It fades away.

All of it. It's just GONE.

Crying and shattered, I look up at the Doctor in a blue suit.

He's not the real one.

That one was in a brown suit.

I shake myself. Why am I worrying about brown suits vs. blue suits? There's an important issue at hand here. I lean on this man, the Doctor-who-is-not-the Doctor, and walk back to my family, Mum, Pete, and Mickey.

In the next few weeks, I visit Torchwood several times. I have the vague sense that I have a job there, but the rest of my life is a blue-and-white haze.

I can't get that infernal box out of my mind! My brain is simply not accepting that he is gone, my heart yearns for him- What? Did I really just use the word yearns? I am getting sentimental.

"Rose? Are you alright?" I realize that I am standing there, just still, in the basement of Torchwood, surrounded by workers, including Mickey. "We heard crying."

Only then do I realize that my face is streaked with tears. Mickey pulls me aside and whispers, "Him?"

"Yes." And suddenly, everything becomes crystal clear. I know what I have to do.

I race out the door, up the stairs. Four flights and a hover-pad later, I stand panting outside of the high-security vault. "Canary."

The door swings open.

There it is.

The dimension cannon.

I enter the code that I constructed myself.

4-5-6-8-3-9-6-8-3-6-2-8-6-7.

The cannon powers up. I step inside. There is a panel on the inside. I enter coordinates by voice.

8-2-7-3-4-7.

Mickey and the others rush in. "Rose! No!"

The automated voice warns me. Warns me that this is only a prototype, that things have gone wrong before, that I could die. And asks me if I want to proceed.

Driven mad by loneliness, I answer yes.

A swirling, white portal slowly begins to eat up the wall in front of me. Mickey and the others run in fear of getting sucked in. In a clear voice, I state, "Launch." I focus all my hopes of getting back to the TARDIS, and my love, on that hole in time and space.

I fly.

I soar through the hole, in a state of madness-induced euphoria. My only thought is, "DOCTOR! DOCTOR!"

After about a minute, I hear the engines of his beloved blue box. Thinking that I am being launched towards the door side of the box, I spread my arms in a hug shape...

and crash into the side.

The Doctor jumps out of the TARDIS. My whole body is hurting, and I am vaguely aware of the fact that we are in the middle of a freezing lake, on a shallow sandbar. As he carries me into the box, it only feels right.

No pain.

Right to be back, in the box, with the madman.