The Doctor sighed deeply as he put his face in his hands. Everything was a mess, and it only seemed to be getting worse. It's not that he didn't like Rose, to be fair, she was simply… a handful. She was straight-up obsessive with him, and it simply didn't sit right with him. How he'd ever change his mind and take her along was beyond him, but that wasn't something he had to worry about just yet.

He hadn't even been particularly for her when he had met her about a year ago, either. Sure, her courage (more so recklessness) could be admired, but… It just… No. He didn't want to. And that was it. He shouldn't need another reason or a whole essay on why she couldn't come along. He just didn't want her there, and that was that.

It had all settled, but then the TARDIS doors suddenly opened and a man, who was such a dilemma by himself, rushed towards him. A few things registered in the Doctor's brain. One, he had the exact face as that other Doctor (his next regeneration, apparently) he saw with Rose. Two, he did not, at all, feel like a fellow Time Lord. Three, he was about to get punched in the face if he didn't do anything.

Part of him wanted to simply accept it and get punched. The other part of him was still a soldier. Reflexively, he moved away, and as the other Doctor (yet not?) punched the thin air of where he used to be, he tripped him, shoved him down, and pinned him in two swift movements.

He groaned underneath him. Now touching him, he could attest that he wasn't a Time Lord. Which was also an odd anomaly, considering he had been, last time. Frankly, he didn't know what in the world was going on, and he didn't want to know.

Corin had been having a terrible day that would get even worse before it got better. It had been about two weeks since he had seen Rose, and despite knowing he could be fairly irrational when it came to her, this seemed reasonable. He had checked her home (don't tell her, but he broke in) after finally haven gotten the address from Jackie, checked with her friends, and her workplace. When he got to the space that was apparently just hers, he saw a machine that was still turned on. Fine-tuned with a perfect slot for the TARDIS key, he immediately understood what had happened. Well, he was wrong, but he thought he knew. His conclusion was that somehow, in some impossible way, there was a parallel version of them, Rose had found him, and the Doctor had taken Rose with him. Which were all true to some degree, just not in the way he had expected.

Naturally, when he saw the TARDIS, the only thing he thought of doing was snapping his fingers to open the doors, run in, and beat the Doctor to a pulp.

It hadn't worked. Now frail, his body actually hurt quite a bit from the fall, and the pose he was holding him in certainly wasn't doing him any good. Still, he managed to get out, with the few breaths he had left before he would fall unconscious; "Where's Rose?"

"What is wrong with you people?!" the Doctor bellowed above him. He elbowed his back for good measure and got off him. "I don't know. I'm not her babysitter!"

Corin groaned. As a man, he wanted to get up. As a human, that just wouldn't be possible for a while. "You don't know?"

"No!" The Doctor took a second. "Well…"

Corin pushed himself up with his elbows. "Do you or do you not?"

"I mean, I saw her." Seeing Corin's face, he quickly amended, "But I didn't take her with me! I just saw her."

"Where?"

The Doctor sighed. "Look, whatever you are… Leave me out of it, okay? She didn't tell you, that's your problem. She didn't want you to know. Maybe you should let it go."

He managed to get to his feet. "Where. Was. She?"

The Doctor felt his patience waver. He just wanted to throw him out. But he was another Doctor—or something—so part of him felt some duty to not leave him on his own wits. "Alzabak 3," he answered. "She walked up to me, thinking I was the version that came there with her."

"Go back," Corin ordered. It came out of his mouth before he even registered it. He wasn't sure what he was doing, next to following some primal instinct in his gut.

"What?!"

"She's lying," he accused on no real basis, being correct even though he had no real understanding of the situation. "Go back."

The Doctor blinked at him before straightening up. "And how do you know that?"

He didn't know. He just really, really hoped. He shrugged and walked to the console with a bravado he didn't deserve.

As the Doctor took a massive breath and followed him to the console, he just had to ask what was bothering him. "What are you?"

"We don't have time," Corin answered.

"Time machine," he retorted.

"Instantanous Biological Metacrisis." He grimaced as he looked up at him. "Hurry up."

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" The Doctor grumbled under his breath as he went to fly his TARDIS. He just wanted to be done with this. If this had been any other day, he might've just pushed out that Metacrisis on the planet and left. But he had been having a good day. Until he met Rose again.

These two just seemed to be following him. At least it didn't seem like a temporal issue of any sort, considering the Metacrisis wasn't really a Doctor, and he wouldn't meet Rose in the future, either.

That didn't mean it wasn't extremely frustrating. Rather quickly, they landed. "What do we do then?"

"I don't know," Corin grumbled. He let his arms fall to his side. "Yes, I do. Pretend you know her."

"Why did I have to get sucked into this mess…?" the Doctor muttered under his breath, which Corin was even surprised he could hear. The Doctor rolled his eyes once more for good measure and left the TARDIS.

Suddenly, Corin felt a wave of anxiety. What if he was completely wrong and this was just a future Rose? And if it was, how would she react to him? Would future her still hate him, or would they be alright in the future?

That small glimpse of the future could change everything. If it turned out they weren't alright, then… he might give up. Resulting in them never reconciling in the first place. It would be over before it fully started.

He gulped. It was weird, it was like his head was spinning, like he—He barely caught himself on the TARDIS. Alright, fainting would be the least good thing to do at the moment, just hold on, stupid human bo—

The TARDIS door opened up again, and Rose walked through, carefully being silent and looking back.

Oh. She did sneak on the TARDIS. Twice. She carefully shut the door behind her and went to softly run, but stopped when she came face to face with Corin.

Busted.

And suddenly, it hit him like a pile of roentgen bricks—it was him and her in the TARDIS. The TARDIS , the ship he thought he'd never see again.
For a moment, he forgot it all. The silence, the stare stretched between them seemed to last for an entire world, an entire life. For just that one moment, he could pretend that they were back. No Metacrisis, no Torchwood, not even that other parallel dude who was barely a few metres away—just them. He wanted that moment to last forever.

But like all things, it ended way too quickly.

"What are you doing here?" she whisper-shouted.

"I could ask you the same thing", he said, using his full voice. "Sneaking on the TARDIS, Rose?"

If she felt any guilt, she was doing an amazing job of hiding it. "You seriously had to ruin it all, again, didn't you?"

Since she was pretending, he joined her on the stage. She didn't need to know how much that hurt. How much any of this hurt. "Rose, you would've been stuck here—"

"I would've found a way!" She said, slamming a hand on the console. "I don't need you!"

"Why'd you even—" He didn't want to feel any of what he was feeling. As long as he turned it into anger, he wouldn't have to face what was underneath. "What were you thinking? Are you insane?!"

"I do NOT need you of all people to come and police all that I do. How many times am I going to have to tell you to back off before you get the message?"

"Rose—" he tried.

"I want you to leave me alone," she said, matter-of-factly, leaving no room for argument.

The look on her face shattered his heart. He had always dreaded that she'd ever look at him like that. She never did. She didn't when he had pointed a gun at her. She didn't when he had told her about his non-passive role in the destruction of his planet. But she was looking at him like that, now.

"Is that too complex for your oh-so-genius brain?" she spat.

" Rose ," he said her name without the respect it deserved, "I'm not just gonna—"

"Oh, you selfish jerk! What gives you the right to come even close to me? You aren't entitled to my attention," she bellowed, "as much as you may think so."

He pushed down his instinct to just yell back. So that's what she was thinking, then. She had been saying it all along, he just refused to see it. He hoped that she'd get over it, eventually. She had to. I mean… what else is there? The only reason he was here was for her, if she never wanted to see him again, then…

It just couldn't be the case. He could show her that he was the same. Still him. She hadn't hated him back then, right? It wasn't any different. He just—

The Doctor suddenly walked back in. "She's not—" His eyes landed on her. "Oh. You're… here." The Doctor stared back at her, his face falling slightly.

She had the decency to look guilty, albeit slightly.

"All right. Whatever." He rolled his eyes. "Are we done here?"

Before Rose could respond, Corin did. "No," he quickly said, "No, we're not."

"Corin, I told you—"

The Doctor ran a hand over his face. He put a hand up, signalling his goodbye, and closed the door behind him as he once again left.

They both stared at the door for a moment, in silence. They looked back at each other, and Corin expected to be able to make a light-hearted joke about it, and maybe ease up the tension, but she made it clear it wouldn't fly from the get-go. "I told you everything I think. I don't want to have anything to do with you. So please, just stop . I cannot be any more clear than that."

He took a breath. "Rose, I'm not—"

"No, Corin! There's no arguing here!" she yelled. "That's it. This is it. You don't get to follow me around like some lost puppy, I just want you gone. Gone! OUT of my life."

He did his best not to show his emotions on his face. It showed through his hands, though, as he fidgeted them around, like a hyperactive child. "You can't possibly think I'll just—"

"Corin!" she yelled through, trying to stop him.

Like everything else, it didn't work on him. "—give in like you don't mean a thing to me!"

"For the love of—Why can't you just understand that I don't want anything to do with you? You can't keep chasing me like a creep, alright?!"

He balled his fists. No, he didn't understand. After everything he did, after everything they went through, she just gave up? He couldn't understand, let alone accept it. But she wouldn't understand him, either. So he needed a bit of a different approach. "He's not going to take you with him, you know that, right?"

She looked at him for a long, cold moment. "That's low."

"It's true!"

"I don't care!" she bit back. "At least I understand when I'm not wanted! I'm going!"

"Then go!" he yelled, unable to think before it left his mouth.

"Fine!" She put her hands up in annoyance, groaned, loudly, and then turned around and walked off into the hallway.

Corin stared at her as she walked off, realising that he probably just made everything so much worse. He didn't think he was in the wrong completely—I mean, she disappeared for weeks, what was he supposed to do?

He swallowed. It was basically over now. The ship's hum accompanied him in his loneliness. He looked at the console.

…He didn't really have a choice, did he?