"Where to next, Ponds?" the Eleventh Doctor asked as he straightened his ever-crooked bow tie.
"I don't know," Amy said in her usual, yet faint Scottish accent, "It is your TARDIS, and don't you usually decide where we go?"
"Why do you think I have you? I'm all out of ideas!" the Doctor sat down in a swivel chair, leaned back, and crossed his legs on top of the control panel, only to hop up again as Rory suggested something.
"How about we go somewhere normal?"
"And what do you mean by 'normal'?" the Doctor questioned, like cannibalistic aliens on an anti-gravitational, toxic gas planet and time-looped non-deadly supernovas were a daily occurrence.
"Like, I dunno, the beach?" Rory said, exasperated.
"The beach, the beach, I do love a good beach..." the Doctor tap-danced on the glass floor to a beat only the Time Lord could hear, twisting knobs, pushing buttons, and pulling levers in a sort of organized chaos as he set off for a random beach.
A few minutes later, the TARDIS made it's familiar whooshing sound, indicating that she had landed.
"Hurry up, Ponds!" the Doctor yelled in the general direction of his companions' bedroom.
"Coming!" he heard Amy call, her voice a little muffled, before she and her husband reappeared in swimwear.
"Well, come on," the Doctor stepped out of the bigger-on-the-inside time machine, closely followed by his two best friends.
As soon as the Doctor stepped out, it was obvious to Rory and Amy that he recognized the place. It looked like a perfectly ordinary beach, albeit a little cold and surprisingly empty.
But the Doctor lost all of his usual energy as soon as he saw it. His smile slowly faded away and the pain showed clearly in his eyes. He stopped moving about like an overexcited ferret, and instead stood there, still and slumped over, the opposite of his usual self. He didn't even straighten his bow tie.
"Where are we, Doctor?" Amy said, trying to snap the Doctor out of his funk.
"Bad...Wolf...Bay...I didn't even know it existed in this universe," he whispered slowly, so Amy and Rory could barely hear.
The Doctor stepped over to a certain spot. It seemed very specific, but he stood there, his eyes filled with tears. "Rose," he whispered to himself, as Amy and Rory shared a confused look.
"Rose Tyler-"
"Over here!" Rory called from a spot a few yards away.
"What?" the Doctor said, his voice cracking.
"Rose. There's a rose over here."
When the Doctor walked over to where the red plant was, Amy began to understand what he always felt inside.
When she saw this venerable state of him, she knew it was all an act. The laughter, excitement, childishness of him was all a protective barrier from the pain and sadness inside.
Rory pointed to a bright red rose that had undoubtably been thrown away after someone's date. It was half-submerged in the salty ocean, so the Doctor kneeled down and plucked it from the harmful sea.
But when he picked the rose up, he discovered that it was bent and broken. Several petals fell off, and most of the stem had been ripped off forcefully.
"I'm so, so sorry." That's when the tears fell. Hot and swift, like a broken dam, saltwater poured out of the Doctor's eyes, only to mix in with the shallow water that barely came over his leather boots.
"Oh Rose, what have I done?"