Rose’s judo lessons were progressing well. For the first time, this morning, she actually managed to throw The Doctor over onto the floor. The first time she did it she couldn’t quite believe it.

“Come on… you fell deliberately,” she said. “I couldn’t have…”

“Of course you could.” He picked himself up and assumed the start position. “All martial arts are intended to level the playing field. Anyone who practices hard enough can beat an apparently stronger opponent. Besides, you call this fair? I’m a granddad. You’re a spry 22 year old.” She laughed. “See. Now… can you remember the Tani Otoshi – the one with the reverse leg sweep and the floor pin.”

She remembered. She performed it well. He found himself flat on his back again and she did the pin so perfectly even he would have struggled to break free of her. But then she altered her grip, leant over him and kissed him on the lips. He felt the disappointment rise up in him and he pushed her off angrily.

“No,” he said. “I thought you wanted to take this seriously. You never… ever… use the disciplines for….”

“I’m sorry,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I just… I thought… just a bit of fun.”

“We’re not doing this for fun. We’re doing it so that you can fight your own corner the next time we’re in trouble. Do you intend to kiss a flesh-eating space cannibal?”

“No,” she answered. “Just you… but if that’s how you feel.…” She stood and ran out of the dojo, crying. For a minute or two he sat there fuming then he stood and went to find her.

He had been harsh. He forgot she was not a committed disciple of the arts, enclosed in the mountain top monastery where he had trained with single-minded dedication. She was a young girl who had done her best to understand something that was another world to her. She had understood MANY things that were beyond her experience. He felt sorry for shouting at her, even though he was correct. The dojo wasn’t the time or the place.

What WAS the time and place? He wondered. The trouble was, they never had the time. There never WAS the place. He loved her dearly. She was crazy about him. And they never had the chance to just tell each other that. The universe dealt them both a cruel hand of cards.

And yet the universe expected them to be there to right its wrongs.

He took his frustration out on the coke machine that stood in the corridor by the engine room with a spinning rear roundhouse kick that caused its inner circuits to scramble and dispense three cans of cola, all of which spilled out in a sticky mess on the floor. He swore in low Gallifreyan and turned away. He’d clean the mess up and fix the machine later. Right now, he had to mend the damage he’d done to Rose.

He finally located her in the last place he expected to find her, HER bedroom, the pink, fluffy room that was an exact replica of the one in Jackie’s flat. She was lying face down on top of the soft duvet with her head pressed into the pillow. She was crying still.

The Doctor looked about the pink room that still had teddy bears and dolls in it from her childhood. THIS wasn’t the place for it, for sure. He turned and saw a dry wipe board on the back of the door where she kept notes and reminders for herself. He picked up the pen and wrote SORRY across it in big letters. Then he slipped back out of the room and went to shower and dress properly.

It was an hour later when Rose came into the console room. Her eyes were still a little red, but she, too, had showered and dressed. Her short t-shirt dress had pictures of Looney Tunes cartoon characters on it. The sight of a manic Bugs Bunny across her chest had much the same effect as her pink bunny pyjamas, reminding him of how young, inexperienced and vulnerable she was.

But they had some grown up making up to do. And he had reflected on it and thought he knew how to do that.

“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “We can all get a little cabin crazy in the TARDIS. Let’s go to lunch.”

She hadn’t even realised they’d materialised. She took his hand anyway and they stepped out into a warm day in Milan, Italy.

“You’re taking me to lunch in Milan, fashion capital of the world, and I’m in a Bugs Bunny dress and you’re…. well… YOU!”

He smiled and looked in his wallet for a credit card. “If that’s your way of saying you want a new dress, then ok, but don’t take more than ten minutes choosing. I’m hungry.”

He wasn’t, of course. And she knew it. He didn’t need food the way Humans did. This lunch was a ‘make up’ gesture. So was the dress. She smiled as she picked one out and paid for it with his card.

It was the first time they had REALLY argued in that way. It was a shock to find that they COULD both of them act as stupidly as any ordinary couple. But she thought he had the sweetest way of making up.

“I crossed the line,” she said to him as they ate in a nice restaurant that did not seem to find his scruffy leather jacket out of place. She suspected he had hypnotised the manager into seeing something else. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry I was so angry about it,” he told her. “Forgive me?”

“Of course I do,” she assured him. “Because I love you, you soppy git. But will you…. I still want to learn… because although I don’t believe there ARE such things as flesh-eating space cannibals, there are plenty of other yukky things out there.”

“Of course I’ll teach you still. You’re doing really well with it. And yes, there ARE such things as flesh-eating space cannibals. I had to deal with a bunch of them when I was the Gallifreyan equivalent of your age.”

“With Tani Otoshi?”

“No. I blew their ship up. Sometimes you can’t wait around to fight fair.”

“Oh.”

“The hard part is knowing when you can fight, when you can negotiate – and when you should just blow the ship up. I’ve done a lot of that in my time.”

“And when not to kiss somebody?”

“Kissing me is not crossing the line, by the way. It WAS nice. But… not in the dojo. It's just a thing I feel. Those things must be taken seriously.”

“I get it now,” she said. She reached out her hand to him. He took hold of it and he kissed it, sweetly. He often did things like that. He often hugged her. He ALWAYS held hands with her. But they RARELY kissed. That WAS where the line was drawn. She understood that it wasn’t because he didn’t love her. More because he loved her too much to be able to stop if they let their feelings go so far. But even if they didn’t kiss, it still felt like something special, and this felt like a real date with him.

“You should HAVE real dates,” he said, though she had only thought about it, not spoken the wish aloud. “The life I offer you… it's not right really. You’re a lovely young woman.” She was sure his eyes flickered then to the plunging v-neckline of the dress as he said that. She hoped so. She’d chosen it for HIS appreciation. “And you don’t get enough simple fun without something spoiling it.”

“You made that sound like you regret having me around,” Rose said. “I… I really am sorry for messing up this morning.”

“Oh no, Rose,” he assured her quickly. “No, it's not that. We just seem to have had one crazy situation after another. Some of it was pretty damn horrible. The Arachnoids… the web…. I know that hurt you so much. Every place we go something bad seems to happen. I’d almost start to believe the ‘Clive’ version of me – death and destruction follows in my wake. And then I go and treat you rotten because of my stubborn adherence to ‘rules’. As if rules matter. If… if you decided you’d had enough… I’d understand.”

“I HAVE had enough of monsters and stuff,” she said. “I wish they would leave us alone. But I want to be with you. I just wish we could take a long holiday with nothing bad happening, without you having to rush off and fight something. But I don’t want to leave you.”

“The long holiday sounds like a good idea. So does just you and me.” He reached out his hand and touched her cheek gently. “Rose, I….”

His words were cut off abruptly by the sound of gunfire. Three men in black clothes and balaclavas burst into the restaurant yelling incoherently and firing semi-automatic rifles into the plaster ceiling.

“You have got to be kidding me,” The Doctor commented amidst the screams and protests of other customers. “This planet has a million restaurants and I pick one that’s overtaken by terrorists.” He sighed and stood up, approaching the three men, one of whom had taken hold of the Maitre-D and was shouting in rapid Italian that The Doctor felt too weary even to bother mentally translating.

“Hey,” he said. “Come on, whatever the problem is, I’m sure it can be worked out.” He held out his hands to show he was unarmed and smiled his most beguiling smile at the masked gunmen. For a moment all three hesitated, but then the one holding the Maitre-D turned his rifle and fired four times. Everyone in the restaurant screamed, but none so loud as Rose as, almost in slow motion, she saw the bullets rip into him. His body jerked as each one hit and then he fell to the floor.

She ran to him, despite shouted orders to stay where she was. As she knelt by him, one of the gunmen moved towards her but she turned with a fierceness she didn’t know she had.

“Back off,” she said. “Or shoot me, too, if you prefer. But I’m not leaving him. So just back off.”

To her amazement, they did. Around her, other diners were being herded together in one section of the restaurant and the three men were watching the windows nervously, but she didn’t see any of it. She only saw her Doctor, lying there, his clothes stained with his own alien blood.

He was alive, but barely. She cradled his head, horrified to see blood bubbling from between his lips as he struggled to breathe. His eyes focussed on her and his hands gripped her tightly for a moment. Then his strength failed him. He slumped in her arms.

She cried out in horror. After all they had been through, he couldn’t die like this, surely? He had beaten Daleks and Slitheen, Arachnoids and all kinds of weird things, and some ordinary human with a balaclava and a gun had destroyed him? No. It wasn’t possible. Besides, he was a Time Lord. They didn’t die. He could regenerate.

The nightmare she had been having for some time came back. He wouldn’t be him when he regenerated. He wouldn’t love her and she would not love him. But that was better than him being DEAD.

Deep in his sub-consciousness, he knew she was holding him. He felt her nearness and was comforted by it. It was that, more than anything, that was keeping him holding on to life, and more especially, to THIS life.

The last time he had felt this much pain was when he was fatally injured in the blast that had destroyed Gallifrey. Then he had wanted to die. He thought he had nothing left to live for. He had not even WANTED to regenerate. He wanted oblivion. THIS time, he had everything to live for. He had every reason to hold onto THIS life. He didn’t want to regenerate. He WANTED this life.

“I WANTED to live, too.” A voice whispered in his head and he saw the face of his last life looking down on him. “But when it's time, it's time….”

“It's NOT time,” he told his other self. “I’m not done. I’ve only lived this life for three years. I’m not giving it up. I’m not leaving HER to be shut into that bloody pyramid with YOU. I’ll make your eternity a misery if I do. So HELP me!”

“You know what to do,” his other self said. “You have to get control of your body. Look into it. See the damage.”

The damage was bad. He would be dead by now if his body hadn’t automatically shut down some of his systems. One of the bullets just went straight through his shoulder. That was just flesh and muscle damaged. He could mend that easily. The other three, though, had gone straight through his right lung. That was why his mouth was full of blood. He had been breathing it for a moment before the lung shut down.

Where were the bullets? Two of them had gone right through. He could feel the holes in his back. The other… was lodged next to his spine. He hoped nobody was stupid enough to try to move him, or he’d be the first paraplegic Time Lord.

Rose couldn’t have moved him if she tried. She had laid him flat on the floor and knelt by him, holding his limp hand. She half heard the voices around her. The ‘terrorists’ had been arguing among themselves. She had never taken a lesson in Italian in her life, but the TARDIS had that strange effect on her of allowing her to understand languages anywhere in the universe. She was able to follow their argument.

They were NOT, in fact, terrorists, just thieves. They had intended to rob the jewellery store next door. The plan had gone wrong, and they had run into the restaurant to escape the police.

She wondered if that made it better or worse. She recalled the first trip she ever made in the TARDIS, to the ‘end of the world’. Even there, somebody had tried to use the occasion to make money they didn’t deserve. “Five billion years and it's still about money,” The Doctor had said, disappointed with humanity’s greed. If he died now, and it was just for was money, she thought he would be even more disappointed.

He understood politics. He came from a planet with more complicated politics than anywhere in the universe. He had been a part of it himself. He had rebelled against it. He might even have sympathised with some causes that people on Earth thought worth fighting others for. But he would never understand the need to steal.

And these thieves had shot him four times because he stood up at the wrong time.

But thieves, and argumentative thieves though they were, they had the restaurant under their control. They had all of them as hostages, at least fifty people, including those of the kitchen staff who hadn’t run for it, all rounded up now and crouching on the floor beside her.

Most of them turned their faces away. They didn’t want to look at a dead man. Most of them didn’t notice the strange light orange colour of the congealing pool of blood, and they didn’t notice the body become ice cold.

Rose almost screamed in alarm as it happened. She knew that wasn’t natural. In a warm room a dead body didn’t cool for hours. And he wasn’t just cool, he was freezing. His hand in hers was icy and his skin was pale blue. His eyelashes had frost on them and around his lips, where blood had bubbled up with his breath, that, too, was icy.

She didn’t know what was happening. Was THIS how Time Lords died? She wasn’t sure of anything.

But whatever was happening to him, whatever was happening around her, she did not intend to leave him. As uncomfortable as his ice cold hand felt, she clung to it. She wasn’t sure she COULD let go without breaking his fingers anyway. She kissed his cold hand instead and hoped against hope.

“All right,” his other self said. “That gives you a bit of time. You don’t need to breath for a couple of hours. So you can mend your LUNGS.”

“That bullet has to come out first,” he told himself. “If I breathe, that’s movement… and it could work its way further in.

“You’d be safer trying to regenerate,” his other self told him. “This is too dangerous. Do you WANT to have to alter the TARDIS to make it wheelchair friendly? Do you think she would still love you?”

“Yes,” he said. “She would.”

“You’re very sure of that.”

“Yes. LOOK at her.” He couldn’t see her. His brain was almost completely shut down and his sight was controlled by his brain. But he could sense her beside him. He felt her hand in his even though his nervous system was being blocked. He could feel her love, and her grief, deep in his soul. He wished he could tell her he WAS still alive. If only they still had the telepathic link between them it would have been all right. He could have talked to her, instead of to himself.

“Why do you hate me?” his other self asked. “You don’t hate yourself. Why hate me? I AM a part of you, after all.

“Shut up, I’m trying to pull a bullet from my spine,” he told himself. If his disembodied mind HAD teeth he would have gritted them. The effort to remove the bullet was difficult and painful. He didn’t need his irritating other self telling him things he didn’t need to know.

He concentrated hard on the bullet, willing it to reverse its trajectory through his body exactly so that it caused no further damage. He was lousy at telekinesis. Of his psychic powers, that one was his worst. At the Prydonian Academy his tutors just shrugged and said that a half-blood was bound to be deficient in those areas. But he COULD do it if he TRIED very hard. And right now he was trying very hard.

It moved slowly. He would have said that the effort was killing him if being shot four times wasn’t already doing that. But he managed to pull it away from his spine and he was relieved to feel no damage there. He pulled it slowly, slowly, through his body, along the path it had ploughed through him. Passing back through his lung was the worst. It hurt like hell. He felt every moment of the pain. He was reminded vividly of the time when he had given a heart to a man who needed it. It had been bearable only because he had been in deep meditation. But it had still been painful. This was the same. He felt every inch of the reverse trajectory of the bullet, all the way through his chest and out through his flesh.

Rose looked in wonder as she saw the misshapen bullet emerge from the hole in his chest. She picked it up and stared at it. Then she looked at The Doctor. He was no different - still ice cold, his body rigid as if in death. But she didn’t believe it, and this proved it. He had expelled one of the bullets from his body. He must be doing something in a deeper meditative state than she had ever known before. It was hope. It was something to hold onto as she and the other hostages waited for freedom.

Around her, the thieves were negotiating with the police who stood off outside in fear that hostages might be killed. Strangely, nobody seemed to have told the police that there had already been a victim. The gunmen kept looking at her as she knelt with The Doctor. They seemed embarrassed by her. She had the feeling they hadn’t intended to shoot anyone.

But then they shouldn’t have tried to do a robbery with automatic rifles. And they shouldn’t have shot HIM. All his long life, he had done good for others. He had asked nothing from anyone. He was kind, generous, and brave. He was a wonderful man. He didn’t deserve this.

“Regeneration would have been less painful,” his other self said. “And quicker. I don’t know why you put yourself through this.”

“You were never in love,” he said as he turned his attention to repairing the grievous damage to his lung. Three of the bullets had torn into it. There was debris scattered through it. It was a long, difficult job piecing it back together. Actually, now, the distraction of the conversation with his other self was welcome. But he was not going to give him an easy ride of it.

“I loved Grace,” his other self said.

“You didn’t love her enough, or you wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.”

“I loved her.”

“I love Rose,” he insisted. “And I won’t let her down. She doesn’t want me to change into another man. She loves ME.”

“Doesn’t she realise we are all the same man?”

“No. And I’m not so sure we are.”

“We have the same memories. A man is the sum of his memories.”

“Yes, and a Time Lord even more so. Can you remember why I thought it necessary to point that out to somebody?”

“No. But it's true.”

“Even so… I don’t think we ARE the same. I’ve NEVER felt the same afterwards. I haven’t even liked the same food. I mean… did YOU like jelly babies?”

“No. they made me feel sick. Too sugary.”

“Same here. And YOU were into Puccini. I like Bob Dylan.”

“We ALWAYS liked Bob Dylan,” his other self said. “And Puccini was a good mate.”

“Yeah, but.…”

“You think she won’t love you if you regenerate. And worse, you think you may not love her.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if you’re right or not. It's so long since we’ve been in love. When Julia was in our lives, we weren’t old enough TO regenerate. It's never been an issue before.”

“It's an issue now. And I’m NOT going to do it. Besides, I’ve only lived with this body for three years. It would be a waste. We don’t have that many chances left to get it right.”

“Four lives left,” his other self said. “Yes, I suppose you’d better look after that body.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

“You’ve done well since you regenerated from me.” His other self said. “You gave us a reason to go on. I really didn’t want to. I thought there was nothing to live for. When I saw Gallifrey burning….”

“Don’t.” he said. “Don’t make me remember. I’ve come to terms with it. But don’t make me remember. It was awful.”

“It wasn’t our fault, you know,” his other self told him. “You don’t need to carry around a whole lot of guilt. All we did was survive the holocaust. The holocaust WASN’T our fault.”

“That’s not how I remember it.”

“You’re remembering wrong. And that’s MY fault. I FELT guilty when I was dying. I made you think we WERE. But the only ones responsible are those who forced that war on us.”

“Don’t make me think about THEM, either.” His soul gave an involuntary shiver. “Nearly five hundred years I’ve battled against them. And because of them everything we ever were… everyone we knew… friends, family, enemies alike, are dead.”

“But you’re alive. The last Time Lord - to remember what we were.”

“Some destiny!”

“Yes.” His other self paused. “But it’s YOUR destiny all the same.”

“Good job I’m willing to accept it then.”

“Yes.” There was an awkward pause as if even his other self didn’t know what to say next. Then….

“How is it going?”

“I can breathe again,” he said. “Lungs repaired.”

“Better bring the temperature back up then.”

Rose was startled when she felt a breath escape from his lips. She looked down and saw he was looking a lot less blue. His hand in hers DID feel much warmer, and the frost was gone from his eyes and mouth. She picked up a paper napkin that had fallen to the floor near her and wiped the blood from his mouth, then she bent and kissed his lips. It was the second time today she had kissed him. This time he couldn’t get angry at her. She kept on kissing him, his lips feeling numb and lifeless, but warm now as they ought to be.

The other tissues were not so difficult to mend. The holes in his back and shoulder closed and mended one by one. The ones in his chest came next. His ribs were bruised and would hurt for a few days, but that was a small price to pay when he knew he HAD a few days to feel bruised in.

“You’ll be ok now,” his other self said. “Take care in future.” Then he was gone. But he didn’t need him now. He could feel himself rising to the surface of consciousness. He was aware of the pressure of her kiss on his lips. His hearts fibrillated. He steadied them.

“What are you doing?” Rose’s heart sank as she became aware of the gunman behind her. “Is he alive?” The gunman spoke to one of his partners, who also approached. “He looked dead. How can he be….”

“Tani Otoshi,” Rose heard the words whispered in her ear and saw his eyes opened, looking at her. “The one on the left. NOW.”

She stood up and turned to the gunman. He was at least a foot taller than her and broad-shouldered. And he had a gun in his hand. But martial arts levelled the playing field. That’s what HE told her.

She was so busy bringing down the man on the left with a perfectly executed Tani Otoshi throw that she didn’t quite see how The Doctor got from lying flat on the ground to that magnificent flying kick she had seen him perform in practice so often. The gunman didn’t see it either until The Doctor’s foot connected with his head. She wasn’t sure either how he crossed the floor and took down the other man with a karate style punch that floored him before he could think about squeezing the trigger of the gun.

The Doctor took the guns from all three men and threw them in a heap on the floor and took out his sonic screwdriver. He aimed a beam at the guns which melted all three barrels into solid lumps.

It was at that moment that the police burst in. The Doctor raised his hands to indicate that he was unarmed and stepped back towards Rose, who still held the first man pinned down.

As the police took the three into custody The Doctor took hold of Rose’s hand. “Come on. We’re not answering any questions around here.” He guided her towards the kitchen area. When he found an empty space big enough he turned and held her close with one arm while he reached in his pocket and took out the TARDIS key, pressing it to bring it from where he had ‘parked’ it. They both felt the strange disorientation of being in two places at once as the console room solidified around them. The Doctor ran to the drive control and put them into temporal orbit then he turned back to Rose.

“I owe you another dress,” he said. “That one is ruined.”

She looked down at the dress and saw that it was covered in his blood. Her stomach churned in remembrance.

“Forget the dress. I thought you were…. What the hell DID happen?”

“I was about as close to death as a Time Lord can get and still have options,” he told her. “I put myself into the deepest possible state of trance to repair myself, rather than the easy option – letting this body die and getting a new one.” He looked at her and smiled.

“You were my reason to want to live. Thank you for that.” He held her again. She felt his two hearts beating as he pressed her close and that, she thought, was the sweetest sound she knew.