AUTHOR'S NOTE:It's the last chapter, guys. And I've said it a few places around LJ before but I'll say again that as far as my readers are concerned I picked a hell of a time to pick up a second job. Which I did just before I started writing this chapter, so it probably took longer than any other installment, as well as being probably the cruelest one to take forever doing. But the good news is it's a nice long goodbye.

I can't tell you how much everyone's feedback and readership have meant to me. For such a long time in this fandom I just lurked and inhaled everyone else's stories, and it's just been awesome to get to know so many people better through this fic. Big squeezy 10-minute hugs to everyone.

When the Doctor returned to the TARDIS maybe an hour later, Rose wasn't in the console room or her bedroom or any of a number of other places. After changing into his usual jeans and jumper, he finally found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table with one foot on the seat and a knee curled against her chest, staring down into a warm cuppa.

Her hair was damp and combed back, testament to a recent shower. She wore a soft white tee shirt with some cute Japanese cartoon characters on it and clean, fluffy pink sweats with a phrase that meant nothing to him emblazoned down the side of one leg. He couldn't help the way his heart swelled to see her like this, so much more in her natural habitat than in those maid's clothes. They must have been so stifling for her—the whole experience must have been. His bubbly girl squashed under all that wool and convention.

It was such a crime to have done that to her—he wished he'd never had to do. He wished he could have been present for it all so she wouldn't have had to be alone. He wished... he wanted...

"So what happened?" she asked, without looking up.

The Doctor's jaw tensed. He pulled a chair out opposite her and sat down. "The Family have been...rehomed."

Rose raised her head and an eyebrow. The Doctor didn't want to continue, but knew he'd never get out of it. "They wanted to be immortal," he said a bit petulantly, "I made them that way. I broadcast them." He watched Rose blink incredulously. "The fact that they were gaseous and non-corporeal meant they were easily converted into other forms of energy, including something like a television signal. You do know that TV signals from your planet keep travelling through space indefinitely? Every programme every broadcast is still winging its way through deep space, and will likely never stop."

Rose looked at him inscrutably. "So that's what you did to them?"

The Doctor watched a picture in his head of the Family's last moments on Earth, and felt the echoes of rage. "Something like that."

Rose watched him carefully, then nodded as though she were reserving comment, out of respect. The Doctor didn't try to justify himself—he didn't want to discuss it any more.

An uncomfortable lull ensued.

Something had to be said, and the Doctor couldn't say it. Leave it to a Tyler woman not to shy away.

"I can't go back," Rose said.

"I know," the Doctor said softly.

Her demeanour was composed but her eyes were fiery. "I can't lie to myself like you can."

The Doctor sat up indignantly. "I'd say I'm the one facing reality."

"Then you're thick as shit."

The Doctor's temper flared. He opened his mouth but Rose was on the beginnings of a roll that couldn't be stopped. "I know you think you're damaged and unworthy and all that bollocks, but mostly you're just scared to death of losing me or fuckin' up or somethin'. D'you really think you're not already in for a pound? Do you actually believe if we aren't sleepin' together it'd hurt less if you lost me? Because if you had any brains at all you'd know it'd hurt more. If you had any brains at all you'd know you'd never forgive yourself for what you squandered."

The Doctor was shaking with rage because he couldn't explain it to her. He could never translate the magnitude of his fear or his potential hurt into human speech. For her to belittle it made him want to grab her and shake her and scream at her and hold her and cry...

He shoved his chair back and stood. "You're not going to watch me wither and age," he spat. "You'll never have to choose between me and the fate of a civilization."

"How d'you know?" she cried, rising as well. "I could certainly end up watchin' you die." A feeling of dread swept over him as he remembered what he'd never explained... "And not regenerate," she added spitefully. He jaw dropped; she folded her arms. "Found it in the TARDIS library," she goaded. "Were you never gonna tell me?"

The Doctor looked at the floor and clenched his fists. "I'll not be responsible for your death," he growled. "I wouldn't survive it."

"Well, you won't survive me leavin', either," she shot back, and he hated her violently for being right. "And neither will I." He looked up and noticed anguish on her face for the first time. "You want reality? Reality is that you've ruined me for anyone else." Her face crumpled and it was heartbreaking. "And I've ruined you."

The Doctor certainly did feel ruined.

He couldn't find words, and he could feel her waiting.

"M'not going to settle for less than all of you, Doctor," she said softly. He winced and swallowed. "And m' not gonna wait for you to brood and make up your mind." He could hear her voice gaining tears. After a long pause he looked up at her, and the silence between them stretched on, and on, and on. Then in one horrible, time-slowed moment he watched her eyes close as she decided.

"Fine," she sighed tremulously. "Take me h—"

He cut her off with a wordless cry—he couldn't even bear to hear the sentence finished. He shoved the table out from between them and grabbed her, clasping her body to his with an arm around her waist and her mouth to his with a large hand on the back of her head. She caught him and welcomed him and gave back in kind, and together they fought the cruel separation imposed by bones and flesh.

He pulled back to kiss her face all over, to close his eyes and caress her cheeks with his own. "Dammit, Rose, you don't know how I'd feel," he whispered, willing back tears. "You don't know how I'd feel if you died..."

Rose took his face in her hands and kissed his eyelids, and her touch was a medicine. "Then think of how you'd feel if we never really lived." His desperation boiled over and he crushed his lips to hers again.

They kissed and kissed and his hands reclaimed warm skin he knew like breathing. His anguish was nonsensical yet ruling him—he felt as though just by rejecting her mentally he'd given away precious time.

"I love you...Rasillon help me, I love you..." he whispered helplessly, over and over.

He felt Rose smile beneath his mouth. "S'about time you showed me how much."

He let out a little gasp-laugh and was amazed to feel himself actually smiling, for the first time in what seemed like days. Suddenly the tension was gone. He looked at her with a crooked grin. "Be careful what you wish for."

He seized her by the upper arms and pivoted her till her arse pressed against the table edge, then lifted her up and on, pushed her back. He shoved her knees apart and stood between them, staring down, greedily drinking in the sight of her hair spilling out around her head and her laboured breaths making her breasts rise and fall and the intoxicating, heavy-lidded want on her face. He felt possessive to an animal degree.

He pinned her upper body with his own and took a minute to gaze, eye to eye, as a knowing smile crept over Rose's face. "Is this your dream?" she whispered.

"Yes," he whispered back. "Except this is better." Then he kissed her till his head spun.

Her mouth was alive under his and could feel the life in her veins and the frenzy of her heart, taste the surge of her emotions. It was playing out exactly like his dream and he felt a thrill of intense gratitude that he was actually getting to live it—the dream had been prophetic after all. He knew he would change some aspects, though—change number one was that his fingers went nowhere near her temples, not yet. He was saving it. A moment like that—the first time—was not for a situation like this.

Although a hard, impetuous fuck on the edge of a kitchen table was certainly not without its merits.

He refused to let their lips part as his fingers dug at her sides to grab the waist of her sweatpants. He found it and pulled them down with one hand while physically lifting her arse with the other, Rose letting loose a muffled squeak into his mouth. Once her sweats were thrown aside he scrabbled at his belt buckle, unbuckling it and opening the fly of his jeans...but only to give himself some relief. He let out a grateful breath when the stiff denim and zip were no longer bearing down on his even-stiffer cock. There...now he could concentrate.

Rose lifted her head to look at him as he stepped back, then knew what was happening when he knelt between her legs. She flopped back with a gasp of anticipation that told the Doctor quite a lot, and the first swipes of his tongue on her made her jolt and let out a yell that would clearly translate to "Hallelujah" in any language.

He mischievously stopped what he was doing. "Like that, eh?"

"Wha?" she panted, having to come back down from another planet and the Doctor fought the urge to laugh. "Yeah. Obviously."

He leaned forward again, slowly. He sensed her tensing, bracing for the jolt of sensation...so he pulled back. "Been wishing for that for a while?" he asked conversationally.

"Oi!" The outrage in her tone meant she was catching on to the game.

"Something wrong?" he smirked, lowering his mouth toward her spread folds again. Her legs were now quivering and he just couldn't help himself. "Why didn't you teach me this when I was John?" he smirked, sitting back. He was genuinely curious.

"AAAUUGH!" she yelled. The Doctor grinned like a maniac. "Why do you think?" she shot back. "I didn't want you to think I'd been a French whore."

"I dunno, mighta moved to France..." he grinned. He gazed down below the dark brown curls and felt his look grow serious and heated. "Anything you'd asked me, I'd've done," he swore thickly. "And something like this..." He leaned down and took a long slow lick that made her shudder. "I'd've been speechless at the privilege."

Rose exhaled on the longest, most appreciative sigh he'd ever heard. "Be speechless now and keep doing that," she said breathlessly.

The tingle he got from that sigh made him want to get down to the business of making her do it again, plus more. "Anything you ask me," he whispered back.

He began to work in earnest and there was no more talk for several minutes, but that didn't mean there wasn't sound. Rose panted and pleaded and hissed out magnificent, filthy swear words and long, low moans. Her reactions had him so hard he had to wrap one hand around his cock, just for the sensation, but he resisted stroking, saving it all up for that first moment he got to feel her, when the sweetest part of her was squeezing him tight and he was saved.

He worked her till she ground mindlessly against his face. Her panting grew harsher and he increased the pressure of his tongue with the utmost attention and care, and she screamed. She screamed and sobbed and thrashed like a wild thing.

When she finally calmed enough he stood, cock in hand and saw her, post-orgasm, sprawled and stupefied and helpless with satisfaction. He felt like a god.

With her on it, he shoved the table against the wall behind it for stability and slid inside to find her sopping. She let loose a short, amazed breath and he had to take a minute: oh God, so good...

He began pumping into her at an increasingly fast pace and heard her start to react. He grabbed her legs and threw them over his shoulders as he shoved himself against her until there was no further he could go.

He began losing himself to the feel of her warm legs against his chest and the slap of their bodies, in the power of being above her and in control and most of all, of knowing she was right here where he could protect her and they were together. He'd nearly given her up. He'd meant to. And now he was an addict binging on the lifesaving drug of her and the thought he'd almost refused it scared him to death.

"You're never going anywhere, d'you hear me?" he panted. "You are never going home. I'll never let you."

"I—I'm going to remind you you said that," stuttered Rose, being jarred against the tabletop.

"You won't have to..." he grunted, "because you're mine." Because I'd never last if you left, his brain told him. His head bowed in grief even as sweet sensation thrilled through every part of him. I wouldn't survive. I wouldn't want to. I— He gritted his teeth and redoubled his efforts, slamming into her, using her body and the dizzying pleasure to cleanse him of all the fear. He bent forward, forcing her legs up around her shoulders and he held her wrists above her head with one hand. He wanted control, he wanted command...he wanted to come into her like a bleeding freight train.

He got his wish moments later as blast after blast shot out of him, ruthlessly pulling sheer bliss from his bones. Her soft hands on his cheeks grounded him as he calmed.

He opened his eyes and watched her glow at him.

A lazy grin took over his sated, sweaty face. "Right," he growled. "That's Round One."

Later, in his bedroom, with the lights low and the shadows sheltering them it was different—he was different. Aggression didn't appeal to him. Here he was dancing around a connection he'd been afraid to let himself dream of since shortly after he met her. A communion he didn't deserve and was too much to hope for, so he'd pretended he didn't do.

He'd started on a tour of her body with kisses to the crown of her head and didn't plan on stopping till he reached her toes. His Time Lord senses were back and alive and screaming heady new information at him. He hadn't stopped to savour it back in the kitchen, but now he did and her whole being was suddenly a brand new bit of home. It was as though someone had brought him a newly-discovered masterpiece by his favourite artist, a lost manuscript written just for him by a beloved long-gone author. He ghosted his lips over her skin, stopping to kiss and lick and nuzzle and savour her scent and aura in a whole new way.

Rose's head was reeling pleasantly at the change of pace, and her heart was singing from the realization she hadn't lost something she'd thought she had.

She hadn't lost John.

The encounter on the kitchen table had been hot and amazing and it had thrilled her to her bones to finally experience The Oncoming Storm side of him in bed...but it had also installed the slightest niggle of worry. She wondered if perhaps he'd never regain his previous gentleness—not that she didn't think the Doctor was capable of gentleness, but she wondered if his special way with her as John had been a product of his persona and the times, a kind of alchemy that couldn't be recreated. But only a short while later and it was all pouring out of him again, and it was alternately making her melt with love and rejoice just as surely as it ever had. She wondered at all the other sides of him she had yet to explore, and a bubble of soft, happy laughter escaped her.

For the Doctor, Rose's personal scent was even more of a drug than it had been previously. The riot of her hormones told him volumes about how aroused she'd been, how deeply sated, her capacity for even more pleasure. With her this close and with his focus so narrowed, he could almost literally feel her love for him as a vibratory frequency that swirled around his face. The tale it all told about how overjoyed she was to be with him...it was a gift he almost couldn't process.

Despite having a hard time focusing—his touch was so exquisite, she kept forgetting to breathe—Rose suddenly became aware of a difference in the Doctor's demeanour, a quiet intensity. "Doctor..." she whispered with an effort, "what is it?"

Of course she knew. He wasn't surprised, only thrilled. The Doctor ran his tongue up the inside of Rose's thigh and his moan matched hers. The rush of chemicals and vibrations made him dizzy and lovesick and amazed, and translated to arousal shooting straight to his groin.

He hadn't answered, so she asked again. Or she meant to, but something was taking her over. She could almost feel her pleasure working on him, then his excitement spilling over onto her in turn, round and round. It was like nothing she'd ever felt before.

All of it soon excited the Doctor so much he had to be atop her, skin on skin. Inside him the urge to complete the connection was overwhelming. "Rose," the Doctor rasped desperately, while he could still form words. "There's one more thing...from my dream...I need to know if you..." It was too much to explain, he had to show her.

She didn't know what he was talking about. The tip of his rigid cock was riding wetly up her inner thigh and she felt a blind, helpless need to get it to its destination. But then she felt his fingers brush her temples and suddenly the world as she knew it ceased to be. Her identity became boundary-less. Suddenly her soul and the Doctor's were sharing the same space and she'd never known such wholeness and then just as suddenly he was gone. "Doctor!" she cried, panicky to have whatever it was return. "Oh God, Doctor, come back! What was that? Don't go!"

"I'm here Rose, I'm here," he gasped. "We're here..." At that, the Doctor made firm contact with her skin, finger pads against temples, and pushed his hips forward and slid into her, and it happened.

He finally, simultaneously sank into Rose in both the ways he'd really, really wanted to.

Rose wailed in relief as everything—seemingly everything—merged, but she could only hear herself for a split second before all awareness of the outside world was blasted away by her fall into the infinite, by her fall into him.

Her consciousness jolted with the shock of meeting another.

She'd really never thought about existential emptiness, the idea of an aching hole and fundamental separation from others that exists behind our consciousness, occasionally peeking out to make us drink too much, fight, have affairs.

She never thought about it until the emptiness was slammed full and hence obliterated, and the completeness she felt was a soul-deep sigh of stunning relief that echoed throughout eternity.

They were both at the source where bare ideas and experiences were-free of their usual clothes of sight or sound or words, just knowledge naked and pure in the mind-and she was deluged with what she could only describe as pure Doctorness. She wasn't really seeing it in the traditional sense, per se, but she knew that all around her there was something shining bright as a nova and it was him—all his power, all his knowledge, all his sadness, all his love.

And what the Doctor felt...what he understood...it was staggering.

Everything about Rose was surging recklessly through the Doctor like a tidal wave, and the depth and breadth and power of Rose's love for him...it made the Doctor's body catch its breath, back where he'd left it in another other world. His gratitude and her dazzling aura lit the landscape of their shared space-it had been so, so long, and oh, what she felt, for him...

The glow of Rose's consciousness orbited the Doctor's, drifting close, flashing and sparking wherever they seemed to intersect. Every seeming touch sent the deepest satisfaction and pleasure through the Doctor, the purest sort of communion.

The consciousnesses were merging, edges blurring and blending with every surge of pleasure that sparked through their world. Suddenly Rose felt herself fall deeper, into a space where she saw what she knew were timelines shimmering off into the distance before her and blazing away behind her, like standing in the middle of a highway of intersecting laser beams. She took a mental step into one of the beams and was instantly immersed in a life that wasn't her own, watching a stranger live and die in every way that could happen and another hop into a different light stream caused the same result. Each jump felt like a threat to her sanity but she couldn't stop. Soon she realized that she understood not only what the Doctor saw, but the immensity of what he felt about it, the responsibility he felt for her and every living thing. She suddenly saw what he was risking or likely to suffer by letting her in. She could appreciate it in a whole new way as she felt the Doctor's consciousness near her, as though mentally holding her hand, communing among the pulses of bliss, like heartbeats in the background.

But somehow she knew to steer him—he had blinders to remove and she knew it. She pulled him through timelines that were theirs and found oh so many that were beautiful. There were thousands in which they lived decades in health and joy. There were even some in which Rose overcame mortality. The Doctor had been ignoring what he was afraid to want.

The Doctor's consciousness soaked in Rose's hope and optimism, while also feeling tinges of her fear and potential grief at losing him. He wasn't sure he'd ever met a braver soul.

The heartbeats of pleasure grew stronger.

Their bodies were growing demanding, the building euphoria too overwhelming to ignore.

To Rose, It was as though the Doctor's body was there but wasn't. All the physical things that made her want him still existed and affected her, and yet were only concepts. Somewhere in another lifetime her hands fell to his back and Rose could feel the zing of the electricity jolting through his muscles-it made her hands burn hot and her consciousness thrill. She could see his emotions, flaring bright and brilliant. She felt the surpassingly sweet glide of him. She swore she could taste his thoughts. Every movement of their physical selves sent a new, flashing, echoing bolt of bliss not only through her, but through everything.

The electrical impulses firing their movements and producing their physical sensations shot across the scene like Northern lights. The Doctor watched the firestorm produced by Rose's legs clamping hard around his waist. Rose knew the kaleidoscope created when rough fingers stroked over her nipples again and again. Their bodies cooperated by holding a conversation in pure ideas, everything understood by the other at the instant of conception. They were directed by each other's primal wants the second they happened. There was no thought of not doing what the other craved—they were one being and there was no difference between her satisfaction and his. Together they were doubling what it was possible for them to feel by themselves.

The auras were blending and sparking in a frenzy. Cries and gasps were filtering their way into their netherworld. And when the brilliant miasmas finally came together, their universes and the bodies that contained them exploded in a way that made Heaven pale in comparison.

Rose wasn't sure when the Doctor's fingers finally fell from her temples. She just knew she woke up beneath him, his weight collapsed on her as though he'd never move again. Rose wasn't sure she ever would, either. She was completely drained yet feeling so much more than content or satisfied. She was utterly, totally changed.

The Doctor finally stirred, letting out a long slow breath that ruffled the hair by her ear. "Still with me?" he murmured.

"Are you kidding?" she panted. "I've clearly never been more with you."

The Doctor laughed, sounding exhausted.

"So that's how a Time Lord does it?" she asked. "Every time?"

The Doctor smiled and raised himself to his elbows with a little groan. "Well...not exactly." He looked down at her, more peaceful than she'd ever seen him. "I'm going to make a massive understatement and say you find out a lot about someone when you do this..." Rose laughed. "You obviously know exactly how they feel. And if two people aren't in tune they won't necessarily cooperate as well as we did. It doesn't happen like this unless the participants are ideal for each other, halves to each others' wholes..." He closed his eyes and let his forehead rest against Rose's, and his relief was so palpable Rose wondered if there was still a mental connection lingering between them.

"It's not usually like this…" he breathed. "At least for me, it's never been this…perfect. Oh, Rose..." he sighed. "I finally touched you everywhere."

A little while later, spooning in the tangled sheets with the remains of a refrigerator raid scattered about, Rose had regained her energy. The Doctor preferred to focus on touching her, running his fingers over every interesting part, lazily and thoroughly.

"Y'know, s' too bad I couldn't have run away with you, as John," she said thoughtfully, picking up some spare cookie crumbs off the sheets with the pads of her fingers. "That would've been really romantic."

"Yes, because we're dreadfully short on romance around here." The Doctor caught her hand and licked the crumbs off himself, enjoying Rose's slight shiver.

"Stop it. That's just the one thing I did to disappoint you, and it just would have been brilliant to say yes to you and then find ourselves on a midnight train somewhere."

"You're dreaming of trains?" The Doctor harrumphed. "Been known to offer a few travel opportunities, me..." He used his newly-moistened fingers to seek out Rose's nipple, circling lightly.

Rose's breath caught quietly, and it was several moments before she continued. "And then we could've got our own compartment, and..." She hummed as he brushed his palm over the nipple instead. "...when we found ourselves alone, I just know you would have been so happy and so...ravenous for me..."

"Again, so very unlike what we have now." He began kissing the place where her neck joined her shoulder, feeling her start to squirm and himself hardening pleasantly.

She was smiling, and gasping a little when she said "It would have been...beautiful to watch you getting your heart's desire."

The Doctor felt said heart soften, even as other parts of him did the opposite. He pulled her leg gently back over his hip, then sent his fingers to spread her lips and give him access to stroke her.

"Then it should be beautiful now," he whispered.

"Oh, it is," she moaned, gasping as he pushed into her.

The Doctor paused a moment, breathing and feeling smug and clever from what he could do to her, yet incredibly lucky at having been saved from his own colossal stupidity. He'd never admit it but he'd clearly been smarter as an ape than he'd ever been in this incarnation.

And Rose had been smart all along.

Rose squirmed again and brought him back to the present. He moved, and his fingers drifted toward her temples, and he could hardly wait to find out what else they could teach each other.

- end -