Summary: Checking her phone idly as she tried to calm her brain enough to get to sleep, Rose realized it was her birthday.

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"There's two sorts of time," the Doctor had said. "Objective and subjective. One's the year, the time as reckoned by everything around you-- and the other's the time you -experience yourself. Like your age, 'cept going by that definition, no human ever gets older than fifty or so. This here--" He'd shown her the option on her phone menu. "That's your subjective time, as near as anyone but you can reckon it. That's when you'd be if you'd never left home."

Checking it idly as she tried to calm her brain enough to get to sleep, Rose realized it was her birthday.

It took a few seconds for her to get it through her head; when travelling with the Doctor, birthdays were the last thing on your mind (unless you conuted the desire to live long enough to see your next one). They were probably still drifting around that damned planet in the thirty-second century in a galaxy there was no way she could name, and it was her birthday. Her twentieth birthday.

Two decades, she thought. 'Course, the Doctor was right, she couldn't really remember half of it, but-- two decades.

And how many more?

She flopped over on her back, staring at the ceiling. But what does that really matter, out here? It's not like we're gonna have a party... it's not like anyone outside this ship knows. Or cares.

Wonder what it ever meant, really.

But. There wasn't any amount of time-travelling that could make this birthday ever come again.

So what do you do? she wondered, and promptly drifted into sleep.

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"So! Where to?" he asked, as if, should she actually name a precise destination, he could hit it with any degree of accuracy. Ah, men and their illusions.

"Someplace with cake," she said, and grinned.

"Type of cake matter?"

"I dunno-- normal cake. You know, preferably Earth cake."

"Narrows it down. Chocolate, cupcake, pancake, wedding cake...?"

"Given how soon we usually have to start running? Probably cupcake. Least that way there'll be time to eat it."

"We don't get attacked every time we step off the TARDIS!"

Rose stared at him.

"Not statistically, anyway!"

"Cupcakes," she said.

"Right. I know just the place."

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He took her to a small cupcake shop somewhere in a fairly large city (the accents sounded American, but how much did that mean?), that served large, fluffy chocolate cupcakes like a scoop of heaven. Just the right amount of fluffy sugar on top, giving way to warm chocolate cake and delicious, melty bits of chocolate that had her closing her eyes and laughing in sheer delight by the middle of the first bite. And the aliens waited five minutes to invade, just for her.

Hiding in the broom closet, trying not to breathe too loudly, half an hour later, she thought, I've never had a better birthday than this.

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