"She wants what's best."

Rose said the words as she held tightly onto the console. The floor beneath her feet bucked and rumbled like an Earthquake. Quiet words, she didn't expect the Doctor to hear; she wasn't sure he had heard. He continued to stare at the rising and falling blue lit thing in the center of the console like it was the coming of Christ.

Or something.

It was enough to bribe her mind from the thought, but she was stubborn.

"She wants what's best for me."

She breathed the words this time; I'm trying to convince myself, wonderful, she thought. With her knuckles white-knuckled on the metallic surface of the console, she took deep breaths.

"We might not see eye to eye," she continued as her eyes searched the console buttons. "But she does want what's best for me."

He probably heard her; he wasn't a family based man; he wouldn't comment anyway. Rose bit her lip as the floor angled itself away from her, declining. She leaned into the console as the Doctor pumped on the pedestal. What did her mother know? Safety? Mother was talking about…crossing a street looking both ways, making sure you ate…turning up and giving back the car keys or giving back the extra tokens without much fuss. Oh, and not having the local police call to spring you after a bender of a night.

She didn't understand…

Rose blinked across the perpetually hazy atmosphere of the console room and to see the Doctor. He had a maddening grin on his lips; his eyes were literally glowing with glee; he wants to see history unfold in front of him. That can't be safe, can it? Didn't someone once say that creation was destructive? How could Mom even think about safety? Doesn't she know?

How could she know, even with aliens at the PM's, the extent of the Universe and how UNSAFE it was?

And how could she know? How could she fathom?

She bit her lip. Ten seconds, she had told her mother, ten seconds was all she had said she would be gone.

Ten seconds had been all the time it had taken her mother to tell her that her Da was dead.

Maybe she was overly-protective. It had been a quick death for Da and he hadn't even been unsafe. He had been coming home.

Rose blinked again to see the Doctor staring at her across the sapphire lights.

If someone could die coming home, what more was the risk going away?

With a deep breath, she gave him a wide grin. Life was short anyway; you can't always be safe.