a/n: Thanks as always for reviews and for sticking with this story. Some of you have stuck with this since I started posting. And thanks very much to Bittie752, who looked over this chapter at the last minute when I was having a crisis of confidence.

This was originally going to be the last full chapter, but after some discussion with Bittie, I've decided to add one more, followed by a short epilogue. They should both be up within the next couple of weeks. At the same time, I'm planning on going over the whole thing, mostly to fix some punctuation and formatting issues. After six years, it's hard to be consistent with that sort of thing.

Thanks again for reading, and I hope you enjoy the rest.


Chapter Fifty—London, 7 October, 2007

Rose sat on the beat-up jump seat in the console room, sick at heart, her stomach a knot of anxiety. It was clear she hadn't needed to leave simply because John (no, the Doctor) had needed to be scanned. It wasn't as if scanning had to be done in privacy or anything. No, it was obvious that John (no, the Doctor, damn it, she needed to get it bloody straight in her mind, he was the Doctor again) hadn't wanted her in the room while he talked to the Doctor, who he thought was Jack.

It was more than her brain could take, particularly after the emotional roller coaster of the past day and a night of no sleep.

She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, grateful she'd thought to wash off her makeup last night. Still, she must look a fright, with a snotty nose and eyes red and swollen from crying. But she didn't think that would change any time soon. She was entitled to at least a three-day-cry, one for every month she and John had been together.

She'd started the day (yesterday to be sure, but she hadn't slept yet so it felt like today) with him making love to her, with him telling her he loved her, with him telling her he wanted her to stay with him forever.

And now it was over.

She'd known from the beginning that it wouldn't, couldn't, last. So why did its ending come as such a shock?

She felt like she was going to be sick.

As she took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to regain her composure, not wanting the Doctor, either Doctor, to see her like this, she heard the heartbreakingly familiar echo of heavy boots on metal grating as her first Doctor entered the console room from the depths of the TARDIS.

He crossed the room and sat down next to her.

"'S almost time for me to go," he told her.

She nodded, not looking at him, not wanting him to see how much she'd been crying and not wanting to burst into tears again.

"But first I need to talk to you about something important. You warned me, more than once, that if I ever remembered who I was, I might regret what had happened between us," he said.

She nodded again, terrified to hear what he'd say next.

Placing his fingertips on her chin, he tilted her face around and up, forcing her to look at him.

"Rose Tyler, you were wrong. I don't regret a single second of it, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Her heart thrilled at his words. Breathing a sigh of relief, she gave him a half-smile.

He took her hand, lacing their fingers together, and raised it up to his lips. He kissed her knuckles.

"You were wrong about something else too. You said I don't love you. Boy, you were way off with that one." He flashed her a crooked grin, but then his face took on a serious expression. "If you want, you could come with me. Might mess up the timelines a bit, but 's nothing I can't fix."

Her heart leapt at the offer. It was so tempting, to travel with him without having to hide how she felt about him all the time. And, for him, before everything went so weird between them. Before Deffry Vale and the Krillitanes, when he'd started talking about the curse of the Time Lords. Before pre-Revolutionary France on a spaceship and the uncrowned Queen of France.

But she knew she couldn't.

She shook her head. "As much as I want to, and part of me really, really wants to, I can't. Back in the past, there's a girl who feels like she just made the biggest mistake of her life. She needs you to go back and get her. And I can't deny her that. Traveling with you back then, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

He gave her a soft, proud smile, like she'd said the right thing, but it held more than a tinge of sadness.

"Rose Tyler, I knew you were fantastic from the moment I met you, but I had no idea just how fantastic you are."

"Yep, that's me. Absolutely fantastic."

At that, he showered her with a huge grin. "And don't you ever forget it." Then he frowned thoughtfully. "Did you really think turning me down was the biggest mistake in your life?"

She met his eyes. "Yes."

"Y'know, I was actually headed back to you when I ended up here. Wasn't sure you'd say yes. What made you change your mind?"

She smiled at him, bumping him with her shoulder. "Oh, you know me. I'm a sucker for a man with a big smile and a nice bum."

He grinned at her with that same big smile she'd fallen in love with so long ago. "And a leather jacket. Don't forget the leather jacket."

Her face suddenly growing hot, Rose wondered if he was remembering the same thing she was. "Yep. Definitely a leather jacket," she said, giving him a cheeky grin. "And a time machine. Don't forget a time machine."

"I won't forget," he promised.

They smiled at each other. And then her smile faded.

"But you're gonna have to forget, yeah? To maintain the timelines?"

"Yes," he told her.

She turned away from him, heart breaking. Suddenly the momentousness of the situation struck her. He really was leaving, and he wouldn't even remember what they'd been to each other. The idea that she would, that she'd have to carry it with her for the rest of her life and he wouldn't even remember it, was overwhelming. How could she do that? How could she be with him day after day remembering everything and knowing he didn't?

She turned back to him and said, "Can you… can you make me forget too?"

He looked at her seriously. "Do you want me to?"

"Yes. No. I don't know."

"To answer your question, yes, I can. I can do anything. But I hope I don't have to. Give it some time. If you still feel that way—in a couple of days, a week, a month—ask me again."

"How?"

He jerked his head toward the back of the console room.

"What?" She turned and saw the doorway behind them. For a moment she was confused, then the penny dropped. "Oh."

"Skinny boy should be able to do it as well as I can. At least I would hope so. I hope I haven't changed that much."

"Even if he doesn't remember what I want to forget?"

"Yes. Trust me, Rose. If you box up your memories and ask him to lock them away, he won't look. But I hope he never has to. It's been one of the happiest times of my life, and I want one of us to remember it."

Tears prickling in the backs of her eyes, she smiled and nodded.

"So, I'm assuming there's a real Captain Jack Harkness somewhere?" he asked, sounding more like he wanted to lift the heavy mood that had fallen rather than out of any burning curiosity.

"Yeah. We traveled with him for a bit," she told him.

"Time Agent from the 51st century?"

"Former Time Agent, yeah."

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Were you and he…"

"No. Oh, he flirted all right, all the time, with both of us. Never went anywhere." She gave him a mischievous grin. "With me at any rate. Don't know about you."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm sure it didn't go anywhere with me either. Particularly if you were there."

Squeezing his hand, she leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder.

"You stayed with me through a regeneration," he said. "Not many people do."

"Course I did. He's still you."

"Rose." She looked up. He had a deadly serious expression on his face. With a sinking feeling, she realized he was about to leave. "Always remember that. He is me."

She nodded.

"Even if his fashion sense leaves a little to be desired."

She giggled, even as tears were springing to her eyes.

"Rose, love, I have to go now." He stood up, and she automatically did as well.

She took him in, his close-cropped hair, his strong features and vivid blue eyes, with the knowledge she'd never see this version of him again. Then she flung herself into his arms, trying hard not to think about the fact that she was receiving a hug from these leather clad arms for the last time. As he held her, she breathed him in, the scents of wool and leather and his warm skin filling her nostrils.

Eventually he let go of her. He cupped her face in his hands and, dipping his face to hers, he gently, gently kissed her.

It was over far too soon.

As far as she was concerned, it could have lasted a lifetime and it still would have been too soon.

He met her eyes. "Rose, stay here. If you walk me to my TARDIS, I might not be able to let you go."

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She was afraid she might start sobbing, or pleading with him to take her after all, to not leave her behind.

He turned away and without looking back, walked swiftly out of the TARDIS.

A second later, she impulsively rushed after him.

To her surprise, it was beginning to grow light outside. She looked around to get her bearings. The TARDIS was parked near where they'd had the confrontation with Jimmy. In front of her was the rough brick wall that Jimmy had shoved her against (and where John had held him while threatening him), to the left was the mouth of the alley, and to the right was the makeshift wall of crates she'd built to hide the other TARDIS.

She ran to the narrow walkway she'd created only to see the Doctor disappear into his TARDIS. Within seconds, the alley was filled with the sound of the engines starting. The light on top began to flash. And as she silently watched the TARDIS fade away, tears began to roll down her cheeks.

She didn't know how long she'd been standing there, staring at the empty space where the TARDIS had stood for so long, when she heard the soft sounds of footsteps behind her.

"Rose," the Doctor said quietly.

Rose whirled around and the Doctor, her current Doctor, caught her up in a tight hug. She buried her face in the collar of his jacket.

"It's all right, Rose. I'm still here. I'm right here."

She nodded.

"It'll be all right. I promise."

She nodded again.

"Come back to the TARDIS. I want to move her back to the courtyard."

In a daze, she let him lead her back into the ship. She sat back down on the jump seat, staring unseeingly at him circling the console. It was only when she heard the loud thud signaling the TARDIS's landing that she realized they'd already moved.

Gradually, as if from far away, she noticed he was calling her name, trying to get her attention. She glanced up at him.

"Rose, are you all right?" he asked.

"'M fine," she lied. "Just knackered. Been up over twenty hours I expect." She stood up. "Is it all right if I kip here? I don't want to go back to Mum's flat and I just can't go back to…" Her voice trailed off.

A troubled expression crossed his face. "Rose, you know you don't have to ask…"

"Thanks," she said quickly, trying to cut off any further conversation. She flashed him a halfhearted smile and headed out of the room.

Back in her bedroom, things were exactly as she had left them when she'd hurriedly packed her rucksack together with Mickey. A paperback novel she'd been reading was face down on the bedside table, open to where she'd left off in it. The wardrobe door stood open, revealing her anorak, scarf, and other cold weather clothes. A couple of T-shirts and a pair of jeans she'd decided not to bring with her lay on the bed. Makeup and hair ties and souvenirs from various places they'd traveled to were scattered on top of the chest of drawers, as was the wallet she'd forgot to take with her, and random photos taken on some of their adventures were shoved into the frame of the mirror that hung on the wall over it.

She glanced dispassionately around at everything. The past three months had changed her so much that it felt like this room belonged to someone else entirely.

But she had nowhere else to go. She didn't want to go to her mum's: it was much too early, and she really didn't want to deal with explanations and her mother hovering over her. And she couldn't go back to the flat she'd shared with John. She just couldn't, not with knowing he wasn't there and wouldn't ever be there again.

She moved the T-shirts and jeans to a nearby chair, and still dressed, not even bothering to take off her shoes, she lay down on the bed. And unable to sleep and unable to cry, she stared at nothing.

~oOo~

She awoke with a start in a darkened room, disoriented, stiff and sore, unable to remember falling asleep and uncertain where she was. Eventually her sleep-addled brain recognized the quiet hum of the TARDIS, and the rest all came back in a rush: the fight with John, the Doctor and Mickey's return, John opening the watch, and saying goodbye to both John and her first Doctor at the same time. Trying to ignore the gnawing, aching emptiness in her chest, she rolled over and attempted to get back to sleep, hoping to put off facing reality for a little while longer. But after tossing and turning for several minutes, it became obvious that more sleep wasn't going to happen.

She sat up. The TARDIS slowly raised the light level in the room to a soft glow.

She needed a shower, she decided, feeling grungy as she always did when she slept in her clothes (although usually it was when she was stuck in some alien prison on a planet whose name she couldn't pronounce, rather than in her own bedroom). She sat on the edge of the bed and began to untie her shoes. As she took the first one off and dropped it on the floor, one of the photos on the mirror caught her eye. She stood up and, limping a little from wearing only one shoe, crossed the room to the chest of drawers. She pulled the photo out of the mirror's frame.

It was a candid shot she'd taken of the Doctor before he'd regenerated. He was frowning over the controls on the console, the blue-green light of the Time Rotor giving his face an unearthly glow, making him look like the alien he really was.

She'd never see that face again.

No, she couldn't think about that now. It was too soon, the pain too raw.

She slipped the photo back in its place, between the glass of the mirror and its wooden frame. Then she kicked off her remaining shoe and pulled off her clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. As she entered the bathroom, the lights came on and the shower started, filling the room with lavender-scented steam. The water was the perfect temperature when she stepped in, the thick white towels that hung by the shower door warmed when she stepped out.

After she got dressed, in a jumper and jeans she pulled out of drawers at random, she placed a hand on the bedroom wall.

"Thank you," she whispered.

She felt a wave of affection coming from the TARDIS, followed by a wave of gratitude. This was accompanied by an image of herself sitting on a wooden box next to the ship. She was taken by surprise at how clear the image was in her mind. The TARDIS had never tried to communicate with her like that before, the two of them having only communicated in vague impressions and flashing lights in the alley, and hardly at all prior to that.

Warmed by the positive feelings the TARDIS was sending her, she patted the wall, wishing there was some way that she could wrap her arms around the ship and give her a hug. The lights in the room flashed, followed by another wave of affection.

"You heard that, did you?" she asked the ceiling.

When the lights flashed again, she smiled.

Back in the console room, the Doctor was sitting cross-legged underneath the console, sonicking something with his screwdriver. Colorful wires hung down all around his head, and hundreds of dismantled bits and pieces lay on the floor surrounding him.

As soon as he heard her enter, he jumped up, banging his head on the underside of the console with an audible thump.

"Ow," he said, rubbing a spot on the top of his head as he climbed out from underneath the console.

She winced in sympathy. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, I'm fine," he assured her. "Takes more than a bang on the head to hurt me. The question is, how are you?"

She shrugged. "Oh, you know me. I'm fine, too."

There was an awkward silence for a second, and then—

"Listen, Rose…" the Doctor began.

"I'm gonna…" she said at the same time.

He chuckled quietly, and she smiled back.

"You first," he said.

"It's just, I was gonna go see Mum, tell her what's going on."

"You weren't asleep very long. It's still pretty early. Knowing her, she'll be down for the count for at least a few more hours."

With a sigh of resignation, she sat down on the jump seat. She'd hoped to put off talking to the Doctor for at least a little while longer. "So, what were you going to say?"

He leaned against the console, arms crossed in front of him. "Well, it's been a busy few days. Thought we could get caught up."

"Few days? That's all it's been for you?"

"I think so. Not entirely sure. Wasn't myself for a lot of it. Or I was, but not me me."

"Sounds like… quite a story." Even to her own ears, she sounded uncomfortable. Probably because she was.

"I'm sure Mickey would tell it better. At least he was conscious during it. Anyway, never mind about me. What about you?"

"Oh, you know, life on the Estate. Got a job. Went to a friend's wedding."

"The one Jackie mentioned when we got here."

It took her a second to remember what he was talking about. "Oh yeah, she did tell us about it."

They were tiptoeing around each other, she thought, making small talk like they were strangers. And he was being weird, as if he was waiting for her to say something, to tell him something specific…

And then a terrible thought occurred to her.

"Doctor, how much do you remember?" she asked.

"Everything," he said softly.

She froze. For a moment, she couldn't breathe.

"I, uh, thought you said you were going to make yourself forget."

"I did. It all came back a little while ago, after giving him the antidote."

"Why didn't you tell me you'd get the memories back?"

"Process of locking up memories is a bit dodgy. Wasn't sure I would."

Biting her lip, she nodded, trying to get a read on what he might be thinking, but his face was blank. "So… if you already know what happened, what do you want to talk about?"

"I thought you might want to talk about something."

She slowly shook her head. "Nope. Can't think of a thing."

"Okay."

"How 'bout you?"

"Nope," he said, and then a moment later, "No, not nope. Rose, I, he, said some things to you before he left…"

"And you wanted to say you don't feel that way anymore."

"No!" he protested. "I wanted to say that I do! I always have."

She stared at him in disbelief. Then, with a sigh, she rested her elbows on her knees and dropped her head into her hands. Silence fell over the console room, the only sound the quiet hum of the TARDIS.

"That almost makes it worse," she said finally.

"I don't understand."

She looked up at him. "Doctor, before all this started, right before you left me here, you left Mickey and me alone on that ship in the future."

"Rose, you knew how to get home…"

"In the middle of an adventure, you left us alone on a spaceship full of murderous robots that had already killed the entire ship's crew. I mean, it would have been one thing if you left us to do something important. But you didn't. You went to a party. With Madame de Pompadour."

"Rose…"

"And then you left us again on that ship with no idea how you'd get back. It was five and a half hours for us, but how long was it for you? Hours? Days? Years? And when you finally did get back, you asked her to come along."

"Rose…" he said again.

"No, let me finish. I looked her up. I know how important she was. I know you had to save her. But that doesn't mean she was a nice person." She tried to choose her words carefully. "She was very smart, but she was very condescending to me. I don't usually let anyone talk down to me, not anymore. You taught me that. You taught me that I was just as good as anyone else. And there was a time when you wouldn't have let anyone treat me like that. But you didn't have any problem with Reinette doing it."

"I'm sorry, Rose. I didn't know."

"She was in love with you, and she thought you loved her back. Basically told me that to my face. She even implied we shared you, which seemed really odd to me at the time because you and I weren't together. But she thought we were, and I'm sure that in her mind the two of you were as well, that the two of you were star-crossed lovers, separated by time and circumstances. And maybe she was right. I saw how upset you were when she died."

She looked at him evenly. "I'm a big girl. I can handle being talked down to. Being from the Estate, I've had to put up with it all my life. But the idea that you would fall in love with someone like her… invite someone like that to travel with us… particularly if you loved me at the same time… it's just too much."

The Doctor sat down next to her.

"Rose, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry she treated you that way. I didn't know until Mickey told me, after he and I had already left you here. It's not really surprising considering who she was and the era she came from, but it was still uncalled for. And I did care for her. I care about a lot of people. I even care about Mr. Mickey. And your mum, although if you tell her that I'll deny it to my dying day."

He must have realized his attempt at humor fell flat, because he continued almost immediately.

"Of course I was upset when she died. But part of the reason I was upset was out of guilt. After she sent me back, she waited the rest of her life for me to return. And I didn't. Not until she was already gone.

"But honestly, nothing ever happened between Reinette and me. I'm sorry if she implied otherwise."

"What do you mean, she sent you back?" she asked.

"I was stuck there," he told her. "Truly, properly stuck, thinking I'd have to stick around for a decade or two before I could find a prior me and ask him to give me a lift. But I'd only been there a few hours when she figured out a way I could get back. And that's why I asked her to come with us, to thank her for helping me. But it was only going to be for one trip, not to travel with us long term."

"Why did she help you? Seems like she'd have wanted you to stay with her."

"I don't know," he said. "Why did she do that?" He sounded puzzled, as if it wasn't until Rose had mentioned it that the thought had occurred to him. "She did want me to stay, was pretty blunt about it actually, come to think of it. But she still helped me get back. She knew I wasn't happy about being stuck, but was there more to it than that?

"Also, why would she think you and I were together? I never told her we were, and it's not as if either of us had done anything that implied it."

Then he jumped up. "Oh! Oh, oh, oh!" He ran his hands through his hair, causing it to stand straight up, and began to pace in front of the console. "Wait a minute, wait a minute…Did she… Oh, she must have done. After all, he did, so I know it was there even though I didn't know about it at the time."

She stared at him as he continued to walk back and forth in front of her. He was making even less sense than he usually did, and that was saying something. "What are you talking about?"

He turned to her, eyes wide. "She must have seen it in my mind! I had to look into her mind to try and figure out what the robots wanted with her, and she turned tables on me and saw into mine. When she did, one of the things she said was that I was lonely. I thought she meant I was by being the last of the Time Lords, but now I think there was more to it. After he left you here, he was—I was—very lonely. Even though I didn't remember what had happened between us, I've been missing it ever since. And it was all there the whole time, I know it was. After all, he saw it."

"Who?"

"Me. Long story. Mickey and I met a previous me, we had to connect telepathically so I could explain what was going on, and he saw something in my mind that I didn't even know was there. I believe now that it was my memories of my time as John. Reinette must have seen it as well. That's why she thought we were together. She sent me back to you."

"I'm sorry," she said. "None of this matters. I just… I can't go back to the way things were."

He sat back down next to her. "I don't want to either, Rose."

She nodded, resigned. She'd known from the beginning that this was a possibility if he ever learned about what had happened with John while he was away. "Well, that's it then. I'll just… go and get the rest of my stuff, yeah?"

"What?" he asked, then continued without waiting for her to respond. "Rose, I think—I hope—we're talking at cross purposes. When you say you don't want to go back to the way things were, do you mean you don't want to go back to the way things were before all of this began, or you don't want to go back to the way things were when I was John?"

"But you weren't—"

"I told you, I'm the same man I was before I regenerated," he said. "Don't you believe me?"

"Yeah, course I do," she said. "Have done since Christmas."

"I don't think you do. I'm the same person I was before regenerating, and since he was John, ergo, so was I." Then his face became shuttered, emotionless. "But if you want to leave, I won't stop you."

"Are you kidding me? I don't want to leave!" she exploded. "But you can't keep pushing me away. You've got to talk to me. I mean, I'd never even heard of Sarah Jane, and she was a big part of your life."

"Rose, I'm over nine hundred years old. It would take the rest of your life to even scratch the surface of everything I've been through."

"I'm not asking you to tell me everything. I just want you to try to let me in a little. About important stuff."

It took him a second to answer. "Fair enough."

"And what about me 'withering and dying'? Because I'm human, and that's part of it."

"I know."

"Are you going to be able to handle that?" she pressed.

"Yes," he bit out. His eyes flashed. "Given that the alternative is not having you in my life at all, yes."

"And you can't just run off on me. No more horses through time windows." Then she gave him a small smile. "Unless you take me with, of course."

A hopeful look briefly crossed his face, followed immediately by a mock-serious expression. "Oh, of course."

"And you can't send me away when things get tough."

He looked away for a moment, and when he turned back his expression was as serious as she'd ever seen it. "I can't promise that, Rose. I can regenerate. You can't. I couldn't live with myself if you died and there was something I could have done to prevent it."

"Doctor, if I want to risk my life, it's my choice. You can't take it away from me," she told him.

"That's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black."

"How?"

"Rose, when I sent you away from the Game Station, why did you come back? You had to know you'd probably die if you did."

"I wanted to help you. I wanted to try to save you. I couldn't live with myself if you died…" Her voice trailed off. When she continued, it was barely above a whisper. "I couldn't have lived with myself if you had died and there was something I could have done to prevent it."

"See? It's not so easy when the shoe is on the other foot."

"It's not exactly the same thing."

"Maybe not, but the feelings are the same."

He seemed to be immovable on the issue. She let out a sigh. "Okay. I guess we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, yeah?"

"Hopefully we never will. Of course, that's assuming you stay." He frowned. "Rose, I can't give you a normal life: children, a house in the country, a dog."

"Our house is often in the country," she reminded him. "And you've had a dog before. He was just made of metal. And I never really wanted kids anyway."

"You might want children in the future, and I can't give you that."

"Doctor, I would never want to have children with someone I didn't love." She bit her lip and then admitted something she'd never dreamed she'd tell him. "And I'll never love anyone else."

Her words hung in the air between them, and for a long time they both were silent. Then he took her hand, lacing their fingers together.

"There's one other option we haven't talked about," he said quietly. "I could use the chameleon arch again."

She stared at him in shock. That possibility had not occurred to her. "Do you want to do that?"

"Honestly?" He took a deep breath. "I don't know. But if I did, we could have all the things we saw in the watch. As John Smith, I could give them to you."

"I would never ask you to give up being you."

"But he was me. Everything he was came from me, deep down."

She didn't respond immediately. "Doctor, do you know what I missed the most while you were him?"

"Traveling?" he guessed. "Not having to have a job?" His eyebrow arched. "Being able to escape your mum's cooking?"

She rolled her eyes. "I missed our shared history. I missed being able to talk to you about things we'd been through together. He was you…but he wasn't at the same time. It's like he was…unfinished. And I don't think you'd really be happy being him."

"I was happy with you."

"I was happy too, but it wasn't real. No Doctor, not even one who doesn't know he's the Doctor, would ever truly be happy stuck on the Estate, working at a job, watching telly and eating beans on toast, not for long at any rate."

"You might be surprised," he said softly. "But you shouldn't be. You saw the vision as well as I did."

She met his eyes. "You would really do that for me?"

"For us," he corrected. "If you asked me to."

She stared at him, frowning, trying to gauge what was going on in his mind, and he gazed steadily back at her, his face expressionless. Except for his eyes. They were full of an emotion she couldn't identify, probably couldn't even begin to understand, and, not for the first time, she wished she could tell what he was really thinking.

Giving up on trying to read his mind, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to remember the things the watch had shown them. Marriage. Children. Grandchildren. A life spent together. It was tempting. It was very, very tempting. After all, he was right. In the vision they'd both been happy.

But it was his choice to make, not hers, and he'd already made it.

"I would never ask," she said when she opened her eyes.

He gave her a small, proud smile, just as his previous self had when she'd told him she couldn't go with him, and just as before, it held an undercurrent of sadness.

"But what do you want, Doctor?"

He hesitated, just for a second, and then said, "I want you to stay here. With me. What we had was good. Really good. And I don't ever want to lose it." Deep brown eyes stared intently into hers, as if he was trying to communicate to her something more than simply what his words meant.

Her eyes widened as, in a rush, she realized he was echoing what John had said to her yesterday morning. She responded the same way as she had when he'd first said it. "You don't know what you're asking."

"Yes, I do. But you don't want to," he said slowly. "Is it me?"

"Of course not."

"It's too soon, then. I'm pushing too far too fast."

"No, it's not that," she told him. She bit her lip nervously.

He gave her a small grin. "Is it the age difference?"

She let out a laugh that held a tinge of hysteria. She shook her head vehemently.

"Then what is it, love?" She searched his face, not answering. He met her eyes. "What?"

"It's just, I know it doesn't mean anything. It's like hello or something. After all, people say it every day, right? I was just startled."

"Rose, love, you're not making any sense."

"You just did it again," she said softly.

"Did what again?"

"You just called me love. You've never done that before."

He raised an eyebrow. "Haven't I?"

She shook her head slowly. "No. Not this you. Believe me, I'd've remembered that."

"If I haven't, I guess it's because I was sure you knew."

"Sure I knew what?"

"That I love you," he told her. He looked deeply into her eyes. "I love you, Rose Tyler."

"I love you too," she whispered.

"Then you'll stay?"

"I'll stay as long as you want me to," she promised.

"Good," he said, starting to grin. "Because I want you to stay forever."