The Doctor was dreaming.

He knew he was dreaming. He wanted to be dreaming. Dreams bring realities you can't have anywhere else. It didn't make sense because he never slept, not really, he just walked instead of ran while his fellow travelers spent the night dreaming. Now he was doing it.

Sometimes the dreams took him to Gallifrey, and that was mainly the reason he didn't make sleep a habit, like some lesser beings did. Seeing home again should have been bittersweet, but all he could hear were the screams, and all he could see was the burning, and then it was just bitter, bitter, bitter, until he was awake and running again to escape the sound and the sorrow.

Not tonight though. This wasn't a Gallifrey dream. This was a good dream. One of those passing face dreams, not his face, their faces, the ones he liked, the ones that mattered, all he ever remembered. The best of him. His needs.

Tonight the biggest need was standing in front of him. The need that was also a want, the only one out of all of them he had ever wanted just as much as he needed. Pale eyes, young and all heart and jeans and golden fireworks and a lack of self-preservation. She'd poured it back into him, that selflessness, forever ago, made him the Doctor again, and it had faded and flared and faded again in her absence and now here she was. In his dream. Standing there like a promise.

His foolish double heartbeat became quadruple in his sleep; the Doctor stared at her with his attack eyebrows raised and his mouth slightly open. He didn't let on. Didn't show his delight, his fear. Guilt. Longing. It wasn't actually often he dreamt of this one. The best of the bests, because she'd brought him back. That was a sign, the fact that this was rare. A sign of the pain he was still running from, adding it to the screams, only this memory was of terrible silence, but it was just as loud.

"Rose Tyler," he said, and it was the first time it had been said in this form, in this dark deep Scottish way, and when he said it it rolled out just the same as it always had. He mourned briefly that this voice hadn't really tasted it aloud yet, in the waking world, the real world. Stupid real world. World without the Wolf. Rubbish real world.

He expected her to address him back, then, the way it always worked between them. At least in his head. He expected "My Doctor".

She didn't say it.

Instead she frowned at him, but it was that frown you don't even try to make; it's just there. He knew it well. It was this face's default setting.

He leaned with his back against the console, heard it faintly humming behind him, the common background noise of his dreams no matter where they took place. A comfort. Why didn't she smile? Humans did that a lot. Laughed a lot too. It was annoying, but if they didn't, he'd have to, and he preferred not to take up that particular mantle. Laughing, not his area. Hugging, no, smiling, no, names, definitely not.

But she always smiled. She laughed. She looked different without her tongue slipping between her teeth, cheeky as he remembered it, and perhaps he would find that annoying too in this form, with this new face, but he would never know if she didn't just do it, why didn't she do it?

His face. Maybe that was it. After all, Clara had never looked at him the same way since he'd changed it. Never treated him the way she had before either. There were similarities between the two, weren't there? A clue, he needed a clue, and that's where it'd be.

He searched Rose's expression for traces of his current carer, but to his immediate interest, he found it quite empty of that sort of thing, no need for a sonic scan.

His face was certainly older. She'd never met him this way before. He knew now why he'd chosen it, a reminder from the past, save just one, Doctor, plastered across his front with a pointed nose and a permanent scowl and those ridiculous lines. But would she know? Would she understand why he'd picked this one? Did she hate it, did she mistrust it, Clara-ness or no? He couldn't tell.

But she could see him. Clara hadn't, not at first. Rose was looking at him like she knew him, like she saw him. She'd always seen him, no matter what face he wore.

So. There was hope, then.

She still seemed cross.

"Go on, say something," the Doctor ordered gruffly. He sounded impatient. Was that intentional? Did he want to sound impatient? Doesn't matter. Out now.

"Why?" she asked.

The lights in the room flickered, no doubt in response to the conscience of the sleeper. The Doctor knew precisely what she was asking. He'd had her say it; this was his dream. It still hit him.

And he still masked it. "Why what?" he demanded.

"Why'd you give it to her?" She was getting emotional, her chest was heaving, blinking eyelids batted away tears, her single heart pumping too much feeling out, human body losing control to it.

She used to do that as often as smiling and laughing. Used to leak out like that. Since her he'd picked up others who held it in a bit better and things were so much quieter without it, but now he felt even he couldn't breathe. Time Lord bodies weren't as different as he liked to pretend. Anyway.

"She needed help, isn't that what I do, I help people?" He hated the way she was staring at him.

Rose shook her head ever so slightly, like if she shook it too hard the tears would fall. "You made her immortal." Not only did she sound betrayed; she sounded wounded for the sake of the girl who could no longer die.

"That isn't my fault," the Doctor countered, wondering distractedly why he felt the need to defend himself. He knew she was right this time. "I didn't design the chip, I didn't implant it to make her that way—it just happened."

"But…you told me." Rose's voice rose and the Doctor wanted to take a step back, but he was already against the console. "You told me—you said—you couldn't spend the rest of your life with me. 'Cos you'd outlive me, 'cos you were cursed! Were you lying to me? You say you left me so you wouldn't have to watch me die and then you go and do this!"

Oh, how his mind was betraying him, even as he slept. Of course she was cross, why shouldn't she be cross? He knew she would never voice this much hurt, this much anger with him, not even when he was nicer. She never wanted to make him ache, no matter how much it tore her, so she kept half of it hidden. He knew her—he'd known her—well enough to see it. But in this dream she was the mouthpiece to his guilt. A cockney embodiment of what he wished he could have done when he had the chance.

"I didn't have the chip then," the Doctor explained, realizing he sounded calmer than he was. Good. "I didn't know—"

"Who d'you think you're kidding? You gave up!" She was yelling now, yelling like Clara, what if she woke Clara up? No, this was a dream. There was no Clara in this TARDIS.

Just Rose.

"You didn't even try!" Ah. Now the tears were falling. She was so human. So grandly, terribly human, terribly flawed. "There was a way and you didn't even try—and now…"

"Even if I had found it," he rattled out, quick as he could, hand lifted to gesture helplessly to give the illusion of control, "do you think it would've been so easy? You'd've had to be dying. You'd've had to be hurt. The chip fixes you, goes on fixing until all you are is a mend and it's too late to break. Did you want that? You think I wanted that? Don't you see, it wouldn't have worked—"

"I could've stayed." Her hand raised the way his had, but hers was used to cover the mouth. She did that when she got emotional. Like she was trying to push it all down. Never worked. Useless. This time she seemed to be in shock, the weight of what might have been blanketing down on top of her. "Oh my god, I could've stayed with you. Forever."

The Doctor closed his eyes. She was right again. Twice. How did she do that? It was like a magic trick. Humans being right more than once in a day—night—dream. That just wasn't natural. Stayed with me forever. Had he ever been prepared for that possibility? Never having to give her up, never watching her decay? The person he couldn't bear to live without, not actually having to live without her. He couldn't even imagine. He couldn't even fathom how happy he might have been. How badly he wanted it now.

But instead he tried to reason with her, to explain away his now obvious mistake.

"You don't know what it's like, living forever," the Doctor said through his teeth. He rocketed off the console, pointing to himself with that still lifted hand. This face did such a good job of being angry for him; he didn't have to fake anything but his tone. She didn't appear to believe it was real anger. She'd be right. Thrice. "Do you want to? Because I can show you what would have happened, I can show you right now."

He pulled a lever.

"Look!"

The TARDIS doors swung open obediently, and the world outside was simply a single-dimension picture, like a screen you could walk through.

Rose turned to see, showing him her back all too readily. He went to stand beside her, hands in his pockets, tall and unfeeling.

They saw her leaning over a hospital bed, and a withered, wrinkled hand shook into view, grasping the alternate Rose's fingers tightly. The blonde bent down further, face already streaked, with more tears on the way.

"My Rose," came the aged whisper of Jackie Tyler, and could the Doctor scan her for symptoms he would have produced the diagnosis of a failing heart.

The scene whirled away as if someone had blown it out, replaced with a new one. Alternate Tyler was standing in the street, flames all round her, somewhere near the London Eye probably, and a large, snarling alien figure hurtled her way, unnoticed by its victim.

Suddenly a streak of black and brown barreled into her, shoving her from her spot. The man turned, and Rose saw Mickey Smith's dark eyes meet hers just before the creature's blaster took him from her.

Whoosh, and the picture was gone. Now she sat perfectly still in a cemetery, same as ever, looking at headstones with expiration dates like 2018 and 2027. Sobbing. Multiple graves, far too many, and the one she leaned over read Shareen Costello.

The would-be Rose didn't move from the wet sod beneath her. She looked as if she might never move again.

The Doctor turned to the real thing at last, looking her full in the face. "See that? That's what it's like. You'd be lost. There'd be nobody."

Rose blinked away more tears, and the Doctor fought the urge to back away. He really wasn't good with those anymore. The sight of them in this body brought memories of the ones the other bodies had produced. And why. His mouth immediately stopped working upon sharing the room with a pair of tears. When Clara cried (and to her credit, it wasn't often) he tried to make her see he wanted it to stop, but it always came out as if he didn't care, as if it were irritating, like getting your hair caught on something. That wasn't it in the slightest, but try telling her that. Watching Rose, knowing this about himself, the Doctor decided not to advance at all audibly.

And hugging was out of the question.

But to his surprise—she was always surprising him—Rose glanced over at him, and with a strong voice she countered, "No, Doctor. You look."

She took the space between herself and the console in two strides, flipped the lever, and returned to him. Her eyes were smoldering. That happened when she was about to do it, about to be the thing that made him keep an extra TARDIS key in his coat at all times.

What happened next made the Time Lord question whether or not this really was his dream, because his former companion seemed to control it all now, just for a moment. Just the show outside the doors.

Alternate Rose was leaning over her mother's deathbed again; those wretched tears rolling down her cheeks. She waited a moment, one hand over her mouth and the other still clutching her mum's. After apparently feeling for a pulse and finding none, she slowly dropped Jackie's hand. Her eyes held the emptiness the Doctor himself had experienced so often—that sort of cloud you acquire when you can't quite believe someone isn't there anymore. That they'll never be there again.

Then she did something the Doctor wasn't expecting to see. She got up from the bed. He could have bet handsomely on her staying put for a bit; she didn't have anywhere to go, did she? Her mum had just died.

As he watched, standing stiffly beside the proper Rose, the might-have Rose turned and looked back at something out of view.

"Rose," said a familiar tone, and the Doctor could almost remember how using that tongue and those teeth felt.

It was himself. He was in the suit, that ridiculous pinstriped thing, too tight, and the shoes he never washed. The pretty boy. Alternate Rose threw herself into his arms, and as the other Doctor held her tightly, almost rapidly her shoulders relaxed. The current Doctor could see by the way she slumped that she was infinitely more at ease, with those thin limbs wrapping her up safe.

Before he could say anything to the Rose inside the TARDIS, the scene changed as it had earlier, changed to the moment when Mickey the Idiot was lost forever.

Alternate Tyler collapsed beside Mickey's limp form, shaking him, begging her old friend to get up. The present Doctor spared a glance at the true Rose, but she stared straight ahead. Leading by example. Fine. He turned back to the picture outside the door.

With the intrusion of a whirring sound that the Doctor was most fond of, the alien that had attacked the two humans suddenly clutched the sockets where ears might have been, howling. It dropped to the ground, rubbery, stubbed feet gripping at the damp asphalt. Its weapon dropped with it.

Rose took no notice, still clutching the body of Mickey Smith. Managed his name once or twice, in a soaked sort of voice.

The other version of the Doctor returned, but he wasn't wearing pinstripes now. It was the Doctor as he remembered being so well—so recently, really, like yesterday—and what was yesterday to him? The Doctor with the bow tie and that hideous word he was always saying. He was hunkering down beside the two and checking Smith for any signs betraying the evidence before him. The Doctor literally felt his own expression slacken as his other self's did.

The would-be Doctor took would-be Rose's hand, curling it in his own, gently removing it from Mickey's lapel. "He's gone."

Rose kept her eyes on the dead boy's features, as if trying very hard to engrave them onto her memory as well as her heart. But she did not push the Doctor away. Of course she didn't, look at that young face, those big eyes. Like a cat's. Instead she snuffled, attempting to hold all that grief at bay, and leaned her head on his shoulder. Typically, it just came pouring out of her a tick later, stronger after it had been suppressed.

"It's okay," murmured the doe-eyed Doctor. "It's okay, Rose, I'm here." He kissed the top of her head, blinking a little too hard himself and rocking back and forth as she hugged him. "I'm sorry, I know. I'm here."

I'm here. The real Doctor opened his mouth to make his argument, to tell Rose that this was only one possible outcome, but still she didn't move. Was she even breathing? So he shut up, without having anything to shut up in the first place.

She was in the graveyard now.

Suddenly the Doctor wanted very badly to turn away, to focus on something else. He felt he knew what was coming, and he had never before itched to run as writhingly as he did in that second. His feet were fireflies, dipping and twitching a little, just an inch or two, to flee. This was going to hurt. Naturally it was. Obviously. Hurt seemed more natural than anything else, actually. In his experience.

The old man stared out into the scene, just tightening his folded hands a bit behind his back. It was the solitary sign he wasn't made of stone just now. The human rigid to his left looked only a fraction more prone to cracks. He should close the doors. Snap and be done with it.

As the other Rose's fingers gripped her knees, sat there in the wet sod, a shadow fell over the tombstones. It was bobbing, walking. Like a boat. A dinghy. Really slowly, as if relishing the crunch of its owner's shoes on the ground. As if the quiet of a cemetery made it hurt to walk at all.

And it was him, and he was there, wearing the same hoodie and holey jumper. Wearing the eyebrows. Everything as he was at this moment. Him. Standing with his hands in his pockets over Rose Tyler, who had not changed, who hadn't aged a heartbeat of a quarter of a millisecond all this time. Standing there like it was right, and wasn't it? Wasn't it?

Rose turned to look up at him this time round. She didn't wait on him to make the first incision, the first tear in the paper that had draped over the world every time she lost somebody.

The Doctor watched himself extend a hand to her. He said it quietly, just a bit tenderly. "Come on."

He hadn't known, watching the other reality play out, that as the different Doctor reached for that Rose's hand, he was reaching for his. Until he found it, and she held on tight.

This, not the norm for him these days. On occasion he might take Clara's hand, and what did that give? Nothing but the illusion of hope. Like a hug. You couldn't trust either of them. Except he hadn't felt this particular hand in his for what seemed like a fever of a time, and it took him so far back he got dizzy. Motion sickness in a Time Lord. Disgraceful.

The substitute Rose, instead of launching herself at him in a mess, instead of crying any more, she smiled. She practically beamed; it should've split her face open. She looked very at home. And she was looking at this face. And it was looking back at her. And smiling thinly.

And she took his hand. They walked out of the graveyard, their shadows larger together, covering up the ones the headstones cast.

The doors to the TARDIS snapped shut, and the Doctor moved as if sore, looking down at the girl who was tugging her palm from his.

Rose stared at him, and he bravely stared back, but he was getting that prickling on the back of his neck that told him he was confusing bravery with aplomb.

"No, see," Rose murmured, slowly shaking her head, "I wouldn't be lost, Doctor. 'Cos I'd have you."

The Doctor went on staring, but this time it was the stare you use when you're not really seeing anything. When you're thinking, or in this case, remembering.

"Of course," he said, mentally hitting himself with his shoe. Always the last place you look. Why hadn't he thought of it? He pointed to her; he liked pointing when he was being clever. "Yes, of course, better with two." Pudding-brain Doctor. Blind man. And wouldn't he know it better than anyone else?

But he'd figured it out far too late. He liked to think the important part was how he'd figured it out at all, never mind the time. Let's focus on that. He was wrong again, apparently, because she still wouldn't smile.

"Did you forget?" she asked, lips barely parting when she spoke. Like a mouth full of cotton.

Those stubborn tears, peeking out at the edges of her eyes. He gave them a stern glance that he hoped would warn them against falling.

She was waiting for an answer.

He was usually prepared to give one. He could scroll through the several different kinds in his mind before opening his mouth, explore all his options, but this time when he pulled up the file, it was empty. Well, say something. Standing there like a newborn with his mouth forming words and never projecting them.

He wasn't good at caring anymore; where was Clara when you really needed her? She'd give him the words. Where were his cards? He felt everything, just as thick as he always had, but he couldn't express it now. It was possibly one of the most frustrating things he'd ever encountered, and that included River Song and small children.

The Doctor finally managed audio. "I didn't, no. No, I didn't forget, no." He tried a smile, genuine as he could, and a little heartbroken around the corners. Smiles always looked misplaced, painted on this new structure. "It hasn't been that long, has it?" Breathy, like laughing. He could have curled his lip at the sound, except it was coming from him.

Rose didn't seem to find this charming. If only she could break full and be done with it, she had to drag it out. Human beings. "It's too late now," she said.

The tears fell, and the Doctor closed his eyes for a moment, disappointed in them. Disappointed in him. Could she read him so easily still?

So much had happened without her. He'd saved so many; he'd done so much. It was hard to believe, looking back as he tried quite often not to, that she hadn't been there for it. He'd faced Missy without Rose? Been to Skaro without Rose? She'd never met Clara?

And it was true, she could have done. She could have been there. If he'd been determined enough to look. To look for a way to keep her with him. Never aging, never dying, the girl just ordinary enough to be extraordinary. Obviously the perfect choice. Someone he couldn't live without. Someone who never cared what he looked like, didn't care what he said or did, determined that he should not be alone. He didn't have to care when she was here; he wanted to. If she'd stayed, he wouldn't need cards at all now.

The Doctor might have found the chip sooner if he'd let himself. He knew he would have—traveling through all time and space, he'd have found it eventually. But he hadn't, for the same reason he hadn't been searching harder for Gallifrey.

Because he was scared.

Fear was absolutely a superpower. And like all superpowers, it depended on the owner when it came to whether they belonged to a villain or a hero. A hero would have found home by now. A hero never would have stopped. A villain would have been just as hell-bent—on running from it. Cowardice was not a foreign concept to villains. In fact it could probably be found in the best of them. And the Doctor had never claimed to be the hero. He just stopped the villains.

Apart from, of course, himself.

He was afraid of an eternity with her. He'd always been afraid of it, afraid he could never give her what she wanted, and in the end, he hadn't even cobbled together the courage to tell her, when he wasn't facing an eternity, just seconds, and the best he could manage was you made me better. It was ridiculous. Just thinking of the phrase made him furious, and he was considering pulling a face as he remembered the way it sounded coming out of him.

"I'm sorry," he said in a whisper, and his tongue felt like sandpaper.

Rose looked confused, just for a moment. He saw it in the pinch of her eyebrows. "For…saving her life?" She sounded disbelieving.

She knew very well what he actually meant. She wasn't that daft. Or maybe she was, maybe it had been too long after all and he didn't know her anymore. That's right, Doctor, keep your spirits up. Of course he knew her. And of course she understood. She was giving him a chance.

He played along, almost bitterly smiling again. It was really disturbing how he kept doing that.

"No," he replied instantly, folding his hands behind his back. "No, never that."

Rose watched his eyes. He felt she was sucking the color right out of them. That's new. New reaction to her. Wonderful, he'd missed those discoveries.

"For being afraid of you." The Doctor kept the smile; he knew how well smiles could hide things and he was hiding a frighteningly large box of pain somewhere inside. The smile wasn't big enough to cover it, so it didn't reach his eyes, and they were pricking in a familiar way he despised. "I'm sorry, Rose Tyler, that I was too afraid."

She didn't move. So she was listening. Lot of them didn't do that.

"That I got in my box and I ran," he went on, whisper flowing into a mutter. "I ran from you. And I didn't try. And I'm sorry, can you forgive me?"

Her mouth was open for a few seconds before she actually spoke. "Doctor…"

She took a few steps forward and his smile melted away, just observing her, planning for what she was probably going to do now. He never knew exactly how to respond to these because he wasn't the sort of person for them any longer. Perhaps she'd show him how, wouldn't that be just like old times?

Then she was hugging him. He'd lifted his arms and unlatched his hands from one another heartbeats before she'd reached him, because it wouldn't do for her to trap them with hers if he was to decide on returning the embrace.

He knew precisely how to do this. He'd done it so often in his life that it was the most human part of him in every form. He just didn't see it the same way he had all those faces before this.

Rose didn't seem to notice. She didn't seem to care either, and she didn't inform him that he did not have a say in the matter, the way Clara had. Never try and control a Control Freak. Never let Rose Tyler get close enough for a hug.

He was in a dream and nobody would see him anyway and he was wasting time doing all this bloody thinking. Shut up, Doctor.

He hugged her back, gingerly, with his withered hands and his very different height; she was at least two and a half heads shorter than he was. She still fit though. Funny. He didn't hold her tightly, and he didn't lift her up off the ground, and he didn't spin with her in his arms. The Doctor could picture exactly what that felt like because he had done that more than he had ever stood with his hands behind his back frowning or lowering attack eyebrows.

But he didn't do it tonight because that wasn't him, and she didn't have to say anything to let him know she didn't mind.

"You have to wake up now," Rose murmured into his ear.

He closed his eyes.

"My Doctor," she said, and hearing the smile in her voice was far better than seeing it on her face. "You have to wake up now."

"Doctor!"

His eyes flew open.

"Come on, sleepyhead," Clara was joggling his shoulder. "You have to wake up now."

He swatted her hand away, irritated. "Could you not do that, it's like being sat on an airplane in an earthquake."

Clara was confused, folding her arms. Short and roundish and not the worm the early bird would like to catch, thanks, not with the look that said she wanted to run somewhere dangerous again and she wanted it right now. "Airplanes aren't affected by earthquakes," she informed him.

The Doctor massaged his right temple with a few fingers and stopped long enough to roll his eyes. "Human technology."

"Are you okay, 'cos you were talking in your sleep," Clara glanced at the console and then back to him, big dark eyes demanding an answer. "Something about chips, I think."

"I don't talk in my sleep," he told her curtly. "You must've been listening in your awake." He stood up, making for the console, and shot over his shoulder, "And your listening was wrong."

Clara's arms remained folded, but she followed him, eyeing the switches and levers in the same way a kitten would with a ball of string. "'Kay." Didn't sound convinced. But she dropped it nevertheless, good girl. "So where we going?"

"How should I know, you pick." He rubbed his eyes. "I'm just the driver, I can't be expected to make all the decisions. Don't touch that."

Clara pulled her hand away from a winding dial, giving him a teasing look for his rebuke. "I dunno."

She thought about it for a moment, running a hand along a row of buttons, without enough weight to actually press any of them. Walking slowly.

"Sort of feel like a holiday. You know, like the ones they fake on the telly and they never show the sunburns or the rubbish hotels that come with? What d'you think, know any good beaches?"

He looked up at that, but not at her. His eyes were on the doors. "No," he growled. "No beaches."

He pulled a lever. No more dreams either. No more chips, no more Ashildr, time to forget. Time to start running again.