A/N: Post-ep for The Green Death, written for the Whoniverse 1000 challenge on LJ.

When he gets back to UNIT HQ from Llanfairfach, the first thing the Doctor does is take the TARDIS twenty years into the future — just to make sure.

Jo isn't easy to locate, but he finds her eventually. Or rather, she finds him; he is checking Dinas Powys when she waves to him from the opposite side of the street. He barely has time to greet her before she dashes across the road and hugs him, saying "Doctor, it's so good to see you again!"

They go back to her house, on the edges of town; she makes tea and biscuits "for old times' sake". He notices that there's no one else at home.

As their tea cools on the kitchen table she tells him about everything that's happened to her in twenty years: the expeditions to the Amazon (wonderful, just wonderful, they were just so full of life, and Doctor, you wouldn't believe what happened that time their canoe got stuck in the middle of the river), the degree in botany (even without those A-levels), the activist life (rewarding, for the most part, and the mines did close eventually), the divorce (amicable; she still worked with Cliff sometimes), the start of her own career. She smiles and chatters just like she used to, like it really has been just a few hours since he bid her goodbye.

The Doctor is used to nonlinear time; he is used to events happening before their causes, and to watching the birth and death of worlds all in a single relative minute. But she has spent so much time living with him in his shifting chronology that to suddenly skip ahead of her feels somehow like abandoning her.

She asks him how things have been for him since he left; she seems puzzled when he says it's been only hours. "You could have just come back the next day," she says. "Why wait all this time?"

"I had to make sure you'd be all right, Jo." He places one hand on her cheek, and smiles to lighten the mood. "I can't trust just anyone with you, you know."

She laughs, but her face falls, just a little, as she rests her hand on his. "I didn't leave you just for him, Doctor. If that's what you're so worried about."

"Oh?"

Jo looks down at the table, and her smile is a bit fainter now. "All those adventures, and all those places we went — and I wouldn't trade them for anything, Doctor, believe me. It's just that…we never went back."

"What do you mean? Was there somewhere you wanted to go back to, something else you wanted to see? We could still do it."

"No, no, that's not it. I mean, we never went back anywhere. We never stayed. We never made sure that everything really would be all right. And, well, that's what I've been doing here. The past twenty years, I've been staying." She looks back up at him, and he's suddenly and sharply aware of all those unseen years between them. "You said you couldn't trust anyone with me. D'you trust me with me?"

Staying. Not abandoned. Not left behind. "Yes. Yes, I rather think I do."

They spend the rest of the day reminiscing about the Axons and Daleks and Sea Devils and Draconia and Peladon (he really should go back and check that one, he thinks); it's near midnight before she checks the time and mentions all the work she's got to do in the morning. They both step outside to say their goodbyes and she kisses him, just once, as they stand in the night air.

"Do come back and visit anytime," she says. "And I do mean anytime, Doctor; I'd like to remember you being here at least once before I shut this door."

"I'll make it my first stop, Jo."

"Goodbye, then! 'Till the next time — or the last time — or something!"

And the Doctor walks off, back to his TARDIS, to let the present take its course.