The zeppelin flight back to England was quiet. The other Doctor dropped off to sleep immediately. She couldn't quite call him "Doctor" yet. Soon, hopefully.

Maybe it was for the best. After all, what would the real Doctor, with nine centuries of experience and a time machine that was bigger on the inside, want with her? She'd been way out of her league.

Rose smiled and wiped the drool off his face. They'd work it out together.

A small stripy missile launched itself out of the door and grabbed Rose around the waist. "Wose! You didn't go away!" He buried his face in her leg. "I was sad, Wose," he accused her.

Rose bent down and kissed the top of his head. Three-year-old Tony Tyler was one of the few things that had made life in this universe bearable, when her goal seemed unreachable and her chest ached with misery. "I'm staying, Tony," she said. "Couldn't leave you behind, could I? And see who I brought!"

Tony peeked around her, his gaze travelling up from the red sneakers to the messy brown hair. "Doktah!" he exclaimed in delight. "Wose, it's your Doktah! You're not sad now!"

Rose looked up to meet his eyes. If her little brother could do it, then so could she. "D-Doctor," she said, stumbling slightly over the word. "Doctor," more firmly, "this is Tony. My brother."

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"You're going to need new clothes, you know."

"Hmm?"

"Some new clothes. You can't keep wearing the same suit. No Tardis to keep it clean for you."

The Doctor picked idly at a thread on the sofa. "Tardis...yeah. Wait, what?"

"New. Clothes. Need to buy." She sighed in frustration. This regeneration had always had a short attention span, but right now he was worse than Tony. "You'll smell."

"Hey! Time Lords don't smell, Rose!"

"You can use my deodorant if you like. It's lavender scented. I think it's suit you." She leaned over and ran her fingers through his hair. It had been so long since she'd been able to do that.

"I'm not using any girly stuff," the Doctor stated emphatically. He glared at her. "Next thing I know, you'll be putting lipstick on me again."

"That was once!"

"Lipstick, Rose. Lipstick."

"Jack dared me!" Jack. She'd never see him again, but at least he was still alive. The Doctor owed her an explanation for that one. Busy rebuilding the earth, my foot! she thought resentfully. At least he'd apologized, or so it seemed from their behaviour earlier. She wondered how long it had taken Jack to catch up with him.

"How long has it been for you?" she asked nervously.

"How long since...what?"

"Since we were separated."

"Nine minutes, forty-three point two four seconds." She stared. "To the nearest millisecond."

"What — Doctor, that doesn't even make sense." Ten minutes? Donna had travelled with him for months.

The Doctor's attention had wandered off again. He was entranced by Tony's aquarium mobile, watching the fish change colour in the breeze. "Don't be silly. Ten minutes?"

"I'm not being silly." He sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. "Five minutes two point eleven seconds later, Jack asked me for the codes, and I told him I'd sent you home. That took fifty five point one seconds. Then another three minutes, forty-seven seconds after that, the Tardis doors opened and there you were." He smiled. "All glowing like an angel," he said in a sing-song voice.

"I meant, since Bad Wolf Bay. Not the Gamestation."

"Nearly five hours, but we weren't separated, Rose." He wriggled and stretched out his legs, drumming his feet on the floor. "Well, except when you went to the toilet —"

"The first time. After Canary Wharf?"

He looked blank.

Rose bit her lip worriedly. Was memory loss a symptom of not-regenerating? She remembered his previous regeneration, when he'd gone mad and crashed the Tardis. Another time, he'd nearly strangled his companion.

She took a deep breath, and spoke in a calm, level voice. "Doctor, what's the last thing you remember before you were in the Tardis with Donna, in the Crucible?"

"Sword fight!" he cried in delight, bouncing enthusiastically. "Slash slash — slice!" He chopped at his right wrist. "Off with his hand!"

"You — you don't remember anything after that?"

He reached over and took her hand. "That's when I was created, Rose. I couldn't have all of his memories, could I? I wasn't a part of him after that."

Her stomach had a nasty sinking feeling. Was he not her Doctor after all? He remembered only half of the time they'd spent together. And while she could see the man she'd first fallen in love with in her second Doctor, there was no trace of him in this man's eyes.

Not for the first time since Bad Wolf Bay, she wondered if her was just trying to get rid of her.

"...and this is my eleventh body. Sort of. My tenth-and-a-half if you want," he rambled on, oblivious to her worry. "New, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, n- Doctor. But I'm not nine hundred any more."

"No?"

"Guess how old I am, Rose!"

"Um...nine hundred and four?"

"Nope!" He wriggled and squeezed his hands between his thighs. "I'm one day old! Because this is also my first body!" He winced suddenly. "And, Rose?" He sat very still. "I think I had a bit of an accident."

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"Dammit," Rose swore, and went to the supermarket to buy adult nappies and cleaning supplies. By the time she got back and rang Jake, the walls had closed and the dimension cannon was no longer working.

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"Poos!"

"Wees!"

"Kissing!"

The Doctor leaned forward and whispered loudly, "Knickers!"

Rose dropped her backpack on the ground. "Hey, Doctor. We found some weird alien artifacts at the site near Swansea. One of them looks like that heart monitor on Sven Five. Want to have a look at them?"

"No, I'm busy here," he replied dismissively. "Bottoms!"

Tony shrieked and clapped his hands.

A week. It had been one week, and already she was close to breaking. Far from romance and running for their lives on a slightly smaller scale, she was looking after a fully grown man who had reverted to toddlerhood. He couldn't sleep without his teddy bear, had to be dressed most mornings, and was obsessed with Spongebob Squarepants (who was red in this universe). Oddly enough, though, he had retained all his gross motor skills. Tony could never catch him in a game of tag. She'd tried to get the Doctor to explain, but he just babbled a lot of sciencey-sounding words to her and then went back to banging the frying pan with the bread knife.

If Donna had absorbed his brain, then maybe the same thing had happened to her. Rose imagined Donna running amok in the control room, grabbing at whatever she could reach and blowing up the Tardis. It would serve him right.

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"You have to get over him, sweetheart," Jackie said. "You won't see the Doctor again, an' this one's a child, in his mind, at least."

"Yeah, don't want to get done for paedophilia," Rose mumbled with her head in the fridge.

"There's no need for sarcasm, young lady," Jackie warned her. "You're not too old for a smack, you know."

"Mum! I'm twenty-four!"

'Then you need to move out. It was all right when we thought it was only temporary, but you're staying for good now."

"And the Doctor?" She found the baby food she was looking for and put it on the counter. "I can't just dump him on you. He's my responsibility."

"I've thought about that. We'll say he's brain-damaged, from the Cyberman incident. That all right?"

Rose nodded.

"He can live here if you hire us a caregiver, and spend Sundays with him. You're right, he's not my problem, but I don't mind helping some. He's good company for Tony, anyway."

"Oh, Mum. What would I do without you?" Rose tried to smile.

"Don't cry now, sweetheart. Now, you're to go out with some friends this week. Mum's orders. I can still boss you around 'til you leave, you know."

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Rose found it easier to move on when she wasn't living with a constant reminder of what she'd lost. She began to make friends in the Extra-Terrestrial Diplomacy (Humanoid) Department, and started eating lunch in the Torchwood canteen, instead of spending her breaks poring over Void reports. Three weeks after her return to what she was beginning to call her home universe, she ordered the Dimension Cannon dismantled and the information destroyed. She allowed herself one night of grieving, then turned her face resolutely towards the future. And if she felt a pang at the thought of a shared future, hand in hand, she never showed it.