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"Take me back! Take me back!" But no matter how she screamed, no matter how she wept and raged, the wall stayed just a wall. It left her in a universe with a father who couldn't admit she was his, a mother who looked faintly relieved at everything Rose had lost, and a world that had no place for her.
It was all her fault! She was the one who hadn't got the lever latched. She was the one who'd slipped, who'd fallen away from him forever. She prayed to a god she didn't really believe in to let her go back to the Doctor. She pleaded with the random forces of fate and chance, offering stupid, ridiculous bargains she'd never be able to keep, if only she could go home.
The worst of it was the dreams. She dreamed about him--not often enough . . . or maybe too often, if you asked her mum. When Rose closed her eyes, he was right there, smiling. She kissed him and cried on him and begged him not to leave her, not to send her away again.
But when she woke up, she was always alone.
Rose Tyler had hardly known Donna Noble, but she owed that woman a thousand times over. She'd saved the Doctor's life--more than once. She'd saved the universes by taking control of the Daleks. And with that human spark of hers, she'd given Rose one of the most precious things in her life.
Rose had always known the Doctor loved her, even when he couldn't say it. She'd valued the closeness, treasured his touch, banked the quiet moments when she'd caught him sleeping in her arms as if she'd known, somehow, that she might have to draw on them in lean times yet to come.
She'd never known it could be like this. She suspected she could thank Donna Noble for that, too.
"Doctor!" she gasped, writhing. She tugged against the necktie binding her hands to the headboard of their bed--not because she wanted to get loose, just because she could. "I need . . . "
He raised his head and gave her a decidedly cheeky grin as he looked up the length of her body. She growled. "What do you need, Rose?" he asked.
She whimpered.
"Tell me." He licked the very top of her thigh, right where it met the rest of her body.
"I need to come," she said, her cheeks aflame. "Please."
He chuckled, then dragged his tongue over her clit in one long lick that was not enough. He crawled up the length of her body while she swore and rolled her hips. She could feel his breath on her ear when he said, "I want you to beg, Rose."
Just the words made her breath catch in her throat. "Bossy!" she accused him.
"You like bossy," he pointed out, his voice low and intimate and disgustingly unconcerned. "Beg for me, Rose."
She threw her head back and cursed him cheerfully, wrapping her legs around his waist as he sank slowly into her body. They'd played this game often enough now that she knew she wouldn't come until he decided she'd been begging long enough.
Yes, Rose had quite a lot to thank Donna Noble for.
"Hold on, Doctor--paramedics are on their way. You just hold on. Don't you dare leave me." Rose clamped her hands down harder over the blood-sodden mass of her hoodie, her eyes locked on the Doctor's.
He smiled at her through the pain. "Do my best," he wheezed.
"Do better," she told him firmly, smiling back and trying not to cry into the wound. She could hear the sirens getting closer, and she willed them faster.
She held his hand in the ambulance and damned that trio of Denutians to whatever hell they believed in. A normal human life. Bollocks. Being human had never stopped her from rushing in to help people--how was it ever going to stop the Doctor? When people needed saving, they were bound to try and save them, even in the middle of a Sunday afternoon stroll.
"Did the right thing," the Doctor murmured. She squeezed his hand. "Torchwood team . . . never 've arrived fast enough."
"Shut up," she told him, forcing a grin through her tears. "Course we did. Now you hold tight--we're almost to the hospital."
"Been . . . brilliant," he said.
She squeezed his hand harder. "And it'll keep on bein' brilliant!" She hated the pleading note in her voice.
She could barely feel him squeeze back. "Tell Simone I love her."
Rose felt slivers of ice in her throat at the mention of their daughter. "Doctor . . . Doctor, don't do this to me. Don't you dare." His eyes closed. "Doctor? Doctor, don't leave me! Please, I need you! I can't do this again! Please . . . !"
"I can't believe you're doing this."
Rose sighed and folded her hands in her lap, sitting on the edge of Simone's bed while her daughter paced restlessly around the edges of the room.
"You'll look like a trophy wife!"
"I can't help that, sweetheart." At fifty, Rose looked young enough to be Simone's sister. And not even her older sister--twins, maybe. Not identical, but both with the same brown eyes, though Rose still dyed her hair blonde. Since it was obviously dyed, at least no one asked why she hadn't gone grey. "You never minded when your dad looked Mickey's age."
Simone stopped in her tracks to glare. "That was different." When Rose refused to respond, she said, "That was Dad. You'd been together forever. This is Uncle Mickey. How can you want to marry Uncle Mickey?"
Rose stood up, crossing the two steps between them to take Simone's hands. "Because I'm ready not to be alone anymore. Because Mickey understands."
Simone took half a step backwards, pulling her hands out of her mother's. "But he's not Dad." Her soft voice was more a plea than a protest.
Rose let her eyes close, seeing a dear face, deep crow's feet beneath wild grey hair, laugh lines, and a beloved grin. She looked at her daughter again. "No he's not. He's Mickey, and if I don't love him the way I loved your dad, we still love each other. Maybe we always have, in some way."
Simone looked away.
"Simone, no one will ever replace your father, just like I'm not going to be Janelle and Jake's mother. I just--" Rose cut herself off. She couldn't force Simone to accept this. All she could do was hope. "Next month, we thought--after Grandma and Granddad get back from Spain. Tony's mum-in-law will come here to do the honors, so we don't have a media circus on our hands."
When Simone looked back, her eyes were full of tears. "Just like that? Mum, you can't just . . . "
"Yes, I can. Sweetheart, I don't need your approval, but I want it. I want you to understand. I need you not to blame Mickey. He asked me six months ago. I finally said yes, because I lost your dad too young to spend the rest of my life in mourning. If you've got to blame someone, blame me. Please."
"I don't blame you." Simone wiped the tears from beneath her eyes with a motion Rose recognized, trying to keep the makeup from smudging. "Don't beg, Mum you're making me feel bad."
Rose opened her arms, and Simone walked into them, letting herself be hugged and petted in a way she hadn't since the Doctor's funeral. "Mickey asked Big Jake to stand up for him. Would you do it for me? If not, I'll ask Samiya--even Tony is a little shocked, but she's only been your aunt a few years, so she can't really feel strongly about it."
"Don't you dare," Simone said, sniffling. "You know I will."
"Thanks, hon." Rose squeezed her daughter tight. "Thanks for understanding. It means the world to me."
Ten rows, and each one held twelve tombstones, all in granite. The color of the stone varied, but the messages etched into the stones would last lifetimes. Other people's lifetimes, that was. Nothing but the best in the Tyler family plot.
Rose had lived through the Great Desalination. She'd poured a great deal of her Tyler inheritance into new hydroponics techniques in the following famine, and she'd seen to it that the resulting technology never was patented, only used to feed as many mouths as possible. The Vitex board screamed at her, and her financial advisors told her she'd never see a dime of her investment back--like that ought to matter to her.
They were right. She hadn't.
The return on investment she'd never expected came in the form of loyalty, the kind of near-worship she associated with the royal family back home. Stunned, the board had asked her to become president of the company, and that loyalty had made Vitex the leading brand in the UK and one of the strongest in the Western world, selling everything from baby food to fuel-efficient luxury cars.
When the first venture to Mars was proposed, she'd convinced Vitex to invest. Thirty years later, despite the way that had ended, she'd convinced them to put money into the first real ship to another star. Oh, she changed her name, changed her hair, and lived as a recluse more often than not to keep her face out of the papers. She made herself into some long-lost cousin or unknown by-blow more than once, faking a long illness and then suggesting her successor to the board as a young, promising Tyler with her gran's ethics and sound business sense, but at the end of the day, it was still her.
Most days, she managed to take a page from the Doctor's book and focus on the living, not the dead.
But today, they'd buried Sam Tyler-Perez, the last member of the Tyler clan who'd known her real name, who'd known her as a person, not just as the aloof guiding force at the Vitex helm.
She hadn't even been able to attend the funeral, not without distracting people from the real reason they were there. She'd only come afterward, after the grave had been filled and everyone had gone, to walk the ranks of her beloved dead and mourn the loss of her personhood as much as her family.
She walked each row, running her fingers along the tombstones and reading each name, remembering faces and smiles, idiots she'd argued with and children she'd dandled on her knee with equal affection and loss, traveling backward in time until she reached the first grave, Doctor Jonathan Tyler, and the spot beside it only she knew was empty, where she'd finally let Tamika, Simone's oldest grandchild, put up a stone that read "Rose Marion Tyler, Always Beloved." There'd been some rubbish about having visions or slaying dragons or some such rot the child had wanted to put there, but Rose had put her foot down, and that was the end of that.
She lay down on the grass of her grave, curled up on her side as if in bed, and flung her arm out over the patch of earth where they'd laid the Doctor to rest so many years ago. "It's all your fault, you know," she said in companionable irritation. "You're the one who didn't want me to know what had happened on the Game Station, because then I'd have known I killed you. Had to remember what became of the Daleks on my own, and by the time I'd worked out that maybe, just maybe, swallowing the heart of the TARDIS had had some unexpected side effects, we were already here, and we had Simone, and there was never time to look into it too deeply, not when there were alien invasions to be stopped and boyfriends to be vetted.
"Didn't you ever think to do a scan while we were in our proper universe? Could even have done it after the meta-crisis. It's not like it took three Doctors to drive the TARDIS--five minutes in the med bay, maybe? But no, always knew what was best for everybody but you, didn't you?" She felt a tear form at the corner of her eye and let it fall.
"I promised you forever, you bloody arrogant sod--did you think it was a joke? So you spent six months working on it and you couldn't find me a way back. So what? It's not like six months was all I ever had. I've got forever, dammit!" She sniffled and swiped angrily at the tears. "I want to go home! Do you hear me? Please. Even if you don't want me anymore. Even if you don't love me. Just bring me back, back where the universe has space for me. Back where I can lose myself, where I don't have to change my name or hide my face for a while. Please. Please.
"Please."
A long time later, she sat up and dried her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. At least she didn't have to worry about makeup coming away on her sleeve, not in this day and age. She patted the Doctor's tombstone, turned around, and stared blankly at the small, ornate mausoleum just beyond the edge of the Tyler plot. Aged and weathered, it wouldn't have drawn a second glance, except she'd sat in this spot so many times before and looked just there, and there'd never been a mausoleum.
The door opened on warm, amber light and an eerily familiar, almost living, susurration. A pale woman with a ginger mass of enormously curly hair waved to her from the doorway. "Quickly now, Rose. With a Time Lord and a TARDIS in each universe, it's possible to do this safely, but it's difficult to do it for very long."
Rose just stared.
The woman smiled. "He'd be here himself, but I'm a much better driver than he is."
River had done her best to fill Rose in, explaining how she'd come to be a Time Lady, only not exactly, and how it came to pass that she'd been the one to learn Rose was still alive.
And then to find out the Doctor was her husband? Disconcerting, to say the least. Rose had hardly expected him to put his life on hold after he'd sent her away--she certainly hadn't stayed alone after the Doctor she'd married had died--but it was one thing to know he'd probably moved on and another to discover his wife flying the rescue zeppelin.
It was something else again to go to bed with her on the return trip, no matter what kind of a nervous breakdown Rose was having or how much River assured her afterward that he'd understand, that relationships got complicated with time travel involved and you learned to expect this sort of thing. But god, Rose needed it.
They met in London, in front of the new London Eye. River walked out the door first and said, "Hello, sweetie. I brought you a present."
Rose stepped nervously around her, the Doctor's familiar blue box standing not seven meters away.
Even though she'd expected it, it was still a shock to see a stranger's face on the man in front of the TARDIS. Barely taller than she was, with coal-black hair and tan skin, the manic grin and the freckles were the only familiar things on his face, but he told River, "You bring me the nicest things," and Rose flung herself into his arms.
He tasted different, but she didn't regret the kiss, not one little bit.
"Still precious. Aren't they just precious, River?" a familiar voice asked.
River's voice came from not too far behind Rose. "Completely precious."
Rose looked over the Doctor's shoulder to find Jack Harkness leaning against the TARDIS's door, grinning that big cheesy grin she remembered. The man who couldn't die . . . and that meant so much more to her now than it had the last time she'd seen him. "Jack?"
River walked over and kissed the Doctor. "Anita and the Daves are expecting me on Rukbah IV. We're exploring the tomb of Torani II. Don't get into too much trouble without me."
"Be careful of the decascorpions, they pack quite a-- Oi! What is it with the handcuffs? You and your handcuffs!"
Rose twisted to look around behind the Doctor, and sure enough, River had cuffed his hands behind his back. "That's a present for Rose," she said sweetly, winking at Rose and sauntering back toward her TARDIS, which appeared to be disguised as a statue of Harriet Jones.
Rose stepped back and rubbed her temples. "She's right--this really is complicated."
"What's complicated?" the Doctor asked. "River is a child of the TARDIS. You were connected to the TARDIS--maybe still are. Of course she got your message. And with two Time Lords and two TARDISes, what was impossible becomes merely difficult." He squirmed against his bonds. "Jack, grab the sonic for me? Left pocket."
Jack laughed, stepping close to kiss her cheek and planting a solid snog on the Doctor as he searched the pocket in question. Which at least meant the Doctor couldn't see her blushing. "I think I shagged your wife," she said, while she was also watching Jack snog her sort-of husband.
"You're right, that is complicated," the Doctor agreed as Jack drew away, the sonic (and not quite the same sonic she remembered) in his hand. "How can you not know if you shagged her?"
"Now there's a glorious mental image." Jack grinned as he circled around behind the Doctor and soniced the handcuffs. "She probably wasn't sure River is really your wife."
Rose blushed at Jack's implied mental image while the Doctor rubbed at his wrists as if he'd been handcuffed more than a minute or two. They really don't need me at all. Even though she'd thought it would be enough just to be here--to be home--the thought made her swallow against an unexpected lump in her throat. "The two of you traveling together, then?"
"For a while," Jack agreed while the Doctor reclaimed his screwdriver. "Give it another sixty years, he'll probably be sick of seeing me and I'll run off to do something else for a couple decades."
"But enough about that," the Doctor said, having apparently decided he'd restored circulation to his hands. "What shall we do first? Fish and chips? Always used to do fish and chips, didn't we?" He beamed.
Rose bit her lip to keep from crying. "Doctor, I . . . I'd like that, really I would, but I don't want to be the gooseberry, and if I've got to walk away from you one last time, it's better to do it now." God, she had no ID for this universe, no money, nothing. Only what she'd had in her pockets when River had arrived.
The Doctor's smile became a frown in that lightning-quick change of emotions she remembered so well.
Jack was more direct. After a moment with his jaw hanging open, he said, "You can't want to leave, Rose. Not when we've only just got your back. Please, if me talking about you and River put you off--"
The Doctor stepped forward and took her hands in his. "Come with us, please. If you don't want to travel anymore, I'll understand, but just give it a try. Maybe you'll like it. If you don't, I can bring you back. My driving's got much better, I don't care what River might have told you."
He sounded so indignant, Rose's impending sob turned into a choked giggle. "But you don't need me. You've got Jack, and River . . . "
"And usually, he's got one or two other companions, too," Jack said, coming around to stand on the pavement beside her. "That doesn't mean he doesn't have room for me, or you, or River. There's so few of us who won't eventually die. Please don't go."
"It doesn't matter if we need you or not, Rose," the Doctor said quietly. "We love you. Say that you'll stay."
She stepped forward and buried her face in the Doctor's neck so he couldn't see the stupid tears. "Yes." Jack's solid bulk plastered itself to her back. "Of course, yes. I never wanted anything else."
They stayed like that for a while. Penniless, powerless, and without so much as a toehold on Earth, Rose knew she was exactly where she belonged.
Eventually she asked, "So. What now?"
"Chips," the Doctor said.
"Bed," Jack suggested.
The Doctor sighed. "One-track mind . . . "
Jack grinned. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
Rose laughed. "Chips first, maybe." She smiled as the Doctor kissed her cheek. "Then we'll see about the rest."