Rose handed him the warm mug, and he thanked her. He hadn't realized his fingers were cold until he felt its comforting heat pressed against them. Flopping down on the sette, she reached for her own glass. Sipping it thoughtfully for a moment, she turned her full attention towards her house guest.

"I have a proposition."

He was sipping when she spoke, and jumped at her intrusion into his thoughts. The mug shook against his lips, splashing tea against them and scalding them slightly. He pulled rapidly back from the cup, yet held it steadily above his lap so as not to drop any more on his sensitive skin. Turning to her, he asked in a gravelly voice, "What kind of a proposition?"

"Questions," she said matter-of-factly. "You ask one and I have to answer, then we switch and you have to answer anything I ask. No rules on the topics, but you have to give the truth." She raised her eyebrows, and he recognized a challenge from her when he saw it.

The Doctor blinked. "Seems to me I've heard of this game before. However, usually there's 'dares' involved."

"Nah," she responds gaily, "Truth 'r Truth. More fun that way."

The setting sun angled through the vertical blinds and left crooked bar patterns of light and darkness across the couch and Rose and Rose's light blue mug of tea. "All right then," he humored her. Setting his own mug gently upon the end table where it could do no more immediate damage, he glanced sideways at her. "What do you want to know?"

"Oh, no." She shook her head violently. "I came up with the rules, you get to ask the first question." He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her. Fine then, if this is how she wanted it then he could play along. It was a strange way of going about things, though. Leaning back against the corner of the couch he considered her. Her face was narrower than it used to be. A sign that maybe she hadn't paid as much attention to caring for herself recently, as if she'd missed a meal or two…or ten. Her hair was longer now, too. She had left it loose after her shower so that it fell in gentle waves past her shoulders. She was smiling at him from behind the edge of her mug, but it didn't reach her eyes; and he had the distinct impression that this is the way all her smiles looked now. As if she just assumed those watching her wouldn't notice that they were faked. Or that they wouldn't care.

Folding his hands gently in his lap, he focused on his intertwined figures. "How long has it been?" He raised his eyes to her and saw only a momentary flicker of surprise behind her lashes.

"You mean since I originally came here or since Bad Wolf Bay?"

"Whenever."

She seemed to ponder this for a moment. "It's been almost three years since you came to me on the beach. A few months longer since Canary Warf." He nodded his understanding, and she retorted with her own question almost immediately. "And for you?"

"Two years, Earth time. Weellll, I say two years, but it was really three. For me anyway. And Martha. And Jack. And Martha's family, I suppose." He smiled at her obvious confusion. "Sorry, time reversed itself for a tad, there. Long story."

She considered that a moment. He broke into her thoughts with another question that had been bothering him for some time.

"You remember Bad Wolf?"

"What words haunting us through all of space and time? Yeah, kinda hard to forget that."

"No," concern wrote itself across his brow. "I mean, you…" This was difficult. He didn't want to say anything that might disturb her, might shake her world view, if she didn't already know it. He sighed heavily. "You remember what it means…where it came from?"

She looked at him as if he was being dense on purpose. "It's a warning," she said simply, and shrugged her unconcern. "I said it to Donna 'cause I figured you'd recognize it. That you'd know who sent the message even though I couldn't tell her my name."

"Oh," he replied, trying not to sound disappointed. She didn't know. Didn't remember. Didn't know how those words had gripped his hearts when he heard them. How his eyes swam with golden starbursts and his breath caught in his throat. How his blood thrilled with the sense of time swirling about the two of them, making a whole of them.

"How come Jack's immortal?" She broke him out of his haze of memory. Strange that she should ask that now, given his last question. He wondered if, despite her claims to innocence about the Bad Wolf, some part of her did make the connection.

"You noticed that, huh?" He almost laughed. "He's not exactly immortal, mind you, and it…ummmm…it's complicated." He didn't mean to be evasive, but it was so ingrained within him he didn't really know how else to be.

"I figured that." Her voice is clipped and icy. She's not letting him get out of this explanation, and she waits expectantly. He had thought himself home free. No such luck. And at this point he wasn't even sure he wanted to deny her the answers. In all honesty, he didn't want to deny her anything.

He looks away from her, because he can't quite meet her eyes. Can't let her see what it does to him to remember this. "You…you remember opening the heart of the TARDIS?" She nods. He doesn't see it, of course, but he knows she's made some sort of affirmative response. Some undefined sense of his still apparently working full force. "The TARDIS…you…that's not supposed to happen."

"I know," she says, and there's apology in her tone. "You told me so. Told me not to do it again; that it was dangerous."

"No." He's shaking his head and still avoiding her eyes. How can she know so much, and understand so little? "The heart of the TARDIS is time itself. Time and reality and possibility incarnate. No one's supposed to touch that. Even Time Lords, we only look. Look and turn away in terror and awe." He's smiling now and he can't help it. The memory is so blindingly clear, so inextricably linked in his mind with…other things. He's afraid that he must be breathing heavily in remembered excitement. He hopes he's not scaring her too much. "So beautiful," he says, letting the full range of his emotions quiver through his voice. He's never spoken to her like this, could never bring himself to be this open before. He's a little disturbed at how easily it seems to come to him now. "With that kind of…of power…anything is possible. Literally, anything. Daleks are as motes of dust. Death just a meaningless word. The universe quivering at your fingertips, waiting to bend to your will."

He turns to her, then, no longer afraid of what she might see in his eyes. He's already taken this explanation much farther than he intended to. Going back is not an option. She's staring at him wide eyed, as if she has no idea who he is. It occurs to him that she might not. "You did that?" she gasps. "You sang a song and made the Daleks run away. Touched the universe and made Jack…" Her voice trailed away, and he can't tell if it's shock or pride she's feeling right then. Knows his next words will change things. Hopes they change for the better.

"No, you did."

She blinks. Her brows contract, and it's not with confusion, but with utter disbelief. Perhaps, he thinks, it's better if she doesn't believe him. "Pull the other one."

He turns his palms up and looks away from her again. "You asked, I answered." He hears the irritation clearly in his voice. This game of hers is getting uncomfortable. Not that anything they had been doing beforehand was particularly comfortable. It was all pointless, really, talking about the past. Silly and too human and grating on his nerves. Which had nothing at all to do, of course, with the fact that he had all but poured his soul out to her, and she had met his barely contained emotions with bland skepticism. "If you don't care to take what I say as truth…" He left the thought open for her to finish.

"No, no." She answered quickly. "I'm sorry, it's just…" She tapped her fingernails against the ceramic of her mug. "'S a bit much to take in. That's all." She's thinking about it now, and he can all but hear the gears turning inside her head. "That it was…me…I was the one who killed them…killed them all." And he can see clearly the thought she doesn't vocalize: 'I'm no better than you.' "But…" she says aloud, seeming to have come to some sort of conclusion.

"But what?"

"It doesn't make any sense. I mean, yeah, it makes a little sense. 'Cause I never really knew what went on after I broke into the TARDIS, never really remembered what happened before I woke up on the floor next to the console. Just…that song. And the light. This golden light. I used to dream about it." She ran the fingers of her left hand through her loose hair and looked up at the ceiling. "Haven't had those dreams in a long time. Not since comin' here."

She looks again at him, and there's an abiding sadness in her eyes. "But, if what you say is true, an'…an' I had all that…power you were talkin' about…well, why didn't I use it to save you?"

He smiles, and looks again into his lap. "You did."

"No, no I didn'" She argues, a flush coming to her cheeks. "You…you died-"

He holds up a hand to stop her mid sentence. "Regenerated."

"Doesn't matter." She's not going to be dissuaded from this path, and it's not as if they haven't had this discussion before. There's no point in rehashing the same Doctor-different face argument, when there are brand new confusing aspects of him to be dealing with. "I lost you! And if there's one thing I remember…one thing that I can pull out of the music and the light an' all…it's that I would have done anything…absolutely anything…to keep you safe."

The Doctor sighed. This conversation had been a long time in coming and, as he'd discovered in the past, these things didn't get any easier when left to molder. He can't look at her. Can't see the hurt in her eyes that he didn't tell her this beforehand. Silently curses his other self for forcing this on him as well. Couldn't have given just a bit of a hand in this department, could you? No, of course not. He turns his eyes up to the cracked ceiling and realizes why she had done the same only moments ago. It seemed easier to go on this way.

"You did Rose. You kept me safe. You and the TARDIS. You made the Daleks go away and you gave life to Jack and then you were burning." His breath catches, and he's caught between his reticence about going on and the lightheadedness that always crashed over him like a wave at the memory of the incident. "No one is supposed to touch time. Not a Time Lord, and certainly not a human. Not like that. And you would have died, died and no regenerations. And I could not…would not let that happen. Not to you."

He lowers his head, and he knows he has to look at her sometime; that he cannot expect to spend the rest of his truncated existence on this backwards planet avoiding her eyes. He turns and says, "So I took it from you. All of it. And it was beautiful and terrible and I died and you lived and I would do it again in an instant if I had to."

Her face is an absolute mask of fury. It's not unexpected. "How could you do that?!? What were you thinking?! What if somethin' had gone wrong? What if you hadn' been able to regenerate, or somethin'?"

"I could ask you the same thing." His voice rose slightly with his frustration and he tried to regulate its tone unsuccessfully. "Looking into the heart of the TARDIS. What were you thinking? You can't have known what it would do, but you had to know it would be bad. You saw what it did to Margaret."

That mollifies her, and the look that comes over her face at his words makes him wish he could take them back. Or at least start them over. He's not entirely sure where this seemingly ever present antagonism in him is coming from. He wonders if it's a normal human condition. Wonders how his assistants ever put up with him as long as they did if it was. Life with him must have been maddening.

"I…I'm sorry." And with that, he's no longer angry. Not with her anyway, or with the situation that had stranded them here in this very wrong universe where everything tasted like lightly flavored sand. And he realizes, suddenly, that in her anger she'd spoken to the Doctor. That she railed against the man with the magic blue machine who had been so foolish as to kiss gilded death out of an amazing young girl that the universe could certainly not live without. That she had been speaking to him, to him. And that, more than her contrite manner, stopped his ire in its tracks. "This back and forth, your side-my side, it's good yeah?" Glancing back up at him, she's chastised, "Please go on."

He narrows his eyes. He's not sure he should go on, not sure it will accomplish anything if he does. But she seemed so fervent in her request, and he's never been one to deny her something that was in his power to give. This was just words.

"Why do you live here? In this flat? Why not stay with Pete and Jackie?"

Rose snorted. "Do ya really need an answer for that, one? You wanna live with my mum?"

"Point taken. But wouldn't it be easier? No rent to worry about. No utilities. Cleaning service, or at least, I assume there's a cleaning service. Can't imagine Jackie cleaning. Especially that marble behemoth of Pete's."

"Easier, yeah maybe." She set her tea down on the coffee table and leaned towards him. "But I've got other issues with that house as well."

"Issues like where to properly display a Moralvian Temporal Displacement Rifle?"

"Not exactly something you want to keep near a rambunctious toddler."

"Or the head of Torchwood?"

"That too." She sighed, and he noticed that the shadows from the windows had changed position. One side of her face was bathed in muted orange light, the other was shrouded in darkness. Her eyes fluttered closed, and he's momentarily struck by how dark her lashes look against the pale curve of her cheek. Almost immediately, they flash open, shining with emotion.

"Did you mean it?"

Ah, and here we get to the main point. He'd suspected from the beginning that this is what she'd wanted to ask. She could have just come out with it at the start, but it was clear that she was nervous about it. Had been looking to soften its blow by burying it amongst a laundry heap of other difficult questions. Giving her yet a further chance to avoid her query, he feigned ignorance. "Mean what?"

"What you said," her hands are wringing again, "On the beach." Her eyes don't leave his face. He reads hope there, and fear. He's not sure which emotion is coming out stronger.

"Yes."

It's a simple answer for a very un-simple question, and suddenly, her eyes are wet. Tears fill her lower lids, shimmering in the faint light peaking through the windows. And she loses her own game, along with her composure, as she queries him again, not waiting for his turn. "Then why couldn't the Doctor say it?" And she's sobbing now, openly. The tears are leaving damp tracks down her cheeks. He's never been good at dealing with this sort of thing, never knows how to react when they cry. Especially when he knows they're crying because of him.

He reaches for her, because he knows it's worked in the past; remembers her crying into his shoulder, leaving dark tearstains on his suit jacket. Clearly, she does too, as she grips at the t-shirt as if she expects it to have lapels and buries her face into the crook of his neck. He brings a hand up behind her and cradles her head. It's difficult to move given their position on the couch, but he sways gently back and forth as he would were they standing. He thinks that he should try to say something soothing. Something to make her think it will be all right, it will always be all right, because he's always all right.

He surprises himself.

"I did, you know."

He feels a stutter in her sobs; knows that she's listening. "Said it to an empty room. Said it with no one but the TARDIS listening in, hovering above a dying star. Took me a moment before I realized, you'd never even heard." Her shoulders have stopped shaking, and he feels her palms pressed against his chest. One hovers over the beat she can almost certainly feel through the thin cotton, the other rests where, despite any expectations either of them might have, a twin beat would never reverberate. She pushes back and looks up into his face. "I meant it then, too," he adds, in all seriousness.

Her eyes again hold incredulity, but this time it doesn't rankle. She's not doubting him. She's not even doubting the other him. She's in disbelief that the universe could be both so wonderful, and at the same time so cruel. It's a feeling he's spent the last 900 years getting used to. He slides his hands down from where they've come to rest against her shoulders. Caressing her arms, he feels the tiny hairs leaping to attention in the wake of his ministrations. His hands find hers and their fingers curl about each other, finding their natural fit. Her eyes drop to where they lay clasped, and he follows her gaze. She's watching where his right hand grips her left. Ah, yes. That hand. Of course. He should have known.

Dropping her other hand, he whispers, "Rose?"

She raises her head to gaze up at him.

"Run."