Disclaimer: Okay, you caught me. I actually do own Doctor Who, along with the government (all of them), the internet (bought it from van Statten), and basically the world in general. Now I'm afraid I have to send my ninjas to kill you.

A/n: ...huh? Wait, what? Uh...I'm just gonna go over here and...umm...yeah, school is tiring...blah.

Spoilers: Basically all of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. This Spoiler Alert will last until the end of the fic. If you have not finished s4, do not read this, because there will be Spoilers. You have been warned.

000

Everything was on fire for a moment, and now he's excited. He would be excited because everything was on fire but only if it was a happy fire and not a sad fire and now she's going crazy because fire can't be happy or sad except for the fire they saw together in that place at that time…oh look, more people.

More people.

People are dangerous, people can hurt you, people are scary and frightening if you don't know them because they can take you and get inside you and twist you and break you until you can't even see and then leave you somewhere until he finds you and saves you but it's confusing and nothing makes sense then. Don't talk to strangers Rose, don't take rides from strangers but she did and he was wonderful and he saved her from the bad strangers so aren't strangers good? No, they can't be, not unless they're him and none of those people are him.

She grabs his arm and holds him close, he'll keep her safe from the strangers they won't hurt her if he's there he would never let them hurt her except for that one time with them when he couldn't save her and he left her there. She knows he couldn't save her, he said so, but he said he wouldn't leave her before he lost his old face and when he rode through a window but if she doesn't have him she has nobody because they're all gone somewhere else. Besides, they had to drag him away.

What if the strangers try to drag him away from her?

She holds on tighter, she won't let go she won't, then grabs on to the nice lady, that's a good name for her until she knows remembers the real one. She doesn't want to lose either anyway and the strangers can't take them away, she won't let them…

The strangers look confused by this, especially the one that reminds her of something or nothing or two things that are exactly same but completely different and the older one that she remembers like a dream with the younger one that she's never seen before. Then the one she knew twice starts yelling and no please no don't take them away I don't want to lose them please please please no…

"Rose, it's okay, they're friends. They aren't going to hurt you. Look at me." She needs him to tell her it's all right like he always used to and always does and always has to because she needs him if she's going to get better, and he promised she would get better so of course she will. She needs him to protect her, so she does what he says and tries not to let him know that she's thinking of them because that would make him sad.

He knows anyway, she can see it in his eyes, but he takes a deep breath and pushes down the pain and tells her, "I promise, none of these people are going to hurt you. None of them would ever want to hurt you." He's promised, so that means it must be true. Right?

The people disappear in a blur of black and white, and he turns to fiddling as the nice lady holds her and murmurs soothing nothings that shouldn't make her feel better because she's older now but do because she can only act like a child, which hurts the most about healing because now she knows that she can't think but can't figure out how to fix it on her own.

Then a voice comes back, a new one, and he doesn't look so happy to see the new stranger. He glows blue on top and he looks old, unbearably old, too old for words and too angry to care. He scares her, this new old man, more than any of the others because at least she'd seen some of them before even if she's never seen them.

But she had seen him, angry and shaking and arrogant to the last, fighting death and tears and memories of things she can't imagine and has never tried to because she's always known from the look on his face that she can't. He's hurting, badly, so badly, too badly, with the look on his face that he had whenever he offered someone help even though he knew they would turn him down, whenever he had to hurt people to save even more, whenever he remembered that thing so terrible that it can't be said or even thought of before he changed.

And now, whenever he looks at her and promises with something that's almost tears in his eyes that he will help her and she will get better and it hurts her more than anything.

The new old man disappears just like the strangers did, and he's whirling around everywhere like he can't stop or else everything will fall apart when really it will only be him because if he stops he'll have to think and thinking hurts. She looks at the nice lady, and the nice lady looks at her, and they both know that there's only one way to help.

So they walk over to him and put their arms around him, and she rests her head on his shoulder in silent comfort and the nice lady murmurs soothing nothings to him, because even though he's old he's still young enough to need a hug when he's scared of the Big Bad Scary Things, and that's the end of that.