The problem was that deciding to tell Rose everything and actually telling her were two very different things, and truthfully, he'd always struggled with honesty.

It didn't help that it wasn't going well either. Why he'd chosen to start at the end and work backwards was anyone's guess, as he had no idea. So far, he'd covered Clara, the Master, River and the Ponds. He'd even told her about the encroaching madness that seemed harder to control with every regeneration; explaining about the Time Lord Victorious, the damage he'd willingly done to the timeline because he'd decreed that Time was his bitch to do with as he pleased. Adelaide's suicide had righted history and scared him back into accepting some limits, but that was all. His next regeneration had the same lingering darkness. He'd stared into the abyss… and found a reflection of himself.

He'd told her all of that, but the thing that had him coming out in hives, fear twisting his stomach, was what he knew was coming next. Bad Wolf Bay Mark II.

~*o0o*~

"You. Utter. Wanker!" Rose seethed, angry tears coursing down her cheeks. "You complete and total arse! How bloody dare you! I promise you forever and you leave me behind every bloody chance you get! How could you, Doctor? How could you just leave me like that? Leave me with…with a facsimile of you like you were somehow doing me a favour!"

Well, that answered the question of how she'd take what he'd done. Not well. Very not well, if he was brutally honest with himself. Not for the first time that day he cursed his previous incarnation for his unforgivable stupidity, and now it looked like he'd actually managed to make an already terrible situation even worse.

Her hand smacked the table and he flinched reflexively. He could still feel that slap her mother had given him three bodies ago, and he had a strong suspicion that slapping was a Prentice family speciality.

"Well! What do you have to say for yourself?" Rose demanded, her hands now clenched into tight, little, white fists in her fury. She glanced down at the device strapped to her wrist before meeting his gaze with a hard glare. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just press the recall button now and give up – seeing as you're just goin' to dump me back there anyway. Seems like had it all in hand, so it's not like I'm needed."

Oh, he'd really cocked this up. He'd noticed it straight away that her accent had softened during her time in Pete's World, but now the cockney was back and bleeding through in a sure sign of her growing distress. Well fuck! And to think the worst outcome he'd been imagining from his harebrained plan was the love of his lives deciding to let the original timeline play out. This? This was worse than terrible. This was apocalyptically bad. More to the point, what was he to do. As things stood, all he'd achieved so far with his confessions was to change the timeline in all the wrong fricking ways.

'Fix it you ape brained idiot,' a suspiciously northern sounding voice growled in his mind. 'This is Rose. Stop fucking around and get to the point, before you completely muck things up.'

He groaned internally, there was only one thing for it – honesty it was; no matter how uncomfortable he found it. This was too important to mess up. It was time to pay the piper.

"What do you want me to say, Rose – that younger me was an idiot, because he was! Worse than that, he was a thick idiot. A total pudding brain," the Doctor growled fiercely. "That me, Rose, he only thought he'd been through the worst life and the universe could throw at him. But he was wrong!" he grabbed her hand, eyes filled with wonder at the feeling of Rose that flooded his senses even if she didn't entwine her fingers with his as he so desperately hoped she would. "So very wrong – and he doesn't know it, won't know it, not until he's me and he's seen what I've seen, done what I've done, and he discovers like I have what we become."

He sighed, the anger draining out of him, and used his free hand to rub his eyes tiredly, never had he felt so old; stretched thin by time and pain. "I thought I was giving you your happy ever after – a Doctor with one life that he could live with you. Someone you could grow old with, have a normal life with: you know children, house in the country, picket fence," he waved an expressive hand, "all those things that humans want."

There was stunned silence for a moment, and then Rose said in a deceptively bland voice, "did I say I wanted that future?" She met his gaze with a carefully blank look.

The Doctor paused, trying to remember if Rose had ever expressed an opinion or desire for a normal life, and came up with nothing.

Correctly reading him, Rose's lips thinned in displeasure. "No," she continued, "because I don't want those things. You just assumed and made the decision for me. Again!" She lent back in the seat, glowering at the table like it's very existence offended her. "So what was it then; thought I was too thick to know my own mind, or too stupid to understand what you thought I'd be giving up?"

Oh, that was a damning summary, wasn't it. Damning… and spot on. It was no wonder Rose was angry and hurt. The Doctor was even more rubbish at reading human-y emotions this go around than he was usually, but he'd always been fluent in understanding Rose Tyler, even if it didn't help much with controlling what came out of his gob.

"Yes, I did," the Doctor admitted, swallowing the angry recriminations at his previous incarnation that threatened to choke him. What a goddamned idiot he'd been. He took a deep breath, "and I was wrong. I've always been terrible at letting people make decisions," especially ones where he felt he knew best, and wasn't that the understatement of the century. He should tell Rose about his seventh self and Ace at some point: how he'd destroyed their relationship to the point where she had refused to speak to him even now. Ace, a girl who had been like a surrogate daughter.

"That me though," he continued, determined not to screw up this once in a lifetime chance the universe had given him, "was one of the worst," especially with the Doctor-Donna acting as a fucking echo chamber, pushing for him to leave Rose with his metacrisis.

"I shouldn't have done it – and I'm definitely not excusing it. I regretted it the moment I left, and I've regretted it ever since; but, if it helps at all, that me was acting out of love and honestly believed he was doing the right thing. I knew River Song was going to crop up in my future and she knew my name, which I thought meant-"

Rose tugged her hand away, crossed her arms and met his gaze square on with a self-confidence that was missing in her younger self. A confidence that allowed her to stand up, nose to nose, and challenge him. His hand felt bereft, lonely, without hers holding it, and he waited for the axe to drop.

"The right thing for who?" it was more a demand than a question, one full of suppressed anger and a healthy dose of frustration.

She was spot on the money, as usual, the Doctor mused. Always asking the right questions, his Rose.

"Clearly not for you," he agreed, "not given the changes you've gone through – and it should have been your choice," he quickly tacked on when he spotted her brow start to furrow and her eyes fizz with renewed anger. Not for River either, come to that, or himself. He really had made a colossal balls up of this hadn't he.

Although stupidly inarticulate, something he'd said must have been right, as Rose relaxed slightly, her tensed muscles unclenching,

"Why're you telling me this?" Rose said, asking the question he'd been dreading. "Seems to me you made your choice centuries ago. What are you hopin' to get out of this?"

He took a deep breath. "A chance."

"What?" She looked baffled.

"A chance," he repeated, flinging caution to the wind and cupping her cheek. "I want a chance, Rose."

"A chance for what?" Her eyes were narrowed, suspicious, but she allowed the contact, which was something he supposed.

Mentally castigating himself for the very good cause she had not to trust him, he looked her in the eye. "A chance to make it right."

"Make what right?" The stubborn set to her jaw told him that she wasn't going to let him off the hook this time, that he would actually have to say what he meant, and after all the times he'd let her down, he couldn't blame her.

"A chance to change the past and correct the greatest mistake of my lives." He inhaled. "A chance to have the life we would have had together if I hadn't been such a prat. A chance to prove that I'm more than just the selfish wanker who made an Olympic sport of dodging. That I'm more than the git who broke your trust and-" He grit his teeth and forced himself to say it. "Left you." He exhaled. "A chance to prove that I love you."

He paused to draw in a deep shuddering breath as he tried to steady his nerves. Talking about his feelings had never been his strong suit – especially for this him – and that admission had been centuries in the making.

Whatever he'd been planning to say next though was rapidly forgotten at Rose's ragged, "you love me?" He could hear the disbelief in her tone, the confusion and incredulity. Not exactly the reaction he'd been hoping for, he had to admit, but it didn't take a genius to understand that it was completely his own fault, especially given what he'd just told her. He was the one who'd made an art form out of avoidance, he'd been the one who'd pushed her away, who'd never told her what she meant to him. Not for the first time he cursed his tenth self for being a pig headed pudding brained idiot.

Without thinking, he closed the gap between then and pressed his forehead against hers, longing for the closeness and a way to show the feelings behind his inadequate words. Such a move was considered unspeakably intimate on Gallifrey, not the sort of thing you did in public or with anyone other than close family or your bondmate.

He took another deep breath. "I love you. I should have told you back when I first realised just after Downing Street, but I thought we had more time." His ninth self had always meant to tell her, but they'd run out of time so quickly, and then he regenerated into a hyperactive hedgehog and it had all gone to hell in a handbasket.

First, she hadn't trusted him, and then when they were finally back on track, along came Sarah-Jane who'd promptly terrified him into making like road runner. Sarah-Jane who'd aged, who looked so old, who'd wasted her life waiting for him to return. It was like seeing into Rose's future and he'd… panicked.

The worst mistake though, without doubt, was the one he'd committed on that bloody spaceship. It had taken months for the hurt to disappear from her eyes after that one. Months to rebuild the torn tatters of her trust in him. Months in which he'd realised what a colossal arse he'd been in wasting the precious time he had with Rose by fearing what the future would bring. A point which had only been reinforced when only a few months later he'd lost her to the parallel universe.

He'd wasted his time with her, and for what? Having that distance hadn't lessened the pain he'd felt when she was gone; it had worsened it, as all he had left were empty, endless regrets.

His shields must have been weak, he realised in surprise, when he felt Rose shudder against him; her mind warming against his own, the icy distrust thawing as his thoughts leaked through the nascent bond and she felt his sincerity. Dual feelings of acceptance and understanding brushed against his shields in a feather light telepathic touch that almost had his eyes rolling back at the pleasure of it.

And there was another thing about Rose that had changed. Gallifreyans were powerful touch telepaths, yes, but even with poor shields she shouldn't have been able to detect, much less understand and respond to his telepathic overtures.

It was bliss though, feeling her mind resting against his. Blissful and, oh, so very tempting, and he longed to reach out and deepen the contact.

"Okay," Rose said, easing away from him and the tentative mental connection he'd inadvertently created, "okay, I get what you're trying to say. But no more, yeah. If you want me to trust you then whatever happens in the future, Doctor, you need to talk to me and be honest. You need to respect me and the decisions I make. No more making decisions for me because you think you know best."

Tension he hadn't even been aware of rushed out of him at the contact and her words. He hadn't mucked this up: he – they – still had a chance to fix the worst mistake he'd made.

His nod of agreement was sharp and decisive. "Agreed," he said, then, in the interest of honesty, added, "with this me, anyway. Can't speak for past me's – especially that prat, all that hair gel must have been seeping into his brain and clogging it up. But you'll set him right, Rose Tyler."

That made Rose laugh, a proper, full, Rose Tyler laugh. His hearts skipped another beat.

"Yeah, okay," she giggled. "Point taken, past you's haven't lived your life, of course they'll need training. But that's something we can work on." Rose squeezed his hand, sending shivers of longing racing down his spine. "I'm not expecting miracles, Doctor. I know you're an old man who's learnt a lot of bad habits; all I'm asking is that you commit and try. What you did to River was wrong, just like what you did to me was – and don't get me started on Donna. But I'm not worried, and you know why?" he shook his head, "'cos we're stronger together. Hope and Glory.""

Oh, Rose. Saving him, even when he least deserved it. Hearts full to bursting, he pressed a kiss to the knuckles of her free hand, trying to convey through touch what his useless brain couldn't get his mouth to say: I love you. Don't leave me. Save me. Love me. Stay. Just stay.

Instead, what he said was, "shiver and shake."

Rose's grin could have lit up galaxies it was so bright, the golden flecks in her eyes glowing like miniature suns. "Who's shiver?"

"Oh," the Doctor breathed, excitement thrumming through him along with something else, something new. Something that felt a lot like… peace. "I'm shake."

It was a glorious feeling and he longed to stay in that moment forever. But there was more that Rose needed to know; he'd made a promise, and if he was going to stick to it then she needed to know everything.

Before he could continue though, Rose with her usual perspicacity hit on the key to how this whole sorry mess had started.

"I get you thought you were doing the right thing, that this was like a tailor made happy-ever-after for me and the other you; but what I don't get is why did River knowing your true name scare you so much that you were convinced we-" she waved her hand between herself and the Doctor, "couldn't have a future together?"

This was the tricky bit. Or rather, another tricky bit. One with great honking big pitfalls and here be dragon signs, because the truth was it was just yet more evidence of what an idiot he'd been and how rubbish he was without someone to knock some sense into him. "There's only two times a Time Lord is meant to reveal their true name, Rose," The Doctor said, eyes dark and serious. "If they've run out of regenerations and need the last rights…"

"and," she prompted when it was clear he didn't know how to continue.

He swallowed uncomfortably, reluctant even now to put it into words what he'd thought. It'd felt blasphemous almost, back when he was his tenth self, to consider marrying anyone other than the precious girl sitting beside him now. It was even worse now, knowing what he'd done.

He fiddled with the sugar spoon, then spat out, "the only other person who should know it is my wife."

The hand he'd been holding, which had been squeezing his in reassurance, froze, as did the rest of Rose. "So does that mean you and River were…" she asked carefully, her expression neutral, but the Doctor could feel the thrum of her pain and the bitter tinge of betrayal leaking through the contact.

The Doctor shook his head, desperate to reassure her. "No. That's what I thought it meant back when I was a manic hedgehog with more hair gel than sense, but I was wrong. River was… complicated," another understatement.

Rose sat back, her expression shuttered and so distant he could only be pathetically grateful she hadn't let go of his hand like he feared she would. Like he knew she would once he had finished confessing all of his sins.

"Then how did she know it."

It was a good question, and he couldn't blame Rose for the slight disbelief he detected in her tone.

"Because I told her." He ran his free hand through his salt and pepper hair, tugging on the ends in frustration. "Telling my wife my name is meant to be done during the bonding ceremony. There were two types of marriage on Gallifrey, Rose." He squeezed her hand again, bringing it to rest between his hearts. "I told you I was married before, yes?" she nodded. "That was the first type – it was arranged between my house and hers for political and genetic benefits. The contracted children were loomed from genetic donations from me and my wife, and that was pretty much all the contact we had. We were never close, and she later divorced me after I stole the TARDIS and ran away with Susan."

The Doctor shivered slightly at the memory. "The second type was rarer, and impossible to dissolve, as it involved a telepathic bond. The bond was literally until death do you part, it was – is – the highest form of commitment and intimacy," and oh, how he wanted it with Rose. Longed for it. Desperately.

Taking a deep breath, he continued, "it was common between Gallifreyans, but those of us trained to be Time Lords were taught that we were above that sort of primitive emotional nonsense. Time Lords were meant to be remote, distant, objective and under good emotional regulation at all times." Which was all a load of rubbish, really, and while Gallifrey had existed he'd delighted in rebelling against their stuffy, outdated and stupid rules. But then he'd lost it, and suddenly things that hadn't mattered before mattered a lot.

"But then your home was gone," Rose said sympathetically, once again uncannily echoing his inner thoughts.

"I was a sentimental prat back then," he agreed. "Nostalgic about a place I largely hated… I forgot that the naming bit was convention only. It wasn't socially acceptable – but I could choose to tell other people if I wanted to. Hedgehog me assumed that because River knew my name it meant she was my bondmate."

"And that wouldn't have happened if I'd been with you?" Rose guessed, the gold flecks in her eyes glinting strangely.

The Doctor nodded sadly, "You feel it, don't you, when we touch?" he asked quietly, stroking his finger down the apple of her cheek to make his point, watching as she shivered beneath his touch, her eyes sliding shut.

"It feels like home, yes." At her cautious nod, he sighed, "that's the nascent bond we have. I knew back then that it was only a matter of time until the siren call became too hard to resist and I would ask you to bond with me. If you'd stayed with me after we returned the Earth to its proper place we would have bonded."

"Which you assumed would have created a paradox with River knowing your name as well," Rose mused, fingers tapping the table as she considered his words. "Hang on though, you thought I was still human then, with the life span of a human. You knew River Song was from your future – couldn't it have been a time after you lost me?"

That almost made the Doctor smile – there was his Rose, puzzling it out, questioning him, making him think.

"That's true," he agreed gently, "but it's extremely rare for bonded Gallifreyans who lose their bondmate to form another bond." He'd known it even back then, there was no getting over Rose, and the last two regenerations had just proved his point.

"So you didn't bond with River?" Rose checked, sounding troubled.

"No, I just gave her my name. Told her she'd need it the next time she saw me and left it at that."

"Did you love her?" she asked, that hateful blank look back in her eyes.

His mind raced with a thousand ways of answering a simple question that had such a complicated answer: he could say 'yes, just not the same way she loved me'. He could say, 'she believed that I did'. He could say, 'at one time I hoped I would', and that he'd clung desperately to that belief because it meant that there might be a day somewhere in the future where his hearts wouldn't ache with losing Rose. He could reply with: 'how could I, when my hearts belong totally and completely to you, my pink and yellow girl'.

He could give any of those answers because they were all true.

But what it boiled down to was "no", which was what he told her.

He'd expected relief, even pleasure, but instead what he got is anger.

"So you manipulated her then," Rose stated, looking distinctly unimpressed. Well, he'd walked into that one hadn't he. Of course Rose hadn't been asking for selfish reasons. Compassion personified, his Rose. Of course, she'd take umbrage over how he'd treated Professor Song, never mind that River, if she'd known what he was up to here, would have been only too happy putting a bullet in Rose's head, especially before her stint in Stormcage had mellowed her.

He nodded and closed his eyes. There had been a reason - a huge honking great reason, not that he expected it would earn him Rose's forgiveness. It was wrong what he'd done, and he knew it now just as he'd known on Darillium.

"Because of the paradox," Rose said, startling him and proving again just how well she knew him, really knew him, and understood how his mind worked.

He nodded again.

"A paradox she kicked off, and you just thoughtlessly went along with, because?"

"Because he - I - was an idiot," the Doctor admitted. "By the time I saw how deep the trouble was it had gone too far, and I couldn't see a way of fixing it." It hadn't helped either that River was partially insane, completely fixated with him, and had a possessive streak a mile wide.

The truth was he'd been in over his head, and he hadn't known how to deal with someone like her or their temporally complicated relationship.

The watch on her wrist beeped, and Rose checked her watch, whatever she saw causing a grim smile to twist her mouth.

His time sense rattled again, zero hour was approaching. It was time to do or die, they were running out of time and he doubted the universe would be kind enough to give him another chance if he bolloxed this one up.

If there was one thing he believed in in this cruel universe though, it was her. Always, and only, her.

He took a deep breath and leapt. "But that's why I'm telling you this. I know what I did to River was," he paused, searching for a word that could convey the depth of his mistake, then gave up knowing that Rose would know what he was trying to say. "I want to fix it. I want to fix all of it-" he waved an expressive hand. "I've spent years regretting the mistakes I've made, Rose. Centuries of regret. But worse than that I know what I've become. The universe needs saving, sweetheart, only this time it's from me."

"Which brings me to that choice I mentioned," he gripped the hand entwined with his own, using the contact to draw the courage he needed to continue. "Precious girl, you know I love you," he waited for her cautious nod. "There's a decision to be made, and it's your choice. Whatever you decide, I'll honour it."

"Option one: you walk out that door and let things play out as they will." She knew what would happen now, and he could comfort himself that if this was what she chose, at least she'd chosen it with her eyes wide open.

Rose glowered at him, "What's option two?"

"We do a reckless, stupid, ill-advised thing…"

Her head tilted slightly as she looked at him consideringly. "What's that involve?"

He swallowed thickly, his mouth suddenly drier than the Lethrian desert on Goba. "We turn back time and wipe this whole timeline out of existence."

Time was in flux. His time sense was singing with all the potentiality cascading from this moment. It started here. The moment where Rose either agreed to help him or walked away, back to the future he had chosen for them all those years ago.

It was almost ironic. Here he was, about to break the first and most sacred law of his people, and all he felt was relief. Either way, the nightmare of his life would soon be over. He was tired, so very tired of everything. There was no future for him, not now. If Rose picked option two, his life as he knew it would disappear – rewritten – lost down the plughole of maybes and could have been timelines.

With Rose by his side, holding his hand, the future would be so much brighter, so much happier for all involved.

A new life, a new future, this time with the woman he loved. He didn't deserve it, not after everything he'd done, but that wouldn't stop him from grasping this once in a lifetimes chance with both hands. A timeline where Rose got the choice she should always have had.

"So what's it to be?"

There is a third option," Rose said quietly, watching him intently.

The Doctor bit back the bitter laugh that wanted to escape and let his eyes slide shut. This was Rose. Of course she'd spotted what he hadn't said. The option he didn't want to acknowledge. The option he knew in the grand scheme of things made the most sense; it was certainly the safest way forward for the universe. And it would be so easy, oh, so easy, to agree. His selfish hearts cried out for it. He could keep her now and together they'd run across the stars.

But it wouldn't be right. Not now. Not with this him. He was too damaged, too broken, too… wrong. He'd wandered so far from the path that he no longer deserved to use the name 'Doctor'.

Never cruel nor cowardly. Never give up. Never give in.

That was the vow he'd made when he'd taken the name. Keeping Rose with him now would be the worst kind of violation of that promise.

It was why - assuming she chose door number two - he was already planning for someone else to do what was necessary to change the timeline.

This him wasn't quite right, not quite sane, and frankly he wouldn't trust this him anywhere near an impressionable, younger Rose. Just as he'd helped to mould River, so she had shaped him. This him was her creation, the monster to her Frankenstein. This him, this was the one she'd talked about in the library, he was sure of it. The him who could turn whole armies with just a look. Who caused devastation and destruction and then carelessly swaggered back to the Tardis. The him to whom compassion and forgiveness were foreign concepts. The him who was most like her.

No, what he needed was an intermediary, someone less damaged who could teach past Rose what she needed so that she could come back earlier. It needed to be him, that was a given, but which him. All the pre time war incarnations were out - most would never agree to break the first law, let alone stamp all over it as he was planning. His ninth was out as well as with his time senses damaged he'd never believe Rose. Worse, the dumbo might try to avoid Satellite 5 in a ridiculous attempt at protecting their precious girl from what he would see as a curse.

That just left his tenth and eleventh selves. Of the two, hedgehog him was too caught up in his own brilliance, too certain he was right. Even if he could be made to see Rose for who she really was, he'd probably still try to find some way to weasel out of it - especially if he'd already met River. No, it needed to be a him that understood what the loss of Rose had done to him, who'd had the allure of the mystery River presented fade and who was scared of the future.

That left his eleventh self. Lucky eleven. Even more fortunate, he knew the perfect moment to stage this little intervention.

He opened his eyes and met Rose's steady gaze head on. "Not for me," he said simply, without his normal prevarication. For once what he said was the raw, honest truth.

"I'm old, Rose. So very old, and so very tired of the life I've been leading, of seeing what I've become."

He watched as she drew in a breath, clearly intending to argue, but he shook his head and placed his fingers over her mouth, stilling whatever she'd been about to say.

"Please, love," he entreated. "Let this selfish old man do this one final act of good in his life. I've caused so much harm," he thought of Madam Kovarion, and the extraordinary lengths she'd gone too to try and stop him. "I've hurt so many people," a vision of River and the Ponds swam before his eyes, the latest in a long line of failures. "I don't want to be this sort of Doctor!"

He sat back, reluctantly relinquishing the contact with his precious girl. "But worst of all is the knowledge of what I'd do to you." And he could see it so clearly. The unwitting, unthinking harm this him would do to Rose as he dragged her down to his level.

"Please let me do this. Please let me give you a life with a Doctor who deserves you." A Doctor who could be worthy of her in a way he no longer was, he almost said; worthy of the sacred bond he had once abandoned.

The Doctor had never believed in the concept of soul mates, not really. He was a scientist - an empiricist - at heart, and the statistical improbability of there being only one perfect match in the whole multiverse for someone was simply mind boggling. It was impossible. And yet, how else could he describe what he felt for Rose. How else could he explain the way she consistently defied his understanding of the universe.

After two regenerations and over a millennium she ought to be nothing more than a fond memory, someone he could look back on and be happy to have known like his other companions. It shouldn't be like this, and yet it was.

Four bodies, four faces, four personalities, four sets of feelings, and it had stayed the same.

He'd loved Rose Tyler when he'd been all war torn and with satellites for ears. He'd loved her when he'd been a hyperactive, cowardly hedgehog. He'd loved her when he'd been a bow-tie wearing buffoon, even when he pretended he didn't. And he loved her now when he was a cantankerous old curmudgeon with a decidedly dodgy moral compass.

He'd loved her for so long that loving her had encoded itself into his TNA: and if that wasn't a soulmate, he didn't know what was.

Which was why the option Rose had presented wasn't an option at all. He had to let her go, no matter how much he wanted to keep her with him. He needed to let her go so his brave girl could meet his eleventh self and change their future.

For a long moment she was quiet, her eyes searching for something. Okay," Rose said at last, a hint of a smile playing around her lips like he'd passed some secret test.

"Okay. Option two it is."

He exhaled, his hearts almost bursting with love for this pink and yellow not quite human even as her courage shamed him. She'd always been so much braver than him.

It felt like a goodbye - and he'd always hated those. Except, he realised suddenly, this wasn't a goodbye at all. It was a hello.

A new beginning. A new adventure.

Hope bubbled through him, bright and shiny: two words no one had ever attributed to his current incarnation. He liked hope. Hope was a good emotion.

Right, it was time to get to work. Rose had once asked him to show her his moves, well he'd show her moves. He rubbed his hands together gleefully.

"So, here's the plan…"

"It's risky," Rose said after he'd finished explaining the barebones of a plan that was really more of an idea it was so skeletal.

"Yes,"

"With lots that could go wrong."

"Certainly,"

"Things that could destroy the universe."

"Indeed."

"Still sure you wanna go through with it?"

"Oh, yes!" The Doctor grinned.

"It's not much of a plan," Rose pointed out. "Means you'll have to trust me."

The Doctor gazed into her eyes, "there's no one I trust more." The slow smile that stretched across her face at his words could have eclipsed the sun.

"Better with two?" Rose asked, her smile growing with the realisation that they are really going to do this.

"No," The Doctor contradicted, shaking his head. "Better with you."


A/N And there we go. What did everyone think? Comments feed the author and inspire her to write quicker, so don't forget to review.

Next up in the series is Short Change Hero, in which we meet the Eleventh Doctor. This should hopefully (muse willing) be up in a few weeks.

Just to whet your appetites though, here is a teaser.

Time changes everything, but not all changes are good. It had all gone so wrong. When had he stopped being the hero and instead become the villain. When had he started choosing killer not coward.

In the wake of the catastrophe that was Demon's Run, the Doctor did what he did best – he ran. He fled his friend's grief and pain, he fled the mistakes that chased him, nipping at his heels, but most of all he fled River and the future she had shown him a glimpse of. A future that terrified and appalled him in equal measure.