Reviews please? Next chapter will make good on the M rating, promise.

The next few days were a drug addled blur for Rose, filled with over-bright lights and muffled sounds. She could feel the ringing in her ears from behind her eyes, it was penetrating, bright, searing... Visions of pinstripes filled her fevered thoughts. Was he actually inside her mind to soothe her? or was she merely imagining it?

The sun was peeking through the blinds into her white room, when the harshest of the drugs finally started leaving her system. The smell of bleach assaulted her nose, and her stomach turned. At least there was nothing in her stomach to retch up. Something nearby was beeping monotonously, keeping time with her heartbeat. Her senses felt too sharp for her to process normally. She forced herself to concentrate on what was in front of her. Gradually, through the fog, a shining pair of blue eyes came into focus.

"Are you awake, Rosie?" The voice sounded too far away to be directed at her.

"Mmmmm…. Not sure yet." A few more blinks, and her field of vision expanded enough to register who was talking to her.

"Take your time." Said Jack Harkness. He was sitting beside her, clutching her hand, and smiling.

"Jack?" More of her surroundings became clear. Her room was stark white, except for the large dark contraption that was monitoring her vitals. The lines on the screen flicked along with the beeping. "Where am I?"

"One of the medical suites in what's left of Torchwood 1."

"Wh... Where's…"

"The Doctor? He's fine, no worries. He's working on a special project in the Tardis right now. That control freak only agreed to leave your side if I was the one to sit with you. Something about you seeing a familiar face, should you wake up… Which you did!" Rose tried to smile back at him, but she was too weak for it to have looked genuine. She nodded instead. "You don't need to talk if you don't want to. Let me just fill you in on what happened, ok?... So, I got called to London to help clean up this huge dalek-y cyber-dude mess. Shoulda known that you and the Doctor would be right at the center of it. What a disaster!... Anyway, after seeing your condition, Torchwood and I insisted on caring for you. It seemed only right, since you saved the world… again. The Doctor reluctantly agreed to our assistance, because the surgeries you needed were ones that even he couldn't perform alone."

"Surgeries?"

"Erm… Might not want to look at your left arm, just yet. It got pretty screwed up. They tried... twice!... to reattach…" Jack paused. He didn't want to overwhelm her, but Rose was always so strong and graceful in difficult situations. "Umm… The way your wrist was severed by that bracelet, the cut was too jagged to be repaired… Even by the Doctor. He tried, furiously, trust me."

"Bracelet! Where's my bracelet?!" Rose sat up with a start.

"You hand has just been amputated, and you're worried about a fashion accessory?"

"It's not a fashion accessory! It's what saved me! I need it to be able to travel with the Doctor indefinitely! It's the paradox, Jack! THE PARADOX!" The blips on the monitor sped up with her sudden exertion.

"Woah, woah!… Calm down! I believe the Doctor has it. Do you want me to go get him for you?"

"I… I don't think I want to be alone Jack." The beeping slowed back down, but Rose was still frightened. Her face was devoid of any color, except for the darkened circles under her eyes.

"Ok. I'll text one of my compadre's to go get him. He wanted to be alerted the moment you woke up, anyway. He's been worried sick about you, ya know, an absolute wreck! Poor sod hasn't slept or ate since the battle…. Hold up, what did you mean travel indefinitely?"

Rose slumped back against the pillows. That small rush of adrenaline was too much for her currently frail body to handle. "Shagging the Doctor will keep my body young for centuries… The bracelet will keep my mind young too."

"Shagging the Doctor, eh? Do go on…"

"Regenerative jizz…"

Jack cocked one of his eyebrows. "Rosie my dear, I think you're delirious… But tell me more about the shagging..."

Just then, an out of breath Doctor burst into the hospital room. "That won't be necessary Jack, even though she was telling the truth." He ushered Jack away from Rose's side, and took his place. "Rose?!"

"Doctor!" The light that had been missing from her eyes returned when she saw him.

"Wait just a minute here! I wanna see this spunky fountain of youth!" Jack exclaimed.

The Doctor gave him a chiding glance. "You sir, do not need to live any longer than you already are… Not gonna happen."

"Damn…" The Captain didn't look too crestfallen, when he snapped his fingers. He had to have been expecting that response, considering who he was talking to. "Ah well, I'll give you two lovebirds a few moments alone… And don't mind the cameras in the ceiling, just do whatever you want to do. Don't bother holding back…" He winked.

After the Doctor shooed Jack out of the room, he gave the conspicuous camera in the corner a buzz from his sonic. There was a spark as it apparently short-circuited. In an instant he was back at her side, kissing the back of her right hand. "Rose… You have got to stop scaring me like this… I can't handle more than one heart attack at a time."

"I'm still here with you… That's all that matters."

"Nothing will ever be able to separate us. You are my life now Rose Tyler." She frowned at his statement, and the Doctor straightened up, perplexed. "Please dont tell me that you're already regretting your decision to stay in this universe... with me."

"No, it's not that… Though, I would be lying if I said I wasn't a bit heartbroken. I didn't think that the cost of this paradox would end up being my Mum, Pete, Mickey and my hand. I could've handled one of those, but all together..." The misery she felt deepened when she admitted to herself that they were all out of her life, for good. "At least I know Mum is safe and well, I suppose… No wonder my future self looked so melancholy when she asked what I would give to have my forever with you."

"If it's not that, then what's wrong?"

"You sent me away… again."

"To protect you." He justified, in vain.

"I don't want to be sent away from you, ever! But you can't do that anymore. There is no fail safe for me now… No alternate life to send me back to… No Mum back at Powell Estates… There is only you… only us… I don't have anything else left in this universe. The only thing that has ever separated us, is you Doctor. Please don't send me away again!"

He rested his forehead against her hand, and swallowed. "Oh Rose… I swear to you, I will never send you away again. We will be side by side through everything that time and space has to throw at us."

"You said roughly the same thing after the game station." She murmured.

"Well…" He cleared his throat, but made a genuine sort of eye contact with her. "Do you need some kind of confirmation of my commitment to you?"

Was he serious? He always ran away from any sort of commitment. Rose didn't want to frighten him away, the fact that they had any kind of romantic relationship at all was more than she had ever dared to expect. "No… Nothing so domestic…That's not you..." He retrieved the silver bracelet from his pocket, and slid it over the gauze wrapped end of her forearm. "What're you…"

The Doctor responded with the most beautiful twelve syllables that she had ever heard, ringing like a song from his hearts. Whoever said that French was the most romantic language, had never heard Gallifreyan. She didn't know why, but the word threatened to bring tears to her eyes.

"Doctor?"

"That is my name Rose. My true name. I'd like for you to call me by it when we bond... That is, if you'll have this damaged old Time Lord as a bondmate... In all my years, I have never found a soul as beautiful as yours. I have never wanted to share my existence with anyone as thoroughly as I want to share it with you. I have never loved anyone as I love you. Please, my beloved, Rose Marion Tyler… Share your heart and mind with me for all time... and let me share mine with you."

The tears that she was holding at bay in the corners of her eyes streamed down her cheeks, as she nodded an emphatic yes. Rose knew that she was beaming like an idiot, but she didn't care. Everything she had ever wanted was sitting next to her holding her good hand to his cheek. She wiped away the tears with the gauze on her left forearm. It was then that her bracelet began to glisten and twinkle.

Rose stared at the chain in disbelief. "Tears? That's all it took?"

"That, and copious amounts of blood. It was partially activated when I was examining it in the Tardis a while ago."

"Oh… right… Thanks for cleaning it up for me."

"Anything for you my Rose… Oooo… that reminds me!" He reached down into a bag that he had brought with him into the hospital room, and produced a very industrial looking prosthetic hand. "I know it's a bit crude. I will fashion a perfectly synced bionic one for you soon, but I wanted to have something ready when you woke up. Two functional hands are a prerequisite for our line of work, you know."

"Cool! It's got sort of steampunk thing going on."

"Do you want to try it on?"

"Mmmm... Not right now… Will you just lay next to me for a while?" She was still recovering, after all.

"Oh, I suppose..." The lanky pinstriped man climbed up onto the hospital bed next to her right side. Careful not to get tangled in her IVs, he propped his head up on his elbow so that he could look at her. "Has anyone ever told you that you have the most perfectly formed philtrum?"

"I don't think anyone has ever told anyone that, ever." Rose giggled.

"It's true. It draws the eye from your full lips up to your nasal septum... Along your pert little nose... To the most lovely glabella I have ever seen..." He traced his finger along the trail as he described it.

"Woah there Casanova, I'm not sure I can handle such steamy dirty talk in my current state."

"I've always fancied this body as being strikingly similar to 'Casanova'." He waggled his eyebrows at her.

Rose sighed, filled with contentment. "Whatever you say, Doctor… I love you."

"I love you too." He tenderly nuzzled his forehead against her cheek.

...

A curious Ex-Time Agent peeked into the room to see the two of them curled up together. He was hoping to witness more action, but seeing the two people he cared most about in the world so obviously in love, made him happy enough… Maybe later there would something more physical and glowy happening, he chuckled, after Rose got the rest of her strength back.