time is but the stream I go a-fishing in

The Boy with the Man in His Head - Part 3: Rose

Author's Notes: Definitely a short one, here, but I think it rounds things off nicely.  Muchos apologies for being rubbish and not getting this up last night!  On with the denouement...
 
***

 The Boy with the Man in His Head - Part 2: The Doctor

Author's Notes: Shorter than part one, and from the Doctor's POV this time.  On with the show!

***

The rift was at Darlig Ulv Stranden, of all places.  A grim smile tugged at the Doctor's lips when he took the readout from the monitor he'd rigged up to pinpoint the crossing place.  The scene he'd looked out on as he'd set eyes on Rose Tyler for what he had thought would be the last time would now be the place he would stand as he re-entered her life.

And he would see Rose again in just a few hours.

Suddenly, the sheer elation that had fuelled him for so long at the possibility of finding her was gone, replaced by something of which he had minimal experience in this context.  Fear.  If her timeline had followed his, she would have had nearly three years in that world.  Some of his last words to her had been orders - have a fantastic life, he'd said, once upon a time.  I can't get to you, he'd said.  So, what if Rose had taken his advice, as he'd wanted at the time?  Would she have a family?

She might not be able to come with him.  He had no doubt that she would want to - she was still Rose Tyler, after all - but would she be able to leave her life on Earth now if it was so much more than what he had taken her from that first time?  And, really, would she even be Rose Tyler any more?  She could have married.  Different name, different life.  He had wanted her to settle in her new world, not brood over him.  What if she had?

What if?

He felt the mental laughter from the TARDIS as bubbles in the back of his mind, and it snapped him out of his worry.  This was Rose.  She would have had a fantastic life, but she would come with him... or... he would stay with her.  He would do it - for her.

For Rose.

He flipped the final switch, and the TARDIS went dark.

***

The Doctor awoke to a splitting headache, which, he noted, had probably been caused by tripping over one of the TARDIS' wires as he tried to find a handhold during the journey.  It had been... tumultuous.  At least the part he'd been conscious for.

The first thing he noticed, after a little zap from the sonic screwdriver had numbed the bump on his head, was that the presence in his mind was positively shouting.  Definitely another Time Lord.  The Doctor grinned, excited.  The strength of the presence meant that whoever-it-was was here, in this world, which was just fantastic.  He could find Rose, and then seek out the other Time Lord, all in one trip!

He was smiling to himself as he peered at the viewscreens, which had just flickered.  No, they showed nothing.  She was trying, was his old TARDIS, but the journey must have done as it had the last time, and knocked her power reserves for six.  Still, after checking that at least one of the crystals was on its recharge cycle (he was in luck - two were recharging.  Perhaps it was easier the more often one landed in one universe), the Doctor realised that he'd have to step out of his haven soon, if he wanted to find Rose.

He gave the console a pat, and opened the door.

A little boy was standing directly in front of the TARDIS, eyeing it warily.

The Doctor considered shutting himself back in, but thought better of it when the boy's eyes met his and they widened in some kind of... recognition?  And then the presence in his mind hummed, and the Doctor realised that this little boy was no ordinary little boy.  He was the source of the comforting link he'd felt for the past year.  But how?

The boy took a step towards him, but then hesitated, as though unsure of his welcome.  The Doctor opened his mouth to introduce himself, but the boy quirked a smile and said, "Yeah, I know.  You're the Doctor."

This world just got curiouser and curiouser.  Fantastic.  "And who are you?" he asked the boy.

"Jack," said the boy, who was about ten or eleven years old.  "How did you get through?"

The boy knew about him - knew that he was not from this universe.  The Doctor wondered just how proficient with the mind link this 'Jack' was if he was able to glean so much from such a well-protected mind.  Internally shrugging, he decided that he'd find out sooner or later, and that he probably should just let it go for now.  In answer to the boy's question, the Doctor said, "Calibrated the rift sensor until it picked up the one I was after - this one, funnily enough - then trusted to my lovely TARDIS to get me through."  He had hoped that the answer would stump the boy, but instead intelligent brown eyes looked back at him.  Oddly familiar eyes...

The Doctor, in his current incarnation, had never been one to get to the point quickly, but he decided that just this once he could lapse.  "Jack - it was Jack, right?"  He knew perfectly well that it was Jack.  The boy smiled as though he knew that the Doctor knew, too.  It was really annoying.  "You're Gallifreyan," he stated.  "How?"

Jack looked as though he'd been waiting his whole life for someone to ask that question.  "I'm not entirely sure," he said, his nose wrinkling as he thought.  That expression, too, was familiar, but the Doctor couldn't quite place it.  "My mother isn't Gallifreyan, but my father is.  Dominant genes, I suppose."  Jack sounded as though he knew all about genes.  The Doctor barely held back his grin - it was almost too good to be true; a child who already knew about genes!

"What race is your mother?" he asked, curiously.  "Humanoid, I'm assuming."

"You should never assume," Jack said, piously.  "But, yes, she is.  Mostly human, actually."

Then something the boy had just said caught up with the Doctor.  My mother isn't Gallifreyan, but my father is.  He'd said 'is'.  Not 'was'.  But the Doctor could only feel one other presence in his head - that of the boy.  If Jack's father was Gallifreyan, and alive, then the only person who could be Jack's father was...

...him.

Jack smiled.  "Hi," he said.  His face was all bravado, but his voice shook a bit, and there was wariness in his eyes.  The Doctor was suddenly glad that he'd been leaning on the wall of the TARDIS throughout the conversation.  This boy was his son.  A thought - a wonderful, terrifying, amazing thought - occurred to him then, as he struggled to process the information.

"Your mother...  Mostly human, you said?"  He cursed himself for the tremor in his voice.

"Mostly," said Jack.  He took a step towards the Doctor, as though approaching a startled animal.  "She was born human, but something happened on one of her adventures with my dad, and she doesn't age now.  Something to do with an over-enthusiastic TARDIS."

The Doctor forced back the sob that gathered in his throat.  "Is she... happy?" he asked, weakly.

Jack reached him, sat down beside him on the sandy floor, and it was only then that the Doctor realised he'd sat down himself.  Gingerly, the boy - his son - reached over and took one of the Doctor's hands.  Jack's hands were warmer than his, but not quite the fever-heat of a human's.  It was comforting.  "She's sad," admitted Jack.  "She tries not to show it, but she misses y- my dad."

It was easier to talk about it as though Jack was someone else's son.  As though he wasn't the child of the woman the Doctor had allowed himself to love.  Rose's child.  And his own.  Rose and the Doctor, in one being.  This boy.  "What's your name?" he asked Jack, again.

"Jack Michael Tyler," said Jack, not pretending to misunderstand the Doctor's question.  "Jack for the Captain, Michael for Uncle Mickey.  Tyler because of you and Mum.  I'm eleven.  I like bi-quantum physics.  I stopped going to school recently, because the teacher turned into a bat, and I was getting bored of playing along with the lessons.  Mum says I lick things that I shouldn't lick."

"She always says that.  Unhygenic, apparently."  The Doctor made a face.  "Things should be licked," he added, authoritatively.

Jack grinned.  "Tell her that yourself," he said.

The Doctor looked around frantically, as though Rose was approaching at that very moment.  Jack laughed.  "Quiet, you," he admonished his son.  His son.  Rassilon...  It was true, though, and suddenly it felt wrong to be thinking of the boy as someone else's.

Seemingly oblivious to the Doctor's turmoil, Jack said, "I only meant that you should come back to the hostel with me.  Mum wouldn't come down here - not after last time - but I could feel something, so I had to come."

The Doctor nodded.  They didn't speak for a while.  Jack kept hold of the Doctor's hand, and the Doctor didn't pull away.  He was thinking about Rose.  It had to have been longer for her than it had been for him - only three years, on his side of the void, but here was Jack, eleven years old.  Eleven years, she'd been here.  The Doctor tried to imagine eleven years without Rose, and was frighteningly successful, even now, when he was so close to her again.  Eleven years of what, for him, would have been darkness and aching.

But Rose had had Jack.  The boy was precocious, cheeky, and looked extraordinarily like his mother.  He would have been a light in Rose's darkness, the Doctor was sure of that.  Then he wondered how he would have coped, stranded on one planet after seeing the stars, with a little boy who developed inexplicably quickly and showed so many traits that he recalled from the one he'd lost.  It would have hurt.  Every day, it would have hurt.

He looked over at Jack, and found wide brown eyes watching him in return.  "I'd like to come back to the hostel with you," he said, at last, and Jack rewarded him with a beaming smile.

***

Rose was making tea in the communal kitchen when the Doctor entered the hostel.  No one else was around - Jack had told him that there wasn't anyone staying there at the moment, aside from himself and Rose.

"They're always like that," he had explained, a touch of sadness in his voice.  "No one stays long after me and Mum turn up."

The Doctor had rested a hand on Jack's head, in an automatic gesture of comfort, before he'd realised what he was doing.  He was about to pull his hand back when Jack looked up and smiled at him.  It was alright, the smile told him.  It was going to be alright.  It was the same smile Rose had worn when she was telling him the same thing, in the past.

The radio was on, tuned to longwave, playing an old song by The Kinks (something about a 'dedicated follower of fashion').  Rose was humming along with the tune, her back to the door, swaying a little as she did what the Doctor thought was a crossword balanced on a cookery book stand.

Jack waited behind the Doctor, just out of sight.  The Doctor knew he wouldn't interrupt, even though he wanted to watch.  It was how he'd have felt in the same situation.  Not that his parents had ever been separated by time and space, only to find each other again near a rift in Norway, guided (the Doctor was certain of this, now) by the telepathic connection between the TARDIS, the Doctor, and Jack.

Rose was bobbing from foot to foot, looking faintly ridiculous but perfect and beautiful at the same time, so the Doctor said, "If you need to go that badly, don't let me stop you."  He wanted to smile, to laugh because he was here with her, but somehow the words came out like some kind of declaration (which was a ridiculous declaration, he admitted, and he'd made plenty of those in his time).  She turned.

The spinning of the Earth that he felt, the vast expanse of the universe that he could sense, all fell away for just a moment as he met her eyes.

The Boy with the Man in His Head - Part 1: Jack

Author's Notes: Written a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, in which season 4 of New Who hadn't happened, and Martha was still getting chatted up by Shakespeare.  Now massively AU, of course.

And on with the story...


Jack Tyler was seven when he started feeling something at the back of his mind - if a mind could even have a back, which Jack, precocious and quiet, debated internally for some time.  He told his mother, who smiled a little, and said to wait and see what happened.

Jack was good at waiting-and-seeing.  He'd waited for four whole years for his mum to tell him about his father, whom he'd never met.  He loved his mum, but he'd always wondered why she lied and told people that his dad was dead.  His dad wasn't dead - Jack knew that.  He didn't know how he knew, but he did. 

Then, the day after his sixth birthday - as a present of sorts - she'd told him the story of the shop girl who had taken the hand of a stranger, and seen the stars.  After that, Jack would watch the glow-in-the-dark constellations on his bedroom ceiling at night.  He thought about his father out exploring worlds.  He thought about his mother, happy here, with him, but sad at the same time.  He thought about the other children at school, and about how silly they were.  He liked them - especially his aunt Lily, who was actually three weeks younger than him - but they were very silly, all the same.

He didn't tell anyone at school about his father when everyone had to write about what their parents did.  He wrote about his mother.

My mum is Rose Tyler.  She is twenty-six.  She has blonde hair and brown eyes.  She works for the government, but she used to travel a lot, so she knows things that no one else does.  She is the best mum in the universe, because she keeps me safe.

It was an exercise in avoiding the point.  It was also a test - a test he set himself, because his mum still didn't know how silly the other children at school were - to see if he could fit in.  He almost passed.  The teacher gave him a funny look because his spellings were all correct and he'd used the words 'government' and 'universe'.  Jack could only imagine what the look on Mrs Peach's face would have been if he'd written that his father was a time-travelling alien and he and Jack's mum had travelled all over the universe - and not even this universe.

It would have been funny, but Jack didn't like to stand out, so he pretended that his mum had tutored him as a toddler, and endured the pity in Mrs Peach's eyes when she noticed the lack of any information about a father.

***

Rose had tried to raise Jack like a normal boy.  He was a normal boy, in many ways.  He liked to run (and why not, his parents being who they were?), and came to her when he fell over, or when he was scared.  True, he was reading university texts on physics by four years old, and he had a dual heartbeat, but he called her 'Mum', and played with his aunt Lily in the sandpit at playschool, and never told his gran that the stories she read him were scientifically flawed.

He had started asking about his father when he was two.  She had managed to put off the inevitable for four years, only saying that she would tell him when he was older.  Old enough to understand, she'd meant, hoping that that day would be a long way off.  He was two, after all.  But when he turned six, and he asked her why she was always so sad, she knew that no matter how they all liked to pretend that Jack was normal, he was not.  And he deserved to know the truth.

So, she told him.  She told him about a man called the Doctor, who had taken her hand and told her to run, who had taken her heart and told her he could never reach her again.  She told him about the worlds they'd visited, the people they'd met, the running for their lives that they'd done, hand in hand.  And Jack had listened, intently as always, a spark in his brown eyes and a flush on his pale cheeks, and when she had said all she could say, he put his arms around her neck and whispered, "I'm so sorry, Mum."

Rose hadn't cried, then.  Jack might have been an extraordinarily precocious child, but she would not cry in front of him.  He knew she was sad - that was enough.  She didn't want him thinking that she loved her memories better than him.  Jack was all she had.  She'd never let him think otherwise.

Later, though, she'd cried into her pillow for the first time in years, and it had felt like a release of something knotted in her soul.

***

When Jack turned seven, he had a party for all the people he loved.  His mum had organised it on his request.  She hadn't said anything for a while, after he'd given a flat 'no' to her suggestion that he invite all the children from school, but she'd nodded as though he'd done something she'd expected.  Jack didn't like doing things that anyone expected, so he'd abruptly told her about the feeling in his head - like something was calling out to him.  He'd asked her what it meant; she'd always had an answer for his questions so far, when even the Torchwood medics had been stumped.

Funny, but the medics had stopped examining him when his mum had made Department Head.

His mum smiled, and there was that sadness again, lurking behind it.  "Wait an' see, love," she said.

Then, as she obviously was going to say no more, Jack said, "Lily can come, though, right?  To the party," he added, when his mum looked confused for a moment.

She laughed, and for a moment the sadness went away.  Jack thought she was the most beautiful person in the world when she laughed.  He told her so.  She laughed again, this time with slight embarrassment.  "You're biased," she told him, still smiling.

Jack smiled back. He liked it that his mum never pretended that he couldn't understand words like 'biased'.  His gran did.  It was a bit annoying.  "A little bit," he admitted.  Then he remembered that he hadn't finished designing the spaceship Mrs Peach had set the class as weekend homework.  He hugged his mum, and dashed away, calling back over his shoulder that he loved her.

***

The party was a big success.  Jack and his mum presided, and Uncle Mickey, Uncle Jake, Gran, Granddad and Lily attended.  They'd been given posh invitations that announced:

You have been invited to

the Seventh Birthday Party of

Mr Jack Michael Tyler

to be held at

His House

at

Four o'clock on

Sunday the Seventh of May

R.S.V.P

No one had R.S.V.P.'d.  Jack had frowned at Uncle Mickey and Uncle Jake when they'd arrived, and flat-out told his Gran and Granddad that they couldn't come in (which threat he'd made good on for all of three seconds, until his Gran offered the cake she'd made).  He hadn't blamed Lily, though, so she'd been the first to see the table of treats laid out for the extended family.

"Wow!" she had exclaimed, and had been about to snaffle some of the corn puffs (her favourite, Jack had told his mum, solemnly) when her big sister had poked her head in and told her off fondly.  When Jack's mum left to welcome the family, though, Lily and Jack quickly emptied the corn puffs into Lily's dress, which made an excellent little bag, and hid under the table.

Sometimes, Jack liked to act like a seven year-old.  It was boring at school, being the only one who knew things.  It was a game to pretend he didn't.  Lily didn't know why the other children didn't like him, and he wanted to keep it that way.  So, he hid under the table with her, and laughed at the grown-ups, and thought about the feeling in his head.

***

It was two more years before the feeling in Jack's head resolved itself into anything.  He was nine by then, and he and his mum were living in Sweden.

He'd wanted to travel, ever since hearing the stories about his mum and dad, but he'd never imagined that it would take the form of a rushed flight from England, away from Torchwood and their tests.

Jack had been eight when his mum had returned home from work one day looking defeated.  Jack had greeted her with a wide smile - she'd been away for several days, dealing with a crisis in Cardiff.  Then his smile had faded when she didn't smile back.

"What's wrong, Mum?" he'd asked.

She hadn't wanted to tell him, he could see that, but he was clever for his age, so she did.  She'd finally overstepped her bounds enough that her immediate superiors had been able to demote her.  Now she was just another agent, and as such...

"They want me to take you in for testing tomorrow," she told him bluntly, as she threw clothes into her biggest suitcase.

Jack could connect the dots.  "We're not going back, are we."  It wasn't a question.

His mum stopped, as though surprised he'd deduced it, but then shook her head and went on packing.  "No.  We're not.  Granddad has a house over in Northern France that we can stay in for a while.  They'll follow us, but we'll hide."

Jack knew that his mum was good at hiding.  They'd played hide-and-seek when he'd been really little, and she'd always won... until the day he'd found himself able to sense her if he shut his eyes, and they'd stopped playing after that.

They'd left England that night.  France had been nice.  So had Spain.  Jack had hated Russia - no matter that he could somehow speak the language fluently, the other children at the school he'd enrolled at all laughed at him because of his foreign mother.  They hadn't stayed in Russia long.

Jack wanted to go to Norway, but his mum had refused.  There was something about Norway she wasn't telling him, but he didn't push, and they ended up in Sweden.  They'd been there for a month when the presence in Jack's head suddenly became someone rather than something.

Hello? he thought.  He'd once managed to project the word 'hello' into his mum's head - only once, though.  They'd practised since then, but he'd never quite got it.  Now, he tried again, projecting a greeting as hard as he could towards the little echo in his mind.

The little echo didn't respond, but Jack knew that it was there.  It was time to ask his mum some more questions.

***

Elsewhere in the multiverse, a man in a pinstripe suit stopped his tinkering and stared at the roof of the machine he was working on.    His name was the Doctor, and something was calling to him.  At first, he thought it could be Martha, calling from some long-forgotten room of the TARDIS, but then he remembered that Martha had left him three months ago, muttering something about not being able to live up to a memory.  It had been two years since he'd lost Rose.  Two years of grinning like a maniac and hoping it hid the raw hurt underneath.

But that feeling... it was familiar, comforting.  He'd felt it before, sort of.  What it was, though, the Doctor couldn't tell.  It was too faint.

And it was gone.  It had been a mere tickle in a corner of his consciousness, but he found he missed whatever-it-was already.  He shook his head.  No time for that, he told himself.  It was ironic, a Time Lord not having enough time, but he was on to something - a way across one of the rifts on Earth.  A way back to Rose.

***

Jack was ten, and he didn't go to school any more.  As of that very day, he was a free... whatever-he-was.  Not a boy, not a man.  Not a human, but not quite Gallifreyan either.  It was difficult to catalogue himself, so he catalogued other people instead.  His latest teacher had called him a people-watcher.  That was at parents' evening, right before said teacher turned into a bat-like creature with fangs, and his mum whipped out her raygun and disintegrated him.

Jack wasn't sick, but he had to breathe deeply for a minute or two.  His mum told him that she was proud of him.  Sitting there, with the remains of his least favourite teacher settling on the tabletop, he said, "I don't want to go to school any more."

His mum knew, as she always knew, that there was more to the declaration than petulance.  "Why not, Jack?"

Jack sighed.  He didn't know how to put it so that she'd understand, but he had to try.  "I'm different - that's a fact.  It's not going to change, and I don't mind.  But," he said, stopping his mum from interrupting with a look, "the way that I'm different... I'm a long way ahead of everyone here, Mum.  I can dissect the String Theory and prove it wrong.  In my head.  Backwards.  I don't think it makes me better than the other kids, but I can't just sit back and pretend they're teaching me new things when it's what I covered in home tuition at four."

To her credit, his mum didn't protest.  "All right, love.  Let's get back to Frau Meier's - after this little incident -" she indicated the charred remains of Herr Brunau with a wave of her hand "- I think we're going to have to move on."

"Norway?" he asked, hopefully.

His mum laughed a laugh full of hurt.  "Maybe next time."

***

The Doctor shut his eyes, blocking out the blinks and glares of the various console lights in the TARDIS.  The presence in his mind had grown steadily stronger over the last few months, to the extent that he was close to recognising it.  The TARDIS hummed loudly, distracting him, and he frowned but didn't open his eyes.  "Quiet, old girl," he muttered.

Then music started to play, from somewhere in the console room, and the Doctor opened his eyes in shock.  The music was Gallifreyan, a recording made eons ago, when his race still knew how to have a good time.  And it was the catalyst he needed to identify the presence - it was another Time Lord!

***

Jack was eleven, and people were starting to wonder about him and his mum.  They'd been in Oslo, Norway, for three weeks, staying at lodging houses here and there and trying to avoid answering any questions.  Still, the speculative looks of their ever-changing landlords followed them wherever they stayed.  Jack had eyes - he could see why.  His mum always introduced him as her son, but she didn't look old enough to have a son his age.  She hadn't changed in the eleven years Jack had been able to see her face.  Rose Tyler still looked twenty years old, in spite of the fact that she was supposed to be thirty-one.

Their watchers thought they were runaways - brother and sister, Jack reckoned.  He looked like his mum, though she'd always told him he was like his father, only quieter.  From what she'd told him, it wasn't hard to be quieter than the Doctor.

When he looked at a map of Norway one day, he knew where he wanted to go next.  "Mum, have you ever been to Darlig Ulv Stranden?" he asked her, looking up from his perusal of the map.  He'd chosen it because of her story about Bad Wolf, and the way she'd gone back to save the Doctor from the Daleks.  They'd talked about it, and Jack thought it was probably this adventure that had left his mum so young-looking.  She'd agreed, with that sadness in her eyes that had never quite left her.

Now, he watched as she paled.  He didn't really need her short nod to tell him that, yes, she'd been there before.  He didn't need her brief explanation that it was where she'd said goodbye to his dad for the last time to know that it was the one place she didn't want to visit again.

Something drew him to the place, though.  "Can I go?  Alone?"

There were the typical objections, but Jack wasn't an ordinary eleven year-old boy.  He was smarter, faster, more aware than anyone else on the planet.  His mum knew it.  He knew it.  And she wouldn't go with him.  Still, she said no, and she was still Jack's mum, so he dropped the idea, in spite of the burning urge inside him to head north.

"We'll stay in the hostel about a mile up the road," she said, out of the blue the next day.  "I won't go to the beach, but I want to be in the area."

Jack hugged her tightly.  Something important was going to happen at Darlig Ulv Stranden, he just knew it.

Ganked from an e-mail I received too long ago to remember who sent it.

This is a strictly mathematical viewpoint:

We’ve all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. How about achieving 103%? What makes up 100% in life?

Here's a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

and:
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But:
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

And:
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

Now look how far arse-kissing will take you…

A-R-S-E-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+18+19+5+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 131%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, it's the Bullshit and Arse-kissing that will get you over the top.


"REMEMBER: SOME PEOPLE ARE ALIVE SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL TO SHOOT THEM."

Ganked from amberwind

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
 

Summary: Set near the end of Runaway Bride.  Angst/Introspection.  Ninth and Tenth Doctor perspective.

The first time was the one where he asked twice.  He never asked twice.  But she'd swung from a chain to rescue a stranger, and that was so stupid that it was fantastic.  So, she'd kissed her wet blanket of a boyfriend on the cheek and run towards him, and he'd thought then that there was probably nothing more amazing than her trust in him.

The second time, he'd landed them in Cardiff, and they were about to die.  He'd told her he was glad he'd met her - trite words, but he hoped she knew that he meant them.  She'd said 'Me, too'.  That's all - just two words - but they'd been enough to soothe a wound in his soul that he hadn't known existed.  He'd taken her hand, then, and given her something of himself with it.  He hoped she knew, but back on the TARDIS she hadn't said anything.

The third time, they were in Downing Street, locked in the Cabinet room.  He told her outright that he could save the world, but lose her, himself lost in the seeming inevitability of their failure.  She'd smiled, and told him to do it anyway.  A nineteen year old shop girl he'd only met a few days before told him to blow her up to save the world.  Then she'd saved them all - him, and Harriet Jones, and herself - and he'd not had the chance to dissimulate about what he'd said back in the Cabinet room.  She hadn't asked, though.

The fourth time was the same day, back on the Powell Estate, when she'd handed him her bag and told him he was stuck with her.  He'd fought not to smile, then, and wondered what was happening.  He was scarred, and walked alone.  Since when did he tie himself to silly human girls barely out of infancy?  Since now, it seemed.  And, what was worse, he didn't care.

The fifth time was the time he tried to rationalise what the Dalek was saying until he could almost convince himself that it meant nothing.  The woman he loved?  Of course.  He loved all the people he'd travelled with for any length of time.  The Dalek was an emotionless shell, it didn't know what 'love' was, and it mistakenly assumed that any affection - that of a friend for a friend, for instance - was the same love as any other.  But then the Dalek showed emotion itself, wishing for its own death, and he wasn't so sure any more.  Nevertheless, had she asked, he would have told her the reasoning he'd used on himself.  She didn't ask.

The sixth time, they were in 1941, and he was trying to resonate concrete.  The universe doesn't implode because the Doctor dances, she'd said, and he'd given in, begun to hold her a little bit closer than he ought, when Jack Harkness had transmatted them out.  He buried it, then, and the only indication he gave was to warn off the cowboy captain with his eyes as he finally danced with her that night.

The seventh time, they were on Satellite Five, and she'd been killed in front of him.  He'd told her, then, over and over in his mind.  It didn't matter that she couldn't hear him - he'd never have told her if she had, anyway.  All that life, all that brilliance - because he only took the best - gone.  Oh, yes, he'd told her then.

The eighth time was the time he'd been lost for words.  He'd sent her back to the Powell Estate, screaming at himself all the while, knowing it was the right thing to do.  But she'd come back.  She'd come back, flush with the power of the Time Vortex, and once again she'd saved him.  He'd wanted to tell her that she didn't need such power to save him, that she'd done it a hundred times, right from the first time he'd taken her hand, but he didn't.  Instead, he kissed her, and died for her, and told her that she was fantastic.

The ninth time, he took her hand in a new body, and she'd smiled tremulously at him.  That had been when he'd known for certain what he'd suspected for some time - he was lost to this girl from early 21st century Earth (not even the good part of the 21st century!), and he didn't really want to find himself again.

The tenth time was when she said hello, on New Earth.  It was the first time they'd seen each other being themselves since they'd been separated at the lifts.  He wanted to do as his past self had, and kiss her, but luckily for his peace of mind Cassandra-in-Chip's-body had interrupted, and he was safe.  Until the next time.

The eleventh time, she waited five and a half hours for him to come back to her.  Always wait five and a half hours, he'd said then, and resolutely ignored the thought that one day - if he made enough of these mistakes - she might not have five and a half hours.  So he told himself that he wouldn't make those mistakes, and they would always have enough time.

The twelfth time, they were in another world, and Mickey the idiot said it for him.  It was always going to be her, wasn't it?  And he'd thought to himself, as he cursed and ran after her, that the boy was right.  It was always going to be her.

The thirteenth time was his own fault.  He'd aimed for 1967, and America.  He'd landed in 1957 London.  And then her face had been taken and he realised that, no matter how noble he liked to think himself, his anger at the Wire really came down to one thing - nobody hurt her.  Nobody.  So he'd saved her - and the others, incidentally - and when she'd found him on that street it had been the most natural thing in the world to scoop her up into a hug and refuse to let go.  If she'd asked, he would have passed it off as exuberance at yet another day in which everybody lived, but she didn't ask.

The fourteenth time, they were on an impossible planet, and she offered him a mortgage.  The moment had been awkward, tense, but what he'd thought beyond all that was that he would have.  For her, he would have.  The amazing thing was, though, that she didn't want him to, and that was enough to allow him these grand, silent promises.  Then she'd ordered him to bring back the hideous orange spacesuit in one piece, and he'd made that promise again - silently, again.  She'd kissed his visor, and for a moment he'd indulged the wish that he hadn't put the helmet on for a while.

The fifteenth time, she hadn't even been there.  Ida Scott was the one to hear his semi-declaration, one that he was honest enough to admit that he wouldn't have had the courage to voice if Ida hadn't been the only one able to hear him.  Tell her...  He hadn't said it, though, because that would be like admitting defeat.  He believed that they would get out alive, both of them.  As he told the beast later; he believed in her.  And, anyway, she knew.  Oh, she knew.

The sixteenth time was when he realised that it was becoming more frequent.  He offered an exchange of Ida Scott for her, and they were holding each other almost the moment she entered the TARDIS.  She didn't move from his side until long after they'd left the time and place of Krop Tor, and he found himself wishing that it would always be that way.  His practicality told him that it wouldn't, but hope won through - after all, him and her, they were the stuff of legend.

The seventeenth time, she offered him a fairy cake with those ridiculous edible ball-bearings, and he told her to never say never ever.  He didn't want to, but he could feel it: someone wanted to take her from him.  She was so young, so full of life, and he couldn't bear to let her go... but if the universe tried, he knew he'd be no match for it.  It was the first time he'd felt his hearts clench in fear for her when they weren't in mortal danger.  It was the second time in as many days that he'd wanted to hold her tight and never let go.  It was the third time he'd wished upon a star.  It was the seventeenth time.

The eighteenth time, he walked into a room with four Daleks, Mickey the Idiot, and her.  She smiled, and he couldn't help smiling back, no matter that they were in serious trouble.  She had expected him, and that made him feel more alive than he had in years.

The nineteenth time, he put a hopper around her neck and sent her away.

The twentieth time, she came back and promised him her forever.

The twenty-first time, he watched her save the world and fall through to a fantastic life, and he wanted nothing more than to scream the agony he felt to the stars.  So he stood at the wall where he'd last seen her, felt himself tear apart inside, and left Earth to give those stars his cries.

"What was her name, this friend of yours?"

She was his plus-one.  The best.  Bronze medal in under-sevens' gymnastics.  Worth fighting for.  Daughter of a harridan  with a heart and a hero with impeccable timing.

She was the Bad Wolf - his saviour and his damnation.

She was life, and light, and hope, and joy.  Laughter and comfort and a hand to hold.  She was hope and desperation and courage and adventure, warmth and safety and danger and everything that had once been fantastic in the universe.

"Her name was Rose."