Rose and the Doctor had not given much thought to birth control. She thought to ask, a little too late, the morning after their first night together as they lazed in bed, if it was something they should be concerned about. The Doctor explained in his usual tone, "weeelll, while of course humans begin to successfully cross-breed with mainly humanoid life forms in, oh, I don't know, the 26th century or so, I've always thought that Time Lords were an exception because of the temporal abnormalities in our genetic code. Then again, could be wrong, never tested it… but I'm reasonably sure we can recreationally copulate without fear of inadvertent procreation…" Rose gave him a blank stare with one eyebrow up. "What I mean to say is, we can shag like monkeys as much as we want!" He swept her up in a silly sloppy kiss as she giggled, and they didn't give it another thought, distracted by other things.

In the next several weeks they developed a pleasant pattern. They shopped pleasantly and playfully for the Doctor's new wardrobe, and Pete was securing identification for him. While Pete guaranteed Rose and the Doctor fulfilling and discreet careers at Torchwood, he insisted that there was no pressure, that they should relax and enjoy themselves for as long as they wished, and they did. They took to wandering the streets of Parallel London in a romantic reverie, feeding each other chips as they walked along the Thames, stopping to look out at the water. When it was cold, the Doctor would open up his trench coat so Rose could burrow inside up against his warm body. Occasionally they'd walk at night and look up at the stars, slightly melancholically.

Mostly though, they spent their evenings at the Tyler house for dinner. Tony, who was three years old, really took to the Doctor. The Doctor was slightly bewildered by children in general and by Tony's attention specifically, but he warmed to the boy. Rose loved to watch them interact – it warmed her heart in a way she couldn't name.

One night, Jackie was washing dishes with Rose drying, while Tony and the Doctor played in the next room. Jackie murmured something about how Rose hadn't eaten much at dinner, "and you normally love my tuna-fish casserole." Rose only half heard her, distracted. In truth, she only put on a show of liking the dish for her mom's sake. Normally it was tolerable, but tonight the smell of it had turned her stomach in knots. She felt as if she'd been holding her breath all night long to keep the smell out. "I wasn't hungry, mum. I snacked a lot this afternoon," which was in fact true. As they walked around that afternoon, the food in all the shops looked delicious, and Rose begged the Doctor to stop in every one. He, as usual, indulged her.

Rose overheard the sounds of the Doctor playing with Tony. They were, ironically enough, playing Tony's favorite game, spaceships, with his Star Wars set. This game consisted of Tony moving his X-wing fighters around in the air, making laser gun, "pew, pew" sounds, while the Doctor tried to explain, "not all spaceships look like that you know," and "laser guns really have a deeper pitch to them," and "a vessel of that size wouldn't have the fuel and power resources necessary to generate a beam of 70 pequods at a distance of 30 kilo-hictars." "Pew, pew!" answered Tony.

Rose listened fondly to this, and all of a sudden broke into tears. "Darling, what's wrong?" Jackie responded with alarm, stopping her dish-doing, taking the plate and towel out of Rose's hands and enveloping her in a hug. "Nothing's wrong!" Rose sobbed. "Everything's perfect! I'm just, I'm just, so… happy!" she sobbed unconvincingly. She sniffed between each word, and began to sob even harder.

"Rose," said a solemn voice, and Rose could barely perceive, through teary eyes, a shock of brown hair. The Doctor, like any man in love, never stopped thinking about where Rose was in relation to him, spotting her through his peripheral vision, listening always for her voice. The second he heard her cry, he appeared instantly by her side in the kitchen.

"I'd better take her home," the Doctor said solemnly, and Jackie passed Rose into his arms. Her instinct might have been to protest, insisting that she was best qualified to take care of her daughter, but in the last few years, and in particular the last few weeks, Jackie had come to trust the Doctor, understanding how much he loved and cared for Rose and how hard he'd try never to hurt her again.

When the Doctor and Rose returned to their house, Rose had recovered. She sniffled, grabbing a tissue to blow out snot, and babbled about how sorry and embarrassed she was, and she didn't know why she did that, she was incredibly happy, etc. etc. Interrupting her mumbling, the Doctor said, "I was wrong."

"What?"

"I was wrong, and I'm sorry, I'm so…"

"Don't say that! Whenever you say that someone's going to die!"

"No! That's not what I meant, I'm sor… I mean, I apologize for that choice of words, and I apologize for being wrong…"

"About what?"

"Of course I forgot that my human form would disrupt the temporal expression of the chromosomal pattern."

"What are you on about?"

"But I'm actually not sorry, I'm not sorry at all!" The Doctor's face cracked into a huge grin, and a laugh at what seemed to be a private joke. Rose was utterly confused. She moved in to punch his arm repeatedly, while saying, "would… you… tell… me… already…."

"Ow, ow! That's no way to treat the father of your child!"

Rose froze, and there was a long pause. "What?"

"Rose," the Doctor said tenderly, and he took her hands in his. "Rose Tyler, my Rosie" and his mouth broke into another impossibly huge grin. "We're going to have a baby."

"WHAT?"

The Doctor just laughed, and smiled maniacally. Rose's head was spinning. "But, but, but, how, how…?"

"You know, the usual way," the Doctor grinned mischievously.

"No! I mean how do you know? You don't have weird alien x-ray vision or nothing?" and Rose started pawing at her stomach as if there was a picture of a baby printed on her t-shirt.

"No! Nothing like that, I just… know, you know? Instinct… I can feel it, I can tell it's there. I mean think about it, it makes sense! The eating, the crying…"

"But… this is… oh, isn't this, bad? Unplanned, and isn't too soon? We just got here, we were just starting to figure things out. It's… it's… scary! Why are you so happy?"

"Because it's you, Rose. Because I love you. I want to be with you for as long as these bodies last, I have no doubt about that. And this baby is… it's… us! The two of us swirled together to create something new, something brilliant! Something small and wonderful, and us!"

Rose smiled widely as her eyes brimmed with tears again.

"Rose," the Doctor said, as he cupped her chin with his hands, wiping her tears away with his thumbs, stopping to kiss her deeply and then looking into her eyes with his most earnest, loving gaze. "I want to marry you."

"WHAT?"

The Doctor bent on one knee. "Rose Tyler." He took her hand in his. "Will you marry me?"

Rose's head was spinning. It was too much to comprehend: how was this all happening to her at once? She was only just getting used to the fact that this Doctor was really all hers, was there to stay, and that they were building a life together, rather than stealing a few precious nights of paradise before fate drove them apart again. As her thoughts swirled chaotically, he waited for an answer, and the longer she paused, his face began to fall. She was overwhelmed, but after all, she always knew what her answer would be, since the day she first ran inside his blue police box.

"Yes," she cried, and he arose to embrace her, and kissed her passionately. He then danced her around the apartment, jubilantly shouting, "huzzah!" until, understandably, Rose got dizzy, and they collapsed on the couch, laughing.

"Now you get this," and the Doctor pulled a ring box out of his jacket pocket. Rose gasped at yet another surprise – he had already picked out a ring? She opened it and gasped again. It was her grandmother's ring – he must have gotten it from Pete – but there was something different about it when it shone in the light – a slight green tint to the metal surrounding the entwining strands that terminated in two diamonds. "I had permission to make a slight alteration," the Doctor explained. "It's a veneer of Glaferen, a fine space metal that they had some pieces of at Torchwood. It was found floating in Kasterborous, the constellation where my planet was. Gallifray was one of the few planets where that metal is found, and was certainly where it was most plentiful. It used to make the mountains of Gallifray shine. This piece might be from there, left floating after Gallifray was destroyed. Anyway, it's my way of joining Time Lord with human, like us. Like our baby…"

Rose smiled and cried silently. She'd been twisting and turning the ring in the light, watching it flash not just green, but red and orange and other other-worldly colors. "They say it keeps a visual memory of the landscapes it has reflected, and provides fleeting glimpses of them…" The Doctor took the ring from her, and looked at it solemnly for a moment, as if searching for something. But then he took her hand, and slipped the ring onto her finger. They embraced, and sat holding each other for a long moment in loving and contemplative silence.

"And you're not just proposing because you knocked me up?" Rose joked.

"No, no! Had the ring made ages ago. Just hadn't decided yet when I was gonna use it. I might have waited longer otherwise, but now that I've got to make an honest woman out of you…"

Rose punched him in the arm half-heartedly. She was exhausted, with good reason, and the Doctor guided her, with drooping head, to bed. They both knew she needed rest, and yet they stayed up late whispering , making plans, figuring out a map for the future… their future. One thing they decided that night: before, they were going to name the Doctor "John Smith" for his identification documents. He had felt ambivalent about reusing his former alias, but it presented itself as the most likely candidate. But now a new one emerged, one that seemed perfect to both of them, particularly now that a marriage and baby were imminent… John Tyler.