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Rose had come back. She’d been sitting on one of the console chairs, waiting for him to notice, and he’d gone about all their previous motions of teasing and asking her where she’d like to go, and she went along with it, then she mentioned that she loved him, and he mentioned it right back, and she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and then after, when they were in bed and she was asleep on his chest, he thought about how sad his life was, that this wasn’t real. The next day she walked out of the kitchen with toast in her mouth and he had the most pleasant case of double cardiac arrest in his life.
Within a month, they were back to their usual adventures - atmosphere shattering concerts and crowded alien marketplaces and Victorian London - except now he occasionally bought engagement rings at these places. At this last location more than usual, since Rose had gotten very good at landing them there. It would go like this: After her proud little grin at their smooth materialisation, he would pop his head out the door and inform her it was the 1800s again. She would say she didn't believe him, that it couldn't possibly be, again. Then her own head would pop out the door just as a hansom cab rolled by, and pop back in again.
She would give him a quiet, poised look of overexaggerated confidence like she had taken them there on purpose, nodding. Then her slow, rolling giggles would burst out into laughter, filled to the brim with humour for her driving skills, an only slightly annoyed fondness for whatever the TARDIS was thinking, and, deep in her eyes, the glittering determination to try again. The jeweller in town knew him by name and might've thought he was a serial adulterer (Though his visits were spaced out over a few years, so maybe he came off more as a prolific widower. Whole different kind of serial, there.)
So it went. They would split up on an alien planet, Rose would buy an ice cream or some such sweet, he would buy a cloacium ring (unmeltable in a volcano, which could be handy). Rose's tongue would be especially red under a sunset, her legs hanging over a pier, a cliff, a ledge.
Her eyes closed in contentment. His hand fiddling with the ring in his tweed jacket. Then she would open her eyes and look at him with such open, trusting affection, hand him her treat without a word so he could have some, and he would realise he could never live without this again, bond or no bond, and his hand would slip off the ring and take it. Later he might toss it off the edge if he felt especially dramatic about it (this was saying something since only a few had been biodegradable).
Rings were purchased. Rings dissolved in the bottom of the ocean, delighting plankton and their plankton partners. Humans were off put by eternal, empathic soul bonds. She would get scared and leave. Rose was not a typical human. She would say yes. He wanted her to say yes, to feel her pleasantly floating around in his mind forever instead of just during sex. He wanted her to say no, in case accidents weren't barred, in case she bonded with him, didn't regenerate, and carved out an unfillable pit with her absence. He was happy with what they had. He was going to regenerate if he waited another second. He was stupid for overthinking it. He was stupid for thinking he should propose in the first place.
There were good days and bad days. On the day it happened, it was at first hard to tell which it would be, laying awake in their bed, thinking up locations, mostly food-related. Then Rose sleepily and extremely ungracefully rolled her head, with all its blonde starfish tangles, up onto his chest with the word "plantains," referring to a breakfast place in 1930s Cairo he had forgotten about until now, and in a base Time Lord reaction to love consuming his being whole, his mind sought hers, crashing into her natural barriers like a bird on glass. She was mostly human and probably felt a tickling feeling of "Yes. Let's go to Egypt" (if even if that), when what he'd actually said was untranslatable in words and incredibly embarrassing. The point was: A bad day. It seemed the bad days were winning out.
"You know," she explained to his neck. "The place in Egypt?"
He kissed her head. "I know."
In the console room, Rose wore a grey hoodie and jeans. For all her posturing about getting it right this time, she wasn't quite dressed for Cairo, or their much likelier destination, Victorian England. Her hair was combed to a semi-straight length, her makeup was lightly done, and every bit of her attention was on the monitor when he walked in. He stopped near her, to the side of the console, and twirled the rim of his top hat innocently. He'd bought it during the last trip Rose had manned, from a haberdashery.
It annoyed her to no end.
He threw it to his other hand with a flourish, caught it.
Her eyes remained stubbornly fixed on the monitor. She carefully, much more carefully than the TARDIS had ever been used to, input the last couple digits of her coordinates.
He put the hat on her head. She barely moved, trying to understand the screen's flood of symbols. Eventually she stroked the console, closed her eyes.
"Come on girl," she said. And without opening her eyes she yanked the dematerialization lever down and they were flying. The Doctor grabbed for the console, one of Rose's hands grabbed for the console, the other for the hat he'd put on her. The Doctor was flung off into the railing as she laughed and tipped it at him.
The hat had become her Stenson, she rode the bucking TARDIS with a glimmer in her eyes, her right hand grasping the controls within reach as both a lifeline and steering function. This was a bad, bad day.
With one last bang, everything went still.
Rose looked at him. Then she looked at the monitor. She ran towards it, but he was faster, swinging it to the side without looking.
"That's cheating," he said. He offered his hand. "Come on, let's see."
She gave one last longing glance at the turned monitor, then took his hand. He pulled her down the stairs. "You've done it this time, I can feel it," he said.
"What if she's been doing this because doesn't like me anymore?"
"Not possible."
"But -"
"She's touchy. It's just a matter of practice."
At the bottom her hands paused on the door handles.
"This is daft." She laughed. "I like the Victorian era, anyway. Oh!" She took her hands off. "If this is 1856, I've made a friend in Lambeth. I promised her I'd stop by for tea, so maybe today's the day - you can come meet her if you want, do you still have thos-"
The Doctor pulled open the door.
He watched Rose's reaction - the door blocked his view of the outside. Then a bright, warm light filled the console room, all from her face. She was staring and smiling like only she could, amazement and tongue and teeth.
She suddenly burst open, running out with a joyful "Yes!"
He stepped into frame to look. Everything beyond the TARDIS was flat, sandy, and deep purple for miles.
"First alien planet," Rose sighed happily in the middle of it all, breathing in the air.
Above was a very mild yellow sun, which gave the greyish sky some very mild weather. It was quite dull, but if Rose asked to settle here for the next ten years, he would bury the TARDIS for fertiliser for their garden (the TARDIS had always hinted she'd like to try that).
"Weren't you aiming for Cairo?" He grinned at her, unable to tear his eyes away.
"Shut up." She grinned right back. "First alien planet."
The sunlight loved her; it became less mild sparkling inside her hair. It had finally found something more colourful to live in, even with her hoodie. She loved it back for some reason, standing in the middle of nothing, her eyes almost closed from the force of her smile, her lips parted to let her teeth shine through. As if laughing, as if unable to contain something inside her, she did that thing she did, leaned forwards a little, towards him, then rocked back. She'd done what he'd done everyday for millions of years - fly the TARDIS and miss the landing - and she was exploding with happiness, and if that's what she was, he…
He felt he should be scared of what he was about to do, but that was currently impossible.
"First alien planet," he agreed. He came outside and ended up sweeping her into his arms and spinning her slightly. Her hair tickled his neck. "You realise you can never insult my driving skills again."
"I realise nothing," she said as he put her down. "Oh my god, I flew a spaceship to another planet."
"Yes, you did."
"I flew a time machine to another time."
"Also that, yes. Hold on." He licked his finger, out it in the air. "Yes, different time."
"You are such a liar, there isn't even any wind!" she said gleefully.
"Rose," he said, unable to take anymore of this, "Would you like to enter a telepathic soul bond with me?"
Her smile slipped. "What did you just say?"
He couldn't read her face. He opened his mouth to try to explain. The silent desert felt small, suddenly.
Then, like her smile, she seemed to slip. She shortened a bit in height, and just like that, he was looking at air.
For a millisecond of complete bafflement, his hand raised to touch where her face should have been. His first thought was that he had been right to worry. She was gone. He heard a noise like oil sizzling in a pan, looked down at where it was coming from, at where her feet would have been, and realized there was now a hole, sand pouring into its deep pit.
There may have been other thoughts here, because within a fraction of a second, his mouth tried to call out for her, his feet tried to move, his hearts tried pointlessly to do many, many things, but against their struggles they were still inside his chest. Regardless, his second coherent thought, as daylight was sucked into a vacuum above him, as he realized he was falling too, was oh, good.
The fall was not that long. It had looked endless from above because it was pitch dark below, but it was only long enough to sting through his legs when they caught the ground, making him tumble onto his backside. He shot up to see Rose right across from him, lit by the dim light from her hole above.
She was just lying there, face-up. Sand twinkled out of her jeans.
He heard the rocks and sand he scrambled across before he heard himself say Rose, then he was in front of her on his knees.
Her eyes were fully open and awake.
He kissed her forehead with a release of breath. "Hello, don't do that to me. Please get into sitting positions after falling into holes."
"Sorry." She stared up at him without moving. "Telepathic what-bond?"
He cleared his throat. "Soul."
She nodded her head slowly, the ground crackling beneath her. "What?"
"It means we would never really be apart. Always feel each other up here," he tapped his skull. "And the only way it could be severed is through death. Truly stuck together. Considering our life expectancies, that could be a very long time from now. It's somewhat of an important decision. I don't expect you to answer now, so," he offered her a hand. She took it and he pulled her halfway up.
She was quiet a moment. She looked him in the eyes, her face shaded in the hole's lighting.
"Why didn't you mention this before?" she asked.
He tried to meet her gaze. "People don't typically propose one month in."
"Propose?" Rose squeaked out. "Is that - is that what's just happened?"
"Well, yes? But it's much, much more than proposing. That's quite a bad word for it, honestly."
"Right," she said. "Yes." She laid back down.
After a moment she added, “And you did this in a hole?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it. "In my defence, it wasn’t a hole before. It was…” he tried to think of the planet above them favourably. The gaps showing the sky looked smaller from their position on the ground, like twinkling grey lights. “Well, it wasn’t something boring. Like an art gallery.”
“No,” Rose said, laughing a little. “It wasn’t that.”
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. His hands made intricate patterns in the sand that he could just barely see. Then he said, "Rose?"
"Yes?"
"You alright?"
"Yes. You?"
"Mm. Would you like to get out of this hole now? Go home?" He couldn't stop himself from adding the last two words. He meant the TARDIS, of course. Rose's old home was in a parallel universe. But that didn't mean, especially having a sudden clarity thrust on her regarding future commitments, she couldn't decide other places were her home. The universe was full of places she could live without him in. Just for example, Tritobus. If she lived there, he could say it was their trouble with frosting factories that kept him nearby. Or if she wanted him to completely shove off, he could do that. Well, it was more accurate to say he would do that. He didn't go around telling people he could create black holes, as if it was a talent he was confident in, but he probably would create them if the situation was dire enough. He did impossible things all the time.
"Doctor," Rose said. He stared at the ground, but he could hear in her voice she was sitting up again. There were shuffling sounds, then her hand was on top of his. "Do you - do you seriously -" She broke off. He turned to her, but she was looking beyond him. "Um. Is that a person?"
His head whipped round. It was a person. They were glowing and short. In one of their hands was a large shining knife.
The Doctor got rapidly to his feet. He heard Rose do the same.
“Hello,” he said. “We were just wondering where the exit was.”
The person blinked at them out of tiny dots of eyes. Their angular nose and pointed ears protruded huge and green in contrast. Like a humanoid bat with an oversized nose. No surprise there, the Doctor thought. Typical underground species look. What surprised him, however, was when the person began to buzz. Staccato bursts, emanating from their mouth.
The light from the holes above abruptly cut off. The knife no longer shimmered, but sliced a dark shadow on the person’s short, glowing legs.
They buzzed again, looking straight at the two of them with dark pupils. The sound went up like a question.
“What did they say?” Rose asked, coming closer.
“I don’t know,” the Doctor said, moving in front of her again.
“Are we running?” she whispered, darting forwards, putting both her hands on his chest as if she needed to do so to ask him a question. He could barely see her face. Her hair reflected more and more of the bat-person’s green glow as they walked closer.
He guided her gently to the side by her shoulders. “Where would we go?”
She caught his hand, tugging slightly. “The other way of the kni- oh.”
He looked behind them. There were two more of the glowing people, their faces large and angular. They were surrounded, in complete darkness, the only light from their captor’s skin.
The hand not holding Rose’s grasped the screwdriver in his jacket pocket. He could make a buzzing noise back at them, hurt their ears. The problem was, where to next? Maybe use the screwdriver as a torch, run blindly for an exit?
He flicked the screwdriver to the right setting as the person with the knife closed the distance between them. He felt his back against Rose’s. She faced the two from the other side.
He was bringing the screwdriver out, his feet poised for the gap between the one on Rose’s right and the one in front of him, ready to pull Rose with him, when the knife person abruptly bent forwards and sliced down at his feet. A twang sounded - a wire or something being cut - and a net dropped limply to their left, where the Doctor had been aiming to run.
When the person came back up, the knife was no longer in their hand. They took a step back, gesturing behind their body in short limbed movements. They seemed to be saying, follow me.
“Doctor,” Rose whispered from behind. “They keep vibrating at me.”
“I think,” he said, letting go of the screwdriver. “I think they’re friendly.”
“What?” she hissed, and twisted round again.
The bat-person continued the movements impatiently. A suspiciously dirtied apron the Doctor hadn’t noticed before swung in time with their arm.
The Doctor took a hesitant step forwards.
The person nodded sharply in approval. They called behind the Doctor and Rose, two quick buzzes, then picked up the knife and started off. The other aliens ran in front of the two of them to follow, making their way into the dark.
“I guess we follow too,” the Doctor said. Their light source was getting away fast. He pulled Rose forward by their joined hands.
“Did you notice,” Rose added helpfully as they walked, “That they were covered in blood?”
“I think we fell near their hunting trap,” The Doctor explained. “Caused them a bit of trouble.”
“And how do you know we’re not still being hunted?”
“I don’t,” he said. They’d caught up to the short figure of one of the bat-people, a stark green silhouette in the blackness. Underneath this one’s apron was a tight-fitting white material that was almost invisible in the shine of their skin. More patches of blood were lit by its blackglow.
“Well,” Rose said, a smile in her voice now. “At least it’s not an art gallery.”
The Doctor tried to think of something spectacularly funny to say here. A rejoinder that meant, I’ve just admitted I could happily live out millenia with you, and perhaps you don’t feel quite the same, but that isn’t devastating at all. He found that, even without the active knife threat, his hearts were beating rapidly. He kept expecting to crash into a wall.
“Doctor,” Rose said after the silence had lasted for too long, “About earlier.”
They’d reached steps. He saw the person in front of them bob out of view first, so when he stumbled on them it wasn’t because he was completely blind about it.
Rose straightened him. “Oh, that?” he said, as they started down. “Like I said, I don’t expect you to answer now. These kinds of decisions take time. Years, even. I’ve seen couples live out their whole lives together before they truly commit to each other.”
The further they went, the more confident their steps grew. A calm blue glow emanated from the bottom, lighting their feet.
“That’s just it,” Rose said. “Since when have you ever…”
He waited, but she didn't go on. Their footfalls echoed slightly.
“Committed?” he said. An edge snuck into his voice. “I can commit. I’ve committed plenty of times.”
“What?” she said quietly. When he looked at her, surprised by her tone, her face was lit in blue, turned to the ground. Her eyes were wide, her mouth pulled unhappily at the edges. Undeniably hurt.
He mentally replayed what he’d said. “No,” he squeezed her hand. “Not, not like that, there hasn’t been - I just mean…”
“It’s okay, though,” she said, her voice tightening up. “Really, it’s stupid to think that - to think that I’m - yeah, I’m shutting up now.” She studied the steps, firm and concrete, drawing to a close.
“But you don’t understand.” His hand, now that it had a clear goal, was helping him explain by re-grapsing her’s a few times. “You… You are -”
“Doctor,” she said quietly. She wasn’t looking at him, but beyond and around him, in fear. The background behind her was now a smooth, lighted blue corridor - except for the big lumps hanging everywhere. Feathery. Some kind of dead peasant birds.
“We’re heading into a slaughterhouse,” Rose whispered. “I think we should run.”
“You are the only person I’ve ever asked this of,” he whispered back. “I just meant I can commit in the general sense.”
“I haven’t seen any side doors to duck into. Have you?” She was looking everywhere but him.
“No. Rose, you are the only person I want this from. One thousand years of time and space and people, and I only want this from you.”
She caught his eye as if she had tripped into it. They paused for a few beats like that. She seemed filled wide with questions, her mouth slightly parted in surprise.
“I thought you knew that,” he said.
Rose turned as a clanging sound echoed around the corridor. They were approaching the end, where two wide doors were swinging closed. Another of their guides opened it and went through, but the one with the knife was waiting behind, at the side. Their beads of eyes narrowed further into a glare. They buzzed angrily.
“I still can’t tell if they're threatening us." Rose kept moving. "Why doesn’t the TARDIS translate?”
“She’s not great with non-linguistic languages.”
They were walking incredibly slow. The bat-person pointed rapidly with the knife at the door a few times.
“Listen,” the Doctor said, gently. “For me, this is it.”
“That's great for you, but I would still like to escape,” Rose said.
He laughed. “No.” He stood in front of her to catch her eye again. “For me, you’re it.”
She stared at him.
He stared back.
“Tell me you understand that,” he said.
Her face was full of shadows and soft blue lighting. Her eyes sang out of it, large and brown. Her lips parted. Then she looked down and said, “They are threatening us.”
The Doctor stared at her a second more, then he turned round to look at the person holding a knife on him. They buzzed once. Loudly.
“Alright,” the Doctor sighed. “We’re going.” He took Rose’s hand.
They moved forward and through the doors. It was not a sacrificial chamber, but a kitchen. Although there were some odd devices, and everything was shorter, it resembled the universal look of one, bat-people darting around cooking tubs and cutting slabs of meat on a wide countertop island. Although if it had been on Earth, the dim blue lighting would have definitely got them shut down by HSE.
The knife-person shuffled them to the side. A mountain of dishes were stacked nearby a sink already overflowing with bits of food and plates. The person, who must be a kind of chef, picked up a dirty dish, put it in Rose’s unexpecting hands, and again pointed the knife at them.
Rose looked at the plate, then the chef, then the Doctor. “They want us to wash dishes?” It was a tone that meant danger. “We fell into their trap, and we have to wash their dishes?”
“It isn’t so bad as killing us, though,” the Doctor pointed out.
“You’ve never washed dishes professionally before.”
“Yes I have.”
“Then you should know. There’s an exit on the far side over there,” Rose darted her eyes past the countertop island. She was right - there was another set of double doors. She pretended to turn with the dish towards the water to appease the chef. They nodded, watching her carefully.
The Doctor turned with her. She took his hand. She tapped out a beat. One finger, two fingers, then three. Both of them vaulted off at once, Rose at the lead.
A loud buzz screeched from behind them. It grew with every person they passed, as people called out with surprise or anger. Rose darted between someone carrying a tub of what looked like tubers. The Doctor’s elbow tipped into them and they spilled everywhere.
“Sorry!” he called back, and they were through the doors, out of the loud vibrations and chopping and bubbling, and into calm lounge music.
Both of them paused in confusion for a half-second. A fancy restaurant, which this time the dim lighting worked very well in, stared back at them. Glowing hands stopped forks just before their mouths. Someone in a suit at the front looked surprised before composing themself and immediately darting through the tables towards them. The door behind the two of them flew open.
“At least it’s not an art gallery,” the Doctor said with a sigh, taking the lead. Rose laughed as they darted into the maze of tables. The exit wasn’t clear until they were a fourth of the way into the room. The Doctor pulled Rose suddenly to the side, tripped slightly on a table cloth, but managed to right someone’s plate before it tipped over. He was gunning for an old reliable - the familiar gleam of a closed lift.
He pushed the only button once they'd reached it. The doors instantly dinged open in a symphony of relief. They got inside. Rose jammed the close-doors button.
The one in the suit, presumably the maitre d', clearly unaccustomed to getting handsy, blankly watched the doors shut around them. The Doctor could see the chef run into frame, luckily too late. They were probably fine getting handsy.
“Up or down?” Rose said, her hand poised.
He looked at her. “The TARDIS is up.”
“But you’re not curious at all? About where we are? A restaurant underground? That has two floors? What kind of restaurant has two floors?”
“They’ll catch us,” the Doctor said, smiling.
“No they won’t,” Rose pressed the down button, just as the doors had started to open again. There were no floor indicators, just arrows.
They waited a while, feeling healthy little lift-bumps as they descended.
A silence came around them.
After a moment, Rose sank to the ground.
"How," she began, the word heavy, "how can I be…"
He sat down next to her and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. "Because you pressed down instead of up."
A slow, quiet smile tinged the sides of her mouth. It seemed out of her control, curving up from a hidden spot. She leaned her head on him. It was only then that he noticed he was smiling too.
When the doors opened, they stepped out slowly, checking the left and right. The lift was the only way down, it seemed.
Warmth, and a large impression of beauty loomed over them. They faced a wall stretched to impossible heights, shining. They didn't look at it for long, quickly darting away from the lift, into where the wall angled onto the rest of the floor. A few people milling around watched them go.
When they turned the corner, their steps instantly slowed.
They’d been engulfed in something dizzyingly picturesque. Gentle dots and shades of blue lit the walls round them, which varied in size like an open-concept maze. It gave the Doctor the impression of outer space, but if someone had taken the time to organise it into angles and boxes and lines. In the small light, he could only just see where one star-wall ended, and beyond it, where the next one rose higher and higher into a murky, endless ceiling. The tallest wall resembled a mangrove tree, with tiny dots of lights that crossed from one end of the room to the other, humming and alive. The wall nearest them had spots that gleamed in neat patterns. They created the shape of a castle, complete with arches and a drawbridge. The Doctor touched it, traced where the spongy surface of lights gave way to the wall behind it. It was soft. When he looked down at his finger, it was covered in a purple substance.
He licked it before Rose could tell him not to.
“It’s dirt!” he said. His enthusiasm echoed a bit.
“Thank goodness,” Rose said, much quieter. She was glittering in the light, smiling at him fondly. “It was killing me not to know.”
“But Rose, this is a natural substance. Do you know the technology that implies? They grow these, these…” He looked up and round him, thinking of an accurate description. “These… Er.” He stopped. His smile slipped - he’d thought of a word.
“Paintings?” Rose suggested, unhelpfully. Her eyes danced.
“No,” he pointed at her. “No. Really, they’re more of… Well, it’s -”
“Do you know, Doctor,” Rose pushed. “I’ve thought of something that has a restaurant at the top of it.”
“Many places have restaurants at their top. Observation galleries, for one. Museums.”
“Right,” she said. She was obviously close to breaking into laughter. Some of it began escaping her smile. “You’re getting it. Tourist locations. Places that gather up all the sights into one convenient stop.” She was quoting a point his last self had gone on about.
She moved closer, until she was within whispering distance. “We’re in an art -”
The lift door chimed open. They swung their heads toward it, then each other, then they were running again.
“Maybe it’s not for us?” Rose asked.
“Maybe,” the Doctor agreed. Still they were smiling, and still they ran, twisting through the endless exhibits, until the sparsely placed people and endless art became a blur of lights. As they neared the dead end of the gargantuan mangrove tree, both of them spotted the alcove at the same time. Two display walls came out from the tree, close together, almost forming a box. Hidden.
When they slowed and entered, it was like walking into a forest made of stars. He couldn't make out the shapes at first, but he'd been in enough forests to know how they felt. On the surface, it was pulsing, breathing lights that talked to one another, created one another. Then the glimmering clustered in his eyes to make a pond, a low hanging branch, a thicket of bark and leaves.
"It isn't so bad," Rose said. She had the breathless sort of voice he always aimed for when he drove.
"No," he said, sitting down near a protective wall, soaking it in. "Not horrible, for your first alien planet."
"Oh, right." She sat down next to him. "I forgot about that."
They sat together and just watched the forest twinkle for a while.
It was empty except for them.
"What's that?" Rose pointed. "On the branch."
He studied it. It was a bundle of dots that seemed almost to sing with pride. It had legs. "A bird."
"Huh," she said. "They have birds."
"We saw birds earlier," he reminded her. "What's strange is the forest."
"That one's more of a songbird though. Maybe they have forests somewhere else. Or they came from somewhere that used to have forests."
"I don't know," he said. It was only a slightly uncomfortable feeling, not knowing. Rose had taken him to a completely new place. Now he was enmeshed in it, eaten up by its odd beauty.
Rose tilted her head back, looking up and up at the tree. "It could be that it's not a forest at all. To them, it's something completely different. And we just see a forest because it's what we know. Like constellations."
"I still have no idea what you people were thinking with Taurus."
"Careful." She elbowed him. "That one's mine."
"How can I forget," he said. "Your organizational and eating habits reveal all."
"Shut up," she laughed.
It certainly felt like a forest. A real one, minus the tiny noises that usually littered the leafy ground and air.
Rose looked into it, as if waiting for noises too. Their shoulders were touching, but her mind was far off. The stars twinkled onto her face, inside her eyes, her hair, the grey of her hoodie.
He hadn't thought of it quite like that, that stars could be yours.
After a long time, Rose spoke.
"So it would be like what we do during…" She trailed off, still looking away.
He studied her, then said, "Yes."
"But constantly?"
"Yes. And much more… stable. Coherent."
"And unbreakable," she added.
"Yes."
"Could you read my thoughts?"
"Not unless you wanted me to."
"You want this with me?" Her voice was suddenly a disbelieving breath. "You'd be trapped."
He laughed abruptly. "Is that really what you're so worried about?"
"I'm just trying to get my mind around it. But, yeah. I thought I knew what forever with you was like and now you're telling me it's something different. You can always walk away, 'cept not with this. I don't want you to wake up and regret… me."
He stared at her. Her eyes were far away, past the lights and the mangrove. She was going mad, he realised. She must be.
“It's still so weird," she continued. "It's like a dream, living on the TARDIS, being with you. I guess a part of me is waiting for you to realise that I'm, that I'm… And now you're proposing." She shook her head, unable to contain the disbelief.
"Rose." He still felt a bit of laughter coming on. "Rose. I will never regret you. My only worry is you walking away."
“That isn't going to happen." She turned to him, firm. “Soul-bonded or not. Just isn't.”
“But you think I can? You think I can walk away from this?” The light, ridiculously bubbly feeling rose higher inside him.
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “No. You need someone. But… me?”
He took hold of her shoulders, looking into her eyes. “You.” Then he began digging in his pockets. “Every piece of you. When you stood up for that man on Traxis Delta even when I told you it was pointless, or when we were bowling and you said I shouldn’t worry about the gutters because I’m the Doctor and I always spare. I keep seeing more and more of you, and it’s driving me mad.” He wasn't doing this at all how he'd imagined, but he'd also never imagined she didn't know. His fingers darted through the museum of rubbish in his pockets, intent on finding at least one of them, a physical proof, the disbelief and adrenaline spurring him and making his fingers miss a few times.
He caught something round and placed it in her hand. They both watched it twinkle dully in her palm.
“Remember when we went to Belfast? And I ducked into that shop in the mall? I was making that for you.” It wasn’t his best work, given the materials of wire and cheap plastic beads.
Rose stared at it like it was encrusted with diamonds.
Which reminded him. He fished through a few other things until he found the one that was ribbed with jewels. He thought it was beautiful, but probably too flashy to fit Rose’s everyday style. He placed it in her hand with the other ring.
She gave a little gasp when she realised what she was looking at. “These are from, from…”
He waited, smiling.
“Erondite.” Her tongue tripped slightly on the alien word.
“You seemed to like the jewellery there.”
She clasped the rings in her palm tight and stared at him.
“I have more,” he said, digging in his pockets again. “One from that android planet, remember that? The most recent one, I mean. Well, also the one before that. We should go back. Amazing custard. I’ve got one from Stockbridge, and Starfall -”
“What did you say?” Rose asked. “Starfall?” Her voice was broken open.
“Er, yes?” He pulled it out. It was a simple band, and the jewel in the centre glimmered with stardust. “This one’s rather embarrassing, but it reminded me of your eyes. You know that section in your collarette? Where it changes a bit from brown to gold?”
Rose took it. She couldn’t stop staring at it. “Doctor,” she said. “Doctor, the only time we went to Starfall, I was with the last you.”
“Oh,” the Doctor said, remembering. “So it was. Alright, that one’s embarrassing for many reasons. I’ve also -”
Rose seized his shoulder with one hand, stopping any further movement, and then she was kissing him, stopping any further brain activity. All that registered was what it felt like, and it felt a lot like a yes, and his body began feeling a lot like a yes, like his insides were strung with the inner copper of a wire and suddenly surged with energy. She kissed him, and her hand crawled up his neck, into his hair, trailing heat with every tiny touch, and he was kissing her, and his mind bumped up against hers, making her gasp pleasurably into his mouth. Eventually, somehow, he pulled back, and then thought came back too. They wouldn’t do anything permanent yet, not here.
Her mouth was red. “God,” she said. Little tears glimmered in her eyes. “What the hell is wrong with you,” she half-laughed. “You could have just asked.”
“I did,” he said happily. Stars were exploding in his chest. Or maybe stars were exploding all around him and he just couldn’t bring himself to care. Rose wanted him forever.
“Did you actually think I would say no?” She laughed, then had to cover her face because some of her tears fell.
“Did you actually think I wouldn’t want this?” he countered. He took her hand off her face. She looked down at her other one. The one, which when opened, held the rings still. She lifted one to put it on, and he helped her. The three looked strange together on her finger, physical and real in blue light. His chest graduated from stars to galaxy clusters.
“So the place we’ll look back on and think ‘this is where it all started’ is going to be an art gallery?” Rose said.
He tried hard to look upset by her mention of the word, but his mouth kept curving up. “Please don’t remind me.”
“I’m going to.” She practically gleamed up at him. “You’ll be hearing of this for at least the next fifty years.”
“Ah,” the Doctor said, for a moment losing words. “That sounds terrible.” He had to kiss her forehead, with all the happiness busting inside him. “But I’d argue the beginning was actually a department store basement.”
She laughed again. "How lovely of us."
Then an alarm began to blare and they realised it was time to run, again.