They fall into something of a routine. The Doctor visits Rose between his own adventures and quests, spacing out their encounters as long as he can. Sometimes a few weeks pass, for him; other times, it's only a few days.

He drops by for a visit on Tralion, peering over Rose's shoulder as she sifts through data in a seventy-eighth century hall of records. (She flirts with the guard, a pretty boy humanoid who is all-too-eager for a spot of female attention and grants them access to the vaunted and forbidden Grey Files with a grin and a wink; the Doctor's eye twitches and he says nothing, but later the guard will notice that his midday treat has mysteriously disappeared, and the Doctor will have a suspicious crumb of something chocolate on his collar.) A few weeks after that, the Doctor spends a morning with Rose on a ghium-mining station battened on the moon of X-375, both of them laughing while they hedge bets on the local jabber-race. (It would be an abuse of the Doctor's time-traveling privileges to give Rose any tips on the outcome, but since she has already brilliantly discovered the location of the stolen casket, he might give her a little nudge in the right direction as a reward and a much-belated thank-you.)

Then he drops by on Rose in London, present-day in her personal timeline, fresh off her first adventure in a parallel world.

He remembers that she disappeared for a few days, when she asked to visit her mum. At the time, he had thought she wanted space from him, and she does, in a fashion; she is not, however, averse to spending time with his current self, and he buys her a long-owed basket of reciprocal chips at her favorite chippy.

Rose eats the food with a little less gusto than usual, the ghost of Mickey weighing heavy on her mind, even if his name remains unspoken. She doesn't bring him up, so the Doctor doesn't either, and they spend two days roaming around London instead. Rose plays the tour guide for once, dragging him around town and pointing out her favorite places, while his younger self putters about impatiently in the TARDIS just a few blocks away.

The Doctor doesn't envy him, especially when Rose pecks a quick kiss on his cheek before they part ways. He can feel the press of her lips on his skin for what seems like hours afterward.

For a long time, the Doctor regretted all of these instances that he left Rose on her own, separations necessitated by environments or species incompatible with humans for one reason or another, or instances where they drifted apart while investigating this thing or that. All of it, he thought for a long while, was time spent apart that could have been spent better together. But now he looks at it as a small gift, like maybe all of reality isn't completely conspiring against him for once.

Well, all of reality except Rose, that is. He's starting to suspect that she might secretly enjoy these clandestine meetings away from his younger self. That would explain why she suddenly stopped protesting the times he had to leave her behind.

One day, the Doctor journeys to Destex Magora, an undeveloped planet whose surface is approximately 85% water. With any luck, the Doctor has managed to land somewhere on the other 15%. He swings the door open and peers out—yes, that's a blue sky and an even bluer-sanded beach beneath his feet, Magorian crystals ground into a fine dust that could almost pass for sand; yes, his younger self is nowhere to be seen, negotiating some trade dispute or other on a less-solid expanse of planet, and yes, that is Rose Tyler lying on a towel several meters away, her body stretched out and slowly turning pink and clad in nothing but a swimsuit that would get her banned on a goodly number of planets.

It should be noted that Time Lords, for the last few millennia now, are not programmed to correlate physical beauty with sexual attraction or reproduction. Physical beauty is too subjective to be trusted with such things, and procreation is largely engineered, based on important physical and mental compatibility in an effort to produce the healthiest, most intelligent, most discerning offspring possible. After all, such a long-lived species can't just go reproducing willy-nilly and populating the universe with 5 billion nigh-immortal spawn, so with what few children they do produce, they need to make it count.

It should also be noted that absolutely none of this is going through the Doctor's head right now; it seems to have been replaced with something that feels just the smallest bit like longing, and a deep appreciation for twenty-first century swimsuit styles.

"There you are," Rose hums happily, pushing oversized sunglasses to the top of her head. "Glad you got here when you did—I don't much fancy turning into a lobster!"

"Sorry?" the Doctor asks, sauntering toward her. His feet kick up tiny puffs of blue sand and his hands wedge themselves safely in his coat-pockets.

Rose taps the bottle of sunscreen lying next to her. "Do you mind?"

The Doctor hesitates. This feels like a trap. A very, very pleasant trap, one involving warmth and curves and touching and silky-soft skin beneath his hands, but a trap nonetheless.

"Not at all," he hears himself saying cheerfully. He can't really blame his mouth; it seems to be a little smarter than he is at the moment. And his hands seem to have a mind of their own as well, fingers pushing cool lotion on overheated flesh, gliding across the hills and valleys of Rose's shoulders and back and legs. The Doctor is sure not to linger—doesn't want to overstay his welcome—but he holds back a grin at the appreciative little noises that escape Rose every now and again.

"You're gonna put me to sleep," she yawns, but she doesn't seem too upset, and the Doctor doesn't stop until every inch of her is good and covered.

(Almost every inch. Distracted by a lazy smile she sends his way over her shoulder, he misses a spot near her left heel. It becomes a red blotch in the shape of a constellation in Cosmos Redshift 7, and the Doctor insists it was on-purpose, an artist's flourish; Rose just rolls her eyes and laughs at him and hisses through her teeth when she pulls her socks back on.)

Sunburns aside, the Doctor is very careful to keep Rose away from anything that could harm her during these little interludes. Their usual adventures give way to strolls and talks and (carefully-monitored) trips to the pub, or whatever passes for a pub on whatever planet they're on. It's a little odd at first, since their relationship has been so defined by world-saving, by heart-pounding escapades and heroic ventures; there were always the quiet moments in-between, but this is different, and they both know it.

Not bad different. Just different.

But it would hardly do for her to die at this time—if Rose warning his younger self about the future could cause as much damage as his instinct tells him it would, then the Doctor can't even imagine the catastrophic time-storm that would occur if Rose died, especially with so many of their later activities chronicled as fixed points on so many different worlds. So this means no daring escapes, no side-trips in the TARDIS, no grabbing her hand and run-run-running.

It does not, however, mean they can't do anything fun. And at this precise moment, "fun" just so happens to be an elegant gala. It may be a gala on a world three hundred lightyears and seven thousand years away from home as far as Rose is concerned, but largely, this sort of thing remains unvaried between worlds, the Doctor has found. And twenty-first century women enjoy that sort of thing, right? Or at least he suspects this particular twenty-first century woman would.

(Although no gala, however elegant, is fancy enough to make him switch out his Chucks for anything else; he's got on a tuxedo, and that will have to be good enough. Rose doesn't complain—she ditches her pumps halfway through the evening anyway, choosing to dance barefoot over the smooth marbleglass floor.)

The Doctor had no intentions of dancing, had mostly assumed they'd attend for niblets and an excuse to dress up—who doesn't like a good dress-up every once in a while?—but when Rose pulled him to his feet, it occurred to him that this was probably a silly assumption to make. So now they're dancing, hands clasped around shoulders and waists and each other, the Doctor leading Rose in a dance whose movements she doesn't know, but is happy to imitate. But the precise movements hardly matter. Her dress is long enough to hide any missteps she might make, skirt swirling and swishing and sparkling, and anyone who might be watching would be distracted by her smile anyway, not to mention the very flattering fit of said dress.

Well. Most of the other attendants are quadrupedal, blue, and reptilian, so maybe that last part's just him.

"So what's the occasion here?" Rose wonders while they dance.

"Didn't I say? We're attending the coronation of the Bhyllic Proto-Empress."

"You did say that," Rose laughs, "but I meant more—with us. You know?"

The Doctor shrugs. "I originally brought you here because I thought you'd enjoy the sunsets. Spectacular prisms, those. Can't beat a three-sun sunset. Pity I couldn't watch it with you at the time, really, but I think I'm just about to solve the mystery of the Menagerie Break right about…" He looks down at his (nonexistent) watch, tilts his head this way and that. "...now. The fact that there's also a coronation going on is just a happy coincidence."

"Is it?"

The song changes and their dance evolves with it, spirited gavotte switching out for something more like a waltz as the tune grows more soulful and romantic and oh my, this is going to be a problem, isn't it?

"Why don't you just say what you're getting at?" the Doctor asks, instead of changing the subject like he knows he should. He's dancing, both literally and figuratively, on a dangerous bit of precipice.

Rose's tongue darts out to wet her lips. "Is this a date?"

The Doctor considers. "I see no evidence to suggest that it is," he says carefully.

"That's funny, cos most of the time, when a bloke buys you a dress, takes you to a fancy party and dances with you, and you're talking about sunsets and things—normally, that means it's a date," Rose replies. "So, to me, it seems like there's a lot of evidence."

"Maybe there is," the Doctor concedes, and if his grip on her waist tightens by just a millimeter, then so be it. "Though I'd be careful not to confuse correlation with causation."

He cinches his grip a little tighter, brings her in a little closer. So that his lips are right by her ear. "However," he murmurs, and he can feel her pulse racing in her fingertips at his proximity, "Your hypothesis might be correct in this particular example."

"Good," Rose breathes. "But…"

"But?"

"Just saying, it seems like, if it is a date—sort of seems like there should be a kiss, doesn't it?"

It is only by the grace of some unknown god that he does not trip over his own feet. This might be a good time to rethink his stance on religion. "Does it?" the Doctor asks.

Fingers clench in his tuxedo jacket, nails squeaking quietly against the wool. "Is that—do we do that sort of thing, in the future?"

"In a manner of speaking," the Doctor replies; he imagines that Rose and his duplicate are all-too-happy to fraternize in such a way. (Actually, no, he tries not to imagine that, tries not to think about it at all, because there's nothing quite like being painfully, hatefully jealous of your own self.)

"So," Rose draws out, and now her fingers tap a nervous rhythm on his shoulder, "Are you saying I should save that for a younger you? Is it bad to go out of order with this sort of thing?"

The Doctor waits for his instincts to agree with her, for his time sense to wrap around his consciousness like a snake coiling tighter and tighter until its prey suffocates, but there's nothing. It's just the two of them, dancing amongst fairy-lights and aliens under a three-sun dusk. The familiar feeling of gut-twisting apprehension and anxiety is mysteriously absent.

Probably he should rely on common sense instead. But there goes that niggling recklessness again.

"Well, we've never exactly done things in the proper order, have we?" he muses aloud.

"I did move in with you the day we met," Rose agrees.

"And then it was off to see the end of the world, then all the way back to Dickens."

"Your standard first date stuff," Rose teases.

The Doctor pretends to scoff. "I'll have you know, that in certain ancient time-traveling cultures, influential points in history are an extremely popular courtship destina—"

—and suddenly his mouth is meeting resistance as feet arch up and the distance between them closes and soft lips press gently against his. Eyes shutter closed and hands grip tighter and legs still to a halt. He's too stunned to move, frozen by an onslaught of fight-or-flight chemicals and disbelief and the sound of his blood thundering in his ears as a thrill shudders through him from head to toe. It's surprising, but not entirely unpleasant.

He might not be an expert, but he's fairly certain he's being kissed.

"—tion," his voice finishes when Rose pulls away. She watches him with wide eyes and a bitten lower lip, all at once bold and shy. Searching his face for a response. He thanks evolution for the gift of a respiratory bypass; he can't imagine how embarrassed he'd be if he was out of breath over so small a gesture. His head is spinning a bit as it is.

Over 900 years old and things like a kiss from Rose Tyler can still shock him somehow.

The Doctor scrambles for something to say. "Don't you normally wait for someone to finish talking before you do something like that?"

"We don't do things in the proper order, remember?" Rose laughs nervously, tucking her hair behind one ear.

"In that case, how do we anticipate what comes next?"

Her cheeks flush and her tongue catches in her teeth when she smiles, a flash of pink amongst the white. "I think we just make it up as we go."

"Good plan," the Doctor nods. "The no-plan plan. I'm fond of that one."

"How fond?"

He smiles. He's not talking about the plan any more; he's pretty sure she knows that. "Very."

Rose lets out a breathless laugh and pushes up on her toes to plant another kiss. A feeling like floating suffuses his being, like he'll drift away into the clouds if nothing tethers him down, and the Doctor clasps her one-handed by the waist, drawing her body flush against his, cupping the back of her head to take control. An electric charge simmers on the air and other partygoers dance around them in time to the music, glancing their way and muttering in disapproval at these humanoids joined at the mouths, but it doesn't matter because beneath that noise and the murmur of rain lazily drumming on the roof, he can hear Rose too, a sound halfway between a hum and a whimper building in the back of her throat. His hand slides down her back just a little too low for public decency and her mouth opens just a little bit in surprise and he chases after, his tongue sliding over hers.

Rose pushes him away to catch her breath, chest heaving and eyelashes fluttering madly. "Oh," is all she says when her lungs fill up again.

"I'm sorry," he blurts out reflexively.

Rose laughs. "Are you really?" she asks.

"No, not really," he admits. "If you're really sorry, that means you won't do it again, doesn't it?"

Before she can respond, he pulls her back in, crushing her mouth to his and swallowing any words that might emerge from her lips. Some little part of him faintly protests—is this too much? Is he taking advantage? What if she doesn't want this, what if it's too intense?—but she isn't exactly a passive participant, fitting her body to his and drawing his lower lip between her teeth. Her hands trace up his neck, fingers tangling in his hair, nails scraping lightly over his scalp, and amidst the hearts-pounding and the heat pooling in his chest, he wonders just how much Rose lingered in that long-ago snog courtesy of Cassandra.

Rose drapes her arms around his neck in a lazy embrace, her chest heaving against his. "I don't know about you," she says, her voice quiet and husky, her breath soft along his jawline, "but. Erm. I could stand to continue all this elsewhere."

The silent request suspends in what little air exists between them, waiting for the Doctor to do something with it.

He plays for time, replying with a non-answer in the form of a soft kiss, his eyes closed while his brain calculates. He almost surrenders. Some long-buried and primal part of him remembers how it feels, imagines the rush in his veins as he'd peel the gown off her body, the tense coil of muscles winding tightly in anticipation, the sensation of falling and flying. It had barely occurred to him, when they first traveled together, that any of this was something they could do. It's the sort of thing other people partake in, people without centuries of baggage or a culture seeking to abandon all traces of the physical, people with appetites and preferences that exist outside a nebulous grey spectrum. Not that there's anything wrong with sex. It just isn't something he often participates in, or often cares to. But then again, Rose has always had a peculiar way of challenging so much of what he knows about himself.

And strangely, there is still no warning sounding at the back of his skull. His time sense is unusually quiet. Which is both wonderful and terrible—wonderful, because it means they're free to do as they wish, for once; terrible because it means the only thing holding them back is him.

(This, he thinks, is one of the many reasons that he can't stand to travel alone. He has too much time for introspection now, too much opportunity for self-awareness. And over the course of a millennia, he's accumulated a lot of mental detritus he doesn't care to sift through, can't bare to look at, refuses to examine more than he must.)

"Rose," he starts to say, but the rest of his sentence is chopped off by a small explosion at the other end of the room.

A Bhyllic warbeast bursts through the far wall, heralded by a flurry of rocks and bits of plaster and glass sailing in all directions. Gala guests throw up their arms to shield their faces, stumble backwards amidst the vibrations that wrack the floor. The warbeast opens its many-toothed maw and hurls out a roar that rattles the Doctor's ribs and the soles of his shoes. Some guests stand and watch, quivering and open-mouthed and frozen with fear; others scatter and scream, scurrying to get away, pushing at each other as the beast splinters through the crumbling wall with its two-meter horns. The Doctor clings to Rose's waist, holding her steady against the churning crowd while he cranes his neck to get a better look.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm!" one of the palace guards shouts, waving his hands wildly. "The situation is under control, the Menagerie Patrol will be here any moment—!"

The warbeast roars again, and this time the bellow reverberates outward in a lightning-fast ripple, shattering all of the windows and drink-glasses and eyeglasses in the room. The Doctor throws up an arm to shield his face. Digging its hooves deeper into the floor, the beast creeps further inside, nostrils flaring and mouth contorted in a grimace.

"The Menagerie Break," the Doctor realizes. He watches the Patrol filter into the room, pushing past the stampede of panicked guests with their Stunners at the ready. The beast snaps at them, its teeth clicking together with a sound like a steel bear trap. "Of course they'd be sent to the palace first," the Doctor hisses, carding a hand through his hair and cursing himself for his negligence, "and of course no one would have recorded it, that ridiculous Bhyllic pride—oh, I'm so stupid that I never saw it before!"

With another earth-shattering roar, the warbeast drags itself further inside. Without even thinking about it, the Doctor shifts, planning to position himself between the snarling monster and Rose, but he's stopped by the pressure of her fingers curling around his, the light pull of her hand. He looks back and she's smiling.

Why is she smiling?

"Run!" she shouts, and then she's tugging him away.

Rose pulls him past the other guests, through the skeleton of what was once a window, its empty frame too narrow for quadrupedal reptiles or horned warbeasts to fit through but just the right size for a human and a skinny Time Lord. The two of them clamber out into a street damp with rain, white stone walls and cobblestone streets made glistening in the moonlight by millions of fat cherry-sized drops.

"Rose Tyler, shame on you!" the Doctor shouts after her, his voice echoing over the pitter of rain and the patter of their feet in the alley, but he's laughing, too, chuckling and blinking raindrops out of his eyes. "Running away from those fine people in their time of need!"

"The Patrol's taking care of it," Rose shoots back, "and if something really big had happened here, you'd know about it, wouldn't you? Besides," she continues, throwing wet hair and a smile over her shoulder, "who says you've got to be responsible for everything?"

His hearts each skip a beat. "Yeah," the Doctor says. They're running, the two of them, just as they should be, and a thrill tingles up his spine, adrenaline and elation braiding together with a desire to do something just a little bit careless. The temptation to give her exactly what she wants (what he wants too, if he's being honest) grows bolder with every step down the street and each coy grin Rose sends his way.

(Doesn't he deserve just a little bit of something wonderful before he dies?)

And while Rose was lovely at the gala, this is how she really is, the way she always should be, lost shoes and muddy-hemmed gowns and damp hair clinging to her face and neck in tendrils, laughing and pink-cheeked as she leads him away from despair, well-kissed lips begging for more—

He can't stand it. The Doctor tugs on her hand, urging her back in an echo of her earlier actions at the palace. Thrown off-balance, Rose whirls around, crashing into him. The solid thump of her body knocking into his is a welcome reminder that, for a short while at least, they're both still here. That all of this is real.

"Almost knocked me down," Rose chuckles, pulling herself upright with her arms on his.

"I caught you," he points out.

"Aren't you a proper gentleman?" she teases.

After hesitating for just half a second, teetering precariously on a razor's edge of nervousness and want, the Doctor reaches up toward her face, traces his thumb along Rose's cheek. Her skin is smooth, far softer than his, and even though the rain is contriving to keep her cool, he can feel her warming up under his touch, see her flush beneath his gaze.

"Maybe not right now," the Doctor admits, and he draws her upward for another kiss.

For a moment, he is content to lose himself in the moment, adrift in the feel of her hands on his chest, the soft and undemanding pressure of her lips, the rough-smooth texture of her tongue intermingling with crisp, cool rain, the heat of her mouth beneath his. Human beings are so delightfully warm. Kissing her is like waking from a good long sleep and basking in the sun after.

He can feel his self-control slipping away like grains of sand trickling through an hourglass. If he wanted, he could stop it, but that's the funny thing—for once, he doesn't want to. He just wants to let go and fall.

But when Rose's hands find their way to his lapels, fingers wrapping round and arms dragging him down even closer, another undercurrent of thought sneaks in: this is how she'll kiss the other him, later. Their arms will wrap tightly around each other and their mouths will clash together, both of them oblivious to the howl of the wind and the crash of the waves and the seething bitterness welling up inside him as he watches, stunned and empty-handed, just a few meters away.

(He shouldn't have been so surprised, when it happened for him—this was what he planned, right? How else was this supposed to end?—but he hadn't accounted for just how torturously awful it would feel, watching a day-old copy get the one thing he wanted, the only thing he ever would have asked for.)

And his hands will ball up into fists as something in his throat seizes up uncomfortably and he'll walk away without a word, because what can he say? His duplicate has already said everything for him. There's nothing left.

(That also means there's nothing left to lose.)

His sense of slow contentment evaporates and a demand for urgency fills the vacuum. He doesn't kiss like the other Doctor. He won't fold his arms around her until he's touching her ribs on either side; he'll never pull her close in silent, desperate gratefulness. He'll take everything she wants to give, everything he deserves.

He grabs her hand and tugs her away.


Afterward, sequestered in the library on the TARDIS—neither of them was patient enough to make it all the way to a bedroom, and although she doesn't know it, hers is blocked off anyway—Rose and the Doctor lie entangled on the floor while the Doctor waits for self-consciousness to strike, or shame, or self-loathing, or guilt or any of the usual things that come creeping in over the edges when he slows down for any period of time. But, while those things may seep in later, they remain mercifully far away right now.

"Wow," Rose mumbles, her voice muffled into his chest. She pushes a damp strand of hair out of her face. The Doctor can't tell if it's wet from rain or sweat; suspects it's a mixture of both. He opens his mouth to let a little brag escape—a breathless "Wow" seems like a pretty good sign, after all—but Rose continues with, "All this time, I thought it was just me. Like you'd never—like you were too far away."

His throat constricts, a tiny thread of pain strangling his words. "I'm here now."

"Yeah, I think you must be. My imagination's not that good," Rose teases, an echo of years past (well, months for her, years for him), and he can't help it. The discomfort is already gone and he's smiling at her like an idiot.

Gods, he's doomed.

"Of course, in my imagination, you didn't still have half your clothes on," Rose continues, drumming her fingers nervously on the bottom of his ribcage.

"Your imagination? Have you been thinking about this?" the Doctor laughs. "Did you plan to seduce me, Rose Tyler?"

He can feel the warmth of her through his shirt, and the moment her lips turn up in a grin. "Might have done. Might be doing it again."

He might be perfectly all right with that.


It's odd. The Doctor has not imagined that his relationship (he shudders at the word, at the implications of utter domesticity) with Rose would ever transcend to anything other than what it is—or at least he will never admit to imagining such things, not even to himself—but if he did, and he ever gave any time to those thoughts, he would fear that things would change between them. That their easy-going friendship and too-tight hugs and too-long looks would devolve into something awkward and heartbreaking and fragile. But really, the only thing that changes is that too-long looks sometimes turn into surprise snogs and too-tight hugs occasionally turn into too-tight hugs with no clothes on.

He drops by for more visits when his younger self is not around; she smiles when she sees him approach. He watches while she follows after aliens and digs for clues and delights in the wonders of the universe; she threads her fingers through his and pulls him along. She maps the planes of his body with her hands; he charts her terrain with his teeth and tongue.

It's different. Good different.

Except for the one way it isn't.

Because one evening, as they lie side-to-side atop his fanned-out coat, gazing up at the constellations hanging in the sky over Verogen IV, Rose presses a soft kiss to his jaw and tells him she loves him.

A dull panic suffocates his voice and the rest of his words die in his mouth.

"I'm sorry," Rose says quickly, settling back a few inches away. "I shouldn't have said anything. I just—I don't know, it's true, and I just thought you should know."

"You shouldn't do that," he tells her; his words have returned to life with a bite in them.

"Shouldn't do what?" she laughs weakly. "Be honest? Be a stupid ape with stupid ape feelings? I never said you had to say it back to me."

The Doctor rubs a weary hand over his face. "No. You shouldn't apologize for how you feel."

Rose quiets. He can practically hear her blushing. "Ah," she says, chewing on a thumbnail. "Well, now I feel a bit embarrassed. How about that?"

"That's just fluctuations in your pregenual anterior cingulate cortex. It'll pass."

"Maybe if I'm lucky, the ground will swallow me up first."

"You're not alone, you know."

She shifts to get a better look at him, neck craning and eyes searching. "What do you mean?"

The Doctor curses himself for opening his mouth even as he continues to speak. "You're not alone in how you feel. It's not—the feeling is not unrequited. It isn't one-sided."

"Right," Rose says as she parses out his double-speak. A negative times a negative equals a positive. Maths aren't her strong suit, but she's no fool. "Glad that's settled, then."

He nods, and he tries to smile, and he wants to be glad. These are all words that should flood him with happiness. Sentiments that should make him babble like an overexcited fountain, giddiness spilling over the edges, words pouring out in an attempt at external distraction while internally his brain overdoses on dopamine. Instead, the conversation sinks to the bottom of his stomach like a stone.

When she says those words again, her voice cut in half by tears and the sharp ocean breeze, he won't say them back to her.

(He can't think of a more magnificently selfish way to fuck someone up than having them fall in love with the same coward four times over.)


Later that night—or perhaps it's the next day, or two days later, or ten; it doesn't matter, because time barely means anything on the TARDIS, holds absolutely no significance whatsoever in the Vortex—the Doctor stands hunched over the console, looking without seeing, hearing without listening. The TARDIS is drifting toward his next destination and he has no idea what it is and he doesn't care.

He's thinking.

(It would be more accurate to say that he's plotting.)

He thinks about Romeo and Juliet, and all of the assorted clichés and tropes associated with that and other such similar stories, other doomed lovers and tragic romances. He thinks about how much he dislikes all of them. In particular, the phrase "star-crossed lovers" has always irritated him, grating on his nerves like sandpaper rubbing against the grain. Because the truth is, those characters earn their sad endings. They make poor decisions, rush headlong into ridiculous plots, miscommunicate intentions and refuse to tie up loose ends. Writers garner sympathy for young lovers who meet such melodramatic fates, but the fact is, they could have made better choices.

Their stories didn't have to end that way.

("Have you considered how you'll bear the separation, and how he'll bear to be quite deserted in the world?")

Pain blossoms at the back of his skull as his time sense creeps back in, soft black tendrils curling gently around his amygdala and chiming a quiet warning. It's a threat he ignores. Because he's tired of following these stupid rules, tired of living in the lines drawn for him by someone else. The people who wrote those rules aren't around any longer, anyway. Who else can force him to obey? Who is left to temper his will and keep him away from what he deserves?

(If he'll murder a sun just to say goodbye, how far will he go to keep her?)

The Doctor reaches down and enters a new command into the console, pulls the TARDIS off-course. He charts a new destination: the Virgo Supercluster, Milky Way Galaxy, Orion Arm, Earth. London 2006.

The warning in his head sounds suspiciously like a Cloister Bell.