A/N: I recently began a rewatch of the entire series and y'all I have /ideas/. So, I don't expect this will be the last DW fic I post.

Chapter 1: It's All Semantics

Language is a funny thing. A billion species, give or take a few hundred million depending on the year, roamed the cosmos speaking and signing and scenting and projecting upwards of a trillion languages. Modes of communication were as varied as the species that originated them; humans with their spoken words and their manual signs, Rexflorians with the colorful lights across their petals, any number of insectoid species dancing though ended conversations. The Doctor loved them all and even before he was the Doctor he had spent years of his life learning as many languages as he could wrap his brain around. Of course there would always be many beyond his reach; he lacked the dual vocal cords needed to produce Glinerian harmonies and a Gallifreyan nose simply was not sensitive enough to pick out the subtle chemical difference between nitroazobenzene carboxyl chloride (radiant happiness) and nitroazobenzene carboxyl di chloride (incandescent fury) of the Hutera. The inability did not bother him, in fact, it was almost nice to know that the universe was filled with wonders beyond even a Gallifreyan's comprehension.

So, the young man who would one day become the Doctor spent his evenings tucked away in the depths of the archives, reading every grammar and dictionary he could get his hands on. The other students at the Academy did not understand his fascination. They pointed out that he didn't need to know these languages; they were all going to be granted TARDIS after all. The ships core contained all the knowledge of every language in the universe and would translate for them. They need never speak anything but Gallifreyan. He didn't say anything, he was a shy boy in those days, but he thought that was a rather old fashioned way of thinking. No, he didn't need to learn about other languages, but he wanted to. Besides, he told himself when they had once again left him alone, the TARDIS might translate for them, but somethings were untranslatable and the idea of missing out on a joke or clever turn of phrase was appalling. So he spent his time alone and he learned. He was gifted with an unusually efficient brain, even for a future Time Lord and generally need only read a grammar once to understand. Soon, he had read every tome on offer in the archives and there were hundreds, thousands of languages clamoring for attention in his head. He loved it.

Then, he took the final exams and was granted two of the three things he wanted most in the world; the title of Time Lord and the ability to choose who he would be.

In the second year of nights spent devouring languages he'd found an entire shelf filled with grammars of the languages of a no account little world. He marveled at the number. Seven thousand languages spoken by only a handful of a billion people? It was unheard of. He did not know it at the time, but this was his first encounter with the world that would become the closest thing to a second home he would ever know. He spent the better part of the next three months working his way through the collection of languages. One night, long after the second sun had set and the rest of the archives emptied, he began reading about the Indo-European language family. The family was nothing special, not really. The phonemes were fairly standard for the vocal architecture of the species and the grammar was nothing he hadn't seen before. But, there was a word. Doctor. The word was strikingly similar across the family, especially in the later texts he could find.

Doctor.

It sang to him. He looked it up in Macedonian (lekar), in Zulu (udokotela), in Welsh (meddyg). He loved every single version of the word and the idea behind it. The meanings shifted ever so slightly in every translation he found. A learned person. A healer. A confidant. An expert.

A friend.

So, years later, when he stood before the council, nervous and proud and ready to take his place as a Time Lord, he knew exactly what word he was going to choose as his title. He knew they expected him to choose something in Gallifreyan, everyone did. But, that wasn't what he wanted. He did not want to take a name and retreat back to the Archives. He'd had enough of reading and experiencing the universe through others eyes. He wanted to go and see and help people all for himself.

His mentor asked him the question. Who was he? Who would he be?

He smiled and spoke, in English and in Esperanto and in Tok Pisin. He layered the word over itself in his mind in every language he knew. Languages of Earth and Raxacoricofallapatorius and Mondas and Aractus and hundreds more and through the entire word he wove the Gallifreyan concept.

"I am the Doctor."

Just now, nine hundred some odd years and nine regenerations later, he was desperately trying to recall that phrase. It had been written on his very soul. No matter how the council tried to argue with him, to convince him to choose something more befitting of his potential, he'd not relented.

And now.

Now, he could remember nights spent alone in the archives, little fingers rapidly flipping through ancient pages. He could remember carefully forming new words, angling his lips just so and the fierce joy that had filled him when he got it right.

But, he could not find the words themselves.

It had taken him nearly a full minute aboard the Sycorax ship to realize that no one was responding to anything he was saying. He had just told the leader of the invading ship to wait his turn and asked Rose how he looked and she was just staring at him. Her eyes were wide and fearful, not of him, never of him, but for him. Because, he realized in that moment, he'd not been speaking English.

It had been years since he spoke Gallifreyan.

"Rose?" he tried to say. But all that came out was, well it ostensibly the closest approximation to the flower that could be found on Gallifrey. But, there were a few notes in there that certainly did not belong in the name of anyone with whom he was just friends.

"Right," he said. "Right. Okay. Well, then, we'll just have to do this the old fashioned way." The sentence flooded from him, a melody of anxiety and determination. He made his way past the leader, talking about everything and nothing until he reached the large button that had been calling his name ever since he glimpsed it from the corner of his eye. Oh, the humans were not going to be happy about this, he thought. He did his best to project reassuring thoughts in their general direction. Perhaps one of them was more telepathically open.

Then, he pressed the button. There was a general cry of anguish from the humans and he looked over. Rose stood with her mouth slightly open and her eyes shining. He shook his head and pointed to the Sycorax leader.

The alien spoke, words the Doctor did not recognize but the man standing beside Harriet Jones translated them. Suddenly everyone relaxed and he knew they understood. Good, he wasn't about to be killed the next time he landed in the UK. Rose was grinning up at him now and his new hearts stuttered in his chest. Oh, that was the same as before then.

He looked around the ship, trying to find a solution to the issue at hand that didn't rely on his gob. His eyes lit upon the swords strapped to each warrior. Well, that would do nicely. Time to test if he'd gotten a fighting body or not.

As the TARDIS settled into the Vortex, Rose found herself unable to tear her gaze away from the Doctor. The frenetic energy he'd displayed aboard the Sycorax ship and after as he ranted incomprehensibly at Harriet Jones seemed to have mostly dissipated, leaving him looking thin and grey. He rested his hands on the controls in front of him and stared absently at the screen.

"Doctor?" She took a few steps towards him. Her voice seemed to shake him from his daze and he looked up, a wild grin crossing his new face. She smiled back, though she knew hers was far more tremulous.

"Are you alright, Doctor?" She was close now, though she hesitated to reach out and touch.

He opened his mouth and a stream of lilting syllables tumbled out. He stopped talking and frowned.

"Oh," Rose said, "I'd sorta hoped the TARDIS would fix that." He stared at her blankly. He'd just opened his mouth again, probably to speak more musical nonsense Rose thought, when a huge yawn caught him by surprise. Rose giggled. He just looked so startled by it. He smiled at her. Not the wild look of a few moments ago or the grim smile he'd worn after realizing no one on the Sycorax ship could understand him, this was the closest to the tiny quirk of the lips her previous Doctor had worn so rarely. She treasured those little smiles, small and rare and all hers. It looked like home in a way Rose couldn't put into words. Suddenly, she needed to reassure herself that he was here and he was real, even if he appeared to be having some sort of language problem. She surged across the final few between them and wrapped her arms around him. He was skinnier than she was used to, and a little taller, all sharp angles and movement where he had been sturdy strength. He smelled right though. Like spices and old books and the TARDIS and something she couldn't name.

He was still her Doctor.

"We'll figure out what's happening, Doctor," she promised. He pressed his face into her hair and a few more unintelligible words slipped out. She hugged tighter. After a few moments she forced herself to stand back, holding him out at arm's length.

"Alright," she said, "You're going to go to bed and sleep for at least eight hours! None of that Time Lord I don't need sleep nonsense. You lost your hand today!" She carefully avoided the fact that he'd also sort of died today. That was a thought that was going to give her enough nightmares without voicing it aloud. He made a complicated series of gestures that appeared to mean, ' I have no idea what you're saying Rose Tyler, but I am also very tired so we will figure it out in the morning '. Or, at least that was what she was choosing to believe they meant because after a moment he sighed and turned on his heel, heading into the depths of the TARDIS to hopefully seek out the bedroom she'd never seen him use.

As soon as he was gone she spun to the monitor. "Okay, we're going to figure this out," she told the TARDIS sternly. "I know he translated for me before, but he can't do that right now, so you're going to have to work with me." The screen remained frustratingly blank. She growled.

The most frustrating bit was that she knew, knew deep in her gut that she would have been able to understand him not twenty-four hours ago. With the heart of the TARDIS burning her up from the inside she had seen the entirety of the Universe and there was something familiar about the Doctor's strange language. She tried to recall it, but her memories from those terrifying, exhilarating minutes were wreathed in a flame too bright for her to see through. She detached the screen from its housing and crossed to the jump seat. It wasn't the most comfortable place to sit, but she figured this might take a while.

She pulled her feet up under herself and wrapped her hoodie tighter around herself. The edges were slightly damp from the mixed ash and snow of the Sycorax ship and she shivered. Two senses warred in her. On one hand, she understood where Harriet Jones was coming from. It had been terrible waiting to see if the Doctor would ever wake up, trying to do what she thought he would do, and then the joy of seeing him followed by the fear of knowing there was something terribly wrong. Of course the Prime Minister felt like she had to make the hard choice to keep the entire planet safe. But, a large part of Rose rebelled against the idea that the Earth was only safe if they killed people. That wasn't the way she and the Doctor did things and she did not like the idea of her homeworld being like the bad guys they'd stopped so many times over the last year.

Once again she wished she was still the Bad Wolf. Everything had made sense then, no uncertainty, no questions. Just the knowledge of what she needed to do and the ability to do it.

Suddenly, a spark of yellow light leapt from her fingers to the monitor in her hands and the screen lit up. It was still covered in the circular symbols of the Doctor's written language, but it was at least on. She made a mental note to ask him about the little spark of light when they could talk again. It hadn't hurt, in fact it felt like home in the same way the TARDIS did, but she knew better than to ignore odd occurrences like that.

"Right." She paused to consider her path forward here. She'd only taken a few years of foreign languages in school (the less said about her French the better really), but she remembered the first few lessons. Greetings. That was a safe spot to start.

"Can you show me how to say good morning in your language?" she asked the TARDIS. Immediately the symbols on the screen changed. Now, there was a single large circle with a few smaller circles inside and lines crossing between them. As she watched the symbol shifted slightly.

"Why's it moving?" she asked. She received no answer. Fine. She thought hard, remembering every fact the Doctor had ever told her about his people. It was a depressingly short list. But, she knew that time had played a big part in their society, maybe it also had in their language? The Doctor was constantly going on about his 'time sense', maybe there was some feature of the word in the language that they could 'hear' with that in the same way she could hear sounds?

"Can you play a recording of it?" she asked. The screen flashed once and then two syllables played. The first was high and fell off sharply into the second which sounded almost like a low whistle. Okay, she could do this. She tried to copy the sounds. The screen flashed bright red.

"Oi," she muttered, "No need to be rude." The TARDIS did not respond. She tried to say the word again. Red.

"Can you play just the first bit?" she asked. Maybe that would be easier. The TARDIS complied. She repeated it. The screen flashed red again, but it was less bright this time. She grinned.

Before falling asleep the Doctor made a quick detour by the medbay to run a scan on himself. He had to stop himself from a full on panic attack at the results, relying on the deep well of calm the TARDIS was projecting. The neural implosion he'd experienced after being woken prematurely appeared to have ricocheted through his mind, leaving behind a wide swath of destruction. It was odd. The scans told him there was severe damage, perhaps bad enough to lead to cell death, but he felt completely fine. He hoped the dissonance was a sign that his brain was already beginning to heal itself. He could still feel tendrils of regeneration energy flitting about. It was long after the typical fifteen hour window, but the damage had occurred within the correct time frame so perhaps it was just healing more slowly than normal?

Knowing there was nothing he could do to help the process along, he left the medbay behind and made his way to his room. The TARDIS, more worried than the soothing song she was projecting into his mind would let on, moved it so he only had to walk a short distance before he was falling into his sheets.

His dreams were filled with golden light, brighter than the yellow-orange of regeneration energy. The light of the TARDIS, he realized, she was comforting him even as he slept.

The Doctor awoke from his post-regeneration sleep feeling decidedly off. It was a combination of the extreme sort of exhaustion that always weighed on him after changing everything about himself and a sort of mental weariness that came from not knowing what the day before him held. Strangely, where before he would have taken that sort of uncertainty as a reason to start the day in a foul mood, now it was almost exciting. Was he an optimist in this body? Oh, that was going to take some getting used to.

Maybe the damage from the neural implosion had healed itself and he would be able to speak with Rose again? He hoped that was the case. English was not a terrifically pleasant language to listen to when you couldn't understand a blessed word of it. In an effort to stay positive, he opened his mouth to say the name of the planet English was spoken on. What issued from his mouth was the Gallifreyan name for the little world. He groaned. The neural implosion was apparently still an issue.

Oh well, he'd better go see if Rose was up yet. They might not be able to talk, but he wanted to make sure she wasn't regretting leaving her home behind (once again) to follow a madman in a blue box into the sky. Honestly, he wasn't even sure how they'd ended up here except that after being teleported off the Sycorax ship Rose had hugged her mom and Ricky and shoved him into the box before pointing at the controls and into the air.

"Roose!" he called as he entered the control room, "Roooose!" It wasn't really her name, but the Gallifreyan word was lovely and he rather liked the way it felt on this new tongue. "Roose!" He drew the vowel out, relishing in the way it sounded.

"Good morning?" He whirled. That was... That was Gallifreyan. Rose sat, curled into a little ball on the jump seat, her hair pulled into a messy bun and dark circles under her eyes.

"Rose!" he cried, "You spoke Gallifreyan! When did you learn to do that? How did you learn to do that? Is the TARDIS working again only in reverse? Why would she do that? I'm the one who normally-"

Rose was shaking her head. She looked very, very lost and it slowly dawned on him that she still couldn't understand a word.

"Good morning," she said again. This time he paid attention to the words. They weren't perfect by any means, slowly dripping from her mouth as if reluctant to leave. But they were words and he could understand them.

"Good morning," he said back. She beamed.

"How did you learn that?" he pointed to his mouth and raised his eyebrows as he spoke, hoping to convey the meaning.

She unfolded herself from the jumpseat and held up the monitor that normal sat in the housing above the console. He peered at it.

"Oh!" He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. "Rose you clever girl!" On the monitor was the word 'good morning'. Rose reached out and tapped the screen. The TARDIS played a recording of the word and Rose parroted it back. Her pronunciation was better this time. He tightened his arm around her shoulders.

"How long did that take you to learn?" he asked. She stared. Right. Oh this was going to be so annoying. He pointed at her and then mimed sleeping. She shook her head and pointed at the screen. Right. All night then. It made sense. As one might expect, Gallifreyan was a language not only of physical space, but also of time. The words shifted in response to their environment; the way one said 'good morning' was very different depending on where in the universe one was located both physically and in the timeline. So, as they drifted through the vortex, the greeting Rose had been trying to learn would have been slowly changing to reflect their changing position. The real question was, how had she gotten it right? No human should be able to figure out the shifting patterns of time based suprasegmental features that accompanied each syllable of the language.

"Good morning," he purposely pronounced the world exactly as she had the first time. It had been correct then, but it was not now. The second syllable needed to be lower in pitch. Rose frowned.

"Good morning," she said. The second syllable was perfect.

"Ha!" He cackled and pulled her into a spinning hug. It was going to take effort, a lot of it in fact, but they would be able to talk again.

He took her hand and started down the hallway. The library on the TARDIS was nowhere close to the Archives back on Gallifrey, but there was a small collection of language books. None on Gallifreyan of course, but they could use one of the more pedagogical texts to devise a course for Rose to follow.

Rose Tyler was going to learn to speak Gallifreyan. It shouldn't make him as proud as it did, but it just felt like more proof that she was here to stay. She really wanted to make this work, no matter how strange a situation they found themselves in. Unbidden, the idea that she might want to make more than just their conversations work drifted through his mind. Before, he would have banished the thought. He didn't deserve that sort of happiness, but now. Huh, he really was an optimist because now the only protest he could come up with was that anything like that needed to wait until they could have a real conversation again.

Rose looked up at him from his side. She was exhausted, physically and mentally, but her excitement sparked the air between them, tingling along the edges of his mind. Her hand was hot in his and he did not resist the urge to grip it tighter.

Oh, this was going to be so fun.