Once again, no beta. All mistakes are mine.
There are some more references to the "Rose Tyler – The Dimension Canon" stories.
"Rose!" the Doctor whispered, astounded. He turned around quickly and there she was, resting on the door frame, her arms crossed in front of her chest as she kept looking at him intently. No wonder she was awake by now. Parallel Sandshoe's hasty departure had been prompted by her imminent awakening and, to the Eleventh Doctor, it now felt like centuries since his alter ego had left.
"Doctor, why are you still here?" she asked again.
"Rose! Are you okay?" he asked her.
"Guess so," she answered, "but you need to leave immediately."
"No need to hurry," he told her. "Truth be told, I was considering the possibility of staying here for a while right before you c... Oh… Hold on a minute," he said all of a sudden as realisation dawned on him. "How do you know who I am?"
"Right," Rose said, her eyes widening. "To begin with, imagine I never heard part of your conversation with Clara just now. It still wasn't difficult to work out who you were."
"How long have you known then?" he asked quite puzzled.
"Second time 'e... you… brought me here. When I kissed 'im… You… The other you… That third one of you… Out of the four of you I've known… I mean, it all came back! I remembered everything. What actually gave it away though was the memory of a TARDIS inside another TARDIS. That was when everything sank in. The Doctor in the TARDIS, regeneration, the other Doctor in the other TARDIS, and Clara."
"How much do you know about Clara?" the Doctor asked, anxious.
"I know she's the one holding your hand now," she answered, the corner of her lips curling up into a sweet smile. "That's why I can't understand why you haven't left with 'er. Doctor, if you want to ever see her again, you should leave immediately."
"I'm not leaving you, Rose," he answered, sauntering towards her.
"But you must," she said, stepping towards him. "I know how it feels to see you go never to return, Doctor, and I'm not letting that happen to her."
The Doctor's hearts sank inside his chest.
"Rose, I…," he said sheepishly as he looked down. "I don't know what to say, I… I guess the easy way out of this terribly long-due conversation would be to put the blame on Sandshoes, but it'd be terribly unfair of me to do so. You know, there's this very curious thing affecting many of the intelligent species I've encountered throughout the centuries, and my species is no exception. As we grow up we may sometimes look back on many of the things we did in our youth and regret how we dealt with them. Sometimes we can even feel ashamed of what we used to be but I find that, out of respect for the man I was, I can't blame him for acting the way he did. And yet, strong as you are, what's been preventing you from starting a new life all this time has been the uneasiness caused by not knowing that he was okay. That I was okay. What I blame him for is never mulling over the emotional impact this would have on you and I'd like to apologise for that."
"You don't need to apologise, Doctor," she answered, stepping closer to him. "I didn't need an apology. I needed an explanation, and I got one. Right before he regenerated, he did explain and 'e told me he did it all for me."
"Like I wouldn't know that," the Doctor smiled softly as he took her hand. "You know, it's been centuries this me has been alive and kicking, but..."
"How old are you now?" Rose cut in.
"Younger than the hills I guess, but still so old I can't even remember my age anymore," he answered, slightly shaking his head.
"You can't be serious," she chuckled.
"But I am," he replied as Rose started laughing. All of a sudden, the Doctor's troubled hearts filled with immense joy and a little bit of nostalgia. Forever as it might have been since the day he had lost her at Canary Wharf, he had always remembered her laughter. "Anyway, what I was saying is, even if this new me would probably have done many things quite differently, what I know is whatever he did, he did it for you," he added, squeezing her hand. "In the end, there was nothing he wouldn't have done for you. Anne Boleyn is living proof of that."
"I know," Rose whispered, a tear unanticipatedly falling down her face. "Guess I always have."
"I'm here now," he said, letting go of her hand and putting his hands on her shoulders instead. "And I'm not going anywhere."
"Don't be daft, Doctor. Of course you are," she said looking softly into his eyes. "There's nothing for you in this universe. You think I don't know that?"
"There's still you, Rose Tyler," he said as he pushed her chin slightly up with this hand.
Oh, how beautiful she looked in the moonlight.
"You'd still do anything for me, wouldn't you? Even this!" she said, grabbing his elbows with her hands. "But I won't let you. You need to go back, Doctor. You need to go find her before that portal closes for good."
"And what about you?" the Doctor asked as his eyes widened.
"Well, thing is… I think there might be something for me in this universe after all," she said, a smile of hope appearing on her lips. "At the very least, there's someone I owe an apology to."
"Sandshoes!" the Doctor said as he put his hands on her hips. "Rose, you need to find him immediately!"
"No need to worry about that," she said reassuringly, "I know exactly where he is."
"No you don't," said the Doctor with a frown. "He said you didn't."
"And sometimes he makes mistakes, don't you remember that? As I told you… Well, the other you, before he regenerated into this you… I may not have felt the strength it would've taken to meet 'im, but that doesn't mean I've been neglecting 'im completely."
"So where is he?" asked the Doctor, puzzled.
"Over there," she answered pointing at Canary Wharf through the window. "Torchwood. Top floor. The Doctor in the attic."
"But he may not be there anymore, Rose," he said as he took his hands off her hips. "He's grown a TARDIS now and…"
"I know," she said, nodding almost imperceptibly.
"...and he said he'd be leaving for good."
"He still hasn't," she said, "I know he hasn't."
"How?"
"My friend Clive's been keeping an eye on 'im. Blimey!" she said as her mobile phone started to vibrate in her trouser pocket. "Here he is! Clive?" she called before she put him on speakerphone. "Clive, are you there?"
"Rose! Where are you? I suspect Rob's been messing with the wormhole and the portal..."
"Well I'm back, so no doubt that he has," she answered. "I made it very clear to 'im that he absolutely shouldn't, but you know us Tylers, we can be quite…"
"Rose you need to get here asap," Clive told her. "There's something weird going on!"
"Well, as you've guessed yourself, it's probably just Rob messing with things a little too much," she said.
"Who's Rob?" asked the Doctor, frowning.
"Long story," she answered. "Parallel male me is probably the best way to put it."
"Rose, this has nothing to do with Rob," Clive interrupted. "Unless he can make wormholes pop up like magicians can pull rabbits out of top hats."
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"The Doctor's found something really weird... He's still not quite sure why, but apparently thousands of wormholes have suddenly sprung everywhere across the fabric of spacetime. And where there are wormholes there are portals as he keeps saying, so if I was you I'd come here asap! He was about to leave right when he found out, and if it was going to be difficult to track him down within just one universe, imagine how utterly impossible it'll be to find him now that he's got plenty of wormholes to choose from."
"Be there in ten! See ya!" she answered, then quickly hung up and put her phone back in her pocket. "I'm sorry Doctor," she said anxiously, "but I really gotta go."
But the Doctor seemed distracted for some reason. Distracted and silent. Terribly silent, to be precise. If it had been the previous Doctor, Rose would have guessed by the look in his eyes that he had just realised something important. Whatever might be going on in his brain, she needed to know and she needed to know right now.
"Doctor, is everything okay?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, a bit lost in his thoughts and smiling to himself. "Yes I am, it's just… Those wormholes, I think… I think I know why they've popped up all of a sudden."
"And are they dangerous? Is something coming?" she asked, her eyes widening.
"Oh no," said the Doctor. "You shouldn't worry at all. Everything's gone back to the way it used to be, that's all. Which means you should get going, 'cause I'm sure Sandshoes will find out soon enough."
"Okay," she said. She hadn't quite understood the last bit the Doctor had said, but she had no time to find out. Her anxiety had just got the best of her again.
"So," said the Doctor, "this is it, then."
"It is," she said, "but this time you can't run away. You'll just have to say it."
"Say what?"
"Goodbye?," she said, smiling nervously. "And you should say it now, otherwise I'll be losing three Doctors in one day and I'm definitely not looking forward to that."
"Are you sure this is what you want?" he asked, looking at her intently.
"Never been surer of anything in my entire life," she said, a sudden sparkle of happiness visible in her eyes. The Doctor noticed of course, and the certainty that this time she would be able to follow the path she really wanted to follow gave him hope.
"Rose," he whispered, taking both her hands in his. "I don't want you to think that… This… This doesn't mean that…"
"I know," she whispered back. "What this means is I was wrong. There'll always be someone out there to hold your hand, Doctor. It used to be Sarah Jane, then it was me for a while, and now it's Clara's turn. No matter what happens. You'll never be alone."
"Sometimes I am," he said, squeezing her hand. "And when that happens, it's the memory of you all that keeps me going. Then one magic day I find a new friend and my world starts spinning again, but that doesn't make any of my former friends any less important. Least of all you, Rose Tyler." He raised her hand to his mouth, his eyes fixed on hers, and planted a soft kiss on its back. "The body and what it does and how it does it… That changes, but all the Doctors that have taken over since I first met you have had one thing in common. I call it the 'Rose Tyler touch'. You changed me, Rose. Forever."
"It's only fair that I did," she said as tears streamed down her face, "'cause that's what you did to me too."
The Doctor himself this time right before he felt a tear running down his face as well. It was to be expected of course. The story of the Doctor and Rose Tyler was finally coming to an end.
Both acted instinctively when they sank into each other's arms. Rose was about to stand on her toes when he brought his head down, letting his forehead rest on hers before he pressed his lips against hers.
And then it happened. Pictures of a past he had completely forgotten about started to flash through the Doctor's brain. Rose was holding his hand and running right in front of him, and his wrist was covered by the sleeve of that familiar brown pinstripe fabric that his previous self had been so fond of. Rose was always there but the background behind her kept changing. First there were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, then there was the lost island of Atlantis, and then came the Library of Alexandria, and the Great Pyramid of Giza, and the Ancient City of Petra, and the Northern Lights, and Venice, and Victoria Falls.
Countless other memories of a time long gone kept coming to life quite vividly in his head. Borrowed time that he and Rose had got to spend together.
Borrowed time when they had loved each other madly.
Then there was the Powell Estate and the saddest goodbye he had ever said, and finally there was Bad Wolf Bay and Rose and the metacrisis Doctor standing hand in hand while they stood staring at the TARDIS.
"I think I'd like to get a really long coat, just like that one. Wanna help me with that?" the Doctor had said.
But then Rose ran away from him, and all the images that had been making their way to his brain started to fade until they vanished into nothingness.
As they pulled away from each other, Rose buried her face in the Doctor's chest as he let his chin rest on her head and raised a hand to caress her long blonde hair.
Pulling away from their embrace, they kept staring at each other's tearful faces. As the Doctor raised a hand to rub Rose's tears off her cheek, he finally spoke.
"Thanks for that," he told her.
"Thanks for what?" she asked, a bit confused.
"For all those memories," he told her. "Same thing that happened to you on Bad Wolf Bay. Thanks for bringing them back."
"So you've remembered," she said as the Doctor stared into her bewildered eyes.
"I have," he whispered, caressing her cheek gently with the back of his hand. "I remember it all now and I will never forget. Go now, Rose, and have that wonderful life that you so truly deserve."
"I promise," she said, taking his hand one last time. "Goodbye Doctor."
"Goodbye Rose."
Rose took a few steps backwards and watched as the Doctor produced his sonic from his pocket and pressed it against the vortex manipulator around his wrist. In under three seconds, he disappeared in a flash of light.
As soon as the Doctor was gone, Rose turned around and ran along the long corridor that led to the door. She grabbed the handle and opened the door, but if it had been her intention to rush down the stairs immediately afterwards, she found herself forced to come to a halt instead. Much to her surprise, there was someone standing outside her flat, and that someone happened to be no other than the Eleventh Doctor himself. Again.
She stared at him as she furrowed her brow and was opening her mouth to ask him what he could possibly be doing there when she noticed a very familiar item of clothing over his arm. Upon recognizing it, she gaped. It was the Doctor's - her Doctor's - brown coat.
"Got to his TARDIS right in time to rescue this before it burnt," he said. "Give it to him. It'll do him a lot of good," he added as he put it over Rose's arm.
"Doctor, how did you...?" she started, but didn't have the chance to finish the question. Once again, his sonic screwdriver worked its wonders against the vortex manipulator and the Doctor quickly disappeared. This time, she was certain, for good.
For a brief moment Rose wondered what had just happened, puzzled as she looked down at the coat on her arm. Bringing it up to her nose, its scent sent a shiver down her spine. She buried her face on it as memories of a time she had believed gone forever flooded her mind on the spur of the moment.
"Doctor," she whispered. As soon as she raised her head she took a deep breath and rushed down the stairs so very decidedly that all of her neighbours could hear her hurried footsteps.
She ran desperately for her future before it was too late. And for the first time since that terrible day at Canary Wharf, the decision that determined what it might be like had been entirely hers.
Clara felt a sudden tightness in her throat when the doors of the Tenth Doctor's TARDIS slammed and the spaceship dematerialised in front of her own eyes. Next thing she knew, the events she had just witnessed came back to her, the images flashing through her mind like a motion picture.
The first time the Tenth Doctor had asked her Doctor to get Rose out of there, she had felt a pang of uneasiness in her stomach. It was the second time he did it that she had started to panic.
"Doctor, you're not going to…," she had said, but as she saw him rushing through the door she seriously doubted he had been able to hear her at all. There had been nothing for her to do except watch as the Tenth Doctor suddenly burst into regeneration energy and Rose fell unconscious into the arms of her Doctor. Upon seeing him turning to the portal that had allowed Rose to come back, she had called to him. Once and twice and again. Unfortunately, to no avail. Curiously enough, when the realisation of what he was about to do dawned on her, Clara also realised she was not the slightest bit surprised. Not that long ago she had done everything in her power to save Rose's life herself, and right now she would personally have taken her back to that other reality if the circumstances had required her to do so. Still, now that the moment of truth had finally arrived, all she could think about was she was not ready to see the Doctor - her Doctor - go. She suspected what taking Rose back to her new universe might entail and, as the Doctor had turned to look at her, the pain she had seen in his eyes had only confirmed her suspicion. He hadn't just looked at her in sadness. That had been his way of saying goodbye.
She would have sworn she had even heard his mellow voice whispering the words 'goodbye Clara' deep inside her brain.
She had begged him to stay, but all of a sudden the doors of the TARDIS slammed and the spaceship vanished from sight. She was never going to see the Doctor again, she kept thinking, and her panic instantly turned into nauseated horror.
In a split second, her heart started pounding rapidly and her whole body began to shake frantically. Becoming dizzy, she held tightly to the railing for support, but it made no difference. The sensation of falling soon overtook her every sense and eventually she lost her balance. Before she hit the ground, however, she felt someone behind her wrap their unquestionably strong arms around her waist, thus stopping her from touching the ground.
"It's okay, I've got you," she heard. Immediately afterwards, she felt a shortness of breath. The voice that had said such words had been the unmistakable voice of the Doctor.
But how was that even possible?
Clara didn't dare to look back at first but she soon grasped the fact that, whether her mind had deceived her or not, there was only one way to find out. Thus, she eventually raised her head, opened her eyes as wide as she possibly could, and although her vision was still a bit blurry, the not completely defined shape she saw left no room for doubt. It was him.
"Doctor!", she whispered breathlessly as tears welled in her eyes. It was him. He had made it! He had returned against all odds. And he looked as intoxicated of being with her as she was of being with him. Tying her arms around his neck, her face sank into his chest as she got lost in the warmth his body radiated. "You're back!"
"Of course I am," he said, sitting on the grating floor and holding her tightly in his arms. "No matter how long it might've taken, I was always going to come back."
"How long have you been gone?" she asked, pulling away though just a little.
"About an hour? Possibly an hour and a half? Not two, though. Definitely not two. And that includes a quick return trip to save Sandshoes's coat from the flames and returning to have it delivered to him. To hybrid him, that is."
"Hang on," said Clara, widening her eyes and never letting go of his neck, "you've been to another universe and back… Twice?"
"Yeah, I have," he answered, nodding. "Turns out travel between universes has recently become infinitely less complicated than it used to be."
"And I bet you've got something to do with that, don't you?" she said amusingly.
"I have, but so have you, Sandshoes, and good old Grandpa."
Clara's eyes suddenly clouded and her cheerfulness disappeared. The Doctor noticed of course, and he softly cupped her cheek with his hand before he spoke again.
"Clara, is everything okay?" he asked uneasily.
"It is, yes, it absolutely is," she lied. "I was just thinking… If travel between universes is possible now… What about Rose? Is she… Is she coming back?"
The Doctor couldn't help but smile.
"No," he answered. "No, she's not. She doesn't need to anymore. Her family's there, the Doctor she wants to spend her life with is also there, and she's got a truly amazing future lying ahead of her. And she loves you, by the way, Clara. She loves you very much! She wants you to have an absolutely fantastic life. Oh look! 'Absolutely fantastic!' It's been such a long time since I last said that!"
"So do I," said Clara as her features regained all of her natural liveliness and enthusiasm.
"Then what are you waiting for?" asked the Doctor, raising another hand to cup her other cheek with it. The thought briefly crossed his mind that maybe he should be trying to hold back, but to be honest, he just couldn't be bothered.
Upon noticing how the Doctor kept gazing intensely at her and feeling his burning hands on her blazing cheeks, Clara inevitably started to feel dizzy again.
"I meant Rose," she whispered breathlessly. "I meant I want Rose to have an absolutely fantastic life as well."
"Oh," said the Doctor, happiness vanishing from his face instantly as his hands dropped from her cheeks.
"But you know what, Doctor? You're right," she added, leaning forward and taking his hands into hers before she went on. "You're absolutely right. What am I waiting for?"
They both remained silent, just staring at each other for a brief while. In spite of their silence, the constant hum of the console seemed to drown, quietened as it was by the three hearts that kept pounding loudly with a rhythmic throbbing pace.
Eventually Clara's face started to come closer to his, and as it did she realised something she had not wanted to admit to herself until now. Even if the Doctor had been who had just found his way back from a different universe, she was the one who found home the instant she found herself wrapped in his caring arms.
As the Doctor's face started to come closer to hers, he realised something. Something that deep down he had always known but which he had never really given any thought until now. Crossing universes? That had been nothing. Absolutely nothing! For Clara Oswald, his impossible girl, he would have done so much more.
Rose's flat was a mere 20-minute walk from Canary Wharf. The day she announced her decision to move out of the Tyler mansion there was absolutely nothing her mother could do to persuade her otherwise - and no one could say she hadn't tried everything within her power. Rose kept insisting she needed to live close to Torchwood, and being in the skirts of the city, the Tyler mansion had always been out of the question. Besides, neither did she have a car nor the time or even the intention to get a driving license. There was just loads to do at work, thank you very much!
Whenever someone asked why she'd rather live in such a small flat near one of the busiest areas in the city instead of in a massive family home surrounded by peace and quiet, she always gave the same answer. It was very convenient. Not today, though. Today as she kept running towards Canary Wharf she kept having the feeling that some resentful species Torchwood had dealt with at some point were experimenting with the city's urban planning. The faster she ran, the farther away the building seemed to be getting from her.
At long last she went through the building's main door. Rushing to the lift, she pressed the top floor button as soon as she got in and took her phone out of her trouser pocket to call Clive.
"Clive, is 'e still there?" she asked the moment her friend answered.
"Yes he is, and so am I, thanks for asking," Clive whispered so that the Doctor couldn't hear him.
"Yeah, sorry! Glad you're still there too," she told him. "Listen, I'm on my way. I'd be there already if this stupid lift wasn't so slow," she muttered angrily.
"That's totally gratuitous, Rose," he said. "Canary Wharf's got the fastest lift in all of London."
"No it doesn't. What it does 'ave is a pretty overrated one. I'll make it at some point though. D'ya think ya could leave us alone for a minute?"
"Suuure," said Clive as a smile lit up his face. "Be warned though, his mind's still set on those wormholes. Been talking to the console for ages and I don't think he'll be stopping any time soon. I bet he doesn't even remember I'm still here!"
"Better and better," she replied.
"Brilliant!" she said, a broad smile appearing on her face for the first time in ages. "Well if Rob's got something to do with this, I suppose I should thank him. Unless this stupid lift doesn't reach the top floor before the Doctor leaves - then he'll never hear the end of it!"
"I don't think this has got anything to do with Rob, Rose, and neither does the Doctor," Clive told her.
"Does the Doctor know about Rob?" she asked, flustered.
"Of course he does," Clive answered.
"Who told him?"
"I did, of course."
"And how much did you tell him?" she asked, panic-stricken.
"Think I told him everything."
"But why would you do that?" she asked, momentarily regretting having brought Clive to this universe with her.
"Because we've… sort of become pals, you know. I know you told me to simply keep an eye on 'im, but he's such a terrific guy!"
"Yeah, I know," she whispered with a smile. "Okay, hanging up now. I'm getting to the top floor. Don't let him disappear into one of those wormholes before I get there, okay?"
"Yes, ma'am," Clive joked before he hung up.
Much as she had been dreaming of starting to run like mad when the lift doors opened, she found she just couldn't as she stepped out into a dark corridor. The darkness became worse when the lift doors automatically closed behind her. She groped for the light switch only to find that it wasn't working. Maybe that had been one of Doctor's tricks to prevent the TARDIS from ever being found. It might even have been Pete's idea. Whatever the reason, she went down the corridor as fast as and as silently as she could, eventually stopping when a soft white light became perceptible to her left. She turned in that direction and at long last there it was, at the end of another long corridor.
When Rose first met the Doctor back in the days when he had been wearing baggy trousers and a dark leather jacket, he had told her that the TARDIS could blend with its surroundings but that a failure had left it permanently looking like one of those British police telephone kiosks from the 1920s. That memory made it very surprising for her to be able to spot not only the silhouette of something that looked very much like the very spaceship she had loved and missed so much, but also the top white lamp and the "police public call box" sign.
Rose felt her legs trembling as she sauntered towards the TARDIS, the pace of her footsteps becoming faster as she kept getting closer. Coming to a halt upon reaching the door, she stood there for a few seconds waiting for Clive to appear. It didn't take him long to do so but to her, the wait felt eternal, especially now that her hands couldn't help but keep caressing the fabric of the coat she was carrying for the Doctor.
Upon setting his eyes on her, Clive smiled softly and moved slightly to the side. He lifted a hand towards the door, inviting her in. Before jumping inside, she stepped closer to her friend and squeezed his hand a bit shakingly.
"Wish me luck," she said nervously, her eyes begging him to say something reassuring.
"Why? You won't need it," he answered, raising an eyebrow. "Now get in. Chop-chop."
Rose bit her lip and nodded at him. Turning to the side, she let go of Clive's hand and pushed the door that he had left ajar.
The interior of this new version of her beloved spaceship didn't even make the slightest impression on Rose. As soon as Rose stepped in, it was the Doctor that caught her eye, and she couldn't help taking him in excitedly as he frenziedly ran around the console, occasionally stopping briefly to check one thing or another. Oh, how much she had missed that sight, she thought to herself. His suit might be blue instead of the usual brown, but there he was. The Doctor. The one she had loved and lost. The one that had loved her and lost her too.
Ambling in his direction, she smiled as she heard him talking to himself non-stop.
"...so no more breaches and no more tears in the fabric of reality, just wormholes of all sorts… Traversable and non-traversable, one-way and two-way, intra-universe and inter-universe… And they're everywhere! The portals are being quite discreet though. Not even Torchwood would be able to detect them. Only the TARDIS can. But why are there so many of them? Once there was a time, such a long time ago, when this would've been an everyday thing. Like having three meals a day is an everyday thing for humans. But for this to be happening now… For this to be happening now it would take… Oh, why am I even thinking about it? It's impossible!"
Rose suddenly came to a halt when something unexpectedly clicked inside her brain.
During the joyful days she had spent in Whitehall Palace in the company of the Doctor, he had told her about lots of things, including the Time Lords, Gallifrey, and how he and his friends John, Grandpa John and Clara had been able to reverse past events and save his planet and his species from destruction.
Then she remembered something Mickey had said once. Something he had told her back on the days when the dimension cannon was being developed, and it was something the Doctor had told him himself. Something about how the walls of reality had been much more flexible when the Time Lords were alive and how they closed when the race became extinct.
Incidentally, she happened to know that the Doctors and Clara had changed that past and brought the Time Lords back to life, which meant…
Which meant Rose now could fully understand the reason why a certain brown coat was resting over her arm.
"It would take the Time Lords to still be around, wouldn't it?" she suddenly cut in.
The Doctor went quiet instantly. It couldn't be, the voice inside his head kept repeating, but this time the sudden springing of wormholes everywhere in the fabric of reality had completely vanished from his head. Rose waited for him to eventually turn around or say something, but he did none of those things. Instead, he stood absolutely still, his eyes staring into nothingness. After a while, all he managed to do was look up from the screen at a slow pace, but he never looked behind him. He just didn't want to. He was scared he might do so only to find an empty space and realise his mind had been playing nasty tricks on him again.
And so, as the Doctor wouldn't say a thing, it fell upon Rose to put an end to that seemingly eternal silence.
"It's something you told Mickey once," she said. "That time the three of us ended up here, remember?"
Of course he remembered. In fact, the exact words he had said to Mickey Smith were being replayed inside his brain that very moment.
It used to be easy. When the Time Lords kept their eye on everything, you could hop between realities, home in time for tea. Then they died, and took it all with them. The walls of reality closed, the worlds were sealed. Everything became that bit less kind.
"But that's impossible," he muttered, and of course there was a double meaning in his words.
"No it's not," she replied with a trembling voice. "It's long and complicated, but not impossible. Nothing's impossible anymore."
At long last, the Doctor turned around. He desperately wanted to say something, but despite his legendary gob, he surprisingly found himself at a loss for words. What was she doing here? She had never wanted him around before, so why had she come to him now that she needed him even less? Had she just popped by to say goodbye? Was Chinny waiting for her outside the door? Why would she do this to him? Had she really hated him so much all this time?
And most importantly, why did the white light of the new console have to make her look so incredibly beautiful? Oh, he should have left when he had the chance and let Torchwood worry about those wormholes, for Pete's sake!
"I've got you something," she said, slightly stretching her arm in his direction. "Remember you said you wanted to get a really long coat, like the one you used to 'ave? Well, I've brought you one. Surprise!"
'Surprise indeed,' he thought, then suddenly realised that his ability to speak had returned.
"I'll never find a coat like that," he said, his voice trembling as much as hers. "Janis Joplin gave it to me."
"I know. Which reminds me, did you know that parallel Ms Joplin never died in her twenties? Right now she's a sweet little lady of seventy, I reckon," she said with a smirk.
"Was she the one that gave you that coat?" asked the Doctor.
"She did give this coat to one of us, but it wasn't to me," she answered. "This is the real thing."
'To one of us?' Had she really said 'to one of us'? For a while Rose kept smiling tenderly at him. So very tenderly that the Doctor couldn't help but feel a tiny glimmer of hope build inside him.
"Where is he?" he asked with a frown, although he wasn't quite sure whether he actually wanted to know.
"Gone," Rose answered. "Back in his own universe. Forever."
"Then why are you still here?" he asked, sauntering towards her.
"Well, I suppose... A long time ago someone in this universe offered to spend the rest of 'is life with me, and I was thinking that maybe… Just maybe… If 'e hasn't changed his mind…" The lump in her throat silenced her words for a brief moment, but it certainly couldn't stop her from beginning to saunter in his direction. A tear was now running down her face, but as she soon found she was capable of speaking again, the Doctor's attention was soon diverted from it. "Although I'd totally understand if 'e hates me or refuses to speak to me after I've refused to speak to him for nearly three years!"
"I'm positive he doesn't hate you, and I know for a fact that he has absolutely no intention of refusing to speak to you," the Doctor answered, smiling nervously and excitedly as he came into a halt right in front of her. "As it happens, there's still nothing he'd love more than to spend his life with you, Rose Tyler. If you want to, of course."
"Of course I do," she said, sighing with relief. Another tear ran down her face, but this time it was a happy one.
"Maybe you could even travel this universe together," he added, beaming. "What do you reckon?"
"Yes!" she shouted, locking eyes with him as she wiped her tears off her face.
"Okay," he said, smiling broadly at her as well.
"Doctor, I… I'm so sorry," she added, biting her lip nervously.
"Shush," he said, delicately putting a finger against her beautiful lips. "You don't have to apologise, Rose. A lot happened very quickly and it just… It was just too much for you to take, that was all."
"It was too much to take for you too and I wasn't there to help you through it," she added, dropping his coat as she reached out to take his hand. "You had to deal with it on your own."
"Still, you got the worst part," he said apologetically. "You spent years trying to return to him, and when you finally did, I interfered. I didn't mean to, but that's the way things happened, and I completely understand if you were mad at me."
"I wasn't mad at you, Doctor, neither did you interfere," she quickly responded. "And now you're being really kind and I feel really bad 'cause I know I don't deserve it!"
"Don't worry anymore about the past, I'm begging you," he told her on the brink of tears as he wrapped his arms around her waist. "Those days are gone, Rose. You're here now, aren't you?"
"I am, Doctor," she said, burying her face in his chest as he raised a hand to caress the back of her head. "Yes I am. And I'm never gonna leave ya."
"Sorry, I'm not sure I heard," he said, his heart brimming with happiness. "You said you're never gonna leave me?"
"Yes I did! Don't be daft!" she said playfully, looking up as she stuck her tongue between her teeth while giving him another broad smile.
"You'd never believe how much I've missed that sight," he told her, feeling his heart pounding now even faster inside his chest.
"Try me," she said. Wrapping her arms around his neck, Rose realised in a split second that her mouth was getting dangerously close to his. "I've dropped your coat, by the way."
"Don't worry," he said as his mouth began to get dangerously close to hers as well. "I'm definitely not going to put it on now. I love you by the way, Rose Tyler."
"Not as much as I love you, Doctor," she said as her breath caressed his lips.
And as of that day, the Doctor and Rose Tyler lived happily and dangerously forever after.