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It ends, as things always should, with a kiss.
It’s not quite the kiss that either of them had imagined, or even the kiss that others had imagined for them (which was a far more common occurrence than either of them were willing to admit). But it was assuredly, undeniably them and that was perhaps the only aspect that neither of them would feel guilty about later.
The power of a god (or a goddess, as it were) in a mortal’s hands is bad enough. It’s not so much of “be careful what you wish for” as it is “be careful of wishing at all,” because Rose Tyler didn’t even need to speak to seal her own fate. She didn’t need to wish because she already had, her desire written across her heart as neatly and clearly as any tattoo. One look at her heart was more than enough.
Stay. Stay with him, let me stay. Not alone, not him. Everybody lives. Better with two.
The power of a goddess in a Time Lord’s hands was even worse. A Time Lord is more equipped to carry the power, sure, but all that it means is that there is more agency, more coherency-–it does nothing to erase those scars of desire. For all that is written on a human heart, a Time Lord carries two.
Let her live even if I won’t, even if I have to go. Just let the next one be someone who deserves her. Someone worthy of her, as much as I can be.
It begins, as things tend to do, with love.
“Cancel Barcelona,” the Doctor says confidently, turning a few knobs as he concentrates on their new intended destination. “Change to… London… the Powell Estate… ah… let’s say the 24th of December.” He glances over at Rose hopefully, deflating a bit at her still stricken expression. “Consider it a Christmas present.”
Consider it an apology present.
A farewell.
A hello.
To his utter relief, Rose begins to make her way towards his position at the console, and he gives her what he hopes is a gently encouraging and not-at-all-manic grin.
“There,” he finishes with a flourish, flicking one last switch and hoping to hell that his synapses were firing properly. Hard to tell with regeneration, really—everything felt raw and prickly and wrong, but he was just adjusting. He just wasn’t sure how well.
“I’m going home?” Rose asks, and he hates that he can’t decipher her tone. Brand new ears and now all of a sudden he can’t tell if Rose Tyler is hurt or relieved.
“Up to you,” the Doctor shrugs instead of giving the resounding no that had risen up in his throat. They were just dropping in, weren’t they? A cup of tea, a go at the toaster, and boom, back in the TARDIS for another spin through time and space—
“Back to your mum,” the Doctor chokes out instead, careful to keep his expression impassive. “It’s all waiting. Fish and chips, sausage and mash, beans on toast—no, Christmas! Turkey! Although, having met your mother, nut loaf would be more appropriate.”
Rose ducks to hide her smile, and the Doctor feels—he feels—
“Was that a smile?” he beams knowingly, delighted by the familiarity of the look even through his new eyes.
“No,” Rose denies quickly, but it’s far too late, an almost impossibly buoyant feeling rising in his chest that his last body had rarely felt with such ease.
“That was a smile,” he half-crows, a flicker of anxiety rising at the way she frowns at his teasing.
“No, I didn’t,” she argues, and he tries to tamp down the hurt.
It never used to feel this hard, did it?
“Oh, come on,” he replies, trying not to sound like he’s whining, or worse, begging. “All I did was change, I didn’t…”
And then there’s pain, and the TARDIS feels it too, and Rose feels the shaking and all three of them seem to shudder.
“What?” Rose asks, and he can’t tell if she’s asking about the shaking or his unfinished sentence.
“I said I didn’t…” he begins, fully intending to answer both questions before another shiver wracks his body and he nearly retches from the nausea.
“Are you alright?” Rose frowns in concern, and he’d be ecstatic about her coming closer if he wasn’t so worried.
“Stay back,” he manages, just before he coughs and golden mist spills out.
“Was that-–” Rose starts, brow furrowing.
“Oh…” the Doctor groans, doubling over a bit. “The change is going a bit wrong and all-–” he gasps, falling to his knees as his expression contorts in pain.
“What do I do?” Rose asks frantically. “Should we go back? Maybe Captain J–-” The sudden and overwhelming rejection that courses through her cuts off her words, and to Rose’s shock she finds her brain moving on instinctively in spite of her undeniable confusion. “What do I do?” she repeats instead, moving to stand in front of the console and projecting what she hopes is confidence.
“I haven’t used this one in years,” the Doctor manages, moving to flick a switch, and Rose’s hand moves without any input from her—she’s not sure which of the two of them is more shocked when she grabs his wrist just before he can flick the switch that she can feel is the wrong choice.
“I—“ she fumbles for an explanation, shaking her head silently at the Doctor when she comes up with nothing in the face of his confused stare. “I don’t… It just felt like I needed to do that, like you didn’t want to do that.”
And it makes no bloody sense, because he’d clearly intended to flick that switch, and there’s no way she should know that there was currently a disconnect between his thoughts and his actions. But in yet another astonishing move, he doesn’t question it, and Rose belatedly realizes it’s because he’s in too much pain and they’re in too much danger for him to prioritize his itching curiosity right now.
“Need to stabilize the flight,” the Doctor gasps out instead. “Can’t… best to land somewhere, Vortex is too… is too…”
He hunches over rather suddenly, another wisp of gold practically tearing itself from his mouth.
“Powell Estate,” he grits out when he can. “So you… so you’re not al—oh, ” he moans, and Rose turns to the console frantically.
She can’t quite explain what happens next. Rose has seen the Doctor land at the Powell Estate a multitude of times, obviously more than they’ve landed anywhere else (though a couple marketplace planets have warranted repeat visits, and she’s pretty sure he’s been hinting at another trip to Woman Wept in their future), so she thinks—hopes—that this can be chalked up to some sort of subconscious memory and not mind control or any other ridiculous alien thing that just might be part of her crazy life now.
She lands the TARDIS. Most of it comes surprisingly naturally, though there are a few moments of pause where her hand hovers uncertainly over a button, a lever, and she’s starting to grow used to the tiniest of nudges, those prodding feelings of right and wrong directing her decisions when she’s more unsure of herself. It’s hardly the smoothest of landings, but no worse than some of the Doctor’s more iffy ones, and she nearly collapses with relief when the ship finally stops shuddering and she can see the familiar view of the Estates on the view screen.
“Now what?” she asks frantically, turning back to the Doctor.
“Zero Room,” he manages, silently pleading for the TARDIS’s help. To his relief, it ends up being the first doorway available when Rose helps him out of the console room, and he belatedly hopes his ship can feel his gratitude and affection as easily as she had his desperation.
“Now what?” Rose repeats, and the Doctor hums nonsensically, his incoherent mumbles drowned out by the loud banging on the door of the TARDIS.
“Just rest,” Rose thinks she hears, and tries not to go insane with worry.
The Doctor sleeps, Rose frets, and Jackie makes tea.
“A what?” Rose asks, and the Doctor wonders if her pale face and hushed tone is due to horror, fear, or both.
“A telepathic bond,” he repeats, hoping his discomfort isn’t audible to his companion—Rassilon, his bondmate. And now that he’s put it that way, he’s quite sure he’s not fooling either of them.
“Okay,” Rose manages, swallowing down her anxiety, and the Doctor feels a stab of pride at the way she holds herself together in the face of the unknown. Quite literally, if one accounts for the fact that his actual face is just about 20 hours old. “What’s that mean, then?”
The Doctor hesitates, shrugging sheepishly at Rose when she frowns at his apparent reluctance. “It’s not something I’ve ever had to explain before,” he tells her apologetically. “Time Lords, we’re just born into it. It’s a given, a fact. Just like humans never question the institution of marriage. Well, mostly. Well, sometimes.”
“Just like you never have to explain regeneration?” Rose asks, and the Doctor blanches and tries to detect any barb behind the words.
“Well, er, no,” he mumbles. “That one comes up a bit more often than I’d like it to, it just isn’t a very fun explanation so I tend to avoid the issue.”
“Never would’ve guessed,” Rose deadpanned, before biting her lip and sighing. “So, you’re saying… you and I, we’re–-”
“Bonded, yeah,” the Doctor finishes evenly. “It would seem so.”
“You said it’s a Time Lord thing, though,” Rose points out. “‘M human, so then how…”
“I suspect,” the Doctor says softly, “that you already know.”
She looks away then, barely able to meet his eyes as she thinks about what she must’ve wished for, what the TARDIS must’ve seen when she looked into her heart. And suddenly she feels guilty, knowing that it was her wish that had trapped him like this. She’d never wanted him to be alone, wanted to be his equal, and now he is stuck with her in more ways than she ever could’ve anticipated.
She feels guilty, too, for how appealing their new reality sounds to her.
“Tell me about them, about the bonds,” she says instead of acknowledging his last statement. “What does it mean for us?”
“Well,” the Doctor starts, and she smiles at the sound of what she suspects is a habit forming. It’s only been a day, and her heart aches desperately for the Northern accent that used to send her pulse fluttering and the twinkling blue eyes that used to steal the air from her lungs, but somehow, this feels right.
“You have to think of it a little bit like a seed, I suppose,” he ponders aloud, and Rose blinks at the strange comparison.
“What, like a plant?” she says doubtfully, and he rewards her curiosity with a lopsided grin.
“Exactly like a plant,” he confirms as though that clears up everything. “Think of it this way, when you form a bond, that’s not a done deal even if it sounds like that. They’re not naturally permanent–-blimey, can you imagine how messy that would be? Essentially it’d be eliminating the option of divorce in a society where individuals regularly live for multiple millennia and regenerate into entirely new people at regular intervals–-”
“Doctor,” Rose interjects, alarmed at the speed he was picking up with each passing word.
“Right, sorry! Seem to have a gob this go-around,” he muses, stroking at his chin thoughtfully. “Anyway, bonds! The point is, Rose Tyler, you should think of it like a living thing. In a way, it is, it’s a live connection between us. And you have to… well, you have to cultivate it the same way you would a plant. Take care of it, feed it, shine some light on it. Bonds strengthen when you take care of them, and they weaken when you neglect them.”
“So they can die?” Rose asks, blanching a little bit at the pain that crosses the Doctor’s expression at her words.
“Yes, they can also die,” he says softly. “And just like with plants, there are many ways to do so. You can cut it off immediately, or actively try to sabotage it, or simply forget about it until it fades away.”
“Sounds horrible,” Rose murmurs, and the Doctor can’t nod his agreement fast enough.
“Depends on how you do it, but it’s usually quite painful, yes,” he sighs. “Bonds might not be permanent naturally, but they’re still meant to last for… well, ages, at least. It… it’s possible for two people to dissolve theirs,” he says carefully, hoping his hearts aren’t bleeding into his words now. “But we shouldn’t-–I just. I wouldn’t really recommend it. Every option other than letting it fade over time is usually quite painful on one or both parties; I don’t really know of many couples that intentionally broke theirs.”
“So if-–” Rose swallows hard, trying to find the courage to say the words aloud. “So if something were to… to happen, to me, I mean. Would it just die?”
The Doctor avoids her gaze for a long moment, and when he finally does meet her eyes it feels like the weight of the universe resides in his pupils. “No. No, I… I realize this is confusing, but even though we share a bond, your… well, for lack of a better metaphor, your plant is still different from my plant.”
“What do you mean?”
“If my side of the bond were in complete disrepair and you were to-–” he inhales shakily, unable to even say the word. “Then yeah, that might be the final straw. But if I take care of my side, nurture the bond carefully and keep it alive and well, then it may very well survive beyond… beyond that date,” he explains softly. “It’s certainly harder to maintain a bond when only one of the parties remain, but it’s not impossible. Sometimes you can get stuck with one, actually; I’ve heard of accounts where the remains of the bond linger rather painfully.”
And there it was, Rose thinks, heart plummeting as she realizes what she’s done. The Doctor will still lose her, one day, and now he’ll lose this too.
“I wonder,” the Doctor comments thoughtfully, “whether or not you’ll have the full capabilities of a bond as it strengthens, or…”
“Full capabilities?” she prompts hesitantly.
“Well, really, there’s no set standard,” the Doctor shrugs. “Most Time Lords could communicate telepathically with their bondmate from afar, whereas otherwise they would need touch. Most of them could get a decent read on each other’s emotions, too. But a lot of those factors-–distance, clarity, comprehension–-those varied a lot. Doesn’t help that there wasn’t too large of a sample size to test from, bonds weren’t particularly popular-–you try getting an emotionally stifled society into a newfangled form of marriage. Not easy, I’ll tell y–-”
“Marriage?” Rose manages to choke out, and the Doctor stills.
“You know, your laundry is probably done drying by now, and your mum wanted to say goodbye, and then we can get out of here,” he points out casually. “Do not let her wrangle us into dinner. Just because I’m a new man doesn’t mean I’m domestic.”
Rose just sighs. She doesn’t actually need a bond with the bloody idiot to tell her that the conversation is over.
“When you say ‘touch it,’” Rose begins, tentatively raising her hand to her temple, “you mean like… well, is physically there?”
At her request, the Doctor is giving her lessons on how to strengthen their bond. He’d nearly fallen to his knees when she’d asked him, bowled over by the weight of her request and his overwhelming feelings for the precious human who was arguably, in the eyes of his people, his wife.
A shame they weren’t here to witness this, actually. They would’ve been absolutely scandalized. The very thought warms his hearts.
“Not as such, no,” he tells her patiently. “It’s in your mindspace, technically. Actually, that’s probably a good place to start. Close your eyes.”
She does, and he can’t help but take a moment to simply absorb the sight before him: the trusting, calm demeanor of the woman he’d all but shackled to his side. His guilty pleas when he’d held the heart of the TARDIS had been enough to seal her fate, even though he’d only had the power for mere seconds. He’d done this to her–chained her to his dangerous, alien lifestyle in some blind, desperate wish that she hadn’t had a single say in.
And still, somehow, it didn’t feel like she blamed him. He suspects he’d feel that through the bond if she did, despite his attempts to grant her privacy to even out the scales, as it were. He has a definite advantage in his natural ability to navigate telepathic connections, and he remembers just how frightened she was when she’d found out the TARDIS could connect with her mind.
All of the effort in the universe, however, probably wouldn’t have blocked out any feelings of blame or resentment, wouldn’t have prevented him from feeling a rift opening up between them where there should be a bridge. Which meant that he could probably take her reaction at face value–-plain, simple curiosity.
Selfishly, he adored the way she soaked up the knowledge like a sponge, the way she asked about his people and held his gaze as he recounted the memories to her, the way she seemed to cherish this new thing between them the way he did even though it was practically forced upon her and held no cultural significance to her. He wonders a little bit if she could feel how important it is to him.
And even more selfishly, he suspects that formation of the bond had smoothed over his regeneration more than anything else could have–-subconsciously, her mind had recognized him instantly, even as her conscious mind had rebelled against accepting the change.
“Take a deep breath, and very, very slowly, let the edges of consciousness fall away,” he instructs, biting back a smile to himself as she frowns.
“And what?” she asks, and he has to refrain from taking her hands in support.
“Direct your focus inside of yourself,” he presses. “Hone in on the point of connection between us. Let’s see if you can find your bond.”
It takes them just over an hour to make a breakthrough, which frustrates Rose but pleases (and impresses) the Doctor. For someone without any natural telepathic inklings, he truthfully hadn’t expected any success on their first day.
“It just feels like I’m exhausted, and for nothing,” Rose sighs, slumping over her cup of tea and blowing away the strands of hair that fall over her face. “I just thought, I dunno. Maybe I’d be able to speak to you in your head or something, you know?”
“Oh, even I couldn’t do that right now,” he dismisses, quirking an eyebrow at her when she looks at him in mild disbelief. “Remember what I said? Bonds can be weakened or strengthened, but it takes time and effort. We’ve planted the seed, but we don’t have leaves yet.”
“Never going to be able to look at plants the same way again,” Rose mutters, but her shy smile cuts the grumbling tone away. “So as the bond gets stronger, we’ll be able to do more with it?”
“Oh, yes,” he nods enthusiastically, before catching himself and forcing himself to tone it down a notch. “We’re already doing rather well, frankly. It’s a little different right now because you’re not a natural telepath, but with the state of our current bond, sharing base emotions, particularly very strong ones, would be easy. It’s a little more involuntary now, but a stronger bond would help us gain control of that. And later, as you guessed, we may be able to share thoughts, either inadvertently or intentionally.”
“So, you can read my emotions?” Rose asks hesitantly, and the Doctor blanches.
“No, not-–well, I could, if I tried, but I haven’t,” he assures her, hating the traces of suspicion in her gaze. “No, really, I haven’t, I don’t think. You haven’t felt anything that strongly except for the fear and confusion right when I regenerated, and at that point I was a bit too out of it to really make sense of any feelings coming through the bond. You’ve felt one of mine though,” he feels compelled to share with her, though twinges of regret pool inside his chest instantly. Rose blinks in surprise.
“What? When?”
He swallows hard, unhappy with the direction he knows this conversation will take. But it’s for the best, truly, because he’s not sure he could stand to feel her heart break over the bond if they have this conversation later down the road, when there’s even more trust between them to be shattered by the truth.
“When you tried to suggest we find Jack,” he says carefully. “You felt my reaction to that plan before you even got the words out.”
Rose’s face twists in thought at the memory, a crease forming on her brow as she recalls the visceral rejection she’d felt even when just trying to say Jack’s name. “That was from you,” she realizes. “But… why?”
The Doctor sighs, standing up and moving over to the kettle like a condemned man. “I think you’ll need another cup for this.”
Their bond grows.
His side flourishes so quickly that he’s almost embarrassed, even just in the privacy of his own mind. He is just as telepathically tactile with the bond as he is with her in this incarnation, and each instinctive mental caress has that little point of connection in his mind thriving under the constant attention.
He would worry about uneven growth and lopsided connections and all sorts of bond strains that he’d read about centuries ago from a dusty library tome, but a lot of their practice sessions involve direct telepathic connection now that Rose is capable of it, and he witnesses her side of the bond blossom as well. He has always been aware that she cares for him–his Rose has the biggest heart of any person he’s ever had the fortune to meet–but to see her feelings for him glowing bright and golden, to feel it radiate warmth and adoration, to know it as easily as he does his own mind… it’s breathtaking, and humbling, and everything he never thought he could have.
Everything he never allowed himself to have, truthfully, though the progression of their bond makes all of those previously-used, deeply-ingrained self-preservation tactics much harder to implement. It becomes nearly impossible to drop her hand on some days, and downright inconceivable to not end the more dangerous adventures with a bone-crushing hug. Wanting to kiss her daily quickly morphs into wanting to kiss her hourly, and he wonders if this is what it’s like for humans, hardly able to get anything done under the sheer volume of yearning that courses through his veins.
The bond helps, sometimes. They pick up the ability to touch upon each other’s emotions fairly quickly, and the Doctor marvels at how easily Rose seems to adapt to what may as well be a new sense for her. He gets her permission to check in on her as unobtrusively as possible, and it allows him to sense when she is injured in Scotland by a particularly violent monk. He teaches her how to reach out and read him, for lack of a better phrasing, in return, and it helps replace the words he cannot voice outside of a little chippy in London while Sarah Jane and Mickey load K9 into her trunk.
The bond hurts, sometimes. He teaches her how to shield herself from both others and him, in the event that she ever wants to keep him out–though he assures her he would never barge into her mind without permission, that he would stick to the surface-level check-ups that he has taught her to perform as well. He is devastated by how quickly it is used when he tries to check in on her after he spins through a fireplace from 18th century France. He is even more winded by how early on he uses it himself, unable to bear his own vulnerability to her after a rather draining trip to a parallel world, even as he checks on her and sends as much comfort her way as possible.
On the whole, though, things get better. He continues to teach her how to utilize their ever-strengthening connection–-how to project her emotions towards him, how to read his thoughts and send her own (with touch at first, and over distance later on), how to use it to guide her towards him if they’re ever separated (which happens a hell of a lot, by the way–-far more than he cares to think about, and definitely often enough to give him a hearts attack every other week).
Rose is beyond grateful for that last one when Ida tells her that the Doctor has chosen to fall.
(She is also glad for the ability to check that he is okay, and even more relieved when she is able to feel him caressing their bond later, when they’re reunited and in each other’s arms and soaking in their collective relief, together again at last.)
He’d told her that sometimes bonds snapped, and sometimes they stretched and faded, and sometimes they lingered. Sometimes they pulled off a combination of them, all in one fell swoop.
He’d also been very clear that all of the options were rather unpleasant, to say the least. There were very few ways to dissolve or end a bond without putting one or both parties through a lot of physical pain-–mutual indifference had been the only one he could even name to her, when she’d asked, and those two words were pretty much the exact opposite of the relationship blooming between the two of them.
Still, though, she is wildly unprepared for the nearly debilitating pain that brings her to her knees when the Void closes.
He loses her.
Deep down, he’s always known he would, but in a strange way the bond had allowed him to forget about that. It superseded any fear he had, because once the bond had formed he’d had no choice but to accept it, nourish it, cherish it. He’d had no choice but to let her in.
(And it made it just a little bit easier to forget just how human Rose was, connecting with her in the way of his people and basking in her affection and pretending, just for one precious snapshot in time, that he could keep her forever.)
He should’ve known better.
He loses her, and lets the pain of their aching bond ground him as he falls apart.
He’d told her once that they each had separate pieces of their bond, that she had her own half to take care of and he had his, even if they could sometimes feel what each other’s were like.
None of their lessons had ever covered this, though, because neither of them had ever really thought they’d need it. It was their one unspoken agreement, to not talk about the aftermath, and it was one she might’ve broken had they not both been laboring under the impression that she would never have to deal with this.
It had always been the Doctor that would lose Rose. It was as inevitable as the turn of the Earth, and as indomitable as a tidal wave. He was always going to outlive her, as he’d so pointedly told her outside of that chippy when she’d felt lost and confused and rejected by his behavior. Something inside of her had known it for even longer than that, truthfully–-from the moment he’d told her he was 900 years old–but she’d never really thought about what that meant for him until the fear of it left him fumbling for words to help her understand.
And she did. She understood. She’d known all this time why he had to maintain his boundaries, why he couldn’t let himself fall the way humans do. It was just another instance where the bond could help her where words could not–-she’d felt his fear, his longing, his heartbreak.
But what she’d never counted on was something like this.
He’s lost her, yes, but she’s still here. She’d never counted on her losing him, and whereas she’d always known (or at the very least hoped) that he would be able to take care of himself without her, she finds herself at a complete loss as to what comes next.
The bond isn’t gone. She’s not sure if she expected it to be; the Doctor had told her it could survive a partner’s death, but this was a wall between universes, and somehow that struck her as the more insurmountable obstacle between the two. She wouldn’t have been all that surprised if the bond severed, simply incapable of connecting the two of them from such a great distance–-space, time, and universes divided them now.
She supposes she should feel proud that their bond prevailed.
She never really stops trying to reach for him, but it’s clear from the beginning that she can’t feel him, can’t contact him. She wonders if he can--he’s always been the stronger telepath, after all, though she used to tease him relentlessly that it was only because he had a 900 year head start (and quite frankly, he’d agreed).
That single thought is enough to kickstart the reconstruction of her spirit, and Rose Tyler takes control of her destiny once more. She refuses to let this be the end, refuses to give up, refuses to accept that she won’t see the Doctor again. So long as she is able to, she decides to claw her way through time and space right back to his side.
She wonders if he can feel her side of the bond, and caresses it every day in the hopes that he can. She hopes that he can feel her resilience, the way that she hasn’t given up on him and doesn’t intend to; she hopes that he can feel her affection-–no, her love, he knows that now; she hopes that he can feel her care.
She hopes that if he can feel her, he doesn’t feel her pain.
He’d told her once that sometimes bonds linger, though that’s not quite the word he’d use if he were to describe what it felt like now.
He supposes he should be grateful that it hadn’t completely severed, though it was hard to feel grateful about anything in a universe that had taken away the one person he’d dared trust with his hearts. Conscious of it or not, that’s exactly what he’d done-–forged a bond with the only person he’d ever met that he actually wanted to see his soul.
And now she was gone, and their bond was still here, and he wishes he could resent it for representing everything that he’s lost, wishes he could erase it and sweep his heartsache away.
It wouldn’t fill the hole in his hearts; if anything, it would only exacerbate the grief when he eventually searches for the bond and finds nothing there. He can’t let that happen, can’t cope with the idea of losing the only piece of evidence that once upon a time, Rose Tyler had loved him.
Rose Tyler had loved him.
She’d told him so, on a beach that shared her name a whole universe away. He’d felt it a hundred times, spilling from her end of the bond, warm and bubbly and alive, but he’d still never dared believe it until the words hung between them, Earth-shatteringly beautiful and impossible to take back.
He wishes he’d told her the same, and resigns himself to several more lifetimes simply hoping that she’d known, anyways.
He’s more than aware that the upkeep of the bond is something just for him, now, and yet he does it more religiously than he’s ever done anything else in his life. With Rose gone, it feels more important than ever to keep this one last piece of her alive, even if it’s just in his own mind.
It’s comforting and soothing in a way that he relishes in–he may not be able to see her again, but he will always have this gift from her, marking him as hers.
She’s done it.
She hasn’t even reached for him yet, but she knows, and it has nothing to do with the police barricade in front of her, or the panicked members of the public swarming around her, or even the fleet of tiny (and oddly cute) aliens being beamed up into a spacecraft right before her very eyes.
No, as clear as the evidence before her was, it all had nothing on the feeling that buoyed up inside her from the moment she took her first breath in the universe.
He’d told her once that having a bond could be second nature, if she practiced for long enough and grew comfortable with leaning on it as easily as she does her senses. Admittedly, she hadn’t quite believed him, figuring his perspective was skewed by his biology and upbringing, but his words are proven true today.
She doesn’t reach out for him at all, but she feels him as clearly as she feels the breeze against her cheeks, and she knows immediately that she is home.
“Doctor,” she breathes out, echoing it in her mind, and she can’t help the smile that breaks across her face when she both hears and feels the response.
Rose.
She laughs involuntarily when she hears his voice, tears welling up in her eyes as she registers the hope and disbelief that belies his cry of her name.
She feels the joy and shock and love and wonder and can’t tell if it’s his or hers, if he’s projecting or if she’s reaching or if they’re both sharing, the way they’d shared contentment flying away from a black hole, oh-so-long ago–-
“Rose!” she hears, and when she turns the corner–-when had she started moving, anyway?--he’s the only thing she sees.
When they collide, it’s like drowning in the sea. It’s a barrage against her senses, those ridiculous pinstripes and the way he says her name and the scent of alien shampoo and his mind against hers, and she lets herself sink into his embrace, into them, and thinks that she could quite possibly stay right here until the end of time.
(Though she hardly complains when he pulls away to meet her lips.)
It’s a kiss long-imagined by the both of them, the culmination of years of yearning and desire and growth and love and one shining moment in which they’d chosen each other.
It ends, as things always should, in forever.