She's ageless now, right?

When I published the first version of Eve of the Eternal on fanfiction.net, once I revealed that Rose has been made ageless, I got a lot of comments like, "Oh, now she can give the Doctor his forever now?" Well, yes, she could, but here's something important to know about me and my writing style. I don't just hand over happy endings to the characters in my stories. Happy endings are boring. I have to put them through hell first.

In this case, concerning the relationship between Rose and the Doctor, I think Rose's biological immortality would build more obstacles than it would eliminate, especially since this wasn't a sudden, "Oh, you're ageless now" moment for Rose. She's been like this for a really, really long time. For the Doctor, it's sudden. The Rose he remembers is the one from before Canary Wharf. Neither he nor Rose know who she is now, only who she used to be. That in of itself is a problem. Rose has a long road ahead of her, a long way to go before she's ready for a relationship.

Also, I believe that suddenly having an indefinite lifespan would be emotionally traumatic for a human. A lot of decisions we make, we make when we do because we don't live forever. Also, Rose now has the same curse as the Doctor and Jack. She can't allow herself to get close to anyone else from Earth without suffering a great deal of pain, because she will outlive them. Rose is cut off from her own world.

Those are only two reasons that Rose is not, in fact, going to have an immediate, unrestrained romance with the Doctor. However, note the words "immediate" and "unrestrained." I never said she isn't going to have an intimate relationship with the Doctor. Just don't expect graphic sex. I don't show that in my stories.

Rose's agelessness was something that I put a great deal of thought into, and part of the reason I set up Eve of the Eternal the way I did was to avoid making Rose ageless according to the usual clichés. I didn't want Bad Wolf to have anything to do with it, for starters; and I really wanted to avoid turning Rose into a Time Lord. With no intended offense to my fellow fanfiction writers, the Bad Wolf thing has been done so many times that to me it's become virtually meaningless; and I really hate turning Rose, or any of the Doctor's companions, into a Time Lord. I did that once in an early story that I never published (and probably never will), and I hated it in that story. I've only seen this done well in a couple of other fanfictions, out of hundreds.

Just avoid it. Please.