Rose sat at the chess table fiddling with the stone pieces as the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing rang out across the park. 'Move forward' he had said, both in her past and her present. And, she thought, she was ready to do that. They were still going to have some rough patches, some things to work through, when she prepared his tea as he used to like it or accidentally looked past him in a crowd or when he rambled something new and expected her to understand, not to mention whatever had happened in those final hours with the Thrizax, but they would be all right.

Better than all right, actually. Fantastic. Brilliant. And...well, she wondered what his new word would be. And found she couldn't wait to hear him say it .

Right on cue, the glorious sound of him returning to her once more reverberated across the pond and into her heart. She looked up just in time to see his new gangly figure bounce from the TARDIS, his eyes fixed on her at the small stone table. She offered him a small, tentative smile and opened her mind to him. The mad, brilliant grin he gave her in response chased away the last of her doubts and, by the time he reached her, they were both beaming at each other like idiots.

"I believe, Ms. Tyler, that you owe me a rematch," he said, sliding his lanky form into the chair across from her like a languid cat.

Rose dropped her voice down low and stuck her chin in the air, "It is generally difficult for me to find an opponent worth playing, young man," she said, stealing his haughty words from their earlier meeting. He laughed as the full memory of the experience so, so many years ago, shone brightly at him in her memory and she returned the sound, dropping the fake hauteur for her tongue caught in her teeth.

"You should have called me that back then," the Doctor replied, resetting the pieces on the board. "You actually were older than me at that point in my Timeline."

Rose gaped at him and then laughed once more. Rassilon, it was good to hear her laugh like that. He didn't miss the tentative looks she gave him inbetween smiles or the shy way her foot was brushing against his when, two weeks ago, she would have been out-brazening him with the best of them. "You're mad," she finally said, reaching out to twine her fingers with his, pausing them over his chess pieces.

"And you're stuck with me," he replied, deep emerald eyes instead of brown or blue peering into her but she didn't see the colour. All she could see was the man she loved.

"Stuck with you...that's not so bad," she said quietly, leaning forward and offering the words to him with the same reverence she had when they'd been trapped on an impossible planet above a black hole ready to take on the Devil himself.

"Yeah?" he breathed, moving forward as well, so their lips were inches from each other over the chessboard. The hand not entwined with hers on the cold stone, reached up to tuck back a stray hair and then stayed on her cheek.

"Yeah," she answered, closing her eyes and letting her lips and her mind meet his. It was tentative, shy and gentle, just as it had been the very first time he'd kissed her in his Eighth body, more an expression faith and understanding than intent. They languidly explored one another rather chastely, relearning and renewing. There would be time for passion and haste and torn off clothing and frantic sex on the edge of the kitchen table later. For now, it was just them.

"It's about bloody time!" rang out Donna's sharp voice and both of them shot back into their seats like chastened teenagers, blushing wildly. "Oh, none of that," Donna snorted. "Not like I haven't seen the two of you doing far worse. Need I bring up the Kitchen Incident of 2014?" she snarked, delighting in watching them both blush an even deeper shade of red.

"I've told you before Donna, it wasn't 2014," the Doctor mumbled, fiddling with the chess pieces in his now unoccupied hands and then going to his bowtie. "There is no Time in the Vortex."

"Well, can't just call it the Kitchen Incident, now can I?" she continued, determined to bring them together in their embarrassment. "Too many of those not to a have some sort of qualifier. That one, however, 'took the cake', if you get what I mean," she said, elbowing Rose, who was now hiding her face in her hands. Donna Noble, master of all romantic endeavors, that was her. Bringing together idiot Time Lords and silly humans since well...she had no bloody idea.

She'd eventually demanded her own kitchen.

"Anyway, don't mind me. Just wanted to come check on Blondie here," she turned her attention to Rose. "Grandad's making fish and chips tonight. Are you and chin-boy here going to make it?"

Rose managed "yes" over a snort of laughter and the Doctor's indignant "Chin-boy?"

"So, you coming now or what?" Donna said, impatiently, tapping her foot as neither of them moved.

"We'll be along in a bit, Donna," Rose answered, still sniggering at the Doctor who was currently trying to look at his own chin.

"Got a game to finish," he said, finally, sullenly giving up his quest to examine his chin. Younger Rose hadn't seemed to mind it.

Donna's eyes narrowed at him. "That's not some weird martian way of saying you're going to shag Rose here on this table, is it? Because it's a park. In the middle of the day. And there are children about, you know," winking at Rose and with that, she turned on her heel and strode away leaving the Doctor sputtering and Rose howling with laughter. As she reached the edge of the path, she looked up to see Rose reach over and gently stroke his (rather prominent) jaw line, evidently soothing his damaged ego.

Her job here was done, then, she smiled.

Back in her own seat, Rose settled into an easy silence with him, watching the Doctor out of the corner of her eye as the two of them focused on the slide of the chess pieces across the board. He absently fiddled with his bowtie, bounced up and down in his seat, bobbed his head and looked around constantly, his eyes always seeking out something elsewhere but always subtly returning to her. Still full of manic energy, then...and still worried what she was thinking of him. She wondered why he didn't just use their bond to see...she wasn't shielding now but he wasn't engaging it. Must be trying to give her a little space.

The Doctor watched Rose watch him, trying not to make her feel pressured. He knew she was cataloguing his new traits and tried to relax into them. He wasn't even sure what he was going to do now, but he knew Rose would notice. Rose always noticed. Just like he knew, without even looking, that her teeth would be sunk into her lower lip as she contemplated her next move. Her foot would be absently tapping the ground, darting over to nudge his and then returning back. Her fingers would be twining in and out of her blonde locks, now a more natural shade than when they'd first met, but still perfectly Rose.

"So, we'll make it then?" he asked, sliding his queen forward to bring their game to an end. Rose glanced up at him. He wasn't referring to Wilf's fish and chips and she knew it.

"We'll make it," she replied, conceding him the win and standing up, hand outstretched to him. He took it, locking his fingers with hers and then moved to stand behind her, the two of them locked together, staring out over the pond to the setting sun over London's skyline, the Eye just visible in the distance.

"Forward," he said, pressing a kiss into her hair, finally letting his mind fully envelop hers as it was meant to do, as they were meant to do.

"Forward," she answered and somewhere, somewhen, across the annals and anterooms of Time: a young, scared blonde swings on a chain to save an old, scarred soldier while a distraught girl presses herself against a white wall, straining for one last touch of a battered man's hand; a heartbroken woman watches as the man she loves crashes through a window for another while a redeemed man gives up his life for the woman who saved him, body, mind and soul; a business woman knocks an arrogant toff onto his britches covered bum in a parallel world where she never belonged while a woman, determined but fearful, steps through a blue door to face the man she never thought she would see again.

And, she realized, in some ways he was wrong. There will always be regrets, there will always be tears, there will always be anxieties...that was a part of living, a part of life itself, the deepest pits as well as the soaring heights. But, most importantly...

There will always be love.