Sunset

---

ACT 1 - Ride Into

So let them all dissolve
And welcome a new resolve
Here's where the credits run
Riding off into the sun

And love is real
Reading your eyes in the glow
Play on, play on
Happy endings

--Better than Ezra, "Happy Endings"

Chapter 1

"I love you."

They were words she'd never thought she'd hear, lips she never thought she'd kiss, not like this; for a moment Rose Tyler wrapped her arms around the Doctor--a Doctor, this Doctor-and lost herself in the feel of hands and lips and a powerful need that she'd been struggling with for so long she'd almost forgotten she could surrender to it. To this Doctor, apparently her Doctor, who clung so tight that she imagined perhaps he needed her, too.

Maybe there was such a thing as destiny. Maybe, just maybe, there was such a thing as happily every after.

The sound of the TARDIS taking off barely registered for a moment, and when it did her heart lurched and she nearly shouted with frustration-it was hard enough following one Doctor, how was she supposed to keep up with two of them? She pulled away and took a few lame strides down the beach, until she realized it was already too late-except for the dome light, the TARDIS was already half-faded, too far gone. Always running away, she thought, her frayed nerves caught somewhere between fury and grief. He hadn't even said a proper goodbye! She hadn't had a chance to say...well, anything at all, even though she didn't know what she would've said if given the chance. Goodbye. Thank you. Don't forget about me. Don't go just yet. All the words she could've spoken seemed to jam up and stick in her throat.

A warm hand caught hers and held it tightly. She looked up to see the Doctor...the other Doctor, that is, looking down at her. "He knows," he told her quietly. "Just can't stand the mushy stuff. You know how he is."

"And you?" Rose asked, studying the too-familiar face. "What about you?"

He swallowed slightly. "I'm...good enough. I hope."

She realized she was seeing him uncertain, something she'd never thought possible before. Well, no-once before. When he'd regenerated that first time, after Space Station Five. He'd looked a bit like this, then, even with a different face-a bit lost and a bit nervous and a bit excited, because at the end of everything he was still the Doctor and loved not knowing what would come next.

At the end of everything, he was still the Doctor.

She squeezed his hand and pressed her other one against his chest, to feel that single heartbeat again. "You really want to stick around here for the rest of your life?" she asked.

"Well, maybe not just here," he said, and reached up to touch her face, hesitant like she might break. "Unless that's what you want. I mean that, Rose, I'll follow wherever you go."

They were the words she hadn't know she needs so badly to hear, and she kissed him again, savoring it this time. These were the lips she'd stared at in the dimness of the control room, the lips that had laughed and scowled and told her tales; this was the ridiculous hair that she used to think up the lamest excuses to touch; here were the ears, the rough jaw, the sparkling eyes that watched her like a wonder worth crossing a universe to see. The arms that she used to ogle when he stripped off his jacket now seized her tight, like he was never letting go, and she wrapped her arms around the thin shoulders that bore the weight of all the worlds and clung back, because this was hers, now, finally, exactly what she wanted. And they all lived happily ever--

"Bollocks!"

Jackie's cry across the strand snapped them both out of it. The Doctor pulled back, blinking and licking his lips, probably because he had Rose's gloss all over them. (She was suddenly, irrationally glad she'd worn makeup on this mission at all, and to hell with anyone who said it was impractical or vain.) Rose carefully wiped at her own mouth, though it was probably a futile effort, and asked, "What is it? What's the matter?"

"Oh, I've got no reception," Jackie groused. "Bloody stupid Norway. Couldn't you have set us down somewhere else? Somewhere with people?"

"Oi, I don't make the rifts in Time, I just use them," the Doctor protested.

Rose smothered a laugh, not because it was funny, but because after so many days and weeks of searching and running and darkness and parallel worlds and Daleks and death and life, the sheer normalcy of something like her mum and the Doctor bickering-well, for some definitions of normal-it crossed the border of relief into giddy joy. She squeezed the Doctor's hand and said, "It's fine, I've still got my phone, I'll make the call. Unless you want to, Mi--"

She looked around the bleak gray Norwegian strand, and realized for the first time that Mickey wasn't with then. But he'd been right there, until-no, wait, he hadn't disembarked from the TARDIS with them, had he? She turned in a complete circle, searching the horizon like he might've run off and hid, not because he did things like that but because he was supposed to be there, should've been there, he was always there. She kept turning until Jackie said "Rose--" in a low, sad voice.

"Where is he?" Rose asked. "He didn't-did he?"

"He decided to stay behind," Jackie said, in the same gentle voice she used for breaking news like Granddad's died or I'm out of a job again. "He-said he'd done all he meant to, here. You know, with his gran and all."

"Why didn't he say anything to me?" Rose asked, mind still flying to every empty space where Mickey could've been, jamming up on his absence. "Why-how could he just leave like that?"

The Doctor squeezed her shoulder, and Rose suddenly had a very good idea why, and it made her a little sick. "I'm sorry," he said. "I...it was a good thing, that he came, you know. I was glad to see him."

She shook her head but leaned into his hand, so she'd have at least one point of reference when everything briefly seemed to spin around her. "Why didn't he say anything to me?" she asked.

"Maybe he thought it was better this way?" Jackie offered, but Rose shook her head again, thinking evil thoughts at any many who'd rather run away than talk about feelings. Two in one day was a little bit much to take, and while the other Doctor was frustrating, Mickey hurt, somewhere deep and close to her heart.

The Doctor rubbed her shoulders without saying anything-he probably knew there wasn't anything to say. Eventually the cool, damp breeze reminded Rose that they were trying to get home, and she managed to shake off her shock long enough to fish her Torchwood-issued phone out of her pocket. "I'll just," she said, "I'll call us a ride, hold on."

Jackie nodded, but the Doctor watched her fumble with the phone with interest. "Why'd you get a signal when she can't?" he asked.

"Hyperwave technology," Rose said. "Cribbed it off the Cybermen. Only thing that works across the Void, so they gave me a modified phone while I went looking for your universe."

"That's brilliant," he said warmly. "Can I have a look?"

"Later," Rose said, and finally managed to dial the right number. "Control, are you there?"

"Affirmative," came a bland, anonymous voice, probably some technician or mechanic that she'd seen but had no time to get to know. She had no idea where the rest of her team were, though after the day she'd been having she wouldn't blame them if they'd all run off to catch some sleep. "It's been a while, ma'am."

"Yeah, well, adventures are like that," she said. "Say, is the idiot there who let my mum jump into the cannon after me?"

"I don't know what you mean, ma'am," the receiver said blandly, while Jackie rolled her eyes and waved around a dimensional portal button. Oh, well, no wonder how they'd slipped under Torchwood's radar then...maybe it was a good thing Mickey hadn't come back, because Rose might've killed him.

"Never mind," she said into the phone. "I'm back in the home universe, can you get a lock on my location?"

"Running a sweep, just a moment...ah, we have you. Bad Wolf Bay, Norway. Do you need assistance?"

"Yeah, get us immediate pickup at our current location, three persons, no medical attention necessary. If anyone asks, it's Torchwood authorization ninety-nine. Oh, and have a message sent to Pete Tyler's office letting him know when we'll be back in Britain." Rose tugged at the collar of her jacket. "And could you hurry it up? There's sort of a breeze."

"Three persons for immediate pickup, confirmed," Control repeated. "A UNCF helicopter will be at your location in thirty minutes."

"Brilliant. Thanks." She hung up. "They're sending a helicopter for us. Thirty minutes."

Jackie snorted. "Thirty minutes, who takes thirty minutes?"

"Hey, you can swim if you don't like it," Rose said, and looked back at the Doctor, who was watching her with a little frown line between his eyes. "What? Something the matter?"

"No, nothing," he said quickly. "Just-'Torchwood authorization ninety-nine?'"

She shrugged. "That's the rule that says 'in case of dire emergency, forget all the other rules.' I figured it'd help speed things up a bit."

He folded his arms, though she wasn't entirely sure it wasn't from the chilly breeze. "Since when have you worked for Torchwood?"

"Since I got here," she said. "They're not so bad, in this universe-I reckon it's more like Jack's version than Yvonne Hartman's."

"Oh, I'm not saying it's bad," he stammered. "Just...surprising, is all."

She grinned at him. "What, did you think I was just sitting around waiting for you?"

He smiled a bit ruefully. "Well, I may have had some romantic notions..."

"Arrogant notions, you mean," she said. "Besides, if you can go off with Martha and Donna and all them, why can't I have Torchwood?"

"So fair's fair," he agreed. "All right. What do we do for thirty minutes until the helicopter gets here?"

Jackie responded by collapsing to the sand. "We sit down for a bit," she said. "I'm knackered. You know, the other thing about that TARDIS, it hasn't got any proper seating at all." The Doctor rolled his eyes at her, but he too sat down, heedless of the damp, and when Rose sat next to him he put his arm around her shoulders like it belonged there and then looked down at her like he was asking for permission. She shut her eyes and pressed close into his shoulder, soaking in his warmth and presence like a shield against the last three or four days.

The helicopter, when it finally came, had to hover over the beach while they shimmied up a swaying rope ladder; this had Jackie making distressed little noises all the way up, like it was any more dangerous than hopping back and forth between dimensions. The Doctor came last, flailing a bit to get inside, while Rose got herself belted in and switched on the radio in her headset. "Thanks for the ride," she said to the crew.

"Not a problem, Ms. Prentice," the pilot said, waving to her. "Mrs. Tyler. Sir."

The Doctor, who had put his ear protectors on the wrong way round, looked up from where he was fussing with his seat belt. "What? What?"

"This is," Rose said, with only the slightest pause, "Dr. John Smith. He's my guest and I'm granting him full security clearance."

"Understood, ma'am," the pilot said. "I'm Flight Lieutenant Penn, my copilot is Pilot Officer Ambrose. We're about ten minutes from the defender Valiant, and you'll transfer from there to the airship Prince Edward, which will take you to London-Heathrow."

"That's brilliant, thanks." She switched her headset off the crew's channel and smiled at her mum and at the Doctor, who was toying compulsively with his radio controls. She batted his hand away and set them. "You catch that? We'll be home in about an hour."

"We will?" He blinked. "I mean, yeah, of course we will. Home." He grinned at her and then looked out the little window, where the North Sea was already rippling away beneath them. Rose settled back into her seat, but couldn't stop herself from snatching looks at him every few minutes, any time some part of her tried to insist this wasn't real.

The Valiant was buzzing with life, and an airship-presumably the Prince Edward-was already at station-keeping alongside it, the closed gangways dangling through the air like strands of spider silk. The bloated balloon of the blimp looked a bit silly next to the muscular outlines of the defender, but the Doctor was looking everywhere at once and judging nothing. "This is just like the Valiant," he said. "I mean, other Earth's Valiant, the one UNIT built. Where'd you get it?"

"United Nations Office of Homeworld Security," Rose said. "They oversee the combined multinational forces-basically what's left of the army that fought the Cybermen. They also technically have oversight over Torchwood, but it's more of a benign neglect thing most of the time."

"Homeworld Security," he echoed, and made a face. "I guess they can't all have clever acronyms, eh?"

A young officer in a crisp duty uniform came across the deck to salute them. "Ms. Prentice, Mrs. Tyler, Dr. Smith. The Prince Edward is experiencing some delays casting off; the captain has invited you to wait in the officer's mess while things get sorted out."

"That's lovely, thank you," Rose said, and winced when she got another salute. "You really don't have to do that, you know."

"Ma'am?" the officer-lieutenant commander's insignia, despite his age-blinked at her.

"Never mind," she sighed. "Lead the way, Commander."

As they went below decks, the Doctor leaned into her ear. "Ooh, look who's all that, eh? Salutes, officer's mess, ma'am..."

"It's not like I ask them to," Rose protested. "I just can't make them stop it." Somehow, that only made him grin wider.

The officer's mess was functional, as befitted a vessel of war, but there were touches that probably set it apart from the regular mess, like the comfy seat cushions and watercolors on the walls. A waiter brought round some tea and sandwiches, simple stuff, but Rose hadn't realized how hungry she was (or how thirsty-all that shifting from here to there caused dehydration) until the food was in front of her. She started attacking the tray immediately, leaving it up to Jackie to smile and say, "Thank you, airman. And tell the captain thanks for us, too."

The waiter blushed, and his arm twitched like he didn't know whether he was supposed to salute or not. "Yes, ma'am," he mumbled. "Of course, ma'am."

The Doctor stared at him as he left, then at Jackie. "What was that, then?"

"I don't know what you mean," Jackie said primly, selecting a sandwich.

"That," he gestured, "with the," and then mimicked the boy's star-struck expression. "Who are you people, and what have you done with the Tylers?"

Rose couldn't choke down her sandwich fast enough to protest verbally, so she settled for swatting him on the arm while she chewed. "Oi, we're no different than we were," she said when she could speak again. "Just got different jobs, is all."

"And before, I wasn't married to the Secretary for Homeworld Security," Jackie added.

The Doctor smiled while he fixed himself a cup of tea. "Really? Good on Pete, then. Couldn't think of a better person in the whole world to get that sorted."

"You only know like five people in this world," Rose pointed out.

The Doctor snorted. "Details, details. So Pete's the Secretary of Stuff That's Not UNIT and you're...what, his trophy wife?"

This was directed at Jackie, who made a face. "Don't be daft, Doctor, I've got a job of my own."

"She's got a foundation," Rose added.

"A foundation?" The Doctor looked worried. "Please tell me you're talking about a building..."

"No, no, it's a charitable thing," Jackie said. "We help children who lost their parents in the Cyberwar. Make sure they get an education, health care, that sort of thing. The Cybermen mostly ignored the kids, you know, so there's a lot of them who need the help, and I figured if I've got to put up with playing the part of That Woman--" this was the only way Jackie would refer to her late alternate self these days, probably some compromise between uncomprehending disgust and the urge not to speak ill of the dead-- "I might as well do something useful, you know?"

"She just likes to pretend she's Princess Diana," Rose added.

"Oh, stop it," Jackie said, without actually denying the charge. "I just wanted to do my bit, is all, and since I'm not a politician like Pete or a space detective like Rose or a soldier like..."

She hesitated like she'd said something wrong, and then Rose realized she had said something, sort of, but before the awkwardness could transform into a full-blown emotion like anger or sadness, the Doctor cleared his throat. "Well, I'm going to admit I'm surprised," he declared. "Never thought you had it in you to run a foundation."

"Oh, I don't run the place," Jackie said, sounding scandalized. "Who d'you think I am, an accountant? No, I've got people to do all the technical bits, with the money and all. I just, you know, do appearances and things. She was quite famous, That Woman, and everyone thinks I've had such a change of heart, the press even called me Scroogella for a bit."

The Doctor grinned. "Now, see, that I can picture just fine. That's brilliant, Jackie."

The lieutenant commander came back to let them know that the Prince Edward was ready to cast off, if they were ready, and so they finished their tea and sandwiches and back up to the flight deck. As they walked, the Doctor asked, "So what is it you do for Torchwood, besides loading yourself into a dimensional cannon a few times a week?"

She laughed. "It's not that exciting, trust me."

"Oh, don't listen to her," Jackie said. "She's famous, our Rose. Saved the world from the Sycorax herself this time round."

"Really?" He looked at her with raised eyebrows.

"The others helped," she protested. "My team-I'm a unit leader in the field division. The Sycorax in this universe decided we'd be easy pickings after the Cyberwar, but my team managed to chase them off. Didn't have to blow them up, either."

"They were on the telly," Jackie confided in a stage whisper. "The head of the Institute called them Earth's greatest defenders. They got medals."

"Stop it," Rose said, feeling herself blush. "It's not normally that exciting. There's lots of paperwork."

They were at the gangways, now, which swayed in the combined drafts of two sets of engines."Sounds like you've done well for yourselves," the Doctor said, sounding strangely quiet, as they stepped into the plastic tubes. "Both of you, I mean."

Rose seized his arm, balancing herself on the safety railing with the other. "And now you're here," she said. "And that makes everything even better."

He looked at her as if surprised by her confidence, then smiled. "Yeah?" he asked. "I mean, yeah. Yeah, it will be. It'll be brilliant." And he leaned in suddenly to kiss her again, and Rose didn't protest until Jackie started griping and poking them both in the back.

Chapter 2

The Prince Edward put them down at Heathrow, and a car brought them from the military landing elevator to the main terminal. They were greeted inside the airport by Pete Tyler, who looked about as righteously angry as a man possibly can when a toddler is making jammy handprints on his shirt and neck.

"I am not going to ask now," he said, "but at some point today you're going to explain to me how it is that I left to pick up my son at nursery school with the intention of reuniting my family under one roof in these trying times, and came home to discover that one of you had volunteered herself for a dangerous-though authorized-mission to another universe, and the other had conned Mickey into helping her tag along." He blinked at them a moment, and batted Tony's hands away from his face. "Where is Mickey?"

Rose suddenly realized what it looked like, coming back without him, but she couldn't bring herself to say it; it was Jackie who piped up, "He's all right, Pete-he stayed behind. I'll tell you everything later." She hugged him and Tony both, and then for extra effort ruffled the baby's hair, which was so pale and fine it was nearly translucent. Rose couldn't be sure, but she thought that in between she heard her mum whisper I'm sorry.

Rose was next, dodging Tony's grabby hands so Pete could give her a one-armed squeeze. "I guess I should've told you I was going," she admitted.

"No, you shouldn't have," he said wearily, "because then I would've had to try and stop you." Pete turned to the Doctor next, sizing him up while the Doctor was busy looking in every other possible direction at the people coming and going around them. "Doctor," Pete said, drawing his attention at last. "Didn't really expect to see you again."

"Ah, you know, I couldn't keep away," the Doctor said with a grin.

"Wouldn't have known that by the amount of effort we went into trying to contact you," Pete said dryly.

The Doctor frowned, and looked at Rose. "What? You were trying to contact me?"

"Well, you didn't think jumping into that contraption and flinging ourselves through the Void was our Plan A, did you?" Rose asked. "We tried to broadcast a message by hyperwave, but without a lock on the TARDIS we couldn't be sure anything was getting through."

"Huh," the Doctor said, and then his attention shifted suddenly, like he'd just noticed who Pete was holding against his hip. "Is this Tony, then? The baby? Hello, Tony!"

Tony turned around to look at the Doctor (who had bent down precariously close to his face) and, with a squeal of baby-babble, made a grab for the long protruding plume of his fringe. The Doctor laughed and made a half-hearted attempt to dodge, then let Tony smack him in the face with his jammy hands. (Where had all the jam come from? Had Pete just given him the jar?) Pete huffed and stepped away, so Tony was out of range.

"You'll be happy to know that the stars are back," he said, struggling to keep on his Serious Business face. "They reappeared that first night you were gone."

"Wait, how long were we gone?" Jackie protested. "Mickey said it'd only be a couple of hours!"

"You know how the TARDIS is, Mum," Rose said. "At least it's the right year this time, yeah?"

"Oi, don't blame the TARDIS," the Doctor said. "It's Time that gets all slippery between the worlds. How d'you think you lot saw the stars going out before the Reality Bomb went off?"

"It's twenty-seventh July now," Pete said; Jackie made angry hissy noises because she couldn't swear in front of the baby and started fiddling furiously with her mobile. Rose couldn't say she wasn't surprised herself-she'd let over a week ago, apparently, though it all felt like one long day. Pete added, "Everything indicates that space is stabilizing-or at least, that's what some very smart people with lots of letters after their names promise me."

"Oh, it is," the Doctor said, circling around behind so he could continue to make faces at Tony. "The Reality Bomb is gone, so all the foreshocks will have ceased."

"And you know for certain the threat's neutralized?" Pete asked; he tried to turn to face the Doctor, but Tony squealed and squirmed every time he tried.

"Pretty certain," the Doctor said, and pulled down the corners of his mouth with both fingers, so his next words came out sort of lisped. "Seeing as I killed them all."

Tony laughed and reached for the Doctor's hair again, but Pete turned sharply, so the baby's laugh turned into a protesting shriek. The Doctor straighted up, face falling a bit, and they all stood about awkwardly for a few moments, nobody speaking (except for Tony's unhappy burbles). Rose wanted to blurt out they deserved it, they always have, I'd have done the same thing-I have done and I would do it again, because wasn't it a bit rich for Pete to be shocked when he'd helped lead the war against the Cybermen?

Luckily, before Rose could leap to the Doctor's defense, Jackie clapped her hands together briskly. "Well, the important thing is, it's over, and we're all safe and sound," she said briskly, bright as neon. "So why don't we go home and celebrate properly, yeah?"

"I don't think I really--" Rose started to say.

"This is a good day," Jackie said fiercely, and wrestled Tony into her own arms. "We're going to celebrate. As a family. All right?"

Rose made eye contact with the Doctor, and he grimaced slightly. Not even the Destroyer of Worlds necessarily wanted to cross Jackie Tyler in a mood like that. "Sounds lovely," he said, plastering on a grin. "Where's the car?"

The driver was waiting for them just outside the main terminal, in one of those lanes reserved for emergency vehicles; that more than anything told Rose exactly how worried Pete had been, even if he didn't want to come out and say it. She helped her mum shuffle around the baby things in the back seat, while the Doctor said something quiet to Pete that she didn't quite hear. "Where are we heading, house or flat?" she asked once everyone was in the car.

"Oh, the house," Jackie said. "I don't think I could cook right now if my life depended on it."

"Could you ever?" the Doctor asked with a little smile; Jackie swatted him with a blanket from the baby bag.

---

It was a long drive from the airport to Pete's mansion, and they spent it passing Tony around from lap to lap, talking without really talking; Pete surely had a million questions, but he seemed content to let them wait just a little bit longer. Instead they stuck to the weather (still miserably hot, but improving) and the UN (useless as ever) and Tony (and why on Earth Pete had let him have a jam sandwich for tea.) They quickly got off the main roads, into the green summer trees and grass baked into shades of khaki and sage by the July sun. It all seemed so fragile when they'd come so close to losing it, and Rose caught the others stopping and staring almost as much as she did.

She thought she felt the Doctor tense a bit when they came up the drive to the house, but of course, his last memories of the place were all steel and blood; to Rose, it had become home, and she found herself looking forward to a hot shower and a square meal in the warmth of the kitchen-there was nothing further from the echoing cold of Davros's lair, as far as she was concerned. As they came up the drive, Oleg and Lena came out to meet them, waving and grinning.

"Who's that?" the Doctor asked, leaning forward.

"That's the Janislowskis," Rose said. "Dad hired them on as caretakers since he and Mum travel so much. They were going to get deported otherwise."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Oleg used to work for Cybus Industries," Pete explained slowly. "He was a plant foreman, not a mad scientist, but during the war some people had trouble telling the difference. It was just supposed to be a few months, until things calmed down, but...well..." He made a vague gesture, as if to encompass all the strange ups and down since then.

"What he means is, he can't bear to go without Lena's desserts and they're more than happy to get paid to live here," Jackie said, gathering together Tony and the diaper bags. He was sliding into nap mode, lolling grumpily against her shoulder, and she paused to smooth down a cowlick, which made him gurgle.

"There's nothing wrong with a fine appreciation of dessert," Pete said with a put-upon sniff that made both Rose and Jackie laugh at him. The Doctor just smiled, broad and deep, though Rose couldn't tell if it was the teasing or the baby or the thought of pierogis that brought it on. Maybe all of it, or maybe it was something else entirely. He was like that sometimes.

"Peter!" Oleg boomed as soon as they started climbing out of the car. "It is good to see you! It is good to see the stars again!"

"Well, I can't take the credit for that," Pete said. "Oleg, I'd like you to meet the Doctor-he'll be staying with us for a bit. Doctor, this is Oleg...Lena..."

The introductions went around, handshakes and hugs-Lena even gave Rose a wet kiss on the cheek. "So if it was not Peter who brought the stars back, surely it was you," she said.

"Well, I had a lot of help from my friends," Rose said, nodding at the Doctor. Lena hauled him down to her level to kiss him, too, and the look on his face was sheer alarm. "Oh, don't, Lena, you'll make him blush."

"I cannot help it!" she said. "We were so afraid, it was like Cybermen all over again, and now you save us..."

"It's, er, all in a day's work, " the Doctor said. And over Lena's head, at Rose: "Besides, I never blush."

"So what's this, then?" Rose said, reaching up to pinch at his cheeks. He stuck his tongue out at her, which she took to mean he conceded her the point.

Jackie immediately headed up to the nursery with Tony, and Oleg took Pete off by the arm, saying something about the garden, and Lena disappeared back into the kitchen. That left Rose and the Doctor standing in the foyer, and the Doctor was starting to look a bit lost again. "You want to wash up?" Rose asked, in case he was thinking gloomy thoughts about that first Cyberman assault.

"Oh! Yeah, that would be..." He sniffed the back of his own hand and grimaced. "Yeah, definitely. I hate the smell of Dalek in the morning."

"Oh, you had to say that, didn't you?" Rose said, because she'd managed not to notice it until now, but the strangely sterile stink of the Crucible had managed to follow them home. "C'mon-race you."

"Not fair!" the Doctor yelped as Rose took off for the stairs. "I don't know where-aha! Come back here! You didn't say where we were racing to!"

Which resulted into some rather chaotic running about, up and down stairs and through the kitchen and gardens (not to mention a near-accident with the dumb waiter, and Jackie screeching at them to set an example for the baby!) before they found their way, exhausted, to the upstairs bathroom. Rose collapsed on the toilet to catch her breath while the Doctor took to examining himself in the mirror. First one side of his flushed face, then the other; then under his chin, the top of his head, his teeth, and then he reached around back as if he were checking for the existence of a certain mole.

"You're him," she said when she could say it without choking. "I mean, you look the same."

"Really?" he asked. "Even the nose? I think I see a bit of Donna in the nose here." He prodded it, frowning.

Rose rolled her eyes at him. "Yeah, even the nose. What are you worrying about?"

He immediately stepped back from the sink and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I'm not worrying. I'm not worried about anything. Who says I'm worried?"

"Fine," Rose said. "You're not worried. So wash up already."

He scrubbed his hands with an intensity not befitting Jackie's decorative seashell-shaped soaps, then dunked his head under the tap and came up shaking like a sheepdog. "So Lena is nice," he said, once Rose had beat him into submission with a towel.

"She's super," Rose said. "Like the best next-door neighbor in the world."

"The best neighbor that you pay," he said from under the towel.

Rose shrugged. "Like mum said, they get to live out here and do whatever they want when none of us are around-and we're not usually around, what with Mum and Dad doing all the traveling and me at Torchwood...and they really are more like neighbors than, you know, staff."

"Staff." The Doctor tossed the towel aside, reveal hair that stuck up even more chaotically than usual. "Aren't you all posh, then?"

Rose rolled her eyes and retrieved the towel from the floor. "I'm not posh," she said. "I just...have really wealthy parents." He smirked at her. "It's not like I live here," she added. "I have a flat of my own. They're the posh ones. Tony is posh. I am a self-sufficient, bootstrapping individual."

"'Course you are," he said, still grinning.

"That's right." She rearranged the towel and started the water running again, but the Doctor remained perched on the edge of the tub, giving her that fond loony grin. "What?" she asked.

"Oh no, nothing," he said.

"What're you smiling like that for?" she demanded, crossing her arms.

He shrugged. "You just seem...different, a little, is all."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said with a wave of his hand. "Well, I mean, not nothing, but nothing bad. It's not a bad different. Or maybe you're not different at all, I dunno. Ooh, look, duckies!"

He swooped down on the multicolored rubber ducks that occupied a plastic caddy on the side of the tub-the only things that could currently get Tony to settle into the bath-and thoroughly perused them while Rose washed her face and hands. A faint smell still lingered whenever she turned her head-something like motor oil and gun smoke and ozone, though she didn't know if it was due to the Daleks or her own weapon. Shame the gun had gotten lost in the shuffle like it had; she'd rather liked it.

"So what do we do next?" Rosed asked, trying to fold the towel in such a way that Lena wouldn't see the mascara streaks she'd just left on it.

The Doctor opened his mouth at the same moment his stomach gurgled loudly. He looked down at it with a small frown. "Well, nobody asked you."

Rose snorted. "Have you eaten at all since...I mean, at all?"

"I think I grabbed a bag of crisps 'round the back of the TARDIS while we were dropping people off," he muttered.

Rose pretended to shudder. "Crisps...god, Lena will kill you. C'mon, she's probably cooking enough to feed an army." She took his hand. "You know, if you stay around here long enough, you might actually put on weight."

He let her tug him out of the bathroom, but his eyes bulged in mock horror. "What, and lose my girlish figure?"

They invaded the kitchen, where Lena was presiding over exactly as much food as Rose expected, in several different stages of preparation; she bribed them with a bunch of bananas and a huge packet of biscuits to make them leave, and they tried to watch television in one of the lounges. But Rose had been awake for going on twenty-four hours, and somehow went from snickering at the Doctor's opinion of a toothpaste advert to waking up groggily, with her face mashed into his sleeve while he ever so gently touched her cheek-as gently as if she were made of spun glass.

"Hey," he said while she blinked at him. "You still want dinner?"

Rose smiled, feeling amazingly content with the universe. "Do I have to move to get it?" she asked.

"Well, I suppose we could always ask for a tray, and we can always find out if I'm still ambidextrous..."

She stretched upwards, as far as she could reach, and pressed her lips against the end of his chin. He grinned at her and tipped his head down to kiss her properly, and Rose had another minute to relish doing this, being able to do this, finally having the Doctor here to stay.

Then his stomach rumbled again, and she broke away, giggling. "Dinner," she said.

"Are you sure?" the Doctor asked with innocent eyes. "I can probably put it off another hour or four...."

Pete and Jackie were already at the table when they got down to the dining room, trying to get Tony to stop fussing and eat his peas. "There you are," Pete said mildly as they sat down. "I was beginning to worry he'd taken you away again in his TARDIS."

Was Rose seeing things, or did the Doctor flinch again? "Ah, no more worries on that front, Pete," he said. "I'm sort of stranded."

Pete raised his eyebrow. "Really? Is that why you ended up in Norway again?"

So of course, they had to explain everything, starting with the Daleks, and then the stolen planets, and the Reality Bomb, and the biological metacrisis bit, only parts of it were not in that exact order. There was a lot of arguing and talking over each other, especially from Jackie, since she wasn't even supposed to have been there in the first place. "But Mickey said you were going, and that he meant to go after you, and I-well--" She stabbed into her chicken with more force than necessary. "You're my daughter," she declared.

"You could've been hurt, mum," Rose said, as she finally started to realize the magnitude of what they'd done. "Or stranded over there. There was a reason I volunteered for the mission, and a reason it was supposed to be solo!"

"What's done is done," Pete declared, and yeah, he'd probably already had that conversation with Jackie and said everything Rose could've said, only louder and more indignantly. He turned to the Doctor. "What I don't understand is this metathingy biocrisis...

Which sent them round and round again, with the Doctor using words altogether too long for a dinner table and Pete trying to write things on the napkins over Jackie's indignant protests. Finally, he sat back in his chair and said, "So let me get this right. You're not the real Doctor."

"Technically, yes and no," the Doctor said, sipping his wine. "I've got all his thoughts, memories--" his eyes flicked ever so slightly to Rose-- "feelings, and so on, plus a few extra bits tossed in for bonus, but physiologically speaking, I'm human."

Pete's eyebrows rose considerably. "Really?"

The Doctor rapped his knuckles over his chest. "Thunk, thunk, thunk. Just the one. Think I'd notice the other if it was there."

Tony, finding this a great game, slapped his hands against his tray. "Tuck tuck tuck!" he squealed. Jackie shushed him.

Pete's attention barely even flickered from the Doctor, and Rose got the idea that her dad was interrogating a suspicious first date. It made her simultaneously want to slap him and giggle into her napkin. "Must be a bit of a shocker for you," Pete said easily. "Change of species and all."

The Doctor just shrugged, chasing bits of chicken around his plate. "Well, it's different, I'll grant you that, but I'm looking forward to it. Human life, human limits, just...I don't think I've ever been ordinary before, if that makes any sense. I think it'll be a great adventure."

Pete frowned. "Isn't that what Peter Pan said about death?"

Rose choked on her cauliflower. Jackie attempted to kick Pete under the chair, though from the sound of it she hit more wood than flesh.

The Doctor smiled, thought he suddenly looked a little wild around the eyes. "Well, it's all the same thing, really. The price of a human life is a human death. Something new either way, and after nine hundred and four years, that's sort of refreshing, innit?"

"Actually," Rose couldn't help but put in, "weren't you technically just born yesterday?"

The Doctor's grin relaxed a little, and he nudged her with his elbow. "Oi, you. Show a little respect."

"You respect your elders!" Rose said, flicking him with the corner of her napkin. And then they were giggling and nudging each other, until Jackie reminded them to set an example for the baby, and whatever shadows had crept into the conversation just as quickly slipped away.

Despite her unintended nap earlier, Rose was yawning by the time they were clearing the dishes. "I'm not tired," she protested after a big one. "I can't be tired, the sun's still out."

"Well, I'm exhausted," Jackie declared. "Maybe you'd like to take care of Tony's bath for me?"

"It's just time traveler's lag," the Doctor added. "Nothing to be ashamed of." He himself yawned, and then frowned, as if he hadn't been expecting it.

"So are you turning in, then?" Rose asked, and managed to surprise herself with a sudden surge of anticipation.

The Doctor shrugged. "Eh, maybe in a minute. I wanted to talk to your dad about something."

Whatever it was, it couldn't possibly take more than a few minutes, Rose was sure. She left a messy pile of plates in the sink and quickly wiped her hands. "I'll just go wash my hair, then," she said. "You, ah, you know where all the bedrooms are?"

The Doctor nodded and flashed her a little smile while he stacked the serving dishes on the draining board. "Yeah, yeah, I think I got it sorted while we were running around up there."

Rose practically flew up the stairs, but her heart was pounding for an entirely different reason. She thought back to the promise of the kiss in Norway, and of course they were both exhausted and her entire family would be just down the hallway...and the fact that she had wanted this for so long, and so badly, would probably make it that much more awkward. She told herself this. It didn't change anything.

She would have the Doctor in her bed tonight, and every night to come. Nothing could be better than this.

Her room had a private bath, and she left a trail of clothes across the floor leading to the door. She nearly tripped over her own panties, clumsy from rushing, and quickly jumped into the shower to wash the last smells of battle and evil out of her skin and hair. She slipped again climbing out of the shower and nearly brained herself on the sink; spent four minutes trying to blow-dry her hair before remembering that this was the Doctor and he'd seen her covered in slime, he wasn't going to mind a bit of bedhead in the morning; and then sorted through the bureau and wardrobe in her room for something to put on that wouldn't be outright embarrassing. (The clothes that migrated to her room here tended to be ones she didn't wear often enough to miss, and for good reasons.) She entertained the thought of just waiting for him stark naked, but he could be weirdly prissy about some things, and so she eventually settled on an old, worn t-shirt that went down nearly to her knees. It might've belonged to Mickey once upon a time, but the first runner-up involved appliqué snowmen, and besides, it wasn't like she was going to keep it on.

She flopped down on the bed, squirmed into a position that hopefully didn't look too much like she was sitting and waiting for him. Then she sat and waited for him.

And waited.

And waited.

When the clock on the nightstand said half an hour had passed, not counting the time she'd spent in the shower, Rose decided that the Doctor and Pete couldn't possibly still be talking about anything important. She threw on her dressing gown (a horrible ruffly thing her mum had bought her) and poked her head into the hall, telling herself that she'd see the Doctor come walking towards her the moment she did.

Instead it was her mum, in her own dressing gown, shuffling past in the direction of the master bedroom. "What are you doing, still awake?" she asked when she spotted Rose. "I thought you were turning in early."

"Are Dad and the Doctor still talking?" she asked.

Jackie blinked at her. "Of course not, the Doctor went to be ages ago. He's in the guest room if you're heartless enough to wake him." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the door on the other end of the hall. "Or are you looking for Dad? He's down in his office talking to Edinburgh--"

"No," Rose blurted. "No, that's...I was just wondering. G'night." She quickly shut the door and took a deep breath, rallying her composure. So the Doctor was sleeping alone tonight. Maybe he was waiting for some privacy. Maybe he really was honestly too tired. Maybe they were rushing things a bit, considering he'd only been born yesterday. Maybe he somehow thought she wanted to be alone, because for all his genius this was the same man who'd managed to overlook the London Eye.

Tomorrow night, she promised herself. Tomorrow, in Cardiff, even if I have to club him and drag him into the bedroom.

She climbed into bed and barely remembered her head hitting the pillow.

Chapter 3

Rose slept until nearly ten and woke up with her hair a complete mess, which she was tempted to blame on the Doctor at least in part. When she made her way downstairs she found the others presiding over a late breakfast; the Doctor was drinking coffee altogether too fast to be healthy, but he grinned when he saw her, which made the whole fiasco last night more embarrassing than annoying. "Morning, dear," Jackie said. "We were just about to send up the Sherpas to recover you."

"Yeah, thanks, no," she said, snagging some toast as she sat down. "I think I earned some beauty sleep, personally."

"So that's your secret," the Doctor said with a manic waggle of the eyebrows. Yep, definitely too much coffee in him. Rose nudged the orange juice his way with a grin.

There was a bang at the back door, and Oleg came into the kitchen with a suitcase in his hand. "Peter, your secretary brings these up the drive," he called out, waving the suitcase. "He says you bought them?"

"Mmm, yes, thanks, Oleg." Pete got up to take the suitcase, and almost immediately handed it to the Doctor. "I had to guess at the sizes, but since you don't have your wardrobe with you..."

"Aw, thanks, Pete, you shouldn't've," the Doctor said. He popped the locks on the suitcase and peered inside. "Or is it just 'cause you want your pajamas back?"

Pete ignored this as he seated himself again. "I put through a request to get you some identification, too," he said. "Passport, birth certificate, the whole thing."

Rose hadn't even thought about that. "Is that what you were talking about last night?" she asked.

The Doctor nodded. "Sort of a symbolic thing, really. Well, that and a legal necessity. Well, that and, I've been thinking about this really fantastic car I used to have, only I'll need a license and all...what are you smirking about?" he demanded.

Rose stopped trying to hide her smile. "Just picturing you driving a car. You'd be a menace on the road."

"Hey, at least a car is built for a single pilot," he said defensively.

"Driver," Rose corrected.

He turned his nose up at her. "If it's my car I can call it how I like."

"In any case, it'll take a bit of time to put everything in order," Pete added loudly as if they hadn't interrupted. "We'll have to search the database of the missing and dead first, see if there's anyone who's a reasonable match for you."

That damped the mood. "Not sure I like the idea of taking on a dead man's identity," the Doctor said with a little frown.

"It's easier than starting from scratch," Rose said as she served herself some eggs. "That's what we had to do for me-I mean, it's common knowledge that the Tylers didn't have any kids before the war. I think I'm officially..."

"Second cousin, once removed," Pete supplied. "Not that we love you any less for it."

"That explains the Prentice," the Doctor said, as if to himself. "I was wondering about that back on the airship."

Rose shrugged. "It was weird at first, but I reckon I'm used to it by now."

"Rose Prentice," he said, like he was testing it out. He made a face, but only for a moment, and then grinned at her. "Reckon I will be, too, soon."

"Are you going back to Cardiff today, then?" Jackie said.

"Well, I do need to go back to work someday, Mum," Rose reminded her.

Jackie frowned. "But do you have to go right back, is all I'm asking? Surely they'll give you a few days off when you just saved the universe, and we never see you..."

"Wait, you work in Cardiff?" the Doctor asked, frowning again. "I thought you worked for Torchwood."

"Torchwood's in Cardiff," Pete put in. The Doctor blinked.

"London's like a ghost town these days, really," Rose explained quietly. "So many people were converted, and so many people who weren't couldn't bear to stay...most of the government's up and moved to Edinburgh, but Torchwood already had a good infrastructure in Cardiff, we really just needed to expand it."

"You didn't tell Jack about it, did you?" the Doctor asked. "He might've been jealous that yours is bigger."

She smiled. "Jack seems pretty happy with the ones he's got."

"Well, if you have run off like that, don't forget to book your train early," Jackie said. "You know you're not actually supposed to run around flashing that ID card at people to get your way unless it's a proper emergency."

"Missing my train is an emergency!" Rose protested. Both her parents glowered at her. "Kidding. God. Lighten up, you two, we saved the world yesterday."

"And life goes on," Pete announced. "You'd better have brushed your teeth, too, young lady."

Rose rolled her eyes at them and ate her toast.

After breakfast, she went into Pete's office, brushing aside a small mountain of top secret documents so she could use his laptop. She had emailed her supervisor to let him know when she'd be back in the city when the Doctor wandered in, having changed into a gray pinstrip suit-Rose congratulated Pete on getting close on the first try. "Hello," he said, leaning against the doorway. "All booked up?"

"Yeah, we're good," Rose said. "Leave this afternoon at four."

The Doctor's eyebrows went up. "So it is 'we,' is it?" he asked, sounding hopeful.

Was that why he'd stayed away from her room last night? Rose came around the desk to embrace him, pressing her cheek into the soft blue silk of his tie. "They're never gonna split us up again," she said firmly. "Just let them try."

He huffed a laugh and folded his hands around the small of her back. "Rose Prentice," he said again, and it still didn't sound right, but close enough. He suddenly lifted her up, and smothered her surprised squeal with a kiss; but just when Rose started to make it interesting, nuzzling and nipping at his lower lip, he pulled back. "You know what this means, don't you?"

"What?" she asked.

'You," he said, "need to pack."

Rose groaned. "Only if you help," she said. "And don't get out of it, you were done when Dad brought you the suitcase."

"You don't know that," he said. "I could've unpacked the whole thing just to spite you. I could have a wicked plot to steal all of Pete's pajamas."

She snorted at him. "As it happens, I don't have much to pack," she pointed out. "All my things are at home in Cardiff."

"Still," the Doctor said. "Don't want to forget a toothbrush. Very important, dental hygiene." She smacked him right in the chest. "Ow! I'm not joking, it's a serious concern!"

They ended up going through her clothes, quietly mocking half of them (even the well-intended gifts from Jackie and Lena) before Rose tossed a few things in a small backpack. Lena filled the rest of it with food to eat on the train, because she seemed to think that one wasn't allowed to ride a train without a three-course meal along the way, no matter how short the journey. Pete called the driver for them, and Jackie kissed Rose goodbye, and then to everyone's surprise she also hauled the Doctor down by his tie for a smack on the cheek. "Do take care of each other, you two," she said, and then all but shoved them into the car.

The Doctor grimaced as they drove away. "Take care of each other, what does she think we are, a couple of babes in the woods?" he grumbled. "Take care. Doesn't she think we can take care of ourselves?"

"Well, you were just born yesterday," Rose pointed out.

He rolled his eyes. "I think I'm going to put a limit on how often you're allowed to invoke that one. And it's two days ago now, thank you." He glanced out the window to watch the house roll away. "I've doubled in age overnight. That's a trick not even most Time Lords could've managed. Well, not without an interociter, a black hole and an adjustable wrench. I'm impressed with myself."

"Aren't you always?" Rose was conscious of the driver in front of them, and so she contented herself to lean again the Doctor's shoulder and let him wrap an arm around her waist. "We're on our way home," she said, just to see if it sounded real yet.

"Yeah," he said, sounding mildly surprised. "So we are."

---

It was an uneventful train ride, and the trip to Rose's flat was about as uneventful as a crowded bus could get; it was surreal to be traveling with the Doctor again, especially by something as mundane as a public bus, but they passed the time with a lot of discussion about migration patterns since the end of the Cyberwar and whether the woman sitting across the aisle from them knew she had a spot of mustard on her lower lip. (Rose voted no, and thus they should tell her about it; the Doctor insisted it was performance art, and anyway they'd been noticing it too long now to politely say anything. That ate up far more of the journey than Rose would care to admit.)

"Nice building," the Doctor said when they got to her flat. "Very, er, yeah. I like it."

"I know what it looks like," Rose said; over the past two years she'd gotten accustomed to the crumbling brick exterior, spreading rust stains and all. "But I'd never get a flat this big in any other building. It's nicer inside anyway."

"Don't Torchwood pay you for all the running-jumping-fighting aliens business?" the Doctor asked as they climbed the stairs. "It's dangerous work, after all. You should get reimbursed."

"You haven't seen the size of my flat yet," Rose said. "I might spend too much time at work, but when I'm home, I want to love the place."

"Well, that settles it," the Doctor said. "It must be brilliant. I'm tingling with anticipation, want to feel?"

Rose found her door, and was about to say something sassy about feeling him tingle when she came to a horrible realization that stopped her in her tracks. "Oh, bollocks," she said. "I left my keys at the office."

The Doctor's face fell. "What? Why?"

"I was going through to all those different universes, wasn't I?" Rose said, going for her mobile instead. "I wasn't going to lose my keys on a Dalek mothership in an parallel universe. Hold on, I think there's somebody at the office this late, I can...do something." Because she didn't relish traipsing to work at an hour like this, especially with the Doctor and their bags in tow, but she'd be fantastically lucky to reach somebody who'd come out here to rescue her.

But while Rose was fumbling around with her phone, the Doctor reached out to rattle the knob. It turned easily in his hand, and he pushed it inwards about half an inch. "Hello," he murmured. "Are you sure you didn't leave the gas on, too?"

"I always lock my door," Rose said, and a thrill of alarm went up her spine, along with a heavy sense of no, no, no, not now, not when I've finally got everything sorted! She put her phone in her pocket. "Stand behind me, okay?"

"Hardly," the Doctor sniffed. "I'll have you know I'm well schooled in the gentleman's art of Bartitsu. I defy anyone to come at me with a walking stick." He set aside his suitcase and reached automatically into his breast pocket; he seemed surprised to come up with nothing but the wrapper of a Mars bar he'd bought at Paddington Station. "Or, you know, a piece of plastic," he said. "I'm very deadly with a piece of plastic."

Rose sighed. "If someone's expecting me, they probably won't expect you," she said. "Doctor, please."

He lowered his brows at her, but took a step back. "All right," he said. "Just...be careful. This isn't my best position."

She nodded, and ease open the door, fully prepared to duck the onslaught of an alien assassin or rogue Cyberman or some more mundane, home-grown threat, like terrorist. She thought she heard a slow intake of breath, a shift of clothing, the creak of the floorboard near the kitchen, and then she pushed the door open all the way and--

"Surprise!"

It seemed that she'd developed a slight infestation of Torchwood in her living room.

Her team were clustered near the sofa, with Tosh holding a banner that said CONGRATULATIONS ROSE AND MICKEY and Grace clutching a bunch of balloons in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other. Jake was standing a little bit away from both of them, as if to distance himself from the balloons, but still grinning like an idiot, with Pierre stationed just over his shoulder. In the direction of the kitchen, Mr. Winslow, her direct supervisor, was standing with his hands folded behind his back and a wide grin on his face; it seemed he'd freshly waxed his mustache for the occasion, and also taken the rare opportunity to change out of his suit jacket in a cardigan knit in rather alarming pattern of green and maroon. Over his shoulder, Brynn was leaning against the counter (which had rather more food on it than Rose remembered leaving out last time she'd been here) and next to her, Ianto stood at something that looked far too much like parade rest for somebody who was never, to Rose's knowledge, in the military. (And who was wearing blue jeans for the first time ever that she'd seen, which was alarming in and of itself.) Dr. Varma was standing over by the television, coughing and looking almost as awkward as Rose felt, and there were other people standing around that she knew only by sight rather than name, and she sensed the Doctor stepping up behind her as she said the first thing that came to her mind, which was:

"What the hell is this?"

"A surprise, natch," Jack said eagerly, taking a step forward. "And look who the cat dragged in, eh? You got Mickey hiding back there, too, Doctor?"

Rose felt her throat go dry under the weight of everyone's intent gazes, but the Doctor's hand on her shoulder gave her something of an anchor. "Mickey...isn't coming back," she said. "He decided to stay. In the other universe, I mean."

Tosh very quickly lowered the banner, as if everyone hadn't already seen it, and Grace's face fell in shock. Mr. Winslow cleared his throat. "A great loss for Torchwood, of course," he said, and: "I'm sure we all wish him well." Jake sure didn't look like he was wishing anyone well, though; he looked like he'd been punched in the stomach, and Rose didn't know if she should apologize to him or vent right alongside him. (She hadn't even realized until now that she was angry; it wasn't a hot anger, but something that lingered in the back of her head like a toothache, ignorable until she pressed on it.)

The Doctor shut the door, like a little afterthought, and Pierre put his arm around Jake's shoulders. Grace cleared her throat. "Well," she said. "I'm still glad to see you," she declared, and then everyone was moving and Rose no longer had time to think of Mickey or anger or anything else.

They had brought food; rather alarmingly large amounts of food for a total of about twenty people, including multiple pizzas and enough alcohol to stock a small bar. "Most people celebrated when the stars came back," Tosh explained, dishing out a small sheet cake covered in multicolored frosting stars."We held off until we knew about you." She reached across Rose to hand the Doctor a slice. "I'm Toshiko Sato, by the way, and you are...?"

"The Doctor," he said. "You seem awfully familiar. Are you a doctor?"

"Of mathematics, but I don't usually use the title," Tosh said uneasily.

"Hmmm," the Doctor said, and then shoved an enormous wad of cake in his mouth when Mr. Winslow approached him. He pointed to his own furious chewing as if to pre-emptively avoid any conversation.

Mr. Winslow was looking mainly at Rose, though. "Difficult news about Mickey," he said. "Difficult to hear."

Rose didn't know what to say to that, except maybe, "I should've phoned it in sooner. I'm sorry, sir."

Winslow waved one hand near his face. "Think nothing of it. We've all had a rather rough few weeks. The report can take as much time as you need; I daresay you've earned it."

"Thank you, sir," Rose said. Writing up a dry professional report on the whole adventure was the furthest thing from her mind just then. She was aware of the Doctor, at her elbow, finishing his cake in a single bite. "Er, Doctor, this is Mr. Winslow, the head of my division. Mr. Winslow, this is the Doctor, I think I've mentioned him before..."

"Charmed," Mr. Winslow said offering a hand, "I've heard quite a bit about you from Ms. Prentice."

"Mmm mmwagh mmagh," the Doctor said, pointing at his mouth again before he juggled his fork and plate to shake hands.

"Ah, yes, sorry. Perhaps we'll talk again later," Winslow said vaguely, and he wandered away again, clutching a plastic cup full of champange.

They moved away from the cake and the Doctor finally swallowed. "That was a lot of sugar," he said lowly, and looked around the room with bulgy eyes. "Who are all these people?"

"Co-workers," Rose said. "At least a few of them. That's Dr. Varma, the head of the medical division...dunno why he's here, exactly...and Ianto Jones, our administrative assistant." She paused. "He was hanging around Jack's Torchwood too, wasn't he? With the woman who looked like Gwendolyn?"

"Mmm-hmm," the Doctor said, studying from afar while Ianto poured another cup of champagne for someone who might possibly work in the archives-Rose didn't remember. "If I read between the lines correctly, he and Jack have something together. To the extent that Jack...well, you know Jack."

"I do," Rose said. "This Ianto thinks nobody knows he's been shagging a security guard named Freddy for half a year, but he makes one hell of an espresso. Doesn't talk much, though."

"Makes more room for Jake, though, doesn't it?"

Rose looked around, but Jake and Pierre had disappeared; of course he'd need a minute after hearing about Mickey. "I should probably talk to him," she said. "Tell him--" What, though? That Mickey had some reason to stay in the old universe, some reason greater than all the people who were waiting for him in this one? That she was sorry, when she hadn't even done anything-Mickey was the one who chose envy, who chose to leave. That she was just as angry?

The Doctor rubbed her shoulder again. "Let him be a bit. He'll come back out when he's ready. He had his, uh, whoever that fellow was..."

"Boyfriend," Rose said. She took a bite of her cake instead. It was about as good as a cake from a supermarket could be expected to be, but she did appreciate the sentiment. "Pierre. Jake and Mickey tried to single-handedly liberate Paris from the Cybermen and Pierre kept them from getting themselves killed on the first try."

"Well, see, there you go," the Doctor said. "Obviously this Pierre has a good head on his shoulders and will get Jake sorted. Don't worry about him just yet."

Grace came out of the kitchen with a paper plate full of more substantial hors d'oeuvres-little crackers with coronation chicken on them, that sort of thing-and waved it under Rose's nose. "Go on, take some for when you finish the cake," she said. "I didn't make fifty ants-on-a-logs for nothing. Who's your friend, anyway?"

Rose took a piece of celery filled with peanut butter and dotted with raisins, more to encourage Grace than any actual desire to eat something called ants on a log. "Grace, this is the Doctor," she said, because she saw the other woman eying him in speculation. "Doctor, this is--"

"Grace Holloway," the Doctor finished in unison with Rose, only he said it in that voice, the one he usually saved for Rose Tyler or Sarah Jane Smith. He juggled his empty cake plate and shook her free hand with a funny little smile on his face. "Grace Holloway, I've met you."

"I'm sorry?" she asked, corralling a stray ant-log.

"Well, the other you," he said breezily. "In the other universe. San Francisco, 1999. To perfectly specific she killed me," he added in a low tone, more to Rose than Grace herself, "but I got better, so no harm done. What are you doing in Britain?"

Grace had learned the hard way by now how to recover from such a conversational U-turn. "I joined the California Defense Forces when the Cyberwar broke out, and when they started discharging volunteers I switched to the UN program for a while." She smiled wryly. "Turns out they don't appreciate people taking the initiative, though-at least, not as much as Torchwood does."

"Taking the initiative, good on you," the Doctor said heartily. "Good to see some version of you again."

Her smile turned a bit wary. "Thanks, uh, Doctor...?"

"Yes, that's right," he said, and Rose pulled him away by the elbow before he traumatized the poor woman any further. "I'll talk to you again," he called over his shoulder, then looked at Rose. "Can I? She's not secretly evil or something? Because that would be awkward, I'd quite like to see Grace again."

"Grace is lovely," Rose said, and tried to remind herself that she meant it. "Maybe you two could bond over being foreigners-she's American and you're an alien."

"Well, technically we're both aliens, but I'm the only extraterrestrial," he said softly, then grinned at the approaching Dr. Varma and shoved Rose's ant-log-thing into his mouth in a swift motion.

Rose's flat was big, but not that big; she tried to make nice with the whole crush of people, but she couldn't help but notice how close the Doctor kept to her and how much he was eating (and how quickly). Everybody wanted to congratulate her on a job well done, and meet the Doctor, and about half the time offer condolences for Mickey like he'd died and she was his widow or something. It wasn't that Rose wasn't glad to see everyone, because she was, just not all at one time. By eight o'clock her desire to chase everyone out with a frying pan was winning out over her good manners.

That, unfortunately, was when Brynn, who had spent most of the evening joined at the hip with someone who might possibly be a medic, sidled up to Rose and flipped her dark hair over her shoulder. "It's good to see you back, Ms. Prentice," she said brightly. "We were all pulling for you, you know, down in front."

"I didn't think you had clearance for that," Rose said, wondering if there was any more obvious way to send out go-away vibes. "The project was need-to-know."

"Oh, you know, we hear things," she said. "What with the stars and all, Mr. Winslow wanted us to know that Torchwood wasn't sitting idle."

"Well, that's...good." Rose considered shoving a biscuit into her mouth as an excuse to leave.

"It's a shame about Mickey, though," Brynn added obliviously, with a little pout. "He was such a great guy. Do you know why he stayed behind?"

"No idea," Rose lied, and shoved a biscuit into her mouth.

"Shame." Brynn's eyes focused over Rose's shoulder, and she broke into a grin that would put some large predators to shame. "But who's this tall, dark and handsome?" she asked.

Rose turned and saw the Doctor lurking behind her, staring out a window; her movement caught his attention, though, and he blushed, because Brynn was looking him up and down in a way that made Rose want to club him and drag him into the bedroom by the hair just to clarify the situation.

"He's an old friend of mine," she said instead. "Dr. John Smith." The Doctor made a sudden noise behind her, but didn't actually speak up. "Doctor, this is Brynn Darby, the receptionist. She knows four ways to kill a person with a computer mouse."

"I don't like to brag about it," Brynn said coquettishly.

The Doctor plastered a smile on his face and bent down to shake Brynn's hand. (And down, and down-she was four inches shorter than Rose even in her heels.) "Enchante, madamoiselle," the Doctor said, but his glance to Rose was a bit wild about the eyes. "Rose, is there a place where I could, ah, get some air? Just for a minute?"

That decided it. "I've got a better idea. Excuse me," Rose said to Brynn, and then maneuvered her way back to her kitchen table, which was still covered the wreckage of a sheet cake. Still, it wasn't so difficult to climb on top of it without putting her food in anything edible. "Oi, everybody!" she called, and then whistled until she was sure she was the center of attention. "Look, it's been really, really lovely, and I want to thank you all for the surprise and the food and everything, but I'm really a bit wiped, and we all know how much paperwork there is after saving the world." That got a little laughter and a few catcalls, but people capable of taking a hint were already setting aside their plates and cups. "So, yeah. Thank you for the nice welcome back, but please, if you could start heading home...thank you...I'll see you all soon at work..."

It took a little more prodding to get some people away from the food and drinks, and there was some confusion about jackets, and then Tosh had to be forcibly evicted from the kitchen ("Let me just put this away for you, it'll spoil--") and Rose realized that at some point Jake and Pierre must've slipped away without her seeing, but eventually it was just her and the Doctor and some bags of trash and more food that the two of them could probably eat in a week.

"Finally," she declared, sliding the deadbolt home. "Alone together."

"Oxymoron," the Doctor said, picking the raisins off another ants-on-a-log. "You've got a lot of lot friends."

"I have a lot of co-workers," Rose corrected. "Though they don' usually go to this much effort...if I'm lucky, maybe they'll pay for my drinks one night."

The Doctor grimaced. "Oh. Right. Sorry about, you know, spoiling the party."

"You didn't spoil anything, I didn't really want such a big crowd--" Rose paused, and studied him carefully. He was standing over one of the snack plates, shoulders just barely hunched, trying to press crumbs of something or other into his fingers. "You were being shy," she said slowly.

"What? No," he shook his head and glowered at her. "No, I'm not shy, when have I ever been shy?"

"Okay, Mr. Go-Use-The-Wrong-Verbs," Rose said. "That's why you were eating so much, so you wouldn't have to talk."

He pointed at her. "Slander."

"No, I think it's cute," Rose said. She hadn't thought it was possible for the Doctor to be shy, not when he had such a healthy ego to prop him up, but there was a first time for everything. "Was it just because they surprised us, or because they all know me already, or what?"

"You keep talking as if I've admitted to possibly feeling a little bit shy around your friends," the Doctor said. "And I haven't. I'm just, ah, fatigued. Yes. From all the traveling."

He stuck out his chin at her and folded his arms across his chest, and Rose smothered an outright laugh which would only have gotten misinterpreted. "Fine," she said. "You're not shy."

"Not at all," he agreed.

"And you didn't spoil anything," she added.

"So you say."

"And anyway, I'd much rather spend the night in," she concluded, passing him a box of pizza. "Just you and me and the junk food."

The Doctor raised at eyebrow at her as he took the box. "A disk of bread, a jug of wine, and thou?"

"Sounds about right." Speaking of the wine-she poured a glass for each of them from one of the bottles Ianto had already opened, and passed the Doctor his. "To home," she said.

He looked around again, like he was just now seeing the place properly with all their well-wishers gone. "To home," he said, and he sounded a little uncertain, but he clicked his glass to hers and drank it down anyway.

Chapter 4

They spent the rest of the evening slouching around the flat, migrating from couch to chair, sprawled on the floor or hunched over the kitchen table, not doing much of anything. Rose started work on her report to Torchwood in a desultory fashion; it was hard to put her thoughts together, even though the whole fiasco had ended barely forty-eight hours ago. Or perhaps that was why it was so hard. Far easier to let the Doctor distract her, which he was more than capable of doing, especially once he found her photo albums-the ones Jackie had put together from all the pictures on Rose's hard drive in a sort of protest against technology. After the third or fourth time he tugged on her sleeve or foot or hair to ask about this picture or that person, she set her laptop aside and curled up next to him on the rug, pizza in one hand and wine in the other, spilling out stories and memories and more than a few of the long lonely stretches in between.

He told her a bit about Martha, then, and Jack and the Master and the end of the world. He told her about somebody named Astrid who had saved his life, and about Donna-lots of bits about Donna, and he sounded sad while he did it, but Rose couldn't figure out why.

"I'm glad you haven't been alone," she said, leaning her head on his shoulder.

He looked down at her, eyebrows knit. "You are?"

"Well, I mean, I'm also totally jealous," she said, "but...you do need people around you, Doctor." She thought of Donna's parallel world and he heart tightened up at knowing just how much he needed people. "You need people, and I'm glad you had good ones."

"What about you?" he asked. "Looks like you've got yourself some faithful companions as well."

She shrugged. "They're just people from work," she said again. "Mum. Pete. Mickey." They'd both had a few more glasses of wine by then, and somehow Rose was having a hard time keeping hold of the knowledge that Mickey was gone gone-that the walls of time were truly closed, that he hadn't said goodbye. Every time she saw his face in a picture or mentioned him in a story, it seemed to creep up on her all over again, though she couldn't decide if the tight feeling in her chest was anger or sadness or guilt.

Easier to have another glass of wine and turn another page of the album, the Doctor's arm around her and their legs all tangled together. Easier to put the whole painful mess out of sight and out of mind until she had recovered the energy to deal with it properly.

Going on midnight, they were both yawning again, thought Rose wasn't sure whether it was mostly the wine or the hour. When the Doctor nearly knocked over his glass with a careless gesture, Rose took it as a sign they were done for the day. "Probably ought to go to bed soon," she said, carefully transferring their wineglasses to the table.

"Good idea," he said, and climbed to his feet, stretching a little awkwardly. He looked around, blinking in a slow and sleepy fashion. "Er...where do I sleep?"

Rose wondered if he really could be that thick, and then remembered once again who she was talking to. "I do have a bed, you know."

"Yes, but...oh. Oh." He looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time, eyes wide and wondering, and he licked in his lips in a gesture that was far too suggestive to be deliberate. "In my defense, I've had quite a bit of wine tonight," he said huskily. "And I'm still getting used to metabolizing alcohol the human way."

"Not to mention you're underage," Rose added, climbing to her own feet. "Just two days old."

"Oh, well, if I'm underage then I should certainly sleep in the bath or something," he said. "Wouldn't want to tempt you or anything."

"Jailbait," Rose told him, and then reached out and goosed him, right through his trousers, because she could do that now. He yipped and gave her that look again, like she was something brand-new to him and wondrous. "I get dibs on the bathroom!" she declared.

"You've got two bathrooms in here!" he stammered after her, still frozen where he stood.

She gleefully brushed her teeth, washed her face and hit the deodorant again, just to be safe. We're really doing this, we finally get to do this, she thought as she stripped down to her underwear, and oh, god, what if it was awkward, what if it was weird, what if he decided he didn't really love her like that after all...no, no, he'd said it on the beach in Norway, he'd whispered it in her ear and then he'd showed her. They were really doing this. Happily ever after, dammit.

Rose darted out of the bathroom and stopped short to find the Doctor already lying on the bed, on top of the covers. He'd stripped down to his boxers and was lying on his side, one arm propping his head up, the other braced on his hip so that his elbow stuck up in the air; he was grinning in what he probably thought was an alluring manner, though it made him look slightly insane. Rose couldn't help herself: she burst out laughing, almost doubled over from it. "Oh, thank you very much," the Doctor said, but his grin didn't slip. "That's exactly what a man likes to hear from his lady friend when she sees him in his pants."

"You're impossible," she gasped, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to cross the room to him, to push him flat, to press her lips against his. He opened his mouth to her and wrapped his hands around her hips, and if he didn't care she was wearing granny panties and a mismatched bra she wasn't going to comment on the fact that his boxers had little yellow duckies on them.

His hands went higher, past the ticklish spot on her ribs, and then he was feeling her up through her bra, scratching gently at her nipples and tracing the edge of the band. "Can I?"

Rose tightened her grip on his shoulders, feeling the bones and tendons straining underneath. "Jesus Christ, Doctor do you really have to ask?"

"Some of us," he said, fumbling with the clasp, "have manners, Miss Tyler."

"Oh, sod manners," Rose sighed, and squeaked as he suddenly rolled them over so that he was above her, gently lifting her bra away. "I want this too much to be polite about it." She raised her arms to get the bra off and then wrapped them around his shoulders again, pulling him down so she could feel all of him, every inch of skin not covered by the crisp new cotton of his pants, and under those the hard length of him nudging at her leg. I did that, she thought, he wants me, and she kissed him hard, matching his own movements and arching up into his hands.

When she started to push down his boxers, he pulled back, just a bit. "Moving a bit fast, are we?" he asked, though he didn't sound nervous, just surprised.

"We've had four years' worth of foreplay," she pointed out. "I don't think it can get any slower."

"Well, on some planets--" She slid a hand under his waistband and pinched his arse, just a bit. "Oh! Right, shutting up now." He rolled onto his side to kick his pants down and gave an encouraging tug to her panties. "Okay. Um. How do you want to do this?"

Rose started to say wait, let's get the condom first, and then froze, a horrible thought dawning her. "No," she whispered.

"No?" he echoed, eyes going wide. "You don't want to do it?"

She checked the nearest bedside table, then lunged over him to check the other. "No, no, no," she chanted, because it wasn't fair, not after she'd been waiting so long...she just hadn't planned on this... "Fuck. Doctor, I'm sorry, I...I haven't got a condom."

"You don't have a condom," the Doctor said slowly, the flush draining out of his face.

"I don't really get out much," she muttered, fisting her own hair. So close, so damn close...

"You don't have..." he started to echo. Then his eyes widened again. "Oh, my god, we need a condom. Rose, I need a condom."

"And...you wouldn't've...before?" she asked, not quite seeing the cause for such hysterics.

"Of course not!" he said, and leaped up to start pacing. "I had conscious control over the motility of my sperm!"

Rose did not know how she was meant to respond to that.

Luckily-or rather not-the Doctor wasn't done panicking. "Humans don't have that! I don't have that! Do you know what this means, Rose?" He got down in her face. "We could have babies."

"Is that a problem?" she asked, not liking his scandalized tone one bit.

"Well, I mean, not with the proper precautions in place," he said, and finally sat back on the bed only to fret at a corner of the sheet. "You know, you need a, a strategy, back-up plans, you need contingencies...I mean, look at me, do you honestly trust me with an infant?"

"I've trusted you with a hell of a lot more important things," she pointed out, but to her surprise he looked genuinely disturbed.

"I'm a crap parent, Rose," he said, shoulders sagging. "I'm absolutely crap until they're walking and talking and doing trigonometry. You know those people who lose their children in shopping malls? Try losing them in the space-time continuum! I did that once and by the time I'd tracked him down he'd hit puberty!"

There were a thousand things Rose could've said to that, but the one she managed to say was, "You're not traveling anywhere without me now, you know." She moved closer and leaned against his shoulder. "I wouldn't let you lose the baby in the space-time continuum."

"I know," he said quietly, "just...babies, Rose." It was the tone of voice he usually reserved for exploding stars or planets where the oceans were dry white wine. "We have to think about babies now. I have to think about babies. I have to think about a million things and that list now includes babies and flats and mobile phones and..."

He trailed off, and she supplied for him, "Mortgages and curtains and wallpaper?"

"Yeah," he said, and sounded so genuinely miserable that for a moment Rose pulled away and just looked at him, so thin and bent on the side of the bed. He looked to her over his shoulder and frowned. "Not that...I mean...I meant what I told your dad, Rose, I want this. It's just a lot to think about all at once."

"It's a lot for both of us," she pointed out, although if she were honest with herself she'd been thinking about this-or, well, a variation on this, a variation that didn't include hysterical rants about sperm motility-for ages; long before Torchwood ever thought of their army of ghosts.

He turned and pulled her to him, so she could rest her head on his shoulder, but he also said, "Yeah, but only one of us was born yesterday. Cut me some slack."

She pinched him for that one, though the result was more of a giggle than a yelp. "Jailbait."

"Evidently you like it that way," he said, low and teasing.

She glanced down into his lap, and noted that he hadn't entirely lost interest in the proceedings. "Y'know, there are a few things we could do without a condom," she said.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "So there are. If you, ah, if I haven't utterly wrecked things."

As an answer Rose kissed him again, and again, pulling him back down to the sheets and into her arms.

---

The next morning, Rose woke up with the kitchen a disaster area and the Doctor snoring softly on the other side of the bed, his pillow having gone missing entirely. She rolled over, pressing her back into his side, and tried to tell herself that this wasn't real-that she'd dreamed it all, and when she opened her eyes the Doctor would still be sealed outside her universe and the stars would still be going out.

No luck. She couldn't keep a stupid grin from spilling over her face. And why should she? She had everything she'd ever wanted right here in bed with her.

"Ehh?" the Doctor muttered after a moment, and she felt him fumble around groggily behind her. He'd always been instantly alert before, on the rare occasions he did sleep, coming awake like a switch flipped; perhaps that was another Time Lord thing, another part of the price of this life. His hand found its way into the curve of her hip and squeezed gently. "Oh, hello there."

"Hello yourself." She rolled over to face him. "Any idea what time it is?"

"Not a clue," he said, and nuzzled the side of her face. "Mmm. This beauty sleep trick is working for you. I even like your morning breath."

She swatted him, not really intending to hurt, and succeeded in making him laugh. "You need to work on your pillow talk."

"Are you offering to tutor me?" he asked, making puppy eyes at her.

She kissed his forehead. "I think we can arrange some lessons."

"Starting immediately?"

That look in his eyes was hopeful, but Rose remembered the condition they'd left the rest of the flat in and sighed. "Got to clean up, first," she said. "Otherwise we're going to be living in a biohazard containment site."

"Oh, all right," he said with an exaggerated sigh. "I suppose I can make one small allowance to personal hygiene...."

She let the Doctor have the shower first, and after pulling on a well-worn pair of pajamas she attacked the kitchen and lounge, sorting out the recycling and tossing a few dishes they probably should've put in the fridge overnight. His suitcase had made it to the bedroom, but her bag hadn't, which meant she also had to sort through all the food Lena had sent which they hadn't ended up eating on the train. It still felt like a hideously mundane thing to be doing around the Doctor, like it meant he wasn't quite real, even though all her sense were telling her otherwise.

But when the Doctor emerged, towel tucked around his waist, warm and damp and with his hair sticking up in even more exotic ways than usual, Rose felt herself start to grin again automatically. Mine, she thought affectionately. Now and always.

"What you smirking about?" the Doctor asked, scratching at a sliver of stubble he'd apparently missed.

"Just," Rose said, but suddenly felt silly voicing the thought, and so she busied herself with the coffee maker. "Nothing."

The Doctor grabbed her from behind and pulled her to him. "That's not a nothing smile. Tell me."

"I was just thinking," she plead, and squirmed around to face him.

He smoothed her pajama top down her sides but didn't let her go entirely. "About...?"

"We can buy condoms now," she blurted.

His eyebrows went up drastically. "Indeed we can," he said. "And lots of other things, too, I reckon."

"Other things?" she asked. "Are we getting creative, then?"

"Mmm, you have no idea," he said. "Jack's got a point about twenty-first-century prudishness, you know."

"What happened to Time Lord prudishness?"

He blinked, and one corner of his mouth turned down a bit, but only for a moment. Then he was striding off towards the entryway. "Time and a place for everything Rose, and unless I'm mistaken, we now have a mission to complete. Allons-y!"

The giggles escaped as she watched him stride towards the door. "You might need your trousers for this mission, you know."

He looked down at his folded towel. "Ah. Yes. Right. Trousers are, in fact, incredibly useful things."

"And I need a shower," she added. "Ten minutes tops, I promise."

He got that wicked look in his eyes again. "What if I helped you in the shower?"

She gave his towel a tug. "Then we'll never get out of here and make a mess on the floor, most likely."

"I fail to see a problem with that," he protested, and made no protest at all as she peeled the towel completely away.

"After we make our supply run," she said before she headed into the shower. "I promise."

---

Unsurprisingly, they didn't get much accomplished that day, or the next either; and Rose was okay with that, because it was so rare she got any actual downtime between missions and crises, and besides, there was something to be said for making an utter mess on the bathroom floor. They had enough food and drink (some of it even non-alcoholic) in stockpiles that they didn't need to go out for anything after that initial shopping trip, and between the computer, the television and each other, they had more than enough to occupy their time. It was possibly the best holiday Rose could remember having, at least in the last two years.

People phoned, of course, to check that they hadn't died or something. Her mum rang to ask how the Doctor was settling in, and announce she was going on another goodwill tour of Chinese orphanages and would Rose please check up on Pete and Tony from time to time? "Yes, mum," Rose assured her. "You know you can leave them alone for a few days without them going savage."

"It's not just a few days, though!" Jackie protested. "I'll be gone nearly two months!"

"What can possibly happen in two months?" Rose asked.

The Doctor, who was eating cold pizza in front of the telly, raised his hand. "I know!"

"Was that the Doctor?" Jackie asked fretfully. "Does he think something else is going to happen?"

"Of course not, Mum, he's winding you up." She stuck her tongue out at him; he retaliated by flashing a mouthful of chewed-up pizza at her. "Because he's acting like a five-year-old."

"Five days, thank you!" he called.

"Well, you two take care of each other," Jackie said. "I'll try to call you from China, but you know how the phones are over there..."

"We'll be fine, mum. Love you."

Jake also called, late enough in the evening that Rose wondered whether he'd been at work until late and only just got free to call, or if he hadn't gone in at all and had only just now got up the courage. Either way, she took the call in the bedroom while the Doctor leafed through her collection of random take-away menus. "What did he say to you?" Jake asked. "Before he left. Or stayed, or whatever."

"He didn't say anything," Rose said, and yes, she was angry; she had decided she was allowed to be. "He told my mum he was staying but he didn't say a word to me about it."

"Coward," Jake said. "Who does he think he is, some fucking cowboy who gets to ride off into the sunset once the problem's solved? Like he doesn't have to live with his messes like everyone else?"

"He didn't say anything," Rose repeated. "I didn't even realize he wasn't with us until the TARDIS was gone. He just left."

"Yeah, where is your mate's little blue love machine?" Jake asked. "Thought you'd be traveling in style in that thing by now."

"He doesn't have it anymore," Rose said, peeking around to watch the Doctor wandering naked through the living room. At least he'd remembered to close the blinds this time. "It's complicated."

"Simple enough to me," Jake muttered. "Mickey ran off and left us hanging. Fucking coward."

And then on Friday afternoon Mr. Winslow phoned, all pompous good graces. "I'm sure you and Dr. Smith are having quite a jolly time together," he said, and she could picture him fiddling with his glasses. "We do miss you around the office, you know. I look forward to seeing you back at work."

Translation: get in here yesterday. "I just wanted to get the Doctor settled in, you know, make sure he's all right." Rose said quickly. "I'll be back in on Monday to hand in my final report."

"Excellent, excellent. I look forward to reading it."

Which meant the rest of the weekend was spent actually writing her report, and somehow she managed to resist most of the Doctor's attempts to distract her. When he wasn't surfing channels (and making Rose finally understand why she shelled out for so many of them) he was tickling her, playing with her hair, or trying to drag her into a conversation in his usual style.

For instance, by announcing: "You know, on some planets, they do office work naked."

"Must be hell when they spill their coffee," Rose said.

"Mmmm," he said, fiddling with a teacup. "And imagine the paper cuts."

Or: "We need to celebrate."

"Celebrate what?" she asked.

"I dunno." He reclined across the couch and tried to put his head in her lap. "Usually I'd just go find a holiday when I felt like celebrating, but in this case the holiday will have to come to us..." He snapped his fingers. "I know! It's Harry Potter's birthday!"

Rose snorted, and nudged his head around so he wasn't resting it on her laptop. "I'm not throwing a birthday party for Harry Potter," she said.

"Why not?" he demanded. "He's a national treasure! Oh, when I read Book Seven, I cried..."

"He doesn't exist in this universe," Rose explained, while looking up appropriate synonyms for evil. "I looked it up. No J. K. Rowling here. And even if there had been, his birthday was yesterday."

The Doctor suddenly sat up. "Really? No Harry Potter?" Rose shook her head, and he knit his eyebrows. "So if I were to, say, rewrite them all from memory..."

"Isn't that plagiarism?" Rose asked. "Besides being really tedious?"

"Well, okay, technically...but they're instant classics of literature! Think of the children here!" And he spent the better part of four hours with Rose's other computer, typing furiously and muttering under his breath, and when he finally gave up Rose didn't dare ask if he'd forgotten the name of a Weasley or just gotten bored.

And then were the moments when he rested his chin on her head or shoulder and just read what she was writing, offering helpful comments like, "I think there were four of them, actually" or "Don't forget what Jack said, it was really clever, what was it again?" or "You spelled something wrong."

Rose scanned the paragraph she'd just typed. "Where?"

"I'm not telling, you guess." Then he saw the look on he face and immediately retreated. "Or not, you know, the answer is 'Osterhagen' actually, and I'll just be over here now." He fixed himself a cup of tea while Rose tried to convince her computer that she wasn't actually trying to type osteopathy and when he sat back down he kindly let her concentrate for a whole three hours.

By the time Monday morning rolled around, she had a nice, concise report, with everything spelled correctly and the illusion that all loose ends had been worked away. If anyone asked why Mickey had stayed behind, she could offer up a dozen reasons-including his gran's death in this universe and his unauthorized travel to a parallel world with Jackie-and Rose knew none of them would be the right ones. They would have to do.

The Doctor made a whimpering noise when the alarm went off and tried to hide under her pillow (as he was so adept at knocking his own off the side of the bed). But when she got out of the shower, she found him shuffling around the kitchen in his boxers, a lonely piece of toast in one hand and an empty coffee cup in the other. "You didn't have to get up, you know," Rose said.

The Doctor just made a vague grunting noise at first, but then he turned to look at her and his eyes went wide. "Well, hello," he said. "Do you always wear that sort of thing to work?"

Rose looked down at the suit she'd put on, with a pinstriped blouse and open-toed flats. "Well, when I'm talking to my boss, yeah," she said. "Usually they don't mind jeans, though."

"You look good," he said, with a little smile, and then the coffee machine clicked and he was in such a hurry to pour himself a cup that he dropped his toast.

Rose was in the middle of a bowl of cornflakes when there was a knock on the door. They looked at each other, and the Doctor's frown matched her own unease. "You expecting anyone?" he asked.

"Not at this hour."

There was a knock again.

Rose answered, and the Doctor lurked on the other side of the door (and insisted on holding a skillet at the ready, just in case). On the other side was nothing more harmful than a soldier wearing the uniform of the UN integrated forces. "Ms. Prentice, ma'am," she said with a crisp salute. "Mr. Tyler asked me to deliver you these. He said they're for the Doctor and you'd know what that meant."

She handed over a plain envelope, saluted again and left. Rose shut the door and turned the envelope over, wondering what Pete could possibly be sending the Doctor. But the Doctor took the envelope right out of her hands and carried it to the table. "Excellent! I was wondering when he was going to send these."

"Send what?" Rose asked blankly.

He ripped open the envelope and slid out a short stack of documents, including a passport and a driving license. "I need my papers, remember?" he said. "Symbolic, necessary, first step to getting a really cool car?"

"Oh, right..." Rose picked up the passport, just to see what the picture was-she supposed they must've taken it back in London but she had no idea when. It looked about as good as any passport picture ever did-his hair was a mess and one eye was open slightly wider than the other-but then she glanced at the personal data written in next to it. "Doctor..."

"Hmm, yeah?" He was alternating between admiring his driving license and reading what looked an awful lot like a contract.

"Did you know you were born in Kent?" she asked, first of all, because she couldn't quite believe her eyes.

"I did not," he said. "But I probably should. What's my sign, hmm? Am I a Scorpio? I've always sort of wanted to be a Scorpio."

The name on the passport didn't change, and Rose wasn't sure why she thought it would. She glanced up at him. "John Noble?" she asked.

He looked oddly sheepish. "Oh, er, yeah. That." He cleared his throat. "Yeah. John Noble. That's the new alias."

"What happened to Smith?" she asked. "I was going around introducing you to people as Smith..."

"Yeah, I should've said sooner..." He scratched his head. "Just, um, just tell them all I suddenly decided to have my name legally changed. Or that Smith was my married name and the divorce just came through. Something."

"But...why?" Rose asked, knowing full well it sounded petulant. "You've always been John Smith when you needed a name. Why switch it to Noble?"

He sighed, still looking down. "That's Donna's surname," he said. "Noble. I just...it seemed, right, you know? Something to remember her by."

He smiled at her then, a little distant, a little embarrassed, and Rose bit her lip. She could've asked can't you remember her otherwise?or what's so special about her anyway? or why didn't you just tell me? She didn't ask any of them. All she said was, "Okay."

"Okay?" he echoed hopefully.

"Okay," Rose said. She wasn't going to be paranoid and jealous. She wasn't going to worry about it. If the past few days hadn't proved what the Doctor felt about her, she wasn't sure what would. She would just...be calm. "If you feel that strongly about it...I mean, it's your name. Not many people get to name themselves."

"Well, what about you?" he asked. "Ms. Prentice?"

"It's Mum's maiden name," she said. "I'm supposed to be a cousin on her side, not Dad's."

"Huh." He started to top off his coffee, and must've caught sight of the little clock. "Oh, hey, didn't you have to leave to catch a bus...um...now?"

Rose checked her watch and cursed. "Yeah, okay, leaving." She ran across the dining area to kiss him goodbye. "I'll see you tonight. Don't be too bored without me."

"Mmm. I will strive mightily," he said, and even shut the door behind her as she raced downstairs to meet her bus.

---

Go to Act 2