She was hanging around the console room hesitantly, still dressed in her finery from the nineteenth century. Her hair was tumbling out of the clip and hanging across her shoulders. She was beginning to look more like twenty-first century Rose minute by minute.

"Right, where now?" He was useless at making conversation; much better to be the action man, that was the character he knew best. He busied himself fiddling with controls, pretending to be doing something very important so that he could avoid analysing what had happened today. When she didn't reply, he looked up. "Rose?"

She shook her head distractedly. "Wherever. I don't care."

"I'm offering you all of history, all of the universe, and you don't care?" he was incredulous.

"No, I don't mean that!" Rose pulled a face. "I meant… it doesn't matter, it…" She shook her head again, more tendrils of hair falling down her neck. She ran a finger along the control panel, as though she were checking for dust.

He smiled in spite of himself. "You don't exactly look the part."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"With your dust test. Not exactly housekeeper material are you?" he gestured to her outfit.

"Well maids don't get much help from you do they?" She surprised them both with the venom in her voice. She dropped her eyes to the floor and stepped away awkwardly. "Sorry," she mumbled.

There was a long pause.

"No you're not," he said finally, leaning against the control panel and folding his arms. "So don't pretend you are." He looked down at his feet and rubbed his shoes together. "I probably deserved that anyway. But you need to stop letting it get to you so much."

Rose looked at him disbelievingly. "What do you mean? Stop letting what get to me?"

"This, all of this." He waved his arms around vaguely. "Rose, if you're going to stay with me, stuff like this is going to happen. We're going to see people die and not be able to save them-" He wasn't able to finish his sentence as she cut him off.

"But you could have saved her!" she exclaimed. "You could have stopped it all from happening, you could have…" Some of the fight in her seemed to die out. "You could have," she concluded softly.

There was so much she didn't understand still, he realised suddenly. So much that she had to learn about everything. Not just all of this, all this time-travelling, this planet hopping. She still had a lot to learn about life, normal life. She was so young. So young and perfect. She hadn't had anything bad happen to her yet, nothing to spoil her innocence. And here he was, taking her places, showing her things she wasn't ready for yet. He'd forgotten she was just a human.

"I couldn't." He matched her soft tone, wanting to reach out and take her hand but not quite daring to. "Rose, I couldn't. It's complicated, it's…"

"You said you helped people," Rose said.

"I do!"

"But not her? Why not her?" Rose demanded. "What was so bad about her? Why couldn't you save her?"

"There was nothing bad about her!" He stood up and walked across the room, needing to get some distance away from her. He was getting so irritable in his old age, he really should learn to relax a bit more. But she… she was so irritating sometimes, demanding explanations, and persisting and never giving in… He smiled to himself wryly. That was why he'd wanted her here. He couldn't go complaining now.

"Then why?" she asked.

The eternal question. Why did some people die and others didn't? Even he couldn't answer that. And he knew that it didn't make sense. If he could save some people, then why couldn't he save them all?

He turned back to face her, trying to find a simple way of explaining the unexplainable. "It's like I said before… everything has to come to an end. I can't keep jumping in and saving people if it's their time to go."

"She was barely older than me, though. How could it have been her time to go?"

"It happens. People die young all the time." He knew he was being flippant about it, but he couldn't see any other way to be. If he let all of this pile in upon him too often, then he might as well give up. Feeling for every person that died… that would kill him.

"But she didn't have to, she didn't have to let them through," Rose reminded him. "That was you, you wanted to save them."

"So did she."

"She was just a girl, though, just some poor housemaid. You're a Time Lord. You should have known better."

He caught her eyes with his own. "We all make mistakes."

There wasn't much she could say to that.

There was a long silence in the control room. They both avoided looking at each other for a time. Then he finally broke it.

"So. Where to now?" He moved back to the control panel and flicked a few more switches.

Rose's voice wobbled slightly when she spoke. "Home."

His head jerked up and he felt a slight moment of panic. "Home? You mean you want to…"

"I want to go home." Her face suddenly cracked into a broad grin. "Only to get some more stuff. And to check on Mum."

"And Ricky."

"His name's Mickey." Rose rolled her eyes.

"At least I remembered him at all," he said, giving her a pointed look.

"Oh shut up!" She slapped him on the arm. "Right, I'm going to go and get changed. Don't go having any fun without me!"

As she walked away he shook his head. He wouldn't. He wasn't sure he could anymore anyway.