Martha had never seen him like this. When she came out after a fitful night's sleep, he was in the control room, which was perfectly normal. He was stretched out full-length on his stomach, which is also perfectly normal. And he was sipping a cup of tea and apparently taking notes from a gigantic book opened in front of him, jotting things down and humming to himself. Which was very not normal. She stopped in the doorway, taking in the charmingly disarrayed hair, the glasses that just made him look more boyishly intelligent, the studious expression that was at once both happy and worried, and realized this was the closest she'd ever gotten to seeing the Doctor look truly carefree. Martha thought back to conversations she'd had with her mates about true love and finding the elusive "Mister Right". She'd scoffed then. She still didn't really believe in soulmates or love at first sight or anything like that. But, she mused, if the truth was anywhere close to what she felt now, then the Doctor was probably the closest she'd ever come to the love of her life. Shaking away the bothersome thought, she cleared her throat and grinned when he looked up at her over the rims of his glasses.

"Good morning, Mister Smith," she said cheerily, and was both surprised and pleased when his response was equally bright-sounding.

"And a good morning to you, Miss Jones!" Bright-sounding wasn't the word for it. He fairly chirped. She chuckled.

"You seem to be in an amazingly good mood this morning. Any reason?" she asked nonchalantly, though she was burning to know what caused the abrupt mood swing. He leapt smoothly to his feet and, to her confusion, leaned over and hugged the ship's control panel. After which he burst into the most animated speech she'd ever heard from him, all but bouncing back and forth through the control room as he chattered a mile a minute.

"This beautiful wonderful ship, actually! You see, I was up all night talking to her - well, it really isn't night or day in the Void, but you get the idea - and anyway, she just gave me the most wonderful news! Oh, the most awful news as well, but really, I can deal with dimensions colliding - I am a Time Lord, the last of the Time Lords - regardless of what the Face of Boe said - and it might get a little rocky, true, but...Rose is alive! And she's close! Relatively speaking, that is. And I'll get to see her again, talk to her, to tell her..." His bounciness came to an abrupt halt, and his face took on an expression that could only be described as wistful. And in that moment, she knew he would never, could never be hers, not in that way. He'd been Rose's for longer than even he knew, she'd bet. Martha finished his sentence, knowing as she did so she was forever sealing them together as "just friends," and no matter how much she knew it was right, it still sent a small pang of pain through her.

"That you love her." He looked at her, those enormous eyes filled with so much emotion, so much more than she'd ever seen from him, than she'd thought he was capable of, and she nearly wept.

"I do. I really do. No matter how hard I tried not to, tried to deny." He paused and smiled sheepishly, and Martha felt his happiness as keenly as she felt her own loss. "I was running from her for so long without realizing that without Rose, I had nowhere to run to." In his voice she heard the tremble of tears, the whispers of anger and rage, and the hope of forever. And she knew she could never be jealous of Rose for this. Rose was, quite simply, the only woman in - well, in time itself - for him. Briefly Martha wondered if she would ever be lucky enough to find a love like that. But that line of thought would get her nowhere, so she focused on other parts of his precocious babble.

"So what did you mean when you said you could talk to her? And what's this about dimensions colliding?" He suddenly turned almost somber.

"I never fully explained how Rose and I were separated, did I? She shook her head. "Well, long story as short as I can make it right now, we were saving Earth - again - in a parallel world - I'll go into parallel worlds later - and when we opened the Void between worlds to suck all the evil creatures in, Rose...we were both holding on, but the lever holding the Void open started to shift, started to close. She knew if that happened, the world would die. So she let go of her handhold and managed to latch on to the lever, forcing it back open. But she lost her grip, and I couldn't save her..." A few moments passed in silence as he mentally relived the horror of the last few minutes. Then he visibly shook himself.

"Anyway, at the last minute, her father - well, not in this world, he'd died in this world when she was a baby - he teleported in and back out, saving her by taking her to the alternate world. Then the Void slammed shut completely - well, except for one small hole I managed to find...had to destroy a sun in order to get a last message through, but it was worth it - sealing us on opposite sides of the solid Void. But now...now the Tardis thinks she can open a communication line again somehow! She won't explain exactly how, but I think with a little jiggery-pokery, it can happen!"

Martha's empathy for the couple jumped exponentially. Rose hadn't left or been left. She and the Doctor had been cruelly torn apart by the determination to save everyone else. By her determination, her willingness to sacrifice herself. Because, hearing just this little bit the Doctor felt up to relating, it was clear that Rose had known her actions could get her killed. And she'd acted anyway. Martha only had one response.

"Doctor...your Rose...she must be a remarkable woman." She could have cried at the tenderness and love infusing his suddenly far-away eyes.

"Yes, she is. One of a kind - I would know. She's the most remarkable woman I have ever met."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The next few days passed quickly for Rose. A little experimentation had yielded the fact that she could speak, after a fashion, with the Tardis. Not conversationally, although the connection was getting stronger day by day. But she could feel and share emotions with the ship - who in turn could share back. It wasn't an exact science, and not a frequent one, but it gave her hope. The first real hope she'd known since he faded from her sight so long ago.

The other unexpected thing was the reemergence of what Rose knew as Bad Wolf. Starting as a tickle in her consciousness, the nebulous contact had quickly built in volume and reliability, until she could thought-speak to the emerging mind. Through these mental bondings Rose learned quite a bit; about herself, she found she had an uncanny aptitude for though-speech - apparently humans were usually quite hopeless in that respect, being effectively mind-deaf and -dumb, but Rose seemed to have a natural talent for it; about Bad Wolf, who wasn't really an entity at all but rather the massed consciousness of a nearly infinite number of beings. Indeed, it turned out that the Time Vortex was simply the culmination of every line of "if" woven through the fabric of endless possibility and powered by unquenchable thought. And she learned a myriad things in between. Which was why, when her family showed up on the morning of the beginning of her third week of her stay, she was surprised at neither their appearance nor the news they brought. They, however, were quite surprised at the person who had taken the place of the moody, depressed girl they'd sent on vacation.

"Rose!" Mother flew out of the vehicle to meet daughter, who was running down the steps and dashing across the sand. The two met somewhere between the car and the porch, embracing one another with no small amount of emotional outpouring. Unlike the tears shed at the end of their last conversation, however, these were filled with joy and warmth, and it made Pete and Mickey smile at each other over the top of the car. It had been hell persuading Jackie to break into Rose's "vacation", but by all appearances, it was very much worth all the trouble.

After the initial reunion, discussion turned to Jackie's now substantially thinner frame, which brought both women to join the men at the car. Without prompting, Rose reached into the car and lifted out her recently awoken little brother. Holding him close, she stood gazing at him for a long time. To everyone's amazement he cooed and burbled happily up at her - a very unusual thing, as he was usually grumpy upon first waking up. She grinned and tickled his fingers, turning to Jackie.

"Mum, he's precious! Did you name him Chase?" Jackie nodded as Rose nuzzled at the baby once more, then smiled at Pete, walking around the car towards him.

"Hey there." And to his immense shock she gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. As the older man stood somewhat dumbstruck, she grinned.

"Thank you for taking care of them. I wasn't exactly doing a bang-up job of it." She shook her head, stalling everyone's protests. "You can all stop it. I know I wasn't right when I left. But I think - I know - it's going to be better now." Pete felt he had to speak up before things got too comfortable, because the real purpose of their journey was anything but.

"Rose, we have...well, a little problem. We're here to tell you...to tell you..." Far from the curiosity they'd expected, the bewilderment, she simply smiled again.

"You came to warn me about the dimensional convergence." A pause, and she laughed. "You lot! You should see your faces! It's priceless! Sorry, guys, really, didn't mean to laugh, but you all looked so shocked!" Transferring the littlest Tyler to her other arm, she gestured to the house. "Come on, let's all go sit down and have a cuppa. I've got a lot to tell you." And with that, Rose led the bewildered trio into her temporary abode.

When everyone was settled in, Rose began to talk. Really, talk, for the first time, about everything. She started with her swanning off with the Doctor, the things they'd done, places they'd seen. To the accompaniment of their astonished sounds she explained the places, the people. She told them about seeing the Earth in its last minutes, about meeting Jack Harkness - took them through every step of her journey, until she got to the events leading up to Jackie and Mickey helping her break into the Tardis.

She told them about the Daleks. About the Doctor's delta wave attempt, and why he'd sent her home. Why she'd felt she had to go back. And then...

"So I looked into the Tardis." She paused for the first time in her narration. After a few minutes, she found the words to continue. "I don't know if I can even begin to explain what happened. It was...imagine looking at the sun, then looking away. You know that afterimage when you close your eyes? Well, it was like that, only it filled my whole body. It was like the tingle you get when your leg falls asleep. It was...it was life. And I let it in because I knew together we could save the Doctor."

"We? What we?" Jackie's curiosity overrode the desire to keep silent. Rose appeared deep in thought, finally speaking.

"I didn't know at the time. It seemed like a portion of myself. Like a split personality, only not latent, but just born. The sensations - it was all so new, so overwhelming. I know now, and I'll get to that, but then? I just knew I had to save him. He'd saved me. He would always save me. And everyone else too. That's what the Doctor did. And I loved him so much...I killed the Daleks..." She deliberately glossed over the next few moments. She now, thanks to the Wolf, recalled everything in amazing detail...the awe, the confusion, the power, the fear...too much...all culminating in the kiss that had rocked the universe. The kiss that, technically speaking, was unnecessary, as a simple touch on the hand would have sufficed. It made her smile inwardly.

"Anyway, I passed out. The Doctor managed to take the power of the Vortex out of me and into himself, to give it back to the Tardis. It would have killed me. It did cause him to regenerate. But humans aren't designed to do what I did. So even though he saved my life, I still had a residue of the Vortex within me. And that's allowing me to, somehow, communicate with the Tardis - which led me to the other mind I'd been part of, the Vortex itself. And now I know. I know so much more than I'd have ever dreamed.

"I know the Vortex isn't alive, not the way we would define it. It's more...aware. It's aware of everything. I suppose, really, it is everything. It was the Vortex that told me about the convergence."

It seemed that her storytelling had opened the floodgates, but only one question rose above the rest. Mickey's voice, more sure and confident than it had ever been when they were growing up together. We've all changed, she thought. But then it dawned on her what he'd asked.

"So if you can talk to the Tardis, does that mean you can pass a message to the Doctor?"

The atmosphere in the room changed from wonder to caution in the blink of an eye. By agreement on the drive over, they'd decided not to mention the Doctor unless Rose brought it up first. Pete looked shocked. Jackie looked murderous. But Rose just looked a little sad.

"Doesn't work quite like that. I can feel her, and she can feel me. But I can't ask questions. And she couldn't really answer. It's more emotions than thoughts." Mickey looked quite downcast. "Why do you ask?"

"I just thought, if it was possible, he might be able to tell us why the worlds are colliding with you at the center."

Rose looked stunned. Focal point? Her? That was something the Vortex hadn't seen fit to import to its human link. She sat back in her chair, head spinning.

"So I'm the focus? But why?"

"I believe I can answer that, actually."

The group spun in shock. There, in the small sitting room, hazy and near transparent but undeniably there...

"DOCTOR!"