Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Good night, Doctor! See you in two days!” shouted Yaz from the open doors of the TARDIS. The Doctor sent a cheerful wave her way before turning back to the ship’s console, hammer in hand, ready to do some tinkering while her companions were gone. Even though their adventure in Kerblam was not overly taxing in terms of time travel, the TARDIS was still acting a bit difficult when they went to deliver Dan Cooper’s necklace to his grieving family.

“Okay, my love, it’s just you and me now. Tell me, did something come loose in that explosion?” She looked at the base of the time rotor, waiting for a reply, but the TARDIS stayed quiet in her mind. “Come on girl, help me out a bit…”

“She’s angry at you,” came a familiar voice from the back of the console room. The Doctor’s breath caught in her chest. Her eyes stayed resolutely fixed at the central column, refusing to look up and dispel the illusion. “You could have saved that man. The TARDIS was trying to tell you to stop. No one has actually seen Dan die. You have a time machine, you could have just whisked him away in the last moment. No one would have noticed the difference. Yet, you didn’t. Why?”

“I thought you were gone. I haven’t seen you for almost a century. I thought…” the Doctor’s lips trembled as she forced the words out, “I thought I was getting better.” An exasperated sigh could be heard in the room.

“I’m not a hallucination. I never was. I’m real, you just can’t accept it. And stop changing the subject; it’s not going to work.”

“Why did you come back?” the question was weak, barely voiced. The Doctor could feel her whole body going numb, leaving her with the sensation of floating in the cold of the void.

“I will always come back. No matter how many times you send me away, no matter how long it takes for you to finally believe me, I will never give up.” Although the voice was kind and the words were supposed to inspire hope, all the Doctor could feel was cold dread and heartbreak. Without her notice, tears started running down her face. “Look at me, my love. Look at me and tell me what’s wrong.”

Spellbound, the Doctor shifted her gaze from the console to the back of the room where the voice was coming from. There, leaning against the doorway leading to the rest of her ship, stood a woman, bleached blonde hair framing her forever-unchanging face. Her attire looked like something out of the Shakespearean era, and if the look she was sending the Doctor was any indication, she was deeply unimpressed by the Time Lady’s latest actions. That finally broke the spell, letting the Doctor’s anger surface.

“Don’t look at me like that! Rose would never look at me like that! All disapproving and judgemental! See, that’s another indication that you are just a hallucination. A fragment of my imagination. Not. Real.” The Doctor almost snarled the last words, looking defiantly into the apparition’s eyes.

“Oh, I totally would and I totally am! I know it’s been a long time, but don’t you dare to put me on a bloody pedestal! I was never afraid to tell you when you’ve been acting stupid, and I’m definitely not going to stop doing it now! And right now, you are acting very, very stupid,” emphasised Rose, finally moving closer to the centre of the room. “It’s like you don’t even try anymore! You forget things you have known for hundreds of years. You ignore the obvious. You might not kill anymore, but you don’t save everyone you could either. You don’t put everything into your adventures now. It’s like you just don’t care enough, like you have given up…” by the end of her outburst, Rose’s voice choked off. Her eyes were suspiciously red when she looked up at the Doctor pleadingly. “Just tell me what’s wrong. Please, I want to help.”

At those words, the Doctor’s face became an unreadable mask. Wiping off her tears, the Time Lady focused her attention on the TARDIS’s console. “You want to help? You are not even real.”

“I am real!” shouted Rose, reaching out towards the Doctor before pulling her hand back. The Doctor, who has seen her aborted motion, just scoffed before she started pulling levers and pushing buttons, taking the TARDIS into the time vortex.

“If you are real,” she started, her steel-like voice easily cutting through the noise of the time rotor, “If you are not just a fragment of my imagination, then prove it.” With that, she pulled another lever, and the TARDIS started to materialise somewhere new.

“Where did you take us?” asked Rose when the ship finally stopped shaking. The bitter, derisive smile the Doctor has sent her way made Rose’s heart clench.

“What, you can’t even tell? Sheffield, same location, just two days later. Let’s see if the big Bad Wolf can handle a couple apes.” She barely finished the sentence before the TARDIS’s doors swung open, diverting her attention to Yaz, who just stepped into the ship.

“Hello, Doctor! You know you are almost half an hour late? For someone with a time machine, you are never on time,” said Yaz teasingly.

Instead of replying, the Doctor turned her head back to where Rose was standing not even three seconds ago, only to find empty space there. Her expression crumbled momentarily, nails digging into the palm of her hands, wishing they could actually draw blood. “That’s what I thought,” she whispered. It took her only a second to school her expression into the usual cheerful one, during which time Yaz was distracted by Graham and Ryan coming into the TARDIS as well, joking about being late for their own funeral, or some other nonsense.

“All right, fam! I hope you had a restful weekend, because I’m ready for the next adventure,” her grin seemed to be contagious, because when she pulled the lever to dematerialise the TARDIS, her companions looked at her with excitement written all over their features.

Chapter Text

“Well, that was eventful,” huffed Ryan when the TARDIS finally stabilised itself inside the time vortex. Last night they have succeeded in stopping those weird living mud creatures from taking over the world, or whatever they wanted to accomplish there. Honestly, Ryan was still a bit shaken from watching the Doctor being tried for witchcraft, excuse him if he couldn’t remember exactly what the Morax army wanted. After Becka’s death, they have managed to get a good night’s sleep at last before they said their goodbyes to King James and Willa and left that crazy period behind.

“All right, fam! Where would you like to go next?” asked the Doctor, enthusiastic and self-confident again, brushing off her trial like it was just any other day. ‘Who knows though,’ thought Ryan, ‘Maybe this is actually normal for her.’ Before anyone could offer up suggestions on their next destination, he quickly stepped forward.

“Doctor… this might sound stupid, but… are there any places where you could find real witches?” As soon as the question left his mouth, Ryan could feel his face heating up. Real witches, right. What was he—

“Of course!” At her companions’ dumbfounded expression, the Doctor quickly corrected herself, “Well, it depends on how you define witches. There’s a planet where the residents live in a kind of symbiosis with nature. It’s fascinating, really. See, it all relies on a delicate balance between…” The rest of the Doctor’s hundred miles a minute explanation might have been lost on Ryan, but he took solace in the fact that neither Yaz nor Graham looked like they understood any of the Time Lady’s speech.

“That sounds great,” he interrupted before the Doctor could bring out charts or something, “Could we go there? I just need to see people being accepted. These witch hunts were real messed up,” he trailed off, hoping Graham hadn’t picked up on just how traumatic this whole experience was for Ryan. If the old man tried to talk about feelings, Ryan was more than ready to jump ship.

“Perfect!” exclaimed the Doctor, running up to the console. “Planet of Boaes, here we come!” But before she could as much as push a button, the Doctor froze on the spot with a grimace on her face. “Actually, I’ve never managed to dry my boots properly after being dunked. Highly unpleasant, wet boots are. Let me change out of them first. I will be back in a tic!” she shouted over her shoulders as she dashed towards where she hoped her room still was. “Don’t go anywhere without me!”

“Spare boots, spare boots, please, tell me I have spare boots…” the Doctor mumbled as she climbed under her table, shifting through the pile of shoes there.

“Second cupboard on your left.” If anyone asked, the Doctor would deny the embarrassing squeak that left her mouth for all eternity. She had no idea what happened exactly, but from the way her head hurt and the content of her 67^th century lava lamp was dripping from the table top into the dance shoes she got from a Rockette, she could definitely make an educated guess. One hand clutching the back of her head, the Doctor slowly climbed out from under the table. Not even three steps away, at the middle of the Doctor’s bed, Rose Tyler looked entirely too serious for someone who just saw a two thousand year-old being bash her head under a table.

“Thanks for that,” hissed the Doctor, still not letting go of her head. “Would you mind knocking next time? Don’t hallucinations supposed to have manners? Wait, don’t answer that. I’m sure hallucinations can be rude too. Although I can’t imagine a world where Jackie Tyler wouldn’t have smacked you over the head if you—“

“STOP IT!” The sudden outburst caught the Doctor unawares. She stood up slowly, watching the apparition almost collapse into herself and start weeping. She has never heard Rose cry like that. The heart-wrenching sound was more than what the Doctor could take, and she started to wonder, not for the first time, why her own mind was torturing her so.

“I’m sorry. I’m not exactly sure what I did wrong, but I’m sorry. Was it the mention of Jackie? I know Rose used to be quite sensitive about her mum, and who can blame her, really, with—“

“I said, stop it!” the woman, who was still definitely not Rose, screamed again, startling the Doctor into silence. “Stop this incessant rambling! Stop pretending to be all innocent and clueless! Stop acting like you have no idea what’s going on around you, like you don’t remember half of your life! Stop hiding behind this… this annoyingly cheerful mask!” By the end of the tirade, the Doctor’s face completely closed off. If not for the cold fury in her eyes, one would have thought they were talking to a robot.

“Been talking with King James, have you?” she asked, still not moving from the middle of her room. “I don’t know what you want from me, and frankly, by now, I don’t even care. I’m sick of this hallucination, I’m sick of seeing someone long dead pop up randomly, like my life wasn’t wretched enough—“

“You hesitated.” The heartbroken tone brought the Doctor up short. Her blood turning into ice in her veins, she desperately hoped one could fake incomprehension to herself, because this conversation was rapidly turning into something she never wanted to experience.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Her attempt at evasion backfired spectacularly when instead of dropping the subject, Rose jumped off the bed, and with eyes flashing menacing golden, she started yelling again.

“Yesterday! At the trial! A wet weekend with Houdini…” she scoffed, “You could have gotten out of those chains in twenty seconds. You waited for almost four minutes! Four minutes, Doctor! And don’t give me that bullshit about superior Time Lord biology, because even that only works if you inhale before you go under, not exhale. I saw you, Doctor. I saw you exhale,” her voice broke on the last word, making her unable to continue.

“It’s not like I could have died. I wasn’t in danger at all. Worst case scenario, my regeneration process would have kicked in, burning through the chains and freeing me. There’s not much point in changing faces mid-saving the world,” she shrugged, playing nonchalant. “It would just confuse people and make my job that much harder.”

“And was that the only reason you came up?” Rose asked, her tone pleading the Time Lady to contradict her. When no answer came, Rose whispered tearfully, “Doctor, do you want to die?”

The question felt like a punch in her gut. Suddenly short of breath and with her whole body trembling, the Doctor stumbled into the chair standing next to her desk, and curling in on herself, she finally began to sob.

For once, the Doctor had no idea how much time has passed. Her whole world narrowed down to the never-ending pain and loneliness that could never be shaken off for long, that would follow her everywhere until the end of her existence. She felt tired. More tired than she ever remembered being. The Time Lady wanted nothing more than to pass out right then, in that chair, and never wake up again. Later, when her own tears have stopped flowing and she thought she might be able to just fall asleep, the sound of muffled crying from beside her bed pulled her attention back to reality. She lifted her gaze up to Rose, who was still standing in her bedroom, trying to stifle her own cries with her hands.

“Why are you still here?” The Doctor’s voice sounded hoarse from crying. “Why are you still tormenting me? You are not even real…”

“I am real, Doctor, I am real,” Rose’s reply was barely audible.

“You keep saying that, but nothing confirms it! You keep showing up when I’m on my own, always in different clothes but never aging a day. You never touch me, you never change anything I can’t explain away when you are gone. And you are never around when I’m surrounded by other people. How do you explain this, Rose? If you are real, why can’t you just prove it somehow?” Without meaning to, the Doctor’s voice shifted into a pleading tone that would haunt those who had heard her until the end of their lives.

Rose gave the Time Lady a shaky smile, whispering only one word, “Spoilers.”

The Doctor’s reaction was instantaneous. She stood up sudden enough for her chair to fall over and clatter noisily on the floor, and with fire in her eyes, she turned against Rose.

“How dare you?! It’s not enough that you take the form of a girl long gone, but you dare to quote my dead wife’s words to me?!” Eyes flashing, the Doctor wiped the remains of her tears off her face. “Get out! I don’t want to see you ever again!”

“Doctor…” The hurt look that overcame Rose’s face did nothing to soothe the Time Lady’s anger.

“NO! I’m done with you!” And without a backward glance, the Doctor marched up to the bedroom door and tore it open. “I’m done with all of it…” She hasn’t noticed the satisfying way the door has slammed behind her, or how it opened back again not even two seconds later. She hasn’t noticed the warmth of the floor seeping into her feet through her mismatched socks. She hasn’t noticed how the TARDIS has rearranged her corridors just so her thief could reach the console room sooner. She hasn’t noticed her companions’ alarmed gasps upon spotting her furious expression.

What she definitely did notice though was when Yaz tentatively asked, “Who are you?” and the apparition with Rose’s face and Rose’s startled voice replied instinctively, “Rose Tyler,” and the whole world tilted on its axis.

Time stood still for the Doctor as her brain tried and failed to come up with anything even moderately coherent. She felt like her body went on autopilot as a far too wide grin stretched across her face and she slowly turned back towards the doorway. “So, hallucinations do have manners after all…”

Someone started to laugh. It wasn’t the nice kind of laughter, like the one you hear after a good joke or a fulfilled desire. No, this was the kind of laughter you would hear from someone who has finally reached their breaking point, who has exhausted their tears and had nothing else to give. With shaking hands, the Doctor reached up to stifle the terrible sounds coming out of her mouth.

Without another glance at the humans in the console room, Rose approached the Doctor cautiously. Disbelief written all over her features, she lifted a trembling hand towards the Doctor’s face, and after a shuddering breath, she finally bridged the gap between them.

Stars could have been born and died out again over their heads, the Doctor still wouldn’t have noticed it. Her whole focus was on that tiny point of contact that felt so painful, yet nowhere near enough. Without thinking about it, she pushed herself forward, barrelling into the very much real body of her Rose.

She had no idea when she started to cry again, or when her companions left the room; all that mattered to her was that she was finally in Rose’s arms. With the TARDIS’s soothing hum in the back of her mind, at long last, she succumbed to oblivion.

Chapter Text

It took a long time for the Doctor to finally calm down. After siting on the hard floor for probably far too long to be healthy, Rose helped the Time Lady to her feet and led her down the corridor. Supporting the other woman’s weight was a sensation she wouldn’t have traded for all the gold in the universe. She still felt like she was in shock – who wouldn’t have been, really? After hundreds of years of separation, she was finally reunited with the person who changed her life forever.

It took Rose only maybe a minute to reach the Doctor’s room. When she opened the door, she was grateful to discover that the TARDIS has put two sets of pyjamas on the Doctor’s bed. There was no way she would have been able to leave the Doctor on her own now, so she was definitely glad for the thoughtful gesture on the TARDIS’s part.

She managed to wrestle the Doctor into her pyjamas and change herself without anyone breaking down again, which was a huge accomplishment, Rose thought. They both climbed under the covers, snuggling up to each other in the middle of the Doctor’s bed.

“Will you…?” the Time Lady’s voice was hoarse, but her eyes conveyed the question her words couldn’t.

“Yes. I’m not going anywhere. I promise,” vowed Rose, pressing a light kiss to the Doctor’s forehead. “We can talk more tomorrow.” With that, they both drifted off to sleep.

First time Rose woke up, it was to clever fingers running through her hair. She opened her eyes to the darkened room of the TARDIS, only to close them again as the Doctor lips touched hers. The kiss was light and sleepy, but it filled Rose with warmth she hasn’t experienced in recent years. When the Doctor pulled back, it was only to touch her forehead to Rose’s.

“Rose Tyler… I love you.”

A delighted giggle escaped Rose as tried to wiggle up enough to capture the Time Lady’s lips again. “I love you too,” she breathed before she pulled the Doctor down for another kiss.

Second time Rose woke up, the bedroom was lit up by the soft orange glow of a binary star system showing through the ceiling. While the view was undeniably breathtaking, it had nothing on the sight that greeted Rose when she looked down along her body.

The Doctor was lying on her front, her head nested on Rose’s stomach, mouth slightly open as a thin line of drool made its way down to Rose’s top, where it already formed a sizeable pool. Wrinkling her nose a bit, Rose gently shook the Time Lady’s shoulders.

“Doctor?” when her only reply was a soft snore, Rose slowly shimmied out from under the sleeping woman. Standing next to the bed, she looked back down on the peaceful scene. “Time Lords don’t sleep, my arse…” she mocked, imitating the accent of her first Doctor. With the quiet of the TARDIS around her, an idea started to form in Rose’s mind.

The shrill scream barely registered in Yaz's mind before her police training kicked in and she was out in the corridor within the second. Her body still half asleep, she was stunned to see the source of all that noise: the Doctor, clothes completely soaked, was chasing a manically cackling Rose Tyler down the spaceship’s corridors. She saw Rose tearing a door open only to come to a sudden halt. Eyes comically wide, she turned around to warn the Doctor of something, most probably, but she never got the chance. The Doctor barrelled right into the other woman, resulting in them disappearing through the open doorway. The huge splash that followed revealed to Yaz that the two madwomen had found one of the four swimming pools. Shaking her head a bit, she went back to her room; the sound of splashing and carefree laughter following her every steps.

When Yaz entered the library about an hour later, it was to the sight of the two other women curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea each. They both looked dry and cozy, so she thought it would be better if she just left them to it. She was ready to back out quietly, but she only managed to take one step before she bumped into someone. The resulting commotion swiftly drew the attention of the two women.

“Gang! Come in! We were just about to tell each other some stories,” shouted the Doctor, almost jumping off the couch. Yaz exchanged an awkward glance with the boys. Knowing the Doctor, those ‘stories’ would be about the new woman’s life and how she ended up in the TARDIS. While they were all burning with curiosity, none of them could shake off the image of the Doctor sobbing on the floor at the middle of the console room. Whatever history those two shared, it must have been really personal and painful.

“Are you sure, Doc? Don’t you want a bit of privacy?” Graham, ever so tactful, offered the Time Lady an easy way out.

“Don’t be daft,” laughed Rose. “I’m here to stay. I’m sure you lot are all curious and I don’t want to go through everything twice. Besides, you should always know who exactly you are travelling with,” she said with a strange glint in her eyes. Curiosity won out over the fear of it all getting awkward again, and each of the companions made their way to the beanbags around the sofa.

“Right,” exclaimed the Doctor when everyone was seated at last, “Introductions! Rose, these are my new best friends: Yaz, Graham, and Ryan,” she said, pointing out each person to Rose. She barely finished that before she jumped up onto the sofa, almost spilling half her tea on Ryan as she plonked herself back down onto one of the armrests. “Fam, this is Rose Tyler, former companion of mine, born in 1987 London. We’ve met when she was only nineteen, just like you, Yaz! Imagine that! Anyway, we met in a shop. Well, not really in the shop, more like in the basement. And when I say met—”

“Doctor,” interrupted Rose before the Time Lady could gain too much speed in her rambling and became an unstoppable force. “How about I take over for now?” She saw the relief on the companions’ faces who, bless their souls, were prepared to just suffer through the Doctor’s longwinded explanation. ‘She could do with some other friends who could ground her a bit,’ she thought, looking at the sheepish expression on the Doctor’s face. She could still remember Donna Noble, who would call the Doctor out on anything, never for a minute fearing the man. Or respecting him too much. The memory brought a fond smile to her lips.

When she had everyone’s attention, Rose described briefly how she met the Doctor, how they ended up on that station controlled by the Daleks, and how she became Bad Wolf, then got trapped in a parallel universe. She also gave a short explanation of how the meta-crisis version of the Doctor came to be, before turning her full attention to the blonde woman, who was sitting at the end of the sofa with her knees up to her chin. This is where the story became more complicated.

“I could never get quite used to that world. Something always felt off. I’d have these weird dreams about a golden light, calling me back to my universe. All the while, we noticed I wasn’t aging,” she explained, trying not to go into too much details, least they wanted to sit there for two days. “It wasn’t easy after that. While we tried to find a way back here without destroying both universes, we never really got anywhere. Then, one day, when I had no one left, I just… slipped through.”

“Wait, what do you mean you slipped through?!” cried the Doctor, stopping Rose from continuing her story.

“I can’t really explain it. I was just walking home, thinking about this universe, when my foot went straight through the pavement. I fell right through the ground, landing in this universe’s Cardiff. I never found an explanation for it. And before you interrupt again,” she raised her voice slightly, stopping the Time Lady before she could do more than open her mouth, “all the technical details can wait. I want to get through this quickly. You can scan me all you want after,” she sent a cheeky grin towards the Doctor, feeling rather smug at the Time Lady’s flustered expression.

“After realising where I was, I broke into Torchwood and stole one of their vortex manipulators. Nasty way of travel, but I didn’t have much to choose from. They also kept a record of all the sightings of the TARDIS anywhere in the world, so I randomly chose one where I wouldn’t cross my own timeline, then made the jump, hoping for the best.” Even though Rose was facing the Doctor, her eyes seemed to be billions of miles away, on a faraway planet, all alone…

Rose has landed on a scorching hot rooftop. She was definitely grateful for the flat surface, as rolling off a high building while experiencing vertigo from a time and space jump was not something she would have recommended for anyone’s continued health. Although the heat of the planet’s star didn’t help at all, she slowly managed to get her bearings and made her way down to street level without breaking anything. While the climb down was slow and torturous with her head still being all fuzzy, she at least managed to gain some insight into the planet’s native species. Buildings no higher than two floors, lots of railings around every edge, no one running around on the rooftops even though every building had an easy to access ladder fixed to its side: the natives must either have a terrible sense of balance, have to be afraid of heights, or have many unexpected earthquakes; possible combination of two or more of these. Other theories were discarded as soon as she caught a glimpse of a humanoid creature walking by on the streets, steps delicate and carefully measured as it made its way to one of the buildings on its thin, almost stick-like legs.

When she was finally on solid ground again, Rose took a look around, trying to determine how much the planet’s inhabitants tolerated aliens in their city. Hearing some noise coming from her left, she carefully made her way to a busy street, full of natives and aliens alike. The place seemed to be a market, buzzing with all kinds of life, making blending in easier than Rose would have expected.

Before she could take more than two steps into the crowd, she heard a female voice with a northern accent calling her name. Immediately suspecting a telepathic species trying to get her attention just so they could sell her something, she turned around, prepared to politely refuse whatever was on offer. What she definitely did not expect was a blonde woman to grab her arm, push her up against the nearest wall, and try to snog the daylights out of her.

Rose was by no means a prude. For one, she was over two hundred years old. She might have had a few hang-ups about what’s proper and what’s not when she was still young, but as she matured, she quickly realised these were mostly just stupid phobias. For another, she has spent almost two years travelling with Captain Jack Harkness. No one’s sexuality is safe when you are around that man. Watching him flirt with everything and everyone was an eye-opening experience for Rose.

Still, random aliens and non-consensual smooching was a big no-no even in Rose’s book. Using a nerve-pinching technique she learnt from a race that consumes its food while it’s still alive, she managed to temporarily paralyse the other woman, giving her a chance to put some distance between them. Disadvantage of this technique was that it had to be applied to the back of the neck, meaning you couldn’t get very far from your victim before you had to release them.

“Ow, that actually hurt,” whinged the woman as soon as Rose released her. Her expression turned inquisitive almost instantly though, reminding Rose of a certain someone with more curiosity than sense. “How does it work? Can you show me? Oh, this could be really useful on laundry day…”

“Who are you?” interrupted Rose, trying to shake off the feeling of familiarity that surrounded that woman. If she has met the blonde while she was still travelling with the Doctor, she certainly didn’t remember her. Still, for some reason, instead of doing the sensible thing and running away, her body was rooted to the spot. She had that weird feeling of coming home that people experience when they step into a forest they have spent loads of time in as children. Everything might have changed, but the feeling of safety and peace would always remain the same.

That might have been the reason why – at the sound of some angry yelling – Rose let the other woman step closer to her again. When she looked down the street, Rose saw a group of seriously pissed off looking natives making their way through the crowd with the support of what seemed like training wheels strapped to their sides for stability.

“Kissing is considered sacred here,” murmured the other woman, her mischievous smile sending a shiver down Rose’s spine. “They consider it a taboo to even look at a kissing couple for too long, let alone ask them if they saw the alien who sampled their queen’s food.”

It was a testament of all the bizarre situations Rose had been in that she didn’t even blink before reaching up to remove the rather distinctive coat the other woman was wearing. “Did they get a good look at your face?” she asked, dropping the coat by their feet. When the other woman just shook her head, Rose grabbed hold of her arms and quickly reversed their positions, pressing the startled blonde up against the wall. Trying to shield the rest of her body as much as she could, Rose made sure their faces were visible enough to make it blatantly obvious what they were doing, before she pressed her lips against the other woman’s.

The kiss that started out fairly innocent quickly turned aggressive. Rose would be lying if she said that wasn’t one of the best kisses of her life. The other woman was startlingly confident and seemed to know what to do exactly in order to make Rose weak in the knees. She could vaguely hear the angry aliens moving further and further away from them, but she was still reluctant to break the kiss. Rose pressed herself even further against the other woman, her right leg slipping between the alien’s thighs and pressing up, she was delighted to discover their anatomy was similar enough to elicit a low moan from her partner.

Rose let her hands wander around her partner’s body. Using one hand to grab onto the other woman’s hips and guide her to rub more firmly against Rose’s thigh, she let her other hand slip further up to grasp the short blonde locks. When the other woman moaned again, she gave her hair a firm tug, using the opportunity to latch onto the alien’s throat. The slight pain mixed with pleasure seemed to work wonders on the other woman, as she let out a loud cry and almost collapsed against Rose. Feeling adventurous, Rose slowly dragged her hand down from the alien’s hips to replace her thigh, when she felt strong fingers wrapping around her wrist, stopping their descent.

“While kissing is encouraged on the streets,” whispered the other woman, her voice deep from arousal, “having sex is not.” The realisation that they were at the middle of a busy market was more effective than a cold shower. Rose let out a harsh breath, finally pushing away from her partner’s body. Before she could get too far, the other woman grabbed onto her T-shirt, yanking her back enough to purr into her ears. “One day, Rose Tyler… One day I’m going to take you to a planet where I can ravish you in public with no repercussions whatsoever. Somewhere I can just push you down on the ground, spread your legs open, and eat you out until you are so caught up in your pleasure that you forget about all the people watching us…”

“Now that we have established that we are both into exhibitionism,” started Rose, pushing down a new wave of arousal, “would you mind telling me who you are? How do you know my name?”

“Oh, Rose, you know exactly who I am,” said the alien, still not letting go of Rose. Instead of stepping back like a normal person would, the other woman simply moved so she could put her arms around Rose. “My face has changed, and I’m definitely a hugger now, but I love you just as much as I have when we were still travelling together.”

Wild hope warred with utter disbelief as Rose pulled back, trying to look at the alien features. “Doctor…?” she whispered, not daring to believe finding the alien would have been so easy. Head still spinning from everything that happened to her just on that day, she desperately tried to push her emotions down before they could overwhelm her completely.

“Hi,” breathed the Doctor, eyes never leaving the other woman’s face.

“How…?”

“I knew you would be here. You told me to look for you here,” said the Doctor, her face falling slowly. “We don’t have much time now. Pay attention carefully, because I won’t have time to explain it twice. You won’t see me for a while. At least not like this. You will see younger versions of me, but you will never touch me. You will show up whenever I’m the most desperate, helping me cope even though I will always think you are just a cruel hallucination. The TARDIS will help you. She will guide you to where and when you need to be, and when it’s time, she will reveal you to me. You have to be strong now, Rose Tyler. You have to be strong for the both of us,” she finished, picking up her coat and reaching inside her pocket to pull out a credit stick, slipping it in one of Rose’s pockets instead. “Unlimited credit. I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rose, panic starting to set in. “I don’t understand! I just got here, what—”

“I’m sorry,” repeated the Doctor, pulling an orange and grey device out of her pocket. Before Rose could even react, she quickly pointed the new sonic screwdriver at the vortex manipulator still clasped around Rose’s wrist, activating the device that would take her companion away from her again.

“Wait a second, I don’t understand,” interrupted Graham for the first time. “When did this happen?”

“For the Doctor, it hasn’t happened yet. She will have to do it soon though. For me, it was around four hundred years ago.”

“What?!” cried the Doctor, almost falling off the sofa. “How old are you?”

“Six hundred, give or take,” replied Rose with an easy shrug and a cheeky smile. It still didn’t reassure the Doctor, whose face instantly fell at the mention of such a high number.

“I’m so sorry, Rose. If I could have just…” the Doctor quieted down, knowing the futility of such thoughts. Even with a time machine, certain things could not be changed. “What have you been up to when you were not here?”

“Travelling, mostly.”

“Without me?”

“I love you, but I’m not defined by you,” laughed Rose. “I have my own life, you know. In the first couple years, I’d just wait for any signs from the TARDIS, anything that would show me if you needed me. I was afraid to travel too far. But as the years passed and the TARDIS realised what I’ve been doing, she kind of made a point by forcing me to wait more and more between calls.”

“How did she call you? How did you know when to show up? Did she bring you in somehow? She never told me she can do that! And how did you know all those details about what happened? And –”

“Doctor, slow down! You’ve got a telepathic ship, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“Exactly. Anyway, time travel, mixed with the telepathic connection I have with the TARDIS – and yes, Doctor, you can test that later too –, I could have just jumped from one meeting to the other. But the TARDIS knew it would be better for me to live more as well. She would always make me wait more when I was idle. If I stayed in one place for too long, she simply wouldn’t call me at all. I had to keep travelling. It was hard at first, but after a while, I couldn’t even dream of stopping. I fell in love with the universe just like I fell in love with you, Doctor, and I’m grateful for the TARDIS’s help.” Rose barely finished her sentence before the lights started to twinkle merrily.

“She never does that for me!” exclaimed the Time Lady, casting a bewildered look around.

“Well, maybe if you said ‘thank you’ more often…” offered Ryan, enjoying the two women’s interaction. He would never admit it, but he started to notice a gradual decline in the Doctor’s mood over the last couple months. The ever-present sadness in the Time Lady’s expression seemed to have disappeared since yesterday. He knew it won’t be that easy, that there would be better days as well as darker ones, but he was definitely glad it was not up to him to have a heart-to-heart with the Doctor over this issue.

“Where did you go?” asked Yaz, interrupting the Doctor before she could try and rebuke Ryan.

“When I started travelling myself?” Rose sent a grateful look at Yaz. “I’d mostly visit times and places I’d never be able to see with the Doctor, in fear of crossing his- sorry, her own timeline. I always made sure he wouldn’t see me. That reminds me though: what was the deal with that celery?!” That question derailed the conversation for a while, but no one minded it. They were all together, healthy and happy, and in that moment, they couldn’t have asked for more.