A/N: This is the last chapter that doesn't delve into my headcanon. And my headcanon will probably be proven wrong by canon shortly. Shall I post it anyway, or leave this as canon-following? A different story perhaps? Let me know! Thanks.

"Doctor…"

"Mhmm?" he mumbled sleepily, rolling over and tossing an arm across her belly. Rose grunted in pain.

"Doctor!"

His eyes snapped open and he shot upright. "What? What is it? What's wrong?"

"What do you think?" she gasped, clutching her stomach. Pain rolled through her whole body, from her chest to her abdomen. "Call mum – and get the car keys - "

"Right! Car! Mum!" He scrambled out of bed, dashing frantically between the kitchen and sitting room. He popped his head back through the bedroom door. "Wait, which one do you want me to do first?"

"DOCTOR!"

"Right, sorry!"

Unshaven, messy-haired, and pajama-clad, the Doctor barely had time to throw on his jacket and grab the phone and car keys before Rose was yelling at him to hurry up. Five minutes later, a very uncomfortable Rose had been loaded into the car, and they were listening to a hysterical Jackie Tyler on speakerphone as the Doctor drove like he used to drive the TARDIS, quickly and madly. Rose barely remembered the journey from the car to the hospital bed – only that the Doctor kept pace beside her, and he never stopped talking – you're doing great, Rose, it'll be okay, Rose, when the baby pops out I'll catch it, Rose –

Her laugh was strangled by a moan of pain. The midwife nodded at the Doctor and Jackie, each of whom clutched one of Rose's hands. "'Bout time now."

The Doctor had seen quite a lot in his life, but Rose gathered from his behavior that he had never seen humans give birth before. His mouth fell wide open and his brow furrowed deeply in utter astonishment. "It's just so primitive – ouch!" he exclaimed at one point, when Rose squeezed his hand so hard he thought his fingers might break.

But when the midwife finally passed Rose a little bundle of a baby, a tiny red face glowing against a pale pink blanket, the Doctor was speechless. Rose's hair stuck to her sweaty face; she was tired, exhausted, and so beautiful with their daughter in her arms. Rose cooed to her, and so did the Doctor, extending a trembling, scarred hand to touch his daughter's cheek. A flawless miniature of that same hand squirmed free of the blankets and closed around the Doctor's finger, soft and light.

"Oh, Rose," he breathed, staring from her to the baby and back again. He kissed Rose gently, briefly, on the lips; it was hard because neither of them could stop smiling.

"I think she looks like you, Doctor," said Rose. "Don'cha think so, Mum?"

"The eyes a bit, yeah - and the hair! No wonder you had such awful indigestion, when I was pregnant it was the hair that killed me…"

The Doctor and Rose let Jackie ramble on, reveling in the perfect little "pink and yellow thing" in their arms, as the Doctor called her – "She's not a thing, Doctor, she's a baby!" Sure enough, a little tuft of brown hair stuck straight up on her forehead; Rose brushed it into a peak just like her father's.

"Hello, sweetheart," Rose whispered, kissing her forehead. The baby let out a cry, a healthy, lovely cry, and pulled at her mother's hair.

The Doctor cradled his daughter's head in one large hand. When Rose passed him the little bundle to hold, his heart skipped a beat. Such a tiny life, and yet full of so much magnificence, hope, potential; everything that was so wonderful about the human race, everything that he had fallen in love with. His human daughter clenched a fist over his heart. She was calling to him, speaking without words. Already, she was dreaming of things beyond her reach.

"Welcome to the world, dearest," the Doctor murmured. "Dearest Clara. I can't wait to show you the universe."