Inspired by the gifset which can be found here: http: post/90176189380/the-ghost-of-me-au-when-rose-is-killed-in

Unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine.

He knew that not bringing her home to her mother was wrong.

But even as he lifted the too still shell of the girl from the grating where he had laid her before punching in coordinates, the Doctor couldn't have brought himself to return her. They would bury her under ground, where her body would decay and rot, where all that would be left of Rose Tyler would be the empty places in her loved ones lives she had once filled. Where the only thing left of this human girl would be memories that were too much to bare until a time when they would have faded with age.

She deserved better than that.

He knew not bringing her home to her mother was wrong.

And yet the idea of her returning to dust, that there wasn't something /substantial/ left of her in the universe somewhere was agonizing.

And so he flew the TARDIS into the farthermost reaches of the Messier 81 galaxy, 12 million light years away from the Ursa Major constellation. The Messier 81 was among the brightest of the galaxies visible by telescope from Earth and the Doctor couldn't think of anything more fitting. The galaxy was suspended in a perpetual state of stasis, and as he navigated as close as he dare to the massive spiral of white and yellow and purple, he couldn't have thought of a place more beautiful either.

The TARDIS doors creaked open of their own accord and had he been able to focus on anything but the way that her eyes remained half lidded, the unique honey color which had always glimmered was now dulled from lifelessness or even how her body was lighter than it should have been, he would have thanked the timeship.

At the edge, he drank in the last sight of her, committing every detail of her face to memory. A memory that would haunt him in a way that even regeneration couldn't have freed him from.

This was a mark that was imprinted into his very DNA by the cresendo of grief and guilt, culminating into a maddening sense of misdirection.

He drew her close for a final embrace, but it was wrong. Her body had already began to cool and her limbs were unresponsive in a way they never had been. His body shuddered of its own accord, and he drew in a breath, before he placed a kiss to each of her eye lids, gently sliding them closed before pressing his lips to her forehead.

"I'm so sorry..."

The finality was unbearable.

There must have been another force at work, because he couldn't remember giving his arms permission to loosen enough that her body slid free of them. However, it would seem his arms had ceased functioning altogether as they fell to his sides and he watched as her body drifted, watched as what must have been years, hundreds of them passed by. Planets far away formed and were destroyed, new life forms sprang into existence and then into extinction. Still he watched until the blazing light of Messier had consumed her.

Only then was he able to slam the doors closed. His breathing became erratic and the door behind him offered the only support that his body would not. Slowly, slowly he slid until he met the grating and simply stared, seeing nothing and everything. Time lines and possibilities bent and weaved together, blending into one another before readjusting to a pattern that would accommodate the lack of her existence.

As he sat, the Doctor slowly became numb, numbed by a reality he didn't have the strength to endure just then.

Only vaguely aware of the slight warmth that trickled down the length of his face, made chilled by the air that was hard to inhale, as if it were suddenly lacking a critical element that made it breathable.