Series: Second in my 'Before, After and In-Between' series. The series is as follows:

Kissing Complete Strangers and Clinging On For Life

***Cannon Fire

Never Too Late To Save Herself

Posing For Pictures As the World Explodes

Before She Sleeps

Knowing Too Much to Stay

The Dimension Cannon had clearly projected her into the line of what appeared to be actual cannon fire. Not the sort of cannons she'd ever seen in any of those pirate films that seemed more disposed towards seaborne romantic stereotypes than criminals with poor hygiene and drinking problems, but still recognisable as such. Rose wondered what idiot had come up with laser cannons, and why it was that she was unlucky enough to have to encounter them.

Rose didn't really know why she was at all surprised. The Cannon existed to seek out the Doctor, and the Doctor seemed to exist to seek out trouble. What better place for him to make a proper nuisance of himself than right in the midst of active warfare?

Well, Rose could think of a lot of 'better' places, actually. There were certainly many places where she wouldn't have been so worried that the buildings around her that formed the backbone of the whole stinking metropolis of a battlefield housed innocent children seeking out the only possible shelter from death (the Blitz aside, who exactly had decided that a major city made for an acceptable fighting ground?). Or, certainly, there were places where there wasn't a bloody stump of a leg waiting mere feet away from where the Dimension Cannon had deposited her into this timeline. Rose's stomach lurched uncomfortably at the sight of it, but she somehow managed to keep her cool, as well as her lunch.

She'd seen a lot of blood and death and agony before the Dimension Cannon had ever started working, and even more since then. She knew she was strong enough to get through this sort of thing yet again.

Though perhaps it wouldn't matter how strong her spirit (or her stomach) was if she managed to get herself blown up by some stray enemy attack, which seemed to be a bit too likely at that moment. Everything was a little too close, too loud, and too almost inconceivably violent for her liking. She really had to get out of there.

First, however, she had convince her sluggish body to move fast enough to avoid those bolts of blue that lit up all of her surroundings.

Someone else seemed to have had exactly the same thought. Rose was knocked to the ground and well out of the way just a moment after the strange 'gunfire' commenced. She screamed for a moment at the painful impact of a bulky and obviously masculine body against hers, but mostly she was merely surprised by it. She wasn't afraid of this man; at least, not any more so than she was of the nameless, faceless masses that hid out there among the buildings calling themselves 'armies'. Instead, she found herself feeling mostly thankful for his intervention.

She'd been just a bit too shocked to move by herself in time, she had to admit. If not for him, she might well have died. There were a lot of things that she was willing to give up for this quest to stop the stars from going out, but her life? She thought that that was something that she would really have to insist upon holding onto until, at the very least, she finally managed to find the right Doctor in the right time. She'd come way too far to fail to find him now. No war that wasn't even anything to do with her was going to prevent that. Not if she had anything to say about it.

Rose looked up at her rescuer, ready to gush her thanks for the life-saving measures. Instead of being able to say the words, though, she froze.

Even in the barely sufficient light shining from the still-occupied houses around her, she'd know that face anywhere. Hell, she would have been tempted to say that she'd recognise him even if it was pitch black, if that wouldn't have constituted a ridiculous cliché.

"You!" the Doctor exclaimed, obviously also recognising her despite the darkness. In fact, he looked supremely put-out by the very sight of her. Rose didn't think that was fair. "Didn't you cause enough trouble last time?"

Right. She tried to get a grip on herself. She reminded herself that she'd expected to find him here, though she hadn't quite anticipated it being him, exactly. He was clearly not her Doctor yet. However, just as clearly, this was the Doctor as he was sometime after their impromptu meeting in Paris.

He knew her. He just didn't know her yet.

"Me?" Rose finally said, finding her voice once more. "Who was drivin' the TARDIS, then? Pretty sure I wasn't the one who parked us on Earth's most famous sinkin' ship at the worst possible moment. Or the one who took four tries after that to hit twenty-first century Earth so I could be dropped off, come to that."

"I wouldn't have been aiming for twenty-first century Earth in the first place if it hadn't been for you," the Doctor said, acting as if he'd just somehow won the argument with that line. Rose, personally, wasn't impressed. But then, maybe that was because she was well and truly aware that his terrible driving skills weren't exactly a one-off.

"Yeah, well, you can aim yourself right back in the other direction, then," Rose huffed. "Wasn't lookin' for you, anyways."

"No?" the Doctor asked, sounding unconvinced. "So it's just coincidence, then, that some girl –"

"Woman, thanks," she corrected testily.

"Girl," the Doctor insisted pointedly, "who's tracked me down before, and clearly already knows me from my supposed future, just happens to end up in this exact point in space and time, right where I am? You know, I have to say, if you were going to stalk me through time and space, you might've chosen a better rendezvous point than the Third Great Battle of Warsaw."

"Stalk you," Rose said, flushing with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. "You wish. I don't even know where or when the hell we are. How could I have known you were here?"

It was partly a lie, of course, since she'd known, or at least hoped, that a Doctor would be nearby. Still, he didn't have to know that. In fact, she'd prefer he never found out. Had the first Doctor she'd met always been so damned... cocky? And annoying?

And still somehow completely irresistible despite (or maybe because of) all that?

"You ended up here without even knowing what you were stepping into?" the Doctor asked, looking incredulous.

Rose shrugged. "What can I say? I like surprises," she said.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "You must be the most –"

A cluster of bullets fired through the air uncomfortably close to them. The Doctor pulled her to the ground and, seemingly instinctively, attempted to cover her body with his to protect her from the worst of the danger.

When the weaponry attack died off (or was redirected towards some other hapless victims, more likely), Rose found that she could finally hear her own loud breathing that warmed the cheek barely inches from her mouth. The sound of explosions in the background didn't exactly fade into nothingness – how could they, when she was well aware that each boom probably signified the deaths of countless soldiers and bystanders – but she was still strangely able to focus on what was right in front of her.

She was covered in what felt like mud (but which, judging by the fact that she was actually lying on a bitumen road, was clearly something even less pleasant, the nature of which Rose didn't want to even begin thinking too closely about) and she was frankly pretty damn freezing in this maelstrom of pounding rain. All-in-all, though, she'd certainly been less comfortable than she was right now, pressed up against the Doctor's warm body (not quite as warm as a human's, granted, but no less welcoming for that).

It was familiar. After all of her efforts searching for the Doctor, and for a solution to the problems of the alternate world she'd never wanted to be a part of, she was certain that she needed a dose of something identifiable. It was somehow essential, even though she knew it couldn't last.

The last time she'd been this close to him, they'd been attached at the lips. She wondered whether he'd push her away if she asked for a repeat.

An explosion nearby pelted small bits of debris onto them, reminding them just how close they were to the potentially fatal danger.

"Come on, you mad woman," the Doctor growled, pulling her up only partway off the ground, so that they were running hunched over so as to attract the least possible amount of 'enemy' attention. "This is no place for you."

"Or for you," Rose insisted stubbornly. Whatever the Doctor might've said about his past of fire and violence and warfare, she thought that he was still anything but a true soldier. She couldn't imagine him willingly taking part in this... this massacre that was playing out all around them. The sound of the echoing screams that reached her ears had to chill his blood as surely as it did hers, or else he was a very different man than the one she remembered meeting in the Henrik's basement the day her life had changed.

She didn't think that that could be true. Not really. There was a lot she never knew about him, of course, but something like that couldn't just be hidden away from someone who'd spent as much time with him as she had. Darkness like that left scars on a person of a type that couldn't be just wiped away by a quirk of regeneration.

No, she was certain that he must hate the very concept of this time and place as much as she did. He had to.

"Honestly," the Doctor griped. They scrambled their way beyond what looked like a glass wall, but which Rose imagined must be some sort of futuristic material that was being used as a shield. "Only you could plonk yourself in the middle of World War Five without so much as an escape plan in your arsenal."

"What makes you say that?" Rose asked through her near breathless panting. "You don't even know me."

"I think that I'm getting to, unfortunately," the Doctor said with a glare. "I definitely know your type – couldn't keep out of trouble if your life depended on it. Which, by the way, right here and now, it really does. So no running off!"

"All right!" Rose protested, annoyance colouring her tone. "Never said I was gonna, did I?"

The Doctor gave her a look that clearly pronounced how he thought he could see right through her.

Well, yeah, all right. She did need to get away from here so that she could activate the Dimension Cannon without him (or anyone else, for that matter) seeing her disappear seemingly into thin air. But that just really wasn't the point. At all.

"You know," Rose said thoughtfully, quietly, "there was this one time where you actually mentioned that you'd lived through World War Five. D'you think you did that on purpose, to make sure I ended up here?"

"Oi, you can't tell me anything like that!" the Doctor protested, looking startled at the prospect. "You're subverting the laws of time. The fabric of reality could break apart!"

Rose rolled her eyes. "Yeah. Sure, Except, well, you also mentioned the Titanic to me. And Paris, I'm pretty sure. So who exactly's off breakin' the laws, exactly? Oh, I think that'd be you! And anyways, I've run into enough paradoxes and such by now that I'm pretty sure I have a good idea what I can and can't say."

"I'm not hearing this," the Doctor muttered. "I really can't know this."

"It's fine," Rose said. "I'm not exactly an amateur, here. Just because you think that anyone who's not a Time Lord is useless at time travel –"

"They are!" the Doctor insisted. "We were made for it. We've got senses that humans couldn't even dream of that prevent us from making colossal mistakes."

"Like landing on the Titanic in 1912 instead of in London 2007, say?" Rose suggested.

The Doctor looked speechless. Rose thought it was a very good look on him, actually.

"That's... That's not..."

Rose raised her eyebrows at him expectantly.

He cursed (obviously it was meant to be under his breath, but Rose could hear the words loud and clear regardless). Rose merely laughed, which seemed to make him even more irritated.

"Quiet, you," he said petulantly.

Winner, Rose declared herself silently.

"So," Rose said purposefully, "there's a battle out there and you're more interested in defendin' your Time-Lordly skills. Not your usual approach, from what I've seen."

The Doctor scowled. "I was saving you from certain death, if you remember. Not that I ever get any thanks for that."

"D'you need thanks?" Rose asked.

The Doctor spent a moment considering her. "S'pose not," he eventually concluded. "It'd still be nice sometimes, though, don't you think?"

Rose stepped forward and kissed him. Much like the last time she'd done so, he didn't seem to be particularly averse to her advances. His words may have said 'no', but the rest of the activities his lips seemed happy to get up to said a resounding 'yes'.

Despite the respiratory bypass that Rose was well-aware he could've relied on, he seemed just as breathless as she was by the time they separated.

"Thanks," she breathed.

He seemed to have to take a moment. When he'd pulled himself together enough to remember what in the universe they'd been talking about before, he simply grinned. "Should save your life more often, obviously."

Rose smiled softly in response. "Don't worry. You'll have your chance."

"Will I now?" the Doctor said. He was silent for a moment. "What are you to me?" the Doctor asked suddenly, forcefully, and even a little desperately. "When I meet you again..."

Rose shook her head. "I don't know. It might be me – this me, I mean – that you meet again the next time. Or it might be a me that doesn't have any clue who this crazy alien bloke I've just met is. We'll have to see, won't we?"

"But in your past –"

"I thought you didn't want me to tell you about your future," Rose reminded him.

The Doctor was silent for a moment. "No. Right," he said. "That would be bad." He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as her.

"I'll tell you this much," Rose said, taking pity on him. "It's definitely something to look forward to."

He didn't verbally respond to that, but Rose saw his reaction just as clearly as if it had been voiced. 'Something to look forward to' was something he'd long since given up on. However centred he'd managed to appear during their last meeting, and regardless of the fact that he'd seemed barely phased by a stranger attacking him with her lips, that was clearly something of a ruse when it came right down to it.

This was still very much the Doctor in the days just after the Time War and the loss of his people. This was the Doctor who was patently looking for something to live for, even if he'd never admit as much. She couldn't stay with him – he had another Rose Tyler to meet one day, after all, some time in his hopefully not-too-distant future – but maybe she could still give him this much.

Maybe she could remind him that there was something to be getting on with in the meantime.

"So what're you here for?" Rose asked. "You plannin' to stop the war, or somethin'?"

The Doctor shook his head, regret making him slump over a lot more than Rose would've liked to see from him. "No. I'm only here for one man. A friend, I suppose, of days long since passed. This war has to rage another five whole years," he said, resigned.

"It has to," Rose repeated. It wasn't a question, but rather something of a benediction.

She could see clearly enough from the regret etched into his face that there was nothing he could do to prevent the bloodshed of this war without rending the fabric of reality itself into shreds. If there was anything to be done, he'd do it. That much was apparent.

It heartened her, she had to admit. This was definitely the man she'd met that first time after all. Not that she'd doubted him, exactly, but still...

Time was fluid. He was the one who'd taught her that, and it had certainly been proven to her time and again both during and after the time she'd spent travelling by his side. She couldn't be sure what to expect. She couldn't even be entirely sure that this was her Doctor rather than some parallel knock-off, except for that resounding sense that she knew this man.

Whether she knew him or not, though, he wasn't who she was looking for. He wasn't that person yet, at least. And as much as she might like to, that meant she couldn't stay with him, even if it meant she could help him through the decision not to step in and solve something that he wished he could change but really shouldn't.

Something of her need to move on seemed to show in her face.

The Doctor looked as if he was going to protest, but then his face set into a stony expression. "Fine," he bit out. "You go right back out there and get blown up by a sonic disruptor shell. See if I care."

Rose grinned. "You're not foolin' me, Doctor."

The Doctor merely favoured her with a particularly dour expression, which didn't do anything to make her grin abate in the slightest.

"See you soon," she promised. "One way or another."

"Something to look forward to," the Doctor repeated, not sounding as if he quite believed the idea of it.

"Yeah," Rose agreed seriously.

She thought that maybe they both needed that.

The next part of the series is 'Never Too Late To Save Herself'.