Part six: Wake me up inside
by The Valiant Child
-:-
I love you my own way
I love you better
I love you inside all this
I love you forever
~Snow patrol: Perfect Little Secret
-:-
Rose Tyler used to believe that she wasn't all very special. With seven billion others like her walking the earth, it was easy to believe she wasn't. But then she met the Doctor, a madman with a blue box who grabbed her hand and told her to run and took her away to see the stars.
Together they did all kinds of impossible things. Saved millions of lives, thwarted evil plots, got kicked out of places, banished from planets, blew things up, caused paradoxes, fixed paradoxes, met people who were long since dead and people who hadn't even been born yet in Rose's time. And with each impossible thing before breakfast, Rose started to believe that maybe she mattered. That life wasn't just waking up, drinking tea, and working in a shop for the rest of her life.
No, it was so much more than that. There were things that she hadn't believed were possible (only dared to hope) that were there within her reach now. She wasn't just Rose Tyler, shop girl. She was more than that. She was the Doctor's companion, his best friend and partner in crime. She was the Defender of Earth, the Valiant Child...the Bad Wolf.
The Doctor made her realise that she was special. She had always been special.
He needed only to show her the whole of time and space to bring out the extraordinary person inside her. And she thought it was going to last forever. They both did.
They had forgotten about a certain "lie" told by a certain beast in a certain impossible little planet orbiting a certain black hole
...the lost girl, so far away from home. The Valiant Child who will die in battle so very soon.
This is the story of Rose Tyler. And this is how she dies.
-:-
She runs like her life depends on it because it does. Behind her, Professor Lazarus's screams transform into roars. She can hear crashing and the sound of breaking glass, and she knows that the mutating professor will catch up to her in a moment.
A plan...she needs a plan...
Or, at least, she needs someplace to hide long enough to be able to formulate a plan. Rose spots Lazarus's machine and, seeing no other option, rushes towards it and closes the door behind her as she steps inside.
"Hello," a voice greets her immediately.
"John!" Rose hisses incredulously. "What are you doing here?"
"Hiding," John whispers with a smile and then he blinks as though seeing her for the first time. "You look...beautiful."
Rose looks down at herself. Her dress is torn, her knees scraped, and there's blood on her face, she's sure. She also lost her shoes while she was running.
John lifts his hand and traces a finger across her cheek. His eyes flitter to the wound above her cheekbone.
"I'm fine," she says automatically before he can even ask.
Outside, there are louder crashes and more disgusting sounds from Lazarus. Rose wants to ask John what he's doing here. Why is he here? How did he get in? But Lazarus will hear them if she starts interrogating him here and now. So instead they stand closer than they necessarily need to, breathing in sync with each other.
And then Lazarus discovers them and turns his machine on and there's little time to discuss John's presence as they conjure last minute plans to save their lives and run like the old times. There's evil to defeat and people to save.
When they're finally safe and a dead Lazarus is taken away in an ambulance for the second and final time that night, Rose turns to John and gestures towards the crude silver tube in his hands which he used to reverse the polarity in Lazurus's machine.
"So?" she asks him.
He stares at her for a moment, drinking her in before answering. "I remember."
-:-
He doesn't remember everything. His human brain wouldn't be able to handle all the memories of a Time Lord, but he does remember most of what he needs to. He remembers who he is, he remembers Gallifrey, he remembers the TARDIS, and he remembers his days with Rose. Those memories are the strongest.
They sit face to face on the kitchen table. She's nursing a cup of tea between her hands and he takes a sip from his own. Amelia is asleep in her bedroom.
"How...how long have you known?" she asks softly. Her eyes stare blankly at the steam curling from the hot beverage.
"I've been having dreams," he discloses.
She nods.
"They make more sense as memories," he continues. "They feel like memories...I can remember the feel of the sunlight in Gallifrey, the exact sound of the leaves when the wind blew."
He pauses, wishing she'd look up from her tea. "I remember the colour of your eyes in the dim basement light of Henrick's when we first met and the sound of your laugh as we hopped for our lives."
He doesn't remember everything but sometimes he feels like he remembers too much. He remembers a planet with red grass and a burnt orange sky, burning away to ashes and dust. He remembers doing that. He remembers dying in a blaze of gold and pain and thinking he'd like the dark and nothingness better.
He remembers the feeling of wanting to hang himself, of the silence in his head throbbing away. He remembers forcing himself to breathe instead and running about saving people almost desperately, seeking forgiveness from someone, anyone.
He remembers forcing himself to immerse in simple joys and silly things like fezzes and bowties so that he doesn't feel the need to slit his wrists and refuse to regenerate.
And then he remembers finding a very pink and yellow human in a shop in the twenty-first century who starts to make him better with each day she holds his hand.
He remembers the strange, unidentifiable tingle he feels in his chest when she smiles at him, when she says the right things in the right moments. He even feels it when she's challenging him, stopping him from doing something he shouldn't. He feels it in greater force when he kisses her for the first time. It's like he can't get enough air, which is not really the case since he has a respiratory bypass.
He likes these feelings. He likes her.
He forgets how easily he can lose it all, and he remembers how, all too soon, he finds himself holding on to a magnaclamp with one arm and the other stretched towards her, begging her to hold on, begging her to not leave him.
He remembers her screams as she falls. He remembers his screams.
And then the breach closes, and she's on the other side.
He remembers how cold the wall feels as he leans against it. He remembers the emptiness in his chest where he once used to feel sparks.
He thinks he can hear faint sobbing as he presses closer and a voice that screams, "Take me back!" as he simultaneously whispers, "Come back."
Two weeks and a supernova later, he remembers crying as he sits in her room, surrounded by her broken things and his two broken hearts.
Rose doesn't once look up from her tea as he tells her this. He can see the tears that trace down her cheeks, though.
"I missed you," he finally says as a silence starts to creep up between them. There's a quiver in his voice, and she mumbles something in an even shakier voice.
"Quite right too."
He laughs, and a heartbeat later, she joins him in between hiccups.
He stands up and pulls her to him, wrapping his arms around her.
"Missed you, too," she mumbles against his shirt.
-:-
He's in a sort of limbo at the moment where he's not completely the Doctor, but neither is he John. But if he really thinks about it, he was never really John for long. Maybe for just a day or two.
Then his memories started bleeding in, and everything started feeling wrong...the flat, the carpets, the curtains, the job, and standing still in one place being unable to feel a new ground beneath his feet and see a new sky with a new colour and running, running and running with Rose Tyler's hand held in his like a lifeline.
For over a month he wondered who he truly was: the man who was only just a man with a boring job and life of beans on toast and carpets and watching tele; who was in love with his best friend and couldn't for the life of him confess, or the madman who was so much more with a magic box and a magic life who was also in love with his best friend and who couldn't for the lives of him confess either.
At least some things stayed the same.
Then, one warm Saturday night he finds the answer in her eyes. They're sitting on the floor by the balcony, their legs dangling off the railing, staring at the few stars that are scattered across the navy blue sky.
"Do you..." she begins uncertainly and bites her lip.
"Do I...?" he asks.
"Sometimes, yeah...? Do you ever feel like they're calling?" she says. "The stars...like they're calling you to come see 'em and the size of it all. Like there's some sort of an invisible pull at you, right from your soul, tugging at you like gravity, only instead of holding you down in once place, it makes you do the exact opposite? Do you ever feel like that?"
It's like she's taken the feelings right from his heart and put them into words. "All the time," he says.
She turns her head to smile at him, and he sees the same longing, the same wanderlust in her eyes that's in him, and he knows. He finally knows who he is.
He smiles back.
-:-
She sits in the TARDIS jumpseat with her legs pulled up as she watches the Doctor brush his fingers over the dials and levers on the console. She wonders if he can still hear the hum of his ship like he used to.
From the way he scrunches his forehead in concentration as he reaches for the central column and the way his eyebrows draw together in disappointment, she doesn't think he can.
She, on the other hand, does. She hadn't paid much attention to it before, but now that she's aware of it, she realises that the hum of the TARDIS is soothing the burn of the vortex's song.
She stands up and walks over to the Doctor and takes his hand in a gesture of comfort.
He sighs and pulls her into a tight hug.
-:-
It's hard to keep him away from trouble now. He tells Rose that he had done his best in pretending to be normal and humany for weeks since his memories started coming back, and now he has reached his limit.
He needs adventure. He needs to blow things up. He needs to keep running.
Rose reminds him about the Family and how they'll cart him away and use his life energy to conquer and breed.
"I won't do anything to draw attention," the Doctor says. "Cross my hearts. Well, heart, at the moment. Singular. I'll only stop an alien invasion or two. Or mad, power-crazed, immortality seeking scientists like Lazarus."
Rose looks unconvinced so he adds, "We'll stop them together." He gives her a small nudge and a tentative smile, complete with wide, puppy-dog eyes. "The old team? Hope and Glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake?"
She bites her lip, and he can see the corners of her mouth quirk up and he knows that he's won this round.
"Fine," she says, and he stifles the urge to do a victory dance. "But this time, I'm Shake."
-:-
It's a bad idea from the start. All their ideas are usually bad ones, but that never stopped them before, so why start now?
She may be a perpetual trouble magnet (or jeopardy friendly, as he likes to put it), but he can invent trouble out of nothing. A ball of string, a banana, and a misplaced verb in this case, and they have an entire ship of Sycoraxes calling for their blood.
He hurries to assure her that the Sycorax were about to enslave half the human race, so they would have been at a disagreement anyway.
"Any more bright ideas, Doctor?" she asks him
"Um, one." He says, eying a sword.
-:-
There's blood, and it's so very red, but all she sees is gold.
It takes over her vision and her senses, coursing right through her veins like liquid fire. There's a rush past her ears, and a song that resonates right through her head and beats in sync with her awfully weak human heart.
The Sycoraxic leader lifts his sword to deliver the final blow to the bleeding Doctor who's kneeling at the edge of the ship, when the gold isn't gold anymore but fire which turns into rage and then madness. There are black spots edged with crimson all over the stardust in her song, and she feels as if there's a black hole forming somewhere inside her that's pulling every bit of light into it.
The sword swings but only dust rains down on the Doctor. He raises his head to an empty ship coated in ashes and Rose Tyler curled up on the ground, screaming.
-:-
She has a funny sort of dream. She's a wolf with a comet for a tail and time in her heart.
There's a girl seated cross legged on the floor across from her and humming a very familiar song. The room they are in (if you can even call it a room) is endlessly white, stretching on and on into forever.
The wolf eyes the girl cautiously. She's very red. Her clothes, her shoes, her lipstick, even the paint on her nails. And there's something very impossible around her.
The girl notices the wolf's stare and reaches behind her, pulling out a plate of soufflés, and offers them to the wolf. The wolf looks down at the plate and then back at the girl. Rose can feel a mad hunger growing in the wolf. The soufflés smell like time and memories. And so does the red girl who baked them. The wolf sees darkness and the red paint on the girl's nails and hears a heartbeat that enrages the hunger inside Rose.
The wolf bears her teeth and lurches for the red girl's heart.
Rose wakes up.
-:-
The TARDIS lights brighten as the Doctor frantically brings the ship back to full power while Rose's protests echo though the room. The Family will find him, she reminds. They'll take him away and kill him and have forever for themselves.
He ignores her, never taking his eyes away from the console as he works with single-minded ferocity. She screams at him, tries to pull him away from the console, but he jerks away from her.
"The Family—" Rose begins and the Doctor abruptly moves towards her, backing her against a coral strut. He has his Oncoming Storm face on, but behind that there's fear in his eyes. He's terrified for her, terrified of losing her. She can feel his breath on her cheek as they stand so close that they're almost touching. A tremor runs through him as she gravitates forward, lifting a hand towards his face.
He moves away, practically jumps like a frightened cat with wide eyes and heaving chest. He opens his mouth, about to say something, but swallows instead and turns around and disappears into the TARDIS corridors.
A minute later, he's back, lugging the largest metal chain Rose has ever seen in her life. The Doctor dumps it by Rose's feet and moves back towards the console, continuing where he left off.
"What's this?" Rose asks.
"Chains forged from a dwarf star alloy," he answers. "They're unbreakable. If the Family come here, Torchwood can wrap them up in these and throw them in a black hole."
Rose takes a deep breath and steps past the chains, then gently pulls at one of the Doctor's hands, wrapping her fingers between his. He pauses and looks down at her, and the terror in his face is blatant.
"I'm not losing you," he says in a wobbly but determined voice. "Not again."
He presses down on a lever, and the TARDIS hums to life like taking a deep, satisfying breath after lying underwater for an unbearable amount of time.
Rose gasps and staggers back. The Doctor is there to steady her and keep her upright as her world starts to swim and the song in her head roars in sync with the TARDIS's heart. But, oh, for the first time in a long time, it doesn't burn her. It's not blood and darkness anymore but golden timelines and bright stars. It's life itself, and it doesn't hurt.
It does make her incredibly lightheaded, though, and it takes a while for her to notice the Doctor's frantic voice.
"I'm fine," she assures him giddily. "Better than fine."
The Doctor doesn't look much assured, though, and she laughs at his unnecessary worry. She's really, really fine. And she's going to stay fine. The TARDIS will protect her. She'll chase away the dark spots in Rose's song and replace them with the gold that belongs there. She's doing so now, in fact, as the Doctor lifts Rose up in his arms and carries her to the infirmary.
Rose's laughter settles into a content smile as the Doctor lays her down gently on a bed and rushes about to scan her. She closes her eyes and lets the TARDIS heal her up.
"No, no, no," the Doctor rushes back towards Rose. "Don't close your eyes."
Rose frowns. Why ever not?
"Please, come on, Rose. Stay with me."
Well, since he's asking nicely...
The Doctor's green eyes swim into view, and Rose almost laughs again because he's still so worried and afraid. And he's awfully close too. Just like in the console room earlier. His breath is cooler than she remembers it being in his time as a human, and her eyes lower to his lips.
He moves away again, but this time he pulls her with him, grabbing her by the arms and bringing her into a seated position.
"Don't close your eyes," he commands and moves away again. Rose contemplates holding him down and tying him up like she'd once thought about when she'd been jealous of River. That wasn't half a bad plan.
Rose smiles to herself and blinks lazily, watching the Doctor rummage around a drawer. When she blinks again, there's a woman beside the Doctor. She's a bit blurry, but when Rose blinks once more she recognises the red dress and the plate of soufflés that smell like time. The woman grins at Rose, and Rose grins back. She blinks again, and the woman lifts the plate towards her.
Rose is about to reach for one of the soufflés when everything goes to hell.
The woman gasps and turns around. The plate falls from her hand, and the song in Rose's head grows louder. Behind the red woman stands Amelia, and she's not alone. There's a man in a dark coat holding a gun in one hand and a phone in another.
Rose screams and backs away until her back hits the headboard. When she blinks there's no one else in the infirmary except the Doctor who is running towards her.
"What's wrong?" he asks her urgently.
Rose is shaking, and she wraps her arms around herself. Her eyes lower from the Doctor's to his tweed jacket.
"Your phone..." she says and the device rings to life.
-:-
The Doctor's hands shake as he holds the silver fob watch that contains everything that made him a Time Lord. Maybe he's got more of John in him than he anticipated because suddenly he's scared; so, so scared to open it.
He knows that he won't really be dying. He wouldn't be losing any part of himself, just gaining more. He'll finally be completely the Doctor again, with two hearts and a respiratory bypass and a brain full of centuries of memories... and a life much longer than Rose Tyler's.
She's dying anyway, a sneaky thought whispers darkly.
No, no, no. The TARDIS is protecting her. She's safe. She's going to be okay. He'll fix this. She can't die.
The invisible band around his throat gets tighter, and an equally invisible but much heavier boulder drops down his stomach.
He can't do this. He wants to wake up to Rose Tyler's hazel eyes and fall asleep to the rhythm of her breathing. He wants her laughter ringing down the corridors of whatever place he lives, be it an apartment in a parallel world or the TARDIS. He wants her to always smile at him like he's someone who deserves that smile. He wants to be able to hold her hand for as long as he lives.
But if he opens this watch, he'll never be able to have all that for more than a few years and he'll be back where he started after the Time War.
His breath hitches as Rose slips her hand in his and squeezes lightly.
His eyes stay locked on the watch, tracing the Gallifreyan words engraved on its surface, and he tries to separate what he wants from what the Universe demands; what he feels is right and what is right.
When he lifts his eyes to look into hers, he has found his answer before he's even asked the question.
He opens the watch.
-:-
He has a plan. He calls it olfactory ventriloquism.
It's a very shaky plan where so many variables could go wrong in so many creative ways but it's the best they've got. Plus, the Doctor is the King of Shaky Plans.
"Have a little faith, Rose Tyler." He grins, kisses her forehead, and leaves her in the infirmary tied to a dozen instruments that are monitoring her body and scanning it simultaneously.
She struggles to breathe and reminds herself that he's got Torchwood backing him up. He's not alone in this just because she's not going with him. He's going to be okay. Jack's with him. They're both going to be okay.
She sits alone inside the TARDIS for an hour, then two, waiting and testing every last ounce of patience she has.
She can't wander off, she reminds herself over and over again. If she leaves the TARDIS, she's start burning again. She waits another hour, contemplating calling the Doctor and asking if everything's alright.
One more hour, and Rose is moments from tearing her hair out and screaming. Dread seeps in like liquid through a cracked glass. They should have been back by now.
She tries calling the Doctor, then Jack, but there is no answer.
She can't take the TARDIS to the Family, she knows. She can't have them getting their grubby hands on the Universe's most magnificent ship. She hardly knows how to drive the TARDIS properly anyway.
She waits some more.
Five and a half hours later, she pulls out every device that's plugged to her and leaves the infirmary for the console. She gets the scanner working after ten minutes of struggle and tries to run a quick search for alien tech, when she hears something odd from outside the TARDIS doors.
She squints down at the scanner and almost falls over as she sees the Family enter the Hub, dragging the Doctor with them.
She should have expected this. They're the Doctor and Rose Tyler. Their luck never holds out for long.
-:-
She recognises three of the four people the Family has possessed. The first is one of the new agents that Jack had hired only last week (which is probably how the Family has discovered Torchwood's base). She had a funny sort of name which Rose can't recall at the moment. The second is one of the delivery boys from the pizza place nearby. The third is the saleslady who had sold the Doctor, Rose, and Amelia their matching fezzes on Rose's birthday.
The fourth member of the Family is a large, dumpy sort of man with a bushy moustache who's dragging the Doctor rather violently behind him. Rose grits her teeth and refrains from running out there with a scream and a meat cleaver in her hand.
The Doctor is bleeding and is very much hurt. He looks like he can barely stand. Rose takes a deep breath as the Family stops just outside the TARDIS and starts demanding that the Doctor open the doors for them.
They say something about him blowing up their ship and how the TARDIS would make a fitting replacement.
"Not happening, mate," Rose mumbles as she searches the console room for something that would serve as an appropriate weapon.
-:-
Well, the olfactory ventriloquism had gone well. No, really, it had. Aside from the minor miscalculation at the end, that is. But really, the Family's ship is now effectively a pile of intergalactic scrap, Amelia is safe with Jack, and Rose...well, he hopes that she's tucked away inside the infirmary like she should be and completely unaware of what's happening just outside the TARDIS.
Of course, that's obviously too much to ask for. She's Rose Tyler. She's never where she's supposed to be. Especially when said place is safe. She's where trouble is. She attracts it like gravity, or it attracts her. Either way, the result is essentially the same.
So, when the Son of Blood pulls the Doctor up by the collar and demands that he open his magnificent ship to the likes of them, it's not really a surprise when a resounding thwack graces his ears, and the Son crumples down to the floor, and Rose Tyler is standing behind him with a cricket bat in her hands.
"Give him back to me," she demands furiously.
And despite the situation, the Doctor can't help but smile.
-:-
"You could come with me...?"
Often the Doctor wonders what it would have been like for him had Rose said no twice to his invitation to come travelling. He'd probably have been dead. Or would have regenerated at least a couple of times.
There's also much emotional damage that would never have healed in her absence. He remembers what it was like before her. He had simply existed back then. Breathing in and out, in and out, and occasionally letting his respiratory bypass take over when he got especially tired, all the while looking for forgiveness for an unforgivable act.
Then, she'd slammed into his existence and turned it into a life, painted it in colours and her laughter. Pink, yellow, and warm.
Running became more fun, bowties became cooler, planets more beautiful, and her smile the prettiest. Saving people was so much more satisfying with her hand clasped in his and her arms around him in a tight hug after. He relearned to see the beauty in the Universe, the goodness in people, and the vague possibly of hating himself less, all because a nineteen year old human loved him.
And love him she did.
Does.
"I want you safe, my Doctor."
He can see her shake with the effort not to give into the song of the vortex as she swings the cricket bat at the Family. Without the TARDIS protecting her mind, it's a miracle that she can keep her eyes open, much less incapacitate two members of an alien family of hunters.
As she swings at the Mother, the Doctor slips away from their hold and runs towards Rose, reaching for her hand and pulling her back towards the TARDIS as fast as he can.
"I thought I told you to stay inside," he hisses.
She snorts incredulously even as she leans just a little against him.
They almost make it inside the blue box when the Son of Blood picks himself off the floor and charges towards them. There's something visibly silver and sharp in his hands and he's aiming at Rose who doesn't see him coming.
But the Doctor does.
"I want you safe..."
-:-
A strangled noise breaks away from her throat as the Doctor pushes Rose out of the way of the Son's knife and ends up taking it himself. Her eyes are as wide as his, and for just a second he's so close they're breathing the same air. Then his legs give away, and she sees the blood.
Something snaps then. The song she'd been trying to keep at bay tears away at her defences, and she doesn't so much as life a finger in resistance. It burns her, and it's agonising, but all she can see is the Doctor and the knife and his blood. She feels the power of the black tendrils of the vortex that had once been gold screaming at her to rip the Family into pieces, to make them feel such pain that they beg and beg and beg for death.
But she won't give it to them. Death would be too good. They want to be immortal. And so it shall be.
She lifts her arms, and the darkness wraps around the Family, and in a blink they're gone, trapped in separate places, separate times, with separate punishments, but all agonising, and all for eternity.
She collapses to the floor.
-:-
He carries her back to the TARDIS. Or at least tries to. The regeneration process has already started, and his legs (which never had much coordination in them to begin with) aren't behaving as well as they're supposed to. Somehow, he stumbles in and up the ramp, but he trips before he can get to the corridor, and they both crash into the grating.
Rose is barely breathing, and the Doctor desperately needs to get in to the infirmary, but his limbs have gone numb and are firmly refusing to help.
"Rose?" he calls frantically, trying to wake her up.
She blinks groggily. "Doctor?"
"Got it in one," he tries to say as lightly as he can without having his voice break.
"You're hurt..." she says.
"I'm fine," he lies. "Just peachy."
She wrinkles her nose. "Peachy sounds as bad as correctamundo."
"It does, doesn't it?" he laughs.
She starts to close her eyes, and he panics. "No, no, no, don't do that. Please, Rose, come on, look at me."
She frowns and opens her eyes back with much effort. "Wha'?"
"You can't go to sleep," he says, like he had just hours ago, but this time his voice is weak and wavering. "Promise me you won't go to sleep."
"'kay," she says almost immediately, even though she'd so very tired.
The Doctor lifts a hand to brush a stand of stray curl and notices that it's glowing just a bit.
"Rose?"
"Yea'?"
"Remember that trick I once told you about?"
She hesitates before her eyes focus on the glow. "Are you regenerating?"
"I'm about to, yeah."
"Oh."
"It's gonna be okay," he assures. "Just don't go to sleep, 'kay?"
"'kay."
He shuffles away from her with much effort as his feels liquid heat travel across his veins. Rose mumbles a weak protest and reaches out. It's almost a reflex that he takes her hand immediately even though he knows that it's not wise. He's going to have to let go in a few moments, but he wants to feel her hand in his one last time in this body. This body that's young but so very old, all full of self-hatred and repressed anger; the body that found her and held her like a lifeline with his hand that doesn't quite fit hers right but makes him feel all kinds of queasy things anyway.
He looks up from their joined hands to see her with her yellow hair spread across the grating, smiling tiredly at him, and unexpectedly he remembers a smile like that (only much sadder) thrown his way from a beach in Norway. Suddenly, he feels the need to complete the sentence he'd started that day.
He's expressed those words in different ways and in different words so many times before...I'm so glad I met you...I could save the world but lose you...Looks like it's just you and me...Have a fantastic life...You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you...I'm burning up a sun just to say goodbye...
And Rose probably already knows how he feels. But he's dying, and so is she, and this might really be his last chance.
No! She's not dying. She isn't. And he's only regenerating. He'll still be the Doctor, and he'll still love her.
...but would she?
Yes.
He recalls his last moments as a human, when he'd looked in her eyes seeking the answers to his inner struggles, and he'd found so much more before he'd asked what he'd asked, and she'd answered in a way that was so very Rose.
"How long are you going to stay with me?"
His vision starts to blur and little wisps of gold begin to cloud over his sight. He gives her hand one last squeeze and whispers those three words that mean so much more.
He doesn't notice that she's stopped breathing.
"Forever."
-:-
A/N: Don't take out the pitchforks just yet. This isn't the end.
I'll try to be quick with the next part. In fact, I'm halfway done with it. And I apologise for how long I took in uploading this part. I hope it was worth the wait. And I hope you'll drop a review to let me know how I'm doing with this story and if there's some way that I could improve. There's always room for growth.
Many thanks to JollyRoger1, blue sky, Zarelyn, Fangirl17, OnyxDay and Mick-Ann for your reviews. And to everyone else who have added this fic to their favourites' list and/or are following it.
Special thanks to Valerie E. Mackin for her amazing work as a beta reader.