Rose continues to impress him in their following adventures. She may be new at the whole saving the world thing but she's a quick learner. She doesn't get in the way and is mostly nothing but helpful until she stumbles into trouble which is rather often. But that's part of the fun.

Nothing like that kid, Adam, that she insisted bring aboard for that little trip to Satellite 5. He feels utter disdain at the thought of him.

There are moments when they look at each other and he swears that she's really seeing him. Not as a teacher or an alien, but as an equal and it's refreshing. He feels the need to look after her, but not in that fatherly way that he would with some of his other companions. She becomes a great friend and a willing student to the wonders of time and space. They get along easily and he finds her company pleasant and their companionship more… easy than with his past companions.

She makes him laugh and he loves watching her grow into herself, reaching a potential she never thought she could reach. She is brave and selfless and it keeps his rage in check.

And she could handle it too. This is what set her apart from the other humans. She doesn't care that he is an alien and really clever. She doesn't care that he is centuries older and war-ridden and broken. She looks at all that and she tells him to stop when he is going too far. And sometimes, he listens.

And more importantly she makes him forget. Sometimes he feels himself falling back into that dark place that he was in before he met her. Sometimes he sits in the library in the dark and stares at the volumes on the shelves that document Galifrey and its history, and the books that contain his favorite childhood stories of adventurous Time Lords. He can't bring himself to even touch them. But then she comes striding in with two cups of tea, turns on a light, and asks him what's next before plopping down beside him and he smiles and talks to her about everything and nothing.

She doesn't leave him alone and while it can be annoying at times, he's grateful for her eagerness because it keeps him moving. It keeps him living. He can't stand to fail the universe again, and she can't either. So hand in hand, they pull each other out of the dark and push against those who would wreck havoc in the universe.

It's nice and while Rose's incident with the TARDIS still confuses him, he even manages to file that away into the back of his mind.

His mind picks up so many things that he's bound to forget something until it's brought up again, which is probably why he doesn't even notice the words "Bad Wolf" following them through space and time.

Today, after a month of being with Rose, he is in the console room, tinkering away with the TARDIS. The aforementioned human is in bed, sleeping off their last adventure, woefully unaware of the hard work he is putting into the TARDIS. At the moment, he is handling a jumble of wires, screws and god knows what else, trying in vain to put it back where it all was to begin with.

The TARDIS is laughing at him and he knows it. The only reason he pulled the parts out in the first place was to give himself something to do until Rose woke up.

While he continues to try and shove the pieces of wiring back into its original position, he is suddenly distracted by an image of Rose in his mind. The TARDIS is practically shoving it inside his head—it is of Rose in her bed, eyes closed and screaming. Her arms are thrashing everywhere and the blankets are bunched around her in a messy heap.

He immediately drops what he's doing and jumps up. He's running before he can even finish registering the entirety of the image.

He gets to Rose's door in just a few seconds, but if feels like too long to him. When he opens the door, he is met with the sound her screams. He rushes to her bed, not noticing the TARDIS brightening the lights in her room.

"Rose!" The Doctor yells at her. He is sitting on the bed now, trying to grab her flailing arms and pin them down. "Rose, calm down it's just a nightmare!" Her screams stop but her eyes are still shut tightly and she's still trying to move her arms, like she's trying to reach for something.

The Doctor is no stranger to bad dreams. He can't imagine what is making Rose this worked up but he knows it can't be good. When he sees the tears leak out form her eyes, he reaches his hand down to touch her temple, figuring he could help her come out of her night terror. When he does however, he is greeted with a shock to his fingers when they meet her skin.

He pulls back, confused. He knows that feeling but it doesn't make sense that it's coming from Rose.

However he doesn't have much more time to think about it because Rose's eyes are fluttering open. The Doctor is once again privy to the unmistakable golden iridescence they are giving off. The glow fills up the entire room it seems, but as soon as it was there, it is gone and all that is left is a dream battered Rose, clinging to his jacket.

He looks down at her as she starts to wake up. Not wanting to startle her, he slides his hands from her wrists slowly to her hands until they switch their grip from his jacket and onto his hands. He watches as she blinks her tears away.

"Are you okay?" He asks her gently.

He is startled when she moves her head from her pillow to his lap. Not quite knowing what to do, he leans against the wall so that she might be more comfortable. She is still shaking so he just waits. He knows what waking up from nightmares are like. He just wonders what Rose could have been dreaming about.

She lays there for a while before moving her head from his lap and up into an upright position next to him. Her shoulder is pressed against his now and she's finally looking at him.

"Sorry." She says quietly. "That's the worst one in a while."

He furrows his eyebrows because this has happened before? The thought sparks an unpleasant feeling inside of him. He feels like he should have been there, but really, Rose's sleeping patterns shouldn't really be his business, he reminds himself. "You've got nothing to be sorry about." He tells her. A pause. "Do you want to talk about it?"

She pushes a piece of her messy blond hair behind her ear and sighs. He feels every movement against his shoulder. "It's the same one every time." She explains. "I'm always in this room, holding on to something but something else keeps pulling me away. Every time I end up letting go, no matter how hard I hold on and then I'm falling and screaming and I can't stop until all of a sudden there is nothing. Nothing at all and it terrifies me."

He nods sympathetically. He takes her hand in his, this time for comfort instead of pulling her away from whatever monster is usually chasing them. She rests her head on his shoulder in return and he finds that he quite likes the weight of her head there and the warmth against this side.

"But it ends every time with this, sort of golden explosion. I can't describe it really." She pulls away to look at him, her expression turning from wistful to serious. " I know it's just a dream and all, but could it have something to do with what you said before? Like that déjà vu thing? Because I get that same feeling. The feeling that I've been through it before even though I don't have memory of it."

At the words, something clicks into place in the Doctor's mind. He thinks about her words and the feeling he got when he touched her temple. That the thing he sensed when brushing against her skin was Time.

Time, generally, is everywhere, always passing at a constant rate. Everyone can feel it to some degree but a Time Lord can sense both its discrepancies and its perfection. They can sense the things that will change and the things that can't be changed. The Doctor knows the inner workings of the Time Vortex because he has traveled through it his entire life and has become attuned to the feeling of time all around him and inside of him. It runs through his veins and in the air he breaths. Everyone else is a slave to its whim but a Time Lord can control it. At least to some extent.

The puzzle is coming together in his head, but he still doesn't know what the picture is.

For some reason, Rose has had an encounter with Time, most likely the vortex itself, one way or another. Whether it had happened already, or if it's in the future, the Doctor doesn't know. That's the tricky thing with time. You never know when. The after effect of whatever happened to Rose left her with a piece of that time inside of her that leaks out only every so often. Now that the Doctor knows this, he doesn't know why he didn't see it earlier, why he didn't feel it.

She's still staring up at him with those big eyes, brown at the moment, when he comes back to himself after his discovery. "Yes Rose, I think it does." He tells her.

She pushes out a short laugh."Well, are you going to keep all the theories to yourself or are you going to share?"

He gives her a smile. "Don't like sharing much, me." He teases, just to see if she will brighten up a bit.

And she does. "Are you kiddin' me?" She says, a grin spreading out across her face. "You over share. I can barely get a word in when you start in on one of your explanations. 'alien thing this' 'alien thing that'. I'm so clever, blah blah blah" She mimics him.

"Oi! I am clever." He says, nudging her in the side. "And I don't sound like that."

She giggles and whacks him on his shoulder. They smile at each other for a moment longer before Rose becomes serious again. "I do get the feeling though that sometimes…" She trails off and glances at they joined hands before looking back to him. "You don't tell me things."

He stiffens and he feels the smile fall from his face. "There are things that you aren't meant to know Rose." He tells her, with a tone of warning. He's not ready to go there yet. And he doesn't think he ever will be.

"I'm not trying to be nosey but… you know that you can tell me stuff right? I can tell that you're not always happy, not like you want me to think." She continues, undeterred. He looks away, but she squeezes his hand gently until he looks back to her again. "I'm the human here but you… you're allowed to be human sometimes too."

He stares at her and feels the feelings and confessions on the tip of his tongue and almost tells her. Almost. He has never felt the urge to just admit everything to someone like this before. No one has ever seen him like she has and it is terrifying. The things he has done, the guilt he feels. All those children that died on Gallifrey that day… the weight inside his heart is so heavy and he wants so badly to have relief.

But he can't. He can't let Rose know what he has done. It is his responsibility to bear and no one else's.

His hand is on her cheek before he knows what he's doing. "Thank you Rose, really." He pushes as much sincerity into the words as possible so that she knows that he appreciates her concern. "but there are some things that are just not meant to be known." He repeats.

He knows he's disappointed her in a way but he can't bring himself to change his decision. Unable to look her in the eyes any more, he gets up and leaves, because he's too close. Because he needs time sort the feelings in his head out because he is human, in the way he lets his emotions take reign over his thoughts when he should really be concentrating on the piece of time inside of Rose and the possible problems in the unforeseeable future.

"Good night." He says quietly when he reaches the door way.

He hovers there a second more and then leaves when he hears her muffled "g'night" that Rose says more to her pillow than to him.


AN: There you go, another chapter! Sorry it took me a while. I hope you like this one, and I am curious... does anyone have any theories themselves? I'd love to hear them ;)