Author's Note: This is my very first Doctor Who fanfiction! I would be extremely grateful if you guys would leave some comments as to what I'm doing right, what I can improve on, etc. Thanks! :) -Jamie

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.

"Doctor, hurry up!" Rose called from the doorway of the TARDIS.

"Right, yeah, coming," puffed the Doctor, jogging along the orange grass to where his ship was parked, taking one last look at the bright yellow sky of Tibulon 689. It was really a beautiful planet, he thought to himself, never mind the jagged-toothed natives that had attempted to kill both him and his...girlfriend. The word still seemed odd to him, though he wasn't sure if it was because he'd never really used it or because Rose seemed to be so much more than just a girlfriend to him. He had lived such a long life- nine hundred and five years- and never once had he found anyone or anything that made him feel like she did. He had felt more alive in the past three years than he had in the previous nine hundred and two.

"Doctor, I swear, if you don't walk through this doorway in ten seconds, I'm leaving without you!" Rose's good-natured threat broke the Doctor's wandering train of throught, bringing him back to the fields of Tibulon 689 with a start.

"You don't know how to fly the TARDIS yet," he replied, stepping inside and shutting the door. A smile broke through his serious face when he saw Rose, already at the controls of the ship with her hands poised over the buttons.

"Well, I'm learning," she shot back, returning his smile. "I got us off the ground today, didn't I?"

"Technically, you got us off the ground six thousand years ago, and it was one of the bumpiest takeoffs I've ever endured," he answered. "But you're right. You're learning."

He stepped up behind her, gently taking hold of her hands. "Do you remember what to do?" he asked, trying to ignore the faint zing of electricity that zipped up his arms from where his hands touched hers. There would be plenty of time for that later.

"I think so," she replied, hesitantly reaching out to flip a switch. She looked behind her, making sure she had it right, and the Doctor nodded.

"Go ahead," he said encouragingly. "Enter your coordinates." A look of delight came over her face.

"We can go anywhere?" she asked. "No world-saving to do? Just us?"

"Just us," the Doctor confirmed. "Anywhere in the universe." He stepped back to let Rose take control of the ship, and she began pressing the lighted buttons on the control panel. The prospect of her flying the TARDIS still made him a bit nervous. The first time she'd tried, she'd nearly tipped it over on its side before she got it off the ground. Nevertheless, she'd observed for long enough. It was time she learned to fly the thing, as she'd said many times.

She flipped another switch and turned to the computer, entering a series of numbers as the Doctor watched carefully. The engines began to whoosh, and Rose stepped away from the control panel with an oh please let me have done that right look on her face.

Suddenly, the TARDIS lurched upwards, throwing Rose into the Doctor's arms. He steadied her, and then began pressing buttons on the control panel. This was the part that he hadn't yet taught Rose: navigation. The TARDIS would get them where they needed to go without fail, but there were always codes that needed to be entered to regulate the ship when passing through hostile atmospheres.

And just as suddenly as it had taken off, the TARDIS landed with another whoosh. Rose sighed in relief. "We didn't crash," she commented, and the Doctor laughed.

"No, we didn't!" he said, happy to see her ecstatic face. "You did wonderfully." Nothing made him happier than seeing Rose happy, and it seemed to work the other way as well. When she had first found him, wandering the skies alone, she had seemed so afraid. Afraid that his look of shock was not due to the fact that she was inside the TARDIS despite being trapped in a parallel universe, but due to the fact that she had changed. She had explained this to him: She had been afraid that he wouldn't want her anymore. But when the shock had faded from his face, replaced by the unbelievable joy, the same expression had been mirrored in her face. She was home at last. His at last.

"Don't you want to see where we are?" Rose asked, pulling the Doctor out of his thoughts once again.

"'Course I do!" he said cheerfully. "Lead the way, Rose Tyler."

She opened the door to the TARDIS and gestured at the outside. "After you," she said, smiling at him.

He stepped through the doorway and the night breeze ruffled his hair. Rocks crunched under his Converse as he walked. Over the sound of the rich indigo waves crashing, he heard Rose closing the door of the TARDIS. He turned around to see her walking toward him, her smile as bright as the three bright blue moons suspended in the night sky. He reached out for her hand and she took it, falling into step with him.

"Where are we?" he asked her.

"Gahlm, in the year six billion," she replied. "I've been doing a little reading on all the different planets in those books of yours. I'm not sure when exactly they were written, but one of them said that this planet was uninhabited after the War of Five Billion Six Hundred Thousand Sixty Two Five Hundred Fifty Seven...oh, Doctor, I'm sorry."

She had seen it in his eyes- that flash of pain. The pain that came around when any war was mentioned; the pain that made him look thousands of years old. The only pain that she knew would never go away for the man she loved. It was a pain he carried with him every day, and there was nothing she could do.

The Doctor closed his eyes. Memories of the Daleks flashed before him. The Cybermen. The Time Lords. Every war he had ever been through, flashing by in a matter of seconds. All that death, always seeming to follow him. All that suffering, always seeming to be some fault of his. Always, no matter what.

He felt the slight pressure of Rose's hand squeezing his. Rose, his anchor to reality. Rose, the only one who could bring him back when he felt like this. He opened his eyes and manged a smile. "It's all right, love," he said quitely. "Not your fault."

Rose pressed her lips together, fighting tears. She and the Doctor were connected now, mentally. If they wanted to, they could join together into one single consciousness, something not even the Doctor understood. Once, when he had gone into that awful state of glassy-eyed rememberance, looking back over the wars he'd experienced, she had timidly edged her own mind up next to his, and seen what he was remembering. She had jerked back, terrified of the noise and death and screams. Shaking, she had curled up by his side and waited for him to come back to her. She never did it again.

And now, standing here on the beach of Gahlm, she did the one thing she knew would comfort him. She wrapped her arms around her Doctor and kissed him gently until she felt his lips soften against hers.

He kissed her back with what little strength he had, wishing he could be a better, stronger man for his Rose, but knowing that she loved him as he was. For some reason, she loved all of him, even the broken bits that hid themselves behind the happy majority, and that was enough for him.

And as they slept that night, curled up in each other's arms on a rock, surrounded by sea and sand and stars, a creature watched them from the sky. Soon, it thought to itself, they would both be dead.

The sound of its laughter was lost in the crashing of the waves.