Disclaimer: If I owned Dr. Who either Rose wouldn't have left, or failing that, Martha wouldn't have.

The blonde woman lay on the lawn, long strands of deep green grass brushing across the fabric of her blue jeans. Her head was next to the knee of her boyfriend, and her friend was also sitting on the grass around a meter away. The warm May sun shone on the threesome and their empty picnic basket. Rose had to admit that only a few years ago, this life would have been everything she could have dreamed of. Her relationship with Mickey was doing better than she would have expected, given everything that had happened in the past few years. She was rich now, she had a father, a baby sister, and Mum seemed to be a lot happier. Rather than the dead-end job at Henrik's, she actually loved going into Torchwood every day. Mickey had transformed into a braver, smarter, and maybe even funnier man than he had been before. Rose knew she was lucky that Shireen was alive and well in this world, and that they were just as compatible as they had been before. Rose had decided to track down her former best friend, and though of course the Shireen of this universe had never met her, when the two did cross paths, they quickly became just as close as they had been as schoolgirls in Rose's native reality. As far as the normal standards for 22 year old women went, Rose Marion Tyler had a fantastic life.

However, Rose was far from a normal young woman. She had spent two years of her life, though it was hard to define that time with the classic measurements, on the most exciting roller coaster ride imaginable. After living with the Doctor, good but normal doesn't quite cut it. Sure, maybe being the daughter of a self-made millionaire isn't exactly a normal life. Dealing with aliens from nine to five certainly isn't. Still, it was a little hard to get excited by weevils after having defeated the emperor of the daleks. Though Mickey Smith had definitely improved on the way he had been in their native world, he would never be as good as the alien who had taken Rose's hand and swept her off of her feet. No matter how hard Mickey tried, he could never live up to the Doctor, and Rose knew that he did try his hardest. Though the Tyler mansion, something Rose thought she would never say, was luxurious, and very big, it wasn't any bigger on the inside than you would see by looking, and it certainly couldn't travel through time. Time was still something that Rose hadn't quite gotten used to. It had taken months for her body's clock to accustom itself to GMT after a life in the TARDIS. It had also been slightly tricky for her to get used to eating properly, now that she didn't spend quite so much time running for her life. Sure, she still did that occasionally at Torchwood, but that way of dealing with aliens seemed to do more with business meetings than the crazy fast paced way she dealt with them with the Doctor. He was by far the hardest thing to live without. Though she had been saved from being trapped in the void, it seemed as if there was another void, trapped inside of Rose. An empty space in her life where he once was. Where he should still be. It had been over a year since Rose had last seen his face, excluding dreams. He still visited her each night, in her head, finishing the sentence that he had started on that beach. Dalek beach, as he had misheard it's name.

Rose closed her eyes, and tried to force the Doctor out of her head. She drifted off to the sound of Shireen's voice, and the nice spring wind. She awoke only minutes later. The sounds of a very familiar engine were ringing in Rose's ear. She must have been dreaming about him again. After a few seconds, the engines of the TARDIS quieted themselves, and Rose propped herself up on her elbows. Both Shireen and Mickey had interesting looks on their faces, though each was slightly different. Mickey looked confused, and shocked, as if he had just seen something that he knew very well could not possibly be. Shireen's look was a different type of puzzled. It was more as if she had seen something she had never seen before, and didn't quite understand. Rose brushed it off, assuming that they had been having some sort of a conversation that had them both confused while she was taking a nap. After all, Shireen had been talking, though Rose wasn't exactly paying attention. That was slightly new for Rose. She had lost count of how many times she had been scolded for paying too much attention to whatever Shireen was saying, and not enough to anyone else. Just about every marking period there was some sort of a note home saying that if Rose cared as much about whatever the subject was as she did about the new brand of mascara that Shireen had found the other day, her grade would be highly improved. Rose had always countered that she would never meet Queen Victoria, Lord Nelson, or anyone else, and that it didn't matter as much as cosmetics. Of course, she had been very wrong. Well, Rose had never met Nelson, though the Doctor had gone on about having tea with Napoleon once. She was pretty sure that that was the same war. However, she did end up meeting Victoria... and even getting damed by her. Was damed a word? Rose didn't think so, but she couldn't think of any other word to describe it.

This reminiscing was interrupted by a far too familiar voice. A voice that Rose Tyler had painfully convinced herself she would never hear again, aside from dreams, and that one silly video of him she had on her mobile from Christmas. "hello, my name's the Doctor, and this is Martha." Rose looked up to see the man that she thought was gone forever. The million watt grin, the messy brown hair, and his deep brown eyes. The Doctor was wearing his favourite pinstriped brown suit, and carrying the jacket, presumably because it was a little too warm. Rose noticed some high topped red Converse on his feet, which she didn't entirely remember, though she had seen them lying around the TARDIS before. However, choices of shoes and suits didn't matter to Rose as much as the fact that the Doctor, HER Doctor, was standing just inches away from her. She felt as if she had to reach out and touch him, just to make sure that he was real. Just so that he wouldn't go away. Touching him wouldn't be enough though. She wanted to hold him, to kiss him. She wanted to grab his hand and run with him back to the TARDIS, wherever he had parked it. After around five seconds of shock at seeing him, Rose couldn't wait any longer. She leapt onto her feet, and threw her arms around his skinny body. It had been far, far too long since she'd held him. She was too happy to be confused at the fact that he wasn't hugging her back, or wonder who the Martha he had spoken of was. The Doctor, on the other hand, was completely confused. Why was a young blonde woman he had never seen before in all 900 and something years of his life hugging him as if they were long lost friends?