Chapter 3

She stared at him incredulously. "How can you not know where your hand is?"

"Well, it isn't exactly attached to my body now, is it?" He said, and dashed about the console room, as if a disembodied hand was lying there in plain sight and they just never noticed it, but would magically do so at that very moment if they squinted hard enough.

She tried to shake away the sense of despair already rising inside her. Panicking would not help at all. Things had been complicated enough already, with the dreams that made no sense and the woman who spoke in riddles. Now there was a missing Time Lord hand that could wreck havoc in the wrong hands. They had to go about this logically instead of his frantic searching. "When did you last see it?"

He scratched the back of his neck. "In the TARDIS. Before Davros..." His words died at the tip of his tongue at the painful memory of his last great battle with the Daleks, one that cost him so dearly, including the memories of his best friend. "Before he tried to destroy the TARDIS and Donna got it back."

"Okay, after that?"

He hated how he didn't have the answers and could only speculate. "Well, Donna must have touched it and caused the meta-crisis. Enter Doctor Donna."

"Yeah?"

His face fell. "And then I didn't see the hand again."

She could not believe him. Sure, he was oblivious to a lot of things around him, but never to something this important. "And you didn't even notice it until now?"

"No!" He tugged his messy hair in frustration, feeling the sudden urge to smash something. He had just gotten Rose, and things were going downhill again. Couldn't he have just one little victory? "I've been a little preoccupied with you, in case you didn't notice."

Rose took a deep breathe to calm herself. They were going to take a rain check on the impending fight- finding the hand first was more important. They could start at the TARDIS, or at- "Oh God, Donna!" She felt like she had just been punched in the stomach. "What if it's at Donna's place? She might start to remember about you! Doctor, we have to go there now!"

He nodded, a dreadful feeling twisting knots inside his twin hearts at the possibility of that. "Dinner at her place and then we search the house?"

She only hoped it would work. "Yeah."

Few years back, or few years later, in a parallel universe...

"Rose?"

Rose Tyler rolled on the bed, trying to get as far away from the cruel voice calling her name, and as far under the covers as she could. "Five more minutes, mum!"

It was bad enough that the woman he loved did not recognize his voice when she was half-asleep, but being mistaken for Jackie Tyler? Now that was just plain unacceptable. "Rose, it's me!"

She squinted one eye open to see who this annoying human was, and was greeted by the sight of pink sheets and blue pajamas. Realizing immediately where she was and who she was with, she buried her face deep into the pillow. "Go away."

"But Rose-"

She looked up long enough to shoot him a deadly glare. "Go away if you ever want to see me naked again."

That he definitely did. Maybe he should just go away?

Or he could just wake her up. She was a reasonable woman, she'd surely understand. "But you have to see this, come on!"

She knew there was no way she could get back to sleep without humouring him now. With a weary sigh, she dragged herself into a sitting position. Even after weeks of being back with him, she still wasn't used to his erratic sleep schedule. She wondered what the big emergency was now. "I hate you so much sometimes."

"You're welcome, honey. Now look!" He jumped out of the bed with the giddy excitement of a child that reminded her of her little brother, and drew back the thick curtains of their bed-side window. "It's snowing! Our first snow here, together!"

She let out a small chuckle, rubbing at her eyes with her hands to drive the sleep away. "Doctor, you can't even remember my birthday! You can't possibly remember all the firsts."

"It's not the date, Rose Tyler, that matters, but the memories."

"Far too wise for the middle of the night." She said, and got up from the bed to join him, giving him a chaste peck on the lips. She leaned her frame against his, and stared out of the window, watching the snow cover the silver streets. She had seen the snow here before, stranded away from him, wondering where he was, if it was sunny or raining or cold, if he was alright. She worried about him all the time, missed him too much for her own good, and could never enjoy anything without him to share the view and see the world anew through her eyes. The snow had never appealed to her. Until tonight, with his breathe ghosting her neck and his hand on her waist. She sighed, pleased. "It's beautiful."

"The first time I held your hand in this body, it was snowing with Styrocox ashes." He murmured against her hair. "Funny, that. We started with tragedy."

She looked up at him with wide, shining eyes. "Yeah, but then I pointed at a star I wanted to see, and you grinned at me." She smiled at the mere memory. "Hope in seasons of despair, isn't that what we've always been about?"

He beamed at her, falling a little more in love with her optimism. "Far too wise for the middle of the night", he mimicked, and reached for her hand to intertwine their fingers. Noticing how cold it was, he asked, "Would you like a cuppa before you go back to bed?"

"Actually, I was thinking of going out to enjoy the snow. Grab my coat for me, will you?"

His grin grew wider and he dashed off to get her coat. "May I, Dame Rose?" He asked when he returned, holding her coat in his hands.

She laughed, raising her arms to let him help her with her coat. "You may, Sir Doctor."

Before long, they were holding hands and running into the snow, and they both realized at that exact moment that all the adventures time and space had to offer could never measure up to this happiness they felt in each other's company right in their own backyard.

It was a matter of moments till a ball of snow hit the Doctor's coat. His grin was of pure joy. "Remember, Rose, you started it."