Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing this on a bad school laptop, with some documentary in the background?

This chapter's a little more Doctor-y... writing him is lots of fun.

Rose didn't notice that as she burrowed her head in the Doctor's shoulder, she was crying. Crying both for the joy, more than joy, more than just happiness. She couldn't find words to describe the feeling of seeing the man that she loved. Holding the man who she had almost resigned to never seeing again in her arms. She was also crying for all of the pain that she had gone through, the terrible year of being doctor-less. That wait for him was over now, though Rose didn't know how. Questions were running through her head. How did he get here? Who was the 'Martha' that he introduced? None of that mattered to her though. He was here. The Doctor had returned.

Questions were running through the Doctor's head as well, though ones of a very different manner. He had never seen the blonde girl before, though she seemed to know him very well. He felt his shoulder dampening with the girl's tears. Something must have happened here. He knew about last year's Cyberman invasion. Humans had crushed it. Just some young men in a car. First London had been freed, then Paris, then New York. The Doctor felt bad for missing almost the entire war. It wasn't like him to not even know about a major event in history while it was occurring. Especially something like that. It should have been something that he could have helped with. So many lives could have been saved if he had been there, rather than popping off across time and space, and missing the Cybermen. He had purposefully steered clear of everything involving parallel universes. That was dangerous. It was too seductive to see what happened in another version of your world. A loved one who never died. Some other mysterious turn in the universe that was better. It was dangerous to get caught up in a different time-line. Too many things happened. He knew about the whole world heating, and he'd tried to help with that part. Of course, nobody had listened to him. Yeah, that happened a lot. People not listening to the time lord who could save them. There was that one time when he had attempted to warn people about all sorts of disasters. Like, that time when he'd tried to tell those people on Karyusdarioniter that the new type of fuel would blow up their planet. Of course, they hadn't listened either... that one involved a lot of running to himself and Martha out of. He was getting off track, rambling in his brain. He wasn't sure why his lips weren't moving, though there were some things that he was sort of glad he hadn't actually spoken out loud.

"I'm so glad you're here" The girl's whisper into his shoulder brought the Doctor back to his original thoughts. Something was wrong. Otherwise there wouldn't be a blonde crying into his shoulder. Normally crying blondes meant something bad was happening. Well... unless it was a happily crying blonde, but the Doctor didn't think that was the case here. There was nothing he had done to make her happy. There was nothing he had done that would really evoke any emotion at all! Then, rather quickly, it hit him. It was his name.

"Doctor. I'm the Doctor... and that's how I introduced my self. As soon as I did that, you started crying, so that means that someone needs a doctor, which means someone is sick. Or hurt, they might be hurt, always a possibility. YES! You're crying because I'm here, because someone's hurt or sick! So, whats wrong? Who is it? What can I do... miss, sorry, what was your name?" The Doctor reasoned out loud, both for his own benefit and that so everyone could actually here him. That was helpful... people actually hearing what he had to say.

Rose lifted her head off the Doctor's shoulder, shocked by what he said. The reasoning out loud was exactly the way he had always done it. It was just like the way he had been, the way she remembered him. Yet, the words he spoke made it crystal clear that he didn't remember her at all. Did he bang his head or something? Some weird thing that happened traveling through dimensions? Rose was confused. Here he was, so clearly the Doctor, yet he didn't know her. She loved him... and from his words, he didn't know who she even was. "Nobody's ill, Doctor..." She said, answering his question, though she barely knew why. She knew that he must be. "But what happened to you, Doctor? How did you get here?" Why did he get here, if he didn't even know her. Finally, with tears once again streaming down her cheeks. "It's Rose... your Rose. How come you can't remember?" She touched his cheek, and watched a puzzled expression cross his face. She loved all of the funny looks he gave. Not now though... not when it meant that after all this time she had waited for him, he didn't even know who she was.

The Doctor watched the blonde girl. Rose, she said her name was. "Rose... Rose... oooh, I know that name, Rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Oh, nope, that's Shakespeare. Nice man, completely brilliant. Course... I gave him a lot of his lines. Not that one though... that's all his. hmm... London, 21st Century... big mansion-y looking thing back there..." The Doctor gestured to the Tyler mansion in the background "Tyler Mansion, hopefully. I was trying to get there anyway. OH, Tyler! You're Rose Tyler! Appeared out of nowhere in the Cybermen raids! Am I right? Remember what though?" He reasoned out loud again, figuring out that the crying blonde was Rose Tyler. She was one of the reasons why he had come here. The whole mysterious appearance right after the Cyberman thing was weird. The precise kind of weird that the Doctor loved. What she was talking about with memory and crying and hugging and something happening to him and the touching his cheek was also weird. That was the kind of weird that scared him.

TBC... obviously. I love reviews, even critical ones. I hope I got the Doctor right... getting his dialouge to sound in character is hard.