Part Four

I stood at the top of the stairs, staring at the Doctor's face. There was such love in it, I didn't have the heart to confront him, to start a row that would undoubtedly lead to him disappearing.

Here was my chance, my chance to actually spend some time with him: no Daleks, no Davros, no end of the multiverse. And it might be my last chance, my last chance to spend time with the other half of the love of my life, and my last chance to say a proper goodbye to him.

Did I really want to waste it arguing?

Because I knew deep down him being here with me like this wouldn't happen again.

And I suddenly realized that the Doctor needed it as well. For his own reasons - loneliness over losing everyone and losing part of himself as well as other reasons I couldn't begin to imagine - he needed us. Needed me. And needed his own chance to properly say goodbye. The man who hated goodbyes, who never looked back, needed this for some reason. That was why my Doctor had allowed this to happen. Allowed him control of his body.

And despite my teasing him about being thick sometimes, my Doctor wasn't stupid. He had to know that I might figure it out. And on the off chance that I did, even though he still was occasionally jealous of my feelings for the other Doctor, I was certain my Doctor wanted me to have a chance to say goodbye to him as well.

All those thoughts passed through my mind in less than an instant only to be replaced by wondering how I should handle the situation. They had not wanted me to know that the man in front of me was him. So I didn't know, I decided. I'd let them believe that they had fooled me and act just as I would if that were my Doctor in front of me.

As I walked down to the lounge, the look on the Doctor's face disappeared and changed to one that was a combination of puzzlement and disappointment.

"What?" I asked.

"You… you showered," he answered.

"Yeah. Told you I needed one."

"It's just…" His voice broke off, and when he began again, he lowered his voice, trying to sound seductive, but now that I knew it was him, I could tell it was a put-on. "It's just that I seem to recall that you wanted me to scrub your back."

He really didn't know how to do it, I thought. I wasn't surprised. It had taken my Doctor weeks to perfect sounding seductive without also sounding uncomfortable or silly.

And although I really didn't want the Doctor to be traveling alone, one tiny, well actually not so tiny, part of me was relieved that he still didn't know how to act that way. It meant he hadn't been practicing being seductive with anyone else.

"And I seem to recall you turning me down," I said teasingly.

"Later, I said," he answered. "I distinctly said later. And it is later than it was."

I crossed over to him and wrapped my arms around his neck, and he wrapped his around my waist, pulling me closer. That was alright, I thought. We always used to hug.

"I thought we were staying home because you hit your head and weren't feeling well."

"Well," he drawled, "I'm not feeling that bad."

"Really," I said, making it clear with my tone of voice that I wasn't surprised.

I'm not sure what possessed me, whether it was an attempt to demonstrate that I had been fooled into believing that he was my Doctor, or whether it was just the fact that I had wanted to do it for so long. But I pulled him down for a kiss.

It was supposed to just be a brief press of the lips, but that's not how it turned out.

I don't know who changed it, it might have even been me, but the kiss turned slow and soft, his lips moving against mine gently but with an undercurrent of passion tightly reined. When it ended, I was breathless and my heart was pounding. I began to giggle, and he asked me why. But I couldn't tell him I was giddy because he was here with me.

Instead I told him what I would have told my Doctor.

"'S just, even though it's been months, sometimes I still can't believe that we're back together. And that we do this."

"This?"

"Snog," I said. "Shag." I gave him a cheeky grin, but he answered me seriously.

"Me neither," he said. "And I'd… I'd like to do more."

It might have been odd, but I wanted him to know that if he was going to pretend to be my Doctor, he was going to have to do a better job of it.

"Are you sure you're alright, Doctor? You're definitely acting weird today."

"In what way?" he asked, sounding overly casual, and I could tell he was not only curious about how my Doctor normally acted around me, but how to duplicate it.

"When you want to kiss me, you usually don't talk about it," I told him. "Usually you just do it."

He gave me a lopsided grin and pulled me in for another kiss, but then we were interrupted by my stomach growling.

I sighed. That was typical, I thought. While we were traveling, every time he had looked like he was going to kiss me we'd be interrupted by something or other. And now my own stomach was betraying me.

With breakfast now a priority, for me at any rate, I went to the kitchen and loaded up a tray to heaping with all kinds of food, knowing that whatever I didn't eat, he would.

Within minutes we were settled on the sofa, a blanket over our laps, a roaring fire in the fireplace, and a Disney movie, The Great Mouse Detective, on telly. Between bites he told me about how he'd met the actual Sherlock Holmes and solved a crime for him, and then encouraged Arthur Conan Doyle to fictionalize it. Even though I'd heard the story before, it was actually more interesting than the movie, which I had seen a version of when I was growing up, and this particular version countless times with Tony. Despite my initial reaction to Sarah Jane, I loved hearing about his travels before he met me, before the Time War had ripped him apart.

After the movie ended, we couldn't decide on another one right away. He began flipping through the channels, watching a few minutes of each movie that came on in order to decide if it was interesting enough to him to continue with, and talking constantly about each one's parallel version and how it was the same, or different, than the Pete's World version.

Eventually he came across one that had a submarine in it. It was based on a true story: a Russian sub that had become stuck under an ice shelf and had had no chance of rescue and in which the entire crew had died. He fell silent and sat forward, elbows on knees, staring intently as the events unfolded on the screen, and I knew something was wrong. He looked troubled; something similar must have happened to him. And recently, too, otherwise I was certain my Doctor would have told me about it by now. I gently removed the remote control from his hands and changed to a movie I knew my Doctor liked, a movie based on a famous Agatha Christie novel.

The tension drained from his body, and he leaned backwards, resting his back against the sofa. I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and squeezed, and he smiled at me, looking at me in gratitude. I smiled back at him before resting my head on his shoulder, and he began to talk again, this time about how brilliant Agatha Christie was and how he and Donna had met her.

We stayed that way for hours, snuggled under a blanket watching movies, the fire going in the fireplace while outside the temperature dropped and the wind picked up. If I closed my eyes, the years since the battle of Canary Wharf fell away. I could imagine we were back in the TARDIS in the media room, watching movies from the year 43,752, or back at my mum's flat, watching Cliff Richard with her on a bank holiday.

At some point I popped some popcorn for us to munch on while we watched an absolutely horrible sci fi movie. Every time something ridiculous came on, an especially corny line or some bit of the horrible special effects, we grabbed some of the popcorn and threw it at the screen. Eventually, when the bowl was empty, we looked down to realize half of what I had popped lay scattered on the floor. We looked at each other and burst out laughing.

After the movie was over, I realized my muscles were cramping from sitting so long. I threw off the blanket and got up to stretch, looking through the wide window behind the sofa.

"'S raining."

He nodded as he flipped through the movie listings again. "Thought it would. How about The Slime Monster from Surrey next?"

"Nope," I said. "You picked the last one. Now it's my turn."

By now I was in the mood for something different, so I picked The Call for Freedom. It was a historical romance, paralleling the end of the monarchy here with one of its last princes who fell in love with a commoner and wanted the freedom to marry her. I had seen it before and knew it was really well done; given the Doctor's interest in history, I thought he might enjoy it.

As the rain began to come down in earnest, I began to hear the roll of distant thunder and see the occasional flash of lightning. I'm not afraid of thunderstorms, not after all I've been through, but I did feel a sudden chill, although whether it was real or imagined I didn't know. When the movie had begun we had settled back down on the sofa with the blanket over us, and he had put his arm around me again, so I snuggled into his side, pulled the blanket up to my shoulders and buried my nose in the crook of his neck.

I could feel him hum contentedly, and he turned and kissed my forehead. Our eyes met, and I was certain he was going to kiss me.

Unfortunately a bolt of lightning and clap of thunder almost directly overhead shook the whole house, and the power went out. It was black as pitch outside, and the only light was from the fire in the fireplace. He stared at me; his face was in the shadows, but I could still see the intensity of his gaze in his eyes. I giggled, a little nervously, almost like a girl on her first date.

"With no telly, now what'll we do?" I asked, my voice coming out lower and more seductive than I intended.

I think.

But maybe not, because I returned to nuzzling his neck.

And then I began to kiss him.