Eighty-four minutes and approximately a thousand instances of Is this really necessary? later, Rose is officially Done With All This Nonsense™. She is tired of being jostled by this squadron of overeager attendants flitting about like a legion of white-clad, silver-collared paparazzi (had enough of all that back home, thanks), she's tired of being led from one ridiculously ornate chamber to another (stone walls and columns, vaulted ceilings, crystal light fixtures, rich tapestries, silks and satins and furs and everything gold-gilded and immaculate and glimmering and enough with the tacky faux-medieval décor already), and she's sick to death of being pampered and scrubbed and polished and preened-over like some kind of fancy poodle at a dog show. Despite her many (and increasingly vehement) protests, the attendants have stripped Rose of her trustworthy clothes, leaving her feeling a little vulnerable and more than a little irritated standing in some fancy poncy gown with all the trimmings. More and more, she is certain that the bloke who summoned her is just some wealthy outer-space arsehole, someone she met on one of her many travels with the Doctor and simply forgot about somehow; certainly it can't be the Doctor, because he would know that they haven't got time for this fussing about, not to mention that the Doctor wouldn't give even a single shit how she was dressed. At any rate, by the time the attendants start bedecking her in flipping jewelry of all things, placing combs in her hair and fastening a fancy golden collar round her neck and even going so far as to slip rings on her fingers (and fret over the state of her nails, of all the stupid things), Rose is so frustrated she's tempted to slam the button that will take her home purely out of sheer impatience.

"No," she says firmly when one of the attendants moves to unclasp her wristwatch. "That stays."

The attendant flashes her a patronizing smile. "But milady, it's such a dirty thing, and his Lordship simply does not abide dirty things. If you will only allow me to—"

"Try it again," Rose says sweetly through a smile of her own, one full of clenched teeth, "and you'll get a faceful of my fist."

Paling, the attendant draws back. "But, milady—"

"Nope! No more milady this or Lordship that," Rose interrupts, standing so abruptly that several of the attendants fussing over her hair lose their balance and fall over. "I'm bloody well done playing dress-up," she continues, pulling at the too-snug bodice of her ridiculous dress as she pushes her way through the crowd and ignores the sea of indignant titters left in her wake. "I know you lot are only trying to do your job, stupid as it is, but I'm on something of a tight schedule here and I haven't got time for whatever other nonsense you've got in store. So you can either take me to your leader, or I'm gonna take a leap out the nearest window and hope for the best. Got it?"

The attendants glance at each other uncertainly. "But—"

"Got it?" Rose bites back, and as the attendants scurry away in a flurry of silver and white, laughter rises up behind her. She turns to see a figure standing in the open doorway, leaning against the frame, all casual elegance and sinuous grace.

She swallows, painfully. Tells herself not to be disappointed if it isn't him. When it isn't him.

Unfortunately, at this distance, in this dim light, it's impossible to tell. Though backlit by the yellow light spilling from the corridor behind him, painting the figure's angles and outline a soft, almost-glowing gold, his face remains in shadow. Rose can't quite make out his features, no matter how she strains to catch a hint of brown eyes or scattered freckles, beautiful cheekbones or ridiculous sideburns. But she still imagines she can sense the warmth in his smile.

"Right," Rose says. "Who are you, what do you want, and why the hell have you got people dressing me up like a bloody Barbie?"

The man chuckles. "Haven't changed even a little bit, have you?"

"Wouldn't say that," Rose replies warily.

The man laughs again, and the sound is different than Rose remembers. His voice is different, too, maybe softer somehow—or maybe she's just remembering it wrong. Four years is a long time, after all. Though she's convinced no amount of time would be long enough to forget something like the sound of the Doctor's voice.

"Rose Tyler," says the man, his words almost unbearably fond. "All fire and spirit and fight, swinging in on a rope to save the day like a little blonde Robin Hood. Just the way I remember. God, it's good to see you."

"Tell me who you are," Rose demands.

The figure's head tilts. "Rose," the man says, his voice hushed, almost reverent. Wrapping around her name just the way his used to. "Don't you recognize me?"

Hope flares in Rose's chest once again but she quashes it, for now. After so many jumps, so many wrong universes (and one that almost wasn't but doesn't bear thinking about, not unless she wants more nightmares about a morgue and a gurney and the ice-cold finality of his hand peeking out stiff and blue beneath the sheet), she's not too keen to have her faith dashed on the rocks yet again. Hope, she has learned the hard way, is a precious commodity, and can't be spent lightly on what-if's and maybe-could-be's.

When Rose doesn't reply (doesn't dare to), the man steps forward into the light, the hair and the face and the everything of him brought into Rose's field of vision in startling technicolor relief. Rose looks him over, cataloguing and double-cataloguing everything just to be certain—smart suit, dark hair, dark eyes, (hopeful eyes), kind smile—before her lips, suddenly dry, part so she can say:

"No."

The man's eyes flash with hurt, and Rose shakes her head, in confusion or apology, she's not certain. "No, sorry," she murmurs. "I've never seen you before."

"Quite right, too," says the man with a wistful smile, and Rose swallows around the lump that's sprung up in her throat. "Would it help if I scrounged up some brown pinstripes, perhaps? Or maybe a jumper and a black leather jacket?"

"Wouldn't hurt."

The man laughs again, an unabashedly delighted thing, and gestures for the surrounding attendants to leave. "Rose Tyler," he says, beaming, and that looks just the way Rose remembers. "Wow. It feels good to say your name aloud again. Feels even better to say it to your face."

Suddenly bashful, he averts his gaze as the last attendant filters out of the room. He tugs nervously on one ear and god, the gesture is so familiar that Rose aches. "I don't suppose—I mean, I know I probably should have opened with this, but I don't suppose I could give you a hug?"

Her lips purse. "Erm, yeah," Rose says. "I guess that'd be—"

His arms have ensnared her before she can even finish her sentence.

Rose's chest seizes up painfully and her arms wrap around him on instinct, hands fisting in his suit-jacket. He smells—Christ, he smells good, not like how she remembers, but good. And he's solid, not as slim as before but still lithe, still good to wrap her arms around. Shorter, too; she can feel his pulse hammering against her own ribs, his double-pulse, as in two hearts, and his arms tighten around her, just the way they used to, and he's here, he's real, he's really—

"Doctor?" Rose whispers, her voice shaking, and the Doctor laughs again and it's the most beautiful thing Rose has ever heard. He laughs and she starts to laugh too, haltingly, in starts at first but then unrestrained and unfettered, hope fizzing out of her lungs like air leaving a balloon. It's her first proper laugh in what feels like years and she's trembling with the force of it and now the Doctor is hugging her tightly enough to lift her off the floor, spinning her round and round and the skirt of her ridiculous gown is swirling and tangling about their ankles and then he's setting her back down and between his embrace and the corset of her gown her ribs are being compressed so tightly she can't breathe but she doesn't care.

"Sorry," the Doctor laughs, as if he only just now remembered that not everyone's got a respiratory bypass, thanks. He pulls away, holding Rose at arms'-length as he looks her over, every detail, head-to-toe. "Sorry, I just can't believe you're really here."

"That makes two of us," Rose laughs shakily. "But, Doctor…"

Words fail her, dying away to nothingness outside her lips. Stepping back, she looks him up and down, really properly noting all the changes. This new face of his is longer, rounder, still youthful. (Still pretty.) He wears a suit once again, albeit one vastly different from anything his last incarnation would have made a habit of wearing; it's a somber affair that could almost be mistaken for boring if Rose couldn't spot the subtle purple hue of the fabric, if she hadn't spent the last four years impatiently fidgeting in the background of one dreadful high-function Vitex function after another, or she couldn't immediately recognize the suit's expensive wool and well-tailored cut. Between the suit and soft black leather gloves, Rose wonders if the last Doctor's proclivity for hair maintenance just transferred to an eye for the fashionable this time around.

The last Doctor.

The thought of his face, his voice, twists inside her painfully and Rose has to clamp her eyes shut to keep the tears back. She didn't make it back to see him. Never got to hold his hand again, or kiss his stupid beautiful face, or wish him goodbye. And now…

Now, she knows she never will.

The loss hits her in the stomach like a physical blow. She feels like she might be sick.

Stop it, Rose chides herself. Don't be stupid. It doesn't matter if he's got a different face. It's still him. He's still the Doctor.

"Wow," she breathes, eyes fluttering back open to find him watching her, his expression hopeful, almost expectant. New face or not, she remembers that look very well. "Sorry. It's just a lot to take in."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I just can't believe it's you." Shaking her head, Rose backpedals. "I mean, not because of the regeneration, just, it's been so long, all this time and it's finally you. And you're just so—"

"Different?" he asks with a sad smile.

Lips pursed, Rose nods.

"Good different or bad different?"

Rose's mouth quirks in a smile of its own. "Just different," she replies, and the Doctor's grin broadens into something genuine then. And the sight is glorious, flooding Rose's skull with such an effusive and bubbling happiness that she's got to let it out somehow or else she'll burst, so she rewards the Doctor with another hug, and oh, if that isn't the very best feeling in the multiverse, Rose doesn't know what is. He looks and sounds so strange and Rose misses his previous selves like her lungs need oxygen but he's here and he's alive and he's real, it's not a horrible pocket universe where everything's gone to hell, it's not a dream, it's not a nightmare. It's him. He hums happily, a cheeky thing deep in his throat just like she remembers, and Rose's head swims with bittersweet joy.

"How did it happen?" she asks when they part. "The regeneration, I mean."

"Wrong Dalek, wrong time."

Rose remembers the cries of the fallen on the Game Station, oh so long ago, and she can't repress the shudder that runs through her. She hates that she wasn't here for him when it happened. She hates it.

"Did it hurt?" she asks softly.

"Not as much as other things," he replies, unable to meet her eyes. Shaking the memory away, the Doctor shoots Rose a smile, more for her benefit than his, she suspects. "What about you, though? How did you get back? How did you get in here? That sort of thing should be—"

"Impossible?"

He chuckles. "You'd think I would have figured out by now that nothing can stop Rose Tyler. But really, though—how did you do it?"

Rose replies with a grin, poking her tongue between her teeth the way she used to. The smile feels a little forced, too many feelings competing in her head for attention, but hey, she can fake it 'til she makes it, right? "I guess I could tell you," she teases, "but it wouldn't be nearly as impressive as showing you, would it?"

"What, right now?"

"Well, yeah," Rose laughs. "I can't imagine you want to hang around here any longer than you've got to. I mean, what are you even doing here—and what is this place, anyway? Why's everyone treating you like some kind of king or something? And what's with that cheap Gladiator nonsense? Why haven't you put a stop to it?"

"Ah, goodness, that's quite a lot of questions, isn't it," says the Doctor, scratching the back of his neck.

A few moments pass in silence. It's only a little awkward.

Eventually Rose raises an eyebrow, half in question, half in concern. There's no way he didn't hear her.

"Doctor?"

"Oh, did you mean me to answer?" the Doctor asks.

Rose nods.

"Right. Erm, like I said, quite a lot of questions, but they've sort of all got the same short answer, funny enough, and that would be that I haven't got much of a say in things round here, for a number of reasons, not to mention that my trusty machines are all gone."

"Machines…? Oh my god, you don't mean the TARDIS?" Rose gasps, aghast. "Gone, as in—?"

"Kaput, moot, put out to pasture, kicked the bucket and bought the farm it came from. The TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver both, I'm afraid. Bit of a bummer, the whole rescuing-people, holier-than-thou, self-righteous-martyred-wanderer act is a little difficult to pull off without them."

Rose swears under her breath. "God, Doctor," she says, grasping both of his gloved hands in hers. "I'm so sorry."

The Doctor nods numbly.

"What happened?"

He winces. "Ah, actually, I'd sort of rather not think about it at the moment, if you don't mind."

"Yeah, sure," Rose says quickly, blinking back the tears that threaten to overwhelm her. "Of course."

Silence again, but this time it hardly matters; Rose wouldn't be able to hear anything over the hurt, anyway. Over the past few years, she had braced herself for all manner of possibilities—that the Doctor would have regenerated again, that he would have moved on, that he would have filled the Rose-shaped hole in his life with a bright and shiny new companion that left no room for her anymore. Yet, while it still burns to look at him—it will for a while yet, Rose imagines—it helps a little that Rose knew it might happen. Less of a gasping shock, more of an unhoped-for eventuality. But never, never in her wildest dreams had Rose ever imagined that anything would happen to the TARDIS. The revelation is staggering.

(Dimly, she wishes the Doctor would take off his gloves so she could hold his hands properly. She's sure he has his reasons for wearing them—maybe this new incarnation is something of a germaphobe? Maybe he's averse to touch now?—but she can't help but feel that the leather cancels out most of the comfort inherent in simple skin-on-skin contact, erecting a barrier in more ways than one.)

"But anyway," prompts the Doctor, withdrawing his hands as he slaps on a veneer of cheerfulness, same as always. "What was that you were saying about leaving…?"

"Right, of course." Shaking herself, Rose holds up her wrist for the Doctor's observation, displaying the watch strapped around it. "Updated dimension-hopper, meet the Doctor; Doctor, meet the updated dimension-hopper."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," says the Doctor to the hopper with a mock-salute.

"Just gotta reboot the initialization process, then I'll hop back to the other universe, nab another hopper, and get us both away from all this—whatever this is," Rose says, wrinkling her nose in disgust at their surroundings. "After we take care of the stars, let's fix whatever's gone wrong with this rubbish planet, yeah? Someone's gotta let these people know that no one's impressed with that sword-and-sorcery bit anymore."

The Doctor's eyes widen amidst the dimension-hopper's downward-counting chirp. "What's that about stars?"

"You know, the stars going out. Hasn't that started happening here yet?"

"I wouldn't say it'shappening so much as it already happened."

The hopper beeps four times, informing Rose that she's good to jump, but she's too busy staring at the Doctor in bewilderment. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, more happened and then un-happened, really."

Shaking her head, confused, Rose tries to sort through her racing thoughts. "But that doesn't make sense. It had only just started in that pocket universe, and we're ahead of both of you—"

"Pocket universe, you say—?"

Cutting through their words with a tweet-tweet-tweet, the hopper lets Rose know, insistently, that if she's going to jump, she needs to do it right now, unless she wants to wait another thirty minutes. And she most emphatically does not; she has spent more than enough time waiting over the last few years.

"Okay, definitely add that to the list of things we're gonna have to talk about," Rose says, weaving her arm through the Doctor's. "For now, just hang on til I get back. Hold on tight."

"Oh, Rose Tyler, always," says the Doctor, smiling. "But I should warn you—"

With a wink and a megawatt-bright grin, Rose hits the button that will take her back home.

And—

Nothing.

Humming in surprise, Rose taps the button on her wristwatch again. She must've hit it wrong the first time, her fingers gone twitchy in all her nervous excitement. When nothing happens again, she presses the button once more, intently this time.

Still nothing.

"Erm, okay," Rose laughs shakily, bringing the wristwatch up to her ear, like maybe she'll hear what went wrong in its inner workings somehow. "Weird, that's never happened before."

"That's sort of what I was trying to tell you," the Doctor sighs, pulling back. "I don't think it's going to work, Rose."

He swallows, and Rose's stomach churns as the Doctor visibly braces himself for what's bound to be an unpleasant announcement.

"There's no way off this planet," the Doctor says, slowly. "We're trapped."