Disclaimer: I would absolutely love it if Doctor Who was mine, since then I'd have a fantastic job, be rich, and not be worrying about writing my dissertation next month. Alas, that it is not mine. The title also belongs to someone else, but I'm not certain whom.

AN: This is the story I promised myself I would never write, because a) everyone else did it first and b) I try not to mess with canon even if sometimes I fail utterly. But then season 4 premiered and Russell managed to work a reunion into canon and there was a certain appealing Torchwood story-line within the same two weeks and so this came about. But really, the basic plot came into existance about six months ago when I first watched Doomsday. I might say spoilers for the end of series 2 Torchwood and the end of series 4 Doctor Who, but you people already know all about that stuff, don't you?

She spent three weeks hoping, waiting, even praying that he had lied. That somehow he would find a way; another gap just big enough for the TARDIS to get through. That he'd come for her no matter what and no matter how long it took.

But he didn't come.

So, one day she got up, got dressed, went down to breakfast, and announced that she was going to work for Torchwood. Although her mom, being Jackie, made a passable attempt at arguing with her, they both knew that Rose would be miserable doing anything less than saving the world.

Torchwood on this world was hardly anything compared to what it had been back on her first one. There was no Doctor in this universe and so Torchwood, instead of being founded by the Crown in the nineteen century, had instead developed out of sheer necessity after a series of alien threats which had only culminated in the Cyberman invasion that had drawn Rose into this world the first time. And although they had had three years to form some sort of cohesive idea, they were lacking in any personnel that really had any idea what they were dealing with (beyond Mickey). Rose was a godsend. Suddenly she was launched into a position that came with more responsibility than she wanted (and certainly more paperwork). All she wanted to do was defend the Earth, but she found herself doing less and less of that with each passing day.

And then, one night, he called her name and she went running. If anything, saying goodbye on that beach and seeing that he believed it was forever was more heartbreaking than pounding on that damn white wall had been. She knew, without a doubt, that no matter what she found in this world or how many times she saved the world it wouldn't be the same. It was him that made everything so much better.

If he couldn't come for her, she'd find her own way back to him. She'd done it once before and she hadn't even known what she was doing. Her desire simply to return to him, to save him, had been enough. She believed it would be enough this time as well.

It was three months before Mickey came to her with a somewhat working idea that he'd started fiddling around with about the second year after he arrived. It wasn't entirely workable (or safe); not yet, but it had the potential to be. She hugged him and kissed him and later regretted that she had been so happy to find a way to leave.

The basic idea was in theory simple enough but mostly involved a rather long collection of equations and formula that defied rather a few laws of physics, the universe and pretty much everything. Rose knew she couldn't help, at least not directly, but that didn't mean that she didn't finagle herself into overseeing the project. And even if she didn't understand four words out of five in the weekly reports the senior scientist Adams happily gave to her (more because he viewed it as bragging about how much he knew and she was certain he found her lack of knowledge of anything he considered useful in life to be non-existent), she still read them. She did, however, understand the basic principle of what Adams was suggesting. And as long as it didn't at any point involving ripping a hole through time and space she was all for letting Adams spend as many hours as he wanted locked in his lab.

But six months after Mickey had brought the project to her attention Adams was killed crossing the street outside his apartment coming back from work at 2am, and all of his notes seemed to either not exist in anything resembling understandable formats (or code, because that almost would have been easier) or had conveniently been on a hard drive he carried with him at all times that had been soundly flattened by the truck's back wheel. And although the project passed to the next in line for those type of things, Petrie couldn't make head or tails of any of it, even after reading the progress reports. Which left Rose rather back to square one again.

But she was determined to wait, for as long as it took to find a viable way and so she went back to doing the copious amounts of administration that had all seemed to get shuffled her way. There was a close encounter on Valentine's Day (a date which passed completely without her knowledge, busy as she was debating the merits of conquering a itty bitty little planet on the outer fringes of the galaxy with nothing worth taking - that was at least her side of the argument) and then another spaceship crashed landed in July and she spent more hours than she'd admitted to anyone thinking about the Doctor and wished the alien threat had been Slitheen. And somewhere along the way life simply got carried away.

She woke up three years later on her twenty-fourth birthday (twenty-eight) and realized that even if she wasn't exactly happy, she was at least living the fantastic life he had always wanted for her. And that she was going to have to get used to it.

In the span of the next month she bought an apartment five blocks from Canary Wharf with her own money, acquired a boyfriend that, even if he wasn't as intelligent as the Doctor, at least never called her a stupid ape and looked nothing like either of the incarnations she had known. He was sweet too and seemed perfectly alright with the lies she told about her job.

She got up in the morning, went to work, saved the world, saw Simon every few days, spent Sunday's with her parents and baby brother Jack (Jackie's idea of a two-fold joke that Pete had been unable to dissuade her of) and just kept living.

Torchwood went public after her fifth year there and a particularly obvious attempt at invasion. The public reacted rather better than anyone had predicted, in that there was no mass panic in the streets, but it suddenly made their job harder rather than easier. Rose spent three weeks straight interviewing candidates who were just begging to work for them, even though all of them were older than her and none of them had even a fraction of her experience. Alien nuts, for the most part and she couldn't help remembering Clyde and wondering what had happened to him. At least he wasn't one of the ones that came bounding into her office looking hopeful and willing to beg, plead, borrow and steal to work for the world's premiere alien experts.

She hired two of forty and summarily refused to ever do job interviews again.

Simon proposed later that month, after what Rose was certain was much too short a courtship, and she was so absolutely shocked that her negative answer was more forceful than it should have been. He begged for a reason and Rose, feeling absolutely miserable, honestly told him it was because she was in love with someone else and always had been. Simon moved out of her apartment in ten minutes flat and Rose swore she wasn't going to go out with another guy so long as she lived.

Which didn't turn out to be too long, all told. Two years later she got caught in a firefight between the Granicae and some particularly enthusiastic Torchwood soldiers and spent five days in a coma, stopped breathing three times, and was declared dead once.

When she finally regained consciousness to Mickey's smiling face and her mother's wailing in joy, she decided enough was enough. He had the whole universe and time at his disposal, and she had neither. It was time she did something about that.

She celebrates her thirtieth birthday (which is less a celebration and more just an acknowledgement of the date passing by) on one of the planets in the Vega sector. She isn't quite sure what it's called because they all look the same and she's been there for three weeks trying to find a way somewhere else. Her birthday isn't high on her list of things to worry about.

She's been out in the universe for two years, thirty-three days and roughly five hours and even though she's happier than she's been since that damn wall, she hasn't accomplished anything she set out to do when she left Earth. Like figure out a way back across the Void. Mostly she's been chasing stories of people who might have heard about someone who may have at some point encountered someone who had heard about the Void.

She'd ended up in Vega nearly positive she'd tracked down whom she needed to, but if they existed they had scampered before she'd arrived. Frustration had set in by day two and since this was day twenty-three she's very nearly ready to kill someone if it means getting out of the system.

Another Harsertsian, or so the inhabitants (she thinks) on this planet are called, sidles up to her at the tavern counter and she tells him, before he can even open his mouth, to kindly go away. At least the universal translator that Torchwood spent three years working on has paid off well. It's almost as good as having the TARDIS around.

When he doesn't immediately return to wherever he came from, she downs the last mouthful of whatever alcohol they served her (she just doesn't ask anymore) and leaves herself. The air outside is hot and stifling; the Harsertsian's planet is basically desert-like and she's as tired of the heat as she is of everything else (perhaps more so).

She wanders back to the shelter she's staying at, which is simply a glorified way of saying windbreak because that's about all it keeps out. She glances left and right constantly; eyes searching through the gloom for any hint of danger. The Harsertsians aren't violent as a rule, but she's well aware she's not the only one around this system that might be more prone to such things. It is with some surprise that the dark figure standing next to the shelter entrance actually catches her off guard; that hasn't happened in quite a while.

"I believe you've been looking for me," the figure says, in perfect English. Rose immediately becomes suspicious, since she hasn't been asking around at all.

"Let's assume I haven't. You'd be…?" She knows she's probably not going to get an answer, but she's approaching desperate about now and she's willing to do almost anything if it gets her off this planet.

"I think Jesper. That was it, wasn't it? And I know you have. No need to play hard to get, beautiful, I promise I've come to help." He steps finally out into what little light there is from the road.

He is surprising because he is isn't what she was expecting. Average height; not bad looks; pretty normal dress for a traveler at least.

"Help in what way?"

He smiles and suddenly for no reason she can quite lay her finger on, he reminds her of Captain Jack. "Well, first I think you'd be grateful for a lift off this bloody planet? Hey, maybe even out of this system? I'd be willing to accommodate that."

Rose knows this game well; she's had to learn the hard way. "In return for?"

"In return, I'll help you in your little 'quest'."

Rose blinks at him. "I'm not sure you get the point of trade, mister. What do you want?"

"To help you," he repeats.

Now she's approaching freaked out. "Why?"

"Because I think it'll take both of us, and I know that by helping you I'll help myself. Doesn't that seem enough of a trade?" He raises an eyebrow.

"I suppose. And how do you know what kind of help I need?" She's getting tired of the circular answers.

He smiles and then stares straight into her soul. "You don't belong in this universe Rose Tyler, and I intend to make certain you return to your own."

Rose blinks: too good to be true, right? "You got a name you're willing to tell me?"

"John Hart. Captain John Hart." He waits a beat, intentionally. "Time Agent John Hart. I believe you know my partner Captain Harkness?"

He smiles in satisfaction while she stands there staring at him.

Getting off the planet turns out to be easier than she thinks it should be. Hart has a ship parked, invisible, a few miles outside the city and he slips behind the controls and initiates the start-up without a word.

He has been rather short on answers since his overwhelming declaration to her an hour earlier. She's suspicious of that, but she's still willing to go along as long as it gets her off this hunk of rock. From there, she'll figure it out as she goes along.

The ship jolts slightly as it rises and then the atmosphere is blurring through the view screen and then there is only blackness and a multitude of stars, and she's missed this.

Hart sets some sort of headed before turning his chair around to look at her. "There; off the planet. Now you going to help me?"

"Maybe I'd be more willing to say yes if you actually explained things a bit more. Like, how were you planning on getting us back?"

Hart grins a mile wide and she's reminded of that first night she danced with Jack in the lee of Big Ben as bombs exploded below them. "That? That's easy love. Just needed to find you and now I have."

"And why did you find me? How did you even know I was here. In this universe?"

Hart's fiddling with the controls and doesn't look at her when he says: "I owed someone a favour. I hate owing anyone anything."

"Jack?" She has to ask. "You owed Jack a favour? You mean, he's alive? He's…alive?" Her brain can't wrap itself around that concept. She'd been so sure he'd died way back then on that station way in the future.

"Oh yeah. Old Jack's just fine and dandy. Got himself a cute little team fighting off alien threats. In Cardiff of all places, but no one's perfect. He saved my life few years back, my time. He talked about you; just once, but he told me. And I figured: nothing else to do. Might as well spend some time hopping universes and low and behold, I find you. Wasn't searching all that hard, but hey, sometimes I'm just lucky." He turns to grin at her again. "Suppose I've got nothing to do now, once I get you back. Wonder if dearest Jack's got a position open yet?"

She knows it's more than luck. The last years have taught her how to read between the lines of what people say. She knows John's been searching high and low and that it's been considerably longer than a few years. She wonders what Jack did to save his life, if he's been willing to devote the rest of it to find some girl Jack once travelled with for a few months.

"I'm sure you'll find something. You strike me as the type who's never bored. Got that in common with Jack, I suppose." She watches the stars spin past. "How is he?"

"Old Jack? Well, old, for starters, but still looking damn good! Be a pretty boy until he dies, I'm sure. If he can die. I'm a little confused on that part."

"What do you mean?"

"Dear Captain Jack, the immortal alien chaser. Can't die. Well, he can, but he just gets right back up again. Bloody annoying sometimes. Still, useful for some things."

"Immortal? Since…when?" She's positive he was no such thing that day he died on the Gamestation.

"You ask a lot of questions. Don't know, for sure. Never talks about it; can't say I blame him. But something happened, about, oh two hundred years ago by his timeline now. Met someone or something and bam!" He says it so suddenly and so loud she jumps. "Now he just keeps on fighting. Stuck in twenty-first century Cardiff, but he seems to have taken a shine to the city." Hart shakes his head as if in disgust. "You can ask him why yourself. Hold on," is all the warning he gives.

Reality bends around them and in the next second she's staring at blue ocean and green lands for the first time in three years. "Home?" she asks.

"Well, in this universe," John says. "Need the Rift to get back to ours."

"The Rift?" This is becoming surreal, if it wasn't already.

"Didn't figure that one out? Only way to cross between universes is to use a rift. Our Cardiff happens to have one. And so does this one."

She's vaguely remembering that the original plan that Adams had used a weak point in Cardiff. But at the time she hadn't understood the rift and hadn't realized that one existed in this world as well. She'd been stupid.

She can see the outline of England in the viewscreen now. "You just planning on flying down there?"

Hart looks at her. "Invisible?"

She blushes. "Right."

"Ten minutes out. You aren't overly attached to Cardiff Harbour in this world, are you?"

"Um, I suppose that depends."

"On what?"

"On how much damage to it you're planning to do."

Hart grins at her. "Nothing irreparable. Won't be your problem either." South Wales is rushing up towards them.

"That's comforting. Only in this universe?"

Hart avoids her glance in favour of focusing all his concentration on a particularly uninteresting button. "Yeah. Sure."

Her eyes narrow. "Won't Jack be a bit pissed if you destroy his city?"

"Not destroy! Just, minorly damage. I did worse a few years ago."

"What?!" Rose's question of dismay is lost in the noise of landing as the ship settles down upon the plaza. It's empty, especially at this time of night. Cardiff never got the money to build the massive complex here that they did back in her universe. It's mostly empty dockyards and what passes for a park with a large centrally paved area that serves no purpose.

Hart moves to the back of the ship and begins fiddling with a device she has previously not noticed. "What's that?"

"This? Way home." The device starts making an ominous humming sound. Hart kicks it. The sound quiets. "There." Another noise starts up and then, in the space of a heartbeat, time and space cross and she swears she is in every place at once. As suddenly as it starts, it ends and she finds herself exactly where she was sitting before, blinking at Hart who is looking as dazed as she feels.

"Was it supposed to do that?" She can't help but ask.

"Oh yeah." He points passed her to the viewscreen.

She turns to look at Cardiff as she remembers it. Water tower, opera house, people. "Is this…?"

"Well, if it isn't, it's damn close. I was, however, assured that this device could only travel back to where it was made. Which is your world. So, yeah," he motions to the door. "This is."

She gets up in a daze, thumbing the opening mechanism for the door in silence. The ground is solid beneath her feet. The sound of people clear in her ears. She blinks up at the tower and the moonlight dazzling it's length and can't bring herself to believe that everything around her is real.

"Rose!" She starts, turns to find arms grabbing her into an embrace, and she looks up into a face she never thought she'd see again.

"Jack?" He looks the same, and yet his eyes look ancient. Maybe John was telling the truth.

"Yeah, it's me. It's me. Oh Rose!" He squashes her so tightly to him she can't breathe, but she can't find it in herself to struggle.

"We're even now, right?" Hart asks hopefully from behind them. Jack turns to him, eyes shining and grins. "More than, but don't think that's getting you anything else." He pauses. "Thank you."

"Yeah, well." Hart looks awkwardly about. "I'll get out of your hair. Know how much your team hates my guts; should probably run while I have the chance." He turns back inside the ship. "Jack? You're welcome." The door slides shut with a hiss and a moment later wind is swirling around her and Jack and then there is only the noise of the waves in the harbour and the people about them.

"Oh Rose." Jack grins at her. "Been waiting a long time for this. Come on." He grabs her hand and leads her down the plaza that is so familiar and yet so alien to her. It looks pretty much the same, though some of the restaurants she remembers from her last adventure here are different.

She asks the same question she always asks when she lands somewhere new. "What year is it?"

Jack seems to falter slightly. "2032. A while. Why, how long it's been for you?"

"It was 2016 when I left."

Jack stops walking. "I'm sorry, Rose. I never thought that time might pass differently. He never said…"

Now it's Rose's turn to falter. "You've seen him. When? Where? How…?"

Jack's eyes betray him. "He comes and goes. More so these days. Been around quite a bit, in fact; in this timeline at least. He's…doing alright. He's never been the same since you…well, no worries now. You're here. You're home." Jack hugs her to him.

"Well, 2016. You're what, thirty now? What have you been up to?" He's smiling at her again.

"Surviving. What else could I do? Been trying to find a way back. He said it was impossible, but I knew there had to be some way. Guess I was right."

Jack smiles sadly at her and she realizes how old he looks now. "Yeah. He said that to me too. But I knew otherwise. I think he does too. Rose," he turns her towards him. "You need to know, whatever happens now, that he never stopped trying. He used to come to me with crack pot theories that had no chance of working. He tried so hard. I think he was willing to die to get you back. I talked him out of that, by the way. Knew you wouldn't be happy if he found you only to regenerate again."

Rose smiles weakly. "Thanks for that. Do you know how long it's been for him now?"

Jack looks away and sighs. "About fifty years or so, last time he was here. We attempted to get rousingly drunk, but of course, neither of us can. Jessie finally had to toss us out of our asses, which was scary, let me tell you. That was, oh, couple of months ago now."

"Half a century?"

"Yeah. Doesn't look any older, though. Well, that's not true. No older than I look, I suppose."

Rose looks sideways at him. "You look old."

Jack grins down at her. "Thanks." He glances away. "I know. It hasn't been easy; this life. Kind of exhausting."

"Immortality?"

Jack falters again. "Hart has a big mouth. Wonder who else he's blabbed that to. Yeah, eternity can be tiring. Or maybe it's just Cardiff."

"Did it happen on the Game Station?"

Jack sighs. "Rose, how much do you know about what happened that day? The Doctor said you didn't remember much."

Rose shakes her head. "Don't remember much. He sent me away and I tried to get back. Everything else is a blur. I thought you'd died."

Jack draws her down onto a bench as they pass one by. "I did. And then, I was brought back. Forever, apparently. Though don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Rather be immortal then dead. Still, there are days I understand him more than I ever wanted to. It's not easy watching everyone around you die."

"I'm sorry, Jack."

"Not your fault. Now, how about meeting the team and then, if you want, I can call him."

Rose allows her shock to show through. "He has a phone number?"

Jack grins and everything is okay again. "He has a cell phone. Or well, what passes for one these days. He might even answer it too! Come on," he pulls her up. "You're home; that's all that matters."

Ultimately it is Jack that talks to him. She cannot bring herself to do it and she's not certain that if she tried she'd actually be able to form words. She's waited what feels like a lifetime for this and all she wants it to be able to touch him.

The noise of the TARDIS echoes in her ears a moment later and her hair blows across her face. It is the sound of the universe; this universe and she's missed it more than she ever thought she could miss a sound.

There is a second's hesitation before the door opens and she allows herself a small amount of panic over what he is thinking after all this time. A lifetime for her; many, many more for him.

His suit is blue, his shirt red and maybe there is a few grey hairs, but he is otherwise the same as he was on that bloody beach in Norway all those years ago. He stares right at her and then he is across the floor in three giant strides and he has her in his arms and she feels home like she's never felt it before. How could she have ever worried?

"Missed you," he says. She grins at him. "Missed you too."

"Rose Tyler…" he starts. She grins and kisses him.

"…you owe me chips."

"What?"

He grins. "You owe me chips. That's what I was going to say."

"Chips?" She eyes him.

"Chips," he affirms.

"Liar."

"I suppose so. But the universe keeps changing the definition of impossible, so I'm not sure it's my fault."

"The universe hasn't changed anything."

"No," he kisses her. "It hasn't. Rose Tyler…I love you."

Jack wolf-whistles and the moment she's been waiting for her whole life fades away into the rest of it. She wouldn't want it any other way. The three of them here, as it always should have been. As it always will be.

She knows, of course, that for all of them there will never be enough time, but she's been granted more than she thought possible, and that it might just be alright.