A/N: Last time I posted a Who-fic, I got a review telling me I had been possessed by Moffat's soul. I'm afraid it's happened again. This fic, which I first posted on my tumblr, is based on the tags for a post about TenToo and Rose. Basically, what would happen if Rose died before TenToo, while they were still young. And I'm being serious about the possessed-thing. I bawled my way through writing this, I'm not quite sure how I managed to finish it. Even so, thank you to tumblr user outcastfromgallifrey for the inspiration, even if it ended in a flood of feels.

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.

In the end, life happens.

For him, it felt like yesterday when they watched the TARDIS fade out of their universe. She held his hand, reassuring him that it was okay. They would be okay. They were together. Rose and the Doctor. Life could begin again, for the both of them. The days went by in a blink. Their first night in a drafty motel room somewhere in Norway, huddled together, Rose listening to his single heartbeat. Kisses, hurried and slow, passionate and quick, marking the days of this new existence. Minor explosions and failed experiments to pass the time while he tried to figure out what to do with himself. Jackie banned him from the kitchen after two weeks, and Pete fixed up a shed for him to tinker in after he accidentally demolished one of the studies in the mansion. He swore he had no idea his little experiment would go off with that big of a bang.

All the while his lovely Rose, his beloved pink and yellow girl would laugh and tease him, asking just how little Time Lord mojo he had received during the metacrisis. He would huff and try to get the soot out of his hair for the umpteenth time, and somehow Rose would always end up with most of it on her face (and on their bed sheets).

He took the name John Wilfred Smith, in honor of Donna's grandfather. He knew Donna couldn't stay part-Time Lord forever. She would be forced to forget, and Wilf would surely be asked to take care of her. The metacrisis Doctor hoped he would, and that his counterpart in that universe would ever so often check up on their favorite Earth Girl. He worried about them. About Donna and Martha, about Sarah Jane and all the rest.

"He's looking after them," Rose promised him. "He always does. You should know, you're him."

So he focused on them, on their life.

He ended up at Torchwood, like Rose. Where else would he be able to blow stuff up and actually receive praise for it? He helped them develop defenses against a multitude of alien technologies, although he steadfastly refused to assist in weapons development. Rose still worked in the field, and no amount of pleading could make her change her mind.

"You could die!" he tried, always as a last resort when they touched on the issue.

"So could you," she'd counter. "With your track record, I'm surprised you haven't blown yourself up yet!"

In the end, it was so mundane, and so unreal. Simple, really, in all its complexity. Nothing alien or strange. For all the technological advancements in Pete's world, there were still illnesses they couldn't cure. He figured it was his ultimate punishment for all his wrongdoings in the past. To reunite with Rose, only to have to lose her, to have to watch her wither away slowly and painfully. Her body shrunk and shrivelled in a matter of months, her smiles weakened and faded. He tried to stay strong, to be strong for her when her strength waned. But in reality, he crashed and burned every night as soon as she drifted off to sleep. He cried silently in the darkness, cursing his misfortune and wishing for the TARDIS, for his sonic screwdriver, for anything that could help her. He counted 149 planets where her illness could be cured in seconds. He counted 67 ways he could ease her pain if only they were on the TARDIS. He counted 0 ways in which he could actually help her with the sonic screwdriver, but still.

In the end, life happened, until one day, it didn't. She drifted away from him, once again separated by universes that would never overlap. They shared a single, final kiss, his tears painting his face and hers. In a blink, three years had passed since they were reunited in Norway. In a blink, his pink and yellow girl was gone. He waited what felt like an eternity for something, anything to happen. She was Rose Tyler, defender of the Earth, the Bad Wolf. She had absorbed the Time Vortex into her mind, she had crossed the Void to find him again. She was his entire world. But she was human; no regeneration, no miraculous resurrection.

Jackie and Pete found him hunched over her body, refusing to let the doctors take her away. He had lost so much in his time, and he had thought, hoped even, that a lifetime of trying to right his wrongs and saving the universe would grant him some sort of clemency. But Fate was a cruel mistress, and in the end, She took away the person he loved more than existence itself. He refused to go to the funeral, refused to go back. He moved out one night, and they didn't see him for over a year. He told himself if he stayed, it would be like admitting defeat, admitting Rose was really gone. So he travelled to the place where it all began, where everything that had once been bad had been righted for the last time. For a year, he lived in disbelief, in a sort of suspended animation. Every day was the same as the one before, replaying the precious hours of soft lips against his, the jarring of the time rotor on the wind and the scent of the North Sea in his nostrils. He dreamed of all the things they had talked about, because on that beach it was still three years ago, and everything was possible.

But even dreamers have to wake up.

He returned to London a changed man. Hardened, broken, utterly defeated. The dreams could be no more. He was no more the Doctor than he was a hero. He spent his first night back in the cemetery, crying in front of her grave, asking for her forgiveness for not being able to save her. He went through the first four stages of grief in a matter of hours, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't quite accept reality. Rose Tyler was dead. Rose Tyler would not come back. These things he knew the be indisputable facts, things he couldn't change. But he couldn't accept his own fate, living in this empty world alone, not when her gravestone was emblazoned with the one thing he had been unable to give her:

Forever.

A/N: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Leave a review and yell at me, if it makes you feel better. :)