A/N I don't own BBC or DW
Book of the Update: The Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling

P.S. I don't authorize the use of cursing, but we all know that Rose doesn't have the cleanest mouth, so I apologize.

Chapter 20

"Rose!" He yelled, running after her retreating form. "Wait!" He jumped back as a car horn sounded and he looked over to see he had run right into the road and nearly been hit. He barely spared the car a second glance before he started to run again, calling after her.

He finally caught up to her on an empty street with a few buildings on one side and a field on the other. He reached out and caught her wrist and she stopped short, turning back to look at him. There were tears running down her face, making black smears of makeup going down her cheeks. It broke his hearts to see her like this, and he reached up to cupped her face in his hands, using the pads of his thumbs to wipe away her tears.

"Shhhh, don't cry," he whispered, his brows scrunched together in concern, "Please don't cry, Rose."

She jerked her head back and before he knew what was happening, her palm had connected with his cheek. Hard. "You bastard!" she screamed, her face red with fury. She sniffed, tears still running down her face, though she looked more angry than sad now. "Why the hell did you leave me behind?" she asked and he flinched, cowering under her gaze.

"I had to, there wasn't time! I thought I would be back in five minutes. I never meant for this to happen."

She laughed bitterly, crossing her arms. "It's been a little longer than five minutes."

He looked down, ashamed. "I know. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. When I landed, it'd been five minutes for me, but the sun was up, so I knew that I was late. And then Amelia told me it had been six months, but then I saw the shed and I knew. And I'm sorry, Rose, honestly, I didn't mean to."

"It's been twelve years, Doctor. Twelve years."

He reached out tentatively, and she flinched, but didn't push him away, so he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, his face in her hair. "I know. I know."

She held back the urge to wrap her arms around his neck and just stood there, breathing in his scent. It still hadn't changed. He'd always smelled the same, whether he had big ears or fluffy hair or a bit of a chin. It was one constant about him, and she loved it. She loved him.

"Oh God, I've missed you," she mumbled into his ear, her walls finally cracking, and he said nothing, only pulled her closer. "Don't you ever go off without me again, alright? At least tell me first, don't leave it up to a little girl. You left me to deal with her broken heart, as well as my own, and it wasn't easy."

He pulled away, searching her eyes for forgiveness, "Rose, I-"

"Shh. Don't," she said, putting a finger to his lips. She was still furious, but there was no need to put that on his shoulders as well. Even if it was his fault. "I'm fine. It's over, yeah? Now we're together again. The old team."

"Hope and Glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake," he agreed, remembering.

"Which one's Shiver?"

"Oh, I'm Shake."

She smiled at him, only slightly forced, and he smiled back, leaning his forehead against hers.

"Now then," he said in an official tone, pulling away but still leaving their hands linked together. "Tell me, Rose Tyler, why you look as if it's been only five minutes since I saw you last? Amelia grew up, but you…." He took out the screwdriver and scanned her with it, buzzing it in a swirl around her face and then down her body and back up again, "Look exactly the same. Absolutely beautiful," he added, kissing her nose, "but absolutely the same." The screwdriver seemed to yield no results, and he put it away, shaking his finger at her playfully. "Don't think you'll be getting away that easily now, you're going straight to the medbay when we get back on the TARDIS."

Rose groaned, but then her eyes snapped open. "Doctor, the planet!"

He started. "Ah! Yes! The planet is going to be incinerated in…well, it was twenty minutes. Now it's seventeen."

"Twenty two," Rose corrected.

"What?"

"Twenty two. It's lots of little ships up there, they've all got to communicate to make sure they'll all fire at the same time before they burn the planet, right? Adds a bit of time."

"What?" he asked in shock, "How do you know that?"

"One ship couldn't transmit that warning all over the earth. 'S like satellites, they have to go all the way around, yeah?"

He looked blown away. "Rose, that's….that's wonderful! How did you manage to work that out?"

She rolled her eyes and began to walk the other way, pulling the Doctor along by their joined hands. "It's not like I've just been her waiting for your sorry ass for twelve years! I've been watching the crack and everything on the other side."

"What?!," he said, grabbing her wrist.

"What d'ya mean what? Let's go!"

"What do you mean everything on the other side? How could you see the other side?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes! Everything about you matters!"

"It's not like you're the only one on earth with alien scanners; now come on!" and she ran back the other way, ignoring him as he spluttered behind her, spitting out questions left and right.

DOCTOR WHO

"Perfect. Twenty two minutes to save the world, give or take a few, and I've got a post office. And it's shut. What is that?"

"It's a duck pond," Amy supplied, looking bewildered.

The Doctor ran ahead to the duck pond, pulling Rose with him, since he refused to let go of her hand. He looked into the pond. "Why aren't there any ducks?"

"I dunno, there's never been any ducks," Rose told him, just as confused as Amy was.

"Then how do you know it's a duck pond?"

She spluttered, and Amy answered for her, "It just is! Is it important, the duck pond?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said, "How would I know?" and on the last word, he spasmed, his head jerking back and he fell to the ground, taking Rose with him. He was clutching at his hearts. "This is too soon. I'm not ready; I'm not done yet," he told her, breathing heavily.

"Tea? Would tea help? Like at Christmas?

He nodded. "No, no, It's not a neural implosion, just ah, still cooking" he growled, still gasping in pain.

"What's happening?" Amy asked, looking at the sky, "Why's it going dark?"

They looked up at the sky, which had been covered with grey clouds. All of a sudden, the clouds cleared to reveal the sun, but it looked sort of funny, like it was covered with a netting.

"So what's wrong with the sun?"

"Nothing. You're looking at it through a forcefield. They've sealed off your upper atmosphere and now they're getting ready to boil the planet." He looked over at the park just a ways away from them, where people were crowding in, looking up at the sky. Some were taking pictures with their camera phones.

"Oh, look, and here they come," the Doctor said, "The human race. The end comes, as it was always going to, down a video phone," he spat the last part and got to his feet, pulling Rose up as well.

"This isn't real, is it? This is all some kind of big wind-up," Amy said, waving her hand and going into a sort of defensive 'deny everything' mode, like she had as a child, after the Doctor had left.

"Why would I wind you up?"

She clasped her hands beneath her chin and turned her head to face them, her eyes flitting about nervously. "You told me he had a time machine," she said to Rose, who nodded.

"He does."

"No, no, no. That was just what you told me when I was a kid and couldn't sleep at night. When all I wanted to do was run away with the raggedy doctor man!"

"Yes, I did tell you that, but it was true," Rose told her in an impressively calm voice. She was anything but calm. "Amy, you've got to believe me. You know me. Why would I lie to you for twelve years?"

Amy became fidgety and nervous, jumping at every noise from the park behind them. "You weren't even real! Why should I listen to you? Maybe I'm just going mad!"

"Wait, no. I saw something. There was something I saw and I missed it!" The Doctor cried, his face freezing up. He stayed absolutely still for a second, but Rose could practically hear his mind racing, tracing back through everything he saw. He blinked, and she knew he had found it. "Twenty two minutes! I can do it. I can save the world in twenty two minutes! So, run to your loved ones and say goodbye, or stay and help me."

"No," Amy said.

"I'm sorry?"

"No!" She screamed and reached out and grabbed him by his tie and dragged him over to Mr. Reynolds, who had just gotten out of his car, and she slammed the door shut and locked it, the Doctor's tie stuck inside, ignoring Rose's cries to stop as she was pulled along too.

"Are you out of your mind?" he asked incredulously and she glared at him.

"Who are you?"

"Amy!" Rose said, astonished, "He's the Doctor; you know who he is!"

She ignored her. "No really, who are you?"

"Look at the sky! End of the world, twenty two minutes," the Doctor said quietly, still backed up against the car, arcing awkwardly over the window.

"Better talk quickly then."

"Amy," said Mr. Reynolds, "I am going to need my car back."

"Yes. In a bit, now go and have coffee," she said in exasperation, not even sparing him a glance.

"Right. Yes." And he walked away, sighing.

The Doctor rummaged in his pocket for a second and then pulled out an apple and threw it to her, muttering "catch" as he did so. The apple had a face on it, the white parts still fresh and new. "I'm the Doctor. I'm a time traveler. Everything I told you twelve years ago, and everything Rose has told you is true. She's real. I'm real. What's happening in the sky is real, and if you don't let me go right now, everything you've ever known is over."

Amy looked at him, calculating, and then at Rose, who nodded slowly in agreement.

"Alright," she said softly. And she unlocked the car. "What do we do?"

"Stop that nurse," the Doctor told her, unlocking himself and taking off across the parking lot, once again dragging Rose with him. He hopped over a little chain gate, pausing momentarily as Rose tripped over it, and ran into the park and straight to a man in a nurse's uniform and grabbed his phone, right out of his hand, and kept running. Rose looked over her shoulder. "Sorry!" She called to Rory, who looked absolutely stunned.

"But you're…"

The Doctor looked at the picture he'd taken and then marched right back to the nurse, twisting Rose around again and pulling her back. "The sun's going out," he said, "And you're photographing a man and a dog. Why?"

"You're not real!" he cried, pointing at Rose in confusion.

Amy caught up to them just now and grabbed Rory's arm. "Hi!"

"Amy!" He said in surprise and she smiled at him before looking at the Doctor.

"Oh, this is Rory. He's a….friend," she said finally and Rory tilted his head, smiling.

"Boyfriend."

"Kind of boyfriend," she corrected and Rose felt bad for Rory, whose face fell.

"Amy!" He chastised, but the Doctor cut him off.

"Man and a dog. Why?"

Rory looked up, looked at the Doctor, looked at the Doctor's clothes, and finally at Rose and the Doctor's joined hands. "Oh, my God. It's him."

"Just answer the question, please!" Amy said, turning red.

"It's him, though! The raggedy Doctor!"

"Yeah, it is! He came back."

"But he was a story, a game, he was-"

"Rory!" Rose exclaimed, cutting him off. "Man and dog, why?"

He shook his head. "Yeah, right. Sorry. But he can't be there because he's"

"In a hospital, in a coma," the Doctor and Rory finished together and the nurse nodded.

"Yeah."

The Doctor smiled broadly, elbowing Rose. "Knew it. Multi-form, y'see? Disguise itself as anything, but needs a live feed, a psychic link with a living, but dormant mind." During his little explanation, he had walked closer to Rory – his left hand still behind him, attached to Rose's right – and began touching his head. On the last two words, he poked him, right in the space between his eyebrows, and Rose giggled. This regeneration seemed to have an obsession with touching things, which she supposed was better than licking them.

The creature behind them began to bark, but it was the man barking, not the dog. Rose's eyes widened. The Doctor turned and took two steps forward, placing him about a foot in front of Rose, facing the creature, which was probably 3 meters away. Maybe less.

"Prisoner Zero," he said confidently, ignoring Rory behind him, who was babbling that none of this was supposed to be real, that it was all just a game, and why could he see Amy's childhood imaginary friends?

The Doctor looked up at the sky, and Rose did too, gasping when she saw it. There was a ship up there, it looked a bit like a really big snowflake, she thought with a small grin.

"See that? That ship up there is scanning this area for non-terrestrial technology," the Doctor told Prisoner Zero. Rose noticed that he had discreetly pulled out his sonic and was slowly sliding it on. "And nothing says non-terrestrial like a sonic screwdriver." And with that, he turned it on, the blue light blinking on and off weakly, but still working, and held it up in the air proudly.

Every light in the park went out and the glass shattered in all of them, raining down in the grass. And then all of the cars and motorcycles nearby began to honk their horns and make noise, flashing their headlights. There was a firetruck that began to drive away all by itself, the firemen chasing after it in confusion.

Rose cover her mouth with her free hand to stop the laughter bubbling up. The Doctor grinned at her, still holding his sonic up in the air. "I think someone's gonna notice," he told Prisoner Zero, "Don't you, Rose?"

The creature began to bark again, but the Doctor just smiled and pointed the sonic at the red telephone box, but it sort of exploded and he dropped the screwdriver onto the grass, yelling at it.

"No, no, no, don't do that!" He yelled at the destroyed chunk of metal, angry.

"Look, it's going!" cried some man from the park, pointing up at the sky.

Rose looked up,, and sure enough, the ship was turning the other way. "No! Come back! He's right here!" she yelled, pointing at the prisoner. But the ship was gone.