Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s the worst noise Martha’s ever heard in her whole life– the Doctor’s agonized screams, his face contorted in pain as he sinks to his knees, knuckles white where he’s gripped the machine clamped to his head so tightly she thinks the skin is sure to split. 

Then the TARDIS begins to quake uncontrollably, knocking Martha off her feet and careening into the console.

“Doctor,” she cries out in panic; the TARDIS is tail spinning wildly now, great big sparks shooting off the console, and the Doctor’s eyes fly open, a miserable sounding whimper escaping his throat. Martha tries to reach him, but the TARDIS rattles with such power it’s all she can do to keep a hold of the railings, her arms hooked around the metal post.

“Doctor, what’s happening?” 

“Something’s gone wrong,” he grits out with what looks like all his remaining strength, his eyes bugging for a moment as a painful spasm grips him. 

Then they crash. 

“Rose,” Mickey calls urgently, his head popping around the door frame of the control room as Rose converses with a member of the tech staff. The sound of alarm in Mickey’s voice puts her immediately on edge, her spine stiffening as she excuses herself.

She’s not even at the door when he grabs her arm and starts off down the corridor with Rose in tow. “C’mon, we have to go.” 

“Mick, what’s going on?”

“Scanners picked up a breach,” he says quickly, “Wanghong thinks it’s a crash based on the impact….” 

“What kind of crash?” Rose halts her movement, pulling at Mickey’s arm to stop him. “What aren’t you telling me? You know I’m scheduled to jump this afternoon, so you wouldn’t be dragging me to--” she takes a quick look around, “what, the loading bay? Unless something major happened. So what is it?” 

Mickey places a hand on her shoulder. “The scans showed whatever crashed looked like a box, Rose.” 

Rose’s heart stops for a beat, all the breath frozen in her body until she takes a sharp exhale. Then, without thought, her hand reaches for the chain around her neck, pulling it from the neck of her shirt. The key feels warm but no warmer than it does any other time, pressed against her skin every moment of the day. She’s been jumping for a month, and so far, there’s been nothing, barely even residual traces of the vortex to lock onto. 

“W-what? Are you sure?” 

“Rose, I saw it myself.” 

She used to dream about it. About the TARDIS piloting down in her parent’s back garden, the overwhelming joy that rocketed through her at the sight of it transforming into horror as she watched the sky rip violently apart, two universes collapsing into each other, and the Doctor stood there calmly in the doorway, the greenish glow of the time rotor casting his features in a chiaroscuro effect as he stretched out his hand to her. It was awful and wonderful. She’d wake drenched in sweat, appalled that there was still a part of her that wanted that, didn’t matter if they damned two universes if it meant she could touch him again. 

Then the stars started blinking out of existence, and for one brief moment, she’d been terrified that her dreams would become a reality as the structural integrity of this universe’s walls started to break down. If the TARDIS was really here, it meant everything was far worse than Torchwood thought it was.  

There’s a UNIT armoured vehicle pulling up when they get there. The readings have taken them to a residential allotment zoned for high-rise condos on the other side of the river. Rose’s hands are shaking as she tears her seatbelt off, throwing open the van door before Jake comes to a stop, and she takes off down the road.

Jake and Mickey call after her, but she pays them no mind. Her heart is pounding, adrenaline coursing through her veins at such a speed she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. Her years of tactical training and surveillance mean nothing at this moment: to charge into an unknown zone, unarmed and unprepared, is not the way Torchwood and its agents operate. 

But nothing else matters because at the end of the road lies a blue box, just as out of place as the first time she saw it all those years ago, and she can hear it crying out, a deep, mournful hum that seeps through her, down to her bones.

“Doctor,” Rose gasps softly, pulling the key from her neck as she approaches with more caution.

“Hello, old girl,” she murmurs as she steps up to the door. The door handle is like a fire red coal to the touch, and she yanks her hand back with a pained, hissing inhale. Looking closer, she can see ribbons of steam evaporating off the wooden exterior, and cold dread trickles through her, her skin breaking out in gooseflesh as she pushes the key into the lock as best she can without touching the TARDIS.

It clicks. 

She roughly shoves the door open with her shoulder and peers inside with a deep breath. The console room is dark except for the eerie green light of the time rotor, smoke lingering in the air as it rises to the vaulted ceiling joints.

“Hello?” Rose calls into the cavernous space, her voice echoing in the unnatural quiet. “D--Doctor?” her voice catches and swallows around the emotions building like a lump in her throat. 

There’s a scuffling noise against the grating. 

“Who’s there?” a voice, quiet and fearful and female, responds, and Rose bounds up the ramp coming to a halt at the sight before her; a young woman huddles on the grating, a bloody scrape on her cheek and the Doctor laid out beside her, unmoving, his head pillowed in her lap as she clutches at his suit jacket. 

“Doctor,” Rose gasps, going to rush forward but stops when the young woman jerks forward protectively over the Doctor.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” She asks more forcefully this time.

Rose places her hands slowly over her chest to show she’s unarmed. “It’s all right. I know the Doctor.” She extends one hand forward, showing the key in her palm. “My name’s Rose Tyler.” 

At this, the woman’s expression changes, the fear draining from her face, replaced by shock, and her eyes widen. “Oh, my God, you’re Rose?” she breathes, “the Rose who used to travel with the Doctor, Rose?”

Rose nods, taking a step closer. Then, when the woman doesn’t show any indication of obvious distress, Rose hurries over, dropping to her knees on the other side of the Doctor’s prone body. 

“What’s your name?” Rose asks, her eyes scanning quickly over the blood trickling down the other woman’s face before turning to the Doctor, desperately trying to block out the panic building up inside her at the sight of his pale, still face-- lips cracked and raw. She takes a moment to peer around the console for any apparent damage, letting her Torchwood training take over to assess the scene and notices a mechanical-looking clamp hanging from the ceiling above them, like an aeroplane air mask.

“Martha. Martha Jones.” the other woman says.

“Nice to meet you, Martha. What happened?” 

“We were being chased by these aliens, hunters, the Doctor called them. They were shooting at us. He fell unconscious as we crashed,” the woman replies. Rose picks up the Doctor’s wrist to press at his pulse point. There’s a pulse, but it’s sluggish, and there’s only a single heartbeat. One, solitary heartbeat. Rose looks up in alarm, catching Martha’s gaze like she knows exactly what Rose is looking for. 

“And he’s human.” 

“...They can follow us wherever we go, right across the universe. They're never going to stop, unless….” Of course, he’d always wondered, had been tempted even, but to really-- “I'll have to do it. Martha, you trust me, don't you?

“Of course I do,” Martha replies. Clever, brilliant, loyal Martha. 

“Because it all depends on you.” He continues, switching on the drive, queuing up the chameleon arch.  

“What does? What am I supposed to do?” 

He holds out an ornately decorated fob watch. “Take this watch because my life depends on it. This watch, Martha. The watch is--”  

There’s a noise in the corridor, the rattle of a trolley and John’s eyes fly open, heart racing even as the dream fades from memory like smoke from a blown candle at the sound of a knock on the door. 

“Good morning, John,” a voice calls warmly, and he turns in his bed at the sound of the door clicking open. He doesn’t often get visitors to his room.

“Dr. Jones,” he replies, voice thick with sleep. “Wh- what time is it?” 

“Nearly ten,” she says with a grin, taking a seat in the armchair in the corner of the room. “You slept through breakfast and our appointment, so I thought I’d come to check on you.” 

He rubs a hand over his face, a few days’ worth of stubble like sandpaper against his skin, then blinks to clear the spots in his vision. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I’d slept so long.”

Her grin turns sympathetic. “Another rough night?” 

Some nights are terrible, like a personal hell he cannot escape-- fire and an all-consuming pain, such bitter loneliness and emptiness like there is something he has irrevocably lost. He wakes from these visions shaking, drenched in sweat, before racing to the loo most times to retch. Yet, if they are memory or nightmares, part of him would rather not know. 

Two months he’s been at the Torchwood Residential Rehabilitation Centre, and yet he feels no closer to the truth of who he was before the ‘accident’ that brought him here. Most mornings, he wakes with no real memories of who he is; nothing but of his name, John Smith. His mind is like a deep, impenetrable fog-- everywhere he looks is shrouded in haze. Some mornings he wakes up, sure that this all been some terrible twisted dream, and when he opens his eyes, he will find himself back where John ought to be and who he ought to be: in his bed in his private quarters in Farringham in 1913. But most mornings, he wakes having dreamed of himself as an adventurer. This daredevil, a madman from another world: the Doctor. 

In his sessions with Dr. Jones, she hypothesized that his mind is trying to fill in the blank spaces with anything, including dreams of being an Edwardian school teacher, or a time-travelling spaceman, to try to make sense of the missing parts of his memory. Psychosomatic amnesia , she says, and for a moment, he almost knows what she’s speaking about, like its meaning is just outside his grasp. 

Torchwood deals with extraterrestrial affairs, so the idea that his brain has made up stories of an alien who travels in a magical wooden box or a teacher in the pre-Great War days to help cope with the trauma and stress makes sense, he supposed. At least as much sense as any of the other peculiarities he’s encountered since waking up in a hospital bed two months ago. 

John shakes his head, swinging his legs out of bed. There’s a part of him that tinges with embarrassment at a woman seeing him in his sleep clothes, but he ignores it. As a physician, John’s sure Dr. Jones has seen far worse than a man in his state of dress, or lack thereof. The modern world he finds himself in is not one of modesty.

“No, no,” he says quickly, “nothing like that. I was er--” he pauses, tugging at his ear, “Sorry, sorry. Sometimes I have these extraordinary dreams, and I struggle to untangle myself from them afterwards.” 

Dr. Jones sits up straighter. “The Doctor?” She asks, her tone neutral. What she must think of him-- some raving man who half the time thinks himself a man from the past and dreams he is an alien who travels through time and space in a magical blue box. Even he knows it’s madness. 

“Ah, it's funny how dreams slip away. But I do remember one thing; last night, I dreamt that you were there again, as my companion.”

“Me?” Dr. Jones laughs, “and what were we doing this time?” Thank goodness she’d taken it well the first time he had told her he’d dreamed of her-- Dr. Jones was an attractive young woman, it would be easy to see how she could have taken his admission in a decidedly different way. 

He doesn’t tell her all his dreams, though. Some he confines to the pages of his journal— a therapy tool recommended by Dr. Jones to help sort the chaos of his mind.

“I don’t know,” he squints, “something about a watch.” 

“A watch?” Dr. Jones asks quickly, her brows drawing together. 

“Yes, a watch. I- it was important–” a knock at the door shakes him from his thoughts, and he scrambles to his feet as a blonde head pops around the opening.

“Oh, sorry, I’m not interrupting anything, am I? I can come back later.” 

“Agent Tyler,” John squeaks, his cheeks turning crimson at the sight of her. “I-- I mean Rose,” he stutters out before she can correct him. She’d asked him to call her by her Christian name as if he hadn't been dreaming of her in technicolour most nights anyway.

Rose. A perfect Rose.  

His dreams are filled with her-- her face shining up at him, tongue-touched smile gleaming like a star in the night, dark eyes rimmed in kohl and lashes like spider legs; her hand clasp firmly in his as they run from danger and towards adventure-- always together-- until the moment they’re not, her hand slipping from his, and suddenly she’s lost to him no matter how hard he reaches out for her. 

He keeps these particular dreams to himself.  

“Hullo, John. How are you?” Rose grins, lips stretching across her teeth just like they do in his dreams, and he can’t explain the joy that wells up inside him when he sees her. “I have the day off, so I thought you’d like a visitor.” 

He notices now the casual nature of her appearance, her standard black utility trousers and fitted leather jacket replaced with jeans and a knitted blouse, her shiny blonde hair loose about her shoulders. 

Rose is always beautiful, but she’s a vision now. This is how she should look, some niggling corner of his says.

“Excellent,” he exclaims, “I mean, I’m excellent. Feeling tip-top health-wise except for the whole memory bother. It’s lovely to have a visitor.”

Rose shares a glance with Dr. Jones, who just rolls her eyes. 

“Hey, Mister Smith,” another voice calls, pushing through the open door, and John feels his excitement deflate like a balloon. 

He notices the way Rose’s eyes narrow at the sight of her Torchwood partner. 

“Agent Smith,” he responds with far less enthusiasm. He doesn’t know why Agent Smith always emphasizes his name like it’s some kind of joke only John isn’t privy to.

‘Maybe we’re related,’ he had quipped when Torchwood had admitted John into their long-term medical facility, as if having no memory of who he was wasn’t traumatic enough without having to worry about being related to that idiot. How someone as brilliant and kind as Rose could put up with Mickey, let alone be partnered with him professionally, was beyond his comprehension. 

“Are you joining us?” John asks dully. Rose’s visits, as lovely as they’ve been, have customarily been under her professional capacity, and he rather likes the idea of having this time alone with Rose rather than Agent Tyler. 

Agent Smith smirks, which only furthers John’s annoyance. “Actually, Martha,” he says, his tone much more controlled now. “I was hoping to speak to you for a minute.” 

“Oh,” Dr. Jones stands, smoothing her lab coat, “of course.” She turns to Rose. “He hasn’t had any food today, so make sure he eats something.”

“I’m not an invalid,” John snaps, frustration suddenly boiling over. “I am a fully functioning human being who is quite capable of my own dietary needs.” 

Dr. Jones levels him a look, and he just knows Jenny has been blabbing again. You miss one or two or four lunches, and people think you’re some scatterbrain who can’t take care of yourself. 

Rose grins, “We’ll just give a minute to get out of your jimjams. Meet you in the caf, yeah?” 

John smoothes his hands down his generic cotton pyjamas. “Right, yes, very good.” Then waits for everyone to leave his room before he scrambles to the loo to shower.   

Out in the corridor, Rose lets her smile slip.

“You’re unbelievable,” she hisses, dragging Mickey further away from the door, Martha following after them.

“Oy,” Mickey huffs right back, “you’re off duty, so it’s a bit rich coming from you. Aren’t you supposed to be going over the house to see Jacs and Tony?”

Rose can feel her ire rising. “I rescheduled, all right. Anyway, I told you to leave it. I’m not risking the Doctor. Not for anything.”

“What’s going on?” Martha interjects, looking expectantly between Rose and Mickey. “Anything that involves the Doctor involves me—” she throws a surreptitious look Rose’s way and Rose blushes, crossing her arms abashed. 

She doesn’t mean to exclude Martha; really, she doesn’t. And she knows if she was in Martha’s position, she wouldn’t be handling it with nearly as much grace as Martha has. The Doctor needed people. It would be selfish for her not to want him to find others to travel with, and Martha’s great. So great. Maybe too great a petty part of her argues— the jealous, insecure part of her that she desperately wants to pretend doesn’t exist anymore, but which still escapes in the dead of night to plague her with thoughts. 

It doesn’t help that Mickey won’t bloody shut up about her. Not that he doesn’t have every right to like Martha, it hasn’t been like that between her and Mickey for ages, and it's easy to see why someone would like Martha— she’s funny, personable, and so sharp. It’s obvious why the Doctor would find her worthy of travelling with him.

He only takes the best. 

“I know,” Mickey says, “that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Behind my back.” Rose snaps before she can stop herself, clamping down when Mickey glares at her.

“I,” Mickey stresses, ignoring Rose’s eye roll, “think we should discuss bringing the Doctor back.” 

Martha blanches. “Why? Has something happened?”

“No, no, Martha. Everything is fine.” Rose jumps in, placing a soothing hand on Martha’s shoulder, her ire cooling under Martha’s sudden panic. “Which is why–” she throws an annoyed look at Mickey, “we should follow the Doctor’s plan.”

“But he’s starting to get his memories back anyway, so what’s the point in waiting?” Mickey challenges.

“That’s different,” Martha says, all business now. “The Doctor is seeping through John’s REM cycle, yeah, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually remembering being the Doctor. He–” Martha pauses, “he thinks he’s going mad. He’s scared of it, actually.”

Rose’s heart aches at the thought. That sweet, flustered man terrified by his own mind, his grasp on reality just a thread, but one he clings to so tightly.

“Could it actually drive him mad?” Rose asks in a small voice, heart in her throat.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, or else why would the Doctor make himself human in the first place if he knew what could happen.” Martha sighs, rubbing her eyes. “It’s not like I really know what I’m doing here. Med school doesn’t really prepare us for Alien/Human psychosis. I’m just trying to apply as much normal knowledge as I have.” She lets out another deep sigh. “The Doctor said the hunters would die out in three months. So we’ve only got a month to go.”

“But,” Mickey counters, “hear me out. It’s been over two months, and nothing has happened. Ships from other universes can’t just cross over.”

“The TARDIS did,” Martha says, looking warily between them.

“Yeah, but the TARDIS is special, isn’t it? The Doctor was always banging on about it, boasting and bragging about how no ship can do what it can.” Mickey raises his brow at the end, arms folded tight across his chest in that way he does when he thinks he’s got something all sorted out. “And despite what Rose might tell you, Martha. I’ve been working on crossing dimensions longer than she has,” Rose scowls, “and it’s not as easy as all that.” 

Bloody Torchwood. For all the ways this universe’s version was vastly improved, the bottom line was still the same— what others can do for them. Yes, they need the Doctor to help stop the Darkness, but not at the expense of his life if these hunters catch him.

Martha gives Mickey a slight, tight little grin. “I won’t begin to pretend I understand the complex science that goes into all that, and I get what you’re saying, Mickey—” Martha places her hand on Mickey's arm, squeezing gently, interesting Rose notes, “I want to help you and Torchwood. Really I do, but the Doctor said three months and—” she pauses, pushing hair behind her ear, colour high in her cheeks “I have to trust he knows what’s right, or else I can’t trust anything about this whole mess.” 

Rose knows better than anyone what Martha means, that devotion, the absolutely unshakable knowledge that the Doctor will know. 

He has to.

Rose can tell Mickey wants to push it, but instead, he nods. Ultimately, the decision is Martha’s, despite what both of them would have preferred. Rose had initially balked at Martha's insistence that she would not be parted from the fob watch that contained the Doctor’s consciousness— confident that the safest place for it was at Torchwood. But Martha had point-blank refused to relinquish it, and really, Rose couldn’t blame her in the end. She would do the exact same thing.

If there is anyone who wants the Doctor safely returned, apart from herself, it’s Martha. 

Rose is sitting at a table already when John walks in; two cups of tea and a basket of chips are placed in front of her as she stares down the mobile in her hand. Of course, he knows rationally what it is. However, still, there is a rebellious part of him that marvels at the technology of the world he’s woken into-- how it is frightening and foreign and utterly familiar and pedestrian all at the same time. 

When Rose catches sight of him, she smiles, her face split like a sunset, and he’s taken aback once again at the simple beauty of her. There is nothing delicate about Rose Tyler, but the features of her face work together in harmony to create something uniquely beautiful.

“I know you don’t remember, so I took a guess at what you might like. You look like a chip man to me.” She takes a bite of one and hums with pleasure, “Oh, you know these aren’t bad!” 

He takes the seat across from her, popping a chip in his mouth as he sits. He tastes potato, salt, and fried oils. It’s good, even better with her. Something about this just feels right.

“I think you’re right. I might be a chip man.” 

Rose grins again, a wistful tinge to her smile. “Some of my favourite moments involve chips. Can’t ever go wrong with chips.” 

John takes a sip of his tea, staring down at his cup in amazement when he realizes it tastes perfect.

“What is this?” he asks in awe.

A look flickers across Rose’s face. It’s one he’s seen her wear before, one that almost always follows with a pang of recognition. In these moments, he swears it is almost like she knows him, like he’s not sat across the table from a stranger, but someone much more intimate. 

She wets her lips. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I just made up the tea. I can get you a new one if you don’t like it.”

“No, no,” he says quickly, “it’s perfect actually, best one I’ve had yet. So what’s in it?” 

“Uh, it’s Earl Grey. Splash of milk and two sugars. I had a friend who took it that way.” She peers at him a moment, her eyes roving over his face. “You remind me of him in lots of ways.”

John picks up on the past tense, and a heap of questions flit through his mind. What happened to her friend? Was he the reason she sometimes looked so sad? How much of a friend was this man? 

“Good reminders, I hope,” he finally settles on, praying it doesn’t sound too forward.  

“The best,” she replies with a grin that doesn’t touch her eyes, and the moment passes. John watches her shake some vinegar on a small portion of the chips and reaches out to snap one up, popping it into his mouth with a grin.

Then his face scrunches up.

“Oh, blech,” he moans, swallowing the chip and washing it down with a mouthful of tea to remove the acidic taste. 

Rose giggles, “Okay, now you remind me of my brother, Tony.” She takes a sip of her own tea then adds with a lopsided grin, “He’s two.”  

John grins, “A distinguished and refined palette at such a young age must be a sign of good breeding.” 

Rose laughs full out now, a warm girlish sound that John finds immensely attractive. “Just wait till I tell my mum you said that. She’ll fall over in shock, she will.”  

John’s brows furrow, the feeling like he’s stumbled into something he should get but doesn’t.

“Why ever for?”

“Oh, um,” Rose says, sobering, “nothing really, just words like distinguished and refined aren’t really words that are used to describe my mum in particular.” Then he watches in dismay as the sunny grin on her lips dims, slipping into something much more demure and wistful once again. 

“I, uh, I hope you don’t mind, John…” Rose says now, fingers pushing around her mug, “…but Martha mentioned you’ve been having these strange dreams.” John’s cheeks flush at the mention. So much for doctor/patient confidentiality. “I’d love to hear about them. Maybe they can help us work out what happened to you.” 

“They’re just silly fantasies,” he says dismissively, staring at his mug resolutely. “They’re not real. I may not know who I am, but even I know I’m not an alien from an extinct planet, swashbuckling my way across the Universe.” 

“Doesn’t matter. I still want to hear them.” His head snaps up at this, and he takes in her face-- her gentle smile, eyes shining with kindness, with earnestness. “Sometimes it’s easier to talk with someone who isn’t a Doctor.” He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, and Rose’s hand shoots out to cover his. “No one thinks you’re mad, John. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen in my life. So trust me when I say just about anything is possible.”

The feel of Rose’s hand, warm and soft over his, has his head reeling. It feels like his hand was always meant to hold hers. Her kindness in a world that he's grappling with, the unique way she grounds him amidst the uncertainty that Dr. Jones, while well-intentioned, and the rest can't. It has to mean something, doesn’t it? More than serendipity, but fate. That of all the people in the world to find him, it was this woman sitting here before him with her soft brown eyes glowing like amber.

How can this feel so right with someone he barely knows. It feels like he has always known the feel of her hand, the texture, the whorl of her fingerprints, every crease of her palm. 

He knows this hand. He knows--  

“John?” Rose asks softly, and he shakes his head to dislodge his spiralling thoughts. 

He takes a deep breath. “Sometimes I have these dreams….”   

Martha stretches, trying to loosen the kink in her back. 

The Torchwood accommodations they’d set her up in were undoubtedly nice, but she never slept well in a bed that wasn’t hers. Torchwood has her consulting on all sorts of cases while she’s here as part of her cover, and while travelling with the Doctor has been thrilling, she can’t deny it’s been nice, fulfilling even, to be reminded of the goals and dreams she had before the Doctor blew into her life. This almost feels normal, or as normal as crash landing in a parallel universe and watching over a Time Lord who’s changed his DNA and gave himself a nasty case of amnesia to hide from desperate aliens near death, hellbent on stealing his near-immortality for themselves, is.  

Without thought, Martha reaches up to the back of the top shelf of her staff locker, palming the small fob watch she keeps there. 

More and more of the Doctor has been bleeding through lately. 

Martha feels caught in the middle of a profoundly complex issue she doesn’t have all the information about. She can feel Torchwood anxiously hovering– the multiverse is breaking down; not just theirs or even hers, but all of them and the only person who could possibly help is currently moonlighting as a patient in a psych ward. Martha feels the pressure to do something. They need the Doctor, and surely this is an emergency worth opening the watch, as Mickey argued last week. 

But she can’t ignore the fissure of fear that goes through her at the idea of opening the watch before the Doctor told her to. Whatever is out there hunting them is severe enough a concern to the Doctor to put himself, and her, through all this, including the horrifying procedure of humanizing himself. 

No, if all goes to plan, they should have just about a month left to wait. The TARDIS is secure,e and they are safe here. Everything is fine for now. 

But after-- the Doctor had given her nothing to go on in regards to falling through a crack in the universe where his long-lost love has been stranded (a fact the Doctor had failed to mention in all the off-hand times he’d brought up Rose. Martha could definitely understand his unmistakable heartbreak a bit better now). 

An outcome she’s sure the Doctor had never foreseen, but nevertheless, here they were all the same.

Martha rubs her thumb over the strange filigree etched on the surface. What would happen to them, to her when this is all over? Would the Doctor send her home now that he had Rose back? Despite her initial trepidation and, she can admit, jealousy over the Doctor’s love for Rose, Martha genuinely likes her-- she’s warm, kind and thoughtful. To be sure, the realization of similar but different overbearing mothers was a bonding moment. More importantly though, for the first time since Martha began travelling with the Doctor, Rose is someone Martha can actually talk to, one of the only other people apart from Mickey maybe, who understands what’s going on in Martha’s life-- the friend Martha didn’t know she desperately needed until now. And in all honesty, Rose and Mickey and Torchwood have been a lifeline in this whole thing. Martha can’t imagine how lonely and terrifying it would have been to deal with all this alone, as the Doctor had intended. 

When this is all over, she’s going to smack him so hard . The idea of stranding her of all people in 1913 rural England as he and the TARDIS had clearly planned, if stuffy John Smith the school teacher is any indication, would be laughable if it wasn’t so infuriating shortsighted. When she’d mentioned this to Mickey one night, he’d just shrugged in a yeah but what can you do way , a quiet commiseration and for the first time in a long time Marth felt like she’d been seen in a way Rose or even the Doctor could never truly understand. 

Still-- the idea of being the third wheel is a horrid thought she doesn’t think she could stomach, but it’s patently obvious in the last two months of being here that Rose has no intentions to be left behind a second time. 

After all this, after everything she’s done and seen, does she want to go home? Back to Martha the peacemaker, always in the middle as her family argues and squabbles around her. She’d wanted to escape it, just for a bit. Maybe she’d used the Doctor to pretend for a moment that she was someone different, to avoid the issues of her life just the same as he had used her to peacock about and forget his pain.

Neither had turned all that well so far. 

With a sigh she returns the watch to its previous spot, donning her lab coat and closing the locker. As she leaves the room, she practically crashes into a figure hovering right outside the door. 

“Tim!” she exclaims, clutching at her chest in surprise at the slight-looking teenager standing in front of her, an intense look to his dark eyes. 

Tim Latimer was a boy on the same ward as the Doctor, recuperating from a severe psychic attack. Martha remembers reading that he’d tested positive for low-level telepathic abilities on his chart. At first, Rose had thought Tim would sense the Doctor, but nothing had come about it so far. 

She likes Tim. He’s always polite, quiet, and calm. 

“You scared me half to death. Were you looking for someone?” She peered at him closer-- Tim’s eyes are so focused they’re almost glazing over. “Tim,” she says louder, “are you all right?” Martha places her hand gently on his shoulder, and Tim flinches back as if burned, blinking rapidly.

“What?” he begins, his features scrunching in confusion.

“Tim,” Martha says slowly, gently, “you’re outside the staff room right now. Did you know you were here?” 

In the last few days, staff had reported numerous occasions of Tim drifting off, sometimes mid-conversation even, his eyes going glassy and distant. An expression like the one he held now.  

He looks at her clearly now, brows still creased. “I-- I don’t know. I’m sorry, Dr. Jones.” Tim glances around the room. “Was there someone else in there?” 

Martha shakes her head, watching him critically. “No, just me. Why? Did you hear something?”

“I-- I thought I heard--” Tim trails off, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I heard.” He quickly apologizes again then scurries back down the corridor, Martha watching him go with concern. Just as he goes through the next set of doors, Tim turns back to her.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “The Doctor won’t let him win another election.”

The Doctor. 

Martha recoils. Something’s not right.  

She’s intent on following after Tim when she hears her name being called and turns to see Mickey hurrying down the hall towards her, a concerned look on his face. When she looks back a moment later, Tim’s long gone.  

“Have you seen the Doctor yet this morning?” he asks urgently, taking her by the elbow to duck back into the empty staff room. 

“No,” something is wrong, her mind keeps repeating, her heart begins to thunder in her ears. No, get a grip, Martha. You’d know if aliens attacked the hospital. 

“What’s going on?” 

“Late last night Torchwood got a private citizen call about something with green lights crashing down in a field just outside the city limits. At first, it was dismissed as a crank call or some jacked-up resident still jumpy from the Cybermen” —  Martha had been horrified when she learned the truth of her cousin Adi’s death, she could understand the fear people of this world still lived in — “but because of everything going on we sent a team out and discovered the burnt-up remains of a spaceship.”

Martha feels her heart jump to her throat. The hunters, they’d found the Doctor. 

“I don’t know how our scanners didn’t pick it up, but the ship is a total wreck. I don’t reckon anyone or anything could have survived based on what that ship looked like. Did the Doctor tell you anything about what was after him?”

“Nothing I haven’t already told you. Everything happened so suddenly. There was no time.”  

Mickey nodded grimly, “Well, either way, I think John Smith’s time is up.” 

Martha rushes for her locker, pocketing the watch. 

The wind is relentless, and he desperately wishes he could feel it, could brush the tendrils of hair from her face as they cling to her lips, could trace his fingers along the magnificent jut of her jaw. When there is heartache as profound as this, he would think the world would lie still for just a moment. Just this one moment.  

Time ripples through him, and yet he’s powerless at this moment. So much power under his fingertips, and it cannot bring back the woman he loves.

“Am I ever gonna see you again?” Her words come out with a tremor as she swallows back a sob.

“You can’t.”  

Not can’t, though, won’t. He could rip these walls down if he wanted. What’s one measly offshoot universe in exchange for her, the girl who swallowed Time just to ensure he wouldn’t die alone.

He needs her—  

Then it’s gone; the beach, the wind, the girl who keeps walking away, and he finds himself in a classroom, the smell of chalk and polish permeating everything. 

“--Advanced with little impediment. The French were all but spent, with only two battalions of the old guard remaining. A final reserve force was charged with protecting Napoleon, but by evening, the advance of the Allied troops had forced them to retreat.”

“Mister Smith,” a boy drawls. 

“Yes, Hutchinson, what is it?” he asks, not turning from the board.

“Time is up.” 

“I beg your pardon?” 

He spins on his heel, watching transfixed as the boy’s face transforms– cogs turning, metal teeth catching like the inner workings of a clock. No, this isn’t right. He’s not meant to be here. He lo—

“Doctor,” a woman calls now, fright colouring her voice. He knows that voice. A Dark Lady, that bloody flirt Shakespeare. Martha Jones.

Smith and Jones. Nononono he’s not John Smith, and this is not the moon.

Green sparks shoot off, and the TARDIS groans. He has to help her— 

“Doctor, what’s happening? What am I supposed to do?” 

John wakes with a start, a pounding ache ricocheting through his skull. His mind feels like it’s splintering, cracking like layers of glass under too much weight. The intensity of his dreams is getting stronger, more vivid than even his waking memories are. He groans, eyes squeezed shut against the pain, and feels the mattress dip with someone’s weight on the edge.

“All right, there?” they ask. 

“My head,” he moans, rubbing at his temples, “is killing me.” 

A goddess awash in gold, Time swirling in her eyes and the universe in the palm of her small hand, he can taste the saline on her lips— 

God, make it stop. 

A soft, sobbed little gasp, and he blinks wearily into the light of his bedside table, Rose staring down at him, eyes shiny with moisture. 

“Rose?” He pushes himself further up in the bed as Rose helps him, her hands on his shoulders to support. “Wha– what are you doing here?” He looks around the room. He’d stretched out after breakfast, still feeling tired from his poor night’s sleep… but then… he has such difficulty remembering things. He moves his legs, and his foot knocks something from the bed. 

It’s a book, no wait, it’s– oh, it’s his journal. He looks at Rose and sees the guilt flash through her eyes, high points of colour on her cheeks.

“I can explain–” she begins at the exact moment as he speaks. 

“Were you reading my journal?”

He doesn’t know why he even asks. It’s obvious she has been. Page after page of his terrors, the mad kaleidoscope of his damaged brain— oh God, the things he wrote about her, the inky details of her face. He can feel a flush of heat crawling up the back of his neck– embarrassment, anger, betrayal, violation– he doesn’t know what he feels most. 

“I’m sorry, I–” she pauses, wetting her lips, “I just had to know.”

“Know what?” he asks harshly, and Rose flinches. Good, he thinks, at least she’s uncomfortable. 

“How much–” her voice cracks, “how much of the Doctor is in you.” 

Martha and Mickey are speeding their way down the corridor when a commotion in the lounge catches their attention.

“Stop, stop,” someone cries in anguish, and Martha recognizes that voice. It’s Tim Latimer. “I’m not crazy. I’m not. Can’t you hear it? It’s him. It’s him.”

Martha and Mickey hurry into the room to find Tim huddled in an armchair, knees drawn to his chest and his arms wrapped over his legs as he clutches at his head.

“It’s all right, Tim,” Jenny, a member of the support staff, soothes, crouching in front of him. “Everything’s going to be okay.” When she spots Martha and Mickey, Jenny stands, casting a glance over her shoulder at Tim, who continues to shake in his seat.

“I have no idea what’s gotten into him,” she says quietly to them. “I’ve never seen him like this. He’s normally so sweet.” 

Martha takes Jenny’s previous spot, kneeling before the quivering boy.

“Tim,” she says gently, “these voices, what are they saying?” 

Tim looks up, his wide, dark eyes glassy with tears, cheeks blotchy and red.  

“In the dark,” he replies, voice small and scared, “Waiting, always waiting. He’s trapped inside the cogs.” Martha shares a brief, worried glance with Mickey, then smoothes a hand down Tim’s arm. “The darkness is coming.”

Then in a rush, he throws his arms around Martha, almost knocking her off balance.

“Who’s talking to you?” 

“The Doctor,” Tim shudders, “Please. The Doctor. Please make it stop.”   

The Doc— no, John stares back at her, confused and angry. 

Rose knows it’s not an excuse, but she honestly hadn’t intended to violate his privacy. She’d only come to check on him, gripped by a panic she couldn’t shake no matter how much Mickey reassured her of the Doctor’s safety. 

“He’s as human as you and me.” Mickey had said on their way back from the crash site, grabbing her arm as she bit her nail down to the quick. “That was the point of this whole fucking mess. They’re looking for a Time Lord, not a loon in a Torchwood brain ward.” 

They knew nothing about the aliens hunting Martha and the Doctor down, though; Torchwood was completely blind to what they were potentially up against if these hunters managed to locate them, and Rose knew the Doctor wouldn’t leave anyone who travelled with him so exposed if he didn’t think this was absolutely the best option. 

Rose trusts the Doctor— she always has, and she always will. But that doesn’t stop her mind from tracing all the terrible unknowns, and it doesn’t stop her from knowing that the Doctor rarely thinks through a plan before jumping into the fray. All she has to do is remember the agonizing hours of waiting for the Doctor to return on a cannibalized spaceship in the fifty-first century. 

What if they can still track the Doctor? John Smith is about as vulnerable as you can get, and if the dreams John is having are any indication, his grasp on humanity is a thin cover at best. Would the hunters be able to sense the inner Time Lord practically spewing out of John?  

Rose can’t take that chance. 

So to hell with Mickey, she’d raced to the hospital the first moment she could. The dimension cannon is pointless, filing paperwork is pointless– it’s all so pointless, none of it bloody matters because the Doctor is here, and he needs her. 

But when she got there and found him, stretched out on his bed sound asleep, something in her had wilted at the sight.

She wanted him to be in trouble.   

For all the grief she’s given Mickey about wanting to open the watch too soon, the truth is she wanted John to be in trouble because trouble meant opening the fob watch. Trouble meant getting the Doctor back. 

God, what is wrong with her…  

At the time, it had been easy to push her emotions down and let Agent Tyler take over. After all, Martha had needed help, not some heart-sick woman having a breakdown about the unfairness of it all. But later, in the safety of her mum’s arms, she had let the sobs fall. It seemed so cruel to spend all this time and effort trying to achieve the impossible, searching for the Doctor, only to have him wind up practically at her doorstep with absolutely no clue who she was. 

A stranger wearing the face of the man she loves. 

She’d resigned herself to the possibility, however much she dreaded to consider it, that the Doctor might have regenerated in their time apart. But in some ways, this feels worse.

John is nothing and everything like the Doctor, and it hurts to be near him, to watch him grin and scratch his head, pull his ear as he talks. To see these moments of the Doctor shining through and be both thrilled and scared at what it means. 

Yet she can’t stay away because it makes her stomach flutter when he looks at her. She knows he likes her, more than Martha and certainly more than Mickey. 

“Of course, he likes Rose,” Mickey had scoffed. “He bloody imprinted on her like a baby chick when he changed faces. Why should now be any different.” 

(Explaining regeneration to Martha had been a whole other thing. He has to start warning his companions about that.) 

It feels wrong to play with John’s emotions when he’s as fragile as he is, like she’s leading him on in some way, but she misses the Doctor so much, and something is better than nothing at all. So when she saw John’s journal sitting there, she couldn’t resist— a moment, just one tiny moment, to have the Doctor back. 

But it’s more than she could have ever imagined, more intimate and unfiltered than the Doctor had ever been with her, and despite the niggling part of her mind screaming at the wrongness of this all— how the Doctor would never want her to see him this raw and exposed, even more than that terrible day in Utah, she couldn’t stop.  

Page after page. Gallifrey as it was; his travels; Sarah Jane and all the others that came before Rose; the war; the Daleks; all the pain and loneliness– tears burn in her eyes as she reads. 

Then she sees her name. Again and again and again. 

A rendering of her own face staring up at her from the page. 

Rose knew, had always known really, that the Doctor loved her— both versions of him, but to see his love and his heartache so clearly spelled out in ink is overwhelming. 

She keeps walking away… 

Martha had recognized her name immediately, and though Rose is desperate to know, she’s never been brave enough to ask what he had said. She doubts it was to this extent. 

“Don’t mock me,” John says hotly, the hurt all over his face. “I’m aware of my delusions. I thought you—” he glances away, jaw flexing as he clenches his teeth. 

“I’m not mocking you, John. I would never.” Rose reaches for his hand, trapping it between both of hers. John turns back to face her, his expression wary, conflicted. “Look where you are; think about the patients on this ward or how you even met me. You’re in a Torchwood facility— is it so absurd to think there could be some truth to these dreams of yours?”  

No, she’s meant to protect the charade, not blow a bloody great gaping hole through it.

“Yes,” he cries, “of course it’s absurd, because if I were this man, then I’d be…” his lips are trembling, breathing coming in hard pants. “I’d be no better than the monsters the Doctor supposedly triumphs over. The things I dream about— fire and so much death on my hands. Why would anyone want that?” 

His hand flexes in hers. “How can you—” John pauses, suddenly abashed as he gazes at her nervously “—love someone like that?”  

Rose sucks in a quick breath, flushing at his words. What is the use in denying it, though? She does love the Doctor. More than anything. Forever. 

“But that’s not who the Doctor is. Yeah, he’s been forced to make terrible choices that no one should ever have to, but he still tries. ” She swallows around the lump building in her throat. “Every day, he tries to make things better than how he found them. He cares so much about everyone, every single living thing. The universe needs the Doctor. We need him more than ever. I– I've been travelling across different universes because every single universe is in danger. It's coming, John. It's coming from across the stars, and nothing can stop it except the Doctor.”

John blanches. It’s too much, she thinks. This is too much. 

“What’s coming?” he breathes, apprehension and fear creeping into his voice. 

“The darkness.”  

A moment later Martha and Mickey hurry in, Rose’s hand reaching for the service gun on her hip at the sound of the door banging open. 

“Mick, what’s happened?” Rose immediately bounds from the bed, crossing the room in a few strides. Martha and Mickey look shaken. 

“Something weird, babes,” Mickey responds. “There’s a boy that was talking about the Doctor just now.” 

What? 

“What’s going on?” John demands loudly, eyes flying wildly between the two new occupants of his room. “Dr. Jones, what is the meaning of this?” 

Martha grimaces, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry, John, I know this is hard to understand. I promise I’ll explain everything. It’s Tim Latimer,” Martha adds, mainly addressing Rose now. “I think–” she pauses, “He says he can hear voices, and he mentioned things he couldn’t possibly know about. I think he can sense the Doctor. I didn’t understand what the Doctor meant at first. I thought he was bonkers. But he was so insistent that the watch was him, that opening it would bring him back. I think what Tim is hearing is coming from this—” Martha reaches into her lab coat pocket, patting around for a moment before frantically diving her hand into the other pocket.

“Oh, my God, the watch,” she cries, looking up at Rose and Mickey with horror, “it’s gone.”  

Rose’s stomach plummets through the floor. Oh, God, how are they going to get the Doctor back without the watch? 

“What the hell is going on?” John yells, jumping up from the bed now, his whole body vibrating. “You’re all mad, all of you. It’s not me who should be in here. It’s you lot.” He turns to Rose. “I’m John Smith.” He pats down his chest. “I have one heart,” he says now to Martha. “You know I do. I… I..” his fingers tear at his hair, increasingly frantic. “I’m human. I’m just a man, not… whatever else you want me to be. I’m human!”

Without thought, Rose rushes to him, pulling him into her arms. “I’m John Smith, not the Doctor,” he cries softly into her hair, his early anger evidently gone as he clings to her. “I can’t be… I can’t be….” 

“I’m sorry, John,” Martha says, arms folded tight across her body.

“All this time, you let me prattle on, let me think I was barmy, making up ludicrous  stories to fill my broken mind.” He lifts his head, casting a blazing accusatory stare at Martha. “Are you even a doctor?” 

“Yes!” She exclaims quickly, “Or I’m almost one once I finish my exams.” Martha exhales roughly, pushing back her hair. “I’m sorry we lied to you, but it was to help keep you safe. This is what you wanted me to do. God, this is so mental; why am I even having this argument with you. Look, I wish there was a better way to do this, but it’s true. You turned yourself human to protect yourself.” 

“Protect myself? Protect myself from what exactly? If I’m so powerful, then why did I need to hide?” 

“Because—” Martha gestures wildly with her hands, “because you were trying to be kind. To let them die naturally, I think.” 

“You think?” Incredulity dripping from his voice. 

“Yes… I mean, I don’t know….” Martha shrugs, deflating a little. “The Doctor’s never really clear on his plans. Most of the time, I’m just racing to catch up.” 

Mickey snorts at this. “Don’t worry, Martha; he does that to everyone, even Rose.” 

Rose bites down on her lip to stop her snapping at Mickey. This isn’t the time for this. 

“And who are you to the Doctor?” John asks Martha sharply, his eyes hard as he looks her up and down. 

“I’m his friend,” Martha replies, her voice quivering ever so slightly. “I travel with him, just like in your dreams.” 

John turns back to Rose. “And you?” He asks softer. “I’ve seen him lose you again and again. Were you and him—”

“We don’t have time for this,” Mickey interrupts. “We need to find that watch.” 

“Tim,” Martha cries suddenly, “it’s got to be him. He must have slipped it from my pocket earlier.” 

“Do you think he was puttin’ on a song and dance for you?” 

Martha frowns, brows furrowing. “No, he was genuinely upset. When I ran into him before in the corridor, it was like he was in some kind of daze. The watch must have been calling out to him from my locker. Oh, God, who knows how long he’s been able to hear it. It must have been slowly driving him mad.” 

Mickey nods tersely. “Right. We need to find him. Now. Scared people do stupid things when pushed to the edge, and he looked bloody terrified when Martha and I saw him. Rose,” they share a glance, “you stay with himself there.” 

“No,” John says firmly, and for a moment, Rose swears it’s the Doctor. “I've spent the last two months being told what to do, what to think and how to feel. I’ve had enough. If this is about me, I want to be there.” 

He glances wearily at Rose. “If we get this watch back, will my memories return?” 

“Yes,” Rose murmurs, her heart in her throat. 

John nods, resolved. “Then I’m going with you.” 

Mickey rolls his eyes. “Christ, even when his brain’s been knocked out, he can’t take a simple order from me. Some things never change.”

They eventually find Tim on the roof. Mickey barks every clearance code he has access for on his mobile as they race to the security wing, then off towards the roof once they get a reading on his location. 

Terror grips at Rose’s heels, trying to pull her down. She usually can compartmentalize, make a clear divide between her fears and what she needs to do. Be Agent Tyler, Defender of the Earth. 

But now she can’t. She feels like every fear she suppressed in the last two months is crawling up her throat. 

The Doctor. The Doctor. The Doctor. 

The fire door has already been blasted off its hinges when they get to the roof. Oh no. 

“Tim!” Martha calls frantically once they make it outside. “Tim, whatever you’re doing, wait!” 

Rose holds her arm out, blocking Mickey and John as Martha races around the corner. “Hold it,” she whispers, “we don’t want to spook him. Let Martha go ahead.”

“Like hell,” Mickey hisses, “you saw that door, I’m not letting Martha go without backup.”

“Mick, stop. Think about it. He’s a frightened boy, not some suped-up Alien. What would be less traumatizing— a Torchwood Operatives Agent he’s never met or the supportive doctor that’s been helping to treat him?” Rose gives him a pointed look, and after a moment, Mickey stands down, letting out a harsh breath. 

Together they make their way quietly around a ventilation pipe in the direction Martha went, gravel crunching under their feet.

Rose gasps softly when Tim and Martha come into view, reflexively going to rush forward, before John’s hand clamps over her arm, stilling her. Tim is standing on the edge, staring down at his hand, gripped tight like a fist. 

“Tim, please,” Martha says, trying to calm. “Please step back from the ledge. I know why you hear voices, and I can make it stop, I promise. I’m so sorry about what’s been happening. None of this is your fault. I’ll fix it. Just please step back.” 

Tim pays her no mind, unclenching his fist to reveal a fob watch in his hand. A wisp of gold, shimmering smoke emerges when he clicks it open. 

Rose has seen that before. Regenerative energy. 

Behind her, John lets out a whimpering cry of pain, his knees buckling, head in his hands.  

“It hurts,” John wheezes out. “Time. It’s all wrong.” 

“Stop, Tim,” Rose yells in a panic, dropping down to place her arms around John, her hand running through his hair. “Close the watch. Please.” 

“I’ve seen it,” Tim says now, unmoved, as the watch closes and a bit of the tension drains from John’s hunched frame. “The future, the past, so many different timelines like a web of thread that never ends. Until it does. I’ve seen the darkness, planets wiped from existence till the whole universe crumbles, and reality falls apart. And everywhere he’s there,” Tim looks up suddenly, his dark unfocused eyes zeroing in on John, who flinches. “The Doctor. The Last of the Time Lords.” 

“Tim,” Martha calls again. 

“I've seen him. He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun.

“Stop it,” John yells, grabbing onto Rose for stability. 

“He's ancient and forever.” Tim continues. “He burns at the centre of time, and he can see the turn of the universe. An infinite fire, burning with light, burning in time. He scares me, and he's wonderful.” 

“Martha Jones,” Tim turns his gaze to her. “Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith. I’ve seen you all. Humans, brave, loyal. Lives that are gone in the blink of an eye, and he lives on. Forever. He wants me to keep him safe, hidden from the false and empty man.”  

Rose shudders. They need to get that watch away from Tim.

“He’s going to burn up if you don’t help him,” John mutters. “Time Lord essences don’t mix well with tiny, human brains.” Rose whips around so quickly she practically does her neck in.  

“What did you say?” she asks breathlessly. That wasn’t John talking. 

John stares back at her, his eyes wide and panicked. “I– I don’t know. Rose, my head…” he pulls at his hair again, tugging at the strands so hard she’s shocked they don’t come away in clumps in his hands.

It’s the watch, she thinks. Something about the watch is reacting badly. But why? What was it abou— then it hits her. ‘Time is wrong,’ John had said. 

Time is wrong.   

“It’s because of here,” she whispers, and Mickey throws her a questioning look. 

The only other time the TARDIS has been here, she'd been sick because she was in the wrong universe. 

“I think the watch is going haywire because it’s in the wrong universe.” Rose mutters quietly. “The TARDIS draws its power from the universe or the time vortex, and the TARDIS and the Doctor are from the same planet, yeah, they have this special bond, he can feel it and I think it can feel him. Mick, don’t you remember when we first came here? The TARDIS crashed because it fell into a different universe and couldn’t work anymore.” 

Recognition dawns on Mickey’s face. “ It's like diesel in a petrol engine,”  The Doctor told me. He had to give up years of his life or something to get it workin’ again. Oh, my God, that has to be it.” 

Then Tim moves, extending his arm into the air, over the roof and the considerable drop below. Rose and Martha both cry out. 

“Tim, don’t!” 

“Stop!” 

“I can end it,” he says, speaking over their distressed cries. “All his pain, his loneliness, his burdens.” Tim turns to address John again, “you could be with her,” he nods towards Rose, “the way you long to be, instead of watching her fade away. I saw how he loves her.”

“I–” John begins, glancing at Rose briefly, cheeks red and eyes wide. His hand clenches around her arm. “I… I don’t—” 

Maybe there’s a universe where Rose walks the slow path with a man– one who’s open and generous with his love, his grins, and his thoughts; his brown eyes wide and expressive, his hand warm in hers— but this man wouldn’t be the Doctor. His eons of memory and experience that have shaped him into the man she fell in love with would be gone. 

Their time together, everything that made them them would be gone. 

John Smith is lovely, but he’s not the Doctor. His love is just an echo of the Doctor’s. It’s not real. 

She’s in love with the Doctor, not just any man who happens to look like him. She loves him for exactly who he is: the good, the bad and the alien. 

No, she could never be happy in that life– not now. The Doctor had shown her a better way to live, and she could never settle for anything less. 

“But, Tim,” Rose takes a hesitant step forward, John’s hand falling away. “That’s not for us to decide. You’ve seen what the Doctor does for the world, the universe. You said it yourself,” she spares John a glance, a watery smile tugging at her lips, “he’s wonderful. And part of what makes him so wonderful is his selflessness. The Doctor never puts his wants above what’s best for others.”

Rose takes another small step forward, motioning for Martha to do the same with her hand. 

“Those things you saw, Tim, the darkness creeping across the universe,” Tim flinches, his hand tightening around the watch, and Rose’s heart pounds violently in her ears. If he smashes it, everything could be over. They need the Doctor. 

“Mickey and I are trying to stop it, but we can’t without the Doctor, and we need that watch in your hand to get him back. You can help us, Tim. You can help the whole universe, every universe.”

Tim looks between his hand and Rose, then he turns to Martha.

“And you can make the voices and visions stop?”

Martha nods. “And if I can’t, I know a really clever Doctor who can.” 

With a shuddering sob, Tim steps back, and Martha immediately hurries towards him, wrapping her arm around his shoulders as she guides him further away. “It’s okay, Tim.” She smooths his hair back in a comforting gesture as he cries, “it’s okay.” 

Later, Rose will marvel at how she made it this far without crumbling.  

For a moment, she forgets how to breathe, when in the blink of an eye and the quiet click of a clasp, the man before them disappears and returns all at once. 

He stands still for a moment, eyes closed but moving rapidly beneath his lids, and for one terrifying second, she thinks it hasn’t worked, that too much as seeped out in the mess with poor Tim. But then his eyes snap open, and she knows. 

It’s him.  

“Doctor?” she asks softly, and his full, unadulterated, intense gaze fixes on her. 

The Doctor has held her gaze many times: in stress and strain, pain and hopelessness, unconfined joy and eagerness, contented calm– his mercurial eyes never able to settle on one thing, always a kaleidoscope of feelings, time and memories.

He has never looked at her like this before. 

“Rose,” he says, just her name, but it’s everything, and Rose feels like her body is on fire, her heart pounding in her ears. 

Someone shuffles their feet, the sound of fabric shifting against fabric, and the Doctor wets his lips, looking away hastily.

“And Mister Mickey,” he says exuberantly, the mask back on and eyes alight in recognition.

“All right, boss?” Mickey chuckles. 

Rose lets out a shaky breath. Then another, and another.  

It’s better this way, she thinks, trying to push down the disappointment welling up inside her. What had she expected anyway– some romantic declaration in front of Martha and Mickey? That he would sweep her up in his arms, to tell her that he lov — no, that wasn’t the Doctor.   

“Martha Jones,” the Doctor says now, lifting Martha up off her feet in a bone-crushing hug, “saved me again, it seems.”

Rose looks away, blinking back tears and the childish stab of jealousy watching the Doctor shower Martha in such easy affection.

“Yeah,” Martha laughs, “that’s all I seem to do these days.”  

Rose had been struck by something as she’d listened to Martha talk about her adventures with the Doctor in the early days of their arrival in the parallel world (no better way to size someone up than to compare notes on their travels. Have you been here, did you see this, oh, yeah the Doctor always does that.) 

The Doctor had always been reckless before, often with little regard for his own safety, but something about the stories Martha told troubled Rose. It was like Martha kept pulling the Doctor from the brink of something. 

She was struck by how often these stories inevitably left Martha fending for herself. Sure, Rose had a tendency to be jeopardy friendly and get herself into trouble, but Martha’s experience felt different. Martha’s stories felt less like a pair of travellers on an adventure, like Rose had always felt she and the Doctor were, and more like Martha had been thrown in the deep end with only a paddle and expected to make her way to safety.

The Doctor had changed in Rose’s absence. 

“Thank you,” the Doctor says into her hair, giving her one last fond squeeze before letting go. 

“Doctor,” Martha begins when he puts her down, “about Tim—” 

“Ah,” the Doctor intones, the convivial grin sliding off his face. Something flickers in his gaze, a look Rose recognizes well, guilt. “Yes, better deal with that right away.” The Doctor reaches into his trousers, then frowns, his hand coming up empty as if just remembering his surroundings.  “Right. I’ll need my screwdriver….” 

“In my staff locker,” Martha replies quickly. 

The Doctor nods. “C’mon, Dr. Jones, after you then.” 

He hangs back a moment as Martha and Mickey file out, Mickey giving the Doctor a good-natured smack to the shoulder as he passes, and the Doctor grins. Then it’s just the two of them. 

Should she say something? This doesn’t seem like an appropriate time to have a domestic, but the feeling like she should acknowledge— 

Wordlessly the Doctor extends his hand, his fingers wiggling in invitation. 

Oh.

She takes it, threading their fingers together, and the Doctor smiles.    

The rest of the day is a blur. 

The Doctor and Martha step into Tim's room while Rose waits in the corridor, pacing and trying not to chew her thumbnail down too much. It had been decided that Tim would probably prefer not to have an audience, and Rose can respect that, really she can, after everything that poor boy’s been through, but still, it kills her not to be in there. 

Mickey took off to headquarters to check in with control and fill the team in on the latest developments. What will happen to the project now that they’ve got the Doctor?

“Don’t let him run off,” Mickey had said before he left. “We need him, Rose.”

She’d spent so many months totally consumed by the job— the mental and physical preparedness she’d been required to undertake just to get the sign-off to begin test jumping once construction was completed, let alone being catapulted into dimension after dimension, all in search for the Doctor. But never once had she contemplated what it would actually be like once she found him. First, they’d stop the Darkness, fix the multiverse and bring the stars back, but after…

She couldn’t let herself think of that. But now, suddenly, it’s all she can think about. Can she really just walk back into her old life? Was it really that simple? 

She’s on her twentieth lap when the door opens and Martha and the Doctor step out.

“How is he?” Rose asks anxiously, crossing her arms so she doesn’t fidget. 

The Doctor sighs, rubbing his eye with two fingers. “He’ll be fine after a bit of time. But, Torchwood was right. Tim’s got an extra synaptic engram, probably born with it, which makes his little human mind like a sponge; perfect for absorbing excess energy from a biodata module like this...”

The Doctor pulls the fob watch from the pocket of his trousers and gives it a little shake to emphasize his point. 

Rose nods her head at it. “It was because you’re here, right? The watch went mental because it could sense it was in the wrong universe. I remember all the trouble the TARDIS had when she was here last, so I figured… it was all part of the causal nexus.” she shrugs, cheeks heating. There’s a reason she leaves the technobabble to the professionals. 

The Doctor stares at her a moment, his lips curling into a lopsided little grin. “Correct, Rose Tyler.” A shiver goes down her spine at the way he says her name. She wasn’t sure she’d ever hear it said like that ever again. “Or I suppose I should say Agent Tyler now.” 

Rose isn’t sure what he means by that, so she just rolls her eyes. 

“Where’s Mickey?” Martha asks, looking around not so subtly. 

Rose smirks. “Back at headquarters, checking in with control. We have a team analyzing the wreckage from last night. They’re running it against tech and biosamples catalogued in our database to find any matches. Since we didn’t have anything to go on about the hunters you two were hiding from,” she casts a glance at the Doctor, who has his lips pursed in a petulant little pout, “we thought process of elimination was better than nothing.”

“Well,” the Doctor sniffs, “that won’t be necessary anymore. I’m here now, and I can promise you, no database can beat my knowledge.”

Rose rolls her eyes again, suppressing a grin that threatens to break. 

The Doctor at Torchwood is… eventful, to say the least.  

The remains of the spaceship were relocated to a Torchwood warehouse. When the Doctor walks up to the ship and gives it a firm kick with his plimsoll, Rose swears at least three lab assistants from R&D cower in fear. Clearly, they hadn’t cracked what this ship was then.

“Yep,” The Doctor says, emerging from the ship five minutes later. “It’s our persistent little friends all right. Their containment chambers have been destroyed, and there are gaseous remnants.”

“What happened to them?” Martha asks wearily, arms drawn tight around herself. 

The Doctor rubs at his neck in thought. “Well, I’d wager they tried to follow us through to this side.” 

“But they’d hit the Void, wouldn’t they?”

The Doctor makes a non-committal noise. 

“The what?” Martha questions, looking lost.

“It’s the negative space between dimensions,” Rose speaks first, smirking at the Doctor’s mouth promptly snapping shut. “It’s the absence of everything. Nothing exists there. The dimension cannon only works because it bypasses the Void by finding vulnerable points in other universes and shooting straight through.”

Martha looks between Rose and The Doctor. “So the Void is bad then?”

“Yes,” Rose says quickly, beating the Doctor again. She catches his eye for just a second before he quickly looks away, but his eyes are so dark and harrowed at that moment that Rose knows they share the same thought. How close she came to being sucked into that hellscape as the Doctor screamed, helpless and agonized, after her. 

Martha nods, her face relaxing. “So, Mickey was right then.”

“He what?” The Doctor splutters indignantly, and Rose has to cover her mouth to keep from laughing. 

“Before, you…” Martha pauses, features scrunching, “uh, came back, Mickey said no ordinary ship could jump dimensions, that the TARDIS was special—”

“She is.” The Doctor interrupts, preening. “No ship can do what she can.”

“Oh, my God,” Martha laughs, pointing at him in mirth.  “Mickey got you almost word for word there.”

The Doctor scowls. 

After, they head to headquarters to see the dimension cannon.

Rose can tell the Doctor is anxious to see the TARDIS; her last crash landing in this dimension almost killed her. Rose can’t imagine she’s fared much better this time. But for some reason, he’d been insistent on seeing the dimension cannon first.

Rose had checked on the TARDIS several times, but she didn’t know the first thing about fixing the TARDIS or even knowing if there was anything wrong. The TARDIS had been so still and quiet, though; it felt wrong to be there without the Doctor, and the longer Rose stayed, the more she could feel the helplessness welling up inside her. 

To her shame, she hadn’t been back in a while. It was just too hard. 

“Speaking of your wonderful ship, I’m sure you’d like to see it.” Rose had said at the warehouse, her grin dimming as the Doctor shrugged.

“That old girl can wait,” he’d said, arms behind his back as the three of them walked to the car. “I can still feel her, so there’s nothing too pressing to deal with.”

“But, Doctor…” Rose began, her words dying off at the look on his face. He had that blank expression on, the one that tended to accompany I’m always all right. 

Don’t let him do that to you, her mind had nagged at her. You’re not some besotted silly girl anymore. Don’t let him push you away. 

Rose and Martha share a look, Martha shrugging in confusion.

“Right.” Rose had replied, swallowing around the lump in her throat.

So now they were at headquarters, the Doctor peering at the wall of monitors up in the control room, moving from computer to computer. His glasses must be in his coat back in the TARDIS because if he had them with him, she’s sure he would have them on now. 

“So this is modified from the hoppers you lot used last time?” The Doctor asks aloud to no one in particular.

“Yeah,” Mickey responds. “Torchwood keeps a close eye on the barriers since the Cybermen passed through to your world and monitored a steadily thinning over the past year. The cannon’s designed to punch a hole in reality to another universe so the discs can work again.” Rose can hear the pride in his voice. Since day one, Mickey and Jake have been on this project, and Rose knows how much time and resources have been poured into it, even before she was brought on board. “We upgraded them, though, so now they travel to different parts in space, not just hopping to parallel Earths.” 

Mickey motions towards one of the monitors. “We’re in the process of getting the cannon to lock onto timelines as well once we connected the Darkness to the thinning dimensional barriers. It can measure timelines, but it’s all a bit… unstable at the moment. That’s what we hoped would help us find you, but then you conveniently came to us, so cheers for that.”

The Doctor looks up from the monitors, glancing at Rose. “And so you’ve been jumping?” Rose flinches at the coldness in his voice. He’s angry.

“Yes,” Rose rounds her shoulders, standing taller. “I have the most experience going off-world. And if anyone was going to find you, it was going to be me. But, Mick and Jake have been jumping the past two months to register the degradation in other realities. ”  

The Doctor nods. She can tell he wants to challenge her, but he keeps his mouth shut. “And where is Jakie-boy?” The Doctor asks in a casual tone.

“He just got back from a jump, so he’s quarantining. It’s protocol to make sure we don’t carry pathogens back from unknown sources.” Mickey shifts his stance when he notices the Doctor’s darkening look. “It’s not like last time,” he says defensively, “As you can see, we’re monitoring every impact this has on Earth. We’re only just recovering from the global damage the holes caused last time. And anyway, it was the Cybermen punching great big bloody holes the first time. We know what we’re doing. The hole can only be maintained for a few days max, so there’s no lasting damage.”

“No lasting damage,” the Doctor scoffs. “Do you even hear yourself? You're as bad as the others. I can’t even begin to count all the ways this could have ended in catastrophe, and if I can’t measure the odds, that should be a clear indication of how monumentally stupid this plan was. And you just let Rose catapult herself into that vast unknown. The fact that she didn’t die on her first trip is a miracle, let alone all the countless jumps you’ve had her and yourselves doing afterwards. The arrogance of humans knows no bounds.” 

“Doctor,” Martha gasps, like a reprimand and warning in one. 

“At least we’re doing something,” Mickey replies hotly. Rose’s heart is pounding. Never had she expected this would be his reaction. She thought he’d be proud to see the work she’d dedicated herself to. “It’s not like we could call on you to swan in and save the day at the last minute.”

“I thought the whole point of this was to ask me to do just that.” The Doctor responded coolly.

“Stop!” Rose yells, her voice ringing out, causing everyone to turn suddenly in her direction. “Stop. Both of you.” She turns to glare at the Doctor head-on. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you agree with our method, Doctor. It was my decision to jump, and I made it freely knowing the risks. There are more important things than my personal safety. Planets are blinking out of existence. Whatever is affecting this universe is spreading across them all. We’ve tracked them with my jumps. It’s only a matter of time until it reaches the prime universe. So either you can continue to stand there, arguing with us about who’s right and who’s wrong, or you can help us.” 

Rose can feel her cheeks flushing, heat crawling up the back of her neck the longer everyone stares at her. She makes sure to keep herself drawn straight, shoulders back, defying anyone to challenge her. 

“I–” the Doctor wets his lips, his expression unreadable. “I’ll need the TARDIS. I’d like to take a few readings myself.” 

“I’ll take you.” Rose motions for the door, scanning her pass to activate the door, her steps quick but steady as the Doctor trails after her.

If the Doctor wants to be a gigantic prat about this, then fine, let him. She doesn’t regret anything they’ve done here.  

They walk in silence. Rose has never been so aware of the sound of her own breathing, the shuffle of her thighs brushing as she walks. She leads him down a corridor, then turns to the left down another generic white corridor identical to the one they just came down. She comes to a stop outside a heavily reinforced door, scanning her pass once more and placing her hand on the scanner, which beeps in recognition a moment later, and the wide double set doors slide open. 

Inside sits the TARDIS, just as she’d left her.

“We thought this would be the safest place for it while you…” Rose sighs, walking deeper into the space, “well, while you weren’t you.”

The Doctor nods silently, stepping up to the TARDIS and unlocking it with a reverent and loving stroke to the door. “You’ve made a right muck of it this time, old girl,” he mutters fondly. Rose watches him step beyond the threshold, her stomach in tight knots at the sight. This is everything she’d been longing for since the moment she was brought to this world, and yet now… it feels ruined. Nothing is like she’d thought it would be. 

The door’s been left ajar, and after a moment, she sighs, following the Doctor inside. 

He’s standing at the console when she walks up the ramp, flipping switches and peering intently at the monitors, the swirling language the TARDIS will never translate blinking on the screen. Rose walks towards the other side of the console, reaching up to give the time rotor a sympathetic pat as she has every time she’s been in here the past two odd months. When she straightens, the Doctor is staring at her across the console, face awash in the green-blue glow. 

There’s that look again, the unknowable one she’d seen at the rehab centre, and she finds herself caught in it, like a black hole, as his eyes pull her deeper and deeper into his orbit.

“I’m sorry.”

“About which part?” she asks in a small voice, fighting the urge to duck her gaze.

“All of it, I suppose. I…” he trails off, pursing his lips together. “I thought I’d never see you again,” he says softly. “It should be impossible that any of this has happened.”

Rose raises her chin, her eyes stinging against unshed tears. “But it has. I’m standing right here.” 

A ghost of a smile flits across the Doctor’s sharp features. “You’re standing right here.” Then the smile fades, his expression turning guarded. 

“Are you staying?” 

Rose’s brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

“Are you staying here in this universe? Or do you want to come back?” 

“To the TARDIS?” Rose’s heart beats loudly in her chest, pulsing in her ears. “Do–” he voice catches, “do you want me to?”

“Do you?”

“Doctor,” she sighs in exasperation, rounding the console to stand at his side. He watches her silently, his eyes travelling up and down her frame, settling on her face again like he’s trying to absorb the image of her. It gives her confidence. “Do you know why I made all those jumps with the dimension cannon?”

“To try to save the multiverse from collapsing into the Void,” the Doctor quips, a genuine little grin beginning to tug at his lips.

“Yes,” Rose replies, “I defend the Earth remember, all versions of it. But that’s not the only reason….”

“Why?” The Doctor shifts closer, his hip sliding along the console. 

“To find you,” Rose says, reaching out to take his hand, clasping her fingers around his. “To come back.” 

The Doctor glances down at where they’re touching, then back up to her face. 

“No, not good enough,” he mutters, and before she has a chance to react or question, he pulls his hand free and tugs her into him, his hands at her hips, sliding up along her back, fingers spanned against her shoulder blades. Without thought, her arms loop around his neck, fingers threading through the hair at his nape, as she buries her face in his shoulder and breathes deeply. 

It had seemed so wrong and yet strangely comforting that under the generic personal hygiene products John Smith had used as a human, the smell she’d always associated with the Doctor — this aromatic mix of citrus and something pungent like petrol, like he’s spent so many centuries tinkering with the TARDIS the smell of it has seeped into his pores— had lingered.

It feels like everything is suddenly crashing in on her– the heartbreak and devastation of their parting, the strength she’d been forced to find to pick up the pieces and keep going when all she wanted to do was lie down and give in (as if Jackie would let her do anything else). All the work, all the strife, the sleepless nights and lonesome hours, jump after jump, always ending in bitter disappointment. 

She feels him press a kiss to her hair, his arms clutching at her even tighter so that every part of their fronts are pressed together. Then, after what feels like ages, the Doctor pulls back, his hands trailing down her arms to rest on her elbows. “When we fix whatever’s happening, Rose, it’ll mean goodbye to the life you’ve built here and all the people in it.” The Doctor gives her a soft, searching look.

“I know,” she says solemnly. 

As hard as these years have been without the Doctor, she’ll never regret the opportunity she got to experience the family she had always longed for with her mum, Pete and her beautiful baby brother. It was because of this time that she had no reservations. Her mum and Pete were happy and settled, and Tony would grow up surrounded by the same fierce love Rose had. 

They would mourn her, as she would mourn them, but in the end, they would be fine. They would have each other, and she would have the Doctor. It was always supposed to go this way. It’s just the ending got waylaid. 

“What about Martha?” Rose asks gently.

The Doctor’s brows furrow. “What about Martha? We’ve travelled with others before. It shouldn’t be any different.” He says this lightly, dismissively, really, in that skimming-over-the-issue way of his, but Rose knows this isn’t the same as having Adam or Jack or even Mickey aboard. 

Martha is in love with the Doctor. It’s clear as day as far as Rose is concerned, and she’d wager the Doctor is just as aware. Denial, denial, denial— the most used move in his personal playbook for dealing with things.

“She’s very devoted to you.” Noting the way the Doctor’s mouth twitches in the tiniest of grimaces. “Wouldn’t let Mickey or I even touch that fob watch of yours.”

“She shouldn’t be.” The Doctor says roughly, staring down at the console. “Martha’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant… has already saved my neck more than a few times, but it’s been… difficult without you,” the Doctor rubs his thumb over the curve of her elbow. “Well, I’ve been difficult without you, rather, and I’m afraid poor Martha might have borne the brunt of it.” 

Rose knows Martha has, but seeing the guilt laid out so plainly in the Doctor’s eyes, Rose can’t find it herself to blame him. It’s not like she was a ray of sunshine to be around either. She’d wallowed for weeks. It was only her mum that could finally knock some sense into her. But the Doctor didn’t have a Jackie Tyler to see him right, he had no one to help him with his grief, and it certainly wouldn’t be fair to ask Martha. 

Rose hesitates for a moment, then gently presses a hand to the Doctor’s chest, the double beat of his hearts steady beneath her fingertips. The Doctor lets out a shuddering sigh, leaning to rest his forehead against hers as his eyes slide shut.

“Losing you was hard, Rose. So very hard.” He murmurs, his breath warm on her face. “I always knew it would be, but…” he drifts off with a deep sigh, rolling his head a little against hers. 

This might be the closest Rose ever gets to an admission of love she realizes. Was it enough? She’s sure, more than ever, that the Doctor loves her— his love bleeding out onto the pages of John Smith’s journal, but she needs to hear it.

There’d be time, though. She won’t push him now. 

“Well, I’m here now,” Rose whispers, running her hands up his chest to squeeze his shoulders, “and I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Yeah.” He tilts his chin up ever so slightly, his lips brushing against hers as he does. Rose goes still, her breath caught in her throat.

“Rose,” he breathes, that one word filled with so much she can barely stand it. The Doctor nudges her nose, catching her lips again, and there’s no mistaking his intent now as his mouth moves softly against hers. 

She’s kissing the Doctor. She’s kissing the Doctor. Actually honest to God kissing, not her body being controlled by a bitchy trampoline or an exuberant gesture of gratitude and joy, but slow, purposeful kissing. 

She’s waited so long for this, and if she’s going to kiss the Doctor, she’s going to bloody snog him, so she reaches up to cup his jaw, changing the angle as she draws his bottom lip between hers, and he parts his lips and allows her entrance. He moans quietly into her at that, pulling her flush to him, one hand sliding to grab at her waist while the other tangles into her hair. Oh, God, Rose thinks as his tongue meets hers, making slow, tentative circles in her mouth, and she gasps against him. When they part this time, Rose’s breaths are laboured, and the Doctor stares at her, his eyes glazed over.   

Then the TARDIS starts beeping. 

“Doctor,” Rose murmurs after a few moments, grinning against his lips. “The TARDIS is talking to you.” 

“Right.” The Doctor says, his fingers tightening his hold on her even as she moves back to look at him properly. His lips are red and glistening, cheeks pink under his smattering of freckles, eyes dark and pupils blown. 

She loves it.  

Rose watches him turn back to the console, squinting at one of the screens. 

“What is it?” she asks as the Doctor pushes a few buttons.

“I don’t know,” he mutters,  “The TARDIS is getting all these scrambled readings. It might be a product of being in Pete’s World, though.”

Rose snorts. “Don’t let him hear you say that.” The Doctor throws her a grin, eyes crinkling in the corners. 

“It’s strange though, normally the TARDIS can keep order of all the various dimensions, seeing as she’s transdimensional, but this is…” he frowns. “This is weird. She can’t even pick up the Void.”

“Doctor,” Rose begins after a few moments, the Doctor tapping away at the keyboard. “What you said earlier about the hunters. How is it even possible they could have made it through the Void? Nothing can make it through the Void. Wasn’t that the whole point of the sphere ship thing that held the Daleks—”

She stops. The Doctor is staring at her like he’s just realized he left the oven on. He rushes around the console, slamming roughly at a few switches. 

“What?!” he exclaims loudly, pulling the screen closer to his face. 

“What, Doctor?” Rose asks anxiously, racing over. “What’s wrong?” 

“It’s the Void,” the Doctor breathes, staring at the screen in disbelief. “It’s dead.” 

“Wait,” Mickey says, “slow down.”

The Doctor paces. He hadn’t stopped moving since he and Rose had raced back into the control room. He was on the verge of doing her head in.

“The Void is dead,” the Doctor says bluntly, pulling at his hair in agitation, “and without that cushion, the dimensions and parallel worlds and everything else splinter into each other,” he makes a motion with his hand to demonstrate, but Rose doesn’t need the visual. 

The reality is horrible enough.  

“So why isn’t it affecting our universe?” Martha asks. “If it’s impacting everything, why haven’t we noticed anything? The Darkness, yeah?” Martha turns to Mickey for confirmation, who nods. “Stars and Planets disappearing without a trace. Wouldn’t the TARDIS have picked up on something like that? It’s got your name written all over it.” 

The Doctor spins on his heel. “Causation is like a boomerang– it happens in N-Space, and the echo of that travels out hitting the other universes before it comes back to the prime universe to feel the effects.”

“N-Space?” Martha frowns. 

“It’s what the Time Lords referred to the prime universe as— Normal Space.” The Doctor says, his neurotic pacing slowly coming to a stop. “The universe contains millions, potentially trillions of galaxies while constantly expanding, and Gallifrey sat outside those confines to be able to control timelines. But the planet still needed a prime universe to anchor it and operate from.”

“So,” Rose jumps in, “whatever is affecting all the other universes hasn’t touched N-Space yet?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor cries in frustration. “I won’t know until the TARDIS is back where it’s meant to be. Time Lords had all these legends and stories of lost planets, but that’s all they were, stories. Planets and stars can’t just disappear.”

“But they are. At least here they are,” Mickey counters. “We’ve plotted them, and they’re gone.”

“We have to head back,” The Doctor says resolutely. “The TARDIS has been in this universe too long. Whatever is happening here is because it’s happening there. ”

Martha sits up straighter in her seat, where she’d dropped a while ago. “So we’re going home?” She casts a quick glance at Rose. As does Mickey. “I mean back to our universe?” 

“Oh, yes.” The Doctor replies, digging out his sonic screwdriver from the bowels of his suit pocket. “Mickey, give us one of your hoppers and a comm device,” He sticks out his hand expectantly. 

Mickey rolls his eyes but acquiesces, handing over the yellow hopper and a communication device that looks like a small mobile. The Doctor lays them out on one of the open desks, cracking the back open on both and fiddling about with his sonic, tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth as he does so.

“Ha! There we are.” He cheers a few moments later, sealing the devices back up and tossing them to Mickey, who, luckily, catches them in his arms.

“Oy! These aren’t easy to fix, y’know.” 

“Both of those now have a lock on the TARDIS,” The Doctor says, ignoring Mickey, “so it should be easy for you to find us. They’ll only work as long the walls are open, though, so they’ll become defective once we get this all sorted.”  He claps his hands together, “Right. We’d best be off.” 

Martha pushes herself up from her seat, casting another lingering gaze at Rose and Mickey before following the Doctor to the door. But Rose feels her feet grounded to the floor. 

“You’re leaving right now?” Her stomach drops. “Doctor, my mum—” 

The Doctor spins on his heel, his expression softening at the look that must be on her face. “Don’t worry, Rose,” he says gently, reassuring her as he takes her hand. “This isn’t goodbye, not yet. You’ll have time later.” Then his soft, kind eyes widen in concern. “Unless you’ve changed—”

“No,” Rose says emphatically. “I’m coming with you.” 

The Doctor nods, a small, shy smile playing at his lips. “Good. That’s good.” 

Mickey walks with them back to the TARDIS.

“Doctor,” Mickey calls as the Doctor pushes open the TARDIS. “This is my mission, so don’t think you can come and take over. It’s bad enough you’re taking my best agent.”

He gives Rose a soft grin, to which Rose quickly responds with her own watery smile.

This isn’t goodbye, she chants to herself. This isn’t goodbye, not yet.

The Doctor grins. “Not a chance, boss”— Mickey smirks at that —“Rose can coordinate with Torchwood once I get some proper readings. That hopper will get you right to me, no more pinging about the multiverse.” The Doctor adds with a smirk, “not that I’m not flattered.” 

“Mick, you’ll tell my mum, yeah? Tell her I won’t leave without a proper goodbye.”

Mickey nods, then Martha wraps him up in a tight hug, placing a lingering kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for all your help,” she looks back at Rose now, “both of you. I’m not sure how I’d have handled this without you.”

Rose grins. “You’re brilliant, Martha. Keeping this lug afloat,” she points to the Doctor, who feigns outrage, “you’d have managed just fine.”

“Yes,” the Doctor says, clearing his throat awkwardly,  “I suppose I haven’t properly thanked you all for keeping me safe these past months.” He shuffles on the spot.

Mickey snorts. “This is the part where you actually thank us.”

“Yes, all right,” The Doctor huffs, “thank you.” His tone softens, sincere now. “No, really, thank you.” He turns to each of them as he says this. “I truly have the best friends in the universe, well, multiple universes, actually.” Then he grins, pulling Mickey into a back-slapping bear hug. “Mickey, the idiot.”

“Oy, you can still watch it with that.” 

The Doctor ducks into the TARDIS after that. Rose hears him queuing up the dematerialization sequence.

Martha gives Mickey’s arm one last squeeze, “hopefully, we see you soon.”

Mickey winks, making Martha blush ever so slightly. “Bet on it.” 

“Martha,” Rose says quickly, throwing a look at the open door to ensure the Doctor isn’t about to bound back out. “I hope you don’t think I’m trying to displace you or anything. It’s just—” she peters off with a shrug, and Martha nods in understanding.

“It’s okay,” Martha smiles softly, “I, uh, care about the Doctor and travelling has been amazing, and terrifying honestly, but having this time to go back to some semblance of my old life has made me realize that I’ve been putting my real life on hold. This life with the Doctor isn’t sustainable,” she cringes, looking down for a moment. “At least not for me, and my life is worth too much to continue playing second fiddle.” Martha looks back at Mickey briefly, who grins, and Rose suddenly wonders what they’d talked about when she wasn’t there. “So after all this is fixed with the Darkness, I’m getting out. I think it’s time I stop pretending to be Dr. Jones and actually become her.” 

“Well, if you ask me, you could give the Doctor a run for his money on doctorin’. But, the way you helped Tim, you’ve got it, Martha.”

Martha smiles.

Rose admires Martha's conviction. She remembers asking Sarah Jane if the Doctor was worth it. Some things are worth getting your heart broken for. 

Maybe. But not your self-worth or the dreams you’d worked towards. Rose thinks perhaps that’s the critical difference between them, for all the surprising things they have in common: before the Doctor, Rose had no life, no real dreams or aspirations, but Martha had. The Doctor had shown her a better way to live her life. But Martha had found a good life all on her own. She didn’t need the Doctor.  

Well, Rose didn’t need the Doctor now, but she wanted him just as fiercely.

“But until then,” Martha says brightly, “we’ve got work to do.” 

Rose laughs. “Maybe we should recruit you for Torchwood. We make a pretty good team, y’know.”

And together, they make their way into the TARDIS, the door closing gently behind them.