My thoughts tend to get more muddled as we go on.

Many thanks have to go to my wonderful beta, horsefly, because she put in a hole load of trying to understand me in this chapter. Guess I'm the only one who understands me, huh? Horsefly also did the fun job of fixing my spelling/grammatical errors.
Let me tell you, this chapter made a whole lot less sense without her.
If you still have trouble grasping my train of thought, tis totally my fault.

Like I said, muddled brain.

AAAAANNNNDDDD...
THANKYOU. Geez, you have no idea how happy I was at all those reviews. Some had me blushing. You're all so great. So, of course, I have to say thankyou to Andrew (made you review. lol), Jacqueline Roget (always fun to have your word in ), gaiafreedom21 (you really know how to ask the tough questions), Wonderlands-Pokemon-Master (I'm awesome? Woo!), horsefly (my wonderful beta), anonymous (ya really helped me to feel confident about the direction I was headed), roxy (keeping it up as well as I can. thankyou) and arieslily17 (I'm glad I did it well, and you must feel lucky to have missed out on all the apprehension in the cliffhangers)

Anyway, on to the chapter, hey?

"Sim?" Rose wondered if she was delirious from the pain as she saw who was standing over her.

"Yeah, I'm here Rose. Here with you." He said soothingly. Rose felt dazed as she eased herself up slowly, noting she was still handcuffed to the floor.

"But... why?"

"Because he can't be?" Sim answered her timidly.

"You're trying to replace my Doctor again? You're not even real." Rose's voice hardened as she got a grip on the situation.

"I wasn't real in the other universe. Now, though..." He trailed off, as if afraid of the emotions that his words would bring out in Rose.

"What?"

"I'm... everything you could have as a human. Everything you wanted from a normal life, if you'd never met him. If you didn't have him now." Sim wrung his hands nervously as he spoke, obviously trying to hide something.

"But... why?" Rose repeated her earlier question, calming down and just wondering what the heck was going on.

"Because you need to have the choice."

"No I don't. I made my choice a long time ago. I'm not leaving him, Sim." Tears started to form in her eyes and took the long slow path down her face.

"If you don't make a decision, he can't make you do this."

"Who? The Doctor?"

Sim gave a sly smile.

"No. 'him'. He can't make you change and stay with the Doctor if you're not 100 per cent sure. No one else can make this decision for you. So... yes or no?"

"How is it even possible for me to have that decision? I've already been through all of..." She shuddered. "...That."

"Okay, okay. So we cheated a little bit. We already knew what your answer would be."

"What if I decided to do the opposite just to prove you wrong?" Rose started a banter with Sim as if it was the old days. She saw again what she saw in him before and couldn't seem to shake her emotions off.

"Alright, so we took a guess as to what your reaction would be and completely took your choice away." Sim backtracked. "We can't have a lonely god. We promised him he wouldn't be alone."

"But if I don't have a choice, what are you doing here?" Rose was genuinely confused. There were no more irritating questions in her mind, just the thought that she no longer had any idea what was going on.

"That is a very good question. And the answer is that, as Sim, I started to care about you so much that we had to see if you were alright. You've got so much more to go through, and we just couldn't bear to watch you as if you didn't have a choice."

"So who are you? Who is this 'we' you keep referring to?"

"Well, it's really just me since the other part of me may not be so willing to have me back. Of course, I knew this was going to happen when we split in the first place. All I could do was split into two extremes, so I left the pushier one here because I knew The Doctor could deal with him, while you..."

"Now my head hurts even more than it did before."

"You're The Face of Boe?" The Doctor asked, appearing behind him. "No wonder I could see you in the alternate universe... But how did you get there?"

"Now, the answer is obvious there, Doctor. I was never there in the first place. I was as much a fake image as the other you in that universe."

"So..." Rose began. She stopped herself "No, never mind. I don't get it."

"You wouldn't."

Rose suddenly felt some resentment towards this man – who she now knew used to be a kindly old face. So she was a human, that didn't mean that he had to be so smug about knowing everything. She didn't say anything out loud, but Sim must have sensed her mood.

"Ahh, Rose. I'm sorry. You'll understand in time. I promise. Your mind is expanding for bigger and better things."

"You've been messing with my mind?" There was a pause. "You've been READING my mind?" Rose couldn't decide what she felt more scandalized about. She just opted for still being confused.

"So what's going to happen when you join back up with yourself?" The Doctor seemed really interested in how this change had come about.

"It's time I was long gone, and splitting myself in two just prolonged my death. As much as the other part of me has enjoyed being all-powerful, finding the Skasis Paradigm too, I see. All things must come to an end. Everything has its time and everything dies, Doctor. Keep that in mind while you're playing the immortality role."

"How can you offer immortality and then tell me that there's no such thing?"

"Because I was never a legend, Doctor. I never travelled through time, was never imprinted on the minds of all I touched. I was never known in the past, present and future simultaneously, was never at the beginning or the end of the universe. So while you are somewhat changed because I thought it fun to mess around with your DNA, you are a mortal, and you are forever at the same time. And you're not lonely. You have your Rose. You chose her, and she will be with you."

"But what's different about us? You messed with our DNA, but what did you do?" Rose found the questions were back, stirring up her mind. She wanted to know, but she didn't at the same time. Some inexplicable curiosity was poking at her, and she was still completely confused as well. She wanted to sleep. That was a rational decision. Sleep. Maybe she would find that this had all been an extremely strange dream. Maybe she'd find that the past few years had been a weird dream. The thought was pushed out of her mind before it went as far as to say that the Doctor and the TARDIS were all a dream, too.

"Ahh... well. That's the question, isn't it? The thing everyone is dying to know. The reason for the pain and the venturing into the other universe and the decisions..." Sim trailed off, shooting a sympathetic look at Rose, and giving a sneaky smirk to the Doctor

"And?" The Doctor prompted. "What is the answer?"

Sorry about the cliffhanger --grins evilly--

Seems to be getting harder and harder to write these chapters. I remember back when I was writing 'Without You by my Side' over in England, and I would update every couple of days. Then life got utterly complicated. I can't believe how far I've come in this… what? Close to a year now. I have a job. Jobs waste so much time. So, forgive me, as usual, wonderful readers and reviewers --bows--- I'm still trying to make this as interesting as I possibly can.

Woah. Haven't written a long AN in a while :) I missed it

See ya next time. Hopefully REALLY soon.

As always, please review.

Mikkifavo