Author's note: After Rose's and Meta-Crisis Doctor's dangerous venture in 'Forever: The Broken Fragments', after running into the Time Lord Doctor in 'Forever: Nineteen Hundred' at the very moment of his regeneration, Rose and her - now one and only - Doctor are about to start a new journey together. There is just one thing they completely forgot about...

English is not my mother tongue so please let me know when you find errors or when something just doesn't sound right. Reviews and comments are always welcome!

[Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. BBC does.]

I would like to thank Bria for volunteering to be my beta! This chapter is now officially better than it originally was :)

FOREVER: COLOURS OF ETERNITY

Memories that linger in my heart
Memories that make my heart grow cold
But some day we'll live them all again
And my blue moon again will turn to gold.

"When my blue moon turns to gold again" (lyrics: Hank Snow, music: Wiley Walker and Gene Sullivan, as sung by Elvis Presley)

BLUER ON THE INSIDE

'Rose?'

'Yes, Doctor?'

'Will you...' he hesitated. 'Will you want to travel with me... again? Will you stay?'

This choked-up and quiet sentence may have sounded strange if said by the previous incarnations she knew but it came natural to his present self. This new Doctor was so much quieter and more composed, so much less crazy. As if he had lost all his craziness seeing bad things happen, she observed. There was some shyness to his manner she had never seen before, and constant disbelief in his eyes that things could really be going the way they did.

In a way, it came as a relief to her. She loved the hectic crazy ways of her Doctor, her human Doctor, but she loved the Northern accent and blue eyes of her first Doctor just as well, and somehow losing the Doctor, the dear face she had learnt to love over the last nineteen years, and finding him at the same time, called for a line to be drawn. It was a beginning of something new, after all.

And here he was, her new Doctor, sounding so solemn and so different. Only the beaming eyes gave him away.

'I thought you'd never ask!' she smiled as she studied his features. 'F'course, I'll need to get to know you properly again!'

His face fell at her words. He had forgotten how hard it was for her before to accept his new face. She only saw it happen once before, and he could still remember her traumatized face when it almost happened again. This time they were given no choice: it was his third face that Rose knew. Would she like it? Strangely, until this very moment he never spent a second wondering what this new face looked like. In the circumstances they met, his appearance was completely irrelevant. Now it was beginning to matter. He looked around for a mirror, and not finding any in the console room, he touched his own face in the way blind people do, suppressing the urge to ask 'Well, how do I look?'

Rose was apparently struck by the same thought because she fixed her eyes on his face with renewed interest. A hardly visible smile lingered on her face: he didn't look like a stranger; he didn't talk like one. She couldn't exactly grasp where it came from but in spite of being a completely new man, he reminded her of both his incarnations she knew. Maybe she wasn't imagining it. Maybe he really was all of them. The intensity she heard in his voice reminded her so much of the short-haired Northerner. And there was an unmistakable flicker in his eyes very much like the man's she had spent most of her life with.

He gulped, obviously nervous under her scrutiny.

'Honestly, though, you are quite the same! You look different but you feel the very same Doctor!' she finally announced. 'I'd recognize you even if I didn't know!'

And judging by the soft glisten in his eyes, it was exactly what he wanted to hear.

'You know that you won't get rid of me that easily though?' she continued in a half-laughing half-serious tone. 'No silly excuses like worlds falling apart will do the trick this time!'

The moment she uttered the words, she wanted to take them back. It sounded reproachful. Well, maybe deep inside it was. But she certainly didn't intend to make him sad. For a moment, he looked like he was falling into pieces. Then he collected himself and that serious-looking new guy in him took over.

'Rose Tyler!' he said, pronouncing her name in his unmistakable way, almost as if he was tasting the sound of it. 'If you think I let you go that easily, you're so wrong! If I can't keep you, Rose, I'll follow you. Wherever it takes!' the fierce determination in his voice made her heart jump. 'And that's...' he hesitated, '... that's a promise.'

Rose didn't know why the word sounded so solemn. She didn't see the image that flashed through his mind, of a girl and a Cyberman hugging in a graveyard. But she knew by the way he said it that it was important. And she heard the TARDIS suddenly go quiet when he said it. Shocked? Amazed? Or merely trying to emphasize the significance of the Doctor's words? Rose wasn't exactly sure.

'Besides, we have a lot of time to make up for!' he said cheerfully.

'Oi, that was just nineteen years!' she teased.

'Felt more like nineteen hundred!' he retorted, and they both laughed.

It was not exactly a happy laugh. The truth was neither of them was quite at ease with the years that separated them, although each for a different reason.

Rose had to cope with his entirely new appearance and personality, something that always took her time to accept, and with the existence of all the people she never met. She only saw the glimpses in his memories, the saddest moments of loss and longing. They all mattered to him a lot, and they were his life and hope for the nineteen hundred years when she was not there. She would want to know all about them but knowing him, he'd rather keep the memories to himself.

When they first met, he was only nine hundred years old. Now the age gap was suddenly tripled. No, she corrected herself, it was not really an age gap. It was a time gap. Back then it was all new and she was ready to accept him as he was. No expectations. Now, after nineteen years of ordinary, well, relatively ordinary human life with in Pete's world, she was a bit afraid. What if her human expectations scare him off? What it they make him unhappy? He was a Time Lord, after all. She hoped he needed her as much as she needed him, but he never really said it, after all. She might have been deceiving herself.

And there was all the sadness she could now in him, unhidden. Somehow she could see through all the covers now. It took her just one brief glimpse into his head and all the walls were transparent, no matter what he did or said. He hated his past, he was disgusted with his choices and he wouldn't want to talk about it. It almost felt like there were three Doctors: the Time Lord she lost, the human she spent half of her life with, and the new much older Time Lord she hardly knew any longer. Was she still part of his life, or just a faded memory?

She tried to reason with her doubts. When they first met, when he yelled 'Run!' into her ear grasping her hand, did she know him at all? Was she any part of his life? She was no one. And yet, he invited her to the TARDIS and it was fantastic! So why give up now, when he meant so much to her?

She looked up at him, hoping to find some answers, and met his gaze. He looked away startled, like a scared animal, and Rose felt like crying.

The Doctor had to cope with the closeness, something that his Time Lord self was not quite ready for, and with all the memories that he thought were gone now flooding his mind and becoming his reality again. The moment he realised the life of the human Doctor with Rose was now his other timeline, he carefully locked it away in his mind and didn't dare to look. It was so intimate that he felt guilty remembering. He nearly asked Rose if he could remember, if she didn't mind. He bit his tongue just in time: he knew it would make her uncomfortable. She wouldn't understand why his own memories scared him. He wasn't sure he understood it himself. He wanted to remember. Looking back, he discovered the warmth of her body, closer than ever before, and the racing heartbeat, and waking up next to her, watching her face while she slept. All his forbidden dreams were there, shameless and revealed, and it made him cringe and want to run.

What if this new him makes Rose unhappy? He was a Time Lord and some things were just... too alien for him to imagine. He told her long ago to be careful what she wished for, but she never listened. She clearly thought he was worth taking any risk. The problem was he wasn't sure she was right. She was still human: too fragile to last. One of those things he could not imagine was spending the entire life watching the love of his life slowly but surely grow old and die. He desperately longed for her company but could he bear it, knowing that she would wither eventually? Although, he reflected, she was so beautiful when she had wrinkles! But seeing their time together run out slowly... No, he couldn't handle that.

But would she even last long enough for him to see those wrinkles again? His pink and yellow girl: a fragile human who could die at any moment when she was with him. Inviting her back to the TARDIS could be her death sentence. He promised he wouldn't leave her but a few thousand years taught him he was powerless way too often.

He glanced at her furtively. She happened to do the same, and their eyes met. The sad look in her face made him want to cry, so he looked away quickly.

Then, almost on cue, they both turned their heads to look again. This time, neither looked away. They kept looking at each other across the console room, both full of doubt, and both trying hard not to show it. As they looked, hope began shyly crawling back to their hearts. Somehow, they both found it impossible to doubt while looking at each other. The Doctor was first to smile shyly. Rose's face brightened at his smile, and suddenly all fears were forgotten.

And just then, on that very moment, all the alarms on the ship went off at once. In the chaos of sounds and lights, the Doctor grabbed one of the screens and his face turned white.

'Rose...'

'Is it bad?!' she shouted through the clangor, holding on to a railing by the door.

His first instinct was to tell her it was okay. But that wouldn't do. It was Rose, not some scared stupid ape... Hectically entering some coordinates into the console, trying to remember the engineering of the dimension cannon in Pete's world and its targeting algorithms, and to combine them with what the TARDIS could do by herself, he answered truthfully:

'Very bad!'

'How very bad?' she wanted to know.

'Like in we've-got-three-minutes bad! Hold on, Rose!'

'Oh my God,' she realised and her eyes widened. 'We were in the void!'

'We still are, and in three minutes, no, wait, that's two minutes... Never mind, there might be a way, there are still some cracks that didn't close. Hold on tight... just hope she does not lose her power while jumping... Hold on to something, Rose, if we're lucky...'

And just then, as he was saying the words, the TARDIS banged into an invisible wall and her door - Not again, please not, again! he thought weakly - swung open.