Rose's head was throbbing when she came to, her hands immediatly going down to her stomach even before she warded off the daze of sleep. Reassured by the physical contact as well as the feeling just at the edge of her mind that the baby's conciousness was still entwined with hers, she sighed and rolled onto her back. At this stage, her movements were difficult and the prolonged length of the pregnancy truly did nothing to help her get used to moving around with such a large belly, since she was more often than not wearing the clothing that concealed it. It was only at night, in the security of her own bed, that she wore regular pajamas, stroking her belly with one hand as she fell asleep. As she turned, she found the Doctor sitting next to her hospital bed, staring intensely at her face, though he seemed to avoid looking at anything below her neck.
"How are you feeling?"
She gave a shrug, or at least, the closest thing to a shrug that she could manage. He did not ask a follow up question and she suspected that he had run a diagnostic on her while she slept, which had provided him with all the reassurance he needed and he was only being polite.
"How long have you known?"
His question might have caught her by surprise had she not been anticipating, for months now, all the questions he might ask about her pregnancy. She even used to sit and write them all down, trying to sort through her thoughts. This was complicated enough as it was, and she felt it was important that she had all the details of it down before she attempted to discuss her pregnancy frankly with anyone, especially the Doctor.
"A few weeks after we said goodbye, I didn't know then. The fetus develops very slowly, so my body took some getting used to. Martha — the other universe's Martha, she's my physician — told me blood loss was normal in some pregnancies and it didn't occur to me that I might be pregnant the first year and half because of that. Then one day, I was sitting in my office at Torchwood and all of a sudden, I got what felt like vertigo and suddenly...It sounds a bit weird, but I felt like there was another presence in my head."
The Doctor nodded as she went through her explanation. Gallifreyans being telepathic, it made sense for the child she was carrying to have connected with the mother's mind, though he could not tell if that was a normal occurance or if the link had been established in that fashion because there was no other telepathic mind to connect to and the baby had found a way around the problem. He had to admit that he knew next to nothing about Gallifreyan pregnancies, for the very simple fact that they were quite unusual and so were Gallifreyan and human hybrid pregnancies.
"Then I started getting pulled across. It took me a while to be able to control it. I continued working at Torchwood, though I did much less field work towards the end. I might not show under the special clothes, but I still have to carry all this weight around," Rose laughed, attempting to lighten the mood as the intensity of his eyes on her started to be too much for her to handle.
Rose turned away from him with a small laugh and for the first time, he allowed his eyes to travel down to her belly. Unlike the clothes she had worn earlier, the thin white sheets could not cover the evidence of the pregnancy, the pronounced curve of her stomach rising and lowering at she took a deep breath and sighed. Without stopping to think, he reached out and placed his hand on the surface of it, fingers extended. She gasped at the surprise contact, turning back to him.
"It doesn't feel real...it just..."
She nodded knowingly, encouraging him along with a gentle smile.
"It's like I can't allow mysef to believe it just yet. To believe that you're truly back, and this..."
He began to pull back, but her hand came up to cover his and held him in place. Under his palm, he felt a sudden movement, followed by what felt like a sharp kick. Rose grimaced, then laughed at the Doctor's bewildered expression. "It's just like its father, can't keep still too long, though it's being a little overactive right now. I guess it still thinks it's time to go kick some Dalek arse, it usually gets like this whenever I'm going out to fight something, or on a field mission."
She paused as if gaging his reaction to the mention of a field mission, then she went on.
"Thing is Doctor, I'm not the same girl you met in that shop years ago."
"Yeah", he sighed, then her heart skipped a beat as she saw his eyes drift to her bandaged hand. She knew that she had rattled him when she had pulled her stunt of punching at the wall and she had not been lying when she had said she had had much worse. This was a far cry from the girl he had known, it was one hundred percent Torchwood training and it was part of who she was now.
"The last two years for me have been years of fighting and training, of stopping alien invasions. Don't get me wrong, I would still much rather that Canary Wharf hadn't happened, but I'm very proud of what I've accomplished. I saved people, I have friends and a family. I do the best I can to make sure that Torchwood stays on the right path, and yeah, that means working insane hours. I carry this baby, for me, for you. All of it...it's changed me in more ways than I can probably count, but Doctor... I'm still me."
When she met his eyes again, they were sparkling as he looked at her in wonder and a little bit of bewilderement. From the expression on his face, she could tell that he was lost in a memory and her heart skipped in her chest as she both heard him say the words in the present and heard them echo in her mind, from that day on that forsaken beach. "Rose Tyler, defender of the Earth."
And then there it was, hanging heavy between them. The goodbye they had shared on the beach, with all its revelations and misses, had been brought up and now it stood as one more elephant in an already cramped room. Taking a deep breath, he reached up to place one hand on top of hers, much like Rose herself had done with Martha. In this case, however, he applied no pressure on her hand so as not to hurt her. "Rose, on the beach..."
"Don't...," Rose interrupted, attempting to pull back her hand from under his, but he closed his fingers around it. She winced softy, but did not pull back. She stared at him and hoped that that was enough to discourage him from approaching the subject. She did not want those memories to be brought up, not while everything was still so unsure between them. Oblivious, or more likely determined to speak his mind, the Doctor continued.
"This is important Rose, it's important that you know, especially with what's happened," he began, his hand caressing her belly to accentuate the last part. "I started telling you something and I never finished it."
At this, Rose froze. The truth was, she had expected him to bring up their goodbyes but gloss over the revelation he had almost made to her. She had come to the conclusion while tossing and turning in her bed that night, that the only way he could ever tell her he loved her was if it did not interfere with his higher purpose as a Timelord. The fact that he was willing to speak of this without the eminent threat of being torn apart completely caught her off guard. She wondered if the reason for that was because they were irrevocably linked now, through their child; the domestics door had been thrown off its hinges.
"Rose Tyler, I..."
"Doc, let's go," Jack's voice echoed through the room as he rushed in through the open door. A second later, his eyes came to rest on Rose's not so slim figure on the bed. "You're pregnant."
Had he not just interrupted them at precisely the worst moment imaginable, perhaps the expression on his face might have seemed comical to them. As it was though, the Doctor had to refrain from unleashing the Oncoming Storm on him and bludgeon him with several heavy objects.
"Really pregnant. What happened? Alien parasite?"
"Oi!" the Doctor exclaimed indignantly, getting up in one swift motion and turning to Jack. The other man threw his hands up in a protective manner, his eyes as big as buttons. "Sorry! It's just...Doctor, she's extremely pregnant and she clearly wasn't when I saw her just an hour ago."
"I was," Rose sighed from the bed, for the first time peeling her eyes from the Doctor to look at the intruder. Jack frowned, thoroughly confused, then dropped his hands.
"That is one slimming coat."
Anticipating the parentage question that would follow, the Doctor narrowed his eyes at Jack. It took the other man a few seconds to work it out, but his sudden sharp intake of break, followed by one of his trademark coy smiles made it clear that he had figured everything out.
"Oh! Right. Well, congrats, but we gotta go, Doc."
With that, Jack exited the room, clearly still distraught. Once the door had shut behind him, the Doctor turned to Rose, as if he were seeking her permission to leave. She offered him a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, her efforts to keep her voice trembling fruitless as she spoke. "Go. Save the universe now, make up for lost time later, remember?"
He smiled fondly at her, his eyes lingering on her face even as he started to turn away to leave, then he paused with his back to her. He stood like that for a moment, as if he were debating something, then turned to face her again.
With two strides, he was standing next to her bed again, his head dipping down so that he could claim her lips. Unlike the kiss they had shared earlier that day, this one tasted like urgency and despair, his hands framing her face as he brought her even closer, breathing her in. When they parted, her lips were red and swollen from the delicious abuse of his own. He leaned his forehead against hers and she reached up to wrap her fingers around his wrists, as she were anchoring herself to him. Maybe, in a way, she was.
"I love you."
Then, after kissing her forehead, he rushed out of the room after Jack, leaving Rose with a dazed expression on her face as she pressed her fingers to her lips. Hearing him say the words helped her deal with the terrible feeling of dread that invaded her as she pictured him facing down the Daleks, cursing at herself for not being able to help him.
It also helped her accept Martha's verdict that the baby was not simply acting funny because of the excitment of the day, but because the injuries substained from her close proximity with the explosion were more extensive then they thought and the baby's double heart rates were getting out of sync and slowing down. It would be more prudent to trigger the delivery, Martha said, as Donna held her hand and tried to soothe her. Rose agreed, out of concern for the baby, but she could not hold back the sobs that shook her as she realized that in all probability, she would be giving birth without the Doctor by her side. Still she hoped — perhaps he would be back in time. As time went by, that idea seemed more and more foolish.
"Rose, be reasonable."
But reasonable was the last thing she wanted to be. A little over two hours ago, Martha had triggered the delivery and the Doctor had yet to come back. This was certainly not the way she had planned for this baby to come into the world, not since she had realized that she could cross through dimensions. The plan had been for the Doctor to be by her side, so she could hold his hands and scream at him that this was all his fault. After three years of pregnancy, she had certainly more than earned that right. "I didn't come across the Void to deliver the baby without him here. No way."
"So what are you gonna go? Cross your legs?" Donna tried to reason, even though she understood the younger girl's wishes. Rose glared at her, her face red and covered with a thin layer of sweat. But then, all the frustration had gone from the girl's eyes as a shadow passed over them, something she had seen so many times with the Doctor, something that gripped at her heart.
"I want him here. I need him here. And he needs it too. You understand what I mean, don't you?"
And with that, Donna was gone, rushing out of the room with a determined expression on her face. She would later tell them of the dangers she had faced while making her way back to the UNIT buildings, or the Daleks she had ducked away from just in the time. But above all, she would tell them about how she saved the world. The Doctor would fill in the details about how Donna had replaced the sample and faced down Dalek Khaan, how she had offered him a choice to save his own kind and he had not believed that their plan to eradicate human life could fail. Neither of them really elaborated on the details of what exactly had happened to the Daleks once they had activated the device, however. Everyone could recognize that despite the fact that they had given the other species a choice, the end result still weighed heavy on them.
But when Donna returned four hours after she had left the room, she said nothing. She simply stepped to the side and let the Doctor rush in after her.
"Where the hell have you been?!"
Rose was scowling at him from the bed, her face red and her breathing heavy. Martha was sitting at the end of the bed between Rose's spread legs, which were covered by a white blanket, but she turned to him and flashed him a beaming smile. "Just in time, Timelord."
With a few strides, he was by Rose's side, clutching her hand as Martha called for a push and she did so with all her might. The next half hour was a whirlwind, as the last two days had been. The Doctor could scarcely believe that it had been less than forty-eight hours since he had learned that Rose was back, even less so since he had learned that Rose was pregnant. And now, here he was, about to become a father again. He tried to push the painful memory of Jenny to the back of his mind, fully embracing the moment and the inherent joy that came with it.
Yet, it wasn't until his former companion placed his newborn daughter in his arms that he realized that this was truly real. That this was not another dream, he would not wake up in his bed to find Donna watching over him, feeling the loss of Rose as if it had just happened. He had thought that feeling would be with him forever. But now he held in his arms the proof that fate would not be that cruel to him.
Rose extended her arms, sobbing softly as he placed their child in them, then sat by her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, kissing her hair. This was the baby she had carried with her for over three years, the beautiful daughter whose mind had been so intwined with hers that they had been one, allowed her to be here today and not alone, in a universe that truly wasn't hers. This was where she belonged. With that thought she turned towards the Doctor and their eyes met, once more promising what she once had, without speaking a word. There would be a time for explanations and discussions, but what mattered now was the unspoken message that passed between them in that moment.
Forever.