Explanations and a reunion

About two hours later, Rose had called her parents to tell them she wouldn't be home that night, along with a garbled explanation of why, and now she was up in the torchwood hospital wing, sitting in a chair beside the Doctor's bed, and thinking slightly of the irony of this situation. Eventually she found herself nodding, and fell asleep.

"R-Rose?" The doctor had woken up. Rose jerked awake to find the Doctor's face turned her way. Those eyes. Those beautiful brown spheres that had haunted her dreams for so long after they had been torn apart.

"Doctor? Are you OK? What happened? How…" The Doctor put up a hand to quiet her. He had woken up a bit more now. He tried to sit up, and Rose was quickly at his side, fluffing up his pillows.

"Oh Rose. You haven't changed a bit." Rose blushed.

"Never mind about me, what about you?"

"Well let me start at the beginning. When we were ripped away from each other like that, I was distraught. For about two years I didn't eat, didn't sleep, all I did was sit in the console room all the time. Well, eventually the TARDIS got sick of it and decided to take it upon herself to do something about it. We spent eighteen years looking for a gap that had somehow escaped what had gone on; eighteen years – but we couldn't find one. I was just about ready to give up, and then someone came along which would make the situation even worse…"

"Who?" breathed Rose.

"He is a timelord like me. I thought he was long dead, but somehow he must have come back… he went round stealing people's regenerations, and that's what happened to me – he managed somehow to steal my last 2 regenerations. He goes by the name of The Master, and now, Rose Tyler, I'm effectively human."

There was silence in the room except for the machinery connected to the Doctor. Rose looked at the doctor and put her head in her hands.

"You're here… it still doesn't explain how you got here…" it was too much for Rose to bear.

"He tried to attack me again to take the life I'm using now, and he very nearly got it, if it wasn't for the TARDIS. She somehow managed to transport me to the safest place she could think of – knowing he could get to anywhere too – and we must have fallen through a new gap and ended up here and now... actually we ended up in alternate Camden town."

"Where is the TARDIS?" asked Rose, looking around as though expecting to see it materialise in the room somewhere.

"Well I expect she's still in Camden town… they found me there, thought I was dead and brought me here – and that's as far as we got."

Rose shook her head, still trying to take everything in. It was by pure chance that her doctor was here now! She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't think of anything.

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"Well, you know when you're better?" The doctor knew what was coming. He had been expecting this since he woke up and recognised Rose sitting next to him.

"Can I still travel with you? And are you staying in this universe?"

The doctor smiled. "Rose, you are always welcome to travel with me. And, I think I might be staying in this universe, because you're here, your family's here, and… I don't think I can get back very easily either." Rose's face lit up at these words, and she wrapped her arms round the thin frame of the doctor, for the first time in twenty years.