The TARDIS materializes outside of an empty church, on an abandoned street that looks like a war zone. Then again, the Doctor muses, the Daleks had transported the planet across space and time and then invaded. Why wouldn't it look like a war zone?

"It's like a ghost town," Donna says, her voice hushed as if they were inside the church instead of outside.

"Sarah Jane said that they were taking the people. But what for?" He glances wildly around, as if the overturned cars and scattered rubbish hold the answers. He turns to Donna. "Think, Donna. When you met Rose in that parallel world, what did she say?" He wants to know what the Daleks are up to, but in his hearts he really just wants to know everything Rose said, everything Rose is, and keep the information in some private corner of his mind and hearts.

"Just… the darkness is coming," Donna says apologetically.

"Anything else?" the Doctor asks insistently. Surely Rose would have given more hints – between the two of them she was never the enigmatic one; that was always his role.

And then Donna smiles that almost motherly smile of hers, that smile that says she's just happy that he's happy. "Why don't you ask her yourself?"

He turns, and down the street in the distance he sees Rose Tyler walking toward him, and he can't quite believe it's really her, cannot find it in him to care that she is carrying a monster-sized gun. And then she smiles, wider and happier than he's maybe ever seen, and she starts running, and he starts running and he knows he's never smiled like this in all of his lives with any of his faces.

He doesn't see the cars and rubbish bins he skirts around as he runs for her, and he never notices the Dalek in the shadows. He doesn't hear it call out "Exterminate!" and he doesn't notice when Captain Jack Harkness appears out of nowhere and shoots the Dalek with a gun just as large as Rose's before it can get a shot at the Doctor. All he notices is Rose, running toward him.

And then he's too busy hugging Rose to notice anything. The universe could collapse around them at any minute but all he can do is spin her around joyously and press his lips to hers for the first time in what feels like a thousand years.

The kiss breaks and he's still smiling, and so is she, and all he can say is her name. "Rose."

"Hi," she says, and he hears a million other things in the single syllable.

"Long time no see," he returns, suppressed laughter in his voice.

"Been busy, you know," she says blithely.

Then she kisses him again and they don't stop until Jack taps them on the shoulder. "Not that I'm not enjoying this – and seriously, you two, I hope when this is all over there's room for one more – but don't we have a couple universes to save?"

They laugh, and the Doctor and Rose hold hands as they run back to the TARDIS to save the universe once again.