Three Years After

Oh, they had adventures. This universe, they found, was in much the same state as the one they had left behind, at every point in time, and both Rose and the Doctor found themselves much more knowledgeable about such matters than they had ever been before. On a fancy they paid a visit to Satellite 5 (the era of which had still not become the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, much to the Doctor's chagrin), and popped into a certain underground museum in 2012 America to deal with the matter of the ownership of the internet.

There were discrepancies as well, of course. After they returned three months late from their first excursion (the new TARDIS, it seemed, had inherited some of its parent's inaccuracies), the Doctor received the full brunt of Jackie's wrath and a weeping Tony to boot, which, he found, was no easier to deal with now that he was part-human.

"You can't do that to me again, you just can't!" Jackie had clutched at Rose's collar. "I thought you'd be staying now, sweetheart, now that you've got him, I thought you'd just stay!"

Rose told her mother, in a shaky voice, that they couldn't be expected to just settle down when there was a whole new universe to see. The result was a blazing row between her and Jackie, with Pete somewhere in the middle, that ended in tears and much slamming of doors. Rose was so upset during the whole affair that she didn't notice the way the Doctor stood silently in the corner, watching with that old brooding look on his face, the one that meant he was thinking very seriously about the way things were going.

Nothing came of that for a while, though. After that initial incident, the Tyler family came to an agreement. Clothes were moved into the TARDIS, a whole wardrobe of T-shirts and jeans for Rose, and for the Doctor, ties and trousers and that one special overcoat, a used one at a discount price from the Bargain Basement in central London.

"You know what I heard on the news yesterday?" said Rose one day, through the grating in the floor as the Doctor was tinkering with the wiring below her. "These astronomers have found a new planet in some galaxy somewhere. Made of solid diamond, I heard. Fancy paying it a visit?"

"No," said the Doctor emphatically, and that was that.

One day, as fate would inevitably have it, Rose and the Doctor found themselves in one of those situations where they were certain they would die. The exact details of the incident were difficult to discern, but there was an alien, and a man, not a human man, and a gun held to Rose's head. The alien was recently dead. The false man was all-too alive, and one of those men who would have been better off dead.

The Doctor stood, weaponless and at a loss, ten feet away, and it might as well have been another universe.

"I'm sorry it had to end this way," said the man. "I'm so, so sorry. Now, you — alien man… just… just turn around and go, and I'll… I'll…" He tightened his finger on the trigger.

Rose stared at the Doctor and mouthed, Go.

The Doctor reached slowly into his coat pocket.

"There was a time," he said, "when I was a different man, when something like this might have gotten me. But I've changed, oh yes, I have changed."

In his hand he held a gun.

"Doctor…" whispered Rose.

"I used to think… I used to think I never would," he said. "But I've lost too much. I've lost too much and now it's my time to get what I want. You couldn't have picked a worse day," he told the man, "to call me an alien. And for that I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Because it seems I'm a little too human after all." He pointed the gun with an unwavering hand at the man's head. "I don't give second chances, now drop your gun."

"You won't save her," whispered the man. "You could never save her."

"No," said the Doctor. "But now I can die with her." And he fired.

The man folded to the ground. In the ringing silence that followed, Rose and the Doctor stared at each other. Then, suddenly transfixed by what he had done, the Doctor dropped the gun as if it had burned him.

"Rose," he said. "Rose…"

She stood up, slowly, never taking her eyes from him.

"Next time," she said, "you shoot me."

"I didn't — I wasn't —"

"Next time, you shoot me! Because I'd rather be dead than see you turn into… into whatever the hell that was! Is that what being human has done to you, Doctor? Is that what finally turns you into a killer?" She stepped up to him and kicked the gun away. "Because that's what made you different. You said you never would. And you did."

He stared levelly into her eyes. "I'm not losing you again. Whatever I have to do." His voice shook. "I'm not losing anyone ever again."

"If you keep going the way you are, Doctor, I'm going to lose you." She brushed past him. "I want to go home."

That was one of the adventures that they never spoke of again, not directly. Like the day many years ago, with the Dalek and the gun in the basement of an underground museum in 2012 America, it left a mark that made the walls of the TARDIS seem to rust before Rose's eyes, as if this new time machine was finally feeling all the blood its parent had experienced at the hands of its master. The Doctor never touched a gun again. He became, again, the man who never would.

It was funny; that incident, of all things, was what convinced Rose beyond any remaining doubt that the man in the TARDIS, with the tie and the coat, was the very same Doctor who had left her that day on a cold and windy beach. The same mind, the same consciousness. Nothing lost, nothing gained.

Strange, funny, the things that convinced her.