Chapter 18

I know that I haven't updated this in quite a while, longer than usual, but I won't apologize, I had a good reason. If you don't want to know why, don't read the next paragraph.

My uncle died. No, I am not kidding. My uncle Ricky and his soon-to-be stepdaughter were involved in a motorcycle accident, the eleven-year-old girl on the back of my uncle's motorcycle. Only Ricky died, and I couldn't go to the funeral. They were in Florida and I live in North Dakota and had cheer camp, which also started this week, and he would've wanted me to stay for camp because he was a cheer/gymnastics coach. The driver had turned into him as he came down the road, his stepdaughter was thrown from the bike while he had skidded to the ground. Ricky was the only fatality. I will do a small side story to honour him and do a self-include, read at your own risk.

The song in this is Oh My Stars by Andrew Belle.

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.

"I think we best be returning to the wedding," Rose finally said, shifting for the first time in what felt like hours but was a mere five minutes.

"Yes, right, of course," the Doctor replied, snapping out of his reverie and starting his funny little dance around the console.

Rose had sensed that his thoughts had taken on serious tones, but he wouldn't let her see them, like he was keeping them a secret for some unknown reason.

The Doctor came to stand beside her again, waggling his fingers beside him and giving her a pleading expression.

With her famous tongue-in-teeth grin, she accepted his hand and began laughing as he dragged her out of the TARDIS.

After a while of Amy and Rose telling him that his dancing was 'absolutely terrible', the Doctor decided that it was time that he and Rose danced, properly, and not just to show off to both of them that he still knew how to dance.

A slow song started playing, one the Doctor didn't know very well, but Rose hummed along to as she laid her head against his chest. The Doctor smiled contentedly into Rose's hair.

A few feet away, Amy and Rory danced. Rory gave the Doctor a soft nod and smile, happy for the, once lonely and, most decidedly, discontent, Time Lord.

The Doctor found himself liking the song, finding it very loosely describing his relationships with his companions. Under heavy guard, he thought about Rory and Amy's wedding and about how Rory had waited two thousand years for his beloved. He knew that if the roles were reversed, if Rose and himself had been Amy and Rory, he would've done the same. Maybe Rose would marry him, one day. Sometime soon. Hopefully. Most definitely.

"Oh, my, my. Oh my stars. Everything you see is ours," Rose sang along, softly. A few more lines passed before she started singing again, "All my stars are leading me to you."

Too quickly, the song ended, and the Doctor was faced with the sound of a quicker, more upbeat song. If he were to be really honest, though, the Doctor had felt truly at peace, for the first time in a very long time, dancing with Rose along to the previous song, listening to her hum and sing along with it, her voice absolutely beautiful.

Rose lifted her head up to smile at him, not her full forced grin, but a soft, delicate smile that said that she agreed with his thoughts. The Doctor smiled back just as serenely.

The Doctor spun Rose out, just to show off to a certain Miss Amy Pond. Rose giggled as her pulled her back in and they began dancing to the new tempo.

Amy, eventually intruding on the duo, her husband attached to her, laughed, "Well, Raggedy Man, you do know how to dance."

"I've always known how to dance. Haven't I, Rose?" he said, stopping their dance to have a small conversation with the Ponds.

"Though he tries to get out of doing it," Rose told the couple.

"Do not!" the Doctor argued, slightly offended.

"Do too!" Rose replied. "Tried resonating concrete to get out of it once, thinking I'd believe that. Yet, when Jack wants to dance, he gets all hot and bothered and interrupts."

"Oh, now that's terrible," Amy responded, laughing along with Rose.

"Who's Jack?" Rory asked, always the one with the important questions.

"Someone who used to travel with us," the Doctor answered him. "And, before you ask, no, you may not meet him. Otherwise, he'll try to get one, or both, of you in bed."

"You just don't want him around me, you big ole jealous spaceman," Rose verbalized. Before the Doctor could protest, Rose shot him a look telling him that she knew she was right. He backed off the subject of Jack immediately.

"So, Ponds, continue your dancing! Rose and I have some business to deal with," the Doctor added, getting a faraway look on his face, as if he were distracted by some random thought.

Before Amy could argue, or Rose could object to being led away from the party, the Doctor had started to drag them towards the door. Rose waved Amy and Rory off, trying to tell them that they'd be back later.

"Doctor," Rose started, exasperated, "where are we going?"

The Doctor ignored her question, needing to be alone with her, dragging her along a thicket of bushes and then through the town.

Soon enough, they found themselves in Amy's garden, the TARDIS before them. The Doctor ran up to the TARDIS, inserting his key.

"Did you dance?" a voice from behind the pair questioned.

"Of course," the Doctor answered. The couple turned around to see River Song a few feet away from them, smirking.

"Well, you always dance at weddings, don't you?" River gave Rose and the Doctor a knowing look.

"You tell me," the Doctor replied mysteriously. Rose watched the exchange with wonder, fiddling with the blue book in her hands.

"Spoilers," River warned the two.

Rose decided to interject on the conversation. Walking up to River, Rose handed her the book, "The writing's all back, but we didn't peek."

"Thank you," River said, taking the book from her and placing it under her arm. She held out her hands and the Doctor handed her the vortex manipulator that he pulled from his pocket.

Watching River put on the vortex manipulator, Rose prodded the woman curiously, "Are you married, River?"

"Are you asking?" River asked.

"Yes," Rose answered, thinking it an innocent enough reply.

"Yes," River copied, glancing up at Rose and the Doctor through her eyelashes.

"Who are you married to?" Rose wondered, curious as to who it was.

"Spoilers," the woman replied, smiling discretely.

"Can you give us a hint?"

River stood for a moment, debating on whether to answer. Finally, she said, "To someone who you have met many times, though you may not know it. A woman who is just... purely impossible."

Rose momentarily thought about Jack, but knew that couldn't be true. She distinctly remembered looking into Jack's own personal timeline during her time on the Game Station, when Bad Wolf was swimming inside her head. Though bits of what she was were still fuzzy, she did remember that much. Jack had married and spent most of the rest of his life with the changed Ianto Jones, not a woman named River Song. Not to mention, River had said a woman.

Then again, Rose thought to herself, when exactly has Jack ever been monogamous? She figured she must've missed something when she had overlooked Jack's timeline.

"River," the Doctor said, solemnly. "Who are you?"

"You're going to find out very soon now," she replied simply. "And I'm sorry, but that's when everything changes."

"Hasn't it already?" Rose tried asking, but River had pressed a button on her vortex manipulator and didn't get to answer her before she had zapped away.

The Doctor sighed and dragged Rose, this time quite gently, into the TARDIS.

He placed his hat on the stand next to the TARDIS doors and pranced up the stairs to the console. Whipping his scarf off and placing it on the console, he turned around and said, "Rose Tyler, all of time and space at our disposal with all the time in the universe for us, where do you want to go?"

A smile broke out across Rose's face and she joined him at his place by the console.

"I was thinking we could find a bedroom..." Rose replied, her hands reaching up to play with his bow-tie.

The Doctor smirked at that and grabbed her hips, pulling Rose closer her to him.

The Doctor leaned in to kiss Rose again, honestly this was becoming a habit for him, and...

Amy stormed into the TARDIS, interrupting them and saying overly loudly, "Oi! Where are you two off to? We haven't even had a snog in the shrubbery yet."

"To which of us are you referring?" the Doctor asked.

Amy marched up to the console, joining them. "Either," she answered, winking at the pair.

"Amy!" Rory scolded as he entered the TARDIS, a little less intrusive of the couple's privacy, unlike his new wife. He closed the door and stood idly by it for a moment.

"What? Rose is a great kisser," Amy complimented, winking at her.

The Doctor's grip tightened possessively around Rose and said woman started laughing, remembering last night when, at Amy's bachelorette party, they were playing Truth or Dare. A silly game, to be honest, but plenty of fun when there was alcohol.

The Doctor caught a snippet of the memory and shied away from the rest, placing mental barriers around his mind. He was going to have to remember to keep them up for Rose's, and his own, sake.

"Wait, what?" Rory questioned, his voice pitching up an octave.

"Shut up, it's my wedding," Amy shouted.

"Our wedding," Rory corrected her.

"Sorry, you two. We shouldn't have slipped away," the Doctor apologized, releasing Rose from his vice grip to make hand gestures. "Bit busy, you know?" he shot Rose a glance, at which she blushed.

Rory approached them. "You just saved the whole of space and time, take the evening off. Maybe a bit of tomorrow."

"Not quite what we were about to do, but okay, good point," Rose said.

The Doctor ran a hand down his face, turning to the console, as if remembering he had important things to do. "Space and time isn't safe yet. The TARDIS exploded for a reason," he started pacing around the console, one hand in his pocket, the other in the air, "something drew the TARDIS to this particular date, but why?"

The console's phone started ringing, Rose went to pick it up, but Rory and Amy were in the way and she figured that the Doctor would get it once he was done with his mini speech.

"Why now? The Silence. Whatever it is, it's still out there," he paused, turning to the phone. "And now you'll have to excuse me a moment. Hello!" the Doctor shouted into the phone.

Rose looked at Amy and Rory and they looked at each other. The Doctor stood with his back facing them.

"Ah, hello," the Doctor said quieter. "I'm sorry, this is a very bad line. No, no, no, that's not possible." The Doctor glanced at Amy and Rory.

Rose knew what he was doing and smiled at him, he was trying to ensure his newest friends continued their adventures in the TARDIS.

The Doctor continued on with his conversation. "She was sealed in the sarcophagus. I was at the prayer meeting. Well no, I get that it's important. An Egyptian goddess loose on the orient express in space," he glanced at his companions again. "Give us a mo'," he told the people on the other line.

The Doctor turned to face the Ponds, putting the phone on his chest while he addressed Amy and Rory. "Sorry, something's come up. This will have to be goodbye."

Rose went to stand by the Doctor and face Amy and Rory. They were both nodding their heads slightly.

"Yeah, I think it's goodbye," Amy said, a little sarcastically. "Don't you think it's goodbye?" she asked her husband.

"Definitely goodbye," he agreed.

Rory stayed where he stood as Amy ran to the TARDIS' doors. "Goodbye!" she yelled out them. "Goodbye," she whispered, closing the door.

Rose and the Doctor smiled proudly at their new companions. The Doctor put the phone up to his ear once more.

"Don't worry about a thing, your Majesty. We're on our way," he said smugly, jamming the phone down back onto its receiver.

The Doctor started his little dance around the console, instructing Rose what to do, per her request, that she made whilst traveling with him on her own, in his ninth form, that he teach her how to pilot the TARDIS. Amy and Rory held on for their lives as the TARDIS started to dematerialize.

Everyone stared up at the time rotor, smiling like idiots, and preparing themselves for the adventures of their lives.

For a brief rundown of the sequel: It will include my own work/adventures with a rewrite of some of the episodes of seasons 6 and 7, I'm not sure that I'll do Day or Time of the Doctor, though. I'm thinking of deterring it even more from canon than just including Rose in the rewrite, as is obvious by River Song. Can anyone guess who I'm going to pair her with? I hope so/not. Though, I don't really ship it, I kind of am forcing it so that River can stay married to someone, and I think, actually, it might be a pretty cool ship. A bit wobbly, but cool, just as good as pairing her with the Doctor.

Please, please, please continue to read my stories, especially if you liked this one and want to continue reading about this AU.

Next up, if you glance at my author's page, an honouring of my uncle and the sequel. One will be titled Goodbye and the actual sequel will be titled A Rose In Full Bloom. It may take me a while to write about my uncle, and post it, but it will be set sometime after Rose and the Doctor drop Amy and Rory back in Leadworth before the events of the Impossible Astronaut and have some similarities to Night Terrors, since that is one I won't rewrite, while maintaining as much to true events as possible.

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A/N: I lied, up there, my sequel is called The Stolen Rose, sorry.