Thank you so much to the people who have been reading this.
Of Towns and Toasters, Epilogue
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The Doctor worked quickly, installing the stabiliser, and seemed almost not to notice when Rose entered. As soon as he was certain that he had sorted the dimensions out, he entered the co-ordinates and began to work intently on the mechanism, not looking up once. Seconds later, the TARDIS stilled.
"Where are we?" Rose asked quietly, after a pause. Her voice seemed far too loud in the silence that had pervaded the air between them.
"Twenty-first century Earth," he responded, his eyes on the flight console. "Your Earth. Right by your place."
"Why'd you take me here?" she asked, half-dreading the answer.
"So you could go home." She wished he would look at her. "I've told you what I did. If you wanted, you could go out of those doors right now. Go home."
"Why do you want me to go?"
He exhaled heavily. "I don't want you to go. I'd just... understand if you did."
She walked around the flight pillar, stood next to him. She had been shocked by what he told her, but she had seen how much he grieved for the loss of Gallifrey, and she had seen how much damage one Dalek could cause, and she had seen how happy he had been when - just once - everybody lived. In spite of what he had told her, she couldn't judge him. She couldn't leave him.
"But I want to stay."
He looked up at her, startled. Thought back to the room in the Woodside Apartments.
Thirteen portraits, the ninth ripped apart and unrecognisable.
The last four intact.
He took her hand and smiled. Perhaps there was a chance of redemption after all.