The Doctor left Rose with an option... How long was he gone, when she said no? Where did he go? She never asked, and he never told her.
note; I don't own any of this, there might be errors, this is what I consider to be a 'drabble,' this is a one-shot, I will love you forever if you review.
"You were useless in there!" Rose chides with a silly grin. "You'd be dead if it wasn't for me."
"Yes, I would," he admits quietly, thoughtful. He gives her a smile back, saying, "Thank you." But something feels off. Standing in this alley, awkwardly saying goodbye. He's good at goodbye, what's keeping him from it now? He looks Rose up and down, rocking on his heels. "Right then, I'll be off. Unless... ah... I don't know, you could come with me." His voice is full of hope. Rose doesn't bite, not right away, and he plunges on. "This box isn't just a London Hopper, you know. It can go anywhere in the Universe, free of charge."
Mickey speaks up first, scrambling against the wooden pallets to move away. "Don't! He's an alien! He's... he's a thing!"
The Doctor doesn't justify him with a glance. "He's not invited," he says, leaving no room for argument. He keeps his eyes on Rose. "What do you think?" She sways, indecisive. "You could stay here and fill your life with work and food and sleep or you could go... anywhere."
She nods to the box. "Is it always this dangerous?"
"Yeah," he answers simply. He doesn't sugarcoat it. Somehow his tongue ties when he tries.
Rose shook her head apologetically, a sad smile on her face. The smile of a woman torn between being happy and making others happy. "Yeah I cant. I got to go and find my mum and someone's got to look after this stupid lump."
He tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Maybe he succeeds, but he doesn't dwell on it. "Okay," he says without a smile, adding, cruptically, "See you around."
He steps into the TARDIS, closing the door behind him. Wasting no time, the strange alien jumps to the levers and gears, flipping them madly. With a familiar groaning sigh, the TARDIS vanishes into the time vortex. He thinks, just dimly, that he should keep going. Keep moving. Rose is special, he can feel it. She's brave and funny and smart, and a Time Lord has a good eye for those kinds of things. The eye that he had right now was enough to set even Rassilon himself after Rose.
On nothing more than a hunch, he taps in commands to the screen, watching the information stream by with a concentrated scowl. Maybe he had become too bitter. So many years alone were taking their toll, and his time with Rose had been as carefree as any he'd had since losing Gallifrey. The TARDIS rejects his inquiry for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Undaunted, the Time Lord presses on, moving levers this and that, overriding the TARDIS manually, his leather jacket creaking as he skipped and twirled around the panels.
When the TARDIS comes to a landing, he doesn't go outside, not quite yet. He lets the external sensors gather information. The screen shows a London much like the one he came from, with people hustling and bustling about the world in their normal attire. Nothing seems to be amiss for the Time Lord, according to his data everything is right as it should be. Everything, that is, except for a signal he homed in on.
"Missed it," he hums to himself, tapping the screen.
As he strolls to the doors, he looks back at the panel covering the Heart of the TARDIS. "Don't go anywhere, you stay right here. I'll only be gone a moment."
A gentle groan answers the Time Lord, but he pays the TARDIS no mind, traipsing out the doors as if he were on vacation. For the Doctor, every location was vacation, until something went wrong, as it was wont to do. He found himself on the same street he'd tracked Rose to. There, down the way, was Rose's apartment complex, where he knew Jackie Tyler would be fretting about one thing or another, maybe trying to seduce the rubbish man. The Doctor starts there.
Climbing the steps three at a time, he comes to the top winded but the adrenalin is kicking through him now, and he doesn't want to stop. If he stops, he'll turn back, and if he turns back, he'll be alone forever. Ticking off the numbers in his head as he walks by, he finds Rose and Jackie Tyler's number and stops. What is he going to say? Will Jackie recognize him? How many years has it been? Nine-hundred years of time and space, but the Doctor could never pinpoint dates.
His fist lifts and pounds on the door, feeling awkward, heavy, and alien. He hears a sound behind the door, a scraping and a muffled shout of "hold on" before the door opens a few inches, the chain lock draped in the gap across a haggard face. The blond hair is limp and lifeless around her shoulders, and she hasn't put on makeup. In fact, if the Doctor were to guess, Jackie Tyler hasn't left the house in many days. Perhaps weeks. Maybe months.
"Hello," he says cheerily, his stomach doing flips. "I'm looking for Rose Tyler."
Jackie goes pale, her eyes looking him up and down, her mouth working but no sound coming out.
"Is she out?" the Doctor asks. "Its been a few years since I came by last... Can never bloody well keep track of time..."
"Its you," Jackie gasps, a hand going over her mouth. "The Doctor!"
He grins, but the gesture doesn't reach his sad eyes. "Yes, it is."
Jackie swallows, a choked noise coming from her lips. "Rose isn't..."
She closes the door.
The Doctor thinks, perhaps, he was mistaken. He wonders if Jackie is just going to shut him out, and he is nearly knocking again when the door opens wider and Jackie Tyler wraps her arms about him. She's gained more than a few pounds in the years, and her personal hygiene can use some work, but the Doctor pats her back and lets her hug him as long as she needs to.
"Oh, Doctor, I'm so sorry. Rose ... My little Rose, she died."
The Doctor's hearts skip two beats. The news is a punch in the chest, and he takes a deep breath to calm himself. Dead, why should I care, I didn't know her that well. We saved London from the Nestene Consciousness, it wasn't a date. But the news is hurting him in ways he hasn't felt in many years. The empty vastness inside of him seems to only grow with every second the news lingers in his mind.
Jackie Tyler sits him down in her livingroom. Nothing has changed since the last time he was standing in that very spot, and he sits with the widowed woman grieving too many years of her life. She makes tea, brings out biscuits, and tells the Doctor of the last years of Rose's life. She tells him about the new car, about her engagement with Mickey, about the baby she was planning. All through this, the Doctor sips his tea quietly, nibbles a biscuit dutifully, notes the age of Jackie and subtracts ten for the years grief has added.
When Jackie begins speaking of him, of the adventure Rose shared with him, the stabbing pain comes back. That empty hurt inside that he tried to put away. Jackie asks him what he's doing, if he's okay, but he's out the door, his tea cup shattered on the floor, the biscuit half eaten on the carpet. The run back to the TARDIS feels like a century, ten centuries, and when the blue box finally appear around the corner, he slams into the doors, cascading into the TARDIS in a jumbled mess.
Hearts beating wildly, he jams levers, smashes buttons, and toggles switches until the TARDIS is heaving and groaning her way through the time vortex, back nearly exactly to the spot she'd left hours earlier. The protesting rumbles deep within the ship are not enough to dissuade the Doctor. This isn't a fixed point in time. With a sigh, the TARDIS parks her corners on the asphalt, but the Doctor barely waits. He throws open the doors, eyes finding Rose Tyler, and a smile splits across his lips.
"By the way, did I mention? It also travels in time."