As much as the Doctor was enjoying watching the look of amazement on Rose Tyler's face as she gazed upon his beloved blue ship, whoever was invading the Earth (or rather parallel Earth) was not appreciating the importance of this moment and rudely continued to shoot deadly lasers in their direction. A particularly lethal purple one cremated a large oak tree about eight feet ahead of the Doctor's current position. Rose did not react. He decided that it was time for them to leave.

"Right, Rose Tyler. Gawking time over" he said, pushing her inside and slamming the doors milliseconds before an orange beam of light would have collided with her head. "Oh" the Doctor whined, rubbing the inside doors of the TARDIS "I bet that's left a mark, and she does hate being burned" Refusing to look again at Rose Tyler, just in case she disappeared, the Doctor ran past her and began frantically hitting buttons, twiddling knobs and shouting at inanimate objects, until the rhythmic humming from the TARDIS told his they were safe in the vortex.

His back to the TARDIS doors, the Doctor looked down at the console, pretending to be doing something very important which meant he most defiantly could not turn around, no matter how much he wanted to see her beautiful face framed by her blonde hair, every one of which he had memorised individually. He was terrified that if her were to turn around, to face his pink and yellow human, she wouldn't be here. He could have dreamed it all. The Doctor's eyes stung at the thought, but it wouldn't be the first time his imagination had betrayed him. Dreams were a dangerous thing.

In the past, after his time alone, most of which would be spent in Rose Tyler's room in the TARDIS, the Doctor would often see her. See her in his dreams. Sometimes they were nice dreams, where they were together again, or where she had never left, both types would result in him waking to the disappointment of her being absent, but the satisfaction of having spent a precious few more minutes with her, even if it wasn't real. The other type of dreams were not so kind; nightmares. The Doctor would watch Rose Tyler as she was sucked into the void, Pete never saving her; he would see her with his other self, laughing at the 'real' him as he fell into oblivion and was forgotten by everyone who had ever known him; the Doctor would wake screaming after watching Bad Wolf take over Rose's mind and burn her inside-out, without him to save her. Occasionally, when he was especially missing her, he would be certain he had heard her laughing, smelled her perfume, seen her disappearing around one of the many corners in the TARDIS. Once, he had even sworn he had seen her reading in the library; the leather on her favourite couch was cold and there wasn't a pile of alien books on the coffee table. She wasn't there. She was never there. No matter how real it felt at the time.

"Doctor?" her voice was so quiet, so unsure. Then again, why wouldn't she be unsure? He was a changed man; still 'The Doctor' but no longer her Doctor. "Doctor?" she spoke louder when he failed to answer.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Rose" he spoke slowly, trying to justify his warped logic to himself as well as the human he hadn't seen in years, stood behind him. "But I'm not going to turn around"

"I'm sorry?"

"It's just, I'm not entirely certain that I haven't gone mad, and your presence isn't simply a figment of my incredibly brilliant imagination" he could hear her coming closer, her soft steps making barely audible noises on the TARDIS' glass floor. The Doctor's advanced senses also allowed him to feel the air pressure between them change; it didn't mean it was real though. Dreams could be vivid.

"It is you though, yeah?" Rose stood right behind him.

"Well, yes." He struggled to control his breathing "I am me. The Doctor" sighing and closing his eyes, he continued "The very same…sort of"

"Sort of?" the hairs on the back of the Doctor's neck pricked up as Rose's warm breath came into contact with him when she spoke.

"Hmm" if Rose was a figment of his imagination, then his capability to create fictional situations had certainly improved since his last experience with vivid dreams. "Same mind, different face"

"Good different" Rose moved one of her arms around the Doctor, placing her hand atop his on the console. He gasped, keeping his eyes closed and focusing on the feel of her warm fingers encasing his palm. "Or bad different?"

With a shaky breath, the Doctor opened his eyes. There in front of him, resting on the TARDIS' console was his hand, his hand being held by the one person whose hand he wanted to never let go of. "Just different" he repeated the words Rose had said to him all those years ago on Christmas day.

"But still not ginger"

The Doctor, still holding Rose's hand, turned to face her. She was crying, but then again, so was he, and neither of them had noticed. His free hand came up to cup her damp cheek, thumb rubbing away the streams of tears from one eye. "No" he smiled, blinking away his own tears to clear the blurry vision they were causing; he needed to see his pink and yellow human. "Still not ginger"

Her eyes flickered from his face to his neck and back again. Wide grin still in place, she raised her eyebrows. "You wear a bow tie now?"

The Doctor laughed wildly and pulled Rose into a rib-disintegrating hug, lifting her feet off the ground and spinning her around. He placed her back onto the floor after a few circles without revoking his hug. "Yeah. Bow ties are cool"