Chapter Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own Doctor Who and make no profit from it.

Rose awoke feeling hung over. Sometime during the night, the Doctor had removed her spacesuit and tucked a blanket around her. She wondered if that was a sign that he had forgiven her, but decided it could just as well be a simple display of basic kindness.

She started out for the console room, but, feeling in need of fortification, detoured to the kitchen. There she found a pot of tea already brewed, teacup and sugar bowl laid out neatly next to it. Don't read too much into it, don't get your hopes up. It's just habit to make enough for two.

She entered the console room, clutching the teacup in front of her like a shield. The Doctor was up on a ladder, his back to her, tinkering with the wiring of a roundel. She could tell by the tensing of his shoulders that he was aware of her presence, but he didn't turn around.

"I made tea. Should still be hot," he said.

"I found it, ta."

There was an awkward silence while he did something that she was pretty sure didn't need doing with the wiring. She sat in the jump seat, letting her feet swing free as if she were a kid, wishing that she were.

At last, he said in a neutral tone, "So. I can drop you anywhere you want to go. I'm sure Jack or Mickey would be more than happy to see you. Or Shareen, if you think domestic might be a nice change of pace. Or I can…" He seemed reluctant to go on, then cleared his throat and said, "I can get in touch with Ten Mark Two if you want."

Rose sat in stunned silence through this speech, her gut twisting. She hadn't dared hope that he had forgiven her, but neither had she pictured this outcome. She was still convinced that she had followed the best course – or maybe the least bad course, she allowed. But even right choices can have some terrible consequences. Maybe this is the price I have to pay. For a moment, she started to debate the options he had laid out.

Then something inside her rebelled. She hadn't gotten to where she was today by backing down when things got tough. She had fought Slitheen, she had fought Sontarans, she had fought Daleks. She would fight a Gallifreyan if that's what it took to save this relationship. "No."

"No…to the other Doctor? I figured you wouldn't –"

"No to all of them. If you want me gone, you're going to have to pick me up and toss me out. Because I'm not setting foot outside this ship until I'm sure she's still going to be there when I get back."

He turned towards her at last, eyebrows reaching for his hairline. "Want you gone? What in the world makes you think I want that?"

"I know you must be angry – furious, even. And I'll stay out of your way. You can pretend I'm not here. But I'm not leaving. Because as long as I stay, there's hope that someday you might forgive me. But if I go, I know I'll never see you again." She impressed herself with how steady, how even her voice was. She had spent all her tears the night before – there was nothing left but steely resolve.

He stepped off the ladder, started towards her, but stopped halfway. "I'm not angry, Rose. Leastways, not at you. I'm the one who messed up. I should have known better – you did."

"Yes, you made a mistake. So what? If ever there was a time I thought you were perfect, that went out the window when you brought me home after twelve months instead of twelve hours. But I stuck around." She meant to lighten the mood, hoped he would give at least half a smile at the memory, but instead he looked even more pained. She tried a different tack. "Well, if you're not mad at me, then why are you trying to pawn me off on Captain Jack, of all people?"

"Can't imagine why you would want to stay, not after what I did to you."

"To me?" She honestly had no idea what that meant. "What did you do to me?"

"You were sick in the street. You cried yourself to sleep. I did that to you, with the position I put you in back at the base. I heard you crying last night. It broke my hearts, but I couldn't comfort you, not when I was the cause."

"Do you think I would have cared less about their deaths if you hadn't tried to save them?" Privately, she allowed that her memories of the event would be less horrifying if they had walked away sooner, but she wasn't about to admit that to him, guilt-stricken as he already was.

He kicked at the base of the console. "Pure hubris, it was. Pride."

She rolled her eyes. "I took my A-levels in Pete's World, Doctor; I know what hubris means. And it may have been pride that made you think you could get away with it, but it wasn't pride that motivated you; it was your heart. You have twice the heart of anyone else I know. Literally." This time she did get the smallest twitch of a smile from him.

Now that she knew his anger was directed inward rather than at her, she felt herself on firmer ground, ready to rise to the challenge. These demons had been chasing him long enough; it was time to lay them to rest. "Do you remember…" This was still hard to talk about; she took a deep breath and started again. "Do you remember when I nearly destroyed the world, trying to save my father?"

He frowned, turned half away, playing with the controls. "That was different. You didn't know what you were doing."

"That's not true. What I didn't know were the consequences. But I did know that it was wrong, that I shouldn't be mucking about with history. Why do you think I was so defensive? You would have been completely justified in dumping me home in the Powell Estate and never looking back. But you didn't. 'Just tell me you're sorry,' you said, and then you forgave me."

"I am sorry, I really am. But this isn't that simple."

"Why isn't it? You didn't tear a hole in the universe, you didn't open a wound in time. Yes, it hurt, seeing what happened to the colonists. But that wasn't your fault, it wasn't anything you could control."

"It's entirely my fault! You never would have been there, never would have known anything about them, if I hadn't brought you there. Don't you see? All the terrible things you have gone through – watching your father die, being separated from your mother, Daleks and Cybermen, nearly dying on oh so many occasions – they all happened because you were with me."

Rose stood, set her cup on the floor, and started towards him, but he put the console between them again. "Okay, yes, I have had some bad things happen to me since I met you. But guess what? Bad things happened before I met you, too. That's life. But the good things, the beautiful things, the exciting things – I wouldn't trade those for the world."

He went on as if he hadn't heard her, pacing now, too agitated to be still. "If I weren't such a selfish old man, I'd have sent you away a long time ago. Because eventually I destroy everyone I touch. I break them, or I corrupt them, or I get them killed, or I turn them into hollowed-out shells and then tell their grandfather that he can never let them remember me." Aha, Rose thought, now we're getting somewhere. But the Doctor wasn't done yet; his voice rose, his hands waved. "Didn't you hear Davros? Weren't you listening? I turn people into weapons. I stand back and watch as they die in my name. How can you still be here? How can you stand to be near me? Everyone else leaves; why don't you? Are you still so blind, even after Davros showed you the truth?" He turned away from her, breathing hard, and pressed his forehead against a coral strut.

"Davros? You think I put any stock in a single word that crazy, hateful, homicidal megalomaniac said?" The Doctor didn't raise his head but did give her a sidelong glance, and she flashed him a smile. "Told you I did my A-levels. Got all kinds of fancy vocabulary now."

"He is all of those things, but that doesn't mean he was wrong about me."

"Doctor, there is so much wrong with what you just said that I hardly know where to begin. For one thing, I've never seen you just stand back and watch anything, even when you should. And people dying in your name? Give me one example."

"Harriet Jones."

Rose snorted. "She didn't die for you. She didn't even particularly like you. She gave her life to save the Earth; she just happened to know that getting you there was the best way to do that. Next."

"Jabe."

It took Rose a minute to place the name. "The tree lady from Platform One? She died for all of us, everyone on that platform. Don't you remember what I told Martha? 'We save the Doctor so he can save everyone else.' And sometimes someone dies doing it. And that's tragic; I'm not saying that it's not. But you aren't the cause; most times, you aren't even the motivation. And always we know that you would do the same if the roles were reversed."

"Jenny. She wasn't saving anyone but me."

"Okay, that's true, but how is that your fault?"

"She was born because of me, and she died because of me."

"No, she was born because someone shoved your hand into a machine at gunpoint. And she died because a lunatic couldn't stand the thought of peace. And there was nothing you could do about either of those things. You talk about hubris – what else is it to think that you are directly responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world? Just sheer arrogance that is."

He half-turned, leaned his shoulder against the strut. His arms were tightly folded across his chest, creating a barrier between them, but at least he was looking at her now. He gave her a grimace that she suspected he intended as a smile. "Strong words."

"Yeah, well, I think you need a bit of tough love right now. Okay, next charge: turning people into weapons. I suppose you're talking about Jack and Sarah Jane with the warp star, and Martha with the Oster-thingie?"

"For starters."

"I think Jack was doing pretty well at being a weapon before you ever came along. Do you not remember how close he came to singlehandedly turning all of London into mummy-seeking zombies?"

"Yes, but that was unintentional." But his lips curled in the first genuine smile she had seen from him in over a week.

"The point is, we all make our own choices. Jack has always been a scrapper. Sarah Jane is a mother now, and there's not much a mother won't do to defend her child. Martha was following UNIT's orders, not yours, and I'm not so sure she would have gone through with it, anyway. She could have used that key – should have, according to the protocol – but she offered the Daleks a choice."

She studied his face, saw that he was not convinced. "Doctor, do you remember what I told you when we first found the Nestene Consciousness?" He looked blank. "I said, 'Toss in your anti-plastic and let's go.' Seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I mean, it had already tried to kill us three times. But you said no. You said you weren't there to kill it, you were there to give it a chance. And then a few years went by, and I met another Nestene Consciousness, and another Doctor, with another vial of anti-plastic. And my first thought was, We've got to destroy it before it hurts anyone. But my second thought was, No, we're not here to kill it, we're here to give it a chance." She closed the distance between them, pried his hands loose from their death grip on his folded arms and held them tightly. He tensed, but didn't pull away. "That's what you do, Doctor. That's what you turn us into. That's the lesson you teach – that there is beauty in every part of creation, and that everyone has the potential for good."

He stared down at her, silent for a long moment, the set of his jaw and brow softer and less grim. "You see more in me than I see in myself."

"Another lesson I learned from the man who looked at a shop girl who was frankly a bit of a chav, and saw someone worthy of journeying the stars."

"I've never regretted that. But I've often feared that you might."

She sighed. "I don't have illusions about you, Doctor. I know you aren't perfect. I've seen you mess up, royally sometimes. I've seen your fury. I know what happened to Gallifrey. I know that you can't always save everyone. And maybe there will even come a day when you can't save me. I understand that. But despite it all, I'd rather be with you than anywhere else, with anyone else. Because you never stop caring, and you never stop trying. So you can shatter a thousand fixed points, you can rage against a million Davroses, and it still won't change how I see you. I'm not going anywhere." She wrapped her arms around him, laid her head on his shoulder, and held tight until she felt him relax against her.

"There's only one thing I will grant Davros to be right about," she said after a moment. "When he called your companions your 'children of time'. That's what they are, your children. And everyone leaves you because that's what children do: they grow up and leave home. And it's hard for a parent to watch them go, but that's how you know you did a proper job."

He rested his cheek on the top of her head. "My children of time, all grown up. I like that. As long as we're not including you in that lot."

She laughed. "No, not me, that would just be creepy." She tipped her head back to look at him. "So you're okay, yeah?"

"I think I will be."

"No more running?"

He smiled. "Oh, I can't promise that. There's always lots and lots of running when you travel with me."