It was late. It was London. The streets were wet from rain earlier in the evening. It was sometime in the eighteen hundreds, and after the introduction of gas street lamps and that was pretty much all the Doctor knew about the narrow little street he found himself wandering along.
He'd said goodbye to Jack, the man returning to his Torchwood team to make them better than they had been before. To remake Torchwood in the Doctor's name.
Then he'd lost Martha. It hadn't been a surprise. She'd been through hell during the year that never was, he understood. Even before that he'd not deserved her loyalty. He'd been in no fit mental state to take on a companion and Martha had deserved better than the treatment she had received from him.
It was the loss of the Master that had truly torn his mind asunder though. The empty echo in his head that had haunted him after the Time War was back and this time there was no pink and yellow human to soothe away the ache in his mind. The Master had believed his death to be a cruel final joke, but even he hadn't known, couldn't have known, the torture the Doctor's mind was currently enduring.
His ninth self had been made to bear the pain of such loss, regenerating with that silence in his head it was inevitable, but this him wasn't built to take this kind of mental torment and he had spent half the evening sobbing inside the Tardis before stepping into the bustling street of London in some vague attempt at not feeling so shockingly alone.
Despite knowing his intentions his ship had dropped him in a quiet part of the city, in the middle of the night, with terrible weather to boot and he knew that the likelihood of bumping into anyone, let alone enough people to fill his mind with noise, was astronomically low but he forced himself to walk. One converse clad foot in front on the other until he'd found himself in this narrow little street facing a space time anomaly.
It was the soft sound of someone trying not to cry that drew his eyes up from the pavement, the street lamps glinting off the damp surface almost making it look like it had been scattered with stardust at his feet, but it was when his eyes settled on the woman that his feet froze and his mouth dropped open slightly.
He thought she was wearing a dress at first, accurate for the period, but after a moment he realised it was a long skirt in a more modern fabric that had clearly been designed in fit in. The corset top wasn't solid boned either, it was sturdy enough to fit in but designed for ease of movement and comfort over anything else.
Her hair had been curled and pinned into a loose bun at the back of her head, leaving some of the shorter strands to fall around her face, framing her angular jaw and enhancing her long neck as it lead his eyes to her slightly too wide mouth, and tear streaked face.
"Rose..." he breathed, eyes widening when she caught the sound of her name and lifted her eyes from the hankerchief in her hand to stare at him, her soft sobs growing silent almost instantly.
"Doctor?" she asked, pushing off from the wall she'd been leaning on to take a single step forward before she froze, her breath catching in her throat.
"Tell me something... something only the Doctor would know," she demanded, her voice hard despite the stuffiness in her nose from crying, and he watched as her whole body angled sideways. She'd learnt to fight since he last saw her and she had instinctively made herself a smaller target for attack and his hearts broke that, whatever she'd been through, had turned her into someone who was forced to be this careful.
"Run... Hopping for our lives... save the world but lose you... Bad Wolf..." he managed to force the words past his lips a moment later, a jumble of terms from both lives spent with her and it was beautiful to watch her whole frame relax.
"But... how?" he breathed, still staring at her and she offered him a tenuous smile.
"It took years... but there was a species over there, they travel dimensions all the time, like your people did... it wasn't even difficult for them but Time travel was something they couldn't do... I got dropped off here, thought I didn't have a chance at finding you... Should have known the Tardis would look out for me," she offered, eyes beginning to sparkle with life instead of tears and the Doctor moved before he'd realised the thought of hugging her had finished crossing his mind.
Scooping her into his arms and crushing her against his chest, he couldn't help but whimper as she wound her own arms around his neck, and holding on tight as he sobbed against her shoulder. Murmuring soft nonsense into his ear, Rose let him cry with her fingers stroking soothingly through his hair and for a long time the pair of them stood on that wet London street, simply soaking in each other presence.
Eventually, back on the Tardis, he would tell her about Martha, about losing the Master and about the torture of the year that never was, and in turn she would tell him how it had been nearly a century since she saw him last, how she now had two heart and a respiratory bypass and how they both had the Tardis to thank for reuniting them and giving them a future.
Eventually he would invite her into his mind, and reveal to her every dark shadow of his personality, and she would invite him into hers and she would show him her brother and her life on Pete's world and how she'd come back to him. Eventually they would share everything, no shadows and no secrets and the Bad Wolf and Oncoming Storm would balance one another across the universe for eons.
For that moment, however, no questions needed answering and no futures needed to be planned. Rose hugged the Doctor as he clung to her in return, and their presence in each others lives was just enough.