.

Connect-the-Dots: Eleven+

New teeth. New man. New hair. New taste buds. A new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new Doctor.

It's all very exciting. And a new body means new skin. She was still preoccupying his thoughts when he regenerated. The Doctor probably shouldn't have gone to see her that final time before he changed. He's worried she won't have left his skin, since his mind is still full of her. But as he shifts a hole in his dress shirt up his arm, he finds nothing on his shoulder. No freckles. No Marke. A new man without a Marke.

Part of him is roiling with indecision, but a larger part of him feels relief.

He should probably get out of the swimming pool now and figure out where he crashed.

The Doctor saved the world in under twenty minutes. It's a new record, he thinks. The record he probably broke was likely set by an old version of himself, and it's a rather good way to start off this new body.

He's a new man, and as such, he needs new clothes. Well, at least ones that aren't in shreds.

As he unbuttons his shirt down the front, his hands stall, and the clothes in his hands drop to the floor. He rips the rest of the buttons down and blinks hard, wishing for it to go away. Because on his chest, in between his two hearts, is a familiar connect-the-dots constellation. He raises a hand shakily and touches it. The same sensation of touching her. He didn't recognize the feel of it automatically, because now it's a broken link, there is no Rose to complete the circuit, and that deadens the sensation of it on his skin. But touching it is the closest it's felt like to holding her hand since he last let go. This would be the first time for new-him.

The Doctor's hearts clench. He regenerated, he shouldn't be that person anymore—

"You're forceful, aren't you?" Amelia Pond says from behind him, voice low and alight with some sort of innuendo he can't be bothered to decipher.

"Amy!" That would be the male nurse from before.

He's glad he's facing the other way from Amelia and the nurse while changing. This is something he can barely admit to himself, let alone another person, not when he's a new-new-new Doctor, one who hasn't even touched Rose Tyler's flesh. He's still not far enough away from her, even with the walls of a universe between them. This isn't fair. The only explanation he can think of is penance.

It's only the impending return of the Atraxi that enables him to push past the unfortunate discovery.

He hides Rose's Marke. He hides it under a bowtie and tweed. The dim realization that it's in between his two hearts hurts just as much, if not more, than having it in the first place. He never asked for this, could never deserve this (all the good and bad). But it's here.

The Doctor swallows hard and tries to put the fact his newly constructed world is still bound by Rose Tyler's hands out of his mind. He has some Atraxi to scold.

Amelia 'just-Amy-now' Pond turns out to be just what the Doctor needs. Most of the time. She's stubborn and adventurous and willful and complains and seems unaware of how vibrant a person she is sometimes, how she can change those around her. She's also ginger, which is a point of endless envy.

Something he could do without is her coyness. Amy doesn't have a Marke.

It's due to this, he thinks, that she feels comfortable pursuing him. He first catches onto her intent when she pretends to idly ask as he's navigating them to the directions left on the homing box,

"Sooo... do Time Lords have a Match?

He gives her his new 'silly-human' look, which he's been practicing quite a lot recently.

"Time Lords do not have a Match. It's a human thing. Well, a handful of other planets have a similar system, like Terriplaxus. We can't visit there though, the people are otters, not actually otters, but almost like them. Anyways, they live in their atmosphere. Kassiplaxus, great poet from there —she had sonnets that could make anyone giggle— poetically dubbed it an 'acid pool.' Not particularly friendly for you or I."

"So you're unattached," Amy says, ignoring his ongoing explanation. His hearts twist at her question and the dotted skin between them seems to burn at the mere mention of it.

The Doctor gives Amy a dismissive shake of his head, even as words refuse to properly form in his mouth. He's saved from having to answer verbally with explanations he can't even compose, by the eventful arrival of Professor River Song.

During their entire escapade with the archeologist, Amy teases the Doctor as she grills River. Amy seems so certain that River is his wife, despite the fact neither of them say a thing on the subject. River's eyes glimmer at the questions. Though the evidence is telling, he hopes it won't turn out to be the case. The Doctor knows that she can't ever mean everything to him. Not when someone else already does. And (sadly) that's regardless of the status of their existence in this universe.

The three of them survive their brush with the weeping angels, but it is a harrowing experience. So much so that the Doctor isn't surprised in the slightest by Amy's request that to go back home, 'just to visit.'

It's interesting, being someone's confidant. Amy slowly explains to him between deep breaths that she is going to get married to the male nurse that was hanging about when the Doctor last saved Earth.

Of course, that's when she sidles up to him and tries to kiss him. Or actually, does kiss him. And to his horror, Amy certainly tries to go even further than that. It leaves the Doctor spluttering.

"You're getting married tomorrow!" he accuses.

"Yeah, but I wasn't thinking anything too permanent." Amy slinks closer. "Besides, us two un-marked people can get up to whatever we want to, can't we?"

The Doctor barely manages to hide his wince. He has two options: one, explain that he has a Marke and is emotionally entangled and might always be (if empirics are to be believed), and also, not really interested in having any kind of interaction with Amy that isn't platonic. Of course, there will be plenty of follow-up questions, like who is it? Where are they? Why did you abandon them in a parallel galaxy with a clone of yourself without checking if the clone had the Marke? Uncomfortable questions like that.

Option two; he could snag her fiancé and try to push them together so Amy forgets about trying to, er, seduce him.

No contest.

The next day he pops out of a large cake with glitter in his hair.

Rory enters their life on the TARDIS distraught and largely unhappy. Amazingly, travelling to different time eras and galaxies doesn't seem to do very much to fix it. The only thing that remedies the hurt look that always seems to be in his eyes, is Amy's affection.

The Doctor doesn't understand their love, because he is an alien from an ancient galaxy long passed, not to mention a thousand years old. So obviously he doesn't understand how a touch from someone beloved could soothe and grant peace to a worried heart, or the ineffable warmth that comes to mind at the mere thought of someone who means everything. Of course not.

He tells not only Amy and Rory, but himself that too.

The human memory is fickle, and it seems that they forget rule number one; the Doctor always lies.

He doesn't have the luxury of forgetfulness.

End of the world.

Amusingly, the Doctor has been in a situation or location that he could define as 'the end of the world' no less than twenty-six times. Perhaps it's the proximity of this one, but it feels like this is the most harrowing end of the world he's experienced to date.

He survives though, he survives and makes it to Amy and Rory Pond's wedding through the hopes of a little seven-year-old alone.

And now, the honeymoon is sufficiently over, they've had ample time to settle into their new house in Leadworth, and Amy is likely crawling up the walls with her need to escape for a while; it's the perfect time for the Doctor to land.

The TARDIS is being a little touchy when he finally hits the dirt of what he expects is likely their garden. He opens the door. Yes, right on the chrysanthemums, which is quite alright with him— they're an ugly sort of flower anyway. He steps out of the TARDIS as is suddenly hit by a wave of something. It's a feeling half-forgotten from over a century ago. And it is impossible.

"Doctor!" Amy's calling out to him.

"Not the chrysanthemums! Why did you land there? I just planted them!" Rory says, exasperated.

The Doctor doesn't care. He walks past them, not taking in the colors or shapes around him. All he can think of is the impossible person who he senses in the Ponds' kitchen.

And it can't be. It really can't be. But he steps into the room and she's here.

Rose Tyler is standing beside the table in the Ponds' kitchen, looking ready to flee on sight. Her body hasn't changed much, but her eyes are wide and complex. He forgot, for all his perfect memory, the exact shade of amber her irises are. She hasn't moved. He almost worries that this is during her time using the dimension-cannon. But she hasn't smiled, or run towards him with reckless abandon. No, she is looking at him like the world is ending, but not in any way related to the stars going out. Though, admittedly, the world may very well be on the cusp of an end and the Doctor wouldn't notice. He can't feel anything except the searing sensation between his hearts.

Rory stumbles over his words as he tries to explain. "Ah, Rose! Uh, this is our friend. He—"

"Visits," Amy supplies quickly.

"Yes, he visits sometimes," Rory says. Then he pauses, and he seems to understand that there is something so much more at work here.

"This is Rose, our new neighbor." Amy hasn't picked up on it yet. "You might see him around. Sort of an odd duck. But, well."

"Doctor?" The single word slips through Rose's lips.

"Rose," the Doctor exhales.

There's a moment where they can only stare at one another.

"I'm guessing you two have met." Rory's words are slow and through a curtain.

It's painfully obvious. The Doctor nods absently nonetheless.

Rose takes a step, two steps, and then five steps until she's standing right before him. He expects a hug or a slap (maybe both), but instead she waits.

"Where?" It's a demand, nothing less. Rose knows about the Marke, the Doctor thinks faintly.

"Between my hearts," he whispers.

Rose nods and goes straight for the jugular.

"Doctor!" Amy shouts.

Rose isn't attacking him though, her hands are hastily, tremblingly undoing his bowtie. He exhales.

"Oh, um." Rory stutters as Rose throws the bowtie over her shoulder and starts on the Doctor's buttons. "We should— Amy, don't watch."

"I'm watching."

The Doctor doesn't care what the Ponds do. His gaze is trained on Rose, whose attention is locked onto his shirt. Despite all her focus, it takes her two minutes to undo the first few buttons with her hands shaking like they are. Then she reaches it, sees the top of the connect-the-dots constellation between his hearts. She sucks in a harsh breath and grabs the sides of his shirt and pulls, undoing all his deceptions and breaking his buttons all at once like he did when he first found her Marke on himself after regenerating.

"I think we should le—"

"Rory." Amelia, who has been watching closely, stops and tries again. "He has a Marke."

The ensuing silence is deafening.

Rose doesn't seem to be aware of their audience. She reaches forward and places a palm to his chest, touching her Marke on him like she doesn't believe it exists.

The circuit that was once disconnected completes itself and bursts back into life, making both of them gasp. He doesn't try to hide it, doesn't try to mute it. He lets the sensation roll painfully through his mind. If fills him with wonderful aliveness, bringing to mind that he was so empty before, but it doesn't matter because she's here, and he's full, complete.

"I almost thought you lied to me," Rose says after a pause. "You said that full-Time Lord you had a Marke. It hurt my heart to think that you had a Match out in the world, and that I wasn't it. I wondered if you met them, if they died on Gallifrey. I was glad when you told me it hadn't transferred over though, because it meant you could belong to me. You told me that was why you never pursued anything serious with me, was because you had a Marke. It never crossed my mind that you would omit the most important detail." She takes a harsh breath.

The Doctor can only watch with his hearts in his throat.

Rose exhales. "You told me on your deathbed. You made me promise to not be alone, you told me you loved me, and then you finally admitted that your Marke was a Match for mine!"

Her voice is so pained, the Doctor just wants to reach out for her, but her fingers slacken, slipping down his chest before she removes them altogether and steps out of reach. His metacrisis-self died before Rose. Pretty soon after he left, it seems, because Rose doesn't look any older.

"You knew. The whole time we were travelling. You knew."

"Only after I regenerated," the Doctor manages. "I wasn't— Time Lords don't have Matches. Then I regenerated and it was there."

"And you hid it from me," Rose states.

The Doctor nods.

"Didn't want to be a Match with a stupid ape?" she asks, and the Doctor is gobsmacked.

"What? No!" he splutters.

"I think that is the case. We wither and we die and you hate us for that, don't you."

Old anger, not at her, but at the universe, rears up. "I don't have a choice! Even if I acted on it Rose, I could never keep you! I couldn't do that."

"You could! You can!"

"I can't!"

"You can!"

"Don't make promises you can't keep!" he exclaims.

"Me?!" she shouts back. "That should be you! You lied about the metacrisis-you!"

"I did not!" he snaps. "I didn't know he didn't have the Marke! I wanted the two of you to Match and have a relationship and grow old together."

Rose's hands clench. "You have no idea what you've done, do you?"

"Hey!" Amy Pond shouts, interrupting them.

"Sorry, Amy," Rose says as she realizes they have an audience. She starts moving away from him in short steps backwards. Her body is actually faintly trembling, not that she appears to notice. In fact Rose barely blinks when her back hits the counter.

"Rose—" the Doctor calls.

"This is not a good impression to make as a new neighbor. I think I'll just go to my house and sit down for a moment," Rose says distantly as she escapes out the door. The Doctor automatically moves to follow her, but Rory gets a firm grip on his forearms.

He starts following after Rose anyways, barely noticing that he's tipping Rory off-balance with his superior Time Lord strength.

"Doctor!" Amy snaps, all fury.

He blinks and stops moving, largely uncertain as to when he started.

"Doctor, are you alright?" Rory asks.

"I don't… I don't know," he admits, finally removing his eyes from the door Rose left from.

He's standing partially clothed and wholly bewildered in the Ponds' kitchen, feeling more lost than he has in centuries.

His expression must relay some of that, because Rory gives him a sympathetic look and says, "Let me get you a shirt." He goes up the stairs to give the Doctor a moment. Unlike her husband, Amy seems intent on getting answers now.

"You have a Marke," Amy states, eyes narrow. Every so often, her gaze flickers down to the Marke still fully displayed on his chest.

"Yes," he replies.

"And you have a Match, and you already know them," Amy says.

"Yes."

"And you didn't think we'd like to know that maybe?!" The redhead's temper finally boils over. "We've been with you for over a year, I've known you even longer! And you flat out lied to me! I asked you if you a Marke and you lied to me."

Beneath the ire is the hurt his lie has caused. But the Doctor is hurting now too.

"It wasn't your business."

Amy is stunned by his dismissal.

Rory comes down the stairs, offering the Doctor a generic grey T-shirt to wear. The Doctor takes off his damaged button-up and shrugs the grey shirt on. The normal, human-y fibers make him shift uncomfortably. Rory sets the tone when he takes a seat at the kitchen table, clearly inviting Amy and the Doctor to do the same. Part of the Doctor doesn't want to; this implies an actual conversation about this utter madness.

But a bigger part of the Doctor is so tired. He's so tired that the thought of continuing to hide this part of him is exhausting. He hasn't even dampened their bond yet. Rose's energy is surging against him, tempting him away to follow the line back to her. And he can for the first time in decades and suddenly he doesn't know what he's doing here—

However, there is hurt, real hurt in Amy Pond's eyes, so he slowly lowers himself into a seat.

"Doctor, you're our best friend. It is my business," Amy starts again, sitting with a huff.

Unusually, Rory cuts in against his wife. "Amy... You know that stuff's private."

"You could have shared with us," Amy persists. "We would've kept it a secret if you wanted us to."

"It isn't about my trusting you." The Doctor pauses to run a hand through his hair. "And I didn't lie to you, not really."

"Seriously?!" Amy asks, incredulous and angry now. "On our way to Byzantium, I asked you if you had a Marke."

"You asked if Time Lords have Matches," the Doctor corrects. "And they don't."

Rory's brow furrows. "But you do? Why?"

Isn't that the tredecillion treazant question?

"This is a rare moment," the Doctor says with false humor. "I have no idea. No Time Lord before me has had a Marke. They looked down on the practice, really. Used to think it was a primitive way of finding a mate. Time Lords chose based on which marriage would be most advantageous, politically, economically, or otherwise."

"I knew you were weird, but I never knew you were weird even for your own people." Amy's tone is light.

"We never did get along," the Doctor says wryly.

"You're using past-tense." Rory swallows. "Why are you using past tense?"

Amy's eyes go wide.

"They're dead. I'm the last one left."

Amy's mouth falls open, and even Rory looks taken aback by the extremeness of it.

The Doctor pauses. "Have I ever told either of you that I was in a war?"

Amy slowly shakes her head, but Rory's eyes narrow. The Doctor wonders how much of his time as a Centurion has stuck with him. Because a soldier knows another soldier.

"There was a battle, between the Time Lords of Gallifrey, and the Daleks. In the end, I was— I—" He fumbles with his words. "I'm the one who ended it. All of it."

"What do you mean?" Rory asks quietly.

And then the Doctor does something that surprises all of them, especially himself; he tells the truth.

"I killed them." His voice is flat when he says it aloud. "I killed all the Time Lords and all the Daleks. The battle was spilling into the universe, and the rest of the galaxy was at risk. Both were too powerful, and everyone was going to suffer."

"Oh, Doctor." Amy places a hand over his, water on the edges of her eyelids.

He manages a weak smile. After confessing to double genocide, the Doctor wasn't expecting her kind reaction, but she seems to trust in his word. She always believes the best of him, undeserving as that trust is.

"After that, I was in a rather bad place. Not only was I the last of my kind, but the one who'd eliminated them was me." He sighs. "The sudden silence almost drove me mad. Time Lords are a very telepathically sensitive race. We were all distantly connected by the communal consciousness. When the war ended— when I ended the war— everything was so quiet."

There's a long pause before the Doctor musters the strength to continue.

"I was a bit of a mess after the war, as you can imagine." Understatement of his life. "I was prickly, broody, and just angry at everything— especially myself."

"What happened?" Rory urges him along, breaking his mind from the memories.

"I hadn't travelled with a companion for a long time. Then, when I was on earth, dealing with a Nestene conscious, I ran into a shopgirl. Her name was Rose Tyler."

"Rose, as in our new neighbor, Rose?" Rory clarifies.

The Doctor nods. "I saved her, she saved me, we saved the world; it was the usual stuff. But I hadn't done it in so long, and it felt wonderful. After all, it's better with two. At the end of the day, I asked her to come aboard." He musters a faint smile. "She said no."

"She said no?" Amy utters, incredulous.

The Doctor sighs. "I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had just let her go... but there was something about her. I knew she was important, special. So I left, battered about the universe for six months before I went back and asked again. I never asked twice before her." He smiles, more genuine this time. "I went back to the second I left and told Rose that the TARDIS travels in time too. And she came with me."

"When did you find out about the Marke?" Rory asks.

The Doctor shifts. "This is where things get a bit more complicated. When I met her, I didn't have a Marke."

"What do you mean? Is this an alien thing?" Amy asks. "Is it to do with Time Lords not having Matches?"

"Yes. Well, sort of." He pauses. Telling the truth involves much more disclosure and explaining than the Doctor expected. But it's unpleasantly necessary for this story to make any kind of sense. "I've never explained regeneration to you two before, have I?"

"Regeneration?" Rory asks.

"Time Lords have a trick for cheating death; we regenerate every cell in our body, replace it with a whole new one from a different DNA format. Well, the Time Lord equivalent of what you think of as DNA."

"A different DNA set? But… wouldn't that mean—" Rory cottons on.

"Yes, we change literally everything about ourselves. We become, in effect, completely different people. New body, somewhat new personality—"

"New taste buds," Amy says, making the connection.

The Doctor smiles. "Precisely."

She speaks slowly. "That day with fish fingers and custard. You'd just regenerated, didn't you?"

The Doctor nods. "Barely finished the physical change. Bits of me kept regenerating through the day though. Think I startled you."

"That really wasn't the strangest thing you did." Amy snorts. "I barely noticed."

"So when you regenerated, you had a Marke then?" Rory asks.

"Er, actually, it was the regeneration before this one, but not the first one Rose knew. I'm the third incarnation Rose has met."

"Wow. You go through bodies that quickly?" Amy asks.

"I had a tougher time keeping alive back then. Rose Tyler is the definition of jeopardy-friendly. I'm doing much better this time around," the Doctor counters.

"The last version of you, that's the one who had the Marke?"

"When I regenerated, it was just there." The Doctor pauses. "No Time Lord has ever had a Marke before. Ever. I was naturally unsettled by it, but even more so when I realized it was a Match for Rose's."

"So you hid it?"

The Doctor nods. "I hid it."

Amy's expression is complex, and the Doctor distantly wonders what her opinion is on Matches. Does she find them sanctified? Does she think him detestable? The Doctor isn't really in a position to disagree at this point in his life. Though admittedly, he really was feeling much better about things as of late.

"Is that why you stopped travelling together?" Rory asks.

"Oh no, you're mistaken if you think I have that much common sense." The Doctor sighs. "She was trapped in a parallel universe, couldn't get back."

"Oh," Amy utters.

"Did you love her?" Rory asks, startling all of them with the frankness of the question.

And perhaps it's his old age finally catching up to him, because at this point the Doctor can't much seem the point of lying anymore.

"Yes."

"Do you love her? Now, I mean," Amy continues.

"I don't think I know how not to," he admits. "I tried to stop. Believe you me, I tried very hard. Seeing her here today…"

His answer seems to satisfy Amy.

Rory isn't completely sated. "And she loves you?"

"She did once, I don't know about now." The Doctor exhales gustily. "I've put her through a lot of pain. I wouldn't be surprised if she no longer does."

"She said she was married," Amy says after a moment, biting her lip. "We were having tea before you arrived. Um, apparently she was looking for new scenery after her loss. I'm guessing it was to someone else…"

The Doctor is more than willing to move on from this disturbingly honest talk of emotions. Even though the thought of clone-him and Rose marrying is not entirely enjoyable, it's preferred. Because after all the work she went through, there isn't a doubt in his mind that Rose convinced the meta-crisis to put a ring on her finger.

"Yes, speaking of complicated things. I lost my hand when I regenerated once. A friend found it and held onto it. Later I was damaged rather irreparably, but rather than change my body, I funneled the energy into my hand, which my friend finally returned."

It's a testament to both Ponds that neither of them ask questions about a single detail of his summary.

"What does this have to do with Rose getting married?" Rory asks.

"I'm relatively certain a clone of myself was the dashing groom," the Doctor clarifies. Very important clarification in his opinion. "He was a meta-crises from my hand."

"You have a clone," Rory deadpans.

"I had a clone. I think he died." The Doctor frowns. "Rose was stranded in an alternative universe, and I left her clone-me to be with. The clone was mostly human, well in all the ways that mattered. He should have been able to grow old with her, and be a proper Match to her. Only later did I learn that he didn't have the Marke. And it seems like he died too, quickly, if I had to guess. I can't even get a metacrisis clone of myself to work properly."

"I don't think he died too soon," Rory says after a second.

The Doctor's brow furrows. "What do you mean?"

Amy continues. "Rose said she lost her husband, but that they'd been together a long time, twenty-years she said."

"Twenty years?!" The Doctor splutters. "How could you believe that?! She looks barely twenty-five, and that's pushing it!"

"She could maybe be in her mid-thirties, I don't know! Good genes and all that. People get married young sometimes, wasn't my place to judge!" Amy replies.

"She was lying then."

"Why lie though? What does she have to gain through making her story look less credible?" Rory asks, bewildered.

Maybe she's just telling the truth because constant lies wear down the soul; especially when they're not for anyone else's benefit, just a habitual quirk. The Doctor would get that. He's just reached that point now.

"Also, you should see her wedding-ring— that thing looks like it's been through hell and back," Amy says. The Doctor stares at her. "It's natural to scope out other people's rings," she defends quickly. "I just got married. Still fresh."

"Pretending the two of us aren't barmy for a moment," Rory says. "What does that mean though, if Rose said she's been with him for twenty years but doesn't look over twenty-five?"

The Doctor's mind reaches a conclusion too good to be true, so he tosses the idea and works on others. Two minutes pass and he's considered thirty-two different hypotheses. But the first, impossibly, remains the most likely. Holmes unhelpfully springs to mind.

"Doctor?" Amy presses. Apparently, she's spent enough time with him to recognize when he's reached a conclusion, especially one he doesn't like.

"It's possible that Rose isn't aging."

The Ponds blink.

"That's perfect!" Amy says after a moment.

He gives her a withering glare, which she then returns, full ginger fury.

"Why isn't it?" she demands.

"She's cursed to my life."

"Yeah, but if you keep each other company…" Rory trails off pointedly.

"Besides, she clearly still cares about you!" Amy says.

The Doctor splutters. "She practically ran when she saw me!"

"Yeah, 'cause she was overwhelmed!" Amy replies. "Having heard the story, I can see why."

That's fair, but he's really trying not to be too hopeful now. Amy isn't having any of that though.

"Don't you see?! There is still time to be each other's Match!" the Scottish woman says.

"No." The Doctor speaks firmly. "She probably hates me. And besides, she already married a clone, someone different, physically and in other ways." Handy was human. How could the Doctor hope to compete with that?

Rory shakes his head. "Don't throw away a good thing."

"I'm not throwing anything away," the Doctor asserts. "I just understand that there are some things that I can't… If my story with Rose proves anything, it's that she doesn't need me in her life."

Amy's mouth opens, no doubt to offer more arguments, but Rory cuts through them quietly.

"Ask her. Before you decide to shut her out. Ask her what she thinks."

Rory can't know how much those words pain the Doctor. Or maybe he is aware. Maybe he knows the Doctor well enough to know that all the decisions about his and Rose's relationship have been made by the Doctor alone. It's a saga of him trying to pull away while helplessly being drawn towards Rose Tyler— Marke or no Marke. And he doesn't see it stopping any time soon. So perhaps it's time to try a different strategy.

Besides, if Rose cusses him out of her house, it'll be easier to stay away at least.

The Doctor grimaces but heads out the door.

"It's the house on the left!" Amy eagerly shouts before the door closes.

The Doctor doesn't need her to tell him that. The pull is alluring in its insistence. He tries not to pay too much attention to the sensation, but it's hard to say the least. His pace is helplessly quick and excited. His body is honest about his desires, even though the rest of him isn't.

There's an awkward moment when he hovers at the door, unwilling to concede the normative gesture of knocking for a meeting he is certain will be anything but. So he leans his head against the wood of the door and calls out to her.

"Rose?"

There's no way she can't sense his proximity. She hasn't tamped down the sensation, he can tell. After a too-long pause, she opens the door.

Her eyes are red and still complicated.

"We should… talk," he manages after staring at her for a moment.

"I'll make tea." She shuffles through the entrance hallway, leaving him to follow after. Rose leads him to a sparsely decorated living room connected to the kitchen. Everything from the pillows to the few decorations is simple and tasteful, nothing like the garish pink she used to love.

Standing there in this foreign space, wearing a different face and Rory's tee-shirt, it strikes him how far away they are from where they started.

"How do you take it?" Rose asks as the kettle starts heating up.

The fact that she doesn't know how he takes his tea anymore makes him more weary than hurt. Another day it might've been a stab in the chest.

Stranger, how do you take your tea?

It belies all the intimacy they once held. But today nothing is normal, nothing is as it should be, so he tells her the answer simply and takes a seat at a small, circular wooden table with only two chairs.

Something tells him she doesn't entertain many people here, and it's even less likely she's contacted Shareen or Mickey since she's been back.

Rose sets a mug in front of him, hands tightly gripped around her own, before she takes a seat across from the Doctor.

And to punctuate the insanity of the day, the only thing that comes to his mouth is,

"How's Jackie?"

She stares at him before speaking. "Did you come up to my house to ask about my mum?"

The Doctor shifts in his chair. "Not especially."

"Good." Rose nods. "Because we have too much to get through. My mum can wait."

And he wants to ask if they'll be addressing things chronologically, alphabetically, or seismically, because they'll need some kind of organization system to muddle through. Part of him feels the need to ask how she's here, but a larger part simply doesn't care at the moment.

"How long has it been for you?" Rose asks.

"Over a hundred years." He keeps an eye on her expression, looking for a tell of her thoughts.

He doesn't get one. If anything, her expression closes off more.

The Doctor takes a steadying sip of tea before he returns the question. "How long for you?"

"Fifty years."

Despite the fact it confirms his suspicions, he still can't help but choke on his tea. His eyes run over her youthful features.

"You still look nineteen."

"Bad Wolf happened when I was nineteen," she retorts.

"So this whole time…"

"I suppose so."

"Amy… Amy told me that you were married to Handy."

"Don't call him that. He was you, Doctor," she corrects softly, fondly, sadly. "But we called him James for identification and if we were in public."

"James." The Doctor nods.

"We were married five years after you left." Rose takes a sip of her tea.

"Did I become that patient as a human?" the Doctor wonders.

Rose makes a hapless gesture. "You have a lot of issues, Doctor. As a human, you had more, somehow. James… struggled to adjust. What with being human, and then genocide…"

Right. The Doctor almost forgot that meta-crisis him would've been coping with that. Still.

"Five years though?"

"Wanted to be good and ready." Rose shrugs.

"By that point I must've realized that you weren't aging though," he notes.

Her lips quirk. "Yeah. We decided to go through with it anyways, despite all your griping."

"Well, it isn't exactly enjoyable watching everyone get old," he defends his other self.

"No," she says, suddenly solemn. "It isn't."

He curses inwardly as he realizes what he's said. The Doctor honestly forgot for a moment what exactly they were discussing. When was the last time someone had been around long enough for that fact to apply to them? For it to apply to anyone but himself? Centuries, it seems.

"Right, sorry," he mutters.

"S'okay." She bites her lip. "It was hard at first, with Mum. But I had you for a while, and then Tony after. Then Tony had children, and a grandchild by the time I left."

"I'm glad you weren't alone," he says honestly.

"Me too. I realized how important it is to have others." She drinks more of her tea. "That's part of why I came back."

His hearts lurch with a painful amount of hope. Because even if she doesn't want his love, being with her is more than enough to satisfy him.

"For me?" he asks.

"Yeah." Rose makes a soft sound of irritation, as though she can't fully believe herself either.

"I thought you might hate me," he admits. For leaving you on the beach, for getting you into this, for not telling you about the Marke, for never giving you those three words—

"I did," she says bluntly. "After you—James died, for about twenty years I stewed and hated you for so many things."

Though he understands it, the Doctor can't hide his wince.

"Well," he says lamely, as he takes a long draught of his untouched tea. He hides his face in the mug for a long moment, gaze trained away from her amber eyes.

Part of him is ready to show himself to the door and put this meeting behind him, but the other part is doing maths. Because if James died after twenty years of marriage, plus five years of dithering before committing, and then adding twenty years of apparent loathing, their calculation is still five short of her fifty year timeframe. As if to prove his half-hearted hopes, Rose continues, tone much gentler.

"I more-or-less came to terms with it on the twentieth anniversary of his death." Rose graces him with a half-smile. "Tony asked me if I regretted it, if I would take any of it back. And I still can't bring myself to say that I would."

The Doctor's hearts skip of beat, the words settling in his mind, but not fully sinking in, because it really shouldn't be possible. He needs more evidence to prove her mad word to himself.

"You still… care about me."

"I don't know how to not," she replies.

The Doctor quirks a half-grin. "I said the same to the Ponds."

Rose laughs, the tone is a little darker than he remembers, but still so warm, and so her. "We're a pair, the two of us."

"Most certainly."

There is a pause, more comfortable than the Doctor could have hoped for, but the sudden silence only draws attention to the connection between them that has been hovering in the background the entire conversation. It's warm and human in a way the Doctor hasn't allowed himself to indulge in since he left Rose on that beach with Handy— James.

"I don't…" Rose stops herself. "I don't know what to do with this." The energy around her seems to twirl with her indecision.

"I admit I'm also at a bit of a loss. But I assumed that was mostly to do with being a Time Lord."

"What, there isn't a file on this in the TARDIS?" Rose asks, tone playful. "You told me there was a file on everything."

He soaks up her levity. "You are too impossible for all the Time Lords on Gallifrey to predict. So you can hardly blame them for not coming up with a file for Rose Tyler."

"S'pose not." And there's a hint of tongue in her smile. It slips after a moment, as she realizes how quickly they fell back into old patterns. Instead of drawing away like the Doctor suspected she might, she instead says, "I meant it when I said I can't not care about you, but I'm not sure I know you anymore, and you don't know me."

The Doctor dislikes the thought, but sees the truth of it. Thankfully, it has a wonderful solution.

"Don't suppose you'd fancy seeing the TARDIS again? Maybe visit a few planets," he suggests.

She smiles, and this time it's warm, too-wide, and utterly perfect.

"You know," he prompts after she takes a beat too long to reply. "She travels in time too."

Rose laughs. "Okay, I'll come. Just promise me you won't drop us on an impossible planet on our first trip."

"The nerve of you, Rose Tyler! That's the kind of adventure saved for a fourth or fifth trip at least!"

"Can't wait."

And with the soft glow of the bond, everything… slides into place, forming a picture he never really allowed himself to imagine.

He quite likes it.

"I lied about what I said before."

Rose is sipping hot cocoa while sitting on the TARDIS stairs that lead to the mainframe. They've just wrapped up their third adventure in Barcelona —the planet, not the city— and subsequently prevented a civil war without necessarily trying to.

"What about? Have you been lying about disliking the bow tie? Because I must inform you, Rose Tyler, that bow ties are very cool." The Doctor twists his arm to aim the sonic screwdriver properly into the TARDIS' inner workings.

"So you've said." Her lips curl up, but she isn't distracted. "I meant I lied about not wanting to change anything I'd done with you."

"Oh?" he asks mildly, like he isn't dying to know.

"Mmm."

The Doctor can't help but pull off his work goggles and moves closer to her.

She takes a sip of cocoa before talking. "I wish I hadn't been so afraid to pursue you. I wish I'd danced with you more, and teased you more, and been braver about caring about you."

The Doctor fidgets. "I wasn't really in a place to receive that kind of attention."

"No, but I still regret it" She pauses for a long moment. "I think I want to try it now, right my regrets and all. But if you still aren't in a place to get that kind of attention, then I want you to tell me."

And this is decidedly not a question he'd expected to face when he woke up two months ago. It wasn't even a question he dared entertain after learning about her presence on this side of the parallel worlds. The Doctor can't treat her query with anything less than total honesty— it's the least he can do after all she's been through to get here.

"I'd like to try. I'm not totally sure, but I want to try," he says.

"I have time to wait until you're ready— all I have is time." She shrugs. "I waited five years for you to come to terms last time. So there's no rush."

The bond, constant and warm in the background, suddenly springs forth. The Doctor doesn't know if he or Rose is more surprised that he's the one who called it forward. Generally it's Rose who manipulates it, using it to tug on his soul, to direct his awareness, to remind him he's not alone— This time, it's all him. He lets it curl around her, trying to solidify his intentions and certainty in her mind. He wants to try.

She smiles. Despite the still-hard edges of her expression sometimes, it's as fresh and true as it was when he first met her all those years ago. Rose reaches a hand forward and cups the underside of his jaw. Her thumb strokes over the skin.

"Me too," she says.

The Doctor is pleased to announce that it takes him four years and three months less time than James to come to terms with loving and living with Rose Tyler for their foreseeable future. And their foreseeable future is long and winding.

He's never thought of eternity with so much fondness before. But then, he never had the assurance of a Match, of Rose Tyler, by his side. He tells her so at night as he holds her to his chest, constellations touching each other.

It takes him nine years to stop calling it Rose's Marke. Something he only ends up growing out of after hearing Rose say our Marke enough times that he grows accustomed to the ring of it, even in his inner monologues.

One-hundred twenty years and four months after that, they marry in Terriplaxus. The Doctor offers to take her to Earth, but Rose tilts her head and smiles and tells him she doesn't care. She's not defined by her planet anymore, she says. The Doctor isn't either, he realizes, and it's a good thing.

Eleven hundred nine years later, Professor River Song and Rose Tyler meet on an abandoned ice-cream truck in the middle of a Mandaskarian green fire-fight. (Rose wanted to celebrate Christmas.) They two women get along famously.

Three hundred years and a tremulous brush with Certain Death after, Rose rediscovers the constellation on his scalp, hidden by curled, salt and pepper hair.

From that day in the kitchen when they reunited, it takes Rose one thousand five hundred thirty-eight years and eleven months for her to admit that bow ties are indeed cool, and by that point he's too eyebrow-y to care anymore.

He cares about her though. Always. Forever.

And the Doctor isn't worried about how he runs anymore, about his frantic footfalls through the galaxy. Because he can always rely on the constellations on their skins to guide him back to her.

Though really, she's barely ever a stride behind or a step ahead from him ever. Because though his pace is breakneck, she's always running too.

Dots-on-skin, hand-in-hand, stride-by-stride, they race through the galaxy.

The Doctor has never loved life nor the stars more.

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The end.

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Thank you very much for reading. I hope you liked it all.

Thanks again to my beta, Vampiyaa.

Let me know what you think, if you have a moment.