A/N: I started watching Doctor Who, and all was fine and dandy. And then came Doomsday and sucker punched me in the feels. Set somewhere after Doomsday but before Journey's End. My first venture into the Doctor Who-fandom, so please, Whovians, don't kill me.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making money. Writing because of the feels.

Footprints In the Sand

He had travelled through time and space, seen and done things that were unimaginable. Witnessed the end of the world. Seen daleks return. Snogged Madame de Pompadour. He had all of existence at his fingertips, he could travel to places far off and revisit points in time and space at whim.

He never did.

Well, maybe once. Okay, perhaps twice. But one place remained hidden.

The others, they never knew. He never took them there. They wouldn't understand. He didn't want them to see this place. He would take them anywhere else; the Ottoman Empire, the beginnings of time, the end of any world. But not here. This would be his own.

Bad Wolf Bay.

The name evoked the memory of a different time, a different Rose, filled up by the time vortex.

"I am the Bad Wolf. I take the words... I scatter them, in time and space, a message to lead myself here."

This godforsaken bay, it was part of her. The Rose he had saved from the Nestene Consciousness, the girl who would absorb a time vortex to find her way back to him, and in a way to herself. Sometimes, he vainly hoped that if this was one of the Bad Wolf's messages, she would come by, and maybe, just maybe, he would be here when she did. But he knew it was impossible. In every parallel universe, there was a Bad Wolf Bay, and the one that mattered was in the universe where Rose existed right now.

But he could dream.

So he did.

The deserted beach would give him solace, and he would walk across it to the exact point where he had projected himself. He could swear his footprints were forever ingrained in the damp sand by now. He would replay the conversation over and over, feeling his hearts shred with every tear on her face and every ounce of pain in her voice. The biting wind was a dear friend now, reminding him that this was reality whenever he got too closed off in his own sorrow. Each time, he would snap out, fresh tears running down his face and whisper to the wind what he didn't have time to say to her, hoping it would carry his message across the dimensions to her.

He could dream.

So he did.

A/N: So, that was it. Hope I haven't completely effed things up. Please leave a review for me? :)