Author's Notes: AU of 'Human Nature'/'Family of Blood'. Contains death and some sexual content.

Their hands brush against each other, countering the cool press of the fob watch.

John Smith sharply inhales and his eyes widen, filled with the sight of Rose Tyler and all of the promises she holds in her gaze.

"Shouldn't we wait, though? I mean..." he trails off, flustered.

Rose smiles slightly, and John looks away uncomfortably. He can read her answer in the curve of her lips. 'Too late for that', they say without actually speaking.

Jealousy stabs viciously at his gut. She's so young, and such a free spirit, and he's always been well aware since before he took her under his care that she hasn't been raised in quite the proper way he has, and now he can clearly see that she's not particularly concerned about waiting until marriage despite his protests. He shouldn't be surprised she's done this before, with all that in mind. But even though he never wants to know who she's been with before him, something in him would still sort of like to track him (or them) down and toss him into a black hole.

He has no idea where the thought of that particular method of torture comes from, though a fleeting memory of watching a black hole consume everything around it niggles unwantedly at him, as if he could ever have seen such a thing (it must have been in one of his fantastic dreams). Regardless of that, and of the fact that he's never considered himself a particularly violent man, it still seems a fitting fate for any man who's ever dared to put his hands on her.

As if to erase their touch, Rose brings his hands to her waist and she presses herself closer against him. Her soft fingers dip beneath his coat and down towards the waistline of his trousers. When fingertips find their way to a slip of bare skin just beneath his shirt, he gasps, the muscles of his abdomen tensing against her.

"I don't... I've never..."

"Don't worry," Rose says wryly. "I'm always happy to take the lead."

It drives him mad that she knows enough to do so, but he doesn't complain about her confidence as she strips herself quietly. He doesn't even comment on her strange yet alluring underclothes; how should he know precisely what ladies wear beneath their clothing, after all? He doesn't have any experience with this sort of thing.

It occurs to him that this is the last day he'll ever be able to say that. He meets Rose's kiss almost hungrily, aroused despite himself by the prospect of having her even though he knows he shouldn't be doing this.

It may not be the way these things are supposed to go, from what he thinks he half-recalls of furtive conversations when he was still a schoolboy (though they seem oddly like dreams to him rather than true memories), yet he's still all too happy to let Rose Tyler have her way with him.

The fact that the wedding night won't be the first time he's buried himself into his new wife and then slept sated by her side isn't the only odd thing about their wedding by far.

One of those strange occurrences is how difficult it is to convince Rose to marry him in the first place. John worries that it means she intends to leave him; he's not sure he could stand that. She silences him with a kiss when he voices that fear, though, and says it just never occurred to her that he'd ask, so she's never thought about her answer. It isn't like him, she says, the way she often does. He wishes he knew what that meant. It might explain so much about her. She does eventually agree, though she insists on a strange condition.

They could have been married at the church in the village, right there in Farringham where their relationship properly began. They could even have gone back to London where her family and old friends still live. There's no need for them to flee to a place where no one knows them like thieves in the night. Even though she's his ward, no one has ever indicated that they believe it's improper or so much as raised an eyebrow at the way they've so clearly become more to each other. Clearly they take one look at them and see what John knows for a certainty; they're a perfect pair, for all their differences and all the things that seem to stand in their way (though John can never quite remember what those things actually are).

Instead, she insists they elope.

"It always feels more like us when we're runnin'," she says, and though John doesn't have the first idea what she's talking about, he goes along with her. He almost always does, in the end. She could be dragging him right into hell by her side rather than just partway across the country, and he'd still follow with a smile.

"What about your mother, though?" John asks tentatively. He always has trouble remembering much about Mrs Tyler, though he knows he met her several times before she finally gave him her blessing to take her daughter away to give her a better life than she could have stuck in the back ends of London. Something in him is certain, though, that Mrs Tyler will wring his neck if he dares to marry her daughter without asking for her permission, or at least allowing her to host the wedding.

Rose shakes her head. "Mum'll never have to know."

John wonders, then, whether they're actually running away completely, not just leaving temporarily so that they can marry and then honeymoon in Barcelona ("We never did end up goin'," she says, though John can't recall ever discussing it in the first place) and then return to their lives later. Does she never intend for them to visit her mother in London again? John knows that, for all that the two women seem to clash with each other as women who are too alike often seem to, they're very close. John frowns at the idea of them never seeing each other again. Something tells him that they could be an odd little family, if they choose. He wants that, and he feels that Rose does as well. He can't see why she's treating it like such an impossibility.

He supposes he can bring it up with her later, presuming he doesn't forget (he has such a hard time remembering things sometimes). They have their whole lives together to sort out the little details, after all. He's looking forward to it.

He would call the wedding quiet, but that's not quite the right word. His own excitement harmonises with Rose's like a peal of bells, ringing much louder than the real bells in the church do after it's all said and done. They don't need anyone else there, he realises. The two of them fill the church all on their own, especially when they manage to stun the celebrant by sharing a kiss that John knows borders on obscene and doesn't care (clearly Rose has been a bad influence on him). It's probably just as well neither Rose's mother nor their acquaintances from Farringham are there to see that, actually.

Rose takes his hand and leads him from the church at a run, laughing.

She's right. Things do feel somehow more right between them when they're running.

"No," Rose says firmly.

"It's my duty," John says.

"No," Rose repeats. John's never been all that good at standing up to that tone of hers, but this is an argument they need to have. He won't back down so easily this time.

"How am I supposed to hold my head up high if I'm the type of man who wouldn't fight for the safety of my country... for your safety?"

"What about when you're the type of man who'd kill others when you have a choice not to, huh? That's not you," she says. Her voice cracks slightly with emotion.

John wonders sometimes how she can always be so sure of his character, and of what kind of man he is. She knows him better than anyone, certainly, but even he doesn't know himself that well half the time.

"'Sides," she says, "you'll go and get yourself killed doin' somethin' stupid or somethin' noble – I know you will – and this time there'll be no comin' back from that."

Ah, John remembers, this is why arguing with Rose always gives him a headache, and why he tries to avoid it. He can never tell whether she knows something integral about him, or them, or even the world itself, that slips right over his head, or whether she's just a little bit mad. Either way, she always ends up making very little sense to him. How can he properly argue against something that sounds like insanity?

"It would be an honour to die for my country," he tries to explain. He's not all that surprised when that just makes her angrier.

"It'd be a bigger honour to stand up for your principles. God. Sometimes I don't know what to do with you."

He wonders what principles she means, but then he vaguely recalls lowering a weapon and sounding a retreat to stop young boys from having to kill or be killed. He's never been drawn to death and violence, though for some reason he's sure that they're very much drawn to him.

She's right. He won't admit it out loud (he hates admitting that he's capable of being wrong), but he doesn't want to go to war, fighting and killing and probably dying himself, as she says. He doesn't want to, but he feels he should.

Rose takes out her frustrations that he doesn't appear to be listening to her dubious logic the same way they usually end these fights on the rare occasion they escalate this far. She presses him back into the bed somewhat forcefully and arches into him when his hands close around her hips to steady her. He thrusts up into her, but she's the one who sets the pace.

No matter how many times they do this, John never loses that feeling that Rose is the one gently (or not quite so gently, depending on her mood) guiding him through it. She'll always be the more experienced, he supposes, and it shows. She has a kind of power over him in those moments, as if the drip of her sweat onto his body acts as some kind of potion that keeps him magically under her thrall. She needs no such thing, though. She's always got his full attention and devotion without even trying. There's nothing in his world more important than her.

So when she presses her cheek against his chest once he slumps tiredly back into the bed and asks him once again, her still-quickened breath cool against the wet sheen coating his skin, of course he can't say no.

"Stay here with me," she says.

He sighs. "Always."

He feels shattered, somehow. The possibility has never occurred to him, even watching other couples around them in the village go through the same thing. It's natural, but it doesn't feel that way.

He's the last remaining member of his family. For some reason he'd thought that would always be the case.

Rose awaits his response with slightly narrowed eyes. John's not sure how to articulate the mixture of happiness and blinding fear that's suddenly struck him.

"So..." Rose finally prompts. The almost undetectable tremor of uncertainty in her voice quickly shoves him into action.

"So it's brilliant, of course," he says, the words running together slightly as his tongue trips over itself to reassure her. "Absolutely brilliant. Spectacular, even! I just never thought..."

"I know," Rose says. "Nor did I."

John reaches forward and presses his palm against her belly, imagining some difference there even though he knows it's not real. Not yet.

"Fantastic," he reiterates, and has no idea why it makes her flinch slightly.

It seems like a mere instant between the day Jack Smith is born and the day John and Rose receive the news that he's never going to return from the war.

John remembers Rose begging him not to go away to fight the last war just as vehemently as she'd protested against Jack enlisting in this one. John had listened where Jack had not, and now he was so very glad he had. He tries to imagine Rose being all alone when she received the news of his demise far away in another country. He can't imagine it would hurt her more than Jack's loss, but at least this way he's here to hold her tightly in his arms and whisper comfort to her.

His strength lets her abandon hers for a time. Rose sobs so hard and long that John thinks she might be shedding his tears as well as her own, for his eyes remain strangely dry despite the empty ache that fills him.

When she falls asleep in his arms, exhausted, something in him that's been silently insisting he has to be like a rock for her to lean on and not let her know that he's just as hurt as she is breaks, and he cries for the loss of his son.

"I never thought I'd see the day," Rose says. "I thought you'd stubbornly end up workin' yourself to death before you'd ever even admit the word 'retirement' exists."

John sighs. "It might have been better that way. What am I supposed to do with myself now?" he asks.

Rose seems to hesitate, which is so unlike her that John quickly returns his whole focus to her rather than letting half his mind busy itself lamenting about long days not filled with students and books and his fellow teachers.

"We could always travel. We've got enough money saved, I think," she suggests.

Something about the way she says it makes John think she's been waiting to broach this topic for years.

"Where would we go?" he asks.

Rose smiles, obviously knowing from the way his response is so filled with curiosity that he's clearly willing. "Anywhere," she says. "Everywhere."

John doesn't think he's ever heard a better idea in all his life.

Somewhere in their travels through the least-visited areas of Catalonia, John tells Rose that they should return to Barcelona since they're already so nearby. He explains it by telling her it'll be like a second honeymoon for them, but she doesn't need soothing words to cover the truth. Her eyes water slightly, but she says nothing about it and simply agrees.

She can tell just as well as he can what's coming. And even more than anywhere back in England, he finds that Barcelona is the place he wants to be when...

He'd hoped they could keep travelling forever, but he knew deep down that it was no more than a dream. There's always an end to every journey.

In a villa not far from where they spent their honeymoon so many years earlier, Rose cards her fingers through John's hair (so much thinner and greyer than it was back then, he thinks sadly, wondering why he'd always been so surprised to see the years actually touch him that way).

It's been weeks since he's felt fit to leave the villa, but they both know that today is different from just the bone-heavy weariness that's kept him still during that time.

He hates to leave her behind, but at the same time he can't help but be pleased that he isn't going to outlive her after all. He's never been able to explain why, but for all of their lives, that strange certainty that one day he'll be without her has been his greatest fear. He thinks somehow he has her to thank for saving him from that.

Rose presses a kiss to his forehead and he sighs, a long escaping of breath.

He doesn't feel the tears that drip onto his face.

It all passes him by so quickly that he feels dizzy, as if he's lost in the whirl of it.

Rose's face is still the foremost thing hovering in front of his eyes when he finds that he can focus again, but it's no longer the features of that much older woman with whom he remembers spending a life (a life he recalls far better than his own solitary existence leading up to when she was still the age she appears now).

She's young again, and after a moment he realises why. The knowledge that that life he's dreamed hasn't actually happened crashes over John.

He should be glad, for it means he's far from dead in this time and place. Yet he finds he's still heartbroken to have to face reality.

That new path that he's seen himself taking with her isn't full of happiness to the exclusion of all else, but he hardly expected that. It is, however, filled with the two of them, and he doesn't want to contemplate any future that begins or ends any other way.

It could still be that way between them. He clings to that as hard as he can, with the certainty that at any moment the possibility will be snatched away from him.

"We could have that life together," he begs, feeling that he knows her answer before she gives it.

"I wanna stay with you forever," Rose says. For a moment his hopes rise. "But not like that. That's not us. We've got a much bigger adventure still to come, you and me."

He knows that. He has no idea how he knows that, but it's clear to him all the same.

"Please open the watch," she says quietly.

He's fought so hard against it, but he finds that in the end the decision is a fairly easy one; although John's vision blurs with tears, he can still see those pleading eyes of hers that he can never quite say no to.

He snaps the watch open and pain swamps him. His eyes, which seem to have been burned open somehow by the visions of a life never led, finally fall closed, and he's reminded of a much harder life that can't be so easily taken back, for all that he might sometimes wish otherwise.

He blinks his eyes open once the feelings pass, finding that he's no longer John Smith anymore, even though he still feels half caught up in the rush of that life he might have had, if not for a set of greater responsibilities and a woman he's promised to show all the stars.

He's the Doctor again. And kneeling before him is Rose Tyler, looking concerned but happy. It seems strange to him that she looks no less content to be by his side now that he's no longer a human man who can give her a proper life.

He grins at her to reassure her that he's fine, lingering headache aside.

"I hear we've got some rogue aliens to deal with," he says.

Rose's face breaks into a dazzling smile of her own, her relief clear. "Yeah. Just another day of savin' the world."

He remembers how oddly comforting the routine of their ordinary lives in those visions was.

The extraordinary is so much better.

He takes her hand and they run towards the danger, shedding any regrets they might feel as they go.

~FIN~