A/N I don't own BBC or DW.

Book of the Update: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Chapter 5

"Open your eyes now," he said, shining the light into them. "Everything seems to be responding normally; your pupils are dilating properly and the color change seems to have no effect at all."

He clicked off the light and let go of her chin. "Which leads me to believe that the color was a side effect of something else, probably mental. Could I-?"

She nodded and he placed his fingers on her temples. "Could I enter your mind? It won't hurt a bit; I just need to see what's happened. If there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a door closing and I won't look." Rose nodded to show she understood and he closed his eyes and very slowly, very carefully began to enter her mind.

At once, he was overwhelmed. The amount of love she had pulsing through her head – for him, for Jackie, for Pete, for Tony, for Jack and Mickey…even Sarah Jane and a few of his other companions flashed through her thoughts, along with various faces unknown to him, distant friends and family of hers. He had expected her mind to be….unusual, especially for him who was in love with her, but this…this was phenomenal. There wasn't a dark corner or broken place to be found. There was forgiveness and love and determination and sympathy and even jealousy, there was even a bit of sadness, but no true anger or sorrow had tainted her thoughts for many, many years.

There was something else though, something….strange. He took a mental step forward and stopped as millions of images flew by: standing on a stage as a gymnastic medal was placed around her neck, falling and scraping her knee, being hugged and pampered by Jackie, dropping out of school for Jimmy Stone, meeting a madman in a blue box, Daleks, the parallel world, facing the Cybermen, almost falling into the void, crying on Bad Wolf Bay, working on the dimension cannon, running toward him in the middle of an empty street, falling in the TARDIS with Donna, controlling the Daleks on the Crucible, and saying goodbye to her mum forever on Bad Wolf Bay.

Her mind was so…open. Like she hadn't even meant to project those images onto him. He frowned as a shimmer of gold caught the corner of his eye and he mentally turned. There, drifting down from somewhere in the top of her mind, was a perfect little trickle of golden dust, creating a shimmering pile in a little blue box on the ground. The gold dust was spilling over the edges of the box and little trails were zooming away to remote corners of her mind, spreading the golden light everywhere.

As the Doctor looked at it, it began to curl up and swirl around his presence within her mind, as if it remembered him. And then he knew.

The Gamestation. The heart of the TARDIS. Rose was burning up. Golden eyes…..regeneration. Bad. Bad; this was very bad. He braced himself and looked to examine the dust closer. Rose didn't seem to be affected other than her eye color; she wasn't burning up and she wasn't in pain. He looked upward. The dust was falling from a patch on the walls of her mind; a worn blue patch with little holes worn through towards the middle. The dust was falling from these holes, one spec at a time.

The patch, though, that was unusual. He'd never seen anything like it, but….it seemed familiar. It felt familiar. Almost like….a part of him? He shuddered, but forced himself closer to the patch to examine it. It was literally just an old, worn-out blue leather patch. On the wall of Rose Tyler's mind.

The patch looked as though it was holding something out, not just letting the dust in. he reached out his mind to whatever was behind it and mentally jerked back as he encountered a burning white-hot pain. It faded once he moved his mind away from the patch. The TARDIS sent Rose a soft hum and it vibrated through her mind and into the Doctor's, who smiled, glad to know his ship and Rose still got along like they used to.

He mentally reached out the golden dust and caught some of it, just to feel it. As soon as he touched it, the dust froze right where it was and just floated in place, shimmering the same as before. He listened, but Rose's mind seemed normal, as if she hadn't even noticed a change.

He frowned, but began to slowly back out of her mind, having gotten as much information as he probably ever would.

When he opened his eyes, Rose was staring at him, having already opened her eyes. They were brown.

He smiled. "Hello."

"Hello," she said softly.

He leaned forward slightly to press his lips to her forehead. "You have the most beautiful brown eyes that I've ever seen, Rose Tyler."

She blinked in shock, reaching a hand up to her eye. "They're normal now?" he nodded and she smiled in relief. "What'd you do?"

He frowned. "I think….and this is just a speculation, but….I think you have a small part of the heart of the TARDIS inside your head. The Time Vortex," he clarified when she looked confused. "Funny, that. Technically, your mind should be burning up right now, every molecule disintegrating, but it's not. There's this….patch…thing. It's acting like a plaster over a scratch, not getting rid of it, but making it better. Protecting it. I think that I might've put that there, back on the Gamestation when I regenerated. Do you remember what happened?"

She shook her head. "Only what you've told me."

"Good, then I've told you pretty much everything. Oh! And that's what happened to Jack; now he can't die. Anyway," he said as she opened her mouth in shock to ask more about Jack, "I must've put that there in my last body and forgotten about it, or maybe I did it without realizing I had done it, who knows. But, right now, that patch is protecting you, but still letting a bit of the Time Vortex through. I think it always has been, but I froze it, kept it from constantly streaming into your head, and that's why your eyes are normal now. whatever you did when you and Donna and the ship fell must've triggered it to start coming in again and the effects became physical."

She bit her lip. "So it's not going to hurt me?"

"It doesn't look like it, no. I'm going to check on it every day or so, but trust me, Rose, I will not let your beautiful mind be put in any danger. Alright?"

She nodded and he grabbed her hand and pulled her up.

"We'd better go and check on Donna in the kitchen, yeah?"

He nodded, but when she turned to go, he grabbed her by the waist and spun her around, stopping her with only centimetres between their lips. "There's one more thing I'd like to do," he whispered.

She smiled. "And what is that?"

"This."

He leaned forward that little bit and pressed his lips to hers, pulling her close and tilting his head downward, bringing his hands up to cradle her face. Oh yeah, he could get used to doing this all of the time.