Rose let her eyes scan the streets as she ran, looking for the Doctor or the two Jones sisters, but instead she quickly spotted what had caused the crash they had all heard.
An ambulance had been driven into a building, the back doors were hanging open, and while there were desiccated corpses inside, there was no sign of Lazarus' body.
With a soft curse, she realised that, somehow, Lazarus wasn't as dead as they'd thought, and she began to wonder just how regenerative his procedure had made him, before chastising her own wayward thoughts and pulling out her phone.
There was no time for speculation if the Professor was, once again, on the rampage, and Rose slammed her finger down onto the speed dial for Jack.
"Rosie—"
"Fluctuating DNA," she greeted him, pacing the street beside the ambulance, "can Tosh track it somehow via satellite?" She asked, waiting impatiently as he relayed the request.
"She's doing it now, what's going on?" Jack growled down the phone a moment later, "This was supposed to be a simple recon, Rose."
"Yeah, well. Jeopardy friendly, that's me," she offered with a light laugh and Jack went silent on the end of the phone.
"He's there, isn't he? That's the laugh you have for him," Jack whispered and Rose swallowed.
"Yeah. Listen, Jack, I'll get him to come to Cardiff—"
"No, Rose."
It was the Captain's turn to cut her off now and she bit her lip as she waited for an explanation.
"He... He left me behind on Satellite Five. We don't know why, but if you tell him I'm here, he'll only avoid Cardiff like it's crawling with Daleks," Jack grumbled and Rose frowned, her heart breaking. She couldn't honestly say that Jack was wrong.
"Just... Just give me a heads up next time he's heading this way to refuel, all right?" Jack asked, voice shaking slightly and Rose frowned.
"Of course I will," she promised, "I'll even sneak a look at the date and time coordinates for you," she promised, and Jack laughed softly, but Rose could hear Tosh shouting in the background.
"There's a source of fluctuating DNA coming from Southwark Cathedral," Jack related, and Rose spun around, eyes seeking out the ancient structure.
"Brilliant, thanks Jack... and thank Tosh for me too."
"Be safe, Rosie. I'll keep your room dust free for you," Jack said simply, and Rose smiled as she ran through the streets.
"Love you, Jack. Speak soon," she promised, hanging up and slipping the phone into her small bag as she raced up the steps and slipped through the doors of the cathedral.
At the far end of the church, Rose could see Martha and Tish standing to one side of the main altar, as the Doctor circled something on the other side of it.
She assumed that something was Lazarus, and began to move down the centre aisle cautiously, keeping her steps light as she approached them, her eyes on the Doctor.
"... What about the other people who died?" She heard him ask, and his voice was full of anger. More anger than she'd seen from him since he regenerated.
"They were nothing," came Lazarus' cold response, and Rose winced at the callousness of the words, "I changed the course of history."
"Any of them might have done too," the Doctor responded. "Do you think history's only made with equations?" He snarled. Pacing around Lazarus, his movements put Rose in his line of sight, and he suddenly came to a halt.
His eyes quickly returned to Lazarus, but she knew he'd seen her when his voice regained the edge of compassion she recognised.
"Facing death is part of being human. You can't change that."
"No, Doctor," Lazarus spat, "avoiding death; That's being human! It's our strongest impulse, to cling to life with every fibre of being. I'm only doing what everyone has tried to do before me..."
Lazarus paused as Rose finally reached them, stepping up beside the altar to stand next to Martha and Tish. She kept her gaze soft and gentle, forgiving as her eyes settled on Lazarus but the Professor quickly turned back to the Doctor.
"I've simply been more successful," he added, but his sudden screams of agony broke off anything else he might have said.
"Look at yourself. You're mutating! You've no control over it, you call that a success?" The Doctor demanded as he stared down at Lazarus.
"I call it progress!" Lazarus gasped out, another shout of pain interrupting him, and Rose couldn't help but wince in sympathy at the agony he was experiencing.
He bent forward, gasping for breath before he continued his explanation to the Doctor, seeming desperate to be understood.
"I'm more now than I was. More than just an ordinary human," Lazarus gasped.
"There's no such thing as an ordinary human," the Doctor responded, and despite the danger, Rose could hear the smile that such a ridiculous statement had pulled onto the Doctor's face.
As Lazarus began writhing in convulsions of pain once more, Rose took a step close to the Time Lord, drawing his attention quickly.
"Doctor, he's going to change again. What are we going to do?" She asked, keeping her voice low to avoid the acoustics of the cathedral carrying her words to the Professor.
"Any minute now, if I'm right," the Doctor agreed, "I need to find a way to get him up into the bell tower. I have an idea that just might work," he muttered.
Rose hadn't realised Martha was right behind her until she heard the other woman gasp softly.
"Up there?" She whispered, and Rose looked up, grimacing even as she nodded.
"You're so sentimental, Doctor," Lazarus sneered, finally getting his most recent bout of pain under control, "maybe you are older than you look."
"I'm old enough to know that a longer life isn't always a better one," the Doctor replied, stepping away from Rose and Martha again, continuing his circling path around the Professor. "In the end, you just get tired. Tired of the struggle. Tired of losing everyone that matters to you. Tired of watching everything turn to dust."
His words broke her heart, and Rose could feel tears gathering in her eyes. Wanted to pull that ridiculous alien into a hug and find a way to never have to leave him alone again.
As though he could hear her thoughts, the Doctor's eyes met her briefly, and she swallowed hard, but his attention moved back to Lazarus a second later as he crouched beside the professor, lips pressed together before he sighed, wearily.
"If you live long enough, Lazarus, the only certainty left is that you'll end up alone."
"That's a price worth paying," Lazarus responded, and Rose couldn't stay silent any longer, shaking her head.
"Is it?" She asked, and Lazarus' head snapped around to face her. She could feel the Doctor's eyes burning into her once more, but she kept her attention on Lazarus.
"The only person who thinks being alone is better, is someone who's never had a hand to hold," she growled, "and if that's the case, Lazarus, then I truly pity you."
His fury bubbled up, and the intelligence in his eyes receded as his lips parted into a snarl.
"I will feed on your soft flesh, Mal Lupin," Lazarus growled at her, "then what use will your pity be?"
"I'm not going to let that happen," the Doctor said, his voice dark, and Lazarus laughed.
"You've not been able to stop me so far," the Professor taunted, and Rose took a step closer to him, the Doctor's head snapping around to glare at her.
"Rose, don't—"
"Come on, Lazarus, I didn't figure you to give up so easily. Don't you know when a girls playing hard to get?" She taunted, spinning on her heels and taking off at a run as Lazarus lunged for her, Martha and Tish running beside her.
"Damn it, Rose!" She heard the Doctor shout, but she ignored him, yanking open a door and breathing a sigh of relief when she found stairs behind it that led up.
"Doctor, the tower!" Martha shouted back.
Rose had her skirt in her hand as they raced up the stairs, and she could hear the Jones sisters right on her heels as Lazarus staggered after them, his cries of pain bounced off the stone, and Tish grabbed at her elbow, pulling her to a halt.
"Did you hear that?" She demanded, and Rose let herself concentrate for a moment, sharpening her hearing and counting the steps of their pursuer.
"Shit, he's changed again! Keep moving!" She snapped at the two women, pushing Tish and Martha past her, before following them up, keeping herself between the two sisters and Lazarus.
Out of the stairwell and along one of the upper balconies, she could hear the Doctor calling them.
"Martha!?" His voice echoed through the Cathedral, "Rose?!"
Martha slid to a stop and leant over the balcony, and Rose smothered a growl of frustration. They didn't have time, but she turned anyway and watched the doorway they'd run through for the mutant Lazarus.
"Doctor?" Martha called down, and Rose yanked her dress up to pull out the gun still strapped to her thigh.
"Take him to the top. The very top of the bell tower, do you hear me?!" The Doctor shouted, and Martha was busy repeating the instructions back to him, just as Lazarus appeared.
"Martha, move!" Rose shouted, before firing her gun, stone shards ricocheting off the wall and making Lazarus flinch back down the stairs for a moment.
"Then what?" Martha shouted back at the Doctor ignoring her and Rose growled as Lazarus pushed through the doorway with a roar beginning to charge at them.
"Martha, come on!" Tish snapped, and the two sisters began running as Rose fired another shot. The stone shards and the explosion of sound did nothing to deter Lazarus this time, and she spun to chase after Martha and Tish, her gun still in her hand as they fled the monster still on their heels.
Another set of stairs, as fast as they could move and the muscles in her legs were starting to ache, but the three of them burst out into the bell tower, and Lazarus still hadn't caught them.
Rose slammed the wooden door closed behind them, and looked around for something to jam it shut, anything to slow Lazarus down, but the tower was empty.
"There's nowhere to go! We're trapped!" Tish cried and Martha moved her sister around the narrow catwalk that circled the large bell until they were as far away from the door as they could get.
"This is where he said to bring him," Martha gasped, and Rose sighed, quickly following the pair of them, checking her weapon as she tried to catch her breath.
"That's because we're the bait," she told them. "You shouldn't have followed me," she added, and Tish whimpered in fear.
Martha grasped her sister's hands, calming quickly as she distracted herself by reassuring her sister.
"He knows what he's doing. We have to trust him," Martha soothed softly, but all three of them flinched back when Lazarus hit the door to the belltower, crashing through it and sending splinters of wood flying in all directions.
Rose staggered back from the impact, one hand shooting out to help steady Martha and Tish.
"Ladies," the creature hissed, he crept his way into the room one long limb at a time, and Martha dragged Tish behind her, facing Lazarus bravely despite her fear-filled eyes that almost made Rose smile.
"Stay behind me. If he takes me, make a run for it. Head down the stairs, you should have enough time," Martha whispered to her sister, but Rose tuned the siblings out as Tish tried to argue, and placed herself between them both and Lazarus.
The scientist was taking his time approaching them now. Seeing them trapped he seemed to want to toy with them so Rose made the most of his delay and raised the gun still clasped in her hand.
She could count on one hand the number of times she'd aimed a bullet at a living creature, but this time she didn't hesitate and pulled the trigger, the bullets flying under the bell as the Jones sisters yelped, flinching back from the sound.
She was only able to fire twice before he swung out his scorpion-like tail, knocking the weapon from her hands and drawing a fresh scream from Tish as Rose cursed.
A second slash of the tail and all three of them were forced to duck as he tried to clamber across the open space beneath the bell to reach them, reluctant to leave their exit unguarded.
"Split up!" Rose hissed at Martha, shoving the other woman towards her sister before clambering around the walkway in the opposite direction, forcing Lazarus to split his attention and decide which of them he would lunge for.
"Spoilt for choice, Professor?" Rose taunted breathlessly, and he snarled at her, looking between her and the two sisters, hesitating.
Unfortunately, as she'd told the Doctor earlier, the Professor was smart, and she cursed again as he slammed his tail through the wooden catwalk, knocking Tish to her knees before he managed to knock Martha over the edge.
"Martha!" Rose yelled, the cry echoed by Tish, but the woman had just managed to catch herself and was clinging to the edge of the splintered wooden boards, hanging over a drop of hundreds of feet.
Rose and Lazarus both dove for Martha, but while the mutant scientist hovered over her threateningly, Rose stretched out on her stomach and leant down. Wrapping her hands around Martha's arms, she simultaneously made sure that the woman wouldn't fall, while placing herself between Martha and Lazarus once more.
Her skin was crawling with barely restrained fear, and Tish was yelling for Lazarus to get away from them, but it was the organ music, rising rapidly in volume, that drew a cry from Rose.
Her ears were still ringing from the machine earlier in the night, and as the volume climbed she struggled not to let go of Martha and press her hands to her ears. The louder it grew, the more her head pounded with pain, and tears began to leak down her face.
She barely noticed Lazarus fall past them, his roars only adding to the agony in Rose's head as the crescendo came to a crashing finale when the Professor's mutated body smashed into the floor of the cathedral below, and the Doctor finally stopped playing.
Silence rang out through the building then, almost as painful as the cacophony of sound they'd just been subjected to, until Martha's strained gasps, and her own hitching sobs of pain, reached Rose's ears.
"We've got you!" Tish told Martha, joining Rose on the rickety wooden catwalk and helping her to pull Martha back up onto the thin ledge. The second the other woman was safe Rose sat back, released Martha into the care of her sister, and pressed her hands against her ears, whimpering.
She checked her fingers for blood, but saw nothing, and covered her ears again waiting for the throbbing through her skull to ease.
The Doctor's voice shouted through the cathedral, his voice rising up to them coated in concern, didn't help.
"Martha?" He shouted, the questions in his voice clear, "Rose?"
"I'm okay, Doctor!" Martha shouted back breathlessly as she clung to her sister, and Rose flinched. "We're all okay!".
The Doctor didn't respond, and she knew he'd be checking on Lazarus, so slowly she pulled her hands away from her head again. The two Jones sisters were hugging and laughing with relief, adrenaline-fuelled giggles escaping them, and Rose didn't want to interrupt.
Quietly she climbed to her feet, retrieved her dropped gun and returned it to the holster against her leg before moving carefully down the stairs heading back into the main part of the cathedral before the Doctor could come and find them.
She only made it as far as the altar before she was caught up into a hard hug, arms wrapped tightly around her waist as she was spun, and the Doctor pressed his face into her hair.
Her ribs creaked in protest, but she coiled her arms around his shoulders, hugging him back just as hard, and she couldn't stop the relieved grin plastering itself across her face at the still-familiar feel of his body curled around hers.
"What I said, about humans facing death? That wasn't an invitation to go and do just that," he scolded against her ear, before gently placing her back on her feet.
She was saved from trying to explain her actions by the sound of Martha and Tish coming down the stairs behind her, and the Doctor stepped over to hug Martha as well, grinning down at the woman brightly.
"I didn't know you could play," Martha said breathlessly.
"Oh, well, you know. If you hang around with Beethoven, you're bound to pick up a few things," the Doctor said, and Martha grinned.
"Hmm, especially about playing loud?" She teased, and the Doctor stared at her blankly for a long moment, long enough to make Rose narrow her eyes in suspicion.
"Sorry?" He asked, but his face burst into a delighted grin when Martha laughed and rolled her eyes, while Rose openly groaned at his truly dreadful sense of humour.
The Doctor and Rose stood side-by-side leaning against the Black SUV that Rose had said was her car, while they waited for Martha to reassure her family that she was alive and safe.
The Tardis was still parked in Martha's flat, so Rose had offered to drive them all there. The last time he'd seen Rose she'd had no idea how to drive, so the offer had startled him more than it should have.
Another reminder of their time apart.
Now that they weren't solving puzzles or running for their lives, it seemed like neither of them knew quite what to say, but the longer they stood there the wider their grins grew, and the more sideways glances he caught her shooting him.
Admittedly, he was catching her when he sent his own sidelong gazes at the blonde, and he smothered an elated giggle in the back of his throat.
"I can't believe I found you," Rose murmured softly beside him, and the Doctor hummed a soft sound of delight in response.
One of them slipped their hand into the others, and he honestly didn't know which of them had moved first, but it was as easy and as simple as the first time. Before Rose had believed in aliens, and when the Doctor had worn leather and jeans, and the Doctor felt his grin grow impossibly wide as he gazed down at her, watching a flush rise in her cheeks.
"Oh, shut it," she mumbled, embarrassment lining her voice as she ducked her head.
"All right, let's get out of here before mum hogties me in the boot of her car," Martha complained as she approached them, and both Rose and the Doctor jumped, startled.
She pulled back from him then, and the Doctor couldn't smother the bereft feeling that flooded through him as she released his hand, his eyes settling on her firmly as though she were about to disappear.
Thankfully, Rose missed his moment of weakness, busy shooting Martha a warm smile and digging through her bag for car keys, but the Doctor felt his hearts throb and he shoved his hands in his pockets to avoid reaching out for her again.
A single beep later and the car was unlocked, and shortly after that all three of them were settled in the vehicle. Rose driving, the Doctor claiming the front seat beside her, and Martha sitting in the back.
The only time any of them spoke was when Martha needed to give Rose directions, but before the atmosphere had a chance to become too awkward or tense, Rose was pulling up in front of the block of flats Martha and he had left earlier that night, and shut off the engine.
"I'll just... go... unlock the door," Martha muttered after a beat of silence, and the Doctor shot her a grateful look over his shoulder as she slipped out of the car.
Coming to investigate Lazarus had been a good excuse to come back for Martha, and he still wanted to offer the intelligent young woman a place on the Tardis, but Rose... He needed Rose like air.
The pair of them sat in the front of the car, and he watched her carefully, her eyes staring out of the driver-side window as she watched Martha move up to the door of her flat and let herself in.
The silence held another moment before Rose sighed and her hands slid to undo her seatbelt, clearly preparing to go inside, and the Doctor cleared his throat, summoning his courage.
"Before we go in, Rose," he prompted softly, holding out his hand and wiggling his fingers with just a slight frown.
He'd heard the gunfire in the cathedral, and there was only one of the three women who might have been carrying a firearm.
"What?" She asked, blinking at him, and the Doctor's frown deepened.
"The gun," he said simply, trying not to let the judgement leech into his voice. He didn't know what she'd been through, what skills she'd needed to learn to survive, but he wouldn't have the weapon on board the Tardis.
He couldn't make any guesses as to how successful he was in keeping his voice neutral based on her expression, because a moment after his request the Doctor was struggling to avert his eyes as Rose tugged the long skirt of her dress up her legs.
The slit that had reached her knees rose with her tugging and put one creamy thigh on display, showing off her gun and its holster in a way he really shouldn't have found at all attractive.
"What are you going to do with it?" Rose asked, even as her fingers deftly unstrapped the weapon with quick, practised moves, and the Doctor forced his gaze to settle on her face.
"Disable the firing pin," he told her, refusing to apologise, but she handed over the weapon without argument, and he blinked at her in surprise, earning a grin in response.
"What?" Rose asked him, and he startled slightly, shaking his head as he pulled out the sonic.
"Just... I didn't expect you to hand it over so easily," he admitted, buzzing the sonic over the gun until he heard a sharp cracking sound. Rose took the weapon back but didn't even check it over before sliding it into the glove box.
"Don't need a weapon when I've got your gob," Rose teased, and he lifted an eyebrow, but she sobered fast. "It was always a last resort, Doctor," she promised softly, "I can count on one hand the number of times I've fired a weapon at a living thing, and one of those times was tonight."
"How long?" The Doctor asked softly, his voice a whisper of fear as his mind latched onto the single most important part of what she'd said.
Less than five times. But was that less than five times in a year, or in ten years?
She didn't pretend to not know what he was asking, and her smile vanished. Rose turned her eyes out onto the dark street outside the car, carefully avoiding his imploring expression and he saw her swallow hard.
"Martha's waiting for us," she tried to deflect, but a soft whine of pained complaint escaped him. The Doctor wished he could say that the sound had been intentional, a manipulation to get her to answer his questions, but it had slipped out, beyond his control.
How much time had he lost?
She turned her head back around and stared at him for a long moment, her gorgeous brown eyes wary and guarded, before her shoulders slumped in surrender, and her fingers tangled together in her lap nervously.
"If I tell you how long it's been for me, can we leave the rest for later?" She asked, staring at him intently.
He was bursting with questions, aching with the need for answers, but she was right. It had been a long night, so the Doctor nodded reluctantly. In part, because her request implied she'd already decided to travel with him again, and that answered one of his most important questions right off.
"Just over four years," Rose admitted, and the Doctor felt his blood turn to ice. "Three years, four months in the parallel world, and I've been back in this universe around eight months... give or take a few weeks."
"Eight months?" The Doctor breathed out, his mind spinning. "You were listed dead at the battle of Canary Wharf, how have you been―"
"Later, Doctor," Rose repeated, but there was a reluctant grin on her face as she watched him struggle to hold back the half a dozen new questions her answer had given him.
"I want to see the Tardis. I've missed her," Rose prompted, and after a moment, the Doctor sighed, surrendering. The buzzing, impatient hum in his mind told him that the feeling was mutual, so he nodded.
"Well, come along then Rose Tyler. The old girl's missed you too," he said, and hopped out of the car quickly, letting the knowledge that she'd been back in this universe for eight months, and the universe hadn't come to an end, reassure him.
She followed, locking the car behind her, and tucking the keys under the wheel arch before accepting the hand he'd been holding out for her, their fingers wrapped around each other as he led her into Martha's flat.
The moment Rose laid her eyes on the beautiful Timeship standing in the far corner of Martha's living room, she gasped softly.
"Oh, look at you!" She cooed, ignoring the bemused stare she could see settling over Martha's face and brushing past the Doctor, pulling away from his hand wrapped around hers so she could approach the Tardis.
"I thought it was just you who was nutty enough to talk to a time machine," Martha teased the Doctor, but Rose ignored them both, pressing her cheek against the double doors, and stretching her arms out so her fingers could curl around the edges of the ship in a hug.
"She's not just a ship, she's alive. With a mind, and a heart. Tardis were grown, not built," the Doctor was explaining.
"So, when you're talking to it— her..."
"She's telepathic," the Doctor confirmed and Rose hummed softly, lowering the shields in her mind just enough to feel the ship brush against her thoughts in welcome.
"You beautiful thing, I have missed you!" She whispered to the ship, turning her head to press a kiss against the wooden doors, and feeling the Tardis almost purr in her mind.
She could hear the Doctor explaining the Tardis' translation matrix to Martha, but she didn't care. There was very little she wanted more, in that moment, than to be wrapped up inside the ship, and she pulled her Tardis key out of her purse, pulling the chain back over her head, before unlocking the door to her home and stepping inside.
If she'd thought the Tardis was purring while she stood outside, the hum of love and affection that washed over her when she stepped through the doors brought tears to Rose's eyes, and he couldn't stop herself running her hands over the rails as she moved towards the console.
"I wasn't telepathic when I left," she realised aloud, her voice barely a whisper, and the humming changed tone as she circled the console, fingertips brushing against the surface lightly, stroking the ship like she was petting a particularly intelligent cat.
"Well, maybe the ability was there, but it wasn't trained, was it?" Rose corrected, smirking up at the rotor as the lights flickered around her.
"Don't need to be telepathic to understand you, though, do I, gorgeous? Just need to pay attention. You know how to make yourself understood. Beautiful, powerful, and intelligent, there's no one in their right mind who wouldn't love you to pieces," she cooed, and if she didn't know better she'd think the warmth in her mind was the Tardis blushing.
Gently the Timeship nudged her attention to the doors, and Rose tilted her head slightly in curiosity when she saw the Doctor standing in the doorway, hesitating in the entrance.
"I can sense a pattern developing" she heard Martha say, "you should take more care in the future... or the past... or whatever other time period you find yourself in."
Rose raised her eyebrows when she realised that the pair were saying goodbye. She'd thought that Martha was a new companion, but maybe she'd got it wrong. Moving towards the doors quietly, she shamelessly eavesdropped, because Martha had been brilliant, and if he was walking away because of her she intended to give the Time Lord a piece of her mind.
"It's good fun though, isn't it?" The Doctor prompted cheerfully, "So, what do you say? One more trip?" He offered, and Rose blew out a soft sigh of relief, leaning her hip against the rail as she waited for the pair to finish up.
"No... sorry," Martha muttered, and Rose bit her lip when she saw the Doctor lean back as though he'd been smacked.
"What do you mean? I thought you liked it?"
"You've got Rose back now. You don't need me—"
Rose winced and moved to step forward, but the warning hum of the Tardis halted her, and she waited.
"Martha," the Doctor cut the young woman off, "I told you. You were never replacing Rose. You were always on board for your own merits."
Rose pressed her hand to her mouth, tears gathering in her eyes again until she slammed them closed. The fact that he'd talked about her, that she wasn't another Sarah Jane, was such a relief that it almost hurt, and it took her a moment to gather her composure again.
"If I'm gonna come along, I don't want to be just some passenger anymore, someone you take along for a treat. If that's how you see me, like, I dunno, some kind of pet then I'd rather say here," Martha was scolding him when Rose was able to bring herself to listen again, and the fire in her voice made Rose smile.
Oh, Martha was really good.
The Doctor took a deep breath and swayed back onto his heels for a moment before he nodded and sighed.
"Okay then," he said slowly, "if that's what you want."
Rose could feel the irritation running through the Tardis, and she rolled her eyes and stepped towards the Time Lord, even before Martha snapped her answer at him.
"Right, well, we've already said goodbye once today, so it's probably best if you just go," the young woman snarled, and Rose jabbed the Doctor in the ribs, hard, making him jump.
"You're such a prat," Rose growled as he stared at her with startled eyes, and a flush quickly crept up his cheeks.
Martha turned back to them both, a frown of confusion on her face as she shook her head, "What?"
""I said 'okay'," the Doctor repeated, shrugging one shoulder and Rose rolled her eyes. She could see the rising hope on Martha's face and shook her head, jabbing the Doctor again with her elbow.
"He only takes the best, Martha. If you didn't flake out after the first trip, you might as well move in," Rose explained and Martha gasped, hands lifting to her face as the realisation set in and she launched herself at the Doctor.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" She shrieked, and the Doctor laughed as he caught her in a hug, and Rose leant against the Tardis doors, grinning.
She retreated back into the ship when the Doctor dropped Martha back onto her feet, clearing the ramp for the pair of them to follow her inside, and the Doctor pushed the doors closed quickly.
"Weelll, you were never really just a passenger, were you?" He teased, ushering Martha up the ramp as Rose took a tight hold on the rail surrounding the console waiting for the familiar trembling of the Tardis in flight.
The Doctor spun around the room, flipping off the handbrake and spinning them into the vortex with a grin and sparkling eyes, while Martha tried to smother excited laughter.
"Like Rose said, I only take the best."