One look at the Doctor and she knew she had a fight on her hands. His eyes were as dark as she'd ever seen them, his expression giving her a pang as she remembered glimpsing it so many times on the face of his previous self. Jealousy, longing and agitation marked his narrow features. Since he regenerated she'd missed that look, which had only ever turned her on and made her even more eager to chase pretty boys, just to get some kind of confirmation that he felt the way for her that she did for him. She remembered how she used to soothe him when she sensed he might get out of control. She wondered if it would still work on this version of the Doctor, so much less lighthearted than he'd been after regenerating.

"Out," the Doctor said tersely.

"Who, me?" the Master asked, without moving an inch. Rose resisted the urge to shrink away from the Doctor and toward the Master at the expression on his face. "No, 'thanks for saving that pesky human'?" Then he paused, as though taking his time to consider what might be the best way to rile the Doctor up. "Don't I at least get a complimentary snog?"

The Doctor looked murderous. Rose could feel his tension, already high, rising to a rapid boil. She turned back to the Master and shot him a quick look and he returned her knowing glance. Then he climbed out of her bed, as naked as the day he was loomed (though she was sure both of them would have insisted that the Time Lords were never naked, Rose, not ever.) He strode casually past the Doctor and from the room, his erection only partially deflated. She snuck a quick glance at his bum as he disappeared around the corner.

The Doctor opened his mouth to say something to her and she held up a hand to stop him. "Give me a minute. I've been in this bed a long time." Without giving him a chance to object, she scurried naked from the bed and into the ensuite.

When she came out, wrapped in a soft silk robe provided by the TARDIS, he was still there, his arms crossed and a stormy look on his face. She took the opportunity to skirt the mess of old clothes on the floor and sit back on the bed. She crossed her legs and looked up at him expectantly.

"So you're telepathic now?" the Doctor asked bluntly. "I felt you reach out to him just then."

"Yeah. We enhanced my low level telepathic ability."

"But you're not a Time Lady?" He frowned at her and she felt him press his mind against hers in a very intimate fashion. She held in a squeak as the mental pressure shivered down her spinal column. "You don't feel like one, mentally."

"Nope!" She grinned at him, tongue in her teeth. "Besides, if what the TARDIS showed me of your past is accurate, you wouldn't want a Time Lady anyway."

Rose could have sworn she heard the Master outright cackling all the way from the console room as his mind indicated to hers, in an only slightly insulting tone, that she didn't know the half of it. She chose to ignore him and assume he couldn't really hear them from the other end of the hall.

"So you know everything about me?"

"No, not everything. The TARDIS said there were some things I couldn't know."

"So how exactly did you and the TARDIS decide on that?" There were so many things implicit in his tone that she immediately pressed back against his mind the way he'd done hers, sensing that his ruling emotion right now was really naked, cold fear and not anger. Well, maybe a little anger - he hated feeling helpless, clearly. He flinched, just as the Master had done at her first real mental touch, and then relaxed reluctantly when he realized she wasn't trying to penetrate any deeper than his surface feelings. "When did you become the one in charge around here? You just told the Master to leave and he did, immediately. You talk about my TARDIS like she's your best mate down at the pub. What are you?"

Rose shrugged and her robe fell open a bit. She didn't fail to notice his eyes flick down to exposed cleavage before he forced himself to look at her face. "Let's not pretend, Doctor. You've got no business at all judging me, or questioning my right to be what I am, with all you've done over your many, many years. I'm capable of making judgement calls the way you so often do and the TARDIS trusts me to choose rightly. I'm pretty sure the Master trusts me and when it comes down to it, you do too. You trust all your companions to make those decisions, to pull you back from the edge if you go too far. That's why we're here. You don't trust yourself. You're afraid you're going to feel a temptation to use me, to exercise undue influence the way the Time Lords always accused you of doing. You're afraid of destroying us, or destroying me." She rose from the bed and approached him, stopping a few inches away. "I'm telling you now that that won't happen. I won't let you, and neither will the TARDIS."

This time she sensed him coming before he moved, but she allowed him to spin her around and press her against the mauve bedroom wall. "And what if I destroyed you right this minute?" He brushed his face against hers, his breath quick but cool against her skin. "What if I reminded you of a saying from your own world - absolute power corrupts absolutely?"

"You can't," she said. "And it doesn't, unless you're saying you're corrupt. And I don't think you are, Doctor. I always sensed it inside of you, the real true desire to help people, to make things better. That's why I kept traveling with you when you aimed a gun at me in Utah, and forgot about me with a werewolf on the loose, and abandoned me with murderous robots so you could get some more snog-time with Madame du Pompadour. Nothing that's happened to you, nothing you've done, no matter how awful, has ever changed that."

"That's where you're wrong," the Doctor said as he reached inside her robe and yanked it open. It fell to her sides and slid halfway down her arms. "It's only recently I've felt myself corrupted. Since a trip to Pete's world a few weeks ago. Since I snatched you back from myself, changed time and ripped holes in existence. Since I realized I would do anything to have you and keep you with me forever." As he spoke he removed his long coat, letting it crumple on the floor with all of younger Rose's possessions. He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it on top of his jacket before toeing off his trainers and letting his pants drop to his ankles. Rose licked her lips as she watched him reveal his own body to her.

"I'm not wrong," she said, unable to hold back a gasp as he wrapped his arms around her and tossed her abruptly back onto her bed. She smelled traces of the Master's scent all over the sheets, and she knew he would too. Could probably smell him on her when he pressed her against the wall, too. "I've seen the timelines, for our old universe and from this one. I can show you." Silently she asked the TARDIS to shut the door and felt amusement from the time ship as she disappeared the door entirely. They were locked in her bedroom suite now well and truly.

"I don't care about the timelines, Rose. I care that you smell like the Master, that he's been inside you in a way I haven't. I care that he's had a try at making you his and you will never, ever be his. I'm going to erase him from you," the Doctor told her as he stalked across the bed and covered her body with his own. "Cover up every trace so that he'll know you're mine. Everyone will know."

She blinked at him, surprised he'd put voice to such a primitive, primal sentiment, when she realized his mouth was closed. He'd spoken into her mind. She answered in kind.

You can't. He's part of me now.

She could feel anguish and rage and regret rip through him like wildfire. He smothered her mouth with his, his weight pressing her into the bed. He was determined to prove her wrong, she could feel it. She hesitated, considering stopping him, but decided showing him would be so much easier. And she could do that, once they were joined.

Despite the squalling emotions that raged through him, his touch was tenderer than it had been before, and she knew then that the torment she sensed in him was mostly because he thought he'd lost her for good. There was fear about the time she'd spent wrapped up in the Master, but it was secondary to what he'd experienced when the TARDIS had clipped their link like a pet bird's wings.

Don't leave me, don't leave me, you left me, don't do it again, oh please, don't leave me.

Won't, Doctor. Here, always. Forever.

She tilted her hips against him and lifted one foot, trailing her toes through the thick hair on his calf. A tiny chunk of his memory left him involuntarily and seeped towards her as his hands found her breasts and roused her nipples. She closed her eyes and saw herself as she'd been when the TARDIS separated them abruptly, unmoving and unnaturally cold. She'd looked dead and the pain inside the Doctor had been so sharp he'd retreated into himself to keep from going mad. She clutched him tightly, both of her hands sliding into his hair and grasping it sharply. She pulled his face to hers and said, low but clear, "I'm here for as long as you want me. We will never be apart again. Not because of the universe and certainly not because of the Master."

She felt his whole body shudder over hers, and after a long moment his hair brushed her forehead as he nodded. She kissed him firmly and pulled him as close as she could get him, savoring the feel of his cool skin against her warm breasts and belly. She shifted her thighs and wrapped her legs around him, wanting him as close as possible. He needed it and so did she.

His hand slid down her side and around the curve of her hip before touching her to test her readiness. She rocked toward his fingertips, the sensations so much more intense than they'd ever been before. It hadn't bothered her before now, with her newly redesigned brain, but the sexual arousal she felt was so powerful that it was overwhelming everything else she was experiencing. She wanted everything - his hands on her, his fingers inside her, his mouth over her clit, his cock buried in her cunt, his mind enveloping hers, every possible part of him he could ever give.

As he adjusted his position and slipped inside her she arched her back so hard it was only his weight that kept her from bucking him off. His cock was absolutely perfect, her muscles parting for him with just the right amount of give as pleasure thrilled through her from head to toe. It skated the line between being too much and not enough, and she fought for control. Her thigh muscles trembled as she used them to hold him close.

Then it was his turn to grab her face and command, "Open your eyes, Rose."

She did, looking up at him, not surprised to see that the glaze on his eyes matched her own. "I love you," she told him, barely recognizing her own voice. "I want to show you, I want you to see - "

"I see," he told her, his voice as strange as her own. He withdrew from her all the way and she hissed at the absence of him, the sudden cool air where he'd been. He pushed in again and her eyes rolled back into her head. She clenched her thighs around him, the throbbing within her urging them to get even closer as experience assured her it wasn't possible. Her fingertips found their way to his temples at the same exact moment his found hers.

And then it was possible, and the tenuous threads of their previous bond, so badly damaged by the TARDIS wrenching them apart, flickered to life and sought each other out.

This time the Doctor didn't resist, and she flew into his mind as he sank into her. For a brief second she was back in that silly human metaphor she'd seen the first time, the airport hallway, and then she was through the huge dark door at the far end and inside the Doctor's mind. He didn't resist, didn't attempt to kick her out again. She could feel him exploring inside her own mind, marveling at the changes and the differences. Compared to his own mind, a vast web of dark caverns and torrents, hers was sparkling and bright. She pushed forward, bringing as much of the goodness of her self as she could muster into his darkness.

For a moment his interior corridors illuminated as though she'd lit a flare inside him, and she smiled as memories resorted themselves, good ones coming to the forefront and the bad and painful sealing themselves off behind closed and locked doors. She shut the old trunk she'd found on her last trip tightly, adding more locks.

As she made her mark on his mind she felt him reinforce the damaged one he'd already left in hers, and the physical pleasure they were both feeling overwhelmed her. Her work was done and she allowed herself to lose control of the mental plane in favor of the bodily one.

Do you feel me, Doctor?

His response was incoherent, a babble of languages alive and dead. As they came together, her light filled him, until she found his own and it burst through them both.

****

The Doctor woke up to find Rose still sound asleep in his arms.

He was pleased to find he could barely smell the Master in her room at all anymore, though he'd seen the man's influence inside her mind. The structure of her mind was neater and better organized than his own had ever been, but also without the same moral judgement he had always wielded. All memories were treated almost equally in their minds; without being marked as bad or good. He wondered what that would mean for Rose. He was afraid of the answer.

He wondered what she would have looked like if he'd allowed her to use him as her model, as she had plainly wanted all along.

It didn't really matter now. He hadn't found the Master's bonding mark in her, and he had repaired his own, leaving it stronger than before. He could keep her with him, stop her doing damage, no matter what she'd told him. She was his and she always would be.

He had also allowed her to mark him. Despite his earlier fears, he was feeling very content at the moment. He pushed thoughts of the willful TARDIS and the devious Master and Rose's access to the Vortex away to the back of his mind, an area which was far less cluttered and full of dark shadows than it had been a few hours previously. He wondered if that was why he was so relaxed. Rose had changed him profoundly. A bond with a Time Lady would not have done that. Of course, a Time Lady would never have tried to change him at all, no matter how frightening or deficient she found his mind. Rose either knew nothing of Time Lord ethics or simply didn't care. Not that he'd ever paid much mind to their rules himself. He couldn't bring himself to get upset about it.

At least his full connection to the TARDIS had returned at some point during his slumbers. There was something different about the way the old girl felt in his mind, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

He wasn't so much upset as slightly disturbed by what he'd seen in her mind either, an alternate timeline - now, universe, he supposed - where he had regenerated into a bowtie-wearing, floppy-haired overgrown adolescent who immediately crash-landed into a Scottish seven-year-old's backyard. Imprinting on a child, at least that part of his new self made sense. He frowned. Would he still look like that when he regenerated? He'd have to remind himself to do something about the hair. Not that he'd listen once he'd become that him. He'd probably be as proud of his silly bowtie as he'd once been of his awful oversized scarf.

What was most disturbing about that universe was the price - the Master, lost with the rest of Gallifrey. He wasn't sure whether or not to be glad he'd wound up in this universe, where he wasn't the last, loneliest man in the universe.

Now that he thought about it, his inability to be disturbed was a bit disturbing in and of itself. What was wrong with him? Was this just what happened when a Time Lord bonded with a mate?

Rose stirred at his side. Apparently she no longer needed as much sleep as she once had, or else being unconscious for two straight days had given her enough rest. She smiled, her eyes still half-closed. "Morning."

"No such thing as morning on the TARDIS, Rose."

"Yeah, there is. It's whenever I wake up."

"You woke up three hours ago, with the Master." The memory was fresh and painful, seeing his old enemy wrapped around Rose like he belonged in her bed.

"True." She yawned. "Having my whole brain reformatted like an old computer wasn't as restful as you might imagine, though. And he's not as cuddly as you are."

"Not what it looked like to me." There had been more than a little cuddling going on.

She gave him an incredulous look. "Are you still jealous? I bonded with you, Doctor. I promised you I'd stay with you forever. Not to mention you're the one who put him in my bed in the first place."

He pursed his lips, sighed, and for the first time in a long time, told her the truth. "I should have done as you asked and let you use me as a model. Your brain - it's like his now. It scares me. His mind has always gone to places it shouldn't."

Rose was thoughtful. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure I still know the difference between right and wrong. And even if I forget - you're there to remind me, yeah? I'm never leaving you."

"I believe you. I've just - " he sighed again, not wanting to finish his sentence, not wanting to admit he'd never been open to another being the way he was with her now.

"I know," she said, and he wrapped her in his arms again, breathing her in and letting her gentle heat warm him in the coolness of her room.

Now it was Rose's turn to sigh and pull herself away from him. "I'd love to cuddle with you, but we need to get up. The Master's going to need our help."

The Doctor blanked on what the Master had been doing, before abruptly recalling the other things he'd seen in Rose's mind - her time inside the TARDIS data banks and the odd woman who called herself Sexy. The reason he'd been cut off from his TARDIS and the truth about Kellisarium. It wasn't possible but none of this was possible - nothing that had happened in the past few days was even in the same universe as possible.

"Yeah," he said, feeling bleak. "If there's really someone out there manipulating Time Lord mind-control technology the Master designed ages ago, we're going to need all the help we can get."