The Hardest Part

Alone.

She was alone.

The beach was empty, and it was quiet. The ground beneath her feet was the same, and yet it was different. Already, she could feel a headache coming on, burning at her temples and aching at the back of her skull. She winced and held onto the back of her scalp, the pain suddenly almost unbearable.

Beside her, the duplicate doctor froze dead. Rose had to remind herself that he was her Doctor now, The Doctor. His blue suit wasn't what she was accustomed to seeing him wear, but she'd adjust. Or perhaps he'd get a new suit.

Or perhaps he'd hate being stuck with her. When she first met The Doctor, he'd hated being domestic. Surely this 'duplicate' would feel the same as her first Doctor had at the time. Maybe he was plotting way to escape as they stood there, alone on that horrible beach.

'No,' The Duplicate Doctor said. 'No, no, no, no, no! This is all wrong.'

'It's fine,' Rose said, feeling her heart sink low in her chest and plummet to the bottom. 'You can take the TARDIS and leave and travel on your own, if you want. I understand.'

The Duplicate Doctor looked at Rose for a moment, and then pulled her into a hug. She was crying, he realised immediately, and he wrapped his arms around her a little tighter, trying to hold her together.

'Rose Tyler,' The Duplicate Doctor said. 'I would love to spend the rest of my human life travelling the stars with you. And I mean it. That isn't my problem,' he told her, his eyes burning with sincerity.

'I understand if you don't...'

'But I do,' The Doctor replied. 'I promise.'

The two stared at one another for a moment.

'No,' The Doctor began, and he started to pace. 'There's a different problem. You see, we entered this universe through a fracture in time, yeah? A rip, a great big, rippling chasm!'

The Doctor became more enthusiastic as he went on.

'But, but, but! Now, look at us, what's wrong with us?' he pointed from himself to Rose, back to where Jackie and Pete were leaving, and then stared at her with intense concentration.

'I don't know!'

'Oh Rose Tyler, you are fantastic, of course you are - think about it! What could possibly be wrong? What did you think when you first arrived here all those years ago?'

'The er, the ground! It felt wrong, and I've got a headache - I always had a headache when I first got here,' Rose exclaimed.

'Exactly! So, let's imagine that this gap in time that we came through is an open wound - and it's bleeding and bleeding, and then suddenly, three foreign bodies enter the wound - and it closes! So now, we've got an infection!'

'An infection?'

'There's something in this universe that never should have been here,' The Doctor said. 'There's something new. Something wrong.'

He grabbed at his hair, and looked on in despair at the place where the TARDIS had disappeared.

'Oh Doctor, you've made a big mistake,' he muttered. 'Because now, this infection, if you like - how do you get rid of an infection?' he turned back to Rose.

'Er, antibiotics?' Rose said.

'Exactly! This universe, it'll start trying to heal itself one way or another.'

'By doing what - will it push us out?'

'No, no it can't do that... It'll...'

His eyes became very wide as he stared at Rose Tyler - the Bad Wolf. He blinked.

'Doctor, what is it?'

'It's going to kill us,' The Doctor said, breathing out unevenly. 'It's trying to fix a wound in the best way it can - by getting rid of the foreign objects... us.'

A.N: What do you think, should this be a full fic or a one shot? :) Review, let me know :)