As soon as he'd ascertained that Rose was able to stand, he'd ushered her – without giving her a moment's chance to object – out of her TARDIS and into his own, which was parked only a few feet away. Tony had trotted along behind them.
Rose told him it had felt like coming home to enter the blue box, and she had let her fingers trail lovingly over the console as she passed it on her way to the infirmary where the Doctor insisted on examining her carefully.
He waved the sonic over her, and peeked in her eyes with a torch-like device. He even used an actual stethoscope to listen to her heart and lungs.
"Everything seems to be in working order," he concluded after fifteen minutes of examination, brow furrowed with curiosity but not overly worried. He helped Rose off the examination table and then reached a hand out to Tony. "Your turn."
"I'm sure that's not necessary, Doctor," Rose said suddenly. "Tony doesn't like medical exams."
"I'm not the one who fainted," Tony objected as well, stepping back.
The Doctor looked to Rose sharply and turned to speak gently to the boy. "You just jumped through the Time Vortex in a juvenile TARDIS whilst towing a planet and you were exposed to someone who had previously absorbed the Time Vortex itself and was radiating who knows what energy. There are so very many ways you could be not okay."
Rose took Tony's hand and headed towards the door, leaving no room for argument. "I'll examine him myself, it's alright. Let's have some tea, yeah? I could use a cuppa."
The Doctor looked at Rose strangely, disapproval etched on his features, but it was gone after a moment. He followed her and Tony silently out the door into the corridor, finding that the galley had relocated conveniently across the hall from the infirmary.
Rose rushed towards the cupboards and pulled open the one where teas were usually stocked. She rummaged through the lowest shelf and pulled out a small, green tin. "You still have it," she said softly, turning to smile at the Doctor. He smiled back. "I have missed this tea more than you know."
He watched as Rose reached automatically for the kettle and then opened the cupboard where he'd always kept her favourite teapot, a clear glass contraption he'd picked up on Earth. The tea cooled too quickly in it, but Rose liked it so he'd always tolerated the slightly cooler infusion. She scooped three spoonfuls of the colourful Ayurian spiceflower loose tea into the infuser.
"How long has it been?" Rose asked while pouring the boiling water into the teapot. "For you, I mean."
"Just over a year since the reality bomb," he said softly, understanding without asking that she was enquiring as to how long it had been since they parted. "You?"
"Six. Six years. Tony had just turned four when we got back; he's ten now." She pulled down three tea cups and hooked them through her thumb, carrying them and the teapot back to the well-worn galley table. She deposited the tea things and turned towards the fridge for a pot of cream.
The Doctor automatically reached for the sugar bowl which never left the small table. He added a spoonful to each of two cups and looked over at Tony, whose eyes were roving everywhere, taking in the sights of the ship, in inquiry. The boy nodded, so the Time Lord added sugar to the third cup as well. Rose returned and without asking, poured some cream into two of the cups, leaving the middle one. She carefully dispensed the tea and reached for the cup without cream and lifted it to inhale the rich aroma.
"Six years," said the Doctor, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Asynchronous timelines. Either that, or there is a linear relationship and we not only travelled through universes but went back in time too. Or both. It wasn't exactly a planned jump with time to adjust for all the temporal eddies that were pouring out of the Vortex." The Doctor looked at Rose curiously.
"Always talks like that now. She got her doctorate in dimensional physics," Tony piped up.
He smiled broadly. "Really?"
"From Oxford," the boy added proudly.
"I never doubted your brilliance," said the Doctor with a grin that reached his eyes. Rose's eyes jumped to meet his, a surprised but sad look therein. He felt taken aback at the expression and arched an eyebrow in inquiry.
She sipped the colourful, rich tea to give herself a moment before responding. "That's what he said. John. When I graduated. Word for word."
"I see."
"Did Tony tell you about…"
"Yeah. I'm sorry, Rose." An awkward pause descended over the three of them. "Can I ask..?" the Doctor broached the topic gently.
"How he died?" Rose responded, her face blank. He saw her hand move and looked down at where she twisted a pinkish metal band around finger. He'd not noticed it earlier and his hearts sank in his chest as it dawned on him what she had actually lost. "Best we can figure, the Metacrisis generated a body that wasn't stable. His cells kept oscillating between human and Time Lord biology, so things just went haywire and stopped working. It was kind of like cancer. He passed away a year ago," she finished sadly.
"He took three years to die," Tony said, his voice harder than any child's words had right to be. "I was there when he had his first seizure." His eyes were damp and his face bore the trauma of the memory clearly. "I barely remember him from before he got sick." Rose reached over and pulled him into a sideways hug and pressed a kiss to his brow as tears began to fall from the boy's eyes.
The Doctor looked at the pair with a horrified expression. "I am so unbelievably sorry. I don't even know what to say." For once, his mouth failed him. He looked from Rose to Tony, devastation writ large across his features. "I'm sorry."
"Me too," Rose said softly.
Rose and the Doctor fell silent and watched Tony with sad eyes. Rose rubbed his back and murmured words of comfort to him as the boy's attempts at keeping a brave face gave way under the distress of remembering something as horrible as witnessing the slow death of a loved one. The Doctor looked on, feeling utterly helpless.
It seemed, no matter what he did, he was destined to hurt her. This woman who punched through time and space, who did the impossible time and time again. He had hurt her. Again. And not only her, but this bright little child who now sobbed brokenly in Rose's arms.
In trying to give her forever, he had only caused her more pain. His hearts beat heavily beneath his ribs, the weight of the sadness he felt for her pressed in on him, guilt for what he'd done to her by locking her away in another world to watch him die crushing him.
Tony's crying intensified as it seemed the enormity of his losses collapsed on him at once; a day of emotional highs and lows shattering what barriers he had built to keep the pain at bay. He whimpered for his parents and his world. Rose rocked him gently, her shuddering breaths as she attempted to soothe the boy the only clue that she was just as affected by the intensity of the day as the child.
Feeling as if he were intruding on an impossibly private moment, the Doctor stood and quietly left the galley. He staggered towards the console room and sat heavily in the jump seat. He propped his elbows on his knees and bent down, covering his face with his hands.
What had he done?
He had loved her enough to set her free, to send her home with her family to live a long and very human life with himself. Or at least a version of himself who would grow old with her, and die with her, and live the slow days he never would. It had rent each of his hearts in two to leave her behind to know that all the coming happy days she would live would be lost to him. But she would live in that other universe, with that other him, and he would not have to watch her fade.
Instead she'd watched him die a drawn out death, from what the boy had said. He hadn't sent her into a world of happy days and long years. She had had to watch him die by pieces and had needed to continue on without him.
He had told her that humans decay, that they wither and die, that Time Lords were cursed to live on alone.
The Doctor clasped his fingers together behind his head as a well of despair sprung up from within him at the dawning realization that he had condemned the woman he loved to the very thing he didn't think he himself could bear.
And now, she had broken through the fabric of reality yet again and found him as he marched assuredly towards his own death. He had warned this woman that he could never spend the rest of his life with her, but here she was, in his universe, so very much alive, while he knew with certainty that his own song would soon end.
"Tony fell asleep," Rose's hollow voice broke into his sombre thoughts. "I put him in my old room."
He looked up at her, his eyes dark and his expression tight with grief and smothered rage at his own failures. It was clear to him that she was hovering on the edge of stability herself after consoling the devastated child. The happiness of their reunion could not withstand the tide of loss that finally found an outlet now that they were safely in Rose's own home universe.
The woman looked around the console room and took a jagged breath. She squared her shoulders and bit down on the inside of her quivering lips to still them.
"I am so sorry, Rose," he whispered thickly. He took one of her hands and tugged her down to sit beside him. He reached his arms around her and pulled her head to rest on his shoulder. Her arms came up around him and he felt her tight muscles ease in his embrace.
After a time, the wave of grief crested and passed over her, Rose's posture eased and pulled herself from his embrace but remained close to his side. She began to tell the Doctor of their hardships. She told him of their escape from Earth in a Judoon transport ship, of seeing Jackie shot down, and the months they'd spent in cargo holds and crew's quarters aboard starships from a dozen worlds.
"You were a singer?" he asked her, eyes wide with surprise after she'd told him of how they'd made a living on the star cruises.
She nodded. "Good one, too. I was the headliner on the best ship in the Quorosi fleet."
"Can't see you as a singer," the Doctor teased. Rose shoved him playfully.
He listened with rapt attention as she told him about the peaceful months she and Tony had spent on the beautiful, but otherwise uninhabited, Gallifrey. She told him how the gentle waves and warm winds had soothed their burdened souls and allowed them time to heal after what they'd been through. She tightened her grip on his hand as she recounted her fear when Tony was struck immobile by the Schism, and his hearts leapt into his throat as she described the uncontrolled hurricane of energy that resulted when they were pulled through the Schism back into Rose's original universe.
"I never thought we'd actually get here," she said quietly, a finger gently tracing the bones of his hand where it rested in hers. "I mean, his hypothesis was sound, but John made all his calculations based on a few assumptions that he couldn't even confirm from Earth. It was a huge stretch."
"Not really," the Doctor said softly. "It used to be that you could pop between dimensions and be home in time for tea, remember me telling you that? You didn't do anything that Time Lords didn't do for thousands of years. You just did it with a little more… flair."
Rose laughed weakly. "You mean bringing a planet along for the ride?"
"Yeah… I can't say it's been done that way before."
"Well, I do like to travel in style," she said, smiling. "But really, I doubted we'd make it back. I think I'm still having a hard time believing you're here." She reached out and put a hand on his very solid, flesh and bone chest. Not just an image.
The Doctor met her smile with one of his own and covered her hand with his. He felt the ring on her finger and sobered, his mind taking a new direction. "You only ever refer to him as 'John,'" he said softly. "Why?"
Rose drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Because that's who he was to me. At first I called him Doctor most of the time. Then over time, he became John Lord and he stayed John because it was easier than remembering not to call him Doctor at work or at the university. Tony called him Doctor John for two years," she smiled gently at the memory. "He couldn't go through life just being called the Doctor, not on Earth. And I couldn't use your actual name."
"So you do know it." He watched her steadily, his face expressionless.
She nodded. "I do." Rose twisted the ring off her finger and handed it to him.
He turned it over in his hands, and brought it closer to his eyes to read the minuscule Gallifreyan writing inside; his name and hers in the elegant script, wound together with the seal of Rassilon between them, completing the circle. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"You had an Earth wedding?" he asked, indicating the ring as he gave it back to her.
Rose shook her head softly, returning the ring to its home on her finger. "No, I didn't want one. Can you imagine my mum with an unlimited budget and a wedding to plan?" She smiled despite the sadness in her eyes, and she saw the look of mock terror he shot her. "No, we had a Gallifreyan ceremony."
"Really?" disbelief coloured his voice.
"Yeah, with Gallifreyan vows. Still don't know how he managed to get me to speak and understand it for the ceremony, since I can't even speak it now. It was just the one time."
The Doctor looked at her intently. "Do you know what they mean, the vows?" She could see the uncertainty in his eyes, a faint flicker of hope in a sea of fear.
"Of course." She returned his gaze with equal intensity and spoke very softly. "I knew before I spoke them." She looked across the room, her eyes unfocused as she gathered her thoughts.
Herlooked at her steadily, trying to assess whether she truly understood what it was that she had promised. While the marriage vows of his people came in many forms, including ones that bound only the current regeneration which was the form the Doctor had used in his first marriage, a match of obligation instead of love, Gallifreyan vows could encompass forever. A concept of forever that no human language could truly describe, not the way Gallifreyan could. He knew with certainty that his duplicate would have promised Rose forever, just as he would. Forever, in all lives. Which, as it so happened, would now include him; the only living regeneration of the Doctor that Rose had married. "I'll understand if you don't –"
Rose cut him off. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to get used to the thought that he was still you?" He shook his head. "About two days, just about as long as it took mum to figure it out too, because that's when she smacked him for leaving me on that beach." Rose smiled at the memory.
"As far as I'm concerned, Doctor, you're him, just without a few years of memories. I may call him by a different name, but he was still you. You're still the daft Time Lord who forgets to sleep when he needs to, and leaves socks where they shouldn't be," she nodded, eyebrows raised, to indicate the pair of black socks hanging on the railing of the circumferential walkway of the TARDIS. "And you are the man who sacrificed his own happiness, twice, to give me a future with you. First when you left me with John, and then when he spent his last years figuring out how to send me home to you."
She finished quietly, her voice a whisper. "Way I see it, John was still the man who took my hand and said 'run,' and you are still the man who gave me his name."