She crosses the threshold over and over again.

Most times, she lingers in the doorway for a moment or two before crossing again, finding herself smiling slightly at him as he tinkers with bits and bobs of things that look quite alien to her. Sometimes, she crosses back hurriedly – such as when she sees him, now a young man, with a young lady wearing what appears to be highly ceremonial dress, standing awkwardly by the bed and looking uncomfortably at each other. Her heart beats slightly faster and her cheeks redden slightly as she rushes back through the threshold, and she's not sure why she feels something almost like jealousy flare suddenly in her chest.

She's almost surprised when she sees him change faces. Or at least she thinks – hopes - he's changing faces, and has not disappeared entirely with a new man taking his place. Somehow, she doesn't think she could bear the thought of that. He becomes older, then younger, then older again, and his eyes become deeper and darker and progressively more familiar. She can't even bear to phrase her suspicions right now. Her heart would be broken if she were wrong …

Once, upon entering the room she can't even see his face at all. He's crouching on the floor, rocking back and forth with his arms completely covering his head, wearing a long dark velvet jacket and fitted trousers. They're almost completely covered in soot and what appears to be blood, full of holes, and she can smell smoke and the searing stench of burning metal. Although the TARDIS is quiet now, she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn't quiet then, and can almost hear the ghostly echo of the cloister bell clanging. Rose's stomach churns – not because of the blood, or because of the smell of what she knows is death – but because she knows she can't touch him. She can't help him, she can't make this – make him – better. She can tell by the shaking of his shoulders that he's crying – no, he's sobbing – and more than anything she wishes she could take him into her arms, just to ease his pain. She tries to go to him, hold him, knowing all the while that she can't.

And she's right – she can't. She's denied an embrace, her arms passing right through him as if through an image. Still, she sits with him, watching and waiting, willing him to feel the comfort she so desperately wants to give him. She can't – she won't – leave him like this. Eventually his sobs become quiet, and she steps regretfully across the threshold again, leaving him alone with his grief.

DWDWDWDW

The next time she crosses, the room is dark, so dark that it takes her eyes a moment to adjust. The soft background hum Rose has been hearing has dissipated, so slowly, that she barely can hear it at all now.

It takes a moment before she sees him – him him, her him, and her heart soars and flips and is beating in her throat. Whoever, whatever else she has been witnessing, she knows in her bones that this is him. Her Doctor.

He's standing with his back to her, legs apart, silhouetted against the backdrop of a window. Oh, but she'd recognize that hair anywhere. She is vaguely aware of long curtains on the windows, and the rustle of a carpet beneath her feet, and what almost looks like a London skyline peeking out from the window behind him.

"I've been waiting for you, you know," he murmurs, turning around slowly to face her.

It's the first time she's been able to clearly make out words since this entire debacle started, and it throws her off-guard. Reflexively, she takes a step back but catches herself on the doorframe just as she would have stumbled back out of the room. She doesn't want to leave him. Not this him, not ever.

It's also the first time she's heard his voice since that horrible beach, and the thought brings tears to her eyes and an almost paradoxical smile to her face. She wants to run to him, hold him tightly, but she knows she'd pass right though him and so she stays standing where she is, feet riveted to the ground, hands clutching the doorframe so hard that her knuckles are white.

He stares through her, almost at her, though she's far too used to being a ghost here now. There's a sensual smirk playing around the corners of his lips and she suddenly notices that he's on the phone. Her mind once again goes into overdrive – she wonders who is talking to him, what they are saying, why he is looking like that. A sudden reassuring hum from the TARDIS quiets her thoughts, and she suddenly knows that she has no reason to be worried. He looks so hungry, almost wolfish, in a way that she knows he never would have let himself look around her. There's so much to take in at once – he seems to look older than she remembers somehow, the crinkles around his eyes deeper than she remembers. Were it lighter in the room, she swears she would be able to make out a few grey hairs, even.

Most of all, she's captivated by his chest. She's never seen him shirtless before, but she's entranced by his pale skin, the fine musculature with the smattering of freckles, the spattering of hair across his breastbone, down his chest, trailing lower, and –

"… and I can't help but notice, someone seems to have taken my shirt," he says into the phone, his eyes suddenly flicking up casually and seeming to meet her own.

She starts at the contact, her stomach catapulting as she realizes that she is holding his oxford, still scrunched in her hand. He couldn't mean me …

He chuckles almost sensually into the phone, flopping back onto a sofa in the dimly lit room and languorously crossing his long legs. A sofa, she thinks for a minute, that almost looks a bit like her own. It can't be …

"Wouldn't you like to know," he smirks. "You'll just have to come and find me. Perhaps we can put that tie to good use later as well."

She starts at that, her breath catching as she almost blushes. She wonders if he could possibly mean what it sounds like he means, what is going through his mind, as he sits alone, in the dark –

"I'm never alone," he whispers, interrupting her thoughts. "I have you."

With a soft, low chuckle he flips the phone in his hand and places it back on the receiver. For just a split second before he hangs up, Rose hears the pleased, comforting hum of the TARDIS and could swear she sees the glint of a wedding ring on his hand, before everything goes dark.

DWDWDWDW

As she comes to, she opens her eyes and jolts upright with a start. She's on a bed, his bed, back in his bedroom. Heart palpitating in her chest, she looks left and right and all around for him, only to be greeted by the eerie silence of the empty room on the dying ship. Even the TARDIS isn't humming anymore, suddenly seeming even weaker and more fragile than when she came on board.

She does a quick inventory of her surroundings – the Doctor's sonic screwdriver is still in her pocket, along with the tie that she had barely registered putting in there when she first came on board the ship. His white oxford is still tightly clenched in her hand.

Suddenly, she looks at the nightstand and sees the long tube there which had been so uncomfortably wedged against her leg when she first entered the room. Wait - was it a temporal – distorter? Rose's mind races again, wondering exactly how distorted everything she'd seen had been. Had it been real - will it be real? Slowly and cautiously, she touches the contraption with her fingers, but it stays off and completely silent, not responding to her touch in the slightest. Slowly, she rises, and taking one last look around the room, moves towards the threshold she has gotten to know so well during this visit. Taking a deep breath, she opens the door –

-and steps into the gray, metal familiarity of the TARDIS corridor.

Turning around suddenly, an almost-sob escaping from her throat, she shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes and quickly backtracks over the threshold, returning into the Doctor's bedroom once more, and over the threshold again. Nothing changes. Nothing shifts. She is alone in the empty bedroom, and the empty corridor. She allows herself one moment, hugging the empty doorframe and letting a tear roll down her cheek before swiping it away with the arm of her battle-hardened leather jacket.

Schooling her features into a mask she'd perfected since starting at Torchwood, she puts one foot in front of the other, and walks out the way she came.

DWDWDWDW

It isn't until several days have passed that she lets herself think of it again. It's not even her thinking of it, or asking the question. Rose had forced the incident out of her mind with military precision, bolting any and all thoughts about it shut and throwing away the key.

"… were you and him?"

In the moment, she didn't answer, she couldn't answer that. Was what she saw even real, even them? A potential future, or a lost past in a universe she'd never know? Her mind mulls over the conversation with Donna for hours after it occurs. She feels one last gently hum, one last reassurance, a vibration in the timelines letting her know that it could be, and it would be, if she'd only let it be so. He deserved this, and he needed her, and in time, everything would be okay.

She thinks of her grief, the man she'd loved, the boy he'd once been and the man he might one day be. She thinks of the dying ship, walking her through his past and into his future. Were they … ? She still doesn't know. But when she finds him again, she knows they will be.