A/N: So sorry to those kind enough to be reading this fic that I've taken so long to update. Life is just so crazy these days. Bit of a longer chapter and I'm half way through the next, so hopefully the wait for the next chapter won't be so long. I'm going somewhere with all of this and dropping a few little cookies, so hopefully it'll all make sense in the end.

Thanks as always for reading…

CHAPTER FOUR

A human would have been out of breath from running so far and so fast but the Doctor hadn't even managed a sweat from his exertions. He paused only long enough at reception to find out which ward Rose was in, and then took to the stairs, finding the wait for the lifts an unacceptable delay. He burst out of the heavy double doors of the stairwell into the coldly sterile halls of ICU. Medical staff moved about in that unhurried fashion that still managed to project some measure of urgency. The Doctor instantly saw Jackie, leaning against a far wall, hunched over and sobbing inconsolably into her hands.

The Doctor stood frozen to the spot, not wanting to go over and speak to her, not wanting to have her say the words that would have Rose stolen from him forever, before he was ready. Before he'd steeled himself to lose her - it was too soon. Forcing himself to walk those last few feet to where Jackie was doubled over, was one of the hardest things he'd had to do in his long life but he managed it, just.

"Jackie?" he whispered, placing a hand on her shoulder.

Jackie's head shot up at the sound of his voice, her tear soaked eyes wide and blood shot as she looked up at him.

"Doctor!" she said, her voice cracking with emotion before throwing herself into his arms.

The Doctor closed his eyes and returned the hug, holding her tightly to him as she started to sob again. They stood like that for a moment, Jackie too overcome to say anything more and the Doctor too fearful to ask anything further.

"You have to save her!" declared Jackie, pulling back a little from their embrace and looking frantically into his eyes.

"She's still alive?" asked the Doctor, a fresh hope awakening in him.

"Yes," said Jackie with a desperate nod of her head. "They called me earlier to say… to say-" Jackie lost the ability to string words together for a moment but eventually won the struggle to keep going. "My baby's heart failed," she said with a sob in her voice. "It was everything that her body had gone through, her heart couldn't take it. They thought that they were going to lose her so they rang me to come back but they didn't know Rose, they didn't know how big and strong a heart my Rose has."

The Doctor nodded, he knew first hand just how powerful Rose's heart really was and how it had saved both of them countless times. "What happened, Jackie?" he asked, needing to know how it was that the fiercely alive young woman he dropped off only three short days ago could be in a desperate fight for her life now.

"It happened yesterday at lunch time across the road at the park. There was a young girl playing on the street, Claudette's youngest, Brianna," said Jackie, her voice hollow from the horror of reliving the moment. "Then there was this speeding car. Rose saw it, saw that Brianna wouldn't get out of the way in time so she ran out and pushed her to safety but couldn't do the same for herself. The sound of it, the tyres screeching, her body bouncing off the car, the thud as she hit the ground-" She looked abruptly away. "It was like watching her father die all over again." Jackie looked back up at him. "But you're here now, Doctor, you can make this all go away," said Jackie, grabbing his lapels with shaking hands. "You can go back and stop her from being hit by that car."

"Jackie," said the Doctor with a painful shake of his head. "I can't do that. The time continuum has to remain intact. I can't go back and change it now." It hurt to say the words. The reality of the situation was agony.

"Don't you say that!" cried Jackie, breaking out of his grasp and starting to beat on his chest with her tightly clenched fists. "What is the use of you if you can't save her? What has it all been for, why are you even here if all you can do is watch her die with the rest of us?"

The Doctor let her vent her anger and fear on him, accepting her blows without even flinching, hating the truth in her words.

"You're useless!" she sobbed at him, finally giving up her pummelling of his chest, her knees giving way as she sagged to the ground.

The Doctor caught her before she hit the ground, crouching down beside her as she continued to sob softly.

"Listen to me, Jackie," he pleaded with her desperately. "I'd give anything to change this, but there would be untold consequences if I undid this. It could rip open the world."

Jackie looked up at him with lifeless eyes. "My world is already ripped open, Doctor. Rose is all I have in this life."

The Doctor swallowed hard, knowing how that felt. "I know," he rasped.

"If you can't stop it from happening then you can fix it now."

Both Jackie and the Doctor looked up at the sound of Mickey's voice. His face was ashen and set in a sad, stern expression that the Doctor had never seen before. He had two cups of tea in his hands, obviously for himself and Jackie as they kept watch over Rose together.

"You can take her into the future where they have all that advance medicine to look after her, fix her up as good as new," said Mickey, walking towards them with an intense look on his face. "You can still save her Doctor, you know you can."

"I can't," whispered the Doctor painfully. "The time continuum can't be interfered with. Rose has to survive this by herself; otherwise, if I interfere, then it will threaten the balance of the whole world. Things will start to degenerate and fall apart; this world will break apart at the seams."

"Then Jackie's right," said Mickey bitterly. "What's the use of you?"

In that moment, the Doctor didn't have an answer to that question. Nothing made sense all of a sudden. His whole equilibrium was tilting on its axis and he couldn't think. The Doctor could always think. That was his gift, his mind. Right now though, there was only one thought for him. "I need to see her," he said quietly.

Jackie opened her mouth and it looked like she was going to deny him his request, but then she nodded, shoulders sagging as she looked defeated. The Doctor stepped away from the two of them, walking to her room slowly. In Rose's room it was eerily quiet, save for the sounds coming from the various machines that she was connected to, each one beeping and buzzing at different intervals, letting anyone who was interested know that they were doing their appointed tasks. The Doctor stood over her bed and looked down at the small broken figure that lay in it. Her hair fanned out around her too pale face and tubes ran along her skin, connecting themselves to her and helping her breath, as she no longer had the strength to do so alone.

Apart from a graze on her forehead and heavily bandaged knee it seemed to the Doctor that she could simply be sleeping and that at any moment would open her eyes and demand to know what she was doing stuck in a hospital bed when there were whole galaxies out there to be explored. He reached out a hand and touched one of hers; it also had plastic lines disappearing into its bruised flesh and was scared at how cold it felt.

"There is a chair there, if you wanted to sit down."

The Doctor looked over at the young nurse who had spoken and gave her a small smile, acknowledging her words before reaching behind him and pulling over the chair and taking a seat, all without releasing Rose's hand.

"She's a fighter that one," said the nurse in a kindly tone.

"You have no idea," agreed the Doctor, looking back down at Rose sadly.

"Are you a relative?" asked the nurse, coming round to check on her various lines.

"No," said the Doctor softly, not taking his eyes off Rose.

"Oh, then you're her…"

"Just hers," finished the Doctor simply as the other woman trailed off expectantly. It was the Doctor's turn to trail off then, lost for a moment in his own dark musings. "In spite of the impossibility of it all," he whispered softly, more to himself than anyone else. "I'm hers."

"I'm sorry, Mr… ah-"

"Smith," said the Doctor, giving her another brief smile. "Doctor John Smith."

The nurse looked surprised. "Oh, you're a doctor?"

"Of this and that," he confirmed, returning to look at Rose. "How is she doing?"

"It's her heart," said the nurse with a sad shake of her head. "It's had to endure so much, it just got too much and it stopped. We managed to get it going again, but there was so much damage done. I'm sorry, but you should really prepare yourself. Her heart can't go on much longer as it is. I really am very sorry, Dr Smith."

"It will be alright," said the Doctor, almost talking to himself again as he leaned closer to Rose. "She can have one of mine."

The nurse arched an eyebrow at the odd declaration, but obviously decided not to press the matter as she quietly left the room.

"You know, Rose Tyler," said the Doctor in a low voice, leaning in as close as he could to her. "This is no way to win an argument. Now, I want you to stop all of this foolishness and open your eyes and look at me." His only answer was the unrelenting sounds of the instruments that were currently keeping Rose alive and monitoring her progress.

"Alright then, if that is how you want to play it," said the Doctor firmly, intent on getting some kind of reaction from her. "I should let you know that I was going to take you to meet some real live mermaids. Yes, that's right, mermaids, but if you're going to carry on like this you can just miss out. What do you say to that then?"

Again, only the machines answered him.

"I have to say I'm very disappointed in you, Rose," he continued with feigned casualness. "I leave you alone for three days and you go and get yourself hit by a car. I mean, do I have to watch over you every minute, young lady?"

Silence.

The Doctor gave a small choked self-deprecating laugh at his ineffectual attempts to raise some kind of response from her. "Because I would, you know," he confessed to her in an aching whisper. "Every minute of every day if you'd only let me, Rose Tyler." He studied her face carefully, looking for any sign of the Rose that he knew. Any sign at all that she was still in there and could hear him.

"I'm not ready," he confided to her helplessly. "Not yet, Rose, it's too soon."

He reached out a hand and brushed away a loose lock of hair from her forehead as he spoke, gently stroking her soft skin, clenching his jaw tightly in an attempt to hold at bay the full force of his emotions. The Doctor shook his head then as frustration overtook him.

"Why do you humans have to be so hopelessly fragile?" he asked, almost angrily, the pain he was in needing some kind of release. "Why couldn't you be like the Diconians? They're covered in a bony shell and emit a toxic gas. I mean, now there is a sensible defence mechanism." Once started with this train of thought, the Doctor couldn't seem to stop himself, the words falling out of his mouth. "What do you humans have, eh? You can't run fast, can't fly or spit venom. You're all soft and squidgy and have no ability to regenerate or repair yourself to any real degree. I ask you, could you be any more helpless? And you live for such a short time - eighty, ninety years. You're only just starting to get the first inkling of how life is by then and then you have to up and die." The Doctor forced himself to stop talking and get himself back under control. He dragged in an unsteady breath. "Sorry," he apologised, shame faced. "I know you can't help being so genetically retarded. Oh, sorry." The Doctor grimaced. "That was me being rude again, wasn't it? I really must try and get a better handle on that."

The Doctor looked down at the hand that he still held in his and brought it to his face, holding her palm against his cheek and sighed heavily. "Now listen to me, Rose Tyler, and listen carefully," said the Doctor his tone unutterably determined. "This isn't how it ends, so I don't care what it is you have to do but don't let this win. You can do this, Rose, I know you can, you just have to fight to come back to us, and if I know one thing about you it is that you are a fighter."

Only that interminable silence met his entreaty and the Doctor sighed deeply again and went back to stroking her hand gently. It seemed stupid now but it had seemed to him that he should be able to bring her back into this world by the sheer force of his will alone. That she'd feel him there, hear his voice and that would be enough, she'd open those big brown eyes and his Rose would be returned to him.

"She's the best thing I ever did with my life, you know?"

The Doctor turned to look at Jackie, not noticing her having entered the room before that.

"From that first moment I held her, the first time she looked at me I just fell so in love with her." Jackie walked over to stand on the other side of Rose's bed and began to stroke her daughter's hair. "I didn't even know you could love someone like that. It was like I discovered a completely new type of love," she said, more to herself than anyone else. "I'd get up in the middle of the night and sit and stare at her. I just couldn't believe I'd had a part in creating this perfect little being."

The Doctor looked from Jackie to Rose and felt a pang of empathy for the other woman. He knew what it was to fall into those brown eyes and never find your way out again, more than that, never want to escape them. He knew that Jackie's problem with him had always been over her fear for Rose's safety and he couldn't deny her that. On more than one occasion, the Doctor had felt the need to keep her safe well up inside him and obliterate any other consideration that he might have hesitated over before. He blinked. So why then hadn't he listened to her concerns about Neris? The thought lumbered into being almost reluctantly, and the Doctor tried to fathom why it hadn't been a concern before. He trusted Rose's instincts, always had.

"She was a right little miss, right from the beginning," said Jackie with a choked laugh. "Always bossing all the other kids around and getting into all kinds of trouble. I used to spend half my life up at the Principal's office. Trouble was she always cared too much, always end up doing anything to look after her friends. I used to tell her 'Rose, you can't get so involved in every little thing, you're not responsible for everyone in the world' but would she listen?"

"If she listened, she wouldn't be Rose," said the Doctor, a slight frown marring his brow. Rose cared for others. Deeply. She wouldn't willingly turn her back on anyone unless she had genuine concerns. Was she right to be worried about Neris? The Doctor shook his head a little to clear it. Why hadn't he asked himself that before just then?

"I know," said Jackie, a tear rolling down her face. "I just can't believe that her heart is letting her down so badly when it was always the strongest thing about her."

"I'm sorry, Jackie," said the Doctor with deep sincerity. "So sorry, if I could do something but the consequences, they're just too vast."

"As long as you can live with the consequences of doing nothing, Doctor," said Jackie, fixing him with a hard look, grief stripping the emotion from her voice. "Can you live with the thought of never seeing her again, knowing that you could have saved her? Oh, I know that you live a long time and eventually you would have had to leave her, but like this? Are you prepared never to be with her again, prepared to watch as we put her in the cold ground next to her father before her time?"

"That's not fair, Jackie," said the Doctor, clenching his jaw from the pain of her words. "If I could change places with her I would, in a heartbeat."

"Yeah well," said Jackie bitterly, "one thing I know about life is that it isn't fair. It isn't fair that my beautiful daughter is lying in that bed fighting for her life, but there it is. It's not fair that of all the people on this earth you could actually do something about it, but say that you can't. It's not fair that you stole her away from me these last three years, and I've spent the whole time worrying myself sick that you were going to get her killed with all of your wild adventures." Jackie glared at him. "You had no right to come into our lives and break apart my family."

"It was Rose's choice," said the Doctor stiffly, not used to being on the defensive about such things.

"Ha," said Jackie dNerisively, "she never had a choice. First time she laid eyes on you she was a goner. I told her she was infatuated with you, that she wasn't thinking straight. I wish now that that was all that it was. This isn't some silly little crush that you get your heart broken over and move on older and wiser is it, Doctor?"

The Doctor frowned, not sure if he wanted to hear what she was going to say next.

"Every time she came home I could see it in her eyes," said Jackie dully, looking back at her daughter. "You have a power over her, a power that would see her trade her life for yours without any thought. A power that means that she'd never willingly leave you. My only comfort was that she had the same power over you. Or at least I thought she did." Jackie then fixed him with a fierce stare. "Guess I was wrong," she said in a hard voice. "Looks like she was just another disposable distraction like all the rest after all."

"Don't you say that," said the Doctor, his voice beginning to rise in anger. "Rose was never that to me!"

"Prove it!" she taunted him harshly, grief making her cruel. "Prove to me how important my daughter is to you, otherwise you just keep the hell away from her! I never want to see you near my Rose again, do you hear me!"

The sound of their raised voices had attracted some attention and the nurse reappeared in the room with a disapproving look on her face. "What's going on here?" she demanded in a loud whisper. "This is a hospital, not a football field."

"It's alright," said Jackie harshly. "The Doctor was just leaving."

The Doctor held her bitter gaze for a moment, the anger and frustration welling up inside him at her unfair accusations. He wanted to shout at her that it wasn't true, that Rose meant so much to him but he couldn't back those words up, at least not in the way Jackie wanted him to. He gave Jackie a resigned nod and started to walk out of the room.

"Take a last look, Doctor," said Jackie coldly, her grief hardening her heart, "You're never going to see her again, no matter what happens."

The Doctor turned round then and locked with Jackie's terrible gaze again before his eyes slid unbidden down to the woman that they were fighting over. He seemed frozen then, unable to take his eyes off her if indeed this was going to be the last time he saw her. The horrible reality of being without her hitting him like a tidal wave, rooting him to the spot. Just how exactly was he meant to leave her there like this anyway?

Unbidden, he found himself walking slowly back to stand beside Rose's bed, uncaring of Jackie's angry glare and bent down low over her so that his lips were pressed directly to her ear needing to say so much but for once words failed him. There was still the faint scent of her perfume on her skin that had somehow managed to ward off the cold, sterile smell of the hospital and as he breathed it in the words came.

Three simple words.

"Stay with me," he whispered simply against her ear so that only she could hear.

Three simple words.

Not the usual three words that perhaps someone else might utter at a time like this, but for the Doctor they confessed a need that he'd never allowed himself to ask anyone to fill before. Always he'd let the people in his life drift in and out, holding onto everything loosely because that was what life had taught him, that everything ended and to try and fight that was a battle he was never going to win. So, he hadn't tried, just accepted that was how it was and always would be and lived his life accordingly. But now, Rose had changed that for him. For the first time in his very long life he couldn't let go, couldn't let her slip through his fingers like everything and everyone else. Three simple words that said everything there was to say.

Stay with me.

Nothing and no one else mattered except for the truth of that need in those words.