AN: Rose gets a respite from the discouraging pattern of jumps going nowhere, and the Doctor recovers a memory or two.

The morning after Pompeii, Donna appeared in the console room in her dressing gown, a cup of coffee in hand. "What are you doing at seven in the morning?"

"Recalibrating the chrono-scanners, buffering the navigational controls, and trying to puzzle out how Rose came back."

Donna rolled her eyes. "Didn't you sleep at all?"

"I don't need as much sleep as humans do, Donna. And if I work on finding a way to get Rose back while you sleep… well, that's a better use of my time."

"I've been meaning to ask—how did you know Rose was there, in London?"

The Doctor stiffened. "We're… we're telepathic. And we have a telepathic bond." Donna looked at him expectantly, and he sighed. "It's the way my people…" He rubbed at his chest, but the ache in his hearts didn't go away.

Donna's eyes widened. "Oh my god, she's your wife!"

The Doctor shook his head. "Fiancée actually," he corrected. "Although assuming she still wants it, I want to complete our bond as soon as she comes home. We've waited long enough."

She leaned against a coral strut. "Then let's get Rose home so you can have your alien wedding. What have you figured out then?"

"That's just the thing, I haven't." He shoved his hand through his hair. "I've had the TARDIS scan London for the two weeks before Rose appeared, and there wasn't a single hole in the walls."

A stray thought occurred to the Doctor. "But…" he said, quickly resetting the parameters of the scan. He tapped his fingers anxiously against the console and crowed in delight when the answer came back positive.

"What? What is it?"

"Well, I've been looking for a hole big enough for the TARDIS to pass through, but Rose is just traveling alone." He frowned. "I don't like the idea of her going through the Void and the Vortex without any protection," he muttered.

"Focus, Doctor," Donna said, snapping her fingers in his face. "What's this all mean?"

"Right. Sorry. Imagine you're in London, and you need to get across the Thames," he said, speaking rapidly. "If you're in a car, you're limited to the bridges that carry automobile traffic, but on foot, you could use the Jubilee Bridges or the Millennium Bridge."

Donna nodded slowly. "So Rose found the Millennium Bridge across this Void thingy?"

The Doctor beamed. "Exactly! And I've just told the TARDIS to look for other tiny fissures that correspond to places we'll be."

"Places we'll be?"

"Time ship, Donna. She exists outside of time, for the most part. Can see every place she's been and will be."

Donna crossed her arms. "But didn't you say something last Christmas about crossing personal timelines?"

The TARDIS hummed, and the Doctor scowled. "Yes, fine. But you can look for cracks and make sure you land us near one."

In response, the scanner dinged. The Doctor whirled around the console to see what results had come up. "Brion. But that's… I was there almost two hundred years ago."

As soon as he said the words, the memory flooded his mind. He waited until he'd seen it all, from the moment Rose walked through the door until he led her to the library so they could talk, and then he looked at Donna with his jaw set.

"Donna, I need you to do something for me."

The ginger woman blinked, clearly taken aback by his sudden mood swing. "What?"

"Slap me."

"What?!"

He snorted. "Oh, trust me—I deserve it. And Rose thought I was rude in this body!"

"Would it kill you to talk so us non-Martians can understand what you mean? This body?"

The Doctor's mind was still focused on what he'd said to Rose, all those years ago. "Are you going to slap me?"

"Not until you explain what you did that deserves it."

He scrubbed his hands over his face. "Well, putting it as simply as possible, Rose just found me, in her timeline. For me, it was hundreds of years ago, and I was…" The Doctor cringed when he remembered the look on her face. "I was horribly insulting."

"No surprise there," Donna said drily. "What's 'this body' mean then?"

"Right." He leaned against the console and crossed his arms over his chest. "So… Time Lords have this little trick, a way of cheating death. It's called regeneration. We change every cell in our bodies and are reborn, literally, as new people. Everything inside is the same, but the outside is different."

"Okay." Donna took a sip of her coffee, then looked up at the Doctor. "So Rose met you, and even though you looked different than you do now, she knew who you were, and somehow you still managed to be rude to this woman who's been travelling across the universe to get back to you?"

He tugged on his ear and felt the back of his neck grow warm. "Yes."

Donna shook her head. "I won't get in the way of this lovers' tiff," she said as she walked toward the corridor leading to her room. "I want to see what Rose has to say when she gets back."

oOoOoOoOo

Rose stumbled a little as she came out of the Void, only barely putting her hands out in time to keep from hitting her head on the ground. The stinging in her palms distracted her, so it took a moment for her to realise her TARDIS key was warm against her chest.

She pulled it out and looked at the glowing key. If that wasn't proof she was close, the ache in her mind had eased too. Rose closed her eyes and focused on the bond to get a sense of where he was in relation to herself. After a moment, she smiled and started jogging down the hill. He was close, probably somewhere in the trees up ahead.

The first sight of the familiar blue box brought tears to her eyes. She was finally home. Rose sped up to a run and whipped the key out from around her neck. It fitted easily in the lock, and she pushed the door open.

She'd only taken one step inside when she realised something wasn't right. The TARDIS hummed in welcome, but this looked nothing like the console room she was familiar with. Hardwood floors instead of metal grating, bookshelves lining the walls instead of exposed coral, comfortable chairs scattered around the room… if it weren't for the console and time rotor dominating the centre of the room, she wouldn't have known she was inside the TARDIS at all.

And the Doctor sitting in the armchair reading looked nothing like her Doctor, attractive as his dark curls and blue eyes were.

The Doctor set his book aside and stood up. "I'm sorry; do I know you?"

Rose tried to smile, but it ended up more like a weary grimace. "Not yet," she answered truthfully. The TARDIS key had worked, but it had brought her to the Doctor too early in his timeline.

Her side of the bond clamoured inside her head, and the Doctor's eyes widened. Rose remembered what her Doctor had told her on Barcelona—bonding with a Time Lord bonded you to all their regenerations, past and present, though the bond would be dormant and unnoticed in past regenerations. She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the urge to touch his mind, but it had been so long, and he was right there…

She managed to resist reaching for him telepathically, but the TARDIS created the empathic connection they'd had for months before they'd bonded. His wary curiosity might not have been the reaction she'd dreamed he'd have when she found him, but feeling anything from him was welcome. Rose looked at her bond mate, unfamiliar but still completely hers, and her heart ached with how much she loved him.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked when the Doctor took a step back from her.

He busied himself with dials on the console, ones Rose knew very well did nothing when the TARDIS wasn't in the Vortex.

"Nothing's wrong."

Rose sucked in a breath and swallowed down the tears that threatened.

The Doctor's arms dropped to his sides. "Rose, I—"

She could feel his remorse, but that didn't ease the sting of the insult. "You lied to me," she whispered.

A shadow crossed his face. "Well I'm sorry if the sudden appearance of a human woman I apparently form a bond with in the future has made me forget social niceties," he bit out.

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. "You know, you keep talking about being rude and not ginger like it's a new thing, but I'm starting to think the rudeness is a constant."

"I'm still not ginger?"

"Not the point, Doctor!"

"Ah, yes." He shrugged his shoulders and smiled apologetically. "I apologise—again—for my unpardonable rudeness. I just can't imagine what would have possessed me to…"

"To bond with a human who will just wither and die?" Rose said tartly. It had taken her two years to break through her Doctor's reticence; she had little patience to listen to it again.

"I don't know if I would have put it quite that bluntly, though it seems a future version of myself will, but yes."

Rose sighed. "Not exactly human, Doctor," she said wearily.

"Of course you are. A telepathic human, which I admit is a bit of a rarity, but—"

The dimension cannon beeped. Rose hesitated only a moment before deciding to cancel the auto-recall. She'd be able to jump back herself later. This might not be her Doctor or her TARDIS, but the presence in her head was just as welcome.

"Control, this is Tyler. I've found something interesting, so I'm going to investigate a bit. I'll jump back in one hour."

"Copy that, Agent Tyler. You have one hour." The cannon beeped again, and she knew they'd reset the auto-recall.

"What was that?" the Doctor asked curiously.

"My ride home," she told him. "I just cancelled the pick up and told them I'd find my own way back."

A furrow appeared in the Doctor's forehead. "Why are you here, and not with my future self?"

"Ah, you're finally asking the important questions," Rose teased. She bit her lip; there was only so much she could tell him. "We were… separated," she said. "A breach in the Void opened, an' we had to close it. Only I ended up on the wrong side."

She felt his curiosity and knew he was wondering why he hadn't just come across to pick her up. Rose shook her head slightly, and he nodded and dropped the issue, though she suspected he would have pressed for details if there hadn't been something else he was more interested in.

"What do you mean by 'not exactly human?'" he asked.

Rose pinched her lips together. "Look, I don't really want to spend the next hour being scanned and questioned. Can you just… can I show you?"

The Doctor looked at her warily, then nodded. "I obviously trust you with my life in the future; I don't see why I shouldn't now."

Rose blinked back tears as she stepped in front of the Doctor and placed her fingers on his temple. It was simple to call up the memory of what they'd discovered about her altered physiology and share it with him. She felt his disbelief and confusion before she pulled her hand away and looked at him.

"See, not exactly," she said quietly. "I still register as human—"

"Unless the scanner is temporally aligned," he said breathlessly. "Rose Tyler, you are… amazing."

A thought occurred to Rose, and she looked at him through narrowed eyes. "How do you know my name?"

"The same way you knew mine." He tapped the side of his head. "You walked into a TARDIS that wasn't yours and saw a man you'd never met, yet you automatically knew it was me."

"Well, who else would wear a cravat and a velvet coat?" Rose teased.

The Doctor looked at the unique woman he shared a bond with. She was smiling and teasing him, but underneath it, he sensed her sadness.

"You have fifty minutes before you need to go. Would you like to sit down somewhere and talk?"

To his surprise, she bit her lip. "Would you… I just remembered. My first Doctor didn't know me when we met. Am I messing up my entire timeline?"

The Doctor smiled. "If I were anyone else, you would be. But, as it happens, I am not anyone else. I'll hide the memory after you're gone. So, would you like to sit down somewhere?"

She nodded, and he led her to the library. Rose brushed her fingers against the walls along the way, and the Doctor felt the TARDIS hum in pleasure at the contact.

"She loves you," he commented softly.

"And I love her."

The words were simple, but the Doctor felt something more behind them, a connection even he didn't have with his ship. At some point in the future, this amazing, baffling woman would merge with the TARDIS so completely they would become one.

"Bad Wolf," he whispered.

Rose froze with her hand on the door to the library. "What did you say?"

"You will look into the heart of the TARDIS and merge with her. Together, you will be… a goddess. A goddess of Time with one goal."

"To keep you safe, my Doctor," she said softly.

The Doctor no longer wondered why his future self would choose to bond with this woman who loved him so completely. Instead, he was starting to wonder how he could ever bring himself to let her go when her time was up.

That dangerous thought in mind, he chose the safest topic he could think of once they were sitting down. "Why didn't you let your team in the parallel world bring you home? Clearly, I'm not the Doctor you expected."

Rose bit her lip. "I've been in Pete's World for over three years," she said quietly. "You're not the version of you that I know, but… you, and the TARDIS… It's just so lonely," she said finally, swallowing back tears.

The Doctor sighed. "In your head," he completed, and she nodded. "And then I immediately insulted you in the worst manner possible."

She offered a hint of a smile. "Well, it wasn't the best first impression, but luckily I already know you."

"You know me very well, Rose Tyler, if seeing your lover with a different face doesn't even throw you."

Rose rolled her eyes. "One," she said, holding up a finger, "you explained to me after we bonded that I'm bonded to all versions of you, past and present. And two, my introduction to regeneration was watching you change right in front of me, without any warning."

The Doctor winced. "That wasn't well done of me, I suppose."

"Not really, no," she agreed drily. "But we were tossed into danger right away, and once I saw you win a sword fight for the safety of the planet, my doubts were gone."

"How long has it been since we were separated?"

Rose's hands clenched into fists. "Three years, two months, eight days, 12 hours, and 47 minutes," she said mechanically.

The pain rolling off her triggered a protective instinct he hadn't thought he would one day possess, and the Doctor pulled his bond mate into his lap. I'm sorry, darling, he whispered in her mind as he brushed a soft kiss against her temple.

Rose settled into his arms and his mind, and he felt her contentment when she realised his telepathic signature was exactly what she was used to. Her pink and gold presence shone in his head, and he wondered what he felt like to her. No sooner had he wondered then the word, "home," floated through her mind.

oOoOoOoOo

When forty of her fifty minutes had passed, the Doctor reluctantly loosened his grip around Rose's waist. "It's almost time for you to go," he said quietly.

She played with his cravat. "I wish I didn't have to."

"You know you don't really mean that, Rose. Somewhere, there's a version of me who is missing you desperately. A me who shares all your secrets and knows your past."

She sighed and stood up. "I know. And I really do want to see that you again, so when you remember this, don't go being jealous of yourself, or worry I'll find some other version of you to live with."

The Doctor tried to look affronted she would think such things, but Rose cocked her head and crossed her arms over her chest.

Warmth suffused through him at that simple indication of how well she knew him, and he smiled. "Oh, all right. I suppose I can always leave myself a reminder to not be jealous."

They walked back to the console room, with their hands twined between them. Rose's pack and dimension cannon were still sitting by the door, where she'd left them.

He saw a glimmer of intent in Rose's eyes just before she stretched up and brushed her lips against his. His first thought was to pull back, to remind her that he wasn't the Doctor she knew. But the scent of her human pheromones mixing with time pulled at his memory, and he realised he was the Doctor she knew.

The Doctor placed his right hand on her waist and pulled her close. Rose increased the pressure of her lips against his, and he slowly moved with her, returning the almost chaste kiss.

When she licked at his lips, he opened them obligingly, and suddenly the kiss wasn't chaste at all. Instead, it was tongues meeting, teeth biting, lips sucking and tugging. The Doctor groaned in disappointment when Rose pulled her lips away from his, but it quickly became a groan of pleasure when she latched onto a spot on his jaw near his ear.

So erogenous zones stay the same from one regeneration to the next, Rose told him teasingly. That's good to know.

The Doctor tilted his head to give her better access and gasped when she rewarded him by scraping her teeth over the spot. "Don't leave a mark," he said in a rough voice. She pulled back and looked at him, and he said, "If I look in a mirror and see a love bite, I won't rest until I know how I got it—memory block or no." He felt her understanding, and she moved away from the spot with a final lick.

The same restriction didn't apply to him, he realised, and he pressed Rose against the doors for support, then trailed kisses along her jaw and throat, waiting until he found the right spot. Yes, she sighed when he reached the hollow of her throat, and he smiled before licking it.

Rose held onto him with one arm around his shoulders and sank the other hand into his hair, holding him in place. The Doctor nibbled and sucked at her sensitive skin until she was moaning and shifting restlessly against him. The movement teased him, and he ground into her, loving the way her breath hitched when his erection provided friction in just the right place. Her hands moved down to squeeze his arse and pull him closer, and he hissed out a breath.

Rose… He needed her with a desperation that surprised him. He'd never felt this level of sexual desire before. He'd loved Charley, but he hadn't wanted her like this. A distant part of his mind was aware that was the bond at work, that he was responding in part to the arousal he felt building in her, but he soon abandoned the analysis and just felt.

The blue leather jacket she wore suited her, but right now, it was in his way. He unzipped it, then slipped his hand under her shirt until he was cupping her breast. Rose gasped and arched against him, and he grinned smugly.

My Doctor, she moaned over their bond, and her possessive tone affected him as much as her touch.

Yours, he promised. Always yours.

She wrapped a leg around his waist and rocked against him, making them both gasp at the increased friction. The Doctor grabbed her leg and moved against her more purposefully, and soon they were both breathing heavily as the pleasure zipped between them.

His control was utterly gone, he realised. As soon as they could both get their clothes off, he was going to shag her against the door.

Rose caught that thought and groaned her approval. Her hands slid under his coat, but before she could push it off, the alarm on her device went off.

The Doctor focused on the woman in his arms, determined to make her ignore the time and just stay with him for a few more minutes. But Rose dropped her leg back down to the floor, and he could feel the shift in her emotions as she tried to rein in her desire and focus on her responsibilities.

He moved his lips to her ear and whispered, "Stay just a little while longer," before taking her earlobe into his mouth and sucking on it.

He felt her waver, heard her whimper, but she still pulled back. "I can't," she told him, and he could hear the regret in those words. "The longer I stay, the harder it will be to leave. And you were right—the you I'm linear with is out there, waiting for me."

The Doctor reluctantly took half a step back and allowed Rose to adjust her shirt.

"Besides, when I get back to you for good, we can have a proper reunion shag." She smiled at him with her tongue peeking out between her teeth, and it took every bit of his restraint to not suck that tongue into his mouth.

Instead, he moved back two full steps and watched her zip her jacket back up and pick her dimension cannon up from the floor. "A proper reunion shag it is, Rose Tyler. Don't think I'll forget."

"Oh, I'm counting on it." She winked at him, then reached for the door.

Rose froze with her hand on the door, and when she looked back at him, her eyes shone with sudden hope. "Why didn't I think? Could you take me to him?"

The Doctor thought that was a brilliant idea, but the TARDIS did not. She hummed disapprovingly at them, and Rose slumped.

"But why not?" she whispered.

The Doctor cleared his throat. "If I had to guess, I would say there's something still in your linear Doctor's future that would be very dangerous for you, or—perhaps—a moment when your return will be more precious than it would be at any other time."

The TARDIS hummed again, in agreement this time, and Rose sighed. "Well then, I guess I'll be on my way."

They stared at each other for a moment. The Doctor wanted to hug her, to offer some sort of consolation for the difficult path he knew she still had to tread, but his restraint was more tenuous than he liked.

Rose looked at him, and he swore for a moment that he saw his future in her eyes. "I love you, Doctor," she told him, letting him hear the words for the first time, in his timeline. "I'm going to get back to you, and we're going to have our forever."

"I believe you, darling," he told her softly.

She smiled at him one last time, then opened the door and slipped out of the TARDIS.

The Doctor stared at the place where she'd been standing for several minutes. He knew when she left the planet, could feel the bond shiver and then return to its dormant state. He wondered idly how her linear Doctor could stand the feeling of not having her with him. At least for him, since the bond was still in his future, he didn't feel the tearing feeling he assumed his future self had when he'd lost her.

Once she was gone, he sat back down in his chair and began slowly hiding his memories away. He started to set the trigger as Rose's return, but the TARDIS hummed her disagreement. He listened for a moment, then nodded. Very well. I'll let you unlock them when you know the time is right.

oOoOoOoOo

After Donna went to her room to get dressed, the Doctor felt the distinctive shift in his mind that indicated memories were being restored. He furrowed his brow for a moment, then his eyes fluttered closed and he sat down on the jump seat. He hadn't just seen Rose and talked to her when she'd found his eighth self; he'd snogged her with more passion than he'd ever felt until that moment.

Every kiss and caress replayed in his memory, and he bit back a groan when he remembered the way it had felt when she sucked on that sensitive spot on his jaw. And despite his lack of experience, he hadn't been an idle participant; the Doctor did groan when he remembered the graceful curve of her neck as she'd arched back to give him access to the hollow of her throat.

Each memory relived felt like a ghostly caress, a sensation remembered without the touch. The Doctor shifted on the jump seat, his trousers tightening uncomfortably as the touches became more passionate.

His eyes widened as the memory continued to unfold. He'd nearly shagged her against the door—would have, if her blasted dimension cannon hadn't gone off at the worst moment. Part of him thought he should feel jealous that Rose had been so attracted to not-him on such a short acquaintance, but in truth, it assuaged a tiny misgiving he'd had. He desperately needed Rose to be attracted to him in all his regenerations, and it seemed like she would be.

The Doctor sighed when the memory ended and gave himself a moment to look forward to the promised reunion shag, before redirecting the blood flow so Donna wouldn't come into the console room and catch him with an erection.

That taken care of, he glared at the time rotor. Why couldn't he just bring Rose here? Do you want both of us to be miserable?

His ship made it clear what she thought of that accusation, and he rubbed at his face. I know, I know. But it's been so long. Her hum softened, but she remained firm that now was not the right time for Rose to come home.

The Doctor blew out a breath, then jumped up and funnelled the energy still lingering into his body into setting the coordinates for their next trip. Donna would enjoy the 1920s. Maybe they could meet Agatha Christie!