Did I ever tell you about that time, and this is true, I swear, that I was falling? It might have been a dream, but a dream is still a story, and that's what I'm telling you now, a story. So did I ever tell you?

Stop me if you've heard this one already.

So there I was, right, on a beach, on the worst day of my life, and she was there, too; she was flickering and faded, or maybe I was, and I couldn't touch. Just couldn't reach out and feel her hand in mine one last time. I couldn't do it. I was falling, and she was falling, too, and I was the feather and she was the cannonball, I was light and she was heavy, and we were falling at the same time.

We were speaking, and she said I looked like a ghost, and if I'm honest, I felt like a ghost. I felt like I didn't belong, like I just wasn't fitting over this plane the right way, like if I took one wrong step I was gone.

In that second, I wanted to go.

There were tears, but not yet; she had them, but mine were still a ways off. She said to me that I was ghost, so I made myself whole for her. But the wholeness was just an image, and the ground beneath our feet was still a chasm swallowing us up. So she had tears and so did I, and we talked about the things I'd missed. The whispers in the night.

The sound of drums, I suppose, drawing her on. Funny, how the sounds draw us closer to our destinies. The whispers in the night, the sound of drums, the lonely heart beat, the song of the universe, the message hidden in the signal.

I like that idea, the message hidden in the signal; the little bit we need to know beneath all the codes of words and thought and deed.

The idea is what I love, and nothing can smother it. Not the games, not the ghosts, not the angels, not even the demons.

So we were there, on a beach, and I looked into her eyes. Because this was my one last chance, but isn't every chance just one last chance? We can split the walls of reality, but I don't mind, because they're already falling apart at the seams. We look for reasons to hate, but never for reasons to love, because the reasons to love are too scary.

I took so much to save me from myself. It took her. It took so much to save me from her; it took Donna and the Master and Martha and Jack. I couldn't reach her, so I tried to find my old home.

I failed, but then I always do; I can't always save everybody.

Sometimes, I can't save anybody.

But there I was on the beach, the worst day of my life, and she told me later it was the worst day of hers, too. And I looked her in the eyes and I said her name. In that moment, I could have sworn the veil was lifted, and she and I weren't falling anymore. We were safe, ghosts that can't touch but can still feel.

I said to her "Rose Tyler…"

And then she was gone.

But did I really need to say it? She's off, she's so alive, she's so happy. They all are. Martha and Mickey, Jack, too, if he ever stops dying, and Donna and her man and her mum and her granddad.

Loose ends, Amy Pond. Always hard to tie up.

But that day, on the beach… another time, now, the second time, the day I said goodbye to all of them. Well, that was beautiful. The ocean and the snow. The frozen seas of Woman Wept. Rose Tyler and I saw them all.

We fought the devil, we fought the demons, a dozen times over; saved the world and destroyed it, saved a man and watched him die. Saved lives, because we had to, because it was right, because that's what heroes do. Heroes, that's what we were. Warriors. Rose Tyler and the Doctor, fighting the good fight, never giving up, and we ran so far and so fast that we met each other coming.

The stuff of legends, we were.

Do you know the best part? We never stopped running.

And right now, wherever she is… she's still running.

So how about it, Amy? How about you and me, time and space, anywhere and everywhere and all the shadows in between. How about you and I peak our heads out into the universe, and see what there is to see?