AN: IMPORTANT: Hello again. Sorry it's been such a long time. I swear I meant to update earlier, but it just sort of escaped my mind. I've been really busy, with the end of the school quarter, and I'm in a musical (Willy Wonka), so I've been uber busy. But the other thing is I have no inspiration. Sure, I have most of this story planned out, but unless I start getting feedback, I might decide to scrap this. Sure it is fun to write, but I have no proof that anyone likes it in the least other than the emails saying that so and so added it to their favorites or alerts (which I really appreciate by the way, so thank you to all who did that). Either way, I went back to reread my previous chapter only to find that the writing is crap, so if you enjoy it, please, please, please review! I really need the feedback. And if any of you have any good ideas for a chapter, add that too. I have a general idea where I'm going with it, but random details would be much appreciated. Also, I finally got a beta (TheFaceOfSacredBob), so there might be changes in the previous chapters, but it won't change much of the actual story line, just itsy bitsy details and stuff. Well anyways, it seems that I am ranting again, so I will just shut up now and continue with the story.

The Doctor was utterly, hopelessly confused. The only other time he had ever seen a fob watch like that before was when he had been human, and when the Master had been human. But why John had one was a complete mystery. It's not like he had ever been a Time Lord to begin with.

"It's a bit complicated, as you can probably tell, but I'll try to explain the best I can. I know you hate not knowing things. Always have, always will." John explained. "I guess the best place to start would have to be Donna. Well, possibly the best place… Well, not the best place at all, but I'm going to start there anyways. So, after you left Rose and me in Pete's World, Donna started going insane. The Human/Time Lord brain would have conflicted with itself to the point of almost burning up Donna. So you wiped her memory, in hopes that the Time Lord part of her brain would go back to sleep. The only problem was, you couldn't make that piece of brain completely dormant, so if she were to remember you, that Time Lord bit would wake up and she would burn. That all is completely true, but there was one thing you could have never predicted.

"The TARDIS is a genius. Well, you already knew that, but you could not have possibly ever guessed that she understood Donna's predicament. The TARDIS understood what had to happen in order for Donna to not burn. Normally She would have just gone with it and let Donna forget, but Donna was different than the other companions that you've had. Donna didn't have the brain of just any old Time Lord, she had the brain of you specifically, because your brain is the only one she could have gotten from the DNA transfer because it was your hand that she touched that I eventually grew out of. Since the TARDIS has a psychic link with you, She also has a psychic link with Donna, because you both have generally the same brain in a way, so She clearly would do everything in Her power to not lose Donna, at least not forever. And that is why, when you wiped Donna's mind and her body was in a weak state, The TARDIS went through each of Donna's cells and removed one homologous pair of chromosomes, specifically the pair that contained all of the Time Lord traits, leaving Donna with 23 pairs of chromosomes. Exactly like a normal human. That means that Donna was completely human by the time she returned home, and if she were to remember, it would no longer hurt her, because she no longer has the brain of a Time Lord. The TARDIS, having no place to store them, released the Time Lord chromosomes into the vortex.

"And that leads us to the subject of Rose and I. You see, as I said before, it took Rose and I ten years to grow our TARDIS. We had to nurture the Coral, specifically establish a telepathic link to it so we could tell it what to do and what to look like. Just as it is with your Psychic link however, The TARDIS can read our thoughts, but we can't read Hers. It's more like a hum telling us what and what not to do. The more important thing is that She can read our minds. She knows that I was a Human/Time Lord Meta-Crisis, and she knows how much I love Rose.

~Flashback~

John and Rose were thrown against the metal grating of the Tardis floor as they had been so many times within the past few years, only this time, they weren't laughing. The room began to shake and jump like a hyperactive child, sending the pair rolling across the floor in a tangle of limbs. The shaking slowed to a dull vibration and John slowly stood up and wobbled to the console, trying to regain his balance, Rose on his tail.

"What happened?" She shouted over the wretched sound of metal grinding up against metal. "I thought you were finally mastering the art of landing without sending both of us flying across the room. If you wanted to be on top of me that badly, you could've just asked." She gave him her famous tongue-in-teeth grin before wincing and clutching her head in pain.

"You okay?" he asked over his shoulder, pressing buttons and pulling levers as he spoke.

"Yeah, just a bad headache from that terrible landing of yours"

John pulled down the monitor attached to the console and stared at it, his eyebrows knit together.

"That wasn't a landing. We're still in the Vortex, but the shields are down. Just hold on a mo while I-"He trailed off with the sound of the shields going back up. "Now, why would the shields be down? I don't recall doing that" Rose walked up behind him and took his hand. "That didn't feel like a crash landing, it felt like-"he checked the scanner again. "Remember when we first came across our universe on accident? Well… it seems that we've somehow accidentally landed back on our original universe…"

"When Rose and I fell into this universe, our TARDIS was able to stabilize itself soon enough that it didn't completely die and fall out of the new vortex. However, when it was stabilizing, the shields around it were down, because the energy was focused elsewhere. The walls became weak, and lots of vortex energy seeped through. Luckily we didn't end up running into another you or something worse, but one thing did get through. The Chromosomes that were taken from Donna. They had nowhere to go, so naturally, they went back to the place they originally came from, me. Of course, my body is strong enough that the chromosomes can't just work their way into each individual cell in me. That would be impossible. So our TARDIS used a tiny bit of energy to direct them to the fob watch that resides in our TARDIS. If I were to open the watch, however, there would be nothing stopping the chromosomes from changing me into a full Time Lord, because that bit of energy used to guide them to the watch combined with the vortex somehow gave the watch the ability to change my biology when opened.

"But I couldn't open it. I didn't want to, because of Rose. She was human. If I were to become a Time Lord again, I would stop aging, and she would continue. That meant that she couldn't hold up her promise of forever. Of course I couldn't open the watch. I love her too much. So I didn't tell her about it, hid it from her. I honestly would have thrown the watch out into the vortex if not for the fact that tour TARDIS hummed a sort of approval every time I touched the watch, like She wanted me to open it. Then Rose started getting sick, and the issue of the watch moved to the back of my mind.

"Luckily, our ship had crashed in London, 3028, so we had access to some advanced hospitals, but no place could find anything wrong with her. She had a weak pulse, and said that her brain seemed condensed and cramped, kind of like when Cassandra had used the Psychograft on her when you two visited New Earth. I flew all across this universe, trying to find a way to make her feel better, but she kept getting worse. Soon it got to the point where she started saying that her head was burning. That reminded me of something she had said so long ago, and pretty soon I had a theory forming in my head, a theory that kept becoming more plausible with everything that happened to my poor Rose.

"I remembered back when she had looked into the vortex to destroy the Daleks and save you. Her head started burning from all the raw power, so you took it out if her. But what if you only took most of it out, and left a few Huon particles in her. They remained dormant and harmless, that is, until our TARDIS fell into this universe. What if, when the protection from the vortex was weak, and the vortex seemed in through the walls, reactivating those dormant particles, but this time, they developed slowly, changing her biology bit by bit. If my hypothesis was correct, Rose was slowly becoming a Time Lady due to prolonged exposure to the 'vortex' inside of her.

"Every time I thought of this, the TARDIS hummed a sort of approval. It scared me. If Rose's biology were to change, that would be excruciatingly painful. That and I would no longer be able to give her forever. And that is when I remembered the watch. I didn't want to open it, for fear that I was wrong. One day I went out to get some new things to make Rose more comfortable, but I ran into a couple of aliens. When I got back to the TARDIS, 3 days later, Rose was curled up in a ball in the console room, sobbing. I went over to her, asking what was wrong, a bit surprised to find that her pulse was strong and steady, and her skin a bit cooler to the touch.

"In response, she laid both of my hands on her chest. I immediately knew what was wrong. My theory was correct. The particles had built up enough that it was suddenly too much for her human body to handle. Her biology had changed completely, leaving her with two hearts. She choked out how she was so sorry, and she would stay with me, no matter how old I got. All I could do was grin. I pulled out the fob watch and explained it to her. I was so happy. We now quite literally had forever. I told her to go rest as I opened it, because I didn't want her to see me in pain, but she wouldn't leave me. I opened the watch, and the whole time I changed, couldn't feel the pain because I was so overcome by the thought of spending forever with her.

"After many days of rest for both of us, we set out. When I had become a Time Lord again, I was able to look into your mind. After 100 years of not needing psychic barriers, you seem to have lost them. That's how I knew about the Time Lords, and of course knew you needed help. I was able to pinpoint your location, and bring back almost all the people that could help us defeat them. And then I figured out about Donna thanks to the watch and our TARDIS and here we are"