A/N Not sure when the next chapter will be up. It's written but my beta is unavailable for at least a week plus I'm pushing to finish the whole thing in the next few days. Happy 50th everyone. Ever the hopeful optimist, me. Plan for the worst so you're not disappointed but you could be pleasantly surprised.

~oOo~

It was several hours later when Rose finally headed home. Her life hadn't felt quite this rocky in years, and she had needed time to think things through. She had needed time to try and find her center. For that reason, she had taken a long hike to her favorite thinking spot and had made a call to Jack. That impossible man would probably always be her biggest confidant, and having John say things that only the Doctor know had unnerved her. So much for a simple three month babysitting job.

Not to mention how angry she had become when he'd said those things. She may not be perfect, but she didn't deserve his scorn. Her jaw clenched once again when she thought about it. Okay, so maybe there had been a small point in there about stringing people along. She had never formally ended things with Mickey even if they both knew that things were over. If anything, they were officially exes when he hooked up with Trisha whatever her last name was. And she was certainly not the one who was holding back in her relationship with the Doctor.

Thankfully, John's SUV was gone when she pulled into her driveway. Right now she didn't want to hear the apology that she was sure John had been practicing since the moment that she left the restaurant. This human man was, unlike his fully Time Lord self, sometimes rude but never to her. John usually went out of his way to be polite to her and to act like a gentleman.

She cringed at the thought of abandoning both John and Liam like that. It had, however, been in everybody best interest that she left before she was arrested for slapping John in public. Besides, Liam had texted her less than an hour later that the two of them had arrived back safely and with nary the argument between them. Liam had changed a lot since she'd met him and all for the better.

Stepping out of her own vehicle, she winced when she put pressure on her left ankle. She'd rolled it coming down the trail. It's what she got for wearing dress boots rather than her hiking ones. It took a little extra time but she made it up the steps and into her house.

"Hello?" Rose called, setting down her handbag. "Liam, are you here?" There was nothing but silence. Last night he had taken a taxi from the airport so he had no car but it was only a short walk into town. If he had gone out he probably couldn't have gone far.

The pain in her ankle had already begun to lessen as she made it to the freezer for a cold compress. By tomorrow or the next day it should be healed properly. Maybe there was something in the TARDIS' med bay that she could use as a wrap in the meantime.

Opening the door to the basement, she was astounded to find Liam sitting quietly on the bottom of the steps. His eyes focused on the blue police box in front of him. Gently, she sat down a few steps down from the top, slipped off the boot on the offending ankle and applied the compress. Then she watched him watch the TARDIS.

Liam shifted, turning his body slightly. "All these years, all those things that have happened, all those stories from you, Aunt Sarah Jane, Jack, Mickey, and Martha. I just didn't get it." He paused, and Rose waited for him to speak again. "I told you I'd seen this ship once before, the night the Doctor came to call, but I hardly noticed her before. Which strange because right now I can feel it. Feel all that power radiating from it. It's… oh, what's the right word…"

"Beautiful," Rose whispered with a soft smile.

"More like terrifying, I think." Liam's voice was solemn. "You really tore open the ship's heart and took in all that power? How did you survive?"

She sighed. The only people that she had ever discussed the events on the Games Station with were Liam and Jack. Her mum would have been terrified with the knowledge, and the Doctor hadn't deemed it important enough to talk about. Or he hadn't deemed her important enough to know what she had truly done. Either way, it didn't really matter now. There was too much water under that bridge.

"I don't know, really. We never actually talked about it. I mean, I remember parts of what happened." Ever since the TARDIS had landed here her dreams had been filled with dreams about her time as Bad Wolf. "And now I remember the Doctor taking the power of the Vortex from me." Unconsciously she raised her fingers to her lips. "I know that that is what made the Doctor regenerate. Saved his life just to kill him a few minutes later. I, apparently, escaped unscathed."

Tears pricked her eyes. "Sometimes I wonder if he resented me for that. If that's why he pushed me away." A wave of admonishment came from the ship at the bottom of the stairs, and Rose stared in wonder. She'd never felt the TARDIS in her mind outside of the ship before they had arrived here a few weeks ago. Since the ship had landed, Rose had felt that familiar, gentle nudge of the old girl in the back of her mind. Not to mention the TARDIS managed the translations of alien languages from great distances, an ability that she hadn't lost when she left the Doctor.

Liam began to speak again, breaking Rose from her thoughts. "Is that why you heal faster now? I mean faster than an average human." He was fully facing her now.

"How do you know about that?" It's not that it was a secret, but she herself hadn't figured it out until she had moved to Colorado.

He shrugged. "I'm not stupid, Rose."

"I never said that you were."

"In five years you never got so much as a cold. Even when Soph and I had that really bad flu, you were the picture of health. Not to mention you broke your wrist on one of your weekend alien hunting trips with Jack. What? Less than a week before you moved here. And I was looking at picture you sent Sophie two weeks later and there was no cast on your arm." There was a moment's pause before he spoke again. "When did you find out?"

"Not until the break healed." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Martha wanted me to see a physician when I got her. Went in to have it X-rayed a few days after I moved into the house, and there was no break. The doctor couldn't even see evidence that one had ever been there. I lied and told him it had been a hairline fracture, and my records must have been wrong because it was a month or so since I'd been hurt."

She moved the compress off of her foot. "I was so scared of what that meant. Called Martha immediately and she was on the next flight out. She turned this room into a laboratory and ran every test she could think of."

Liam scooted up a couple of steps. "What did she find?"

"Nothing really. Everything came back normal except that my rate cellular decay has slowed dramatically."

"So you're like Jack?" He reached over and tenderly touched her injured ankle.

Rose shrugged. "Don't know if I'm immortal and to tell you the truth, it's not a theory I want to test."

"Why didn't you tell me?" His fingers caressed her no longer throbbing ankle.

"I didn't know how. No one knows outside of Martha, Mickey and Jack." Cocking her head to the side, she studied him. "How do you tell someone you love that you're probably going to outlive them by decades? How do you even reconcile that within yourself?"

"Oh, Rose." Liam enveloped her in a tight hug. "I would have understood. I love you, unconditionally."

She pulled back and looked deep into his eyes, and she suddenly knew what it must have felt like to be the Doctor.

~oOo~

"Rose! No!" John sat bolt upright in his bed, sweat dripping off his brow. His hands fumbled in the dark seeking the lamp. With a small click, the soft light almost blinded him. He blinked rapidly, letting his eyes adjust and then grabbed his journal. Charcoal pencil in hand, he sketched a face he'd drawn an insane amount of times since he'd met her.

But this time it was different, her mouth was downturned, hurt radiating from her eyes. She was sad, and it was his fault. He wasn't sure what he had done but he knew to his core that he was the cause of her pain. Flipping a page he began another sketch, this one of a man, dressed in period clothing, pre-revolutionary France, his face set behind a bizarre mask. A robot, he was a robot, an enemy of the Doctor, the madman that John sometimes he dreamed he was. A man who always hurt the ones that he loved most.

Behind the clockwork man, John drew a fireplace, an old ornate thing. Beside it, he wrote the words regret, mistakes, Rose taken for granted. Slamming the journal shut, he jumped up and started pacing the room. What did it all mean?

Raking his fingers through his hair, he pulled on his trainers and grabbed a jumper to pull over his vest top. It had been a chilly night, and he'd worn sweats to bed. No time like four o'clock in the morning when it is freezing outside to go for a run to clear your mind.

~oOo~

Rose pulled on her lightweight jacket, completing her running outfit. Part of her wondered if John would be joining her this morning. Another much larger part didn't want to see him just now.

She didn't fancy seeing anyone right now. Last night after their talk in the basement, Liam had wanted to discuss him and Sophie moving here on a permanent basis now that all the custody issues had been sorted. A year ago, Rose would have wanted nothing more than to marry Liam and help him raise his daughter. There had even been talk of future children together.

Now though, Rose was slightly hesitant and she didn't know why. Most people would believe that the arrival of the TARDIS was what had caused this trepidation. Rose knew, however, that that was only a small part of it. And now she needed time, alone, to clear her mind.

After grabbing her mobile and leaving a note for the man sleeping upstairs, Rose left for her run.

John wasn't waiting for her on the sidewalk and she was just a little bit disappointed. She shoved her ear buds into place and cranked the music on her iPod. Maybe the thrumming backbeats of the upbeat pop songs would drown out the thoughts filling her head.

Today, she chose to take one of her favorite paths. It was rocky and took a steep incline, but the view from the top was spectacular. Rose shut herself off to everything except from stimuli in her immediate vicinity, her feet hitting the ground, the clean, crisp air filling her lungs and the music in her ears. She was about two miles in when she found him lying in the middle of the path in a pool of blood.

"Doctor," she cried dropping to her knees beside the Doctor's prone body. His breathing was shallow, and his lips were tinged blue. "Oh god, John, don't do this to me." His pulse was thread and he was bleeding from his left temple. She had no idea how long he had been out here, and she was afraid. What would happen to the Doctor if this human body died? Surely John couldn't regenerate.

Pulling out her mobile, she dialed 999 before remembering this was America and they used 911. She was trembling as she kept the phone to her ear and took off her jacket to wrap around John. He was wearing sweat pants, a t-shirt and a thin jacket. The lady at the call center advised Rose not to move him since they weren't sure of the extent of his head injury but to monitor his breathing and try to keep him warm while they waited for emergency services to arrive.

It took everything that Rose had in her not to snap at the woman on the other end of the phone. After all of the scrapes that she had gotten into with the Doctor, Rose most likely knew more about first aid than most people. Still she needed to tamp down the panic that was rising in her. Had this been the Doctor she would have just dragged him back to the TARDIS. John's human body was much more fragile.

"Rose," he moaned.

"I'm here, John, and help is on the way. You'll be alright. One way or another, I promise you that you'll be alright." Reaching under the jacket draped across his chest, she found his hand and entwined her finger with his. "I've got you."

It was an agonizingly slow wait for the arrival of the ambulance to reach the base of the trail and then for the EMTs to hike in the two miles to them. Time slowed down and seconds ticked by like hours as they started the IV and began the arduous trek back down the narrow trail.

It all felt surreal. They'd both been in far worse danger before. Hell, the Doctor had died and regenerated in front of her, but this felt different, scarier. Rose followed behind them, reminding them for the third time that he was allergic to aspirin and refused to take no for an answer when they tried to stop her from getting in the ambulance. John continued to moan her name all the way to the hospital. His hand was still tightly clasped in Rose's while she listened to the EMT's talk about his low blood pressure and his lowered core temperature. If they only knew how much lower his body temperature was when he was his fully alien self.

"Hold on, John. We'll get to the hospital soon, yeah? You're not going to die, not on my watch," Rose said softly, more to comfort herself than to him. "I can't lose you now."