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[December 21, 2010]
A slushy snowball smacked into the Doctor’s back. He yelped and whirled around, scooping up a handful of snow and launching his own snowball back at Donna. She shrieked and laughed as she dodged his attack.
“Oi! Not the face,” she shouted, breath fogging in the cold winter air.
The Time Lord grinned. “You started it!” he called back. He darted forward to steady her when she slipped on a patch of ice and pulled her down the pavement with him, dodging other shoppers along the way.
The Doctor had been excited about their current trip. Donna had been more skeptical, at first. They were in Boulder, Colorado, a university town nestled in a valley at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The Doctor had decided to pay the city a visit after Donna had gone on and on the day before about wanting a holiday somewhere fun, relaxing, and at least moderately pleasant.
While considering several thousand places in the universe that could fit Donna’s criteria, the Doctor had stumbled upon a memory of an unusual night he’d had in a Colorado town sometime in 1969. He couldn’t remember which body that had been in, since 1969 tended to be a year he often revisited (something that was not exactly his fault, thank you very much).
It didn’t take long for him to remember visiting Boulder a few other times as well, though none of those memories brought with them the same nostalgia, surprising sense of satisfaction, and mild embarrassment as the first memory.
That had decided it. He couldn't resist the siren call of a little mystery, an odd memory or two, and a dash of fun. Plus, the Doctor was curious about what had happened to the town since his last visit.
Arriving in Boulder on the day of the Winter Solstice was more of an accident than anything, but not even the cold and overcast skies could dampen his enthusiasm. Neither he nor Donna had any complaints as they walked West along the Pearl Street Mall, toward the mountains.
(Here, “West” always meant “toward the mountains”. Sometimes the locals used the terms interchangeably when asked for directions.)
When she and the Doctor first arrived, Donna had asked why on Earth he thought taking her to an American mall of all places would be fun or relaxing. She wasn’t in the mood for shopping, or dealing with crowds. She wanted to relax.
The Doctor had simply given her a raised eyebrow and a wide grin before flinging open the TARDIS doors. Donna had taken one look at the snow piled on the ground outside, and the colorful lights wrapped around every tree in sight, and dashed back to her room to get her warmest winter wear.
The Doctor chose to wear just his usual attire. Today that meant his brown suit, long brown coat, and white plimsolls. When Donna had questioned his lack of winter-appropriate clothing, he countered that cold didn’t affect him as much as it did her. A perk of not being human in situations involving cooler climates.
Donna quickly discovered that the Pearl Street Mall was nothing like she’d assumed it would be. According to a woman working at a local art shop, the Pearl Street Mall was one of the more successful and long-lasting ‘pedestrian malls’ in the States, and even the world.
The Doctor was quite enthused about it. “—and then in 1976, this part of Pearl Street was completely closed to traffic and paved in. Of course, some businesses were unhappy about it, but that didn’t last long. Just a few years after my first visit, BAM! This place just takes off!”
Knowing how the Time Lord could be with his nonstop gob and vast stores of knowledge, (and personally glad that no aggravated aliens were chasing them for the time being), Donna was content to go along with his impromptu history lesson. It was nice to see the Doctor simply being happy. He rarely let the weight of the universe fall from his skinny shoulders, even when he was excited about a new place or meeting a famous historical figure.
The two of them wandered in and out of shops for a while, and engaged in a few snowball fights in between. They eventually reached a tie, which Donna found great pride in given that her aim usually left a lot to be desired.
She pulled the Doctor into some of the locally-owned shops in search of souvenirs and Christmas gifts for Silvia and Wilf, and let the Time Lord talk her into staying a whole 37 minutes in an antique map store because he’d noticed a map of a distant planet that definitely didn’t belong on Earth in 2010.
It only took that long because the Doctor decided to buy the map AND check every other nook and cranny in the shop to make sure it was the only alien item there — despite being asked to leave many times.
Donna started searching for alien maps as well, only stopping when the Doctor called for her as he bounded toward the door with the furious shop-owner on his heels. The poor man, who had no idea he was in possession of an alien map in the first place, had no desire to entertain thoughts of life on other planets, and chased them outside before the Doctor could convince him otherwise.
Once they were well away from the shop, the Doctor and Donna paused to catch their breath, and promptly burst out laughing as they recalled the final, comical look of fury on the shop-owner’s face when they left.
“Did you have to say it like that? God, I thought he might explode right then and there!” Donna said.
The Doctor folded up the alien map and dropped it into his dimensionally-transcendental coat pocket. “Yes! Regardless of what he thinks, several species consider Earth a novel travel destination, and some of them have clearly been to his shop! He needed to know in case someone decides to leave a tourist map of another planet in his collection again.”
“Yeah, but did you see his face when you said—”
Donna broke off with a shiver as a cold gust of wind rushed over her. She blew loose hair out of her face, laughter fading as she gripped the handle of her small shopping bag tighter in one mittened hand. Another, stronger gust made her cross her arms with a shiver.
The Doctor’s laughter faded too, and he shot her a smile—that slightly nervous smile he adopted sometimes when he was about to talk her into something she probably wouldn’t like to do, but would do did anyway because it usually wasn’t as mad as she imagined it would be.
She met the Time Lord's gaze pointedly. “Where do you want to go now?” she asked.
He shuffled his converse-clad feet against the red bricks that paved most of the Pearl Street Mall. “One more shop, just one, then we could warm up at a cafe I know? It’s just a few blocks from here.”
Donna’s expression softened at his hopeful tone. It was one of those days where he still managed to rush around like a hyperactive child, but not as much as he could have, and not in a way that would drag them straight into the next alien war or an accidental misadventure. She gave in and followed him into a nearby shop full of candies, caramel apples, and chocolates.
Donna barely resisted the urge to cover her face or groan when she finally realized what had attracted the Doctor to this particular shop. The Time Lord paid her embarrassment no mind as he happily ordered one chocolate-covered frozen banana.
Why he would want to eat something cold when it was already freezing outside was a mystery, but the staff took his request fairly well. They provided said chocolate-covered banana with only mild bewilderment.
As she watched the Time Lord pay for the treat, Donna thought to herself that she was lucky. She was prepared for and fully expected antics of this sort from the Doctor. The poor young men and women working at the chocolate shop had to face him without warning.
She thought they did quite well, considering.
The Doctor enjoyed the frozen banana as he and Donna walked the few blocks west to the café he’d promised her. He only made two comments about the chocolate covering being sub-par to that of other planets and some other countries on Earth, but nonetheless finished the whole thing in what Donna considered a shockingly short amount of time.
The sun sank behind the mountains, and Donna began to focus more and more on how far away the bloody café was. She dearly hoped she could get a hot cuppa at the café—if any American place could be trusted to make one properly, that was.
The BookEnd Café had a small outdoor seating area out front, separated from the rest of the pavement by a thick, almost elegant wrought iron railing. Only a few brave souls sat at the outside tables. The front wall of the café was composed of large windows that could be moved to the side, making the indoor seating area partially open-air on warmer days.
The Doctor held the heavy wooden door open for Donna, who sighed in relief as she stepped inside. The cafe was bigger than she’d expected, and despite its high ceilings, it had a warm, homey atmosphere.
The tables near the front were packed with people watching shoppers and tourists pass by, or simply enjoying the festive atmosphere. There were a few more tables in the back, past a six-foot-tall dividing wall that stuck out from the brick wall to their left. A funny frog statue and a giant ball of string sat at the far end of the divider.
The Doctor noticed a family leaving a table near the dividing wall and quickly claimed it for the two of them. Then he joined Donna in the cue.
“Almost forgot,” he said, “since we’re here, you might as well get something to eat, if you’re hungry. I know you haven't liked what the TARDIS had to offer recently, and they’ve got good food here, so...” He nodded to the series colorful menu placards hanging on the wall behind the register.
Donna shrugged, though she quietly appreciated the thoughtful gesture. She wasn’t particularly picky about food these days, but sometimes she and TARDIS disagreed when it came to the culinary arts. She decided to get the cafe’s signature breakfast burrito with a side of soup, and two hot cups of tea with a strong emphasis on the hot part. The Doctor had yet to eat or drink anything warm on this trip, and she was determined to make that happen.
He paid for it all, as the only one of the two of them with the proper currency. Donna wasn’t quite sure where the roll of green banknotes he’d produced from his coat pocket had come from; couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him pay for things with actual money before today.
Of course, he noticed her curious gaze as they made their way to their table.
“Rose,” he said quietly, sitting in the chair across from Donna with a half-smile on his face.
Donna’s brow furrowed, and she shifted, trying to get comfortable in the cafe's hard, wooden chair. Rose? The Doctor actually wanted to talk about Rose right now?
The Time Lord must have seen the brief, incredulous expression that crossed her face, for he quickly clarified. “The first time I took Rose out to get chips, I didn’t have any money with me. Hadn’t thought I would need it. She ended up paying, and never let me forget it.” At that, a shadow crossed his face.
Donna recognized it as the look he got whenever Rose came up. She dearly wished she could do something to fix the situation, but for now, all she could do was wait for the Doctor to continue.
After a moment, he cleared his throat and snapped out of whatever memory of Rose had pulled his attention away. “Right, so, whenever we’d visit a new place, Rose would exchange a few intergalactic credits for whatever the local currency was. ‘Just in case,’ she said, and she was right.”
“Wait, you took Rose to get chips? You took her out on an actual date?” Donna was surprised to only learn about such a monumental event now.
The Doctor sputtered. “It wasn’t a— Well, it was more like a— No. We…We didn’t….”
Of course he didn’t.
Donna took pity on the Time Lord before he could tangle himself further in a verbal bind. “Alright, I get it,” she sighed.
“Right. He trailed off and looked away, a touch of dejection flickering in his eyes.
To give the Doctor a moment to himself, Donna took time to survey the café again. There was an open doorway just past the dividing wall, leading into a bustling old bookstore.
The Doctor’s carefully crafted front, with all his boyish enthusiasm, returned as quickly as it had slipped. “So!” He clapped his hands together. “Fun facts about Boulder, let’s see…Hmmm. I think I’ve been here twice before. I think the most recent time, sometime in the nineties, I got a tour of this region’s atomic clock facility—”
“What’s that?” Donna interrupted.
“It’s one of the clever ways you humans have learned to measure time, since you can’t sense like I can. The atomic clock here provides the States with time and frequency standards. The whole process is a bit convoluted, but you’ll all get better at simplifying it in the future…”
The Doctor’s rambling explanation continued until the arrival of their tea and Donna’s food. She decided that the tea was passably decent, as was the soup and burrito.
They ended up staying at the cafe long after they ate their fill, and eventually made their way to the bookstore next door. The Doctor quickly wandered off on his own while Donna perused the magazines and various sections of the store at her leisure.
The place was even bigger than she thought. It was like being inside a TARDIS dedicated solely to books. The fiction section took up an entire ballroom on the second floor. A ballroom. In a bookstore. It was only after discovering this that Donna realized she hadn’t seen the Doctor in quite some time.
After wandering around all three floors of the shop twice, she finally found him sitting on the floor in a corner of the children’s section, surrounded by kids who were all listening to him with rapt attention as he read a picture book aloud.
Donna leaned against a nearby bookshelf and observed the adorable spectacle. She had to admit that the Doctor was good at entertaining the kids, making sure to show them the colorful illustrations, and reading in a different, dramatic voice for each character.
The Doctor had glanced up at her with some uncertainty when she first arrived, like she’d caught him doing something he wasn’t sure he should be doing. The unbothered expression on her face had made him relax once more, and he sent a grin her way as he finished reading a tale of dragons and brave warrior princesses. The children all begged for one more story as soon as he closed the book, and it took a long time for the Doctor to extract himself from his circle of miniature fans.
Donna stayed far away from that, laughing at the Doctor’s failed attempts to escape the kid’s clinging hands and teary doe eyes. Given what had happened every other time kids were mentioned around him, she’d never have guessed he could stand a group of loud, human children.
She finally had to haul the Time Lord outside to avoid the oncoming storm of potential tantrums. “Come on, Doctor. It’s getting late.”
“That was fun! Maybe I should do that more often! Also, you know Time is relative on the TARDIS. We don't have to be late unless—"
“Yeah, I know that, but those parents don’t have TARDISes. I really don’t want to have to hear ten different tantrums tonight.”
“Fair point. Oh!" The Doctor suddenly dug his plimsoll heels in, forcing Donna to a halt in the middle of the pavement. "Look, there it is!”
Donna turned to see what he was looking at, and found it easily in the twilight. It was hard to miss the massive, five-pointed star shining on the side one of the mountains.
The Doctor bounced excited on the balls of his feet. “It's the good old Boulder Star! I once helped students from the University of Colorado rearrange its shape into a peace sign, you know. We all escaped arrest in the TARDIS, and I managed to return them to their dormitories just a few minutes after they'd left. The authorities never discovered they were responsible for the change, as far as I know. I believe that was back in my...fourth, no, fifth body. Anyway, we should pay the star a visit before we go. I hear it’s become a popular nightly event in the winter."
“Of course you would do something like that,” Donna muttered.
“And why not? It didn't harm anyone, and it was for a good cause. Come on, back to the TARDIS! Allons-y!”
On their way to the time ship, they admired the hundreds of colorful lights wrapped around the trees along the Pearl Street Mall, twinkling merrily against the dark winter night. Donna briefly stopped in front of the Boulder Courthouse to admire the lights outlining its Art Deco architecture and the water fountain in front of it. Curved tubes of lights arced out of the center of the fountain, replacing the water for the winter.
At times like these, Donna wished she had a camera to document the happier moments from her travels with the Doctor. Moments when she couldn’t stop laughing, moments when the Doctor did something absolutely ridiculous for reasons that were uniquely his, and moments when she was mind-blown by the beauty her universe had to offer.
Miraculously, they did NOT plummet off the side of the mountain with the star on it. (Flagstaff Mountain, according to the Doctor). Still, it was a close call. If the TARDIS had materialized slightly closer to the edge of the small parking area along the side of the road winding up Flagstaff, they could have tumbled down a snow-covered slope.
Gazing up the mountain at the glimmering lights of the Boulder Star, Donna’s mouth fell open. “You’ve got to be joking,” she said. People of all ages scrambled up the snowy, icy slope to the Star, where some people had already found rock to sit on—or cling to—and look down at the city.
“It'll be fun!” the Doctor insisted. “Though, mind the cacti and ice under the snow. I knew about them and still fell on a cactus last time I was here. Had to pull 28 terribly tiny spines out of my hands.” He gave a small shudder of remembrance at that, then he pulled Donna across the road with a grin that did not reassure her in the slightest,
There was no official path up to the Star. What the Doctor lacked in tread on the soles of his plimsolls, however, he made up for in enthusiasm. Donna cringed as she watched him nearly faceplant on a patch of hard-packed snow a few feet above her.
Luckily, he managed to catch himself with his hands, and sprang back up to his feet with a laugh.
“Aren’t you coming, Donna?” he called.
“Yeah, just not so fast that I fall and break something," she grumbled.
She climbed carefully, determined to not break any bones in the process. Soon, she was gasping for breath as the lower oxygen content in the air above sea-level started to affect her. By the time she finally made it to the large, flat rock the Doctor had claimed for them to sit on, she was utterly out of breath.
Their rock was next to a metal pole that formed one of the star’s side points. Donna latched onto it with both hands the second she reached it.
“You made it!” The Doctor grinned, helping her up onto the rock. She collapsed onto it, weakly flapping a hand at him in acknowledgement.
Once she caught her breath, she was able to take in the glowing, festive atmosphere of the Star, and the beautiful view. She could see all of Boulder, the town’s city lights twinkling merrily in the darkness. Tiny lines of cars moved along the roads, becoming white and red ribbons of light along the highways stretching out away from the mountains. It was still cold and breezy, but not unbearable. The appeal of hiking up to the Star began to grow on her.
Donna twisted around to look at the Star's highest point, and immediately decided to never set foot there. Only a few brave souls (teenagers, of course) had dared to venture to the top of the star, where the slope was even steeper.
The Doctor remained uncharacteristically silent through her observation, simply sitting forward with his elbows braced on his knees and chin resting in his hands.
“You know,” he said eventually, “light travels at 186,282 miles per second—that’s about 299,792 kilometers per second—in the vacuum of space. Imagine that, Donna. Every second, a little photon, a little beam of light, moves 299,792 kilometers closer to somewhere new, illuminating wherever it goes. Of course, in comparison to the size of the universe, even at that speed that’s barely going anywhere. And out of all of that vastness, buried in one of the millions of strands of time and dark matter that bind our universe together, in an ancient, rather average-looking spiral galaxy, orbiting around a G-type main sequence star that form at just the right place and just the right time…there’s Earth.”
Donna gave him a sideways glance, a soft smile forming on her face. It was always fascinating to listen to the last Time Lord put the wonders of the universe, his wonder at the universe, into words. She was never sure what his more contemplative states would lead to. She loved traveling the universe, happy to escape from monotonous cycles of her old life, but for now, she was glad for a momentary reprieve from the chaotic cosmos.
“Yeah,” she agreed quietly, "there’s Earth.”
“So much good, so much evil. Just add water.”
“Did you come up with that yourself?”
The Doctor shrugged one shoulder. “Nah. Just borrowed it.”
“It’s good," Donna said, leaning back on her hands. A slightly warmer breeze was coming down the mountain now, scattering dry grasses, snow, and pine needles around them. She blew loose strands of hair away from her face. “Thanks for bringing us here. It’s a nice view.”
“I’m glad you like it,” the Doctor said.
Donna tilted her head back to gaze at the partially cloudy night sky. She had seen so many stars and planets, wonders that most humans in her time would never get to see, but there was still something unique about viewing the starry sky from the Earth’s surface. “You were right,” she admitted. “Sometimes when we’re out there helping species I never even knew existed, on some planet I’ve never dreamed of visiting, or getting caught up in history, I forget how beautiful my own planet can be. There are so many terrible things that can happen here, but Earth is also amazing in its own way.”
The Doctor made a small sound of agreement. Then a shout across the Boulder Star caught his and Donna’s attention. A little girl was standing near the central support pole of the star and watching in dismay as her small green backpack tumbled end over end down the mountain toward the road.
“Oh no!” Donna muttered, her gaze following the backpack’s bumpy descent.
The Doctor pointed to a pair of teenagers down the slope who were already moving to catch the wayward bag. “Those two will catch it for her. That’s how it works here, see? At the best of times, everyone helps each other.”
“So there are still a few good people in the world,” Donna said. The teen with a guitar case on his back, clearly quite confident in his winter mountaineering skills, let the backpack roll right into his waiting arms before bounding up to the little girl with his friend. They returned the bag with jovial pomp and circumstance.
“Oh, more than a few!” the Doctor countered, bumping Donna’s shoulder with his as they continued to watch the exchange.
She huffed and lightly elbowed him back. “You know what I meant.”
“Oh, course I—"
Two brilliant flashes of light behind them brought their banter to an abrupt halt. Just as they turned around, the star went dark.
Shouts and shrieks of alarm echoed through the night. Donna quickly slid off the flat rock, standing up with one hand tightly clutching the edge of it. She and the Doctor stared up the dark slope in the direction the flashes of light had come from, searching for their source.
“What do you think that was?” she asked. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the cacophony of shouting from everyone else.
The Doctor was little more than a tense silhouette beside her. “I…don’t know,” he answered. “The rest of Boulder hasn’t lost power, so this was likely an isolated incident.” He felt around the pocket of his suit jacket as he spoke, presumably searching for the sonic screwdriver.
Donna was glad it was a full moon night, so there was some light for her eyes to adjust to. She squinted, spotting a flash of movement up the mountain.
One, no, two figures cautiously emerged from the snow-dusted trees along the edge of the star and made their way downhill. They looked human, or at least humanoid. Then again, Donna reconsidered, a human-looking body doesn’t mean they’re actually human.
One of the figures suddenly slipped on a patch of ice, their feet sliding out from underneath them in an instant. They wildly flailed their arms before frantically grabbing the nearest tree branch and sitting down hard on the frozen ground. They stayed there until their friend caught up and helped pull off one of their boots to check for an injury.
“Doctor!” Donna hissed, not daring to look away from the two.
“Hmm?” The Doctor was still rummaging through his pockets in search of the sonic.
“You should really look up.” She spoke with more urgency this time, jabbing her elbow into his not-Martian-but-still-alien ribs. “Now, Spaceman!”
“Ow! Give me one two seconds, will you? I’ve— Aha! There you are!” the Doctor exclaimed, triumphantly withdrawing the sonic screwdriver from his coat pocket.
Above them, the second figure had shifted to sit beside the first. In the process, one of them accidentally knocked the first’s boot and sent it rolling down the mountain straight toward Donna and the Doctor. Donna was prepared to catch it— and really, it would have been an easy enough thing to do— but the Doctor was faster. He leaped up on to the flat boulder they’d been sitting on and scooped up the boot before it could fall any further.
He straightened, gaze darting from the footwear in his hands to the figure who had lost it. Donna couldn’t read his expression in the low light. Why was he hesitating to return the boot? Was it alien after all?
That was when, with a series of pops and a low electrical hum, the Boulder Star flickered back to life. Everyone cheered.
In that moment, the two mysterious figures’ features became visible. Donna’s mouth fell open when she caught sight of their faces.
The Doctor gasped, letting the black boot slip from his fingers and fall to the ground with a thud. Donna could see the exact moment he decided to run— toward the two figures, not away— and quickly caught his ankle before he could take off.
He looked down at her, startled.
She tossed the black boot up to him, and he caught it, his expression a wordless plea for confirmation that she was seeing the same thing he was. She smiled and gave him a small, sure nod.
“Go on,” she said, “I’ll catch up. I think your Cinderella’s waiting for her shoe back.”
Donna had never seen the Doctor move as fast as he did then. 'I’d probably do the same if the love of my life and a daughter I thought I’d lost forever suddenly returned out of the blue,' she reasoned, watching the Doctor clamber up the mountainside like his lives depended on it. For all she knew, they might have.
“Dad!”
“Doctor!”
The Doctor knew those voices, had known that hearing those voices now should be impossible, and yet…here they were.
He was moving before he’d even made the conscious decision to do so, hearts in his throat and respiratory bypass kicking in, because he’d all but stopped breathing the moment he’d seen them. Every other thought lost importance, swiftly overtaken by the names repeating over and over again in his mind.
Jenny! Rose! Oh, please let this be real!
He almost faltered halfway there, almost gave into the fear that this wasn’t really happening. But Donna had nodded. She had seen them too, and now he could sense their presences in space and time, burning bright and brilliant and wonderful. He could see the one person that was everything his aching hearts had missed for so, so long, and that drove him forward those last few feet.
Her name rushed past his lips as barely more than an exhaled breath, but it didn’t matter if she heard it or not because then he was there, falling to his knees before Rose Tyler and pulling her into the most magnificent hug the entire universe had ever known. He may have slipped on ice at the last second and almost knocked her over in the process, but none of that mattered either. She simply steadied herself with a laugh—Oh, how he’d missed that laugh—and wrapped her arms around him just as tightly.
“Rose! Rose, you’re here, you’re really here. How are you—I thought—” The Doctor didn’t know what to say first. How could he possibly put everything he thought he’d never get to tell her into words?
“I’m really here, Doctor,” Rose said with a joyful chuckle, both hands tightly clutching the back of his coat. A tremor went through her and she gripped his coat even tighter, like she was afraid he would disappear if she let go. The Doctor knew that feeling all too well.
He glanced up at Jenny then, meeting her hopeful smile with a watery one of his own. Her features were the same as they had been on Messaline, and he couldn’t help but wonder how that was possible. She was dressed in all black, including her combat boots. A neon pink knit hat with cat ears was pulled down over her blonde hair. The Doctor knew he would have time to talk to her later, hopefully for a long, long time to come, but he had something very important to do first.
He tilted his head down, bringing his mouth closer to Rose’s ear. “I missed you,” he whispered, lips tingling in anticipation as they hovered over her soft skin. There were thousands of hopes and fears flying through his head, but he kept himself grounded, focusing on her presence and how it soothed him, revived him in ways only she could.
“I really missed you too,” Rose echoed. She didn’t appear to want to let go of him anytime soon, one of her hands drifting up to play with the short hairs at the nape of his neck.
He pulled back slightly and brought his hands up to either side of her face, thumbs caressing her cheeks. “Rose Tyler…” he began.
She stiffened.
(Had she truly not known how he felt about her? He thought he’d shown her enough before, thought she might have understood despite never hearing the words.)
He kept going. “I don’t know how you managed to find your way here. I tried for so long and nothing worked, but that’s not important. What is important is that you’re brilliant, and you’re here, and I never got to finish telling you something last time. That is, if you, um…”
An adoring smile appeared on Rose’s face as he trailed off. “My feelings haven’t changed. Even if you can’t say the words…I think you tried to tell me in other ways before," she said softly.
He searched her gaze, in absolute awe of the love he saw there. “Rose Tyler, I love you.”
It was a resolution, a confirmation, and a promise. And kissing her for the first time, the first real time without either of them about to die or because one of them was possessed, or for any other reason than simply because he loved her, sealed that promise. If the eyes of the universe were always watching the Doctor, then he was going to make his intentions clear beyond a shadow of doubt when it came to this human woman, his saving grace, his brave pink-and-yellow girl. She didn’t hesitate to respond in kind. She was his and he was hers for however long their forever might be.
They might have possibly gotten a little too wrapped up in each other— because kissing Rose Tyler was absolutely fantastic, and the Doctor was trying making up for years of missed chances— and only broke apart when Donna wolf-whistled.
“Save it for the TARDIS, Spaceman, there are kids present!” she said, jokingly trying to cover Jenny’s eyes with her hands.
Jenny laughed and batted her hands away. “I’m not that much of a kid!”
“Think you dropped my boot,” Rose muttered, drawing the Doctor’s attention back to her.
His brow furrowed in confusion. “What?”
She looked pointedly down at her feet. He followed her gaze, rapidly working to recall the incident that had reunited them. “Ah, right. Boot. Where—”
Rose stifled a giggle, patting his cheek with a tongue-touched grin like she knew exactly what her kiss had done to him. She felt around behind her until her fingers closed around the missing boot, and proceeded to jam her foot back into it with a small wince.
“I’m fine, just slipped on ice. It’s not even sprained,” she said, noticing the concerned look that flashed across the Doctor’s face. He remained doubtful (of course he did, he had just gotten her back), but she stopped him with a quick kiss before he could scan her with the sonic screwdriver.
When she pulled away, she tilted her head in Jenny and Donna’s direction. “Think we’ve scandalized them enough for one night yet?” she asked.
He gaped at her, unable to form a word, let alone a proper sentence that would actually answer her. Rose took pity on him, getting to her feet and drawing him up with her. “She’s been waiting a long time to find you again, you know,” she said. She didn’t have to clarify who she was talking about.
Jenny didn’t wait for her father to make up his mind (again) about her. She simply darted forward to envelope him in a crushing hug when he took a tentative step toward her. The Doctor returned it, opening his mouth to apologize, to say something, but the words caught in his throat.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jenny said, stepping back.
“But I—”
“It wasn’t, Dad, and besides, I came back. And I got to visit so many planets after I left Messaline! I did an awful lot of running, and saved a few lives too. And I love it,” Jenny said in a rush, voice brimming with excitement.
“But how did you...You were...You didn’t…” The Doctor couldn’t bring himself to say it, even now.
Jenny’s expression softened. “I’m not exactly sure what happened,” she said, her gaze darting over to Rose. "All I know is that it felt like waking up from sleep. A little more jarring, a bit more intense at first, but it wasn’t a complete regeneration. I think it happened because of the way I was created.”
Donna finally spoke up. “You sort of ‘caused’ your own creation, right? We went to Messaline because the TARDIS sensed your presence, but you only came about because we went there in the first place.”
(Oh, Donna was brilliant! So unsure about herself, but she really needn’t be.)
“Aaannnd…” Rose added, slipping her hand into the Doctor’s, “I found Jenny, well, we found each other because we were drawn to the other’s presence without realizing it.”
“What do you mean?” the Doctor asked, wariness creeping into his voice the more he thought about all the implications of Rose and Jenny’s return.
Rose grinned disarmingly. “I guess the dimension cannon honed in on her location because her presence is so similar to yours. Handy, that.”
“A dimension cannon?!”
Nodding, Rose pulled a flat, yellow, circular device out of her jacket pocket and held it up for him and Donna to see. “Helped build it myself. I had to get back here somehow, didn’t I?”
Before the Doctor could sputter out an incredulous reply or launch into a detailed lecture about why blindly flinging oneself across the Void to get to another universe was one of the most dangerous things he could possibly think off, Rose squeezed his hand reassuringly. “I’m here now, though, and so is Jenny. I promise we’ll tell you everything, later. For now, can’t we just enjoy the view?” She gestured to the star around them, and the valley below.
The Doctor let out the breath he’d been holding, looking down at their joined hands. The tension soon left his shoulders, and he couldn’t help but smile slightly as he gave her hand a small squeeze in return. “Won’t you get cold?” he asked.
Rose gave a slight shake of her head, bright eyes shining up at him. "Not if you let me borrow your coat.”
“I’m fine with staying a little longer if you all want to,” Donna said, drawing Jenny into a side-hug. “And while we’re here, Doctor, I think Jenny and Rose need to hear about all your past Boulder adventures.”
“Oh, this I have to hear!” Jenny grinned, far too much like her father to ever let such an intriguing statement go.
Rose looked at him expectantly, and for a moment, all the Doctor could think about was that there were so many similarities between her and his daughter it was almost…impossible. But he would have time to think more on that later. As for the present, of course Donna would force him into telling a few (slightly embarrassing) stories, and who was he to deny a captive audience of people he loved?
“Oh, alright, if you insist,” he conceded, pressing a kiss to Rose’s hair. He took off his coat and helped Rose slip her arms into the sleeves, taking care to button up a few of the buttons before leading her, Jenny, and Donna back down to the wide, flat rock he'd found earlier.
And sitting there in the light of the Boulder Star with his newfound, lost and found family of amazing, brilliant people, the Doctor was happy to stay a little longer. As he began to tell the story of his last encounter with the star, he heard the teen with the guitar start to play a lovely little tune that the Time Lord had never heard before, but he found the accompanying lyrics rather fitting.
I want to tell you before I forget
You're doing well
You know you're living it
You're gonna make it no matter how hard it gets
Despite the darkness
Some of these days
Wintergreen I can't outshine your radiance
Wintergreen or undermine your silliness
Wintergreen I love you more than anything
Wintergreen despite the darkness
Some of these days
“Wintergreen”
(The East Pointers)
