Rose felt sick to her stomach. Over a century - over a century the Doctor had been wandering around without her. Would he even remember who she was if she ever got around to telling him? She realized suddenly that she couldn't begrudge him that strange, dark look in his eyes - nor could she hate him for the way that he so easily flirted with other girls. A hundred years was enough to change any man. She just wondered what sort of man he had changed into ...

The Doctor seemed to take Rose's shocked expression for the normal human response to his extended lifespan and he smiled knowingly down at her as he announced, "I'm the Doctor, I'm an alien from outer space, I'm a thousand-years-old, I've got two hearts, and I've got a big blue box that's actually a spaceship that's bigger on the inside and can travel anywhere in space and time."

Rose screwed up her eyebrows at him in a frustrated look as she demanded, "Oh, is that it, then? Is that how you introduce yourself, now?"

He blinked in confusion for a moment before replying slowly, "Yes ... I suppose so ..."

"And you want to complain about me not asking the right questions, when you just go and play all of your cards at once like that?" she muttered with a sarcastic roll of her eyes.

That startled an amused chuckle out of him and Rose couldn't help but smile as she met his softly curious expression.

"Who are you, Clara Oswald?" he asked with quiet interest.

The moniker sounded so wrong coming from his lips that Rose very nearly blurted out her true name right then and there, just in an attempt to correct him.

"What makes you think that I'm anyone?" she asked evasively instead.

"Well, everyone's someone," the Doctor insisted, stepping forward and invading her personal space again as he looked down searingly into her eyes.

Rose found that she was frozen under scrutinizing expression, entirely unable to look away or find another way to deflect his probing questions.

"I'm not," she finally whispered under her breath. "Not yet. Not here."

The Doctor's brows furrowed in quiet contemplation for a moment, and just as Rose was beginning to worry about how she would lie directly to the face of the man who she cared most about in all of creation, he stepped away from her again, turning back to face his TARDIS with a grand, sweeping gesture of his arms.

"So, what do you say?" he asked suddenly. "Anywhere. All of time and space, right inside those doors."

"What?" she asked, blinking up at him in surprise.

"Come on, Clara," he groaned dramatically. "We've been through all of the questions and answers already, you know them all! So? What'll it be?" He pushed the TARDIS doors open with a self-satisfied smirk that she really wanted to wipe off of his smug old face.

"Are you serious?" Rose asked breathlessly instead, peering past his shoulder to glimpse the blue glow of the time rotor reflecting off of the shiny silver surfaces of the interior of his ship. The TARDIS looked just like she had when Rose had seen her at Christmas, and the pull that she felt in her chest was just as strong.

But a lifetime spent in another world with a man that she loved still wasn't enough to settle her doubts about this daft old alien, and Rose needed to be sure. She knew - her husband had told her - that the Doctor never asked twice. But he had for her - over a century ago on that dark, dirty London street corner. He had come back for her and asked again. Her husband told her that it was because he had already known that there was something special about her, right from the very start. She wondered if a hundred years and a new face was enough time for this man to change his mind about her.

"Come back tomorrow," Rose muttered, watching him with a speculative look. "Ask me again."

"Why?" the Doctor asked, his smile instantly disappearing as he stared down at her in confusion.

"Because tomorrow I might say yes," she answered teasingly. And it felt so wrong in this new body, but she knew just how much he had enjoyed her old, tongue-touched smile, so she flashed it for him again, and was rewarded when his gaze immediately zeroed-in on her mouth with an intensity that she had forgotten he possessed during their time apart. A thousand different things flashed behind his old green eyes in that moment, but Rose was really only able to focus on the way that his pupils noticeably dilated.

When she raised an eyebrow at him in silent question, the Doctor finally cleared his throat awkwardly and stepped away, grumbling under his breath the entire time.

"You know, it's three-o-clock in the morning," he sighed wearily. "It's not really even worth it to get in the TARDIS and skip ahead to tomorrow. I might as well just wait her until dawn breaks."

"You could, if you wanted to," Rose replied with an unaffected shrug.

"Sorry?" the Doctor asked, confused.

"You could stay," Rose elaborated, nodding her head over her shoulder back in the direction of the darkened house behind her. She still didn't really know what "Clara's" living situation was like, but she was certain that the house was empty, and no one would likely return until tomorrow morning anyway.

"'Stay'?" the Doctor repeated, flashing her an oddly horrified look. "You know, I did try that once ..."

"Seriously?" Rose asked, not sure whether to be amused or irritated that the Doctor had somehow found it in him to take the dreaded slow-path with anyone other than herself.

"Wasn't really for me," he sniffed lightly. "Only managed to make it about an hour."

"Well, what do you say?" Rose prodded teasingly. "Think you can make three more?"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed once more as he seemed to quietly debate the pros and cons of having to stay the night in a human house. Finally, his shoulders sagged and he gave a long-suffering sigh. "Fine. Alright, then," he groaned dramatically. "But it's only so that I can keep an eye on you. And I'll have you know that I'll be expecting breakfast in the morning!"

"Okay," Rose agreed easily, giving him a considering look. "Maybe I'll make you one of my world-famous souffles."

The Doctor's eyes widened to comical proportions, but Rose turned her back on him so that he wouldn't be able to see her gleeful smile. She knew that she shouldn't be enjoying this as much as she was, but for once she knew more than he did - and the experience was exhilarating to say the least.

Rose's first night back in her home universe was strange. She didn't realize until she stepped into the small bathroom in the hallway near her bedroom (well, the room that she had inadvertently claimed, anyway) how very odd the whole situation was.

Who was Clara Oswin Oswald? She appeared to have her own books and a job and a toothbrush and a laptop, and even though the last one was oddly empty for someone who was supposedly in her mid-twenties and would have surely used it before, it was fairly clear that she was indeed a real, human person with a life all her own.

Rose felt like an intruder in her own skin as she leaned over the bathroom sink and peered at her new reflection in the oval mirror hanging on the wall. Her unfamiliar dark brown eyes narrowed as she slowly inspected every single detail of her new form.

Who am I? she thought quietly to herself.

She wasn't exactly expecting an answer to her rhetorical question, but one came anyway in a sudden flash of golden light behind her eyelids. You're yourself, the Bad Wolf replied simply.

Yeah, but who is this Clara person? Rose insisted, not even bothering to ask why or how the Bad Wolf was speaking to her now. She had too many other pressing questions weighing in on her mind at the moment. She furrowed her brows at her reflection and focused all of her thoughts on the strange, ephemeral voice echoing inside of her head.

Did I just steal someone else's identity? she asked curiously. Or is the real Clara still out there somewhere, wandering around? Or ... wait, hold on ... Is she dead? Am I walking around in a dead girl's body?

There is no Clara Oswin Oswald, the Bad Wolf replied evenly, refusing to rise to Rose's suddenly panicked thoughts. She is no one - an invention of the Bad Wolf. I have fabricated memories of her in the minds of those surrounding this household so that you could have a seamless transition into this world. Clara Oswin Oswald is you.

No, but ... I'm Rose.

Yes.

Well, you can't be two people at once, that's just ridiculous ...

I exist across all of time and space, the Bad Wolf explained in her typical flat monotone. There are many realities, many lives, many names. You're simply more.

'More'?

More than Rose, more than Clara, more than human.

Yeah, you're going to need to explain that last one to me a bit.

In time, dear one. I will speak to you again at the Rings of Akhaten.

The rings of what? Rose thought, but there was another flash of golden light and she knew that her time for finding answers had come to a close.

Rose sighed wearily as she gave her strange new reflection one last hard glare before forcing herself into the strange new bed that she supposed she might as well start calling her own and reluctantly fell back into another fitful sleep.

Rose wasn't quite sure what she had been expecting to find the next morning - maybe a half-way remodeled kitchen or a fancy new gadget in the garage or a fully-furnished, bigger-on-the-inside shed out back. What she most certainly hadn't been expecting was to wake up to complete and utter silence as early morning sunlight drifted lazily over her new bed.

She stretched her sleepy muscles as she slowly regained consciousness and moaned happily at the sensation of her new, lithe young body. She still wasn't quite used to the way that she felt in this new skin, but it was quickly growing on her.

"Oh, good, you're up."

The sudden male voice made Rose startle with a gasp and she grabbed her blankets defensively as she whipped her head towards her open bedroom doorway. A tall man with wide shoulders, floppy hair, and a bowtie was leaning casually against the doorframe and watching her with an oddly hooded expression. It took Rose a minute to remember who he was - but she wasn't sure if that was because of her own exhausted mind, or the fact that she wasn't quite used to his new skin, either.

"Doctor!" she gasped in surprise. "Wh-what are you doing here?"

"Spent the night, remember?" he replied, throwing a casual thumb over his shoulder as if that were explanation enough for how he had spent the last three or four hours.

But Rose had spent almost seventy years - nearly a whole lifetime - being married to the Doctor, and even if he wasn't this man exactly and he had a whole host of different expressions and mannerisms, she liked to think that she was pretty good at reading him. And the current guarded expression on the Doctor's face told a very different story from what he was telling her with his words.

"Did you, though?" she asked suspiciously.

The Doctor's eyes narrowed to match her own and he pushed himself off of the doorway to stand to his full height once more before admitting, "Fine. No, I lied. I didn't stay. I thought, 'hey, since we're going out on an adventure tomorrow, might as well get to know my new companion', right? So I Googled you."

"You ... 'Googled' me?" Rose repeated in complete disbelief.

"Yes, well, I tried to," the Doctor went on, beginning to pace within the doorway now and flinging his hands about wildly. "But there wasn't much to find. Actually, there wasn't anything to find. So I thought, 'hmm, that's odd. Best look into that'. So I popped back a few years to search for birth records, graduations, parents, family, friends, anything, and you know what I found?"

"No ...?" Rose answered slowly, already fearing what his answer might be. The Bad Wolf had said that Clara Oswin Oswald was a construct - an empty alibi created in this universe for her to fill. She knew that no lie or story that she could make up would ever be good enough to fool the Doctor - he had clearly spent the last few hours doing his research. She decided that it would be best to simply let him fill in the blanks for her for the time being.

"Nothing," the Doctor answered, halting his frantic movements and coming to a stop right over Rose's bed. He was smiling down at her, but the expression wasn't a nice one. Rose had seen the Oncoming Storm many times in her life, but never had she seen it directed at her. "No birth, no death, no relationships, not so much as a single fingerprint. You're no one, Clara Oswald."

Silence fell between them, then, and Rose knew that he was waiting for her to contradict him or try and fabricate some sort of lie to cover her tracks, but she refused. She considered, very briefly, telling him the truth, but the words were clinging to the inside of her throat and refused to come out.

So finally, she did what she had seen the Doctor do so many times that she had lost count over the years - she evaded the question.

"Everyone's someone," she muttered, watching him carefully as she slowly repeated the words that he had spoken to her just a few hours ago.

The Doctor laughed, but there was no real humor behind it, and the poisonous look in his green eyes didn't fade in the slightest.

"Why did you do it, though?" Rose asked curiously, tilting her head at him in question.

"Do what?" the Doctor asked, his tone like ice.

"Why did you ... Google me?" She tossed him a flirtatious grin and was pleased to see that the hard look in his eyes softened just the slightest bit before he finally turned and began his casual fidgeting once more.

"Well, it's like I said - if we're going to be traveling together, I have to know what kind of person I'm bringing along with me," the Doctor explained easily.

"Yeah, except you don't do that," Rose reminded him pointedly.

"And how do you know what I do and don't do?" the Doctor asked, flashing her another suspicious look as he began poking and prodding the small, meaningless things scattered around Rose's borrowed room.

"You couldn't even force yourself to lay down on the sofa for a three-hour kip," Rose explained with an off-handed shrug. "You also haven't stopped moving for more than two seconds ever since you first barged through my front door yesterday. For a thousand-year-old alien, your attention span is pretty spotty. Why would a man like that who has all of time and space at his disposal go and look up one single, human girl? There is such a thing as being too keen, you know."

The Doctor made a disgruntled noise and then stuttered awkwardly for a moment as he fidgeted in place at the edge of her room and glared at her indignantly. "Oh ... shut up," he finally growled, though there was no real venom behind his words this time.

Rose grinned brightly as he turned his back on her, but not in time to hide his suddenly pink cheeks. She was silently amazed at how these new bodies seemed to give their flirtatious banter a whole new perspective. It seemed that her new form was witty, challenging, and just as fond of words as her husband had been, while his new persona was awkward, mercurial, and quick to blush.

She could hear the Doctor's boots on the stairs making far more noise than he needed to - like a young boy pouting after he'd been told off. He called back to her petulantly, "Don't think I've forgotten that I was promised breakfast!"

And oh, Rose had missed this.