He sat in knee-high knots of scarlet grass, fingers twining through the strands and pulling them up by the root. Their smell was bitter; like most things from this place, it was beautiful and seductive without, and foul within. With a snort of derision the last son of Gallifrey tossed the plant aside, but the bitter juice still clung to him, leaving the pads of his fingers stained bright red.
It was a dream. Anywhere, anywhen he saw this place, it was never anything more than a dream. He and the Moment had removed Gallifrey from all Time, and now, save for himself and a few other dusty relics, it might never have existed at all. He idealized this place in his mind, sometimes, but even as the ache of homesickness rose in his chest, the last Gallifreyan - the man known as the Doctor - reminded himself that for all his wishing, in the end all there had been was rot.
A wind swept across the hill where he sat, rushing through the silver leaves and carrying their chime out into the darkening auburn sky. The Doctor took a deep breath. The air was sweeter here than on any planet he'd ever known; it was the air he had been made to breathe. It ruffled his hair, swept through the grass, and swirled at the skirts of the little girl sitting at his feet.
She was beautiful, this little creature; not in the alluring way women were beautiful, not in the way - he swallowed hard - not in the way Rose had been, but in the way a collapsing star was beautiful. She was at once ancient and utterly young; a carefree spirit both dying and being born. Here, her pale, ancient eyes pinned him to the scarlet hills.
"Our Rose," her voice was a whisper. "Our Rose has gone."
Sometimes She took this form, in his dreams. He didn't know if it was actually Her, or just a construction he'd built in his mind so that he could look on his oldest friend with his eyes. He didn't speak. Didn't think he'd ever find his voice again, not in the deafening silence of Rose's absence. But he reached out in his muteness anyway, and found his hands enveloped in small white ones.
"Will you bring her home?"
A sudden memory assaulted him: Rose, frightened and suspicious and pressing herself against the far side of the console room, as far away from his new body as possible.
"Can you change back?"
Her palpable disappointment at his answer had hurt nearly as much as any physical wound, and if he'd had it in his power to ease back into his overlarge ears and Northern burr, he would have in an instant, but he'd been powerless. Now, what She asked of him was just as impossible as taking up an old body, and the sense of drifting helplessness returned. He was only one Time Lord, and one Time Lord could not breach the Void.
She knew that. So why did She ask?
His last memory, as he woke, was the sight of violent red smudges on the tiny pale hands covering his; his stains, becoming Hers.