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A blue box crashes in the backyard of a young Amelia Pond, and it’s not just the Raggedy Doctor who comes tumbling out.
Forming from the surge of regenerative energy colliding with the heart of the TARDIS emerges a Bad Wolf, returning home, and very thoroughly confused.
Time moves differently over in Pete’s World and it’s moved on without Rose Tyler.
As everyone she loved grew older, she did not grow with them.
Her beautiful youth soon became a curse and even her beloved Doctor passed, because his body did not have the longevity a full Time Lord would have.
And so she was alone, wandering the world like a ghost, unable to stay for long and make connections that would inevitably learn of her inhuman lifespan.
Being alone is lonely, she quickly realizes.
Being alone makes her truly understand why the Doctor took her in all those years ago, seeing a young shop assistant and taking her along his fantastical adventures.
Because even with the entire universe at your fingertips, it’s no fun to travel it alone.
Rose spent countless years trying to find a way to return to her old universe. She told herself it was because there’s nothing left for her here, and that if she were to crack time travel, she would be risking the stability of this universe’s unruptured timeline.
But really, she’s selfish. She’s selfish and lonely and holding out a last hope that somewhere, sometime, The Doctor is waiting for her.
It’s a summer afternoon sometime in the 2130s. Rose has trouble keeping track of the time, especially now that she’s amongst the stars.
Time moves differently in the stars, too. Time is something she feels in the weariness of her bones and the fog that distorts her memories as the seconds, minutes, moments pass by too slow.
She’s on a planet in a galaxy far far away from Earth. She chuckles to herself at the joke. She makes it often and it’s gotten old but it still gets a tired huff out of her.
She’s drinking down a drink that would probably turn a normal human’s liver into mush but is one of the few substances in this galaxy that doesn’t get immediately burnt out by the Bad Wolf.
And for those precious hours with just a slight buzz that never quite meets intoxication, she tries to forget.
When she feels a tug in her gut, she assumes it’s nausea, but as a familiar whir pounds in her ears, pulling at her heart with painful nostalgia, she closes her eyes and allows herself to fall to what she believes is a cruel dream.
Instead, she is thrown from 500 meters in the air into a stranger’s garden and she starts to consider if someone laced her drink.
She lets out a pained groan, though not as pained as she should be, and rolls over.
Her heart stutters at the sight.
The TARDIS, battered and on her side with steam billowing our of her, lies in front of Rose.
Rose stumbles to the blue beauty and presses a palm to her shell, gasping as their connection pulses, choking and overwhelming and so right.
She is suddenly blinded by a light pointed into her eyes.
Blinking away the spots that mix with her already blurred vision, she meets the owlish gaze of a little girl.
The TARDIS’s doors open with a harsh bang and a rope shoots from her steamy interior, latching onto its nearest anchor.
Rose doesn’t recognize the face who pops out, but something in her knows.
She knows he hasn’t seen her quite yet, probably too doped up on regenerative energy. At least he’s not bedbound and seeping shots of gold like he did the first time around with her.
“Every regeneration is different,” he had once told her. “Not just the looks but the personality, the preferences.”
“Does that mean that one day you could change and hate me?” she had asked.
And he paused, eyes boring into her in a way that made her feel too seen. “No,” he says. “I don’t think there’s anything in the universe that could ever make me hate you.”
She hopes that’s still true.
She watches the man she has loved for so long with bated breath. She has fantasized about their reunion for over a century, about what he would say when he saw her again.
“Can I have an apple?”
That is not what she expected him to say.
.-~*~-.
This Doctor is very hungry.
His hunger is insatiable and his cravings are also odd.
He’s a yapper, just like she remembers him being, but in a different way he had been.
He hasn’t acknowledged her yet, and that hurts a little bit.
No. Not a little bit. A lot.
It’s more than a sting. It’s a devastation that he gave her one spare glance before not looking at her again, like she’s not even there.
No smile. No recognition. Nothing.
Just a glance and his attention dedicated to this little girl who feeds him whatever she can from her cupboards and fridge.
His exuberant eccentricity warms Rose’s heart, the way he almost bounces off the walls with how much energy he’s got.
He makes Amelia laugh and he makes Rose laugh too, even though it also hurts.
He’s finally been satisfied by a frankly disgusting combination of fish fingers and custard, Rose enjoying them separately as well as the discarded dishes he didn’t deem worthy enough, relishing in the taste of food that tastes like home.
“Can I have some?” Amelia asks, poking at Rose’s arm with a scrunched nose. “His probably taste fishy.”
Rose laughs. “Of course. You’re gonna have to get your own spoon.”
Amelia beams as she hops out of her seat and runs to the cutlery drawer.
Rose turns back to the Doctor and is frozen at his petrified expression.
His face has gone pale, eyes wide and teary, spoon dropped from his now trembling hand.
“Doctor, what’s wrong?” Rose asks.
“Amelia!” he calls.
Amelia’s head whips around, brows furrowed. “What?”
“You… you can see her?”
“Of course I can,” Amelia says. “She’s been here the whole time.”
The Doctor’s hand covers his mouth, head shaking as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
“Doctor,” Rose says. “What’s wrong?” Rose presses the back of her hand to his forehead and he flinches at her touch. “You’re burning up.” She snorts. “Of course you are. You should lie down.”
“Rose?” he whispers, voice cracking on the singular syllable.
She smiles confused. “Doctor?”
“Rose,” he repeats. “You’re here.” His hands cup her cheeks, staring at her like she’s a precious miracle but also a bomb waiting to go off. “How— no. You’re— you can’t be. How—?”
“I know as much as you do.”
“I… we have to get you home—”
“No!” The word rips out of her, like a guttural, visceral instinct.
“Rose,” he says. “You’ve got a whole universe waiting for you. Your family—”
“Is dead.”
He stills. “No. No. What… what happened?”
Her lips curl into a bitter smile. “Time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, Doctor. Longer than you know.”
His shaky hands trace along her temple. “Your eyes. They’re so old. But you’re…”
“A smokin’ hot 19 year old?”
His hand drops as if he were burnt. His eyes are still teary, but filled with sadness. “What happened to you?”
Her smile grows sad too. “Time.”
“How long—”
“Long enough.”
“Rose.” He shakes his head. “You were supposed to get a life.”
“I did,” Rose says. “We were happy, me and him. But he was too human, and I… wasn’t.”
A quiet gasp escapes his lips. “The Time Vortex. It’s still in you.”
“It never left,” she says. “And it never will.”
“I thought I saved you.”
“You did, Doctor, you did. But this isn’t something you need to save me from. She is part of me as much as I am a part of her. She is as much a protector as a tether but I am just a joint in the infinite branches of time.”
“You guys talk funny.”
Rose and the Doctor’s heads snap to face Amelia who has now eaten Rose’s entire bowl of custard.
“You’re going to get a tummy ache,” Rose says.
“And it will be worth it,” Amelia says, tipping her head up defiantly. She then ducks her head into the bowl to lick the sides, getting some on her nose. Rose wipes it away with a napkin and Amelia tries to squirm away. “You’re just like my mum.” She pauses, her mood growing somber.
“My mum used to lick her hand to get things off my face,” Rose says, recognizing the grief in Amelia’s eyes. “It was absolutely embarrassing. Did it until the day she died.”
Amelia’s eyes go wide. “Your mum died too?”
“A long time ago,” Rose says with a nod. “And I miss her every day.”
“It doesn’t go away? I won’t stop missing her?”
“No,” Rose says. “But, it won’t always be bad because she lives on in you. She lives on in your memories, but sometimes you’ll lose those too, so she lives on in the shade of her favorite color that brights up the world and the smell of her perfume and everything that makes it up and in everything she did that made you happy that’ll make you happy again.” Rose takes her hands in hers. “Sometimes it’s hard to be happy. Sometimes it feels like you’re never gonna be happy like that ever again.” Rose’s eyes drift to the Doctor who stares at her with love so strong it’s palpable. “But you’ll be happy again. And you’ll find other things that will make you happy in a new way.”
Before she can process what’s happening, Amelia is barreling into her, clinging around her middle and crying into her stomach.
Rose just tucks her in close, petting through her ginger curls and trying not to cry too at the kind touch that she had almost forgotten the feeling of.
Rose feels two arms wrap around her from behind, clinging on her just like Amelia is, dampening her shirt with his tears as he presses almost imperceptible kisses to her shoulder. The feeling of his racing two hearts against her back are foreign and nearly forgotten and she leans into him as much as she can while she’s keeping Amelia close.
“I wish you were my mum,” Amelia mumbles. Rose stiffens at her words. “I wish you could be my mum instead of my Aunt Sharon. She doesn’t care about me like you do.”
Rose isn’t stupid enough to dispute that. She doesn’t doubt it.
“She won’t listen to me about the crack in the wall. She thinks I’m mad.”
Rose pulls away, wiping away her tears with her thumb. “Well, I don’t think you’re mad and I’m here to listen.”
Amelia’s eyes grow serious. “Follow me.”
She takes Rose and the Doctor to the crack and Rose watches as the Doctor’s emotions are compartmentalized and the inquisitive curiosity takes over.
But as they approach the crack, Rose’s head throbs, overlapping noise and feeling and all encompassing everything overwhelms every one of her senses. Just a few steps away and Rose’s knees buckle beneath her, the Doctor quickly catching her and clutching to her like she’s going to disappear if he lets go.
“Rose!”
Rose feels like she’s back on that Dalek ship, the Time Vortex tearing apart her fragile human mind with the knowledge and sight and power of time and space. It feels like she is being stripped and reformed atom by atom. It feels like she is hurtling through now and before and after and everywhere in between.
Her eyes snap open, burning a blinding gold, her voice coming out echoed and far away.
“Prisoner Zero has escaped.”
And with that she goes limp in the Doctor’s arms.
.-~*~-.
Panic shoots through the Doctor.
It’s been less than an hour reunited with Rose and he’s already close to losing her.
“What’s wrong with her?!” Amelia asks, rushing to Rose’s side. She shakes her to no avail. “Wake up! You have to wake up!”
“Amelia,” the Doctor says, voice firm but not quite a shout. “I have to take Rose back to the TARDIS, my blue box out there, to help her. She’s not just a blue box that falls from the sky. She’s a time machine.”
“A time machine? Are you taking her to the future? To a future doctor?”
“My time machine is the doctor. Or, well, I’m the Doctor. But the TARDIS is the only one who has what can help Rose.”
“Like… medicine?”
“Just like medicine.” A medicine that can incinerate any other human, but medicine nonetheless. “But you stay right here— no. You go downstairs, far away from that crack in the wall, and stay there until I come back.”
“I can help!”
“I’m sure you can, but the way Rose needs help might hurt you, and I can’t let you get hurt.” The Doctor pries a hand away from Rose to cup Amelia’s cheek in his palm. “We’ll be right back.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” he says with a smile. He points his sonic screwdriver at the crack and a voice bellows from behind, repeating the haunting words that had just fallen from Rose’s lips. Amelia screams, cowering behind the Doctor and Rose as the crack grows wider, flooding the room with light.
But as quickly as the crack had opened, it snapped closed.
“Wait for us by the door,” the Doctor says. “We’ll be back before you can even notice we’ll be gone.”
“And Rose will be okay?”
The Doctor takes in a shuddering breath. “I’m going to do everything I can to help her.” The Doctor sweeps Rose into his arms, running to the TARDIS as she lies limp in his hold. He turns to Amelia once more. “We’ll be right back.”
The TARDIS’s cloister bell tolls and the Doctor doesn’t know if it’s because she’s been hurt by the fall or if it’s because Rose is in danger. Probably both.
He jumps through the top, bracing himself from the drop, and nearly drops Rose from his instinct to shield his eyes as the TARDIS opens up her core and links with Rose, the two of them feeding and fueling each other like an astonishing symbiosis.
The engines that had begun to phase cool and settle from just from their connection to Rose.
Rose is fully engulfed in the light of the Time Cortex before the burst of blinding energy suddenly disappears.
Rose’s eyes open, glowing gold once again, and the ominous words spill from her lips once again, echoing and reverberating against the TARDIS walls.
“Prisoner Zero is HERE.”
With a gust of power, Rose leaps out of the doors to Amelia’s house.
After a blink to comprehend what just happened, the Doctor bounds after Rose.
He pushes past the already open door and tenses, readying himself to fight when he sees Rose collapsed on the ground, lying limp though thankfully still breathing.
A woman who is in the midst of pulling on a police uniform stands above Rose with a cricket bat.
At the sound of his footsteps, the policewoman turns to face him with panic, holding her cricket bat defensively. Her eyes widen at the sight of him.
“What have you done to Amelia?” the Doctor says, voice low and dangerous.
“Amelia… Amelia hasn’t lived here for a long time,” she says, voice trembling.
The Doctor’s hearts drop. “No. No. We… we promised. We told her we’d be right back.” He looks at her with devastation. “What happened to Amelia Pond?”
“Everyone thought she was mad. Blue phoneboxes that fell from the sky. Cracks in the wall that spoke. Women with glowing golden eyes.”
“She wasn’t mad. Amelia wasn’t crazy.”
“Well, that’s what everyone told her.”
The Doctor shakes his head, hearts breaking with every word. “She wasn’t,” he repeats. “No, I… Amelia can wait a little longer. This can’t.” He looks back to the policewoman. “I need to speak to whoever lives in this house right now.”
She shifts uncomfortably. “I live here.”
The Doctor frowns. “But you’re the police.”
“Yes,” she says. “Police don’t just live in the police station.”
“How many rooms?”
She freezes, clearly not expecting that question. “I’m sorry, what?”
“On this floor,” the Doctor says. “How many rooms on this floor? Count them for me now.”
She furrows her brows in a way that feels painfully familiar. “Why?”
“Because it will change your life.”
The Doctor watches as emotion flashes through her eyes, too fast to clearly identify, especially to his newly regenerated brain to catch.
“Five,” she simply, before pointing out the five rooms as she counts them.
“Six,” the Doctor corrects direly.
“Six?” she repeats with confused trepidation.
“Look.”
The confusion morphs, the terror ingrained so deep in her subconscious that the Doctor bets she wouldn’t be able to acknowledge even if she tried. “Look where?”
“Exactly where you don’t want to look,” the Doctor says. “Where you never want to look. The corner of your eye. Look behind you.”
She turns around and the door appears, or at least, appears for her. “That’s not possible. How’s that possible?”
“A perception filter.”
They both jump at the sound of Rose’s voice, still distorted from the temporal power slowly draining from her.
“That’s a whole room. A whole room I’ve never even noticed.”
“It doesn’t want you to notice,” Rose says. “Something came to hide here, a long time ago, and it’s still hiding.”
The policewoman takes a step towards the room, the curiosity almost magnetic, and Rose grabs her shoulder to hold her back.
“Rose,” the Doctor says warningly.
Rose doesn’t listen, though. She just pushed past the stunned policewoman who watches as Rose pokes her head into the room which tilts as she looks as she looks around.
The door tries to slam closed but Rose catches it with her palm, the impact making a resounding thud that sounds painful but Rose shows no reaction to it.
Something makes Rose jump and the policewoman rushes to steady her but falls past her, getting trapped into the room.
She bangs against the door from the other side. “Rose! Doctor! Help!”
“Just don’t look,” the Doctor says, scrambling to find a way to open the door. “Don’t try to see it. If it knows you’ve seen it, it will kill you. Don’t look at it. Do not look.”
The Doctor is pointing the sonic screwdriver at the handle to no avail when he hears a shrill scream.
“Is there anything—?” the Doctor turns to Rose, wracking his brain for a solution, but stops when he sees the way Rose steadies herself against the wall, leaning her weight to keep herself upright. “Rose—”
“Help her,” Rose grits out. “Not me.”
And though it goes against every instinct the Doctor has in that moment, he turns to the door, ready to break it down, when it flies open, knocking him into the wall as the woman runs out, pale and terrified.
She immediately barrels into the Doctor, clinging to him as she looks behind her.
“You know my name,” the Doctor says.
“What?” she says, glancing at him but keeping her eyes glued on the door.
“You know my name,” the Doctor repeats. “And Rose. You know us. How?”
She flinches away from him, creating as much distance as she can between them in the little hallway until her back hits the wall. “You must’ve misheard.”
“Amelia.” The name falls from Rose’s lips in a heartbroken whisper.
And with just one word, she crumples. “You’re late.”
The realization hits the Doctor as if a planet has been hurdled into his gut, knocking the breath out of his pulmonary tubes. “Amelia?” the Doctor breathes.
“You said you would be right back,” she says, voice breaking on the words. “And I waited. You told me to wait so I waited. I waited for years and years and years but you didn’t come. So I… I stopped waiting.” Her face hardens, the sadness in her eyes evident but locked away.
“We need to go,” Rose says.
Amelia’s head snaps to her, hurt and anger spreading through her future. “You’re going—?!”
“We need to go,” Rose says. “That includes you, Amelia.”
“It’s Amy,” she snaps automatically. “No one calls me Amelia except…” she stops, looking between the two of them. “They always called me Amelia. The counselors and therapists and psychiatrists, they all called me Amelia and they thought they knew me but they didn’t. It wasn’t right when they said it. It wasn’t…” you, she doesn’t say.
A bright light emits from behind the door.
“What’s that?” Amelia — Amy — asks. “What’s it doing?”
“I don’t know,” the Doctor says.
The door falls to the floor, revealing a workman and his dog.
Amy blinks at it, wide eyed. “But it’s just—”
“No, it isn’t,” the Doctor says, blocking Amy from the creature, Rose following in his stride and standing shoulder to shoulder with him. “Look at the faces.”
The creature disguised as a man barks.
“What?” Amy gapes. “I’m sorry, but what?”
“It’s all one creature,” the Doctor says. “One creature disguised as two.”
“The question is,” Rose says. “Is it a singular hive mind or just a piss poor multi-form shifter?”
The Doctor looks at her with surprise.
“I’ve learned a bit since we last saw each other,” Rose says with a small smirk.
Something about Rose’s confidence in her new knowledge sends a rush through the Doctor, one that he will look deeper into later. “Multi-form,” he confirms. “A bit of a rush job, though. Got the voice a bit muddled, did you? Mind you, where did you get the pattern from? You’d need a psychic link, a live feed. How did you fix that?”
The creature opens the man’s mouth revealing its sharp teeth.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Rose says, holding her hands up placatingly.
“Right,” the Doctor says. “We are no threat to you.”
A booming voice that nearly shakes the foundation of the house calls from outside. “Attention, Prisoner Zero. The Human residence is surrounded,” it repeats.
“What’s that?” Amy asks.
“An ally, hopefully,” the Doctor says.
“Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.”
“Okay, or maybe not,” the Doctor says. The Doctor meets Rose’s eyes and she smirks.
“Run.”
The Doctor takes Amy’s hand, tugging her through the house. Rose and Doctor protect Amy between them, the Doctor leading them and Rose guarding her from behind.
“So, you’re a policewoman now?” the Doctor asks Amy, glancing over his shoulder.
Rose snorts and the Doctor’s head turns to her with confusion.
“No real police officer dresses like that,” Rose says.
The Doctor turns back to Amy whose face has flushed with embarrassment. “I’m a Kissogram,” she admits in a mumble.
Rose lets out a small sigh of relief. “Much more tasteful than what I was imagining.”
Amy scoffs and glares at her. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being a sex worker, but that’s just not for me and, well, it pays the bills well enough.”
The Doctor’s brows shoot up so high that he’s surprised they haven’t disappeared into his ridiculously fluffy new hair. Shaking the thought out of his mind, he rushes to the TARDIS. He sticks the key in but her handles don’t budge. “No, no, no! Don’t do that. Not now!” He turns to Rose.
“She’s locked me out too,” Rose says. “She’s still rebuilding and saving me took a lot out of her.”
“Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.”
“I don’t know about you,” Rose says, “but I’d really like to not be incinerated.”
She takes the Doctor and Amy’s hands and runs, the Doctor quickly following in her stride but Amy nearly tripping from the sudden departure.
“You’re Amelia,” the Doctor says.
“Amy,” she shoots him a hard look “And yes, we’ve established that.”
“Why did you lie?”
“Two strangers broke into my house. Sue me for not giving out my real name.”
“But you knew it was us,” he says. “You recognized us. So why didn’t you tell us then?”
“Because you’re not supposed to be real!” Amy drops Amy’s hand and turns to the Doctor with fury. “For my entire life, I was told I was crazy. That whatever time travelers who dropped in my backyard were just a figment of my young grieving mind. You were a coping mechanism. You were a delusion. You were everything but real. Because how could you be real? How could you be real when the only one who saw you was a lonely little girl who just wanted parents who loved her?”
The Doctor’s breath hitches. “Parents?”
Her face drops. “Forget it. I was a little grieving girl. I was—”
“Even if you were a little grieving girl, you’re… that doesn’t make you crazy,” Rose says.
“I know that!” Amy snaps.
Rose meets her eyes. “Do you?”
Amy turns away, jaw clenched. “It’s been twelve years. It’s long enough to not believe in a new set of parents falling from the sky.”
The words rattle in the Doctor’s mind. Twelve years.
Despite being a Time Lord, he has trouble accurately conceptualizing the passage of it. When you travel through time and space, time becomes relative, and he rarely stays in one place long enough to really feel it pass.
There’s more species in the universe to even count, all with different lifespans, different rates of aging, and for the Doctor who has lived hundreds of years, it moves both quicker and slower to him than it does for someone like Amelia Pond.
And Rose Tyler, his traitorous mind reminds him.
Twelve years can be a blink for some species. It can be a lifetime for others. And as the Doctor reflects on what the last twelve years of his life has been like, it has been filled with adventure to fill his moments and companionship when he could have it.
But there were also many moments drowned in grief. Grief for all he lost. Grief from all he’s done. Grief for lost time and moments that could never be.
Amelia Pond has spent her last twelve years haunted by the grief of people she loved and people she never got to know.
And in those twelve years, he and Rose have been immortalized in Amy’s rose tinted memory. An idea that she had grandized and put on a pedestal and built up in retaliation to the disbelief. They had known each other for a short hour and yet they had made a lifelong impact on the girl.
It’s only been a few minutes for them and it’s been over a decade for her.
And the Doctor knows, distantly. He knows that when you’re a time traveler, encounters can be nonlinear.
But there’s something about the lost time with Amelia Pond that aches to his core.
It’s Rose, he realizes. Rose’s reentry into his life has made him painfully aware of how much time he had lost with her and how he doesn’t want to lose anymore.
There’s alway an invisible countdown with everyone the Doctor encounters. A countdown until they leave, a countdown to their inevitable death, a countdown until their time together finally ends.
Too many go too soon. Go before the Doctor can even know them.
And though he had those joyous few years with Rose Tyler, it’s been decades since he’d seen her last.
And decades since he resigned himself to never see her again.
But now she’s back and the grief he thought had subsided, the feelings he thought had dissipated, they’re all back in tenfold, hitting him with the power of a million suns, and making him starkly aware of how very much he hasn’t moved on.
What’s happened with Amelia has hit him so hard because he sees himself in her.
And that’s something he doesn’t like seeing.
An ice cream truck passes, its speakers blasting the repeated words: “Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.”
“”No, no, no. Come on! What? We’re being staked out by an ice-cream van.”
“Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.”
“Can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is actually less creepy than the one that went around my town,” Rose says.
Amy shoots her an incredulous look.
Rose shrugs. “The music would stop and this awful voice would say ‘hello?’ Not even a ‘hello!’ It was a question! Scared me from getting an ice lolly for years.”
The Doctor, glad that Rose is distracting Amy from the dire situation with silly stories. Amy may not realize it, but just from the change to frivolous, mundane conversation, the tension that has been wound through her is slowly letting out.
The Doctor runs up to the ice cream truck. “What’s that?” he asks the driver. “Why are you playing that?”
“It’s supposed to be Clair De Lune,” he says.
The Doctor reaches in through the window to grab his radio and presses it to his ear.
“Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated,” the radio chants as well.
The Doctor looks around the park, every person listening to their electronics with confusion.
Rose’s ramble drops off as she follows the Doctor’s sightline and Amy comes behind him with trepidation.
“Doctor,” she says. “What’s happening?”
He doesn’t respond. He just starts running.
.-~*~-.
Amy has had a very strange day.
No, she’s had a strange life.
Strange is too kind of a word to describe her life, though. She doesn’t like to think about her childhood much. Everyone who didn’t listen to her. Everyone who didn’t believe her.
She bit a few psychiatrists out of frustration.
She started to get a bit of a reputation from it if the gloves her fifth one wore indicated anything.
But when everyone tells you that what you saw wasn’t real and you have no evidence but a stack of dirty dishes, a slightly charred garden and a crack in the wall that everyone already doesn’t believe you about, there’s not a lot you can do to plead your case except repeat the same hour long encounter.
Just an hour knowing them and it changed the course of her life forever.
Sometimes she wished she had never met them. That they didn’t tease her with the promise of escape and love.
But sometimes she can’t imagine herself in a world where they hadn’t met. They were a part of her, a tiny sliver of hope in a sad, lonely little girl’s life.
Of course, she wasn’t sad and lonely forever. She had friends. She had Rory.
But with every disagreement turned into a screaming match with her aunt, every bowl of custard that made her heart long and stomach churn, every whisper of her cracked psyche, she held onto that hope a little harder for that blue box to come swoop down and take her away.
They never did, though, and the hope slowly extinguished, and the memory became a faraway dream that had trapped her in a nightmare of a life for too long.
So, when Rose came into her house, looking exactly the way Amy remembers her, she panics.
In her addled frenzy, she thought that the impersonating a policewoman plan was going to work.
Of course it didn’t and now her house is going to be incinerated and twelve years of trauma is being resurfaced when she thought she finally moved past it.
But, she’ll do what she does best, and shove those feelings in a box and ignore them.
Amy and Rose follow the Doctor into Amy’s neighbor’s house, both stilling when they see the giant eyeball on the old woman’s television.
“Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated.”
“Hello!” the Doctor says to the woman. “Sorry to burst in. We’re doing a special on television faults in this area. Also crimes. Let’s have a look.”
Mrs. Angelo frowns. “I was just about to phone. It’s on every channel.” She spots Amy and smiles. “Oh, hello, Amy dear. Are you a policewoman now?”
Amy flushes. “Well, sometimes.”
“I thought you were a nurse.”
Amy shifts with embarrassment. “I can be a nurse.”
“Or actually a nun?”
“I dabble.”
Rose snorts behind her and when she catches Amy’s glare, her hand shielding her chuckle falls and she tries to stifle her smile.
“Oh, where are my manners?” she says. “Who are your new friends?”
“We are not friends,” Amy says and tries to ignore the pained way the Doctor and Rose flinch at her words.
“I know you, don’t I?” Mrs. Angelo says, eyes narrowing at the Doctor and Rose scrutinizingly. “I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
“Not me,” he says. “Brand new face. First time on.”
“And I’m not from around here,” Rose says. “Well, neither is he.” She holds out a hand that Mrs. Angelo gingerly shakes. “Rose Tyler.”
The Doctor shakes it as well before he turns his attention back to the radio he’s fiddling with. “And I’m the Doctor.”
“Oh! A Doctor,” Mrs. Angelo says. “Do you work with Amy?”
“Yes,” Amy says hastily.
Mrs. Angelo turns to Rose. “And are you a nurse as well?”
“Shop assistant, actually,” Rose says.
The Doctor’s head snaps up, looking at Rose with a complicated mix of longing and hurt that Amy really doesn’t want to start dissecting.
“Repetez…. Le Prisonnier… Zero word der menschliche…”
“It’s everywhere, in every language,” the Doctor says. “They’re broadcasting to the whole world.”
Rose huffs. “On one hand, it’s nice to know they’re not just targeting Leadworth, but on the other hand, targeting the rest of the world isn’t much better.”
“I’d say that’s worse,” Amy says.
Rose grins wryly. “You don’t know what London’s had to deal with.”
“And I don’t want to know,” Amy says, even though her burning curiosity really does. Amy’s attention turns to the Doctor who stares up through the window. “What’s up there? What are you looking for?”
“Okay,” the Doctor says. “Planet this size, two poles, your basic molten core? They’re going to need a forty percent fission blast.” Jeff, Mrs. Angelo’s grandson comes in and the Doctor zeroes in on him, getting up in his face as Jeff stares back wide eyed. “But they’ll have to power up first, won’t they? So assuming a medium sized starship, that’s 20 minutes. What do you think, twenty minutes? Yeah, twenty minutes.” The Doctor’s face falls, expression growing dire. “We’ve got twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes to what?” Amy asks.
“Are you the Doctor?” Jeff asks and Amy feels a weight pool in her gut. Oh no.
Mrs. Angelo’s face lights up. “The Raggedy Doctor and his Rose! It’s them, isn’t it? All those cartoons you did when you were little. The Raggedy Doctor and his Rose. It’s them.”
Amy clears her throat, saying through grit teeth. “Shut up.”
“Cartoons?” Rose repeats, looking at Amy with emotion filled eyes that Amy turns her gaze away from.
Amy can see the comprehension click in Rose’s mind. The way the two of them imprinted themselves on her mind and their memories haunted and hovered over her for the rest of her life.
The Doctor collapses into the couch like a puppet cut from its strings, Rose following soon after, slowly sinking to sit on the arm. They share a look so stark with emotion that it hurts to look at and then both harden, eyes glued to the television with a shared intensity of people who have barely scraped out of a war and entered another.
“Gran, it’s the, isn’t it? It’s really them!” Jeff says.
“Jeff, shut up!” Amy hisses, curling into herself. She turns to the Doctor. “Twenty minutes to what?”
“The human residence will be incinerated. Repeat.”
“The human residence isn’t your house,” Rose says, voice hollow. “It’s the entire bloody planet.”
The Doctor nods, leaning in as he looks into the television. “Somewhere up there, there’s a spaceship, and it’s going to incinerate Earth.”
Rose lets out a heavy sigh, covering her face with her hands. “I’m really sick of people trying to blow up my planet.”
“Repeat, Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence, or the human residence will be incinerated.”
.-~*~-.
Rose walks with the Doctor and Amy, the situation finally sinking in.
Cartoons, she had said. Cartoons that Amy had drawn of her and the Doctor, enough to be recognizable by her neighbor and her grandson.
Unlike the Doctor, Rose has spent the last hundred years following time in a straight line, unbearably aware of how fickle life is and how aging is inevitable.
Rose also knows what it’s like to grow up a human. How those years between childhood and adulthood are so crucial to the person you’ll become. Something that happens when you’re young will shake up the rest of your development.
Rose’s dad died before she could remember him and his absence shaped the rest of her life, not just how it affected her but the way it affected her mum.
Grief isn’t simple and it isn’t easy.
At least Rose had gotten closure. She knew her dad was dead. She knew he wasn’t coming back. And even though she could dream of meeting him, dream of a life where her mum didn’t have to parent her alone, she knew that it wasn’t possible.
Amy didn’t get closure. Amy waited for a chance to reunite with them. She waited for the day they’d come back.
Rose can’t imagine how much they held her back from living her life. What things did Amy not do because she was waiting for them to come back? What connections did she not make or sever? How much time did she waste because she didn’t want to plant roots in a life she thought she was going to escape?
It rips Rose apart to know that Amy could never truly move on from it because she knows exactly how she feels.
Meeting the Doctor changes your life forever. For the rest of your life, that magnetic pull to be with him will tug at your very core, to be with him, to join him, to leave your miserable mundane life to see the stars.
When that doorway between their worlds closed for what she believed to be the last time, she never stopped hoping that it would open again. She’s spent her entire life after him just waiting for him to come back.
And it did keep her from living. It did keep her from moving on.
Because just that sliver of a chance that she’d see him again was enough to cling onto for a lifetime.
But for Rose, the Doctor is the love of her life. It’s different. She could write it away as a hopeless romance.
Amy saw Rose and the Doctor as parents. She had told Rose that she had wished she was her mum.
Once upon a time, Rose could never imagine being a parent.
But in that other world with a Doctor human enough to start a family with, she realized that she did. They struggled to conceive, enough to consider adoption, but then Rose realized that she wasn’t aging.
And it was then that she realized she could never be a parent because it would be too cruel. A mother that would have to be kept secret, unable to meet her child’s friends or lovers or their own children because she was an anomaly who should not exist.
And she couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the thought of having to hide who she is and for her child having to spend their life lying about her.
That didn’t stop her from longing for it, even long after that Doctor had passed.
When she held young Amelia Pond in her arms, something in her claimed her as her own, a wave of protectiveness so strong that she couldn’t let go of her even if she tried. But now Amelia has grown up and Rose has failed her, even if it was unintentionally, and she’s missed out on the years she could’ve been the mother Amelia deserved.
“What is this place? Where am I?” the Doctor asks Amy as they speedwalk through the streets.
“Leadworth,” Amy and Rose say at the same time.
“Where’s the rest of it?” the Doctor asks.
Amy shoots him a look. “This is it.”
“Is there an airport?”
“No.”
“A nuclear power station?”
“No.”
“Even a little one?”
“No.”
“Nearest city?”
“Gloucester. Half an hour by car.”
“We don’t have half an hour. Do we have a car?”
“No.”
“Well that’s good. Fantastic, that is. Twenty minutes to save the world and I’ve got a post office. And it’s shut.”
“Hey!” Rose says, gripping his shoulders to face her. “We’ve said planets with far less.”
The Doctor’s lips part and then grow into a knowing smirk. “You’re right. We have.”
Rose watches as the flip switches and his eyes lock onto something in the distance, his analytic mind finally clicking into place. He starts to run and so Rose runs to follow too, heart warming from the familiarity.
“What is that?” the Doctor asks.
“It’s a duck pond,” Amy says.
“Why aren’t there any ducks?”
Amy’s brows scrunch. “I don’t know. There’s never any ducks.”
“Then how do you know it’s a duck pond?”
Rose understands Amy’s confusion, the way the Doctor says something and it makes no sense to you, but it will once the picture is all put together. The Doctor didn’t have all the answers all the time. He wasn’t right every time. But it’s in those moments where he’s spouting nonsense that you know something brilliant is going to come from it.
“It just is,” Amy says. “Is it important, the duck pond?”
The Doctor suddenly jerks back, collapsing to the ground and clutching his left heart. Rose rushes to his side, hands gripping anywhere they can to reassure him that he’s alive if not okay.
“This is too soon,” the Doctor grits out. “I’m not ready, I’m not done yet.”
No. No… she just got him back. She is not going to lose him yet.
The sky grows dark and their heads all turn up to the eclipsed sun.
“What’s happening? Why’s it going dark?” Amy asks. The sun is engulfed in a burning burst and she squints up at it. “What’s wrong with the sun?”
“Nothing,” the Doctor says. “You’re looking at it through a forcefield. They’ve sealed off your upper atmosphere. Now they're getting ready to boil the planet.” Amy whips around with wide terrified eyes. The Doctor pays her no mind, looking at the parkgoers. “Oh, and here they come. The human race. The end comes, as it was going to, down a video phone!”
“Oi!” Rose says. “That’s my species you’re talking about… though it only gets worse from here.”
“Worse than the aliens blocking the sun and boiling the planet?” Amy asks incredulously.
“Yes,” Rose says, lips twisting at the sight of their bulky smartphones. “They don’t even have TikTok yet.”
“This isn’t real, is it?” They both look at Amy who shakes her head with shocked disbelief, wringing her hands together. “This is all just some kind of big wind-up.”
“Why would I wind you up?” the Doctor asks and Rose’s heart tightens at the lost puppy he shoots Amy, so familiar even with a different face.
“You told me you had a time machine,” Amy says.
“And you believed me.”
“Then I grew up.”
Rose takes a step towards Amy. “You may have grown up, but you know what you saw. And you know what you know. Deep down, you know it’s true and I think deep down you also want to trust us.”
“I don’t know you,” Amy says. “And you don’t know me.”
The words make Rose’s heart clench because she’s right. They’ve known each other less than a day for Rose. She doesn’t know Amy, but she wants to. More than anything, she wants to know her.
The Doctor’s eyes linger over Rose for a long moment and she feels more seen than she has in a century. “No, hang on, shut up, wait!” He smacks himself against his forehead suddenly. “I missed it. I saw it and I missed it. What did I see? I saw. What did I see? I saw, I saw, I saw—”
Rose can practically see the cogs firing in overdrive in his mind and how she wishes she could dive into it and see what he sees. Her eyes flash gold at the thought but she pushes down the Bad Wolf who festers beneath her skin.
Rose knows the moment the Doctor’s got it, his epiphany so clear that there might as well be a lightbulb brightening up over his head.
The Doctor breaks out of his stupor and turns to Amy. “Twenty minutes. We can do it. Twenty minutes, the planet burns. Run to your loved ones and say goodbye, or stay and help us.”
Amy stares at him with that wide eyes fear she’s had since the sun began to burn. “No.”
The Doctor falters. “I’m sorry?”
“No!” She goes to grab him by the tie but Amy grabs her wrist before she can. Amy freezes under her hold, trying to twist her hand away but her body stays glued to the spot. “Who are you?”
“You know who we are—” The Doctor starts.
“I’m Rose Tyler,” Rose says. “Grew up in London to a single mum. A has-been dropout who left school to be with a musician. Didn’t work out but then again, when does that ever work out? Got a job in retail which were the most hellish years of my life and I’ve been tortured on alien spaceships. And then the Doctor dropped into my life, saving me from mannequins that had come alive, and took me to the stars in his crazy blue box.”
“You’re not human,” Amy says. “Your eyes they… they glowed gold. Your voice echoed.”
“I’m human,” Rose says. “Always have been. I just can do things other humans can’t.”
“And him?” Amy asks, eyes darting to the Doctor.
“Oh, yeah, he’s an alien. Hundreds of years old, last of his species, he has a whole spiel about it. But that’s not important right now.” Rose relaxes her grip on Amy’s wrist and pulls her hand into hers. “Everything we told you twelve years ago was true.”
Amy looks at the Doctor. “I’m the Doctor. I’m a time traveler. I’m real. What’s happening in the sky is real, and if we don’t do something soon, everything you’ve ever known is over.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Rose turns Amy’s head to face her. “You’re not mad and neither are we. I told you that you would be happy again and you can’t be if the world ends in twenty minutes. And maybe I’m also a little selfish because this is my planet and I want to be happy again too. And I will not let some wannabe Eye of Sauron destroy my home. Will you?”
The Doctor raises his hand. “Who is the Eye of Sauron?”
Amy ignores him and nods with determination. “What do we do?”
“Stop that nurse,” the Doctor. He runs across the grass, Rose and Amy barely keeping up behind him before he grabs the nurse’s phone. “The sun’s going out, and you’re photographing a man and a dog. Why?”
The nurse is stunned speechless and pauses when he sees Amy.
“Amy?”
Amy grabs his arm in a way Rose can tell there’s something definitely going on between the two of them. “Hi!” Remembering why they’re there, she turns to the Doctor and Rose. “This is Rory. He’s a friend.”
“Boyfriend,” Rory corrects.
“Kind of boyfriend,” Amy amends.
“Amy,” Rory says, slightly offended, slightly embarrassed.
And there it is. If there’s one constant throughout the multiverse, it’s pretty women being in situationships. God, when’s the last time she’s used that term? The 2030s? Being back on her Earth’s making her nostalgic.
Focus Rose. Aliens incinerating the Earth.
“Man and dog,” the doctor repeats. “Why?”
“Oh my God, it’s him,” Rory says. His eyes go to Rose. “Oh my God, it’s them!”
“Just answer his question, please,” Amy mutters.
“It’s them, though.” Rory says, lighting up. “The Doctor and Rose. The Raggedy Doctor and his Rose.”
Amy shrinks in on herself. “Yeah. They came back.”
“But they were a story. A game. Like playing house. They’re actually real?”
“Man and a dog,” the Doctor repeats once again urgently. “Why? Tell me now.”
Rory shakes his head, clearing himself of his stupor and focusing in. “Sorry.” He points at the impersonator. “He can’t be there. Because he’s—”
“In a hospital, in a coma,” the Doctor and Rose finish with Rory.
Rory’s brows shoot up. “Uh, yeah.”
“Knew it,” the Doctor says. “Multi-form, you see? Disguise itself as anything, but it needs a life feed—”
“A psychic link with a mind that’s alive but not aware,” Rose finishes.
“It needs a dormant mind,” the Doctor says, grinning at her understanding.
It’s intoxicating, being back with him, and being able to keep up with his brilliant mind. Rose was never dumb, no matter how much she’d been told so and how much she believed it herself sometimes, but beside the Doctor, sometimes she had felt that she could never be clever enough for him.
Their time apart has made her ability to hone her skills and embrace her intelligence enough to expand it.
And it’s all worth it from the way he looks at her like he’s seeing her for the first time again. Maybe because he is.
The bodyjacked man barks at them.
“Prisoner Zero,” the Doctor addresses it.
“What?” Rory rushes to Amy’s side with alarm. “There’s a Prisoner Zero too?”
Amy stares at the creature. “Yes.”
The creature’s eyes look up and a spaceship with a giant eye descends from the sky. A beam extends from the ship.
“The ship is scanning this area for non-terrestrial technology,” the Doctor says. “And nothing says non-terrestrial like a sonic screwdriver.”
Rose braces herself with a blinding grin as the Doctor raises the screwdriver to the sky. Streetlights explode, car alarms screech and a firetruck blares its siren as it drives on its own.
“I’ve missed you,” Rose breathes, smiling at the Doctor so wide that her cheeks hurt.
“I think someone’s going to notice, don’t you?” the Doctor says cheekily. The Doctor turns the sonic towards a phonebox and Rose pulls it from his hand. The Doctor blinks with bafflement.
“She’s tired out,” Rose says. “Allow me.” She finally lets the Bad Wolf take over, the pure force engulfing her body with scorching time.
Like a beacon of otherworldliness, she raises a hand to the sky just as the Doctor had, releasing just a hint of the Time Vortex’s power, climbing the sky in a glimmering stream.
The scan latches onto the power and the ship speeds above them.
Amy clutches Rory who clutches just as hard as he shakes in fear, nearly falling into Amy.
Rose turns her hand, pointing at Prisoner Zero, the stream of power aimed at its chest like a sniper gun trained on its target.
It opens its mouth to bare its sharp teeth at Amy. “Oh, dear little Amelia Pond. I’ve watched you grow up. Twelve years, and you never even knew I was there. Little Amelia Pond, waiting for her true parents to return and whisk her away. But not this time, Amelia.”
The Doctor steps between Amy and Prisoner Zero, shielding her from its prying eyes. “Take the disguise off. They’ll find you in a heartbeat. Nobody dies.”
“The Atraxi will kill me this time,” it says. “If I am to die, let there be fire.”
“Okay. You came to this world by opening a crack in Space and Time. Do it again. Just leave.”
“I did not open the crack.”
The Doctor’s head snaps to look at Rose, the Bad Wolf faltering as the damning realization hits her.
“The Pandorica will open,” it says. “Silence will fall.”
“I will not let you hurt my planet,” Rose says, her voice booming with the Bad Wolf’s power.
“The Atraxi are limited. They’ve tracked your power, not me. And they may know this form, but in another, they’ll be unable to detect me.”
“Oh, stop it,” the Doctor says. “You know you can’t. It takes months to form that kind of psychic link.”
It sneers. “And I’ve had years.”
“Amy!”
Amy goes limp, Rory catching her just before she can collapse on the ground, lowering her down carefully.
“No!” Rose roars. She and the Doctor run to her side. Rose cradles her head as Amy is half sprawled on Rory’s lap.
“You’ve got to hold on. Amy?” the Doctor babbles.
“Don’t sleep,” Rose says. “Please, please stay awake.”
“Doctor? Rose?” Rory says.
“Rose?” the Doctor says as he looks up at the impersonator's new form. “And who’s that supposed to be next to her?”
“It’s you,” Rory says.
The Doctor follows his sightline and frowns. “Me? Is that what I look like?”
“You don’t know?” Rory says.
“Busy day.“
“Is that really what I look like from that angle?” Rose mumbles. It takes her a moment to realize what she’s looking at. “Why us?” Rose asks Prisoner Zero. “You’re linked with her. Why’re you us and not her?”
A little girl pushes from behind the two, sandwiched between them and grabs the fake Doctor and Rose’s hands.
“I’m not. Poor Amy Pond. Still such a child inside. Dreaming of the parents she knows will come back and save her. What a disappointment you’ve been.”
“No,” the Doctor says. “She’s dreaming about us because she can hear us.” The Doctor kneels beside Amy. “Amy, don’t just hear us. Listen. Remember the room, the room in your house you couldn’t see. Remember you went inside.”
Rose’s breath hitches. She cups Amy’s cheek in her hand. “Remember that you were in trapped in there. Remember what was inside that room. Remember what you saw. I know you don’t want to, but remember.”
“Amy,” the Doctor says. “Dream about you saw.”
The impersonation screams in rage and agony. “No. No. No!” It transforms into its true form, writhing with anger.
“Well done, Prisoner Zero. A perfect impersonation of yourself.”
“Prisoner Zero is located. Prisoner Zero is restrained.”
The Doctor turns the ship and laughs mirthlessly. “Oh, I’m not letting you go yet.”
“Who dares to speak to the Atraxi this way?”
He smiles sharply. “Me. The Doctor. Article fifty seven of the Shadow Proclamation. This is a fully established level five planet, and you were going to burn it? What? Did you think no one was watching?”
“It’s always the Shadow Proclamation, innit?” Rose says. “At least I know the article this time.” She steps next to the Doctor, standing tall and chin held high.
“What are you doing?” Rory hisses. “They’re about to leave.”
“Leaving is good,” the Doctor says. “Never coming back is better.”
The eyeball drops onto the roof and scans the Doctor and Rose.
“You are not of this world.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Rose says. “I am of this world and this world is mine.”
“And it may not be mine, but I’ve put a lot of work into it.”
“Is this world important?”
“Important?” Rose spits. “This world is important because it’s important to us. Not just me or the Doctor but the six billion people who live here. But you don’t care about our feelings. You don’t care about the thousands of years of history and evolution. You care about you. So, what’s it matter to you?”
“Is this world a threat to the Axtraxi?” the Doctor asks. “Well, come on. You’re monitoring the whole planet. Is this world a threat?”
It forms a projection of the world, eye darting with analysis. “No.”
“Are the peoples of this world guilty of any crime by the laws of the Axtraxi?” the Doctor continues.
“No.”
“Okay. One more. Just one. Is this world protected? Because you’re not the first lot to come here. Oh, there have been so many. And what you’ve got to ask is, what happened to them?”
The projection flashes all of the faces that have and will be of the Doctor, his many companions by his side.
“We will not let you hurt our planet,” Rose says.
“Basically,” the Doctor says. “Run.”
The Atraxi sucks up Prisoner Zero as the eye retreats to its ship and it disappears in a blink.
Rose smiles up at the sky. “The sun’s back to normal. Haven’t seen the Earth sky like this in a long time.”
“That, that’s good, yeah?” Rory asks. “That means it’s over.” Amy begins to stir in his arms and he grips her tighter. “Amy. Are you okay? Are you with us?”
“What happened?” Amy asks groggily.
“They did it,” Rory says, beaming. “The Doctor and his Rose. They did it. You missed the whole thing. The thing turned into the Doctor and Rose and you and then and eyeball came out of the spaceship and the Doctor and Rose told it to never come back and—”
Rose turns to the Doctor, smiling softly. “I’ve missed this. Missed you.”
The Doctor’s face crumples. “I’ve missed you more than you could ever know.”
“Well, you don’t need to miss me anymore because I’m staying right here with you.” She holds his face in her hands, rubbing her thumb over his cheek. “Can I kiss you?” The Doctor nods wordlessly and Rose’s lips meet his, years of yearning and grief surging through her and finally being replaced with relief and contentment, the love she’s tired but failed to bury flowing through her and into the Doctor.
They pull away, panting as though they’ve run a marathon, the adrenaline of their day leaving them bubbling through their veins. They rest their foreheads against each other’s.
“What do we do now?” Rose asks.
The Doctor turns to Amy who is held in the tight embrace of Rory and back to Rose and she feels it.
She feels the bone deep safety just being the subject of his gaze. The certainty that he will protect her, but the new certainty that she can protect him too
She sees the sadness in his eyes, too sad, always too sad even before they had been parted. She sees the overwhelming love nearly bursting out from him from the way he takes in the sight of her like she’s something precious and knows that he is just as precious, even if he can’t see it in himself.
She pictures their future. A future traversing the stars together. A future where they’re no longer alone. She pictures the futures that could have been and can’t be. She pictures something better than they were able to have and give.
She imagines all the ways he has changed and knows she has changed even more. She imagines the way they’ll continue to change and knows that no matter how much they change, they will change together.
She knows that there’s a lot to heal from for the both of them and that they’re both more than a little broken, but they will piece each other together again even if it takes both of their lifetimes. She knows that no matter what, it will have been worth it, and that everything she’s endured has led to being reunited with him again. She knows that she’s finally home.
“We make up for lost time and not waste another moment together.”