This fic will be a bit slower-paced than Undead Future was but still full of impossible cliffhangers, deadly situations, awesome twists and general awesomenss

And hopefully (with lots of reviews) this fic will be a lot longer

Me and LilyRose XD have it all planned out and have had it planned for quite a while

But keep in mind that it took us Paradoxical Experts about 10 minutes (a long time) to get around the complexness of this story, but there shall be lots of explaining for you people

Post Doomsday

Requiem
by LilyRose XD

Standing alone
Breathing in time
As the dust on the floor
Covers the crime...

Disclaimer: (Do we really need these things?) I think you all know I don't own Doctor Who. But I'd trade my goalie gear and iTouch for the rights of it.

Prologue

He'd visited the apartment first.

Originally that was all he was going to do, to just stand there and loose himself in remembrance and give himself up to the grief that constantly battered the walls that kept his emotions in check. To sink into the sorrow and let it swallow him and drown him until he became numb and cold. To just breathe in the scent of tea and mess and utter Rose and breathe it in so deeply as to swallow it completely until there was no smell left. Because he needed it most. And now more than ever.

He'd wanted to say goodbye to her here. Not just on the beach and in her room on the TARDIS. Because the apartment seemed to have so much more Rose than the TARDIS did. Even though she'd decorated her room in the TARDIS and made it utterly hers, full of mess and colour and memories and she'd spent more of her life in that room, she'd spent more of her time here.

So, to him, it had seemed fitting to come here.

It had been easy to get in, one quick buzz of the sonic screwdriver and the doorknob was turning in his hand. It had been much harder to actually step in.

The apartment wasn't quite at the stage of decline, but it was musty and sunbeams highlighted the swirling dust in the air. The hallway was half in darkness, but nothing could make it seem threatening. It was just empty. Empty and abandoned and lifeless and cold. And the Doctor had to take a deep breath and swallow before stepping in.

Immediately he was drawn to her room. But he wanted to go there last. As a final goodbye. He looked into the first room on his left, the door halfway open, or halfway closed. This was the room he'd been put in after his regeneration, but there was no bed in it now. It was just full of junk. Not junk, he realised, after taking a few steps into the room, but stuff. Pete's old stuff.

He doubted that the door had ever been opened before last Christmas when his regeneration had gone wrong and he'd been left to rest in here. And he doubted that it had ever been open since. Maybe Rose had come in here occasionally during her childhood, to sit on the floor amongst the boxes and odd knickknacks and pretend that her father was alive and this was his workroom and he was just out for a cup of tea, but Jackie wouldn't come in here.

He exited the room and moved across the hall to the door opposite, before realising that it was Jackie's room and backpedalling. He had no wishes to go in there, and nor had he any right either. But of course he smiled when he remembered the first time he ever set foot in the Powell Estate apartment. When a younger Rose had dragged a younger him in to explain about the shop window dummies and he shuddered when he thought about what Jackie had said to him, at first.

He moved up the hall, opening the next door on his right only to see that it was just a bathroom, and closing the door again. He deliberately ignored the door now opposite him, and moved into the living and dining area.

The dust was thicker here, shifting through the air and stirring up off the furniture that he came close to. He stood in the centre of the room, dust swirling around him like fog as he turned slowly on the spot and regarded the room in which Rose had spent so much of her childhood.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the photos, and in one long stride he was in front of them. He smiled to see pictures of Jackie and Pete, along with a baby Rose, even one of their wedding day before they had got to the church, where Pete had died in that car accident. He saw pictures of a baby Rose, a toddler Rose, Rose as a kid and as a teenager. Even some pictures of Mickey were there. And there was one of him.

It was from last Christmas, his only real Christmas. There was him and Rose laughing together at some long forgotten joke with those daft paper crowns on their heads sitting at the table eating Christmas dinner. Jackie must have taken the picture when they weren't paying attention. She'd probably guessed that they would have been irritated to find out they were having their picture taken, and they would have been, but now, now he was so thankful that she'd taken it.

He swallowed loudly and stared at the picture a moment longer, before picking it up and slipping it into his bigger-on-the-inside pocket along with all the pictures of Rose. Rose would have wanted him to take them and put them somewhere in the TARDIS. On the console maybe, or one of the walls, or in her room, but little did she know they would probably end up in his. He briefly looked into the kitchen before moving back out into the hallway.

He stopped outside her room. Waited. Breathed. His breath seemed so loud to his ears, but not nearly as loud as the thumping of both his hearts as he stood there outside her door. He didn't know why he was hesitating, it just seemed…right to stop and wait and remember. But then the handle was turning in his hand and the door was open and the memories were bared for him to see.

Her room was the usual mess, just like her room on the TARDIS, things scattered everywhere, surfaces crowded with magazines and books and clothes and other things. He breathed in deeply again, letting the familiar smell fool him for just a second that it was Rose beside him and not just all the things that smelt like her. As much as he wanted to properly go into the room and pick up objects and turn them over in his hands and sit there in her room forever, he didn't. Because then he would have never left. It was the same reason why he didn't really go into her room on the TARDIS. He looked on. He breathed it in. He listened to the quietness. But he never touched.

His eyes roamed the room greedily one last time. To try and drink in as much as he could and imprint it on his mind forever. Then he swallowed again, stepped backwards and shut her door with a sense of finality.

He padded down the carpeted hallway to the door and swivelled around, in the same place as he was when he came in; he looked everything over one last time before opening the door, swiftly darting through and tugging it shut behind him before sonic screwdriving it to lock it.

No one was ever going to come in here again. No one but him.

He'd visited the apartment first. To say a last goodbye.

But then it had escalated into so much more.

Kind of long for a prologue...meh

I've already written the next (very dark) chapter

And am waiting for reviews before it is uploaded!

Sorry about the emoness of the Doctor, but it's so much fun to write him like this (and we all know he's like this anyway)

Thanks to LilyRose XD once again for everything (and might I add GET ON WITH IT AND START -cough- )