AN: ICYMI, I posted the first chapter of another short work in this series over the weekend. "Hope is Where Forever Begins" is a honeymoon story, and is technically an outtake from chapter 7

Chapter 48: The Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler

The Doctor's hands clenched and unclenched as he paced the room. A moment ago, the exasperation Rose typically felt when dealing with the Master has morphed into fear, sending a wave of foreboding through the Doctor. After seven months, they'd gotten used to the Master's antics. None of his normal tricks would scare Rose like this, which meant whatever was happening, it was new. He paced the length of his room, trying unsuccessfully to rein in his fear.

I love you.

The Doctor froze for a moment; he understood now what Rose had meant about those words being terrifying in a moment like this. His brain quickly concocted a dozen ways to find her and get her away from the Master, and just as quickly discarded every one. He was locked in a room without any means to get the door open. There was no way he could protect her.

Instead, he swallowed hard and managed to say the words back to her. If something were to happen…

I love you too, Rose, he told her as he resumed pacing the room.

He was mid-stride when he felt it—a pinprick at the base of his skull, followed by an excruciating tearing sensation. Even as he fell to his knees, clutching his head, concern for Rose far overshadowed his own pain.

Rose? What's happening, love? What's he done?

She didn't respond.

It took him less than ten seconds to realise she couldn't respond, that the pain he'd felt wasn't her pain being transferred over the bond, but the sensation of the bond itself being severed.

Their unbreakable bond.

"No. NO no no!"

The Doctor threw himself at the wall and beat on it with his fists. "Rose!" he screamed. She wasn't gone. She couldn't be gone. She'd promised him forever, not a paltry two years.

"Doctor. Doctor!" Rose pinned her flailing bond mate to the bed and encouraged him to wake up from the nightmare with a gentle telepathic touch.

A moment later, wild eyes looked up at her. Rose held her position, straddling his waist with her hands pressing his wrists to the bed. As gently as she could, she wrapped his mind in calm, comforting thoughts, trying to soothe the terror the nightmare had triggered.

"Rose!" He tugged at his wrists and she let them go, sighing when he immediately wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her down to cuddle next to him.

She splayed a hand over his chest and could feel his hearts racing. "It was just a dream, Doctor," she whispered as she drew patterns on his chest with her fingers.

"Not just a dream," he countered, his voice hoarse from shouting in his sleep. "Memories. I thought…" He took a shuddering breath and rubbed his hand over his face. "I thought you were dead for three months, Rose."

Rose swallowed. "I know. Oh Doctor, I wish I could have done something…" She bit her lip and closed her eyes against the tears welling up. She'd never forget the agony in his voice when he'd cried out for her that day. "I should have thought of some way to tell you long before Lucy brought it up."

The Doctor ran his hand through her hair, and Rose could feel him slowly regaining a tenuous control over his emotions. "That was Lucy's idea?"

Rose nodded. "Apparently your coldness scared her. The Master didn't think it was any worse than your usual reaction to his games, but she knew there was something more, and she wanted to… well, she thought you'd be safer if you knew I was alive."

His snort shifted her hair slightly. "Well, she wasn't wrong," he said bluntly. "I don't know what I would have been like if I'd come onto the flight deck still thinking you were dead. I might have let Francine shoot him."

Rose didn't argue that he'd never do that, that he was better than that. He was, but she knew as well as he did that severing their bond had put them both on shaky mental ground. Would he have been able to live up to his better nature? She hoped so, but she just didn't know.

"What about you?" he asked finally. "How did… did he…"

It took her a moment to parse through his question. "He didn't hurt me," she assured him. "In fact, once he'd had his fun teasing me about how it was my fault you were hurting, he left me alone." She pulled away from the Doctor and sat up with her knees folded in front of herself and her arms wrapped around them. "After all, he couldn't use me against you anymore, not without letting you know I was still alive." She laughed bitterly. "I was just an accessory who'd lost my purpose."

The Doctor sat beside her and took her hand. "You are so much more than an accessory, Rose," he told her, his voice earnest. "You are… You're my bond mate. We're partners, remember? The Master might have been blinded to that by his frankly disturbing obsession with me, but we're equals."

The words broke open a wound Rose had refused to acknowledge before, and her eyes were hot with unshed tears. "Yeah, but it's always gonna be like this, isn't it?" she countered, unable to look at him. "People using me to get to you, because you're the one that matters and I'm just…"

When she felt the Doctor's self-loathing, she realised this probably wasn't what he needed to hear. "Oh, love," she whispered, bringing their joined hands to her lips and brushing a kiss over his knuckles. "None of it was your fault. Do you hear me? None of it."

"But I took you to the Valiant. I led you right into his arms."

Rose sighed and finally looked over at the Doctor. His jaw was tense, and she reached out and rubbed her thumb over the twitching muscle. "Doctor, you know as well as I do that the whole situation was a fixed point. From the moment the Master took the TARDIS, we were locked into following after him."

"Not both of us," he insisted stubbornly. "I could have found a way… Martha didn't have to live at his mercy for a full year."

Rose pursed her lips and shook her head. "Okay, first of all, I don't think Martha would say her year was any better than ours. Walking the Earth, knowing that the people who were helping her might die because of it? Seeing Japan burn and knowing the friends she'd just left behind were dead? Being hunted by the Master's UCF?"

Her voice had risen in volume and pitch with every word, and she took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. The more she thought about what the Master had done, the happier she was that he was dead.

"It was a horrible year for all of us, Doctor," she said finally. "The only person who had a good time was the Master."

The Doctor's gaze shifted to somewhere just over her shoulder. His stubborn insistence that there was something he could have done to keep her safe during the last year rankled, but she gritted her teeth and tamped down on her annoyance. She could feel the raw edges where their bond was still healing, and she knew that was influencing him.

Doesn't mean I'm gonna let him go back to thinking he knows what's best for me, though.

Rose tapped him on the arm. "Hey. Look at me." He did, reluctantly, and she held his gaze, wanting him to see how important this was to her.

"And if you remember, you tried to convince me to stay behind, or somewhere safe, while you confronted the Master on the Valiant a year ago. I refused."

Anger glinted in the Doctor's eyes, and she crossed her arms over her chest and stared him down. He refused to blink, and Rose took a deep breath to control the tirade she wanted to launch into. His trauma was talking now, and yelling at him wouldn't help.

"I know you want me to be safe, Doctor. I want the same thing for you. It killed me to spend those five months not knowing what the Master might be doing to you, even though I knew he probably wasn't hurting you physically since he had some sort of weird crush on you."

The Doctor set his jaw. "You don't think it hurt me physically to be without our bond? How can you say that? I know you had headaches, same as me."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Rose protested. "Of course I knew you were in pain. He made me watch your reaction when he activated the collar, remember?" Her voice broke, and she swiped at the tears running down her face. "I heard… I saw… God, Doctor, I had nightmares where I heard you crying for me."

A heavy silence sat between them for a moment, then the Doctor took a breath and nodded. "You're right, I'm sorry. I knew what you meant."

Rose rested a hand on his knee. "Believe me, I know exactly how much this hurt both of us," she assured him, then she redirected the conversation back to her point. "But I can tell that right now, you're sitting there promising yourself that if we're ever in the same situation again, you'll send me away, no matter what I say."

A trickle of guilt passed over their bond, despite his best efforts to suppress it.

"Yeah. That's not gonna happen, Doctor. You and me, together. Remember?"

"Except we weren't together," he burst out finally, his eyes wild and chest heaving. "You were gone, and you're never supposed to be gone, and I thought you were dead and that I'd never see you again and how can you expect me to just stand aside and let it happen if we're ever in a situation like that again?"

"Because I'm not just some… some possession that you're supposed to take care of!" Rose exclaimed. She understood his fear, she really did, but after a year in the Master's control, she wasn't willing to give up her autonomy—not even to make the Doctor feel better. "I'm a person in my own right, and I deserve the respect of being allowed to decide for myself where I want to be."

The Doctor telegraphed his fear so loudly that even a basic empath would have been able to pick it up. Rose made an effort to gentle her voice, though her clipped sentences were uncompromising. "Look, Doctor. I understand. I know you're afraid. And I will always listen to your arguments when we're in dangerous situations. But you have to let me make the final call." He was silent, and she played her ace. "You promised."

His whole body stiffened, and Rose wondered if it had been unfair of her to invoke their wedding vows like that. But he had promised, and it was a promise she cherished because it was a marked difference from the way he'd acted before they were a couple. She needed to know he would keep that promise, even when it was most difficult.

"I… I know," he said finally. "And you're right. There really wasn't a way to avoid both of us being taken on the Valiant. It's just… I spent a year thinking about all the things I could have done differently, and then when you… when he put that collar on you and our bond was gone, I was convinced that it was my fault, that my negligence had led to your death. So… it might take some time to convince me otherwise."

Rose felt her exhaustion creep back up on her, now that the confrontation was almost over. She yawned and encouraged the Doctor to lie back down.

Once they were lying on their sides facing one another, she said, "Well, thankfully, time is something we have plenty of. In fact, I seem to remember a promise of forever."

The Doctor's breath hitched, then a tear rolled down his face. Rose… oh, love. You are my forever, always.

Rose felt the wound beneath those words and was surprised for a moment, until she remembered the way the Master had smiled when he'd seen the inscription in her ring. That bastard, she thought, angry all over again. She was viciously grateful that she'd found his ring and kept the wanker from attaining immortality. He deserved to rot in whatever the Time Lord version of hell was.

The Doctor chuckled and pulled her into his arms. He does, and he will, he promised her.

It didn't take them long to fall back to sleep. They'd already slept five hours before the Doctor's night terror had woken them up, but after the trauma of the last year, they were tired enough to sleep another five, or more.

The Doctor was the first to wake up in the morning, and it took him a moment to orient himself. Bed made of dark cherry wood, a soft mattress, and a plush duvet cover beneath his fingers, all illuminated by pale pink light coming from the sunrise streaming in through the simulated window. He was in their bedroom on the TARDIS. And that meant… He turned slightly towards the weight on his shoulder and brushed his nose against Rose's hair. They were home, in their own bed.

He rolled onto his side and draped an arm around Rose's waist and scooted closer to her. When the Master had broken their bond, he'd honestly thought they'd lost this. His only hope had been the paradox, and even then, he hadn't really believed that breaking the paradox would bring Rose back.

But he'd clung to the hope for three months, until Lucy had given him something better.

Rose sighed and blinked up at him, a sleepy smile on her face. "We made it home, just like you promised."

The Doctor trailed his hand down her arm to lace her fingers through his. "I doubted, for a while," he confessed.

Rose went still in his arms, and the Doctor bit the inside of his cheek. He wanted to beg her not to be upset with him for doubting, but guilt made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. He should have been stronger.

"Doctor, no."

Rose's quiet, firm voice pulled him out of his spiralling emotions. "I should have, though," he insisted, his voice rough. "I told you to believe, and then…"

She rested her hand on his cheek. "Don't," she ordered. "How could you hope when you thought I was dead?"

He took a few breaths, then nodded.

"And besides," Rose continued, "how could I be upset with you for doubting when I did, too?" She brought his hand to her mouth and pressed a kiss to it, and he felt a few tears land on his skin. "I missed you so much," she whispered, her voice choked with tears she was holding back. "I would dream about you… dream that we'd gotten away, that everything was done and we were home. And then I'd wake up alone, just like I'd been when I fell asleep, and I just wanted…"

The Doctor closed his eyes, tears pricking under his eyelids. "I know, love. I know. I had the same dreams." He pressed his forehead against Rose's and matched his breathing to hers, until they'd both regained a tenuous hold on their emotions.

Rose cupped his face in her hands and brought his lips to hers for a deep, tender kiss. As her lips moved against his, the Doctor felt the top layer of their shared anguish ease, bringing some healing along with it.

She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and rolled onto her back, pulling him with her as she went. The Doctor sighed when he settled on top of her. He'd tried not to think about this aspect of their relationship during the year on the Valiant, doing his best to even suppress his memories of making love with Rose. No point longing for what he couldn't have, after all.

So now, feeling her trail her fingers down his back, the physical sensations were nearly as overwhelming as they had been at the very beginning of their relationship, when everything was new. Yet it was familiar at the same time, and that seemingly impossible combination was intoxicating.

Passion built between them with soft touches and whispered words of love, their earlier frantic need softened to tender lovemaking as they moved together slowly.

"Forever," the Doctor vowed as he kissed her neck.

Rose moaned and dug her nails into his back. "Forever and never apart," she swore.

oOoOoOoOo

While Rose took a shower after breakfast, the Doctor moved the TARDIS so they were parked with a supernova just outside the doors. He'd promised her they'd dispose of the Master's ring, and honestly, after the year they'd just been through, he was just as anxious to make sure his old enemy couldn't come back.

Once they were in orbit around the dying star, he pushed the doors open and leaned against the doorjamb. He stared out at the stars and watched time swirl and eddy around them. Galaxies born, planets dying, stars going supernova—it was all driven by Time, the force that held the universe together and let it fall apart. The Time War had damaged the Web of Time extensively, but frayed as it was, this much remained.

The Master's paradox had left ripples in the timelines that would take months or even years to smooth out. The ripples threw his time senses off, but something tugged at him, something about this supernova.

Unable to stand not knowing, he pushed off from the door and walked back to the console. "Why did you pick this supernova, old girl?" he muttered as he checked the coordinates. His eyebrows went up when he made the connection, but Rose appeared before he could say anything to the TARDIS.

She took his hand. "Ready?"

The Doctor pointed to the open doors. "Mount Doom awaits," he told her. Rose laughed, and a smile tugged at the Doctor's lips as he followed her to the door.

He pulled the ring out of his pocket and handed it to her. "I think you should have the honour. You were the one who found it, after all."

Rose hefted the silver ring in her hand, then pitched it out into the mass of gaseous clouds. "Good riddance to bad rubbish," she muttered as they watched it spin through the vacuum of space.

The Doctor stared, transfixed, as several timelines suddenly disappeared. He could only see shadowy glimpses of them—of a mad Master turning everyone into his clone, of something coming back that should remain lost, of his own painful regeneration—but what he saw was enough to make him grateful that Rose had found the ring.

"Why don't we sit down?" he suggested. Sitting with her in the doorway of their TARDIS with their feet dangling out into space reminded him of his proposal. Rose sighed happily when she caught that thought and rested her head on his shoulder.

"Do you know where we are?" the Doctor asked after a few minutes.

Rose lifted her head off his shoulder to frown at him. "No, should I?"

He nodded at the swirls of pink and blue dancing in front of them. "This is the same supernova we orbited when we called your mum."

Rose looked at the gaseous cloud with new eyes. This supernova had helped her close two different chapters of her life now.

"We've come full circle," she said.

"Yep."

She sighed and scooted a little closer to the Doctor. "I wonder what Mum and Mickey are doing now. And if I have a little brother or sister."

The sudden surge of anger from the Doctor surprised her, until he said, "You wouldn't have to wonder what their lives were like if the Master hadn't interfered. Canary Wharf wouldn't have happened if he hadn't encouraged Torchwood to play with the breach. Jackie would still be here."

Rose took his hand and carefully loosened his fist, then laced her fingers through his. "Calm down," she whispered.

He fought to control his rapid breathing. "How long is it going to be before I don't see him everywhere?"

His plaintive voice broke Rose's heart. "It's gonna take time," she told him. "For both of us. An' like you said about grief, it'll come and go."

The Doctor wrapped his arm around her and carefully shifted so she was between his legs, then he hugged her close. "I just want it to be over." He sighed and rested his chin on her shoulder, nuzzling into her neck. "No, better than that. I want to go back to the end of the universe and make it never happen—just take you and Jack and Martha and fly away, leaving him there to rot."

Rose rubbed soothing circles over the back of his hand. "You know we can't do that," she told him. He huffed, and the air tickled her hair against the nape of her neck. "We can't, Doctor. That would be a paradox too big for even the TARDIS to hold together."

She thought for a moment, trying to remember something hopeful to distract him with. When she landed on the perfect memory, she twisted so she could look him in the eye, then shared it with him.

His brow furrowed, but when he placed the memory, his mouth gaped. "You see, Doctor?" In her mind's eye, Rose ran her hand over their joined timeline. Through all the twists and turns, their lives remained linked. "No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't change this. You and me, sharing our forever."

With her increased understanding of timelines, Rose could discern now what she hadn't been able to see the last time they'd looked at their future together. What had seemed to be one timeline then she could now tell was actually two, entwined so tightly that where one went, the other was bound to follow. Even as possible variations of their future broke off from the central, most likely timeline, they followed those paths together.

"We've still got our future, Doctor."

He smiled, then leaned down to kiss her. Rose poured her love into him as his lips moved against hers, trying to soften the knot of grief she could still feel in his mind. She felt the corners of his lips turn up, and he broke the kiss.

"That's right, love. The Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler."

She nodded. "Just as it should be."

AN: And all that's left is the epilogue! In light of that, here's a quick peek at the plans for this series.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Voyage of the Damned story, starts posting on 11/29

Taking Time: The Doctor and Rose take a year off from dangerous adventures to recover from their trauma. ETA late January/early February

Forever and Never Apart: Series four rewrite, coming in April hopefully

Since fanfic dot net doesn't have a way for you to follow series, the easiest way to make sure you don't miss any of these stories is to follow me. Barring that, you now have the titles so you can keep your eyes open.