A/N The Doctor answers Rose's question in his own way, finally forcing him to evaluate where they stand, and what stands between them.

Chapter 22

"We spoke vows to each other, Doctor. Did that mean anything to you? Please tell me this now, even…even if the answer is no."

Smothering tension seemed to pull the air itself from the room as Rose's significant question was met with silence.

The Doctor recovered a semblance of equilibrium the second he broke eye contact and turned from Rose. He walked a few steps away, and for a brief few seconds she thought he might even leave the room. But then he turned back, and what she saw in his eyes at that moment shook her a little as she drew a sharp breath. The emotion radiating back at her carried the intensity of a raging storm and the fragility of glass, nearly broken. It was anger and longing and anguish. It was the beauty of what they both wanted held by ugly chains that refused to let it free.

And it wasn't going to be the answer either wanted it to be.

"It's not that simple," he finally replied, his emotional voice so tight that every muscle in his body was strained with the effort of speaking this. "You want a simple answer from me, but there isn't one, Rose. Not with this."

Rose took two hasty steps forward to where he had withdrawn. They were not, leaving it at that. Not at this point. "Why? Why can't there be?" she countered his response. As much as he was fighting to hold back, this was still the most the Doctor had ever opened up about what existed unspoken between them, and Rose wasn't going to let this slip through her fingers without trying to hold on to it with all her might before it was lost. "I know that so many things in life are hard, Doctor. So many things in life are a struggle, and so many things can never be simple. But does that have to be the way things are for us? For this. For you and me?"

"You just don't understand, Rose," he answered in a broken voice.

"Then tell me. Please. Let me understand," she pleaded. If they were finally going to confront this head-on but then turn away from it completely then she at least needed to know why. "Is it because you'll lose me one day? Because if that's the reason, would it really hurt you any less when that day came if you made sure we never became more to each other in the meantime? Never became closer? Or is it…is it because this just wouldn't be worth the effort?" she asked, not trying to get a rise out of him but genuinely questioning if this was so. "Would my time compared to yours be so short that it just wouldn't even be worth—"

"No," he interrupted sharply, unable to keep listening to her self-doubts and remain silent. "No, that is not at all the reason why. You're the one, Rose…the only one who has ever…" He closed his eyes briefly and took a long breath before fixing her again with his intense gaze. "You promised to stay with me forever. Do you understand just what that means to me? No one has ever promised me that, Rose. And if that is really, truly what you want then there are ways. I couldn't make you live forever — no one can. No one does. But there are so many advances out there — breakthroughs beyond your time period. Means which exist billions of years in the future that could keep you with me so much longer than anyone who has traveled with me has ever wanted to stay. And that is one of the very reasons I did all this today. To keep you with me."

Rose didn't even know what to say to this. She felt so confused. He so desperately wanted her with him, yet was fighting just as hard to keep her at arm's length? And then in the middle of all this to bring in the potential of somehow, someday, extending her life — dropping something like this on her now of all times, as if her head wasn't already spinning enough. So what was he saying? Was he saying all he wanted was a long-term traveling companion, and since she'd offered to stay for her lifetime then this was the only reason he stopped her from having to marry Zerin?

"So you're saying…what, exactly?" she asked him slowly. "Are you saying that since I've promised to stay with you and you can find ways to keep me around a little longer then that's what made today worth the effort? Why you did what you did? Okay, so…now I'm starting to get it. You see the potential of being able to keep me as more of a permanent companion, yeah?" she pressed, moving a step closer. "I promised I'd stay, and you can make that promise last a little longer if I'm willing. So to you I'm one who wouldn't have to be 'replaced' quite so soon, is that it?"

"Rose, stop it. Just stop," he responded tightly, his body tensing all the more.

"Then what are the reasons?" she cried. "If it isn't because you're afraid of losing me too soon…if we can be together, then why can't we be together? Is it…is it because you don't even want…"

The Doctor couldn't swallow these words down any longer. They rose like bile in his throat. "It's because you wouldn't want me," he answered her sharply, eyes flashing.

Rose's reply was a steady challenge, her eyes never leaving his. "Try me."

He laughed once, short and bitter. "Oh, you just don't know, Rose. You don't really know what you're asking for — who I am, what I've done. After the War, I'm…" He stopped and fell silent before finally speaking again, his voice dark. "This isn't something I do, Rose. Not anymore. Never again."

Rose had a flash of revelation in this moment. All those years, all those lifetimes, all the relationships he had formed — Rose was no longer naïve enough to think she was the only one he had ever grown close to. But maybe she was the only one who he had fought so hard to keep from growing even closer. "You mean this isn't something you'll do with me. You've not been this guarded with anyone else, have you?"

The question hung in the space between them. The Doctor thought of the relationships he had allowed himself to have in times past. And not just the distant past. Even after the War, just recently, how easily he had let his head be turned by Reinette — even asking her to pick a star, pack a bag and come with him. And he had meant it. He wanted her to come on board the TARDIS along with him and Rose, between him and Rose. And why? As a distraction. A distraction from this very thing facing him down tonight. This thing that shook him a little inside every time he looked at Rose and felt something so much stronger than he ever dare feel.

He stared at Rose so long that she thought he wouldn't even reply. His eyes never left hers once he finally did. "No. Just you."

A noise escaped her throat that started as an ironic laugh but came out choked. Rose shook her head. "Doctor, I don't want to be your statue on a pedestal that's…that's never allowed to be touched. For one thing, I don't deserve to be up that high; and for another, I want more out of life."

"Then you want more than I could ever give you," he answered, his voice hollow.

Rose released a breath of exasperation. "Because you won't let yourself. You won't let yourself give or let yourself have. And why? Is it punishment for the War, or because you think you're just not allowed because…because the universe would…implode or something?"

The Doctor flinched visibly at the mention of the War, and Rose knew she had struck a nerve that ran deep, a wound that had not healed. She didn't want to dredge up pain for him. She wanted him to let go of that pain. The Doctor had learned all too well about loss. He had learned how to fear it. It was that fear which was now fighting against her — fighting against this. She understood that now. His haunted eyes said it all, even if his words had not. There were times when the Doctor seemed like such a mighty being, but in this moment Rose saw him simply as a lonely, broken man. He was the Last of the Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm, a Lonely Angel — yet he was also just a man. He was a man who deserved to have happiness and love just as much as any other.

"Doctor," she continued softly, "The past isn't what matters now. Right now. Let the past go before it stops you from living."

Rose saw the depth of his pain flash in his eyes before being covered by a mask of steel. "It already has."

Her heart broke for him, yet found strength at the same moment. She was not going to let him lose anything more in life — not now, not her, and not on the basis of casting this away of his own doing. In putting herself in his place as the last survivor of an annihilated race, she literally could not comprehend the anguish he lived with. But no matter the insurmountable pain he carried inside, he needed to move forward, and she believed he could.

"Then maybe it's time you let yourself come back to life. Time to let yourself live again. And you have started living again. I've seen it…that life. It's there. It's there every time we step out of the TARDIS and find something new, and every time we end up running for our lives in the process and loving every single second of it. You have more life inside you than anyone I've ever known." She paused and he was silent. "And yet…you could have so much more…"

The Doctor dropped his eyes and turned from her then. He walked back over to the widow, gazing out blankly into the black night as her words struck his armor yet fell to the ground without breaching his shield. Rose thought she had seen him feel truly alive in those mad, dizzying moments; yet he knew those moments of adventure were never examples of his life to the fullest. It was just a way to dull the pain. He recalled the words of Jabe spoken to him on Platform One:

'Perhaps a man only enjoys trouble when there's nothing else left...'

He wanted desperately to accept Rose's words and believe he could have what she was so simply and so innocently and so completely offering.

But he could not. Because he knew. He knew that nothing about this — nothing about him — was simple or innocent.

"Rose," he finally spoke again, his voice low and strained. "I wish I could be the man you want me to be. The man you think I'm capable of being. But I just can't."

"No, Doctor," Rose corrected with resolve. "You just won't."

His answer was a hoarse whisper. "I'm sorry."

Rose shook her head vigorously, refusing to let the tears behind her eyelids escape. "No, don't. Just…no."

He didn't reply or turn back around. Rose wished she could have said something more, but the words just wouldn't come. She combed a hand through her hair and suddenly felt the weariness of this entire ordeal from the moment they had crashed on this planet begin to weigh her down until she could barely stand. She didn't have the strength for this anymore. At least not tonight.

She wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes, like her heart, pulled downward. "I'm just so tired," she murmured, her words referring to so much more than the physical.

"You should sleep," the Doctor said quietly, still gazing outward into the night.

Lowering her head, Rose turned back towards the bed, feeling numb. The whirling emotions of this day had left her with too much to process here and now. Maybe tomorrow or the next day or the next she could begin the steps of trying to figure out just where they would go from here, but it was clear neither were able to do that tonight.

She blew out the candles on the bedside tables and turned back the sumptuous covers on what had been prepared as a marriage bed, slipping in beneath.

She turned on her side opposite him. Rose closed her eyes, trying desperately to think about anything other than the man on the other side of the room. That proved to be impossible, though. Not after a day like today. Not when that man on the other side of the room who refused to move closer was now her husband.

Her husband.

Up until now, marriage was something Rose had never really even thought too much about. Before the Doctor had come into her life marriage was just something she took for granted and assumed would come someday, though she was nowhere ready for it back then. Even though she had been dating Mickey and they had been close mates, they had never gone so far as to plan a marriage. Neither one had been at a point of being ready to consider it.

Then came the Doctor who forever changed her life and any assumptions she'd once had. When she promised him her forever she meant it with every fiber of her being, and she had known exactly what such a promise meant. No settling down, no house with doors and carpets and a mortgage. And no husband. And she was fine with that. An ordinary life wasn't the one Rose wanted. And though she had never been opposed to the idea of marriage, there was only one man who occupied her thoughts when she imagined committing herself to one person. But marriage to that man wasn't something she thought would ever be possible.

Yet here they were.

Here they were with a marriage that, even if Rose had allowed herself to imagine it, she never could have conjured up something like this. And now here she was on her wedding night, lying here alone, with the man she had married on the other side of the room, unable to even look at her.

Rose felt paralyzed. They were in a state where they couldn't go forward and they couldn't go back. They couldn't move because he wouldn't move. Yet even if he chose to sweep this away and somehow pretend it meant nothing, Rose knew that no amount of pretending or running or hiding could ever change or mask what she held in her heart.

When a fitful sleep finally managed to claim her, the vows she had given to the Doctor echoed through her heart and through her dreams — words she would forever hold, even if he chose to let them go.

-:-:-:-

Night crept on, and the Doctor sat on the floor beneath the window he had been gazing out of for so long, his arms resting limply across his drawn-up knees. He stared across the dim room and could make out the still form of Rose in the bed, the flickering of the firelight casting a dancing glow across her motionless shape as she slept.

Rose had asked him one question. A question now reverberating through his mind again and again: Did this mean anything to him? Did this marriage, no matter how it was brought about, and the vows he had given and received mean anything to him? As much as he had tried to tell himself this was done strictly out of necessity and fought to assign this no deeper meaning, the fact remained that it did mean something to him. And that was the reason he sat here now fighting down thoughts and emotions he had always managed, at least to a point, to keep suppressed. He couldn't just step in at the wedding and do what had to be done in the moment, and then shake this off and move on as he pretended to himself he could have. It wasn't going to be that easy this time.

Rose was right. Words have power. The words she had given to him and the words he had spoken to her were not empty, meaningless phrases. Both knew this the moment they fell from each other's lips and passed into the other's soul.

The Doctor squeezed his eyes shut as he scrubbed both hands down his face. What had he done?

He knew exactly what he had done.

He knew exactly what he had been doing before he did it. He was keeping Rose from another and for himself. Well, now he had her. And now he refused to allow himself more. In taking more he would also open himself to giving more of him, and that was something he could never do. Not considering the things he had done that Rose would have to know and see. If he opened himself to her just a fraction more there would be no hiding it. Whether he lost her to Time or lost her if she saw the darkness within him, keeping distance between himself and Rose all came down to that fear of loss. Giving and having more meant he stood to lose so much more, and he had already lost far too much.

Maybe once they were back in the TARDIS and running head-long into the next adventure, moving past this would be easier for both of them. Maybe they just needed time and a little safe distance — distance a shared marriage chamber on a wedding night did not allow. The problem with that thought, though, was there didn't seem to be such a thing as 'safe distance' where Rose was concerned. Maybe there never had been. Not since her hand had taken and filled the emptiness of his own.

Emotions were a strange thing, indeed. Even though a part of him felt a sharp, painful stab of longing for what could never truly be when Rose told him her vows to him were genuine and she meant every word, another part of him had felt elation. Though both of them had instinctually known there was something fundamentally more to their relationship and this connection they shared, he had never really known for sure the depth of what Rose might feel for him. He had tried not to think too hard about it, to be honest — never allowed himself to probe that deeply. They had certainly never broached the subject.

Now that he knew without a doubt that she was certain of the forever she had offered him, he wanted to claim that promise and claim Rose as his own. This thought was not one that shocked him. The thought of Rose being his and his alone was one that had stirred deep within at the mention of names like Mickey and Adam and Jack and Zerin. He wanted Rose to be his. So he had taken her hand if he could not take her heart, and he had clutched it like a lifeline.

And that's exactly what she was to him. He had once told her he had no one left, and she had become his lifeline with two words: 'There's me.'

Those were not simplistic words, either. Rose had not just been a hand to hold or a set of eyes through which to show the universe. She was the one who had saved him. She saved him the day she stepped into the TARDIS and banished the vast emptiness within. She saved him again the day she came back for him, radiant and all-powerful with all that is, was and could be. If he had not known it already he would have known in that moment that Rose was so much more than a coincidence that happened into his life.

Not just anyone could have done what she did — the TARDIS would not have allowed it. The power Rose had held within had not even spared him, yet Rose held it as if she had been born for such a purpose. He believed she had. As the raw power of Time itself had flowed between them, she had even made him into the man he was now, a little less rough around the edges and even sounding a bit like the woman who owned his every thought and emotion during the moment he had become a new man because of her and for her. He had imprinted himself on her just as she had imprinted herself on his soul. He doubted he would ever even change from the man he was now as long as Rose was ever-present in his life, regardless of regeneration. Her influence on who he was now was simply too strong, and would continue to be while she remained with him.

Rose was so much more to him than he thought anyone could ever again become. She wasn't just the one who was willing to live her forever with him. She was the one who had also been willing to die for him. And so he had held her close, but not too close. Because for him, too close meant that he would lose her. If she saw his true self — the blood-stained hands of the Killer of His Own Kind — how could she possibly want to stay with him for even a minute, much more a lifetime? Losing her wasn't an option and having her closer wasn't allowed.

So they held hands and they ran — a symbol of what they were: holding tightly to each other while running from more.

Until today when the running stopped and they stood facing what until now had successfully remained unspoken between them. The Doctor had never before actually allowed these thoughts to come fully to the surface. Now that they had, he wished for just one thing: strength. It was in weakness that he kept Rose at a distance. It would take strength to let her in close. He didn't have that strength, though, no matter how much he wished he did. He had said it of himself once and it was still true — coward, every time.

The Doctor slowly stood from his slumped position and walked silently closer to the bed. He stared down at Rose's sleeping face and his hearts seized painfully in his chest. He wanted to crawl inside her soul and let her bury his pain. But that was such a selfish thought. He had once told her that what he needed most to get across the universe was a hand to hold. As long as he had her hand in his he could make it day by day. The unthinkable risk of losing that would keep him from ever taking more or letting her see enough of him that she would run far away. He could not risk that. Never.

If all he could have was her nearness then he would take that with both hands. Needing to at least be close and feeling the heaviness of so much more than just this day weighing on him, the Doctor moved to the other side of the bed and eased silently down beside her. His own vows repeated through his mind as he fell to sleep beside the woman he could never allow himself to have, and in irony, the woman who was now, at least for this day, his wife. Did life ever tire of mocking him?