A/N: Yay, a New Year's present to anyone that reads my Doctor Who stuff. If it helps, I'm planning on uploading a Vampire Diaries fic soon, to all of my other readers that don't actually care for DW (which I can't understand, how can you not love this show, it breaks your heart and puts you back together in the space of like ten seconds, EVERY TIME). Umm anyway, yeah, so, thanks for reading and I hope you like it. It's a little mushy. Um, okay, a lot mushy. I'm sorry. I'm not really in the right headspace for writing (having not slept in three days and all, and I thank my friends for that) so I really don't even know what I'm typing right now and I hope you like this anyway. Sooo. Thanks.

ALSO, I would like to recommend listening to this song or at least reading the lyrics. They are very indicative of the summary of this chapter.

ALSO ALSO, this is a three-parter as far as I have planned. The other chapters should be up soon.

Pairing: Doctor/Rose, mentions of 10.2/Rose.

Summary: When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part. / She comes to him in his dreams.

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Nope. Not mine. Sorry.

She takes you in with her crying eyes

And all at once you have to say goodbye.

-john mayer, "dreaming with a broken heart"

"I l- I love you," she sobs, looking away, unable to face him in her confession and his enlightenment.

"Quite right too." He sighs. "I suppose, if it's-"

But before his failed attempt to tell her is shown heard felt cried over, his dream is ripped away. He's no longer on the beach, this part of the dream/memory is over and his subconscious has moved on to a new scene.

He opens his eyes to an empty field. It's a meadow, very lovely and full of blooming light pink and yellow flowers. Pink and yellow, just like his little human. (No, not little. She is was never could be little.) The sun is soft and hardly there. He can feel the warmth on his arms, but just barely. It strikes him that he's naked, just as he was when he fell asleep.

"Oh my god, you're naked," says the voice behind him that he knows so well. He turns, and there she is. Dressed in her pink jumper and tight blue jeans and dirty white sneakers and he missed her so much. Hard to believe it's only been three years for him, he still misses wants needs loves her so much. Dreams of her every night.

"Shit," he mumbles sleepily, shoving a hand through his hair to give it something resembling order. He blinks tiredly, rambling. "Is this another sex dream? Because normally in those you don't mind if I'm naked."

Her eyes widen comically. "Another? You've had- you've- oh." She plops down in the grass. "I didn't know that. Oh. Um."

He blinks more and she comes clearer into focus. Her hair is blowing in the wind, but just barely, just enough to remind him of her on the beach, crying wishing loving as she said goodbye. Her eye makeup is lighter, less thickly applied, as if she's finally realized just how beautiful she is without it. (Some of his favorite looks on her were when she stumbled into the kitchen, just woken up, unable to open her eyes without a cuppa in her hand, smiling at him with a mouth missing her usual coating or three of lipstick. Her eyes were bare and thick with sleep, and he loved her then just as much as he loves her now, or maybe it's the other way around.)

"Oh, Rassilon," he breathes, reaching for her. "Are you real?"

She takes his hand (they still fit together perfectly, just like always) and stands up. "'Course I am, Doctor," she whispers. "What, you didn't think I'd leave you alone forever, huh? Didja? I had to come back."

"But...this is a dream," he mumbles, and she smiles up at him with sunshine on her face and starlight in her eyes (bad wolf says hello to oncoming storm).

"Of course it's a dream," she says, "but I'm the one making it happen. I'm real, Doctor, I'm the Rose Tyler you took onto your ship after you told me to run. I'm the girl you never finished that sentence for on Bad Wolf Bay, and I still don't know how it ends."

He takes her in his arms and finishes that sentence, over and over and over again, between kisses to her hair and forehead and eyes and lips.

(It ends several different ways, i love you i need you i miss you i love you i want you i love you rose tyler you're everything to me i love you. Only one keeps repeating, the thing he never got to say, those eight letters that might just haunt him forever.)

She laughs through her tears and kisses him through his. "You believe me now?" she whispers, taking the hands he's been running over her face into hers and holding them, entwining her fingers through his.

"I don't know if I believe," he whispers, "I've had so many dreams like this...so many times. I've wanted to see you so much. This might just be my subconscious, stringing me along and fooling me again. I know this is a dream, but...I don't know if it's real. I just know that this might be another hallucination, but either way you're right here in front of me. I have to believe for now."

She smiles and kisses him. She tastes like peaches and smells like roses and she's warm with sunlight (just as he remembers her). "I love you," she breathes against his lips, and he closes his eyes because he can't handle this if it's not real, "and I'm real."

And the next thing he knows, they're tumbling in the grass and laughing and kissing and loving. Finally, they stop, and he's on top of her with his hands braced on either side of her head. "I can't believe it," he laughs. "Our first real kiss, and I'm starkers."

"Well, we've never been conventional," she giggles. "Don't you want to know how I'm here? You don't have to ask why, I hope, you should bloody well know without having to ask why, as I've already had said I love you."

"No, I don't," he laughs breathlessly, still in shock that she's here, real or not, making her laugh, too. "All right, how are you here, exactly?"

Her smiles fades a little, but she grins at him nonetheless. "You can thank Torchwood for it." Her tongue sticks out between her teeth (his favorite smile of hers) and he wants to kiss her again, so he does. By the time she regains enough awareness to push him away again, she's breathless and her lips are swollen beautifully. "They've got the tech to patch me through. They used the TARDIS key you gave me, and the cell phone you jiggery-pokery-ed into working, and got enough of your essence so that their machine thingy could lock onto you, never mind the universes, and now we're both here. Mentally. But it only works while you're sleeping." She grins. "I've been trying to lock onto you for months, but you hardly ever sleep. It took forever for us both to be here at the same time, so it could work!"

He kisses the tip of her nose. "Sorry. That would explain why I'm naked, though. I don't think I ever told you, but that is how I sleep..."

"I gathered that," she giggles. "And it's fine, you see me complaining? I already know what you look like starkers, anyway, I've been with John."

"John is..." he's suddenly sad, suddenly breathless for a whole different reason. "The other me? The half-human me?"

Her smile disappears, vanishing without a trace. "Yeah, that's him." She looks down and traces her fingernail along his chest, creating some nameless design. He's too concentrated on her beauty laughter joy (her very presence intoxicates him) to give enough brain power to figure out what she's tracing into his skin. "He died, y'know. A while back."

"Really?" He didn't know his doppelganger for very long, but still...a large part of him was in that man, more than just his hand. "I'm sorry. I know you loved him."

Rose looks up at him, showing him a smile that seems entirely too happy to be anything other than forced (he knows all her smiles, knows everything about her). "Yeah, I did, but we had a good long run together." She won't meet his eyes.

He frowns and examines her. "You, Rose Tyler, haven't aged a day," he announces. "Whaddaya mean, 'a good long run'?"

She smiles bitterly with tears in her eyes, and she's looking at him now with that heartbroken expression that just tears him apart. "I mean the Bad Wolf changed me, Doctor. Didn't quite realize it for the longest time, but...well, I s'pose I'm like Jack. I've seen him in his dreams, too. He can't die, either. Or he can, but he comes back. I just...don't die. And I don't age, either."

The Doctor tilts his head at her. "You can't age?"

Rose laughs through her fingers, covers her face to wipe away a few stray tears. "Yeah. It's been a long time, y'know. I dunno how long it's been for you since you left me and John on the beach..."

"Three years," he answers, though it wasn't a question. "I'm alone now, you know."

"You shouldn't be alone," she whispers, then she continues like she never said it (so many things left unsaid between them, but he heard her this time). "It's the year 2105 for me. It's quite funny, really, I met you in, what, 2005? Yeah. So it's been a hundred years for me, give or take thanks to the TARDIS's weird time measurement thing."

His jaw...well, it certainly doesn't drop, he's far too physiologically superior for that, but it definitely comes just the tiniest bit unhinged from his mouth. Rose laughs slightly at the expression on his face. "The year 2105?" he repeats. "How...how are we linked across time, then? Why hasn't it waited almost a century to connect to me?"

"Because this is your present time and this is my present time. And I know that all time exists at once, I know. I can't really answer your question, I guess," she says with a small smile. "John was the tech-y one, I just stood there and pointed a gun. Well, now, that's not really true. I talked to some aliens. Became a sort of middleman for Earth, I guess. Prevented a lot of wars and death, which is good. You'll never know how many times I used the words 'Shadow Proclamation'... and it worked. Gave me and John a right good laugh, several times. But he was the one more related to the computer-y, technological stuff. I never really got that. Not even in a hundred years."

The Doctor takes her hands into his once more and rubs his thumb across the back of her hand. He knows her and this body, and it's true, she hasn't aged a day. If this is really her, if it isn't a dream or a hallucination or whatever, then...what she's saying is true. Somehow, she's immortal. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't," she snaps. "Quit apologizing, I'll not have it. You've apologized enough in your lifetime, I'll wager, and I'm not having it from you, not this time. Maybe when you actually do something wrong or stupid or mean, yeah, but not now. Not when I made the choice to become Bad Wolf. I chose it or it chose me, whichever's more correct, I dunno, but I do know that it wasn't your fault and it still isn't."

"I didn't check to make sure it had no lasting effects on you," he says, feeling the guilt rise up in him. "I should have."

"Maybe you should have," she says, "and maybe I should have suggested it, but we were too happy with our lives together. We didn't think to check. And besides, what were you gonna do? Is there some cure for immortality that I don't know about?"

He laughs through the shining in his eyes. "No, I don't suppose there is," he admits.

"Good, then. It doesn't matter. So it's not your fault. So don't bloody apologize to me, Mr. Time Lord of Guilt."

Well, he'll let it go, at least for now. She knows him and knows he'll still carry that guilt around with him until she convinces him that she truly doesn't mind, but for now...well, maybe she does mind a little, and she can't really convince him to let go of his guilt until she's let go of hers. "Besides," she says, mixing bittersweet truth in with humor like they are so prone to do, "I've got some more experience now. With death and guilt and saving worlds, your sort of things."

"Death?" he asks, uncomprehending, and then it dawns on him. "Oh. Oh, Rose."

"They died happy," she says, struggling to remain calm and show an exterior facade of being fine, when inside turmoil and grief are raging inside of her (and he probably knows, like he knows everything about her). "Mum and Pete went together, can you believe it. Like somethin' out of The Notebook. And Mickey...well, Mick, I haven't seen him since he chose to stay in your world. Haven't gotten to connect to his dreams yet, been tryin' too hard for yours. But I expect he's happy. I hope so, anyway. And that's good, I'm glad, because here in my universe, and in my time...well, he'd be dead. So this's better than the alternative. He's alive there, with you, which is so much better."

He cups her cheek in one palm and rubs his thumb underneath her eye to wipe away evidence that she's crying. "I'm so sorry, Rose."

"Stop that!" she demands. "I'll not have it from you. I want us to be laughing and smiling and happy again. I've waited a century to talk to you, Doctor, don't you ruin it by makin' me cry for the whole time!"

"I'm sorry," he repeats, this time for making her cry, and all of a sudden they're both laughing and crying helplessly, simultaneously, overjoyed and overwhelmed with each other's presence. He takes her up into his arms and he's lifting her up into the air and spinning her around like something out of a John Hughes film. "I missed you," he whispers in her ear as he lowers her to the ground but doesn't let her go. "I missed you so much."

"I missed you, too," she murmurs back. "I dreamed of you every night. John was sorta jealous."

"I'll bet," he chuckles. "You were happy with him?" he asks, suddenly serious. "He...he made you happy?"

"He did," she confirms after a slight moment of hesitation. "We were rocky at first. I was so torn up after you left, and he was, too. We were dysfunctional in the beginning. But we were good together, and we knew it. We worked past everything. I got to share so many important things with him. We were messed up for a while after we realized that I wasn't aging, but...well, we made it okay. I remembered how I'd stayed with you even though you don't really age or die or whatever in the normal way, and he...he understood that. He tried to do the same for me. And he died happy, too. I miss him sometimes."

He smiles in the soft sunlight, watching how the light frames her face. "He was a lucky man."

She looks down, shyly smiling. "I was a lucky woman. Still am, of course," she laughs, "I've got you again, at least in your dreams. Always been lucky, me. Had you, always there, always takin' up my time. Helpin' me with my homework, gettin' me that bike for Christmas, making me smile and laugh, gettin' me to say yes to the travelin', everything. Even got you now. I'm the luckiest woman alive, in all the universes."

"How did you know me?" he asks. "I mean, when I came into the dream, how did you know it was me? I've regenerated."

Rose runs her fingers through his hair. "You look younger. You act different. You don't smile quite as much. But...when I first entered into this dream, I knew it was you. It had to be you. You're the same. Darker, sadder, younger, different...doesn't matter. You're still somehow the same. My Doctor." Maybe he imagines it, but her eyes seem to flash gold in that instant (bad wolf wants her doctor).

"Besides," she continues, solemnly smiling with just a hint of teasing to it, "I remember you helpin' me with my homework. I remember your face, just like this, not aged hardly a day."

"Rose," he smiles. "My Rose. I never gave you all the things you deserved."

"Quit with the moping and blame," she scolds. "If you want to give me something, take me somewhere. In your dreams. Take me somewhere."

He tilts his head. "I've heard of the technology you've told me about, circa 2100 AD on Earth. But I don't quite know exactly how it works. Can't you change the background, too?"

"I can," she tells him with a smile as she presses her lips to his. "But I want to see what you'll decide."

With a smile, he kisses her again. When she opens her eyes, they're in Barcelona. With its pale yellow skies and long marble temples (quite like ancient Greece) and pretty purple people. There are wild brown and black and red and yellow (and all sorts of colors, really) noseless dogs, running around everywhere, unrestrained by leashes or collars or fences. It's a truly wild world, truly beautiful, truly quite like them.

"I never got to bring you here," he smiles at her, and she looks up at him with a smile and kisses him.

He isn't quite used to this - being loved and not being abandoned and showing his true emotions - but this is admittedly quite sentimental of him, and he doesn't mind as much as he thought he would. With Rose, it just seems right. (The domestic approach. "With you it's not so bad.")

She grins. "You know this is just your memory of it."

"No," he smiles, and notices absentmindedly with vague delight that now he's got clothes on, yay for dreaming him, "I made it much better for you."

And then she gets tackled by a noseless dog (that's always funny) and one of them hits him, too, and that's when he wakes up in his bed, tangled in the sheets and sweaty, utterly alone and utterly starkers, yet again.

And that's when he realizes that he's alone again, and even if she really is his Rose, she can only come to him in his dreams.

It's another month before he has the opportunity to sleep again and restfully dream. And this time, he's smart about it. He brings her flowers, like a gentleman.

She's there, smiling in the same meadow again, and, thank the universe, his dream self is wearing clothes this time (he's getting better at this). "Roses?" she grins. "You brought me roses?"

"Fell asleep with them," he says, feeling shy and a lot like his previous incarnation (Rose has a way of doing that, of making him feel younger and more emotional and less guilty again). "Don't s'pose you like roses, do you? I never asked."

She takes them into her hands and breathes in the scent deeply. "Love 'em," she murmurs. "Well, love these ones, anyway. They're lovely." Reaching down, she uses one hand to take his wrist and press his palm to her face. "I missed you," she grins. "You kinda left without notice last time, y'know. But I s'pose we can't quite control when you wake up."

"No," he sighs. "Regretfully. We should probably make plans for next time. I can go to sleep again in a month, I think."

"Sounds good," she grins, and then he kisses her because he loves it when she does that grin with her tongue between her teeth, and then she drops the roses and wraps her arms around him and runs her fingers through his hair and everything is momentarily perfect.

He still doesn't quite know if she's real, but it doesn't matter at the moment. He'll ride out the agonizing heartache eventually, but for now he's enjoying the bittersweet bliss.

A/N: So, I hope you enjoyed it. I kind of ended it on a slightly melodramatic, sad but sweet note. Which makes me sad. And also tired. Anyway, I hope you liked it, and the next chapter will be up soon. Please kindly remember to at least consider reviewing. Thank you! And thank you for reading till the end.

Happy New Year! :)