A.N. Hello! I want to start by clarifying something that Kate's comment brought to my attention. So in the context of this story, 10.5's TARDIS found a way back into the 'normal' universe, and Rose, through Bad Wolf's capabilities, found a way back as well; everyone is in the 'normal' universe from the first chapter on, not hopping back and forth between universes. Thanks so much to Kate for pointing out that I hadn't made it clear enough! And thanks to everyone for reviewing, following, and favorite-ing.

"Rose?" It was a tentative question, asked in quiet tones that rang with an accent Rose hadn't entirely gotten used to yet.

There was a muffled noise and the Doctor followed it into the brightly lit room. No, not just a room. A bedroom. Her bedroom. Their bedroom, with a bed and books and sofa and – and pictures. Everywhere, pictures. Of her, of him, of Mickey the Idiot, of Jackie, of the other Pete, of a little boy with a shock of blonde hair the same color Rose always dyed hers, of people he'd never seen before. And in every photo, these people were smiling, arms wrapped around each other.

It was entirely, utterly, completely domestic, and he, The Doctor, in that moment, was jealous of it.

The Doctor lifted one picture after the other, devouring the images and ignoring the ache in the center of his chest that seeing them but not having been a part of them made him feel. Rose had called his other self her husband and here was the proof. Picture after picture of Rose in a beautiful white dress, her shoulders bare, her hair longer like it had been when he first met her, curled elegantly. She looked divine, more beautiful than any woman he had seen in over one thousand years of living.

"Oh, Rose," he whispered, one finger tracing her shining face through the cool glass, her hand was clenched tightly to that of his previous face who was wearing a dark blue tux and those awful Chucks, smiling like a complete idiot into the camera, his hair wild. This is what he had missed by staying in this world. He had missed marrying Rose Tyler.

His hearts pinched painfully and he half thought he might regenerate from the sheer pain of seeing everything he had given up. Everything he had had to give up because of the Metacrisis and the Doctor Donna. Everything that had led to him changing into this man, who didn't want to hold others' hands, who got married in timelines that didn't exist, who was more selfish than he could ever admit to.

Nimble fingers slipped between his, squeezing tight then holding on. The Doctor's eyes fluttered shut. He knew those fingers, he knew every contour of the hand that held his; never, in all of the years he would live would he ever forget what it felt like to hold hands with Rose Tyler.

"You looked dead handsome, even Mum thought so," Rose said. "Though she did try to physically force you out of the Chucks. I liked them though, they were so you; even doing something as horrifyingly domestic as getting married, you still got to be you." Rose spoke to the picture, not having the heart to look at the Doctor. She knew her face would be blotchy, her make-up smeared from the cry she'd had in the closet, surrounded by his clothes and familiar smell but never farther away from him.

"Would have looked better with a bow tie," the Doctor muttered, opening his eyes once more.

Rose giggled, the sound not convincingly happy, but on the way to recovery. "Dunno, I don't think you're much into bow ties."

The Doctor picked up the next picture, one of the wedding party at the reception hall. Rose and the Doctor in the center of the table, Rose's smile impossibly wide as the Doctor kissed her cheek, one hand lifting a champagne glass in a toast. Unfamiliar faces filled three seats on either side of them and the Doctor wondered who these people were that he would never know.

"It's not champagne. Banana Daquiri." Rose pointed to the glass in question. "You were completely adamant about it even though I said it was in bad taste. We had an awful row about it."

"Why?" the Doctor asked, glancing down at her. He wasn't as tall as his last self, but he had six inches on Rose. She had always been the perfect height for him.

"Why?" Rose lifted an eyebrow. "Because of Madame de Pampers."

"Pampers?"

"Yeah," Rose sniffed, "like the nappies."

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up in surprise before he laughed. "Rose Tyler! She was the uncrowned queen of France – "

"Blah, blah, blah." Rose let go of his hand, stepping back to sit down on the bed. Stricken at the loss of contact, the Doctor turned around to face her, one hand still holding the picture. If he couldn't touch her, he at least needed to see Rose.

"I read up on her," Rose said, nodding toward the bookcase. "She was remarkable. Exceptionally capable with a great mind and devoted to the King. Not really the glimpse I got of her during the whole fireplace fiasco. So you'll have to excuse me if I separate her into Madame de Pampers who I met and Madame de Pompadour great historical figure of France who exists only in biographies for me."

The Doctor frowned, looking down at the picture before setting it back on the dresser. He crossed to the bed and sat down beside Rose, his hand searching out hers. His fingers bumped up against the back of her hand and Rose flipped her palm over to readily join them together.

"Was Reinette really that rude to you? I thought you only saw her for a second?"

Rose shrugged. "She said you were worth the monsters." Rose titled her head to the side, looking quietly at the Doctor. "Which means she didn't really get it. I wasn't with you because I wanted to be in spite of the monsters, I was with you because I wanted to be with you when you found the monsters."

The Doctor was completely helpless against the smile her words brought. "You always were fantastic, Rose."

She returned his smile, the first true one he had seen since she came blazing aboard his ship. "And so were you."

Seconds elapsed into minutes as they sat staring and smiling at each other. It was familiar, even though his face was different and her hair was longer. His eyes ran rapidly over her features looking for any changes that might have occurred in –

"Rose? How long has it been?"

"How long?" She looked up at the ceiling. "Well, three years for us. How long has it been for you?"

He let out a shaky laugh. "Three years." It was incredible that it should be so short a time for her and yet the thought of Rose Tyler living three whole years without him seeing her, without him watching her grow and change, seemed so much longer than the two hundred years he'd lived since she left.

"It's been three years for you?" Rose asked, her brow furrowing.

"No – no. Not three years, closer to two hundred, actually." The Doctor looked at Rose nervously, his left hand tugging at the side of his bow tie.

Rose lifted her unoccupied hand, settling it over the Doctor's so that he would stop fidgeting with his accessory of choice. "You're going to choke yourself if you don't stop that."

"I – what?" he dropped his hand to his lap. "That's all you have to say? Two hundred years and you're worried about me choking myself?"

"Well, it'd be a shame for you to regenerate after two hundred years due to suffocation from bow tie," Rose reasoned.

Then her tongue poked through her teeth and time stopped moving and the universe stopped spinning because just for a second, everything was perfect.

The Doctor could feel the words coming, could feel them pushing up against his lips, racing through his thoughts. Two hundred years and he was finally ready to say it.

"Rose Tyler, I –"

Her hand clamped over his mouth, the soft skin of her palm pressing tight to his lips, still open to form the next word, to finally, finally finish that sentence. "Don't." It was a plea, not a demand and it hurt more than he had ever imagined it would.

"Not now," she continued, her beautiful brown eyes locked on him. "I need to find the Doctor, my husband. I need you to be my friend, to help me. I need you not to finish that sentence, because right now, it doesn't need saying."

The Doctor nodded, his lips brushing over the skin of her palm, to show he understood. Rose withdrew her hand, eying him with a shy smile. "And, anyway, you seem to have a bit of a wife at the moment."

Before the Doctor could think of a proper response to that, and one that would probably include an apology for the kissing show in the console room, Rose leaned in close, her lips hovering next to his ear and whispered a word that was everything he had ever wanted to hear from her, in her voice, with her warmth.

"Rose!" He jerked back in surprise.

She laughed. "It's a ridiculous name, by the way. Totally made me laugh during the vows, which I can tell you, you did not appreciate in the least."

"My name! You know my name." He seemed to be having trouble comprehending this, the hand not holding hers flailing awkwardly at his side, he looked a bit like a deranged penguin actually, which only made Rose laugh harder.

Rose managed to compose herself after a moment, which was difficult with him looking all indignant. An indignant deranged penguin. "Of course I do, married you, didn't I? Well, not you-you. I got the one with better hair."

His hand went to his hair, yanking on it a bit. "My hair is better! Not all sticking up for no reason!"

Her tongue poked out before she fell back on the bed, finally releasing his hand, and laughing until she cried. The Doctor didn't like her laughing. She was laughing at him, it was a bit more than insulting. Here she was, saying his name like it didn't matter in the least, and then poking fun at this new him.

"Rose Tyler," he said sternly, arms braced on either side of her as he loomed over imposingly. "You cannot laugh at the Last of the Time Lords. It is strictly forbidden."

"Not – the – last," she managed between fits of laughter. "Half of the last." Then she broke up into more gales of helpless laughter.

The Doctor glared, dropping lower so that she could see his menacing look. "I am the Oncoming Storm, I am the Time Lord Victorious," he dropped lower with every pronouncement. "I am –" his nose brushed hers.

"Not Spock," Rose interrupted, her breath coming in gasps from all the laughing.

"You should be punished for such remarks, you stupid ape," the Doctor teased, his eyes running hungrily over her features, flushed and bright.

"I don't think so, Shake." Rose grinned, her tongue slipping through.

"That's why you're Shiver," he replied, his head dipping down, covering those last few inches that separated them. He could feel her breath, warm, against his lips, her chest, rising upwards. She was so very alive, and she was so very here, and she was so very close, and she was so very very –

"Rose Tyler."

The amusement faded from her eyes and she regarded him seriously. They were in the midst of being in a situation. It was incredibly easy to be with the Doctor, to slip back into their old familiarity because even if it was two hundred years and he had a new face, he was the Doctor and she was Rose Tyler, just as it should be. But it wasn't, because he wasn't.

Rose watched as his eyes fell shut and he moved to eliminate the very last, very important space between them. Quickly, she slipped from beneath him, off the bed, and stood looking back at him, her heart racing, and her hands trembling.

"We can't," she said, in a voice she was proud didn't shake. "You've got a wife, I've got a husband, one I desperately want to find, one I need you desperately to help me find."

The Doctor was staring at the space Rose had occupied only moments before, blinking in disbelief at how incredibly empty that space was without her. He heard picture frames scraping against the dresser as she rearranged the photographs he had moved.

"We're not really married." He didn't know why he said it; he had a feeling that compassionate as Rose was, she would not like him dispelling his marriage so easily.

Rose held up the picture of the Doctor lifting her up in his arms, full in her wedding dress, her bouquet held loosely in her right hand. They were smiling, beaming actually, at the photographer, shouting out random planet names to see who could make the photographer the most aggravated. It had been one of the best days of her life. Why hadn't it been his, this Doctor's?

"What do you mean?" She turned around, leaning back against the dresser, the knobs digging into her back but not in a way that really bothered her.

"Me and River, River and I." He sat up, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands as he worked his fingers through is hair in a repeated gesture of frustration. "We were married, more or less, in a timeline that didn't exist."

"A timeline that what?" What he'd said didn't make any sense. How could a timeline not exist?

"Like the one with your father, where I was taken by the Reapers. That timeline didn't exist."

"But – but it did, because, I was there, when he died. I held him, Mum remembers," Rose argued, feeling anxious at the mention of the worst thing and the best thing she had done while with the Doctor.

"Yes, you holding him existed, but the part where the universe was being destroyed, that you and I remember and no one else does, that doesn't exist. That's what happened with River. We were in a universe that was tearing itself apart and while we remember what happened, no one else does, because it never existed."

Rose frowned. Hands propped on the dresser, she shifted to ease off the knobs, mulling this over. "Then why would you marry her there? If you knew it wasn't going to exist?"

The Doctor sighed heavily, his hands stilling in his hair. His fingers knotted at the back of his neck. He couldn't look at Rose when he said this, he had become such a different person while she was gone, and maybe he'd been doing a good job of hiding it before, but now . . . now it would begin to unravel.

"Because she needed me to."

"What?"

"River, she needed me to marry her. It was the only way for me to save the universe, and I do care for River, she has been incredibly loyal and I have done absolutely nothing to deserve that."

"Doctor," Rose said angrily. "That's not why you marry someone, because you need to. Because you wanted to earn her trust – why was the universe ending anyway?"

"River tried to save my life and to do that she endangered the universe –"

"What the bloody hell goes on when I'm not around here?" Rose asked, rubbing aggressively at her temples. "You start wearing bow ties –"

The Doctor jerked his head up. "Bow ties are cool!"

Rose snorted. "I changed my jumper," she mocked in an awful attempt at his former Northern accent.

"What does that have to do with anything? I did change my jumper!"

"Did I do that?" Rose asked, her tone abruptly worried.

"Change your jumper?" He looked at her incredulously. "You never wore a jumper, Rose."

"No, you idiot." She rolled her eyes at him. "When – when I tried to save you on Satellite Five, did I endanger the universe?" Her teeth sunk into her bottom lip, gnawing at it in a horrible habit she'd picked up since the first time he'd left her on Bad Wolf Bay.

She hadn't even recovered the memories of Bad Wolf until after their TARDIS started to mature. Then it had come back to her in blinding yellow dreams that woke her up screaming and needing the Doctor to soothe her back to sleep. Eventually he had explained what had happened, in the barest of the details, tears shimmering in his eyes.

They had called in sick to Torchwood that day, spent it instead doing everything domestic they could think of. Making microwave s'mores, watching black and white movies, playing scrabble (the Doctor had cheated with alien words that he knew she wouldn't be able to prove weren't real).

But what if he had left something out, to protect her? What if she had almost destroyed everything, not just the course of Jack's life? And that was something she was never going to be able to apologize for. She had been furious at first, with herself for condemning Jack to eternal life, and then with the Doctor for not telling her sooner so that they could have found him, helped him, let her apologize.

"No," the Doctor said quietly, drawing Rose away from her dark thoughts which had her eyes glowing gold again. It worried him, that gold. "No, Rose, you didn't endanger the universe. You could have, might have, but I took the Vortex out of you before that. Or at least, I thought I did."

She nodded disjointedly, her teeth still digging into her lip. She might have. Would she now? Her Doctor was missing and wouldn't she do anything to get him back? Wouldn't she sacrifice anything?

Rose closed her eyes. She was back on Bad Wolf Bay.

"I'm burning up a sun just to say good-bye."

"Can't you come through properly?"

"The whole thing would fracture. The two universe would collapse."

"So?"

They'd laughed. Of course they had. She'd meant it just as much as she hadn't. She wanted to be with him more than anything, but there were prices you had to pay in the life they lived and the one thing that they had to live by was saving the universe. So of course she hadn't meant it, because the universe came first and then them. She had learned that lesson very effectively with trying to save her father. Nothing was worth that. Not even him, the Doctor.

"I wouldn't have," she said quietly, more to herself than to him. "I wouldn't have done that, because you wouldn't have wanted me to and I wouldn't have wanted to. 'Everything has its time and everything dies,'" she quoted softly. It was what her first Doctor had told her, something she remembered any time things got almost too difficult to bear.

Watching her expression grow sadder, the Doctor opened his arms for her. Rose walked towards him and he folded her into his embrace, his face coming to rest against her chest. "No, Rose, you're right, you wouldn't have. Not after –"

"Not after the Reapers, no." Her hands ran up the tweed of his jacket, the material rough against her fingertips, leaving them tingling. "Where are you?" she whispered, her cheek resting on the crown of his head.

"I don't know, Rose."

They lapsed into silence, drawing solace from their embrace.

"But you did marry her," Rose said finally. "Because she knows your name, and you –"

"I didn't though," he interceded. "Not then. It wasn't – it wasn't even really me."

She drew her fingers through his hair, loving the way it ruffled against her skin. "What could you possibly mean by that? Another half self out there, Doctor?"

"Not in those exact terms. It was robot me and I was inside the robot and so quite technically the robot married River, but it wasn't a proper ceremony and I didn't tell her my name, and it happened in a timeline that never existed –"

"Was it real to River?"

The Doctor stumbled then fell silent. "Yes," he said finally, "yes, it was very real to River."

"Then you married her. And she is your wife. And you are her husband." Rose drew back, out of his arms, further still until she was completely out of his reach.

He had nothing to say to that. It was something he had been struggling with since it had happened. All of time in crisis because River wanted to save him, even though he'd already found a way to save himself.

"How am I going to find you?" Rose asked.

"I don't know, Rose," he said quietly, leaning forward on the bed until he could link their hands together, choosing to ignore that she might not want him to touch her after his confession. "Wandering around Savoh blindly looking for me isn't really an option."

"Can you do something Spock?" she pleaded. "Scan for non-Savoh?"

"It's not really the simple," he apologized. "When the others get here, we could try and form search parties, but even then, we'll probably have to wait until tomorrow, the jungle will be too dark at night."

Rose fought off tears. Waiting until tomorrow didn't appeal to her at all, but if the Doctor thought that's what they should do, there really wasn't a way for her to argue against him. She'd never heard of Savoh before let alone landed on it and as the alien expert, she was going to have to listen to the Doctor, even if it was the last thing she wanted to do.

They had fallen back into silence when a knock echoed through the TARDIS. Rose's eyes flared golden and she took off at a dead run. The Doctor hurried after her, arms pumping at his sides as he chased her through the winding hallways to the console room. He had been dreading this moment, the moment when his other self returned to whisk Rose away from him. It was the absolute last thing he wanted to happen just as it was the absolute only thing Rose wanted.

Rose threw herself across the console room, wrenching the door open, heart in her throat.