Wow, I really feel like I should have stuck the first part of this chapter at the end of the last chapter and had a more effective cliffhanger, so after you come across the first break line, please take a moment to…wallow in suspense? After the break, there's no time jump or switch of perspective, but I really want a beat to be taken there. If this was a show, that's where'd I'd probably want to put the commercial. Ya got me?

Thanks for reading/reviewing!


More of what were presumably laser blasts jostle the table, and its bottom digs into Rose's arm. The Doctor, facing her, wears an expression of fierce concern accompanied by intense confusion.

"Did you get a good look at who it was?" Rose asks him.

"I thought I did," he replies, ducking instinctively as a beam blazes over his head.

"What'd it look like?"

"I don't think I got a good look," the Doctor scowls at the memory of the figure he'd seen just before ducking under the table.

Rose maneuvers herself onto her knees and braces herself. She executes a silent prayer in her mind, and then grips the edge of the table, preparing to lift herself up. She's about to lift her gaze when a voice booms across from her.

"Rose Tyler," the threat calls.

Rose frowns at the sound of the voice. It's familiar, but metered and robotic.

The Doctor's face goes tight when he hears the voice. He recognizes the tremor of it as well.

"Who's askin'?" Rose challenges.

"You will rise."

"Fat chance," she scoffs.

"We have apprehended Pete Tyler. Rise, or he dies."

The Doctor and Rose exchange wide-eyed looks. The Doctor immediately tries to talk her down.

"Rose, it could be lying," he points out.

"Yeah, but he could not be."

Rose gets a grip on the edge of table and lifts herself to her feet. She's prepared to meet the threat's eyes with stoic grace and perhaps a dash of sass, but when she sees the enemy, her face blanches.

She immediately whips her head down to make sure the Doctor is still crouched beside her, then double takes back to stare at the bellowing rival.

Meeting her gaze levelly is the Doctor.


The sight of the Doctor renders Rose speechless and utterly perplexed. In front of her, in the brown pinstriped suit she remembers with surprising clarity, the Doctor from her memory stands before her.

Pete's talk about the imprints in space implying the Doctor's attempted visit come to her mind with hesitation.

"Rose Tyler," the pinstriped Doctor identifies her.

She manages to part her lips, and a measly reply falls out of them, "Yeah."

The Doctor beside her rises to join her. From her reaction, he can tell she's seen what he thought he'd observed mistakenly.

"Your time is up," the threat announces.

"Sorry, what?" Rose shakes her head, startled and confused, barely hearing him.

Suddenly, the being drops its jaw and a blue light erupts from between its teeth. Pulling Rose from her shock, the Doctor grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her to a crouch, the beam barely missing the pair of them.

"Who are you?" the Doctor shouts over the table at his doppelgänger.

"I am the Teselecta," it pronounces in its metered monotone. "You are the Doctor and Rose Tyler."

"And why does that mean you have to kill us, exactly?"

"You are wanted for crimes against this planet. Your punishment is death."

"Crimes? What crimes?! Who are you?!" the Doctor demands to know.

"Rise."

"No."

"Rise, Doctor and Rose Tyler."

"No."

"Rise, or Pete Tyler dies."

Rose straightens up at the notion and pushes herself off the ground. The Doctor, rolling his eyes at how easily she's won, rises to join her.

"So you're not the Doctor?" Rose asks.

"No, but we are human. Humans guide this figure from inside."

The Doctor glances sidelong at the small, but noticeable disappointment that manifests in Rose's features, her shoulders sagging slightly.

"Then why do ya look like 'im?" she asks, her voice becoming very small.

"To locate you. We planned to take the likeness of the Doctor to find you and to take the likeness of Rose Tyler to find the Doctor."

"Why?"

"To eliminate you."

"Why?"

"Crimes against humanity."

"What crimes against humanity!?" Rose presses, frustrated.

"Crimes yet to have been committed."

The Doctor and Rose exchange looks and take a long while to consider what could possibly lay in their future. What is so despicable that a group of mercenaries would want to kill them before it occurred?

"You will now die."

The Doctor and Rose brace themselves to react accordingly, but then the Teselecta speaks.

"Surrender, or Pete dies."

The Doctor's heart clenches, because he knows Rose will readily sacrifice herself for another. He opens his mouth to shout something desperate at Pete when a rather peculiar piece of information comes to his attention.

"Pete's not here," he notices.

Rose scans the room around her and draws the same conclusion. "Where is he?" she demands of the robot shape in front of her. "What have you done with him?"

"He is inside," the Teselecta reveals. "He was shrunken and allowed entry into the Teselecta, where he will be eliminated unless you both surrender."

Rose clenches her jaw, exhales deeply, and steps over the table. The Doctor, knowing the decision she's come to, reaches for her shoulder.

"Rose, don't."

"I'm not letting him die," Rose shrugs the hand off of her.

"Rose, this isn't what he'd want."

"I don't care."

The Doctor, desperate, steps over the table and strides after her determined figure.

"Rose, please."

"Teselecta!" she shouts, ignoring the Doctor's pleas. "If you're going to kill me, answer me something."

The pinstriped figure waits, presumably listens.

"Whatever it is you think the Doctor and I will do in the future, we do it together, right?"

"Correct," it answers.

"Without me in the equation, we can't do it together. Kill me, fine, but spare the Doctor's life."

"Rose, no!" the Doctor bellows, yanking at her arms, which Rose lurches away from him.

The Teselecta is silent for a while, and the men orchestrating its decisions are probably debating inside. Eventually, the mouth of the figure parts, and its robot voice says, "Agreed."

"Rose," the Doctor puts himself between the Teselecta doppelgänger and Rose, who finally meets his gaze. Tears are brimming in her eyes as she awaits her death. The Doctor grips her shoulders tightly. He makes his voice quiet and serious, and it shakes with the effort. "Rose, I'm begging you, I'm begging you, please don't do this."

"Should I let them kill you both instead?" she says, her voice cracking, her tears spilling.

"Who's to say it won't kill Pete and me anyway?" the Doctor raises the question.

"We promise to honor our word," the Teselecta assures him.

Rose lets a humorless laugh escape her. "Besides," she says, her voice breathy, "whatever crime against humanity we're supposed to commit, it's best if we don't commit it."

The Doctor's stoic exterior crumbles, and his face is a picture of despair. More tears spill down Rose's face, and she drops her gaze, looks towards their shoes. The Doctor's hands slide to her neck, and his fingers entangle themselves in the hair just above there. His own gaze drops, and their foreheads touch. They're both so sad, so very sad, yet somehow, the presence of each other strengthens the both of them.

"I never got to say it again," The Doctor begins. "Rose, I lo—"

Rose quickly lifts her hand to the back of the Doctor's neck and guides him into a kiss, cutting off his sentiment. Rose doesn't want to hear it now. If she does hear it, she'll back down. She knows she will. And so she kisses him instead, for the first time since Bad Wolf Bay redux. If she had been able to kiss the Doctor during their first encounter at Bad Wolf Bay, the other time his sentiment was interrupted, this is what she imagines it would've felt like. Drawing sadness and pain from each other, yet drawing joy and hope from each; so reminiscent, yet so future-focused; so quick, yet so lingering.

And also, tongue.

The Teselecta waits silently and patiently during the exchange, proving that human beings were actually running that thing.

They finally part, Rose's hands on the sides of the Doctor's face, her fingertips grazing the hair on the back of his neck, The Doctor's hands attempting the memorize the feeling of her blonde hair.

"Look after my family," Rose asks through the bubble in her throat.

He nods against her.

The Doctor knows there's an impressive arsenal of weaponry in this building, in this very room, probably. He could stop this. But there are people in that robot lookalike of him, human beings. Human beings who think they're doing the right thing, who might very well be doing the right thing. The violent fierceness that was so prevalent so recently in him washes away in the presence of Rose's fearlessness, Rose's compassion, Rose's love.

It's happened already. Rose has helped make him a better man.

Rose slides her hands down the Doctor's arms, grabs his wrists gently, and guides them off her, holding his hands for a moment. She exchanges one last gaze with the Doctor and tries to give him a reassuring smile through her tears.

"Promise me something?"

The Doctor nods immediately.

"If I tell you something, will you promise not say it back."

The Doctor's throat tightens, regretting the promise.

The moment overtakes her, the tragedy and mystery and history of it all, and she chooses what she hopes to be her last sentiment.

"I love you," Rose proclaims.

The Doctor's mouth opens, but Rose grips his hands tighter, a pleading look in her eyes. If he says it, she'll back down. She knows it.

The Doctor, with some effort, clamps his jaw shut.

She gives a smile of gratitude, so reminiscent of the smiles she gave him when he was walking her home, making sure she didn't pass out, and it's so preposterously hard for him to slide his hands out of her and back away. But he manages.

Rose drags her sleeve across her face and collects herself.

"I'm not really at advocate for suicide," she tells the Teselecta, "so I want the history books to say I went down fighting: Please, don't kill me."

The small ghost of a smile. The refusal to perish so easily. The hope she always held. The Doctor decides he's had enough. He turns his gaze from the painful scene.

"You will die," the Teselecta rejects.

"What if I'm extra careful in the future?" she offers.

"You and the Doctor destroy the world," the Teselecta explains.

"I don't want to die," she says.

The Teselecta drops its jaw, and it's mouth glows. Rose freezes at the sight of the beams that could kill her, and she shuts her eyes against the light.

"Hold everything!," a cheerful voice bellows from behind her. "Teselecta, you may have the wrong person."

The jaw closes rigidly, the light abruptly going dim. "Confirmed: this is Rose Tyler."

"I assume you'd also accept the Doctor as your victim."

"Yes."

"Well," a figure brushes past Rose and saunters up the Teselecta. The figure wears a tweed coat and a bow tie is fastened around his neck. There's a broad, testy grin on his face as he announces, "I am the Doctor."