A/N: First, I would like to mention that this is not a song fic. I just happened to be listening to the song Forever and Almost Always by Kate Voegele and the title was like the spark to my creative fire, the kick in my muse's pants, the key to my car of creativity- well, you get the point. This is not based on the song. I would also like to mention that I in no way believe what I have written here. This is a rather pecemistic view of Rose and the Doctor's relationship, and while I am really very optimistic about their relationship, the plot bunny wanted this angst. This drabble tells us what Rose was thinking while she waited for the Doctor near the end of A Girl in the Fireplace.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Doctor and neither does Madame de Pompadour. We all know who really owns the Doctor ...

Forever and Almost Always

Rose matured significantly in her travels with the Doctor. She met him when she was just a girl but by the time she was torn away from him, she was a grown woman.

Looking back on her life, if Rose could have pinpointed the time in which she finally made the transition from child to adult, she would have said that the hours she spent alone in 51st century, waiting for the Doctor were that time. That was the time in which she finally accepted who the Doctor was and what she was to him.

Right after the Doctor left, Rose was full of hurt. She had promised him forever and he had just left her stranded in the middle of space for a famous French prostitute. Yes, she knew that wasn't nice – she had met Reinette and actually liked her. Rose admired her poise and intelligence and beauty. She felt bonded to Madame de Pompadour because they both loved the Doctor. But when push came to shove, she was in no way ready to share her Doctor with a woman who gave her favors away for a high position. In fact, Rose wasn't ready to share him with anyone.

She loved him.

Rose thought that the Doctor had promised her forever too. But here she was, alone, and he might not be coming back for her. The Doctor had left her without a second thought, as though he didn't care for her at all.

A little while later, Rose's thought's had taken a slightly different turn … She was thinking about the Doctor's character. Maybe it wasn't fair of her to be so mad at him. He was, after all, a wonderful but broken man. She had done her best to start fixing him, but he was still haunted by the deaths he carried on his shoulders. She loved him and so, she wanted him to be happy. If Madame de Pompadour would make him happy, then who was she to stand in the way?

Maybe everything she had been thinking before was wrong. In these hours Rose had spent waiting for the Doctor, she had felt, first, like a betrayed teenager and later, like a martyr. But maybe she wasn't either. He didn't leave her because he loved Reinette more than her. He left because he need to save the life of someone so special. It was just part of who he was.

Rose's life wasn't a fairytale. It was wonderful but it wasn't without problems, chief among them the fact that she was in love with a broken alien. He was both self-deprecating and arrogant; selfish, self-absorbed, and selfless; brilliant and so simple. He was so amazing and so hard to live with. In any other relationship, she would have walked out at this moment but in these few hours, she had grown up. Rose couldn't leave the Doctor even though he would make her miserable, not because he would also make her blissfully happy, but because she loved him and he needed her. He needed her to see past his faults and the hurts that he dealt her and see to his true heart, because that heart was hers even though the other belonged to the universe and caused him to do things like abandon her to save a brilliant stranger. And the thing was, while Rose only had one of his hearts, that heart belonged absolutely to her while the other heart had to be shared by so many others.

The Doctor was Rose's forever and almost always and while that wasn't perfect she realized now that life wasn't perfect, but it was wonderful all the same.

A/N: Don't hate me! The Doctor really is Rose's forever and always, but this had to be written ... Please review!