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Rose’s first thought on landing was that this jump was another failure. She didn’t recognize any of the creatures around her, but they weren’t human. She was about to activate her recall when she felt something warm against her chest. Reaching into her shirt, she realized it was her TARDIS key. She might look like she was in the wrong place, but the TARDIS was close—very close. Instead of activating the immediate recall, she turned off the auto recall function on her dimension canon. Looking up to one of the fish like aliens, she asked, “Excuse me, but is there someone here called The Doctor?”
The alien she asked bubbled excitedly and led her down a long hallway. She couldn’t understand him, but she would happily follow him anywhere if the Doctor was near. In the hallway, she noticed that there also seemed to be lots of humans here. If this turned out to be another false alarm or near miss, she would have to remember not to judge her surroundings so quickly. She had just been burned one too many times by inhospitable jumps, and it had made her more prone to rash judgements.
Eventually, she saw an open door at the end of the hall, and through it, she saw the one thing she had scarcely dared to hope for. She took off running, leaving her guide behind. “Doctor!” she yelled.
The Doctor started at her voice, but he didn’t turn around. She slowed down, and when she got to the doorway of the room he was in, she looked around before trying to get his attention again. The Doctor was standing in front of a long table, where a blonde woman was laying. If it hadn’t been for how unnaturally still she was, Rose might have thought she was sleeping based on how peaceful she looked. The Doctor’s face was riddled with grief and guilt. It wasn’t a look she had seen on this face, but it was one she had seen before. Back when he had big ears and wore leather, it was the look he had on his face after their run in with the Dalek in Utah, when he told her exactly what the Time War had been like.
“Doctor?” she asked, hesitantly creeping forward.
The Doctor held the woman’s hand. “Regenerate. Please. You’re so like me, so please, do that too.”
Rose took a step forward and reached out a hand to lay it on the Doctor’s shoulder, but he flinched away, so she dropped it. “Doctor, who was she?”
“She was my daughter,” he whispered. “Jenny.”
“What?” Rose gasped, looking at the fully grown woman.
“Progenation machine. Took a DNA sample, rearranged it, and rapidly grew it to produce a child from one parent. She wasn’t even a day old,” he explained.
“Oh Doctor, I’m so sorry,” Rose said.
“I told her I would take her to see the stars,” he continued. “We were gonna run.”
“What happened?” Rose asked.
The Doctor shook his head. “No. I won’t. You already know, so don’t make me say it again.”
“Doctor?” Rose asked. She had no idea what was happening. Had she somehow crossed her own timestream?
“I should go. It’s been half an hour. I don’t know what I’m waiting for. Nothing is going to happen,” the Doctor said, but he made no effort to move, still staring at Jenny with unseeing eyes.
Rose wasn’t sure what to do, wasn’t sure why he was acting as though he couldn’t see her, but she assumed it had to be shock. What she did know was that he couldn’t leave yet. She felt the same nervous anticipation she always felt before a jump. And she could tell by the way he was refusing to move that he was grasping for some reason to stay, to keep waiting for something to happen. “Always wait five and a half hours, yeah? That’s what you told me.”
“Five and a half hours,” he repeated blankly. “Yes, yes, that’s it.”
Rose decided that he must just be in shock. She stepped out to the hall to see if she could find someone to get chairs for her and the Doctor. She wouldn’t leave him to his vigil alone, but five hours was a long time to stand. Once they had somewhere to sit, Rose scooted her chair next to the Doctor. “I’m here, Doctor. I’m here,” she reassured him, and she went to lay her head on his shoulder so he would know he wasn’t alone, but he jerked back.
“No touch,” he emphasized, as though it was some rule she ought to know.
This Doctor had always been so tactile, she couldn’t imagine him not seeking comfort, but she supposed she didn’t know how long it had been for him. It had been over three years for her, but the universes weren’t always in sync. Something must have happened to make him so touch-adverse, but she decided that this wasn’t the time to challenge that.
For an hour, they were left in peace. Rose had closed the door so that no one bothered him. She yearned to hold him, to be able to help him through his grief, but she knew better than to push him when he was like this. When he was ready, he would come to her. She had been gone for so long, but she was back and she wasn’t going anywhere.
Without warning, the door swung open. “Doctor, we should—” a redheaded woman started, but when she saw Rose, her sentence cut off abruptly. “Who the hell are you? Can’t you see he’s mourning? Leave him alone.”
Rose expected the Doctor to defend her, but he just stared at the redhead, confusion all over his face. “What?” he asked.
The Doctor didn’t have the faintest clue what was happening. When Rose had called his name, he had been filled with dread. His hallucinations had been better since he had broken down and told Donna about them. Talking about Rose and who she was had helped when his mind tried to use her against him. But when she had shown up here? Well, he had been sure it was a repeat of the old visions. The ones that asked him why he couldn’t save her. They were always worse after he failed. After all, they were manifestations of his subconscious, the part of him that felt every loss so deeply. And what bigger failure was there than this? Losing his daughter the same day he got her.
But instead of chastising him, asking how he could let her die for him, a man who had too much blood on his hands to deserve such a sacrifice, his hallucination of Rose had given him exactly what he had wanted, a reason to stay with Jenny just a little longer. Until she had said it, he thought he had forgotten about the five-and-a-half-hour rule he had instituted on that spaceship with Madame du Pompadour, but apparently, it had been in his subconscious after all. The Not-Rose had stayed with him, giving him his space—well, mostly. He had needed to remind her of the no-touching rule, but she accepted it easily enough.
It had just been him, Jenny, and his hallucination in the room, so who was Donna talking to?
“I’m comforting him,” he heard Rose protest. And for once, it was true. The visions normally made him feel worse, but she had been helping so far. Maybe she was counting on him letting his guard down and getting comfortable, only to disappear on him when he needed her most. That would really send him spiralling, so it was probably what his mind had in store.
But when Martha answered his hallucination, his hearts stopped. “Leave the comforting to his friends, yeah? He asked for space, so we gave him that.”
“Yeah, if he wants people around, he has us. I don’t know what you hope to gain from hanging around, but we aren’t going to let you take advantage of his grief. So scram, Blondie,” Donna added.
“Oi! I’m not trying to take advantage of him. I’ve been looking for him for a long time. I—” Rose started, but the Doctor cut her off when he finally found his voice.
“You can see her?” he asked, horror mingling with hope in his voice.
Realization washed over Donna immediately, but Martha didn’t know about the hallucinations, so she said, “Yeah, course we can. Is she supposed to be invisible or something?”
“Doctor, why wouldn’t they be able to see me?” Rose asked. Then, with a bit of panic, she asked, “You can see me, right?”
“I can always see you,” he said, finally looking at her directly. “But no one else has ever been able to before.”
“Doctor, what are you talking about?” Rose asked.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. It’s her, isn’t it? Doctor, is it her?” Donna asked, unable to reign in her excitement. The Doctor was her best friend, and she had seen how much losing Rose had hurt him. But could she really be back?
“Who?” Martha asked. “Donna, do you know her?”
“If I’m right?” Donna replied. “No. Only from stories, same as you.”
“I’m still not following,” Martha admitted. She was watching the Doctor warily as he continued to stare at the blonde, his eyes darting around, seemingly cataloguing every little detail about her.
“Come on, you’re smart. You said your captain friend told you she was blonde,” Donna hinted.
Martha gasped. “No. It can’t—this is Rose?”
Rose turned her attention from the Doctor to the other two women. “You know me? How?”
Martha snorted, a little bitterness seeping into it, but nothing compared to how she had felt when she was travelling with the Doctor. “You’re about all he ever talks about. It’s always ‘Rose did this’ or ‘Rose said that’ or ‘Rose would know what to do,’” Martha said.
“You told your companions about me?” Rose asked, trying to fight down the tears. In her worst moments, she had feared that the Doctor would forget her. And while there was a lot to unpack from the other woman’s tone, it certainly sounded like that was the farthest thing from what he had done.
“Are you real?” he asked her. “Are you actually here? This isn’t just my mind playing tricks again?”
Rose was very worried about the implications of his questions, but they could deal with that later. For now, she needed to let her Doctor know that she was back. She took a small step toward him and slid her hand into his. As soon as she had, his grip tightened. It was a little strong, but she couldn’t complain, squeezing his hand just as tightly with no intentions of letting go any time soon. “I’m home, Doctor,” she promised.
He crushed her to his chest. “Rose Tyler,” he whispered, repeating her name like a prayer. “Rose Tyler.”
“Doctor,” she said, finally allowing the tears to fall now that she was back in his arms.
There was no telling how long they would have stayed like that if her dimension cannon hadn’t chosen that moment to beep. “This is Torchwood One calling Agent Tyler. Agent Tyler, report.”
Begrudgingly, Rose pulled back from the Doctor. “This is Agent Tyler, Torchwood,” she said into the device.
“Oh, Rose, thank God,” Mickey’s voice said, replacing the nameless soldier. “This is the longest you’ve gone without a check-in. When you didn’t come back with the auto recall…”
“Is that Mister Mickey, then?” the Doctor asked, his voice all cheer as he took the device from Rose.
“Doctor, is that you? Rose, did you finally find him?” Mickey asked.
Rose wrestled the device back from the Doctor. “Yeah, I did. Sorry about not reporting. Some things came up. But I did it, I’m home Mickey.”
“I’m happy for ya, babe,” Mickey said. “But don’t forget about the stars, yeah? We’ll try to use this to keep in touch when we can, but you know connection strength comes and goes.”
“I know, Mickey, and thanks, for everything,” Rose said. “Talk soon, yeah?”
“Yeah. But before I go, Doctor, you take care of her, alright? We put a lot of work into getting her back in one piece,” Mickey said.
The Doctor held Rose close. “I will, Mickey. I will. Thank you.”
The connection went dead after that and the Doctor just held Rose close. “I should be worried about a lot of what was just said, but I really can’t manage to care,” the Doctor admitted into her hair.
Rose giggled. “I do know what’s going on and how worried we should be, but right now? I don’t care either.”
“I missed you,” he said, completely disregarding his companions. “Every minute of every day, I missed you, Rose.”
“I missed you too, Doctor. I could have everything I ever wanted over there, but none of it mattered. The only thing I wanted was you,” Rose said.
“Uh, not to interrupt, but the Doctor said you were gone. That you could never come back,” Martha said.
Rose laughed. “Yeah, he told me it was impossible too. But never underestimate the power of money and the desire to prove him wrong.”
“I’m Donna, by the way. And this here is Martha,” the redhead said. “Spaceman’s been a right mess without you.”
“Spaceman?” Rose asked, trying to hide her smile.
“At least she’s stopped calling me a Martian,” the Doctor grumbled, but his faux grumpiness was undercut by the smile he just couldn’t wipe off his face.
Before the Doctor and Donna could start their friendly bickering up, a voice behind the Doctor asked, “What’s going on, here?”
The Doctor froze. He had begged for it earlier, but the universe was never that kind. He had already gotten Rose back. It was too much to hope for Jenny too. But when he heard Rose gasp as she looked behind him, he finally turned. There she was, sitting up, right as rain. Never mind the fact that she had been very, very dead not ten minutes prior. “Jenny?” he asked, hesitantly.
“Dad? Donna? Martha? What happened? Last I remember, I got shot,” she said. Then she looked at the blonde woman her dad had only let go of to hug her. “What did you do, replace me already?”
Rose laughed and shook her head, holding her hand out to Jenny when the Doctor finally released his daughter. “Not quite. I’m Rose Tyler. A friend of your dad’s. I’ve been looking for him for a long time.”
Jenny’s face brightened immediately. She had liked her dad’s other friends, and based on the way he was holding on to Rose, she must really be something special. “I’m Jenny.”
As the Doctor watched the blondes shake hands, he couldn’t help but laugh. “Five and a half hours. I can’t believe that it actually worked.”
Rose put a hand on her chest, feigning scandalization. “What, are you saying that isn’t a fundamental time travel rule? That you made it up to cover for the fact that you left me and Mickey to cannibalistic robots while you partied in France?” Rose teased. Then she turned to Jenny. “There’s one thing you’ve got to know now. Your dad is absolutely making up everything as he goes along. If he tells you he knows what he’s doing? He’s lying.”
“Rose Tyler, I—” the Doctor said, shaking his head. He was going to joke back and keep things light-hearted. But something about the way he started his sentence, entirely unintentionally, caused the words to get stuck in his throat. Instead, when he looked at her, smiling at him with that tongue-touched grin he had missed so much, what came out was the end of a sentence he had been waiting years to say. “I love you.”
Rose froze. Three words. Just three words. But she had waited so long to hear them. Based on the gobsmacked look on his face, the Doctor hadn’t meant to say them, but his shocked expression quickly morphed into one of the biggest smiles she had ever seen. She threw herself at him, pulling him down into a kiss. The first proper one they had ever had, where neither of them were possessed or dying. The first kiss they shared just because they both wanted it.
“Friends,” Jenny joked, putting air quotes around the word.
When they finally broke apart, they both stared at each other, goofy grins on their faces. “Come on,” Martha teased. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you two were acting like that was the first time you ever said those words.”
The Doctor’s head fell and he buried it in Rose’s neck, his cheeks heating up. Rose laughed and pressed a kiss to the side of his head. Martha looked at them both and gasped. “Shut up. It’s—it’s not,” Martha said. When Rose nodded, Martha groaned. “All the pining he did, and he never even said it before?”
Rose bit her bottom lip. “Would it make it better or worse if I told you that was our first proper kiss?”
Martha threw her head back and groaned louder this time. “Oh my God. I can’t. I cannot deal with this. I’m going back to the TARDIS.”
As she started to walk away, Donna said, “Come on, Jenny, let’s leave the lovebirds to their reunion.”
Rose watched the other three women walk away, but the Doctor kept his head firmly buried in her neck. “Come on, Doctor,” she whispered.
“No,” he groaned. “They’re never gonna let me live this down.”
“It won’t be so bad,” Rose reasoned.
“You don’t know Donna,” he pouted.
“Come, on. At least you don’t have to deal with it alone,” Rose said.
The Doctor raised his head to look at her. “Yeah?”
“You’ve got me,” she promised, pressing a quick kiss to his lips.
“And I’m never letting you go again,” he vowed before giving her a lingering kiss.
When they broke apart again, Rose pulled out of the hug completely. Before the Doctor could protest, she took his hand. “Come on Doctor. Let’s go home.”
“Allons-y, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said as he led them to the TARDIS.
When they reached the doors, Rose pulled out her key and smiled up at the Doctor. He nodded at her to do the honours. While she did, she said, “I don’t think they’ll be that bad, but if they are, I do have a bit of a multiverse ending problem we could get started on that might distract them for a little bit.”
“Will we ever get a break?” the Doctor whined.
Rose shrugged. “Dunno. But we’re together again. We’ve got this.”