Anyway, Reinette is looking up at the sky when she hears footsteps; she checks the clock face, but instead of a crack, there's Rose. Reflected: "Madame de Pompadour...Please, don't scream or anything, we haven't got a lot of time." Rose takes a seat, because it's intense, and Reinette stands before her. "I've come to warn you that they'll be here in five years," Rose says quietly, and sadly. "Some time after your thirty-seventh birthday. I, um...I can't give you an exact date. It's a bit random. But they're coming. It's gonna happen. In a way, for us, it's already happening. I'm sorry, it's hard to explain. The Doctor does this better..." Reinette is almost unbearably cool: "Then be exact, and I will be attentive." Rose totally -- and this is a brilliant move -- gets where Reinette's coming from, and can only offer apology: "There isn't time." Reinette's like, the hell?: "There are five years." Rose shakes her head: "...For you. I haven't got five minutes." Reinette: "Then also be concise." She sits down, clearly ready to listen and learn.

"Um, there's, say, a...vessel. A ship. A sort of sky ship. And it's full of...well, you," says Rose. "Different bits of your life in different rooms, all jumbled up. ...I told you it was complicated, sorry." Reinette nods: "There is a vessel in your world, where the days of my life are pressed together like the chapters of a book, so that he may step from one to the other without increase of age. While I, weary traveler, must always take the slower path." Rose nods: "He was right about you." (This is either another trick to make us love her, or it's a really cool way of showing how deep into each other's shit Rose and the Doctor actually are: he says Reinette's awesome, she's awesome. No time for jealousy when the girl's life is on the line. Considering where we're headed, I could go either way.) "So, in five years these creatures will return. What can be done?" Rose tells Reinette to keep them talking, when they come: "You won't be able to stop them, but you might be able to delay them a bit." Reinette sucks it up: "Until?" Until the Doctor can get there. He promises he will come. "But he cannot make his promises in person?" asks Reinette. He'll be there when you need him. That's the way it's gotta be, Rose tells her. And she should know. But not as much as Reinette: "It's the way it's always been. The monsters and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other." Rose laughs: "Tell me about it." Forget the romance and the dancing: wouldn't you like to see Rose make one friend? One wonderful friend? "The thing is, you weren't supposed to have either. Those creatures are messing with history. None of this was ever supposed to happen to you." Reinette draws herself up, angrily: "'Supposed to happen'? What does that mean? It happened, child. And I would not have it any other way. One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel." She stands with her back to Rose, facing the fireplace. I vex my heart with fancies dim: He still outstript me in the race; It was but unity of place That made me dream I rank'd with him. Mickey calls Rose back, and he appears behind a tapestry: "The time window when she's thirty-seven. We found it. Right under our noses." Reinette makes a run for the tapestry. Wouldn't you? She fell in love. She told us this before the credits rolled. Rose protests, saying that the Doctor will freak out, but Reinette's already gone.