Rose felt fear and adrenaline spike through her veins as she and the Doctor faced off against the glowing, gold crack that stretched upwards like a sinister, crooked smile along the wall before them. She wasn't quite sure if the terror that she felt in that moment was coming from her or her bondmate, but it didn't really matter as they both silently held their breaths and examined the strange anomaly.

"Doctor ... what is that?" Rose asked warily as she narrowed her eyes at the gleaming yellow light that ominously lit up the room around them.

Rose could feel the way that his hearts sunk in his chest as a wave of bitter defeat swept through the Doctor's thoughts and instantly flooded her mind. "I knew," he muttered quietly in response. "I always knew it wasn't over." He dropped her hand, then, so that he could shrug off his jacket as he bent down to get a closer look at the crack in the wall.

"It's a split in the skin of reality," he explained as he slowly let his fingers trail over the edge of the jagged line. "It's a structural weakness in the whole universe. Someone's trying to get through it from outside our universe, from somewhere else."

"'Somewhere else'?" Rose repeated dubiously, but the Doctor ignored her as he turned and stalked towards the empty cyberman head that he had brought along with them onto the planet's surface.

"You said 'Gallfirey', why did you say 'Gallifrey'?" the Doctor demanded roughly as he grabbed the robotic helmet and glared deep into its black, unseeing eyes. The name still sent a shock of fear and heartache through them both as the Doctor repeated the words that they cyberman had announced earlier in the day, before they had ever set foot on the snow-filled, wintery planet.

"Analysis of message composition indicates Gallifreyan origin, according to TARDIS databanks," the robot replied matter-of-factly.

The Doctor gritted his teeth together in silence for a moment before he shoved one of his hands into one of his trouser pockets and pulled out a flat, round circle. "Seal of the High Council of Gallifrey," he explained quickly. "Nicked it off the Master in the Death Zone." He slapped the seal onto the cyberman's forehead without any further explanation and tightened his grip on the helmet as he commanded, "There is an algorithm imprinted in the atomic structure - use it to decode the message."

"Message decoding," the robot replied in its flat monotone. "Message analysis proceeding. Information available. The message is being projected through all of time and space on a repeating cycle."

The Doctor's face went pale and Rose felt her fingers clenching into fists at her sides as their combined terror swept through their bond once more and made her heart skip a beat in foreboding.

"Warning: translation will be available to all lifeforms in range," the cyberman continued hollowly. "Translation follows: Doctor who?"

The two words seemed to fill the small room of the tower and echo ominously around them as the robotic voice of the cyberman twisted and distorted, continuing to repeat the question on an endless, repetitive cycle.

"A question only I can answer ..." the Doctor muttered quietly as he hung his head in utter defeat and shuffled back towards the glowing crack in the wall. "A truth field to make sure I'm not lying. If I give my name, they'll know they've found the right place and that it's safe to come through." He sighed wearily as he leaned one shoulder against the wall and began fidgeting nervously with his hands as his gaze stared hard at nothing and his mind began to run through the many terrible possibilities that lay before them.

"Doctor ..." Rose murmured quietly as she stepped close and laid her hands gently over his twitching fingers in an attempt to calm him. "Isn't that a good thing? Don't you want Gallifrey to come back?"

The Doctor squeezed his eyes shut tight as he let his arms drop to her waist and pulled her forward to rest his forehead against hers, but she could sense that her solid presence in his arms was doing nothing to ease the sharp, panicked anxiety that was coursing through his mind.

This is dangerous, Rose, he reminded her silently over their bond. More dangerous than you can possibly imagine. "Any chance I could convince you to go back to the TARDIS where it's safe?" he added out loud, his voice a mere whisper between them as his mind reached for hers and silently begged for her to allow him this one, last comfort of knowing that she was alive and secure while he faced off against this looming, unknowable danger.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," Rose sighed as she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, "but there's no way I'm leaving you now."

Rose could sense that the Doctor's thoughts were still racing ahead of them both, searching for a different solution or a way to trick her into following his wishes, but they both knew how he had tried and failed at that before, and with a direct line to her thoughts and a truth field hovering all around them, there was no way that he could lie to her now.

Rose knew that she should probably be more upset that he was trying so hard to get rid of her, but she could feel the panicked urgency of his thoughts and she would have been lying if she had tried to say that her own restless anxiety wasn't making her itch to get away from this place as fast as possible. However, they both knew that she had made her choice long ago, and there was no way that she could leave him now, no matter what either of them might have wished.

"Doctor!" a familiar female voice called out suddenly, her voice booming through the entire town and echoing through the dark chambers of the tower around them. "Doctor, face me now!"

The Doctor stepped back and flashed Rose a tight-lipped, pained smile as he begrudgingly accepted their shared fate. "To work, then?" he asked, all of his usual eagerness completely gone from his tone as he fought to meet her eyes.

Rose placed her hand firmly in his, giving his fingers a tight squeeze as she nodded resolutely and stated, "Together."

"Trenzalore."

The simple name seemed to ring out across the entirety of the planet as the hologram of Tasha's face stared down at them intently from the night sky above. The Doctor had asked her for the name of the planet, and the answer had instantly turned Rose's blood to ice as the declaration hung ominously in the air around them.

"If you speak your name, the Time Lords will return," the Mother Superious continued gravely.

"If they return, they will come in peace!" the Doctor protested desperately, his grip on Rose's hand turning painful as he faced down the giant projection in an attempt to defend his entire race.

"It doesn't matter," Tasha insisted resolutely. "They will be met with a war that will never end. The Time War will begin anew. You know that, Doctor."

"They're asking for my help!" The Doctor cried in reply, his free hand cutting through the air in anger as he continued to argue with her. For the first time since Rose had paired her mind with his, she could feel what the daleks referred to as the "Oncoming Storm" beginning to rage within him. The cold, harsh reality of it made her shiver.

"And if you give it, war will be the consequence," Tasha snarled darkly, completely heedless to the Doctor's growing frustration. "I will not let that happen, at any cost. Speak your name, and this world will burn."

"No," the Doctor replied, his own conviction just as dangerous as hers. "This world is protected."

He dropped Rose's hand just long enough to grab his sonic and point it at the large brass bell that hung from the top of the tower behind them. As soon as it began to swing and its loud call began to vibrate through the cool, dark air of Trenzalore, he grabbed Rose's hand again and dragged her quickly back down the tower stairs they way that they had come.

"So what now?" Rose asked breathlessly as she struggled to keep up with him. "Doctor, what are you going to do now?"

"Weren't you listening?" the Doctor asked, tossing her a smile over his shoulder that didn't quite match the dark look haunting the rest of his expression. "Now we protect them - the whole planet, all of them. Christmas has a new sheriff."

Rose tried very hard to stay hopeful after that, but the days turned into weeks, and when the weeks began to multiply, she quickly began to lose track of just how long she and the Doctor had been in the small, sleepy town of Christmas. The nights seemed to go on for ages with only short glimpses of daylight in between to mark the time by.

And always there were the aliens - most of them small attack forces sent down from the ships above and meant to infiltrated and wipe out the townsfolk in an attempt to get to the Doctor. However, every plan was thwarted in one way or another, and soon it just became something that Rose and the Doctor did - a strange, unconventional way for them both to pass the time. They even made a game of it, sometimes - who could stop the cybermen quicker? Who could dodge the most sontaran lasers? Who could shoot down more dalek drones out of the sky?

The Doctor never once stopped trying to convince Rose to leave, though. Every waking hour that they were together, he was quietly pricking the back of her mind and reminding her that the TARDIS was parked in the center of town and could be used to escape at any time that she chose. Every time, Rose's answer was exactly the same - "Not unless you come with me, Doctor."

And so they both remained - because the Doctor could not choose between the innocent town of Christmas and his own people, and Rose could not leave the Doctor to make the decision on his own.

Without having to discuss it between themselves, the few short minutes of sunlight that the planet received every day quickly became another part of their strange new routine as well. Every morning, as long as there wasn't some danger attempting to sneak its way through the town's border, Rose and the Doctor would meet at the top of the bell tower and watch the sun rise and set together.

"After all these years, I've finally found somewhere that needs me to stick around," the Doctor mused quietly one morning as they sat close to one another at the top of the tower, a single, wool blanket wrapped tight around them both to keep out the planet's wintery chill.

"You're not serious, are you?" Rose asked, scrunching up her nose at him as she handed the Doctor the large bag of marshmallows that he had brought up with them. When she received nothing more than a sad, blank stare in reply, she rolled her eyes and grabbed the Doctor's arm, hugging it tightly between her own as she pulled him closer to her. "People have always needed you to stick around, Doctor. It was you who never wanted to give them the chance."

Rose pressed a kiss to his cheek and silently filled his thoughts with her quiet sympathy. She knew why the Doctor always felt as though he had to run - he was afraid of consequences, afraid of goodbyes, afraid of attachments that he knew would always have to break at some point or another. She supposed that his fears were well-founded in some respects, but she needed him to know that he was loved and needed by more people in this universe than he would ever possibly be able to understand.

"Everyone gets stuck somewhere eventually, you know," she reminded him quietly, "even you."

"Suppose so," the Doctor murmured noncommittally. He plucked a large marshmallow form the plastic bag in his lap and flashed her a small smile out of the corner of his eye as he added, "Stuck with you, that's not so bad."

Rose recognized the quiet declaration from their previous life together, and she rewarded him with a bright, pleased smile as dawn began to glow along the horizon before them.

"Sure I can't convince you to leave?" he asked quietly, immediately diminishing the conviction of his words as he pressed a kiss to Rose's temple and wrapped one arm around her waist to bring her in closer. She turned to rest her head affectionately on his shoulder in response as she gazed out at the pale blue and yellow sky that they had come to call home.

"Never gonna happen," she stated firmly. "Are you ever going to stop asking me that?"

"Nope," the Doctor replied with a soft sigh, his fingers trailing absently along the line of her hip. "Everything ends, Rose. I'm determined not to see yours."

She supposed that there was the one good thing about living in the town of Christmas, at least - with the truth field keeping them all from lying, they had eliminated the need for the use of Rose's second name whenever she and the Doctor were out in public. He hadn't called her "Clara" once since they had first arrived, and no one on Trenzalore seemed to be able to mark the difference.

"Not everything," Rose reminded him quietly, "not you."

"Yes," the Doctor insisted, his grip on her tightening, as though he needed to make sure that she was still real and sitting there with him. "Yes, even me. I can only change twelve times. Thirteen versions of me - thirteen silly Doctors."

"What are you trying to say?" Rose asked, turning her head on his shoulder so that she could meet his sad, gloomy expression. She knew the old Time Lord rule as well as he did - she had questioned her husband about it extensively in their parallel world in an attempt to better understand him and his people. However, she had always just assumed that the Doctor would find some way to circumvent that rule, just as he did with so many others. She had never known that the number of regenerations concerned him at all.

"You're, what, number twelve, including the Doctor I met from the Time War?" she continued hesitantly. "So what are you worried about?"

"Are you forgetting about the Metacrisis?" the Doctor asked pointedly. "I kept the same face, but it was still a regeneration. That means I can't ever do it again. This is where I end up - this face, this version of me. We saw this planet in the future, remember? All those graves ... one of them mine."

"Yes, but I remember Gallifrey, as well," Rose insisted stubbornly. "There were thirteen TARDISes there, Doctor, I counted them."

"That doesn't prove anything," he grumbled with a wary shake of his head. "That could have been anyone, we never saw his face. There's no way of knowing if that was me."

Rose opened her mouth to argue, but her words were cut off as a giant hologram of a familiar face suddenly filled the skies over Trenzalore.

"Doctor!" Tasha called out, her gaze appearing frantic as she quickly scanned the landscape and eventually narrowed her eyes on Rose and the Doctor. "The Church of the Silence requests parlay. Your rights and safety are sanctified."

"I'll be right up!" the Doctor called back warily as he moved to stand, wrapping their shared blanket tighter around Rose's shoulders.

"'Parlay'?" Rose repeated dubiously as she hugged the blanket tighter around herself and moved to follow him. "What's that all about? How long have we been down here, with no word from her or her lackeys, and now, all of a sudden, they want to talk?"

"Yes, it is a bit suspicious, isn't it?" the Doctor replied, narrowing his eyes on the dark, starry sky above them as the sun finished its decent back into the horizon. "Is it dangerous enough that I could convince you to stay behind?" he added, flashing Rose a bright, hopeful look.

"Not on your life," Rose replied instantly. "This one, or the next," she added, giving the Doctor a weighty, pointed look. He ignored her stubborn insinuation and simply sighed in defeat as he led her back down the stairs towards where the TARDIS was parked. They both silently agreed over their bond to save that particular argument for another day.