Rose and the Doctor were going to have words when this was all over.

"'Village dances aren't the place for housemaids'," she mimicked under her breath, angrily scrubbing at the floor harder than usual with her wire brush. "I'll show him."

As if she was going to spend the night working while he went off waltzing with some poor woman whose heart he was going to break in a month or so. Someone had to keep an eye on him. Joan Redfern aside, even, she hadn't liked the look of that green light in the sky the other night. If the Family were nearby ...

Well, no uptight school teacher was going to tell her that she couldn't stay close to the Doctor so that she could protect him.

The amount of work she'd been given to accomplish by the end of the day would usually last her well into the evening, long after the dance would already have commenced. Certainly, that wouldn't leave enough time for the average woman to get ready. No matter how much she wanted to go (now more so to show John Smith up than because she'd actually been excited about the whole dancing thing until she talked to him), she was not going to show up as the help. She'd had enough of that.

Good thing she had the TARDIS, then.

She'd travelled with the Doctor initially to get away from a life of struggling through lower-class jobs and people looking down on her because of her background. Now here she was getting it worse than ever. One night's break at a dance wasn't too much to ask.

So she worked harder than ever at her chores so that she'd be finished in time, and tried to visualise the area of the TARDIS wardrobe room in which she was sure she'd find the perfect dress.

She finished up even earlier than she'd hoped (she was certain those two boys who'd tried to trek mud across the newly-clean floor legitimately feared for their lives after the truly frightening glare she'd sent their way). She half-skipped half-ran through the fading light down the country lane that would lead her to the TARDIS.

She felt a bit like Cinderella, except that no fairy godmother could hold a candle to the TARDIS when it came to providing clothing and transport to impress. The TARDIS, after all, wouldn't turn into a pumpkin at midnight. Not unless the chameleon circuit magically fixed itself and decided that a pumpkin was a particularly good disguise for fitting in during 1913, at least.

Having found a dress that would knock John Smith's socks all the way across the Channel, Rose scattered shoes impatiently across the wardrobe room floor.

"How is it that he had shoes that fit in perfectly on Raxicoricofallapatorius before he'd ever set foot there, but the Doctor can't keep somethin' that'd be suitable for England in 1913?" Rose complained.

The TARDIS hummed softly in sympathy. A pair of shoes – not as perfect as the dress, but they'd do – were fired across the room to land at her feet as if from a precision cannon.

"Thanks girl," Rose said, rubbing a hand against the curling staircase banister.

If the Doctor had any idea how much Rose and the TARDIS had bonded since her contact with her Mum had been cut off by the now-closed walls of that parallel world, he'd probably decide to run for cover. Living with two females who were more than willing to gang up on him ... well, after what he'd put them through these last two months, with another month still to go, he'd better start running.

Rose had swept her hair up into something vaguely resembling a style of the time, she hoped. She frowned a little at it, still getting used to the fact that it was brown. She didn't have much occasion to look at herself in a mirror outside living as a servant, so the look was still very new to her. She'd had to dye it; three months regrowth in any time period was bad enough, but in 1913 when she was pretty sure that not even prostitutes frequently altered their hair with peroxide, it seemed an especially bad idea. Luckily, she'd had some time on her hands to get the lay of the land before the Doctor had recover enough from his ordeal with the Chameleon Arch to regain consciousness. She'd figured out approximately where and when they were and set about collecting clothes from the wardrobe room for the two of them and even home-dying her hair in her bathroom sink. Though why the Doctor had conveniently stored brown hair dye that was still well within its (relative) best-before date was a something that Rose wasn't sure she'd ever quite understand.

With her hair as acceptable as it could be, Rose ran her hands down the dress to smooth the material and surveyed herself in the mirror.

She couldn't wear any jewellery; the clothing would raise enough eyebrows as it was, but adding something as obviously valuable as gold or precious stones on top would certain spark accusations of theft. She was, after all, supposed to be only a lowly and very poor maid.

Her hands were absolutely ruined from the last few hours spent scrubbing the floor, building on weeks and weeks of using them for various types of cleaning and labour. My kingdom for a manicure, Rose thought, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Yet, when she looked past those things and grinned into the mirror, she felt a sense of déjà vu. The first time she'd set foot in the wardrobe room she'd dressed up in a way that wasn't entirely perfect for the time period. She'd looked a little too flashy, and showed a little too much skin, and all around chosen an outfit designed to attract too much (and maybe the wrong sort of) attention. Nevertheless, she'd emerged to have the Doctor call her beautiful, even if he'd then felt the need to qualify it because he'd been that sort of man when she'd met him.

She doubted that John Smith would ever admit that she looked beautiful in the first place, as he was even more reserved that way than Rose's first Doctor. However, Rose thought that he'd be thinking it against his will, and that was good enough for her.

Time to show him just how much a dance could be a place for a maid, then.

Rose couldn't stop grinning as she passed through the crowd without anyone stopping her, though it certainly wasn't because they hadn't noticed her. Apparently the makeover was extreme enough that no one recognised her, at least at first, as Rose Tyler, the lowly maid. She got a glad eye or two from some young men and made a note that males were just the same whether they were from 1913 or 2007. Give a girl a dress, some heels and a bit of make-up and watch them swarm.

She locked eyes with John Smith, who had Matron Redfern on his arm, seemingly ready to lead her out to dance. Except that he wasn't presently leading her anywhere, because he'd stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth formed Rose's name and he seemed unsure whether to frown or just look stunned.

He did eventually settle on a frown as he changed directions and escorted (or pulled, really) Matron Redfern along to intercept Rose.

"What are you doing here dressed like that?" John Smith hissed. "You'll make a fool of yourself if anyone notices."

"Too late. I think they've already noticed me, actually," Rose said flippantly.

John scowled. "Is that why you were so insistent on coming? So you could draw the men's attention, acting like some ... some tart."

Rose thought she'd be more likely to draw precisely the wrong sort of attention if she slapped him, but boy was she tempted nonetheless.

"I'm not acting like anything. I'm just standin' here," she replied, gritting her teeth. "I'm hardly throwing myself at people I barely know." She resisted the urge to look pointedly at Joan, because that would be childish and, Rose admitted, unfair on her. It wasn't Joan Redfern's fault that she'd fallen for a man who didn't remember he had a prior commitment.

Commitment to the universe, that was, Rose corrected herself. Not to someone else. Not that way.

Oh, who was she kidding, really? It wasn't as if they weren't all but a couple anyway. He certainly got jealous enough of her. She figured she must be entitled to give him a little of his own back on that count.

"The way you're dressed ..." John said, waving a hand at her outfit as if it should speak for itself.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked tersely. "I think I fit in nicely."

"But it's hardly appropriate for a woman of your station. Did you steal it? I'm responsible for you still, even if you are working at the school now, and I can't have you stealing."

"Who would I have stolen from?" Rose asked. "Matron Redfern is the only woman working at the school bar the servants. Is this your dress, Matron?"

"Oh, no. No, I don't own anything like that," Joan said. Rose felt yet more pity for her then, seeing how flustered she was. It was clear she wanted to be anywhere but there at that moment, witnessing what must have looked like a lover's quarrel between her date for the evening and a woman that Joan would have considered far below John's station in life.

"And I'm sure you'd find, if you asked 'round, that none of the ladies from the village are missin' dresses, let alone one that looks like this," Rose continued. "So if you're done throwin' accusations about, I think I'm gonna go dance. That's what I'm here for, after all."

Well, it was part of what she was there for, but she was hardly going to mention the rest to those two, was she?

"She's very forward for a maid, isn't she?" Joan asked as Rose turned her back on them and swept away. "Didn't your family ever try to teach her about her place in society?"

Rose might have turned back to give an answer to that, but it was probably just as well that one of the men who had been watching her earlier quickly offered his hand for a dance. He swept her away from John and Joan, and Rose tried very hard to concentrate on her new partner rather than the man whose eyes she still thought she could feel glaring at her back.

It would have been easier if she could stop thinking about how wrong the hand leading her through the dance felt against her palm.

Rose certainly couldn't ignore John Smith easily when he danced, with Joan, past her field of vision. Her partner chattered on heedless, but Rose had long since tuned out the sound of him.

John Smith wasn't the best dancer in the room, nor was he the best-dressed man around. It was debateable whether he was the most handsome; she thought so, but she might be a little biased on that topic. Still, even though he didn't have quite the presence of the Doctor, there was something about John dancing that commanded her attention, as if this whole occasion had been put together in his honour, and now he was finally stepping into his realm.

He steered Joan right into another couple, bumping them lightly, and Rose mentally retracted that thought. He wasn't exactly the prince of the dance floor, then, was he?

Any further opportunity to gather hilarious memories to use against the Doctor when he finally returned to himself was foiled by the electronic sound of alien gunfire. She'd recognise that sort of sound anywhere, even if she was the only person in the room who could.

She broke away from her dance partner (shame, she'd never even caught the poor guy's name) and ducked through panicked couples to close the gap between herself and John without drawing attention to what she was doing. If the Family didn't know what – or who – they were looking for, she was hardly about to help them out.

Of course, Rose's luck had never been that good. They called out for 'Mr Smith', and Rose wasn't naive enough to think they just wanted to exchange dancing techniques with him.

Rose grabbed his hand and pulled him, and inadvertently Joan as well (since she was still linked at the elbow with John) in the direction of the door.

"Don't make a fuss," she pleaded. "I don't think they've seen you yet. We've got to get you out of here before they do."

They got out the door safely. Rose noted that the man who'd held out a collection tin to her earlier was conspicuously missing. That was several deaths already racked up by these aliens. God, she'd told the Doctor this was a bad plan.

"Those people killed Miss Landry, the butcher's daughter," John said, sounding mystified. "And they were looking for me."

"Yes," Rose confirmed. "And they would've killed you as well. I'm sorry, but I can't let them get near you. You're too important."

"I'm no one of great consequence," John refuted. "I'm just a teacher. What could they possibly want with me?"

Rose sighed. "Mr Smith, sometimes there's nothin' more important in the entire world than an ordinary man. You taught me that. Or rather, the Doctor did."

John looked confused for a moment. Then his expression resolved into the sort of condescending but kind look one might give a mentally-disturbed but ultimately harmless person. "Oh, I think I understand your behaviour now. Rose, I'm so sorry to have filled your head with confusing stories. I can see how that might have been mixed in with reality for you. But the Doctor isn't real. He's someone I made up. And you aren't his companion, able to flit around galaxies doing as you like. You're a maid."

Rose laughed sharply . "Yeah, well, sometimes the maid can do as she likes as well. Alien invasions pretty much strike me as one of those times. And right now, the Doctor's just a story, yeah. Right now he's locked away. If you don't hand over your fob watch right now, maybe he'll never be real again, even. But I'm not gonna let that happen."

"DOCTOR!" a booming voice called out from the hall where the dance had been being held. Rose pulled harder at John's hand to speed him up, but he suddenly dug his heels in and all three of them ground to a halt.

"COME OUT, DOCTOR! WE KNOW YOU'RE HERE! COME TO US, OR WE'LL HAVE TO START KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE!"

"Does the village even have a doctor?" John asked Joan, firmly ignoring Rose. "We have to seek him out, if so. We can't just leave those people to be hurt if there's something to be done about it.

"Damn it," Rose said. "They're not after some medical doctor. They want the Doctor. 900 year old alien with a box that travels through time and space. You've dreamed about him, Mr Smith. You know how good he is, the things he can do. That's why we need him back now. Please give me the fob watch."

"I don't even own a fob watch!" John said. "Rose, enough. Stop playing this little game now. I have to go back to the hall and help. All those people –"

"Will be dead unless we get the Doctor back," Rose cut him off.

"The Doctor isn't real!"

"Tell them that!" Rose responded. "They're callin' for him, can't you hear? The Doctor isn't here right now, but that doesn't mean he's not real. He's more real than you are, or than I am, maybe. Sometimes I think he's the only constant in a completely insane universe. Then he goes and changes his face and makes me question that sort of thing, but still –"

"You really are completely mad," the Doctor gaped. He looked strangely fascinated with her. "Barging in on Matron Redfern and myself in my private room without so much as knocking earlier, dressing up like that, and now making up these outrageous stories. You've lost your senses, haven't you? We need to get you help."

"I'm fine. Not mad at all, I swear," Rose said. "The Doctor's sanity when he decided to turn himself into a useless human man when we had aliens on our tail seems more and more questionable by the minute. My sanity, on the other hand, is in tip-top shape. Not even a little bit doubtful. Except that I'm starting to ramble a little like he does, so maybe it is a little off after all. Two months stuck in 1913 will do that to a girl."

Joan said, "We should take her to the school. Maybe if she sleeps it off in the infirmary, she might wake up feeling better in the morning."

"Yeah, all right," Rose said. "The school. Let's go there." If John wasn't even aware of the watch, then she imagined it was still sitting on the mantle where she'd seen it last time she'd tidied his room. They wanted to go to the school? Fine by her. It'd be easier to get them to move already if they thought it was their idea.

Of course, trying to direct them to John's room instead of the infirmary once they arrived at the school was a different matter.

"I just need to find the fob watch," she said.

"There is no fob watch. Rose, it's all in your mind."

"The fob watch is designed so you'll pay no notice to it, but it's there. You've seen it. You've just forgotten."

"Now Rose," John said, sounding eminently reasonable. That tone just served to make her sort of bristle. "We'll take you someplace quiet so you can rest. Please don't struggle. It's for your own good."

"All right, really, stop talkin' to me like that. I understand just fine what's goin' on. Better than you right now, actually. In fact, let me tell you what's happenin' back at that hall in the village, eh?" Rose said. "There's a bunch of beings from another world probably killin' people you know and like because you're wastin' time. Now if I'm really crazy, like you think, then it's not gonna make any difference whether you lock me up now, or give me a few minutes to prove whether I'm tellin' the truth. With a whole heap of lives on the line, don't you think it might be a good idea to give me the benefit of the doubt?"

Joan made a noise as if starting a sentence, and then lapsed into silence again for a moment, a thoughtful expression on her face. Then she said, "You know, John, you do have a fob watch. I've seen it."

"I don't," John insisted, but he didn't sound quite as sure with the apparently much-more-believable Matron Redfern suddenly backing part of Rose's story.

"Please," Rose begged. "Just let me show you."

Exasperated but clearly beaten with the two women suddenly teaming up, John let himself be led.

Rose hated to take the choice out of John's hands, especially without letting him know that there was a choice to be made, but they were in a bit of a hurry now. If she could only get to the watch, she could open it without John ever having to know exactly what it was, and what it would do to him. Then the Doctor would be back, and together they could ride off and face the aliens. Rose didn't want to be responsible for any more bloodshed if she could possibly help it, and this was the only way she could see to prevent that.

That plan, however, relied on her being able to find the watch.

"It was here," she said, pointing to the empty spot at the centre of the mantle.

"You see?" John said. "It's in your mind."

"I thought it was there as well," Joan said. "Is it possible you moved it?"

"I've never seen a fob watch there before. How could I have moved it?" John asked. "Now, we've proved that this watch doesn't exist, not that I can see what it would matter if it did. I need to go alert the Headmaster that something is wrong in the village. We can't afford for those people, whoever they were, to come to the school next and catch everyone unawares. Think of the children."

"And what will you do if they do come?" Rose asked.

"Fight," John said simply. "We have an army within these walls."

Rose gaped. He wasn't the Doctor, no, but Rose had thought that more of the Doctor's morals would certainly have translated into John's template. Apparently not.

"You can't have a bunch of schoolboys fightin' for their lives. It's horrific!" she argued.

"This school teaches us to stand together," John insisted.

"I won't let you," Rose said.

"I'll lock you inside the room if I have to, Rose, but one way or another I will find the Headmaster and alert him of the potential threat now."

Rose slapped John. "Snap out of it! I know that you're a good man, even if you're just a human. You can't send children into war!"

John spluttered. "That's it, Rose, no more. I'm sorry if you're going through some sort of mental illness, but I'll not stand for this behaviour. You can pack your things and leave the school tonight."

Rose laughed almost hysterically. "God, you're such a human, aren't you? Hang the job. It's rubbish anyway. Honestly, working as the help again. I'm going to take the psychic paper off you for good next time I see it, and from then on we'll be royalty everywhere we go. Pauper to princess, that'd make a nice change."

Joan frowned at her suspiciously. "You really are just making things up, aren't you?"

Rose shook her head. "I know you don't understand, but maybe soon you'll at least start to. As soon as we find that watch. I know it has to be around here somewhere."

"What good is a watch going to do when there are enemies attacking?" Joan asked. "You said it yourself. People might be dying in the village."

"Look, all right, it looks like a watch, but it's not a watch. It's a container. And inside it, there's the mind of a man called the Doctor."

"This is the man you dream about?" Joan asked John.

"Exactly," Rose said. "Except they're not dreams. They're memories bleedin' through. You've seen me in them, haven't you?"

"There was that picture in your journal," Joan backed her up. Of course, 'backed her up' might have been an overstatement, as it didn't sound as if Joan was quite on her side about that one. It seemed like it was Matron Redfern's turn to be a little jealous of her, this time. That felt good, even though she had no real bad feelings towards Joan.

John, on the other hand ...

"I see you every day," John explained slowly, as if Rose was being particularly simple. "Of course I would incorporate you into my dreams."

"Have you seen Matron Redfern in them, then?" Rose asked. "You see her every day as well, and not just movin' 'round in the background cleanin' like you do with me."

Joan appeared to know the answer as well as Rose did, because she coloured a little, and not so much in a good way.

I'm sorry, Rose thought. It couldn't be a good feeling to be told that the man you were in love with had strange and wonderful dreams about his young maid, but never gave you a single thought as he slept.

"Well ... well, no, but that's ..." John stammered. He looked entreatingly at Joan. "That means nothing," he said a bit more firmly.

He really did love Joan, Rose realised, and he cared what she thought of him. Damn the Doctor for not preparing her to deal with this sort of thing.

"It means everythin'," Rose said, hating to have to be the one to say it. "It means that you remember havin' me in your life before you became John Smith. It means the life you remember from before comin' to this school is a lie."

"I was born John Smith, Rose, you know that. This is ridiculous."

"You weren't. You weren't even human until a few months back. You and me, we flew around savin' universes in a blue box. You've seen it in your dreams, I know. It's called the TARDIS."

There was silence for a moment.

"I never wrote that name down," John breathed, stunned.

"No, but somehow I still know it, don't I? You can't deny that," Rose said. "The TARDIS is real. It's sittin' about a mile away, tucked out of sight in a shed. I could take you to see it, if you liked, if we could just find that watch first."

"Rose?" a small voice from behind her called.

Rose turned around to see one of the young students at the school hovering in the doorway.

"Timothy Latimer," John said, sounding surprised. Then he frowned. "How long have you been there?"

"I'm sorry I was listening ..." Tim began.

"Students are not allowed out at this hour," John said sternly. "And you shouldn't be listening in on a teacher's private conversations at any time of day or night, for that matter."

"Oh, no, never that," Rose muttered under her breath. "But sending them out to fight aliens, that's just fine. Can't think of a better idea, myself."

"I'm sorry, sir," Tim said. "Only, it's important. I went looking for you at that dance and I saw what happened. I came to give you this back. It sounds like you need it."

Timothy held out a silver fob watch. Rose felt herself smiling for the first time since she'd first arrived at the dance earlier that evening.

She could practically kiss this boy. Maybe if he'd been a little older.

Instead, she pulled him into a brief and obviously unexpected hug. "Tim, I think you might have just saved the day," she said. She took the watch into her hand and waved it at the Doctor. "See!" she crowed triumphantly. "Fob watch. Just like I said."

John snatched it out of her hand to get a closer look.

"Hey," Rose protested. "Give that back." She couldn't afford for him to keep possession of the watch, because it was becoming clear that he'd never open it himself. Rose needed to get her hands on it again long enough to do it herself. However, he was apparently very good at keeping the thing out of her reach.

"Are you in on this as well, Tim?" John asked incredulously. "Has the whole school, and the village too, gone completely mad?"

"I'm not mad, sir, and nor is Rose. There are these thoughts inside that watch," Tim said. "I can feel them, sometimes even see them. The watch called out to me. That's why I took it. I'm sorry. But all those things are part of the memories of this magnificent and terrifying man. A man who looks exactly like you, sir."

"He is you," Rose added. "I'm sorry, Mr Smith, but until two months ago you were just a small part of a much larger mind. The Doctor's mind. That wonderful man you dreamed about is real, like I said, and he's you. He was hidin' away from those people in the village, and he had to become human. So he created you from himself."

"This is mad," John breathed. "It's just a watch."

"Open it and then tell me that," Rose pressed.

"What happens if I open it?"

"The Doctor comes back."

John shook his head in denial. "Not that I believe any of this. Of course I don't. It's lunacy. But even if I did, you said that I'm the Doctor. So if the Doctor comes back, what happens to me?"

"You go back to bein' part of him," Rose said, trying to gentle the blow a little. She didn't want to come right out and tell him that he was nothing but a fairytale.

A loud boom just barely preceded the aftershock that slightly shook the floor beneath their feet.

"What was that?" Joan asked.

"I think they're attackin' the village for real now," Rose said. "They probably think you're still there somewhere, and they're tryin' to smoke you out. We need the Doctor. He's the only one that can stop them."

"But if I'm part of the Doctor, why don't I remember being him?"

Rose sighed. They just didn't have time for this. "You're the man he wants to be, I think. Just a normal human."

"You make him sound so perfect, though," John protested. "Why would a man like that, some exciting prince who rides in on a white horse to rescue beautiful women" – oh, thanks, Rose thought, bring up Reinette why don't you – "want to be me?"

"You get to be just an ordinary man," Rose said. "The Doctor is so much more, and so he can never have that life."

John looked at Joan. "Then he can never fall in love and have a life with someone? What sort of existence is that?"

Rose literally banged her head back against the wall above the fireplace, gritting her teeth. Then she made a decision. They didn't have time to ease John into this. She had to go for shock value instead.

So she stepped forward, grabbed him by his tweed coat and kissed him.

It wasn't half as good as the last kiss they'd shared – much as he'd told her that he needed to perform a genetic transfer, there was no way he hadn't enjoyed that kiss on the moon as much as she had. Still, he was physically the Doctor even if he wasn't quite there mentally, so the attraction was still there. And John, as much as he'd been prudish earlier and would never admit that he found her attractive, wasn't exactly stone-lipped. His lips caressed hers just a little, tentatively, as if he was well aware that in doing so he was digging a hole for himself, but he couldn't quite stop himself nonetheless. His hands grasped at her for a moment before he yanked them away as if they'd been burned by the intimate contact.

She broke away from his lips and, while he was still stunned, reached for the watch. Unfortunately, the first hand she tried was empty, and he quickly caught onto her game. He tried to wrench himself away from her, but Rose caught that empty hand in hers.

She turned to Joan for a moment, who looked shocked and not just a little angry that some upstart little maid had just kissed the man she thought she had a claim on. "I'm sorry for that, really. And for what I'm about to say as well. I wish things could be different for you. But they can't."

Then she turned her whole attention back to John.

"The Doctor will probably never tell me he loves me, because he's a bit of an idiot – and a lot of a bloke – that way. But it doesn't matter, because I figured out a while ago that he actually does. He's not that good at lying. And I love him back, even when he's acting oblivious. Maybe even especially then. So no, he's not incapable of loving someone. He loves the whole damn universe. And he loves me. He just doesn't show it the way he wishes he could. But this," she indicated their joined hands. "This he does all the time. He grabs onto my hand and doesn't let go, and that says he loves me better than three little human words ever could. And he can have a life with me even if it's not marriage and children and stuff, because I promised him forever and that's what he's going to get."

"But you're a servant girl," John protested.

"No I'm not. Not really. And never to him," Rose shot back. "Even when I was just working in a shop, he saw me as so much more. That made me want to be more. And now I'm fantastic, thank you very much, even if you don't see it."

"I can't ..." John started, and looked down at the watch as another loud boom shook the whole village and surroundings. "I'm not ... I'm sorry, but I'm not this Doctor. He doesn't exist."

"Open the watch," Rose challenged. "Prove me wrong."

John was shaking his head slightly, clearly scared.

"Come on, Mr Smith, please. If the Doctor is in that watch, we need him to save the lives of every student and staff member in this school, and all those people in the village. I know you don't want them to die. And if I'm wrong, and there is no Doctor, what harm can it do to open the watch?"

"I think you have to," Joan spoke up. "All those people, John. Can you live with yourself if you could have stopped it."

"But I want this life!" John raged suddenly. "I love you, and I want this life with you! Marriage and a family and growing old together. I want that!"

"Next year World War One starts," Rose said.

Joan nodded. "You wrote about that in your journal. 1914 to 1918."

"Millions died," Rose said. "Even if you stayed, I think you're the sort of man to defend King and Country. You might not live long enough to have a life together. And if you did, and you had children, World War Two would start just in time for them to fight and die in the mud."

John was still shaking his head, but Joan reached out and touched his face. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm so sorry. I would have liked that life too." John let out a choked sob he couldn't quite hold in at that. "And I can see you're scared. But you're a brave man, and I think you'll do the right thing."

"You want the Doctor as well, then?" John asked, silent tears streaming down his face. "He's a hero, like a warrior prince. Is that what you'd prefer?"

"I want you," Joan assured him. "But the world needs this Doctor, I think. And even if I did want him, I don't think I'd get to have him anyway." She looked pointedly at the way Rose was still grasping John's hand in hers.

John looked pleadingly at Rose, as if the woman who'd been pushing him to effectively commit suicide all along would suddenly shift to take his side. Sorry, Rose thought yet again, but that's so not going to happen.

"I'll never leave him," she promised instead. "All of time and space to travel through, having brilliant adventures. It's a really great life, with the two of us. And he won't be lonely, not really. I'll make sure of it. It's not so bad being the Doctor."

Rose knew that even she wasn't enough to battle away the Doctor's loneliness really, and she was sorry for the lie. Needs must, however. She'd apologise later to the Doctor if she needed to. Somehow she doubted he'd bring it up at all.

"I'm going to step outside," Joan said. "I'll be in the infirmary if you need to come see me, whatever you decide."

Rose wished she could have found a way stopped Joan Redfern and John Smith from falling for each other. She hated that she was forcing the Doctor to break yet another woman's heart. He'd go back to see her later, probably, sure. But he'd probably be a little too flippant, as was the Doctor's way, and he'd be very different from the man Joan wanted to see again. It would more likely add to the hurt rather than heal it in any way.

From the look in her eyes, Rose thought Joan might be well aware of most of that. Rose was sorry for her.

"Joan," the Doctor pleaded, but Joan just gave him a parting look, as if memorising him, and left the room. Tim, Rose noticed, had long since snuck away, clearly not comfortable in the tense and very adult environment. Smart lad, she thought.

However, that did leave Rose and John alone.

"He really does love you?" John asked quietly.

"Is that really so hard to believe?" Rose asked.

John met her gaze. "No. It seems odd because you're the maid, of course, but no. You were never really just that, were you? Such an odd girl."

"Always," Rose said.

He nodded slowly, but the move was clearly resolute.

Rose breathed a sigh of relief. She'd done it, she thought. She'd actually convinced him.

The decision was ultimately his, of course, as long as he had that watch in his hand. However, he might never have made that decision for himself. John Smith was almost as stubborn as the Doctor himself. So it was quite the accomplishment that she seemed to have changed his mind.

Then again, Rose wasn't like some modern-day (though not so very modern at the moment, admittedly) Cinderella, willing to wait meekly for the Prince to ride by with a glass slipper in hand. Just who decided that glass was supposed to be the height of fashion or beauty or whatever for shoes, anyway?

No, Rose was the one that went looking for the perfect fit. And in her world, it was nothing as ephemeral as a breakable item of footwear that could fit hundreds of people well enough to pass muster. No, the match she was after was his hand in hers. Nothing had ever felt as perfect and right to her as that. She could pick his hand out of thousands in the pitch dark if necessary. And with their hands clasped together right at that moment, Rose didn't think even John Smith, with his vague memories of all the other times they'd held onto each other like that, could dispute just how right the curl of their fingers and the press of their palms together felt.

She clutched at the hand that was joined with hers then as his other hand flipped the fob watch open.

He screamed for a long while, and Rose didn't let go of him, hoping that he could feel that support through the pain. When he finally stood gasping but otherwise quiet, leaning heavily against the wall, Rose asked, "Doctor?"

He smiled tiredly at her. "Hello."

Rose slapped him, hard, and then she kissed him. He seemed almost equally taken aback by both, but Rose didn't care. After all that she'd been through in the last few hours, not to mention the two months that preceded them, she thought she'd earned both.

He didn't ask why she'd done either. Rose thought she'd made herself clear enough earlier. And he'd called her a tart, for god's sake. She should slap him again. If her Mum was still around in this universe, Rose would take him there and have her do it. That would be an appropriate punishment.

The Doctor, clearly realising that he should count himself lucky, just squeezed the hand that was still clutched in his and said nothing about it.

"Come on, then," the Doctor said instead. "We've got a village to save, if memory serves."

"All right," Rose said, "but as soon as we've done that, you owe me a proper dance. The last one got rained out on account of aliens."

The Doctor gave her a face-splitting grin. It was the sort of expression that would never have found its way onto John Smith's face, with his much less complicated emotional scope. John Smith had been happy, yes, but he'd never been through enough sadness to truly understand just what joy was until he was set to die. Rose thought that no matter how much grief and sadness the Doctor had been through, that understanding meant that (even putting aside the ability to travel through time and space and the fact that he'd live much longer) the Doctor was capable of living a much fuller and better life as a Time Lord than he ever could have as John Smith. For that reason, Rose couldn't be sorry that John Smith was gone, packed away somewhere into the back of the Doctor's mind. The trade was worth it for the Doctor as much as it was for Rose.

So Rose returned his smile because it was infectious, but mostly also because that look on his face was like absolute proof that her Doctor was finally back. Nothing in the world had ever made her quite as happy as that thought.

Then the Doctor unexpectedly tugged her by the hand along with him as he broke into a run, heading towards danger to stop the aliens. She laughed loudly, willingly following.

The Doctor and Rose Tyler, running into jeopardy. Oh, she'd missed this.

She thought to herself, as he laughed as well, that as long as she didn't let go, it was hard to believe that they wouldn't get that wonderful forever she'd been promising him all along.

~FIN~