They were an odd couple.

Sometimes in the mornings they would sit across from each other at that one table and he'd just stare at the coffee that he'd suddenly become addicted to and she'd stare at him, wanting to find something to say, to start up a conversation, but no words ever came to her.

Sometimes she would see a picture of a child with a gas mask and would have to stand there and remind herself, over and over again, that it wasn't a dead child changed by nanogenes who would destroy the world to find his mummy.

Sometimes she would look up at the sun and she'd remember standing on the satellite and watching the Earth get devoured by the dying sun.

Sometimes she would hear about Torchwood and have to remember this was not her Torchwood; these weren't the same people who opened up the fabric of reality and got her stuck there in the first place.

Sometimes she had dreams of that blue box materializing outside her door and he'd come running out, the real Doctor, the Time Lord Doctor and not the product of metacrisis and they'd go and explore the universe as it should be, the two of them.

And she knew he spent hours every day just staring at the growing TARDIS in their yard as if he silently hoped that it would suddenly become full sized and they could get off that damned planet that felt more like a prison than anything else.

She knew he sometimes completely collapsed and use all of his willpower not to scream at pain from the headaches he got, all of the time, the mind of Time Lord stuck in a human body, and she knew that sometimes he would still wonder why they'd been left there, abandoned, even if he knew, even if he still could travel.

She knew they both had the nightmares that neither of them could escape; both had spent nights trying their hardest to stay awake just so they didn't have to face that again.

She knew he sometimes wrote notes to himself in Gallifreyan, just to remind himself that he could. She knew he still sometimes expected the TARDIS to translate any language for him and even took a few moments to realize why he didn't understand the people talking.

She knew he dreamed of the worlds out there and all of the death going on because he couldn't stop them. She knew he still looked up at night and saw the stars and knew instantly where they were, what they were, all that had ever happened around them.

But she knew the look on his face when he saw the fully grown TARDIS and there he was again, her Doctor, even if he was human and couldn't regenerate, there he was again, with all of the childishness and sheer joy that she'd known and she'd grown to love, back before Canary Wharf.

And she knew the voice he used when he looked over to her and said, "Allons-y, Rose Tyler."