AN: This is a supposed-to-be drabble written for the tumblr prompt: Echoes. This is my first story written for this fandom, so I hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. It is the property of BBC.
She wondered at first if she was losing her mind. The way it followed her made her feel insane.
It had scared her in the beginning. No one else could see it but her. She'd asked many different people (not always humans) while on their adventures (she made sure to be away from him at the time) if they could see the brooding man in the leather jacket with the generous sized ears. Or later on, if they could see the thin-as-a-toothpick bloke with that great, mussed up hair and pinstriped suit.
The answer was always and forever would be no.
So when she'd been given odd, pitying, or even offended looks (they couldn't possibly believe she wanted to purposely be disturbing) for conversing with the air, she'd stopped asking and tried to ignore it.
The echo.
The first "echo", as she had elected to call it because all it ever did was show that scene from the past, featured the before mentioned "brooding man in the leather jacket." It was appropriate, she guessed, for her first echo to be his first word to her.
Run.
And she did. She ran with him wherever he would take her in his brilliant blue box that reminded her of the evening sky that housed all the beautiful stars he'd take her to. His hand in hers, filling the gaps both there and in her life that she hadn't even known she had.
The echo was always the same in the beginning. It would appear in times where she needed comfort and reassurance and hope. Hope that they would always be alright. Hope that the two of them would never end.
Run.
Maybe she should've listened to it and run away and left him. Because then he left her. And in his place out swanned the "thin-as-a-toothpick bloke."
Her world was fractured with only the memories of better times and promises of brighter futures holding it together. And the echo.
He still appeared, the other him. Run.
When she was on her own defending him while he slept tea deprived, the echo was there. When the poor excuse for a human possessed her and tongued the life out of him, the echo was there. When she was facing off with the werewolf that claimed she had "something of the wolf" about her, the echo was there.
The echo him appeared when they went to that school and he got a blast from the past, and she got a wake-up call. The echo him appeared when he used a fireplace as an escape from her. The echo him appeared when her mum (well, not really) became an emotionless, metal monster, and her dad (also not really) rejected her attempts at gaining a father figure. That echo him was even with her while she resided inside a telly screen.
When he claimed he had to go down there into the pit of hell, the echo him was there. When a prophecy of battle and death became her future, the echo him grasped her hand. He held her hand through the mix-up with LINDA and the female slab of pavement. And finally, when she was told to "never say never ever", he echoed back into her ear the word that had brought her strength all this time.
Run.
She really should have. Because then, as she stared at a white, blank, empty wall that was a symbol of what she believed to be her future, he let go. And she died inside.
Rose.
She thought it was an echo at first. A new one after all this time. However, she couldn't see any version of him anywhere, and it was only in her dreams. It was insistent, though, and it pulled her to what was soon to be her living hell and her place of hope.
She stood on that bloody cold beach with the wind whipping around her hair like a twister and a cautiously hopeful expression barely gracing her features. She was right to be cautious.
He looked like one of her echoes, and that scared her. Only when he strengthened the signal did she relax. As much as she could anyway.
Lots of words were exchanged that would forever be in her memories. They tried to comfort the other in their own way as best as they could with only two minutes of their forever remaining. She cried over a soon to be loss.
With nothing else to say, she tried to work up the nerve to tell him. He appeared then; her echo. He didn't tell her to run. He only took her hand. It gave her the courage to get the words out.
I love you.
Quite right, too.
She gave a small, watery smile to that. The echo squeezed her hand as she tried to rein in her saddening emotions.
And I suppose, if it's my last chance to say it…
Hope rose in her again as she tried to suppress the sniffles that had come from the tears she didn't remember shedding. She almost began to feel a bit of joy on that terrible day.
And on that terrible day, she learned a horrible thing: Hope is dangerous.
Rose Tyler, I-
He faded like one of her echoes. Just something of the past. A wailing sob broke out from her and tears poured down and stained her cheeks. She was broken inside.
It was all for nothing. The painful, emotional turmoil and the endless nights of nightmares that didn't end when she woke up. Coming out here only had brought her more misery, and she felt regret begin to creep in.
-love you.
Her sob ended in an almost gurgled gasp. A prayer went through her mind and she looked up. She saw nothing but the rolling waves and the barren beach but felt a squeeze on her hand. Her eyes shifted over slowly.
He was standing there. The he of now. She looked at him closely while trying to hold in the hiccups she had gained. She didn't understand.
He smiled at her and finished the incomplete declaration of love again.
Love you.
She stared at him again and began to wonder how he could possibly be saying this to her. He had never said it to her before. He had to echo, right?
The new echo merely grinned at her and squeezed her hand encouragingly. She couldn't help but return the infectious smile.
And that's how she found herself a few months later standing in the room with the nightmare wall. A tech team stood, staring at her, looking to her for directions. Piles of equipment stood around them from the archives to be used to make the cannon she had "planned." (She'd gotten quite a bit of help from Pete.) Her echo stood to her side, offering her a small smirk.
She found it fitting that her first echo had been his first words to her and that her second echo was the words he had never gotten to say. But she would change that. If she had any say in it, he would be completing that sentence himself quite soon.