Chapter One

"Her name was Rose."

The Doctor stared at Donna.

He dare not cry.

He would not cry.

Not in front of her.

He was the Doctor. He was always in control of everything including his emotions. He felt a tear forming in his left eye and he knew he had to break eye contact and go back inside before he lost it completely. Finally after what seemed like ages, the Doctor went back inside the TARDIS and closed the door.

He hurried over to the console praying Donna wouldn't call him back again. He felt tears blurring his vision as he ordered the TARDIS to take him as far away from Donna as they possibly could go.

As the TARDIS began its familiar wheezing rhythm, the Doctor sank down to the floor and finally let his emotions take over as his head fell into his hands and he wept uncontrollably.

As he cried, he laid his head back against the console, and caught something out of the corner of his eye. He looked over to Rose's shirt lying on the floor in the corner of the room. He stared at it hating himself for bringing it into the room.

He had gone into her room after he had lost her with the pretense of packing up her things. But looking around at her stuff, memories came flooding back to him and he just couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead, he began rifling through her things; feeling, touching, tasting, smelling trying to hold on to some part of her. Then, he opened her dresser drawer and saw it. The shirt. The shirt she had worn on the first place he had taken her in his current body. Memories flooded his mind. New Earth, The Sisters of Plentitude, The Face of Boe, the cloned humans. It all came rushing back like a tidal wave, threatening to overwhelm him.

He remembered how beautiful she looked in the shirt. How he thought the color purple suited her. He held it to his body and as his fingers held the fabric, he imagined holding her. As he put the shirt to his nose and inhaled, he caught a faint whiff of her scent and tears ran down his cheeks as he remembered smelling that scent a thousand times before whenever they embraced, whenever she lay her head on his shoulder, the smell of her on his fingertips after they had held hands. He had taken her for granted. When she stood with him on Alphasia 5 and they watched the Mantabats flying around them as the suns set in the sky; he asked her how long she would stay with him and smiled as she told him "Forever." And he had actually believed that. What an idealistic fool he had been. He should have known. The universe had never treated him with kindness and it never would. Love was both a blessing and a curse. A joy and a torment. Being in love felt so wonderful, but the pain of loss was worse than any torture the Doctor had ever experienced. He wondered if he would ever get over Rose and he feared the day he actually might.

Rising to his feet, the Doctor went and retrieved the shirt and held it to his chest just as he had done so many times when he had waited and prayed for Rose to answer his call. When he had finally found her, he had put the shirt on the railing just in case Rose was able to see it. He didn't want to have to answer a lot of embarrassing questions about it. He had been so upset after the gap had closed that it had completely slipped his mind that the shirt was there until he looked up and Donna was shoving it in his face and screeching at him about abducting Rose. He damned her for doing that and damned himself for being so weak that he had to carry around a shirt like a child's security blanket.

"And now, he was at it again.

"What am I doing? It's just a shirt. A cheap, little shirt. It's not her, you fool," he muttered to himself.

"But in a way it was. It was a link. A tangible link to her and unlike her, it was something he could touch and hold on to. So, he closed his eyes and walked around the console room as the TARDIS flew him to God-knows-where. Walking and holding the shirt and remembering all the happy times they had shared together.

His eyes snapped open as he heard the familiar thump indicating that the TARDIS had landed. He walked over to the computer screen and his face drained of all color as he saw where they had landed.

"Oh no. No. Please not here," he said to the TARDIS. "Take me somewhere else. Anywhere but here."

Go outside. the TARDIS said telepathically.

"No, I won't."

Go outside. Someone needs your help.

"Well, they'll just have to help themselves for a change. I'm not available."

Go help her.

The Doctor sighed angrily. He knew the TARDIS wouldn't leave no matter how much he pleaded with her. Cursing his ship's stubbornness, he stomped towards the front door.

He paused as he realized he was still holding the shirt in his hand. He started to throw it down, but then thought better of it. He needed this tiny bit of comfort right now no matter how goofy it might look to this mystery woman. Besides, given their destination, It seemed appropriate that it accompany him.

Sticking it in the waistband of his trousers, he buttoned up his jacket and put on his leather coat. Walking to the door, he put his hand on the door handle, took a deep breath and stepped outside into…

New Earth.

He flinched when he saw skyline of New New York. The TARDIS hadn't landed in the exact same place as before but it was pretty close. As the hovercars whizzed over his head towards the city, he got a sudden urge to lie down. Taking off his coat, he spread it on the apple grass and with a sad sigh, lowered himself onto it. Reaching under his jacket for the shirt, he pressed it close to his hearts as he stared up at the sky. As he listened to the car's engines roaring overhead, he turned his head and his eyes misted over as he imagined Rose lying beside him; leaning upon her elbow and smiling at him as she did that day.

"Oh my love," he murmured. "I miss you so much."

He lay for a few minutes more until the memories became unbearable. Stuffing the shirt back in his waistband, he rose up from the ground, put his leather coat back on and with a sigh of resignation began walking towards a nearby hill wanting to find this mystery woman and do whatever the TARDIS wanted him to do so she would fly him away from here and never return.

Reaching the top of the hill, he looked down and saw that this was the place where his TARDIS had landed before. He looked over at the hospital; he was surprised to find it was no longer there. He frowned in confusion for a moment and then reasoned that it must have been demolished sometime after the sister's arrest to cover up the evidence of their underground labs.

"Good riddance," the Doctor muttered.

As he uttered those words, a thought occurred to him. He wondered what had become of the clones? He hoped that someone was helping them assimilate into society and they hadn't been abandoned or shipped off to other labs to be experimented on.

As his eyes drifted over towards the riverbank, he spied a lone woman standing and staring quietly out at the river. The Doctor raised his eyebrows.

"I guess this must be the damsel in distress," he said dryly.

He looked around him half expecting Daleks or Cybermen or Slitheen to appear over the horizon and start attacking the women en masse. Seeing none, he looked back at her and watched as she just stood and stared off into the distance.

"Okay, what am I supposed to help this woman with?" he muttered to himself.

His eyebrows rose as he watched her disrobe. Completely naked, she stood for a few minutes more on the riverbank and then she waded in and slowly walked further into the river. The Doctor watched as she got a few feet out and then lowered herself under the water. He watched waiting for the woman to surface.

And waited…and waited.

Suddenly, the Doctor's eyes widened in alarm as he realized what the woman was doing.

"Oh no!" he cried out as he sped down the hill.