For a prompt for a Doomsday fixit with Nine.

This is the first of three prompts that I've strung together to make a single fic. The third prompt stipulated that the Doctor and Rose already be in a relationship, and after a bit of consideration, I decided to make this a sequel to Tokens of His Affection. I mentioned at the end of Tokens that Doomsday doesn't happen in that 'verse-well, now you know how they avoided it.

Torchwood, July 9, 2007

Rose stared at her husband in shock. "I'm supposed to go."

The muscle in the Doctor's jaw twitched. "Yeah."

Rose jumped when his magnaclamp hit the floor with a loud clang, but she didn't let it distract her from the conversation she couldn't believe they were having. "To another world, and then it gets sealed off."

"Yeah." The Doctor barely looked at her, spinning around and running over to a computer to hide his face.

But Rose knew exactly how he felt; she could feel his anguish over their bond. "Forever." He flinched when she pronounced the word she'd recently used when he'd asked, in a romantic moment, how long she was going to stay with him. Rose shook her head. "That's not going to happen."

A loud crash rattled the building, breaking up the tableau that had formed as the Doctor and Rose talked.

"We haven't got time to argue," Pete said brusquely as he strode toward the wall. "The plan works. We're going." He spun around and pointed at Jackie and Rose. "You too. All of us."

Rose's jaw dropped. He'd rejected her when she tried to call him Dad, and now he thought he could tell her what to do? "No, I'm not leaving him," she declared.

Her mum looked at her, then at Pete. "I'm not going without her."

Fear and anger were etched in every line on Pete's face, and for a moment, Rose felt a bit of sympathy for him. "Oh, my God. We're going!" he told Jackie.

Rose could see her mum's back stiffen, and despite the serious situation, she had to hide a grin. Pete must have forgotten what it was like to argue with Jackie.

"I've had twenty years without you, so button it. I'm not leaving her."

The reality of the situation suddenly occurred to Rose. This was her mum's last chance to be with the man she loved. "You've got to," she said, putting a hand on her elbow.

Jackie spun around, sparks in her eyes. "Well, that's tough."

"Mum." Rose swallowed and brought her mum's hand to her heart. "You can't give up this chance when I'm never gonna come back to London to stay. I lived with you for nineteen years, but my home is with the Doctor now." Her mum's eyes dropped to her wedding band, then met her eyes again. "He does so much, Mum—for the whole stupid planet and every planet out there."

Rose felt a shiver of something over her bond with the Doctor, and she focused on it as she finished talking to her mum. "He does it alone, Mum. But not anymore, because he is not sending me away without asking," she concluded, understanding the Doctor's intent just in time to spin around and grab the disk from him before he could put it around her neck.

The Doctor's hand hung empty in the air. His Adam's apple bobbed, and he had to wet his lips before he spoke. "Rose—"

She ignored him, too angry to speak coherently. Instead, she tossed the disk away and looked over her shoulder at Pete. "Go." He nodded and hit the yellow button on his chest, and the four of them disappeared.

"I can't keep you safe here!" the Doctor shouted as soon as they were gone.

The wild panic in his eyes allayed some, but not all of Rose's anger. "An' I can't keep you safe from there!" she retorted. "I vowed twelve times that I would never leave you. Now." She lifted her chin. "What do we need to do?"

London, March 5, 2005

The Doctor rolled his eyes when Rose jogged over to comfort her idiot boyfriend, cowering in the alley. Ricky would never appreciate her full value. Rose Tyler would be the perfect companion, but he hesitated to ask such a young human girl to risk being tainted by the danger that followed him wherever he went.

But the habitual appeal to her sense of adventure escaped his lips before he realised it. "Nestene Consciousness?" he snapped his fingers. "Easy."

Rose spun around and looked at him, her eyebrows raised. "You were useless in there. You'd be dead if it wasn't for me," she told him, pointing to herself proudly.

The Doctor nodded slightly. "Yes, I would. Thank you," he acknowledged, then shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Right then, I'll be off." He drew in a breath and managed to stammer through his invitation. Rose might deserve better than him, but he wanted her with him anyway. "Unless, er, I don't know, you could come with me." Her smile gave him some confidence. "This box isn't just a London hopper, you know. It goes anywhere in the universe free of charge."

But Ricky the Idiot spoke up before Rose could answer. "Don't. He's an alien," he said, pointing at the Doctor. "He's a thing."

The Doctor glowered at the human boy. "He's not invited." He looked back at Rose, trying not to appear desperate. "What do you think? You could stay here, fill your life with work and food and sleep, or you could go anywhere," he offered, trying to appeal to the need for a bigger life he'd sensed in her.

Rose bit her lip and rocked back and forth on her feet. "Is it always this dangerous?"

The Doctor nodded curtly; he wouldn't lie to her. "Yeah."

For a brief moment, he thought she would say yes. Then Ricky got up on his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist, and Rose deflated, patting her boyfriend on the back.

"Yeah, I can't. I've er," she shrugged her shoulders and pointed in the general direction of her flat. "I've got to go and find my mum and someone's got to look after this stupid lump, so."

The Doctor had to swallow hard to choke back the regret. "Okay," he said softly. Rose's eyes widened, and he thought maybe he hadn't hidden his longing as well as he'd thought. "See you around." He slipped back inside the TARDIS and closed the door behind him before he could do something ridiculous, like beg a teenage girl to come with him.

After leaving Rose, the time senses that had briefly come back to life in her presence seemed dead again. Desperate to feel something, the Doctor chased down fixed points, visiting Krakatoa just before it erupted, stowing away on the Titanic, even watching Kennedy's assassination. Each time, sensation returned for a while, but quickly faded once the event passed.

The TARDIS was getting more fed up with him with each trip. She made no attempts to hide her disapproval of the way he was skating the edges of the laws of Time—one wrong step in any of those moments could bring the Reapers crashing down on them, and she knew it just as well as he did.

The Doctor ignored her protests, so eventually, she decided to take matters into her own hands. There was someplace he needed to be, and if he wouldn't go there, she would take him there.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked his ship when she sent him into flight without his permission.

She refused to answer until she landed with a hard thud. You need to be here, she told him bluntly.

"Where is here?" The Doctor checked the navigation information. "Canary Wharf in July of 2007? What's so important about here?"

But he could feel it as soon as he stepped out of his ship into a sterile white staircase. Someone had opened a breach in the walls between the worlds. Pulling out his sonic, he scanned and took the stairs going up.

"Online and locked," a computerised voice announced as the Doctor approached the room the breach was in.

He stepped inside and took the scene in in an instant. "Oi, what's going on here?"

A pretty boy in pinstripes looked up at him, a jolt of recognition and relief in his eyes. "Grab Rose," he ordered, nodding at the blonde girl who was just barely hanging onto a lever.

The Doctor lunged forward and grabbed her hand just as her fingers slipped, and she smiled up at him. This time it was his turn to feel a jolt of recognition. "Rose?" It was obviously her, even though she did look a few years older than she had when he'd left her behind in the alley a month ago.

"Doctor!" she cried happily.

The breach in the wall closed and weaved itself together. The Doctor crossed his arms and glared when the other man let go of the clamp he'd been hanging onto, ran across the room, and pulled Rose into a tight embrace. "I thought I'd lost you," he said, his voice rough.

Rose pulled back and stroked his face gently. "Never. I told you; I'm never gonna leave you." Pretty Boy sighed and leaned into her caress, then—to the Doctor's surprise—he bent down to kiss her gently.

It was in the middle of the kiss that the Doctor realised who the other man was. "Oh, I don't believe it," he groaned loudly, not caring if he was interrupting the other man's—well, future him's—kiss with Rose. "This is what I regenerate into?"

The couple parted, and the Doctor's future self glared at him while Rose giggled. "Yep! This is the next you, Doctor."

"Fantastic," the Doctor groaned.