"So, what's a Sith?" The Doctor asked intently.

Rose shrugged uncomfortably, "The opposite of a Jedi really. Where we're all about saving and preserving life; they want to subdue and dominate. Their power comes from hatred and anger. And the Dark Side of the Force."

They were following Sarah Jane and K-9 to the munitions lab. Rose who had reclaimed a blaster had Razzle tied up and gagged and was pushing him along with grim purpose. The Doctor was not happy by this turn of events. The Rose he new would never threaten a child.

Of course the Rose he knew couldn't move things about with her mind or run up walls so maybe he was missing something.

"Dark Side of the Force? Sounds dramatic." He ventured.

"Dramatic…I guess that's one way to describe it." Rose bit her lip.

The Doctor decided after a internal debate to try again, "He's only about fourteen you know?"

Rose stopped in her tracks for a moment. They'd never get anywhere if he didn't take this seriously. She pulled Razzle up and glared at the Doctor in frustration. "Just because he's young doesn't mean he's innocent."

They followed Sarah Jane to the munitions lab and stared mutely at the army of droidekas being assembled. Their eyes panned upward to take in what Sarah Jane had taken to thinking of as the 'Giant Golfball of Doom.'

"Kriff." Rose said flatly.

Razzle stopped struggling to stare at Rose. The Jedi was confusing. She was a noble he was sure of it...a noble with the vocabulary of a scoundrel!

"It's a mini Deathstar," she breathed.

"Deathstar?" The Doctor said tasting the word. He didn't find it to his liking. Things with the word death in them were rarely good. Never good really. Okay, maybe twice.

"Mini?" They were supposed to be bigger? Sarah Jane contemplated.

"Yeah, they're supposed to be as big a moon."

Sarah Jane let out a harsh breath, "Big as a moon?"

Rose nodded.

"What is it for? The Doctor asked carefully.

"The originals were planet killers." Rose replied. The following silence was profound. "I'm guessing that that this one's for the destruction of nations." Her expression was cold. "Just a thought but I think Darth Brat and his master, wherever he's hiding, is after taking over the world."

The Jedi contemplated and then marched with purpose to the fire alarm pulling Razzle by the arm. She reached out and pulled it and smiled in satisfaction at the panicked running and screaming the high pitched whine of the alarm induced.

The Doctor clapped his hands together briskly, "We have work to do."

Sarah Jane watched in bemusement as Rose duck taped Razzle's arms over his head and onto a wall. "Why are you doing that?"

"So he's tied up and his hands are seen at all times."

The Doctor had gone to the main computers to do destroy the specs and cross galaxy science the Sith had given Cross & Bone. He had been dubious about leaving the women to deal with the droidekas and the mini Deathstar but had relented when Rose had assured him that it would get handled.

Rose finished with a satisfied nod and lowered her face to Razzle, "I know that you really wouldn't have any trouble getting out of this so…" She tossed the blaster to Sarah Jane who caught and glared at Rose. "If he tries anything shot him in the leg."

"What sort of anything?"

"Moving things with his mind. Choking the life out of you from a distance. That sort of anything."

"Okay."

Rose looked thoughtfully at the droidekas in various stages of construction and the mini Deathstar. "I suppose if I sped up the rate of cellular decomposition…" She raised her hands and concentrated. The world looked different through the Force. Rose didn't know what it was like for others but for her it was like throwing off illusion for reality. She could for instance see people as they really were—their essence. Sarah Jane was a violet flame, Razzle, an ever darkening blue and K-9, a bright spark. She made a mental note to never ever try that on the Doctor. She'd probably go blind.

Rose wasn't looking to see souls at the moment. Her sight focused and microscope-d in. The world went from solid objects to lots of empty space and molecules. Now all she had to do was shift some things around.

The Doctor was situated in front of the 'god board.' This should be fairly easy. All he had to do here was to fabricate a search and destroy virus. That at least would take care of technologic blueprints and such. He also located where they were constructing the blasters, at a Cross &Bone satellite lab across town and the warehouses where they kept their weaponry. He didn't want to take any chances with the timeline.

Satisfied with his work he was about to leave when the monitor caught his eye. In each small square he viewed a part of the building. Naturally, his eye caught the droid room.

He knew he shouldn't but he turned up the volume.

"So how are the two of you these days," Said Sarah Jane's voice through the speakers. "Things seem a little tense."

Rose shrugged, "We're fine. Things were sort of awkward when we met up again…but we're better now."

"Five years, lost in another galaxy. I can't imagine." Sarah Jane commiserated.

"Wasn't so bad. Okay it was," she admitted recalling the shock of being thrown through the Void. Rose supposed she was lucky she had lost consciousness for most of it. Probably why she was still sane. Then being lost on Tatooine and not knowing the language…and the utter helplessness. "At first at least. Then things got better."

Sarah Jane walked over and copied Rose's stance of leaning on the wall with her arms crossed. "So things are back to normal now?"

Rose snorted derisively, "Normal. When are things ever normal with the Doctor."

Sarah Jane wasn't an ace reporter for nothing, "True. But that's not going to get you out of answering my question."

"The Doctor," Rose said ruefully, "thought that everything could go back to exactly the way it was. I'm not exactly the same Rose I was." She let out breath. "He can change everything about himself and your expected to just go with it. He doesn't even give you time to adjust. He doesn't seem to get that we change too. It was five years…" She trailed off.

Sarah Jane looked at the younger woman thoughtfully. So. She had gone through regeneration of sorts and all that that implied.

"And he doesn't take me seriously!" Rose made a face. "The first time I tried to explain the whole Jedi thing he just laughed it off. He thought it was funny. Like I was just making time until he came to rescue me."

One day the brigadier had been full of vigor and nowadays he walked heavily on a cane. He had kept his shock at his old friend's deteriorating health firmly in check the last time he had been to visit.

He'd noticed that she'd changed. He didn't get to his mid 900's by being unobservant, thank you. Humans changed. Minute by minute they changed. They seemed to be born dying.

And as for not taking the Jedi thing seriously? Rose had up and joined an ancient society of mystic warriors. They wore robes.

Sarah Jane took in the vehemence of Rose's tone stoically. "You didn't think he'd come for you."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement that seemed specially crafted to make the Doctor wince. Well, that hurt. She didn't think he'd come for her. He'd scoured the time and space to find her. The idea of her hurt and alone had haunted him. He'd nearly gone mad with worry.

Rose shrugged, "I really thought that I wasn't going to see him again. So I was very angry at him for a time and hurt. But hurt eventually heals and I had a life to lead." She let out a laugh looking at last a little like the girl Sarah Jane had first met. "When he came to get me I realized things had to change."

Rose gave Sarah Jane a sideways glance, "I gave him up."

The reporter blinked. "You gave him up."

"Not that he was ever really mine to give up. I gave up the hope of him." Rose smiled sadly.

"Oh."

"It hurts to much to love him. Being in love with the Doctor…it just hurts."

Sarah Jane loved the Doctor. Her relationship with him had been intense and more than worth the monsters. But she had never been in love with him. It was not even something she had ever contemplated. Being in love with the Doctor had to be a bit like being in love with lightning or fancying the ocean. It was something that could only end in pain.

Oh Rose. He'd known it. But why did she have to say it? He knew that it wasn't a child's fancy. It was real. Her love for him sang out and warmed him like sunlight. It was the one star he'd never get to touch. The one adventure he'd never get to have.

He loved all his companions. But, Rose was special. She'd saved his soul.

After he'd survived the war the Doctor had been on the verge of giving up…a Time Lord with a death wish. But he had met this silly ape-shop girl who had stitched him back together. And he couldn't love her.

It was something that he just couldn't allow. His father had loved a human. His mother, a woman the Doctor had never met. He'd been taken from inside her and reworked in a Loom. She had been returned to Earth with no memory of his father.

They had given him to his father as a kind of consolation prize. Being separated from her had broken his father. He'd grown up with a man who was dying by inches.

He could never allow himself to be in love with Rose

But he couldn't let her go. Not yet at least.

Sarah Jane knew what the Doctor hadn't seen. He'd noticed she'd changed. The reporter knew that he noticed everything. But he had missed what it meant. The raw material had been refined, melted and shaped into something else. Something new.

"So I will be his friend…for however long we are supposed to walk together. From meetings and partings none can ever escape." Rose's voice was as bittersweet and rich as chocolate and now it held sadness and nobility, won as true nobility was ever won by humans— by sacrifice.

Rose shrugged. "Wolves mate for life," she murmured too low for Sarah Jane to catch.

The Doctor caught it. He ignored the sentiment and grabbed onto the subject. Rose referring to herself as a wolf could not be a good thing.