Hi again! It's been a while, so I'll try to keep this short. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed this story, I really appreciate all the positive feedback! I wasn't sure where to cut this chapter off, and I think it shows a little... Anyways, enjoy and, as always, please tell me what you think by way of a review!
Disclaimer: Roses are red, violets are blue, there's something wrong with your head, if you think I own Doctor Who!

Searching Souls

Part The Fourth

The next time the Doctor saw Rose, roughly two weeks since he had told her how he felt, he engulfed her in his arms straight away, trying to force himself not to crush his love… and his child. The grin that had hardly left his face since he found out increased tenfold at the thought that he was holding the two most important people in his universe in his arms. It had been so very long since he had a child in his care…

The thought made his smile falter as he remembered Susan, and what terrible mistakes he had made with her.

Rose knew that he was over nine hundred years old and obviously had a family at some point in his extraordinarily long life. She also knew he must have lost them somewhere along the line, since he was the last of the Time Lords.

She could tell from the way his posture changed from practically bursting with energy to slouching that he was remembering the horrors of his past. Pulling back a little, Rose flashed the Doctor a grin and murmured into his ear, "The past is in the past. Everything is different now."

After tenderly kissing her way up his neck and to his lips, Rose stepped out of their embrace to look him in the eyes as she said, "I will find my way back to you, and our child will know his or her father, the most wonderful man in all the universes."

The Doctor grinned at her profession, though he had stated that crossing between the parallel worlds was impossible now that the Time Lords were gone. He trusted Rose to find her way back to him, she always did. He had learned long ago not to underestimate her; she had taken out an entire fleet of Daleks with a flick of her wrist, she could make her way back to him.

The two kissed sweetly for a bit, before Rose started telling the Doctor about her life. "You know, Doctor, Toney's favorite stories are about my travels with you."

The Doctor grinned at the sweet smile on her face, before replying, "Really? That's brilliant!" After a moment, however, a confused look appeared on his face. "Rose, how old is your brother?"

"Well, he's about a year old, now, but I know he enjoys the stories." She paused for a moment before continuing, "Well, at least he enjoys them better than those stupid books Mum reads 'im."

The Doctor laughed at that, replying, "You know, I rather miss your mother now that I haven't seen her in a year and a half… Although, I could do without the slaps." Rose had to laugh at that comment, and her laughter grew when he added as an afterthought, "I think Donna could give her a run for her money in that department…"

"Is Donna your newest companion?" Rose was curious, and the fact that this mysterious woman had slapped him gave Rose the impression that they could be good friends.

The Doctor grinned in response, nodding vigorously as he exclaimed, "Yep! You would love her, Rose! She's truly brilliant! Although… She has the same problem you did…"

When Rose gave the Doctor a perplexed look, he explained, "She never believes me when I tell her how brilliant she is, she always says, 'I'm just a temp,' kind of like how you would always claim to be 'just a shop girl.' Really, you humans are ridiculous! You get a compliment and immediately compile a list of reasons as to why the compliment does not apply to you. Honestly…"

Rose laughed at him, having seen the rant coming from the moment he started talking about Donna. "Doctor," she cut in, laughter in her voice, "I get it. We're all a bunch of 'stupid apes' who can't take a compliment for our pitifully short lives. I would have thought a 'Superior Time Lord' like you would have known we were all the same in that respect!"

The Doctor grinned at her, knowing better than to try and find an insult in her words. "Well, regardless of how crazy you humans are, Donna is a brilliant woman. Really, she's probably my best friend. Well… aside from you. So, she's my best friend in my universe – until you come back to me, that is."

From the grin on his face, Rose knew that he was anticipating her return and was probably already picturing their reunion – which would hopefully not involve a life-or-death situation. Her voice took on a tone of mockery as she replied, "Really, Doctor? You only have two friends? That's kind of sad, you know. Especially considerin' how I'm not even with you in your universe – yet."

The Doctor's face grew more serious, and almost abruptly he declared, "When you get back to me, I am going to hold you and never let you go, ever. Not even in the middle of the night when our daughter starts crying. We'll go together, and you'll learn to do everything one-handed."

The sincerity in his voice truly touched Rose, but there was something he had said that did not sit right with her. "Doctor, did you say, 'our daughter'?"

He nodded enthusiastically, the smile still not gone from his visage as he replied, "She's going to have the best childhood of anyone in the universe!"

"But, Doctor, I don't think you're right on that point." When he frowned, she immediately clarified, "I think we're going to have a boy, not a girl. You know, a mini-Doctor to wreak chaos across the galaxies by licking monarchs and accidentally insulting diplomats as he rambles off at a million miles a minute."

The Doctor smiled, but he held firm, insisting that their child would be a girl, who he decided would have Rose's eyes and smiles, but his knack for getting into trouble. To distract her from their disagreement, the Doctor announced excitedly, "Rose, I think the first trip we should take our child on is to Barcelona! You know, we never did make it there ourselves… It would be quite nice to bring our little family to a new planet together. Well... new for you and our child. Of course I've been there before, saved the planet, I did…"

Rose let him ramble on, knowing that he was in his element. She was perfectly content with watching the different expressions that flashed across his face while he spoke, all of them one form of joy or another.

When he had finished with his story, the Doctor and Rose discussed all the places they would go with their child, like Raxacoricofallapatorius. Jokingly, Rose even suggested the planet Vulcan, and was shocked when the Doctor agreed. "Sure! We could go there! Although... It's not what you'd expect.... It's a human colony planet, chosen because of the similar atmosphere and mercury swamps."

Rose's face dropped as she commented, "So, no Vulcans with pointy ears?"

"Nope." She had to smile at the way he popped the 'p'.

"Is the planet named after 'Star Trek,' then?"

"Actually," the Doctor was in his element, and was enjoying himself far too much, "the planet in 'Star Trek' was named after it! You see, I took Ace with me to the planet, to show her how humans would eventually colonize across the universe. Then we went back to Earth, a few years before her time, and she got to talking with Gene Roddenberry about the possibility of life on other planets, and she suggested that maybe, somewhere among the stars there could be a planet called Vulcan."

Rose laughed at the story, replying, "Well, you had better get us there, one day!"

When he felt himself slipping away, the Doctor leaned in and kissed Rose on the lips, cutting off her laughter. She willingly gave in to the kiss, knowing that, soon enough, they would have forever in which they could travel the stars.

When the Doctor woke, he began theorizing ways Rose could get back to him, hoping to be able to speed up the process as much as possible.

When Donna entered the console room, she found him pacing back and forth, still trying to come up with a way to get Rose back. It took her a few calls of 'Oi, Spaceman!' to finally pull him from his musings, but when she finally did, Donna insisted upon getting some answers.

"What are you plannin', Doctor?"

He knew that he should not have been startled by the way she got straight to business, but he was, even after a few weeks of traveling with the wonderful human. "What do you mean, Donna?"

"I mean, what are you up to that's got you so deep in thought that I have to call your name four times before you look my way? It's rude to ignore people, you know."

The Doctor knew he had to tell Donna, he would be spending far too much time trying to get Rose back for him not to tell Donna. Besides, if he told her, hopefully she would offer to help him get her back, knowing how important Rose was to him and all. But, in a rare event that had only happened a handful of times in his exceedingly long life, the Doctor found he was unable to get words out of his mouth. He knew that he had to tell Donna, he wanted to tell her, but he was also afraid of what would happen when he said the words. He was afraid that he would not only sound crazy but that if he did try to bring Rose back, he would find that not only was it truly impossible, but that his dreams of her had also been nothing more than dreams.

At length, when Donna was running out of patience, he found his voice once more. "Donna, I've been having these dreams for a while now, but they are the most wonderful dreams, and I'm fairly certain that they are more than just dreams..."

When he had finished with his story, Donna was practically speechless, but managed to offer, "So, what have you come up with so far?"

Grinning like the madman he probably was, the Doctor said, "Well, I figure that if I poked around with the TARDIS to try and find a weak spot in the barriers between the universes... Probably Bad Wolf Bay, since that's where my message showed up...."

At this point, Donna spoke up, not really understanding what he was trying to say. "You know what? I think I'm going to make you a cuppa, you know, so you can think better."

As she walked towards the kitchen, she heard the Time Lord muttering to himself under his breath, not even pausing to breathe, letting his respiratory bypass take care of his need for oxygen as he put his manic thoughts to words.

TBC...