He looked away, one hand reaching up to rub at the wallpaper. Only five years? He'd been struggling with the concept of his own mortality already - nine hundred years of memories, and he knew that he would make only a few more decades more of them before his human body gave out - but five years? The thought that he, as an being independent of the Doctor, would exist for less than a decade (assuming Rose's timeline stayed intact - and how could it not, if he was meeting her here now?) made bile rise in his throat.

"Jack said you were from after me," he blurted out, still not looking at her.