It wasn't until they had left Rinos Five that the Doctor realized Leba had slipped an ectitrope into his drink.

He couldn't blame him really. He ought to be flattered that Leba, one of the few truly ancient bartenders, recognized him as a Time Lord and thought to give him one. They were a common additive in the past. Everyone tried two…once. Only once.

He was sitting back, contemplating the next big adventure and wondering if Rose didn't need a bit of a rest. Perhaps Rados Eleven? She might like how the birds looked like a fish and the fish looked like birds. Bit nippy that air though, and the flowers bit. Perhaps that little spa in the rings of Uda? Didn't they claim to have the best foot soaks in the quadrant? Best tentacle massage as well but he'd always found that a bit dodgy.

He stretched his arms back and rested his head on his hands and it struck him. He felt so warm and comfortable. Odd for temperature to register on his radar.

Then he stopped, kept still and listened. Sure enough, the sound of water running. Rose was having a shower.

That's when it came to him about the ectitrope. A telepathic enhancer. It only lasted a few hours usually. Not a huge difference among a race of telepaths but a bit like alcohol on the inhibitions, a bit like cramming everyone a bit closer in the car.

He stretched out his senses to see if his guess was right and felt an onslaught of affection from the TARDIS. It had been a very long while since he had stretched out his telepathy. There hadn't been a reason too with all his people….well anyway he'd rather neglected paying any telepathic attention to the TARDIS. She was overjoyed to hear from him and momentarily blotted out Rose with the equivalent of an emotional bear hug, followed by something like chastisement, then concern for him. And last, how much she approved of Rose.

This only turned his thoughts back to Rose who had clearly left the shower and now had a chill. He looked down at his hands, rolled back a sleeve, astonished to find goosebumps there in reaction.

Surely he could still handle his ectitropes? That would just be too humiliating to find after all this time he had lost his tolerance.

He decided then that he could in fact handle them just fine and would not mention it to Rose. It would only be a few hours and so far it seemed only to be sensation.

A moment passed while he saturated himself with denial then in a blustered voice to the TARDIS, "Oh honestly! Turn up the heat in there! She's freezing!"

The TARDIS obeyed but he had the distinct impression he was being laughed at.

He tried to fill his head with math equations and old songs and thoughts about upgrades to the TARDIS circuitry to drown out Rose as she became more and more pronounced but he couldn't help it. The surprising thing was, she was happy. She was perfectly content. She felt like she was exactly where she ought to be. Cozy and settled as a child is at home before they really see the world. How was that possible?

He looked around the TARDIS and saw the past, dark and coloured by bittersweet memories. He saw himself, old and peppered with regrets he could not escape when he could see every possibility at all times. He felt the desperate push forward, keep going, never stop. He felt the danger inherent in every journey.

Rose looked around this ship and saw the best moments of her life. She let the memories of each thrill wash over her, blotting out any worries she might have about the future and filling her instead with a rich awareness of being alive. And she credited it all to him.

Him.

He swallowed as she finished getting dressed, brushed out her hair. She liked that, the feeling of having her hair touched. He remembered absently fiddling with it one night when they were out. She'd gone so quiet. Now he realized pleasure had stilled her.

Then she was back to that buzzing field of affection that was all for him. He, the captain, sailing her across the stars to things undreamt of, choosing her and unexpectedly becoming kin. That contagious joie de vivre had gradually grown in warmth until it was a bond of very sweet understanding, an agreement to hold hands through every leap and share each feeling as they landed.

She was coming towards him now and he reached into the TARDIS to hide away. He had definitely lost his tolerance. He must not get close to Rose Tyler. He must put up the biggest, thickest wall in the universe until that bloody drink wore off.

The TARDIS turned traitor however (that affection for Rose much more far reaching than he had previously realized – did she talk to the TARDIS? Why was she now the favorite?) and abandoned him to the growing awareness cutting into this thoughts like a touch.

And then he saw everything and learned he had been wrong. So very wrong.

He was a Time Lord, he saw every possibility in every moment, ever changing, reacting, shaped by equations and circumstances and choices and all pivoting around fixed points whose meanings might never be truly divined. No human could fathom such workings, surely.

But Rose, in the silence of her mind, spun out every possibility for him. She thought them all in an instant and he was good and truly blinded by it. And without telepathy crowding in to shape it or change its rendering as she decided whether or not to be ashamed of it, her thoughts spun out shaped only by her own fears, desires and expectations. She created each path from affection and fueled it with all the happiness she felt just being here, with him.

What if they stayed together always? What if the Doctor somehow became human? What if she somehow managed to live hundreds of years? What if they got stuck somewhere forever? What if he stayed on Earth? What if they had lived in the past? What if they'd been born in the future? What if they'd met another way? What if they each gave the other exactly what they wanted somehow?

The closer she came the more of them he could feel. It was his own fault really. He put her in a ship where everytime the door opened anything could happen on the other side. He'd made it easy for her to dream and she in turn, made her dream-keeper the subject of her dreams.

She appeared in the doorway, oblivious and the sight of him sped it all up, hundreds of possibilities lighting up like stars. He saw himself younger, older, holding his children, sleeping peacefully, rushing joyfully towards a shoreline, laughing recklessly the way she knew meant he had forgotten everything for just a moment. He saw a thousand lives they might have together and begged the TARDIS for mercy because he would never forget a single one of them.

She stopped short a few feet from him, at the sight of his face and all her thoughts shifted instantly. Worry slammed into him, foreign and strange. A race of telepaths rarely worried for they could easily and instantly discern what was wrong. God, he hadn't heard anyone's thoughts like this in so long. It reminded him of his family, ages and ages ago now. It hurt until it was pleasure and pleasured until it was pain.

"Doctor? What's the matter?"

His eyes had filled up with tears and a hundred possibilities crowded her mind. Was he ill? What should she do if he was?

He felt her reach out to the TARDIS and his earlier suspicions were confirmed.

She had her hands at his face now and her voice sounded like it was coming from faraway though she must be shouting.

"Doctor? Doctor! Tell me what's wrong!"

So much fear in her voice, in her mind, every sense tight with it, every muscle ready to fight for him, or fly for him or, his mind balked, lay down her life for him. She wouldn't spare a thought. She would hand it over, forfeit. She loved him. She loved him like he belonged to her and after all her thousand imaginings he really thought he did.

That was his last thought before he blacked out.

When he woke he was laying comfortably in a bed. It was hers and she was sitting over him. How had she managed to get him here? She still felt anxious but the TARDIS must have calmed her. He must have been out for at least two hours because her thoughts aren't so loud, but he's still feeling fuzzy and he can't calculate his blackout to the second. She is very gently stroking his hair and face and he feels that it is as much a pleasure for her as for him.

He murmurs pleasantly and feels the thrill run through her at the idea of his enjoying it. Dangerous that. Now he remembers why no one ever took two ectitropes.

He opens his eyes, yawns and feels her smile coming. Waves of relief, affection and look-after-him-ness radiate out and over him and he smiles back.

"How do you feel?" she asks gently and for just a moment he is surprised and sad that she isn't sharing his thoughts too. Then he berates himself for such a selfish, careless thought. Yes, reading his thoughts! That wouldn't be damaging at all.

"Bit better," he fibbed, "Bit of a headache still though."

She knows he's lying but is just flattered enough to keep giving him those delicious rubs. He settles back with a sigh and his eyes drift closed.

He's not sure if he sleeps but when he opens his eyes the last of it is wearing off. There is only how comfortable she's feeling and how the TARDIS really seems to be keeping the place a decent temperature today. A lazy, wayward wondering about their next destination. Then an indulgent pride at how relaxed he looks and how fantastic she is at rubbing his hair. His smile gives him away and she is chiding, "Awake for how long now you greedy cheater?"

He opens his eyes, makes his best irresistible face and feels her melt. Ha! He knew that worked! He is feeling very well cared for and still riding the echoes of his revelation on her perception of the possibilities inherent in their time together so he sprouts a big grin and says affectionately, "Rose?"

"Yes?"

"I haven't told you enough lately. You're absolutely fantastic."

She flashes him the one-hundred watt smile, his favorite and retorts, "Thanks! I know it."

But behind it, just before he loses all the extra telepathy, is an I love you. It's the last thing he hears in the last place he expects it. She was being cheeky! She was teasing him! And there it had been.

He is left to wonder how many others have been and will be hidden where he does not expect to find them.