Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who do you think I would be sitting here writing fanfiction?
...The answer is no.
He sees her everywhere; in the middle of a crowd, in the reflection of a mirror, out of the corner of his eye. Brief flashes that come and go so quickly he begins to suspect that his old age is finally getting to him, and that he is losing his mind- or what little of it he has left.
"It isn't possible," he says to himself, running his fingers through his already-messy locks of brown on top of his head. Then she appears again, with a sad smile that seems unnatural on a face that was once so full of wonderment and joy. He remembers the way she used to smile, a flash of pearly white teeth, sometimes with the tip of her tongue teasing in between- he loved that smile, and loved even more to be the person that brought it to her face. He notes to himself how young she still looks, but something in her eyes tells him a very different story and he believes she's just as worn down by all of this as he is. For a second he even thinks that she's glowing, but he blinks and the dim gold light is no longer surrounding her.
Her voice echoes around him, but strangely enough her lips never move.
"Doctor."
He wants to call out to her, to ask what she's doing here, if she's real, but his voice catches in his throat and she's gone by the time he regains the ability to speak. He stares at the space she left behind, and to that space he whispers softly, "Rose."
The first time he sees her he's in Las Vegas, 1969, and he's just watched the King of Rock for the third time. As he files out of the concert hall he hums the melody to "Heartbreak Hotel" under his breath, reflecting on how smoothly this trip went; oddly enough, everything went according to plan. For once his visit didn't result in any crisis, any explosions, or a group of aliens trying to take over the world and known universe. He feels a sense of contentment as he walks back to the TARDIS, switching his tune of choice to "Blue Suede Shoes", allowing himself to relax in the comfort of the city lights and bustle. He freezes mid-step when he sees her, just as beautiful as he recalled. She's standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk, and people seem to navigate around her as they walk without actually seeing her. Her brown eyes lock with his own and a chill sweeps over him at the realization that she can see him too.
When she disappears he convinces himself it was all a hallucination, and tries to ignore the ache deep inside his chest as he continues his trek back to the TARDIS.
The second time he sees her inside the console room, he's laying beneath the grating, fiddling with a couple of problematic wires, and when he glances up from his work she is standing above him. This time he doesn't waste the opportunity to take in every detail of her appearance. Her hair, while still blond, is longer than it was before, now falling in waves past her shoulders. She's thinner now as well, almost to an unhealthy point, he can tell by the way her clothes hang off her frame in the places they would once cling.
She raises a pale, tiny hand, and the sight of her fingers makes him think of how they used to fit just right between his own. Those simplistic human phalanges served to remind him of how fragile her pink little body was, while at the same time the grip they had on his own was a symbol of her strength. He stares at that hand, forcing pain and nostalgia into the back of his mind, hoping that if he pretends these feelings don't exist they won't hurt as much.
And then she's gone just like before, no fade, no flash of lights, nothing to indicate any method of transportation…just gone. He rubs his weary eyes, trying to clear his thoughts and remove the vision of her from his conscious to no avail. He would feel like he was being haunted if it wasn't for the fact he actually enjoyed her appearances, almost as much as he hated them. Slumping back into the grating he picks up the wires he abandoned moments ago, eager now more than ever for a distraction.
The third time he sees her it's after waking up from a nightmare, the product of one of the rare occasions he actually fell asleep.
Burning. Burning. The entirety of his race screeching in agony within the confines of his skull. All of them burning. At this moment, even as he hears so many voices screaming in his mind, he feels more alone than he ever has.
"This is what you deserve," someone- no something murmurs, a voice he has never heard, one that is separate from all the others in his head. It's smooth like honey, but at the same time it's dripping with venom.
"Sorrow," it purrs.
"Desolation," it hums.
"Agony!"
Pain slices through him, searing his insides, making his body feel as if it's on fire.
"And now, "it announces," You burn too."
When he awakens he's covered in a thin layer of sweat (imagine that, a Timelord with superior biology actually perspiring), and his double-heartbeat is thrumming in his ears. At first he doesn't notice her-he's too overwhelmed by the dream-but when he finally does he reels back; startled. She stands closer to him than before, only a meter away, and as her eyes trap his own he finds a looks of worry shining in their depths. But she's only an apparition, a hallucination, how could she possibly be worried?
He shakes his head, breaking eye contact, and when he chances a glimpse back up she's no longer there. For some reason he finds himself missing her, even if she was just an illusion she was better than nothing at all.
He thinks to himself that he really must be going mad.
She continues to make appearances over the next few months (or was it years?), and he finds enough comfort at the sight of her that it's almost bearable to deal with the sense of loss that comes forth every time she disappears again. Sometimes he's afraid to rest his eyes even just a millisecond, worried he might miss one of her visits. On occasion she even talks to him(or at least he hears her voice), but it's never more than a word or two, and usually those words don't stray from "Doctor", "try", or "love". He disregards all of those worrisome thoughts about going insane, he stopped trying to dissect what his hallucinations meant long ago and now he just embraces them.
As the years roll by he begins to see her more frequently, and she begins to leave him with a haunting word or phrase almost every time. At times she even reaches for him, but she never quite manages to touch him.
The final time he saw an illusion of Rose Tyler was in her bedroom. It was a place he secluded himself in whenever he felt particularly melancholic, and after almost a week of not seeing Rose he was beginning to worry that she might have left for good.
And then she's there, standing in the middle of her pink room, and for a moment he can pretend that everything's back to the way it used to be and that they're about to go on some grand adventure. But he can no longer pretend that's all true when he studies her gaunt face and notices her worn out appearance.
"Doctor," she says.
He's used to that word, it's the one that he hears the most during her visits, but there's something different about it this time.
"Doctor," she repeats again, and this time he realizes the difference- her lips are moving.
"Rose?"
She smiles then, a bit too sadly for his taste, and opens her mouth to speak again.
"Doctor, I'm dying."
"What?" he sputters out," What do you mean?"
"I tried so hard to come back you, I really did."
"Stop that," he says, not liking the direction this is going," You aren't dying, you aren't even real."
"And I think I finally figured it out," she continues anyway," After all this time, all these tries. "
"Stop it!"
"At first I didn't remember, but then I started to have these strange dreams about singing and a wolf. It didn't make any sense until everything that happened at the Game Station came back to me, and then I realized that you had left a tiny part of the time vortex in me, so miniscule it didn't harm me, but it gave me the ability to see you."
He remained silent, unsure of what to believe or think. All of this time he had thought she was a figment of his imagination - a phantasm, could it be possible that all of this had been real?
"But it wasn't enough; no matter how hard I tried I couldn't return to this universe, I could barely even talk to you. I work for Torchwood in the parallel world, and we found a TARDIS- or at least the remains of one, we're not sure how it got their or where it came from, but I knew it was my way getting back to you. It's all so simple."
Rose smiled, raising a glowing, golden arm and murmured, "All I had to do was look into the TARDIS."
"No! Rose, don't!" She didn't understand, she would burn from the inside out- all because of him, just like his planet had, just like his race.
"I already did, I should be done phasing into this universe any second now. I know it will kill me, but I couldn't spend the rest of my life without you. I'm sorry, but I promised you forever."
And then she reached towards him, he almost expected her hand to pass right through his face but instead he felt the light caress of her palm. She was real, standing right in front of him, having sacrificed her life just to spend a moment with him.
"Rose?"
"I'm here Doctor," she said quietly, tears (whether they be of pain or joy, he didn't know) streaming down her face. His arms wrapped around her small frame and he clutched her to him, never wanting to let go of this beautiful, precious, yet stupid human. But he pried himself away from her with the knowledge of what he had to do to save her, and he was perfectly willing to give up another one of his regenerations if it meant preserving her life. He brought her lips to his, gently caressing them with his own, fully expecting the searing pain of the vortex to fill his body at any given minute.
To his horror, her lips went slack against him before he felt the burn of the vortex, and she fell against him.
"Rose? No. Rose!" he slid to the ground and cradled her unmoving body in his arms, desperately hoping that this was some horrible nightmare and not reality.
It seemed like he spent an eternity holding her seemingly lifeless body, but he couldn't bring himself to move, to let go. He had given up hope when he felt her stir against him; he brought his fingers to feel against her throat, to find much to his relief- a pulse. He watched as the color returned to her cheeks, brushing locks of yellow hair away from her face, waiting for her to open her eyes. When she did he released a smile and she returned it with one of her own.
"Oh Rose," he whispered, hugging her against him," How could you be so stupid?"
At that Rose grinned, intertwining her fingers with his and said, "I told you, I promised you forever."
A/N: This has been a work in progress for a very long time, and I've finally decided to type it all up and post it. So all I can say is that I hope you enjoyed it.