. She wakes crying in the dark but barely has the time or permission to be sad; her tears are kissed away with gentle lips, her worries brushed aside with the caress of a now well-known hand. It's impossible to be afraid with such arms around her.
Besides, if there's one thing the Doctor has taught her, it is that time is circular.
Before she can ponder that further, whispered words and a hand in her hair have lulled her back to a far less melancholy sleep.
When she wakes the next morning, she remembers only his touch, never the reason behind it. The dream – the tears, the half-felt realisation – remain a forgotten memory.
She stretches in his embrace, and all at once a much younger her is pulled from the same. As she bumps into a nameless man she won't meet for another few years, part of him crumbles from existence completely, leaving behind a taller, happier, singing alien intent upon adventure. Well, as soon as he's figured out how not to burn their breakfast, anyway.
They will always have time. Time is circular and now and always. Time is forever.