Rose woke up crying. Instinctively, she pressed a hand to her round belly. All was well. She lay in silence in the dark, breathing deeply and aware that she was not the only one up.
"Doctor," she choked, and buried her face in his chest.
"Hey, shhh…" he soothed. He switched on the bedside lamp, casting a comforting glow over their small but cosy bedroom, and sat up, adjusting his wife in his arms accordingly. "The dreams again?"
"It's the same one, every time," she sniffled. "The big bad wolf, dark but burning bright, walking through the winds of time, beckoning to me…"
"Rose," The Doctor said, gently but firmly. "No human has ever before absorbed the time vortex. No human should be able to and live. It only makes sense there would be lingering aftereffects…"
"Yes, but if that's the case why didn't this start happening until just a few months ago?"
It seemed for once, The Doctor was at a loss for words. He didn't need them; Rose understood by the worried look on his face. For seemingly the first time since Rose had run off with a mad man in a blue box, The Doctor did not know the answer.
Still shaken, Rose didn't speak either, only curled up close against her Doctor. He in turn just held her and stroked her naturally wavy blonde hair.
"Doctor...am I going to be okay?" she eventually said.
"Hell will freeze over before I let anything happen to you," the Doctor whispered.
"But the wolf...it's in me, Doctor. You can't protect me from me."
"Rose Tyler, just you watch me," he vowed, drying her tears.
At times like this, it was so easy to forget there was another Doctor, out roaming the universe somewhere, with some other girl. Rose would always have a place in her heart for him, but she would never again love him like she did her husband. Her Doctor.
He laid a hand on her belly. "How's baby?"
"You try it sometime," Rose grimaced. "But he's worth it."
"You need all the rest you can get, try to get some sleep. Why don't I go make some hot milk?"
"Actually I was fancying some chamomile," Rose confessed.
Smiling, the Doctor kissed first her, then her belly, before padding barefoot off to the kitchen.
When the sound of his footsteps faded, Rose heaved herself out of bed. She slid into her pink slippers before creeping out; she knew the Doctor didn't like her getting out of bed without his help when she was on bed rest.
She made her way laboriously into the little TARDIS-blue room across the hall. The Doctor had painstakingly painted silver stars all over the ceiling, and it was Rose who had made the mobile that hung over the cot in the corner; handcrafted little TARDISes and stars and planets, spinning slightly in the draft from the window. Rose knelt at the foot of the cot and just rested her head against the bars, breathing deeply.