A/n: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed during the course of this story, it is much appreciated. I'm going away for a week tomorrow so I thought I'd better post the last part of this before I go. Please keep the reviews coming.

"Doctor," Rose muttered, almost inaudibly. Her voice was shallow, not dissimilar to that of a small, frightened, traumatized child.

The Doctor's eyes locked with Rose's, in which tears began to well. He stared at her sincerely, mesmerized and besotted with her. "You're everything to me, Rose," came his slight assurance, before he reverted his attention to Jack with a clear reluctance surrounding his action. "And you Jack; quit trying to sound like a persuasive advert, if you'd please."

The Doctor allowed himself several seconds to stare intently at his companion, and he grinned lovingly at her before the realisation hit him that he'd better resolve not only his own situation, but Jack's issue with Donna. Donna's issue with Jack, to be precise.

"What are you doing in here, anyway? Apologising would be a good move, whatever's gone on here."

"Excuse me for fearing my nose may be broken!" Jack expressed quite dramatically.

The Doctor glanced at Rose for a moment, expressing his clearly defined opinion as to Jack's clichéd attitude without need for words. "Don't come to me with the medical stuff; go and ask Martha, I'm busy!" he protested, almost squealing in his desperation to explain to Rose that his friendship with Donna was entirely innocent and would always remain so. He couldn't lose his Rose again; he couldn't, wouldn't.

Martha. Another one. This was history repeating itself alright.

"Martha?" A shaken Rose enquired worriedly, as the Doctor realised what he'd absentmindedly failed to conceal at least until he'd exposed Donna's identity.

"Jack, I think you should just leave us and head to the TARDIS now."

He frowned. "That's just the thing; I asked Martha to take a look at my nose and she refused flat out. It didn't take her very long to come to that conclusion either; I'd say she knew exactly what I was going to ask, if I didn't know any better. Unjustified or what?" the Captain dwelled, longing for sympathy which was undeserved on his part.

"Clearly you really wound up Donna; ganging up against people isn't Martha's style any more than traipsing round retail parks is mine; just go and apologise will you," the Doctor ordered, overlooking the fact that he had handed Jack the perfect window to dispute his words on a plate.

"All I said was ginger people are very attractive; not my fault she decided to get all specific on me!"

"And Martha?"

"She's a woman, what other excuse does she need? Don't know how you put up with those two!"

The Doctor slipped an arm comfortingly around Rose's back, hoping that his gesture would prove at least something of a comfort to her in light of the revelations and truths that she had recently heard and become exposed to, which he was the first to admit, should have sourced from himself and only himself. "Stop trying to argue your way out of everything and get out there and apologise. NOW!"

The Captain, rather surprisingly, actually left swiftly and with a start.

"Martha? Donna? Did I actually mean anything to you for more than five minutes?!"

Great, the wrath of a Tyler. Female as well, that worsened his current circumstances still.

"Rose," he urged, holding both his hands out ahead of him, which she did not take. "I feel apart when you fell into that universe, me, the last time lord. How pathetic that sounds. Anyway, I don't care. All I need is you, and I didn't have you…" The Doctor had not finished what he had been intending to voice as Rose interjected rather loudly.

"So you thought you'd just go and shack up with some other random girls? Well thanks a bunch!" She screeched, clambering to her feet, her legs shaking beneath her.

The Doctor looked to be deeply saddened. He felt tears threaten to fall from his eyes as the one thing that mattered most in the world to him continued to doubt him. "I'm not shacked up with them; Rose…" he began to explain, pulling her gently back down to her knees. This enabled him to gaze straight into her eyes again, and he hoped that if nothing else, his gesture acted as evidence to portray the truthfulness of his words. "I swore I'd never fall for a human, and you know me, I'm not particularly a weak man… you're something pretty special to make me directly contradict that, and they're nothing compared to you. I love you," he told her, as she busied herself contemplating, considering and mulling over his quite lengthy explanation.

"I love you too," she admitted gingerly, the edges of her lips now curling into a slight smile.

The Doctor went to reply, but Rose hadn't finished.

"I was a cow, I'm sorry. I knew about the Time War, and stupidly expected you to be alone just because I couldn't be there. You can't live like that, and I shouldn't have expected that of you, after everything."

"It doesn't matter."

For the first time, Rose now held a genuine interest that was something other than jealously in the Doctor's new friends. "So, how'd you meet them then?"

"Donna; she was with this guy, Lance. Scheming little toad; he was messing around with an old enemy of mine, the Racnoss. Not only that, but she was the Empress. They concocted a plan between them where they dosed Donna with liquid huon particles and the particles then activated while Donna and Lance were supposedly walking down the aisle. Huon energy was eradicated long ago, so it pulled her to the only place in the universe that any remains. The TARDIS."

Rose let out a slight giggle at this admission, and smiled softly. "Bet she was impressed."

"Probably less so than your Mum was when I brought you back after a year, if I'm honest."

"I'd have loved to see that!" grinned Rose.

The Doctor's expression rose into something more humorous for a second, as he considered the events of the Christmas Eve in question. "I wish you had; she found one of your tops draped over the TARDIS rail, and started laying into me claiming I'd abducted her and saying she was going to 'sue the living backside' off of me.

"Like to see that; what the hell for; you don't have any money!"

Rose laughed as did the Doctor, when suddenly a crucial thought dawned on her. "How did you get her to come with you when she wanted to sue you?"

"I didn't," he admitted to a puzzled Rose, who shifted slightly closer to him. "We met up again a couple of months ago."

"What about Martha?"

The Doctor considered the day several months later upon which he had first met Martha, and began. "Medical student; the hospital she worked in was taken to the moon by the Judoon, who wanted to sentence it to execution because they believed that an alien was being concealed there; I couldn't have saved everyone without her, and said she could have a trip as a way of thanks; we just seemed to get pulled into more and more mysteries until she came on board full time."

Allowing his words to replay themselves within her mind, Rose reached a conclusion. "That sounds like fun for you, exhibit A."

"Not much," he grinned, pulling Rose to her feet. "You coming back to the TARDIS then?" he asked her caringly, slightly afraid of hearing her answer. "I'll send them packing if you want; you really are all that I want and all that I need," he assured her, pulling her into a hug. He smiled again she returned it. "Come on," she told him, pulling him along by one of his hands, having released him from the hug. "I've still got a rucksack full of clean clothes in the TARDIS."

--

Martha and Donna could almost have claimed to have done themselves a neck injury as the need to glance to the entrance of the TARDIS became paramount. Amusingly for Rose, Jack stood at the opposite end of the time ship, as if allergic to the two women who stood in the corner, discussing what a parasite their present company was in reality.

The Doctor had an arm wrapped comfortingly, securely and tightly around Rose's shoulder. She said nothing and simply let her eyes scan the inside of the time ship, which she had missed so very much.

"You must be Rose; I've heard so much about you," Donna told her gently, surprisingly quietly and comfortably. She offered a hand in politeness, outstretching it so that it ceased to hang limply.

Rose edged forwards and hugged Donna briefly, before stepping back into the Doctor's grasp and smiling to her. "I hear you gave Jack here a suspected broken nose; nice work!"

Donna began to laugh in infectious tones as the Doctor stepped in to commence the overdue introductions. "Rose, Donna and Martha," he told her, gesturing to each of them in turn. "Martha, that's Rose," he finished, giving her shoulders a slight squeeze, which Rose beamed upon perceiving.

Martha closed in towards Rose, beginning to speak quietly. "It's an honour; the way he talks of you, you'd think you were famous or something."

A silent Rose smiled appreciatively at the medical student standing before her, then turning to her Doctor. She hugged him in silent thanks for his keeping her memory alive, and proceeded to give Martha the same greeting as she had Donna moments before.

The Doctor reluctantly loosened his grip on Rose, and brought his arm out from around her. He strode to the TARDIS's central console with a beaming smile littering his face at finally having his Rose back in his life, before turning back to his companions. "We off, then?"

What came next could only be summarized as a horrendous ego boost to the time lord. "Try getting rid of me," the three women chimed in unison, in the processes of gathering around the console for much needed support during the undoubtedly turbulent flight which lay ahead of them. Jack said nothing, but made no attempt to leave the TARDIS; he had no desire to crawl back to Torchwood, who he anticipated would simply discard him on yet another occasion, as soon as a young, attractive and relatively intelligent female came along.

"Where to then?"

Donna turned to look at Martha, who seemed to subconsciously sense Donna's gaze and turned to meet it. The pair seemed to have engaged in an intense conversation of no words, before piping up, "Lets see Rose's favourite place," the two requested, and the Doctor looked more than happy to oblige.

"Women Wept, is it, Rose?" he asked, although he was sure he'd concluded correctly as he held one hand over the console and the other aside for her to take.

"Oh yes."

The time lord set his machine in motion as Donna and Martha edged closer to Rose, who found she was drifting away from reality in staring at the Doctor. "How did you meet the Doctor?" they asked her, and an amused expression dominated her entire being as she considered her very first encounter with the man she loved. Their question seemed to have emerged from nowhere, but Rose was happy to answer it.

"He blew up my job," she grinned in mild amusement, as Martha and Donna adopted a look of genuine shock. "It wasn't the last time he blew something up in my company, and I don't see it being the last."