A/N: This chapter was never supposed to exist in this story, but the first and second (yet to be posted) chapters are separated by a large gap in time. This companion chapter bridges that gap and gives a little Ten!Closure. rest assured, there will be more happy!doctor to come...

Enjoy


TARDIS, Unknown Location

Four Months After Bad Wolf Bay

He watched as Martha slept next to him. Peaceful and content. The TARDIS hadn't provided her with a room yet, so she had settled in one of the many nooks of the control room, blanketed and warm.

She hadn't had any pyjamas. He went to get her some.

Instead he found it.

The locket. The necklace. Rose in sterling silver.

He held the chain in his hands and listened as the silver hearts tinkered down and clashed together at the lowest point of the chain. He flipped the necklace around to listen again. Over and over, the rhythm of Rose's silver hearts comforted him and drove him into deep melancholy.

He wished she had taken it with her.

A memento. A symbol of him, of them to comfort her in her solitude. Not that she was alone of course. There was Jackie and Mickey and Pete and the little one to come. How his hearts had leapt when she spoke of it. The baby.

He had thought it had been hers. Her s and Mickey's. He was disgusted and intrigued by the jealousy and the relief that had been mixed into his loss when she had said it. Jealousy that it could never have been his. Relief that she might live a loved life.

How she had changed him. He was so human now. Jealousy over a child that realistically could never have been his, of a relationship he could never have reached out and taken. He might have if she were still here. She had changed him in so many ways; it was not such a big stretch to believe she'd make that change in him too. Make a man out of him. A real, loving, complete man.

He hadn't been able to say the words she had wanted to hear. He had thought them, they had burst through his mind like fire but he couldn't bring himself to say them. Selfish. And completely unhelpful. Now they just rolled through his mind like molten sludge, begging to be let out to anyone and everyone.

He had as much as told Donna. He had basically blurted it to Martha.

He wasn't supposed to do that. He wasn't supposed to bleed one companion onto another. But he was bleeding. He was bleeding from the inside out and everything he touched was getting soaked in it.

He dropped the necklace. He couldn't stand the tingling.

It was as though it still tingled just to spite him. To show him that the energy of the Bad Wolf was never ending. Even though their song was over. Rose Tyler and The Doctor. Never to meet again.

He slipped the necklace in his breast pocket. It sat there, tingling and stinging and biting and swearing. He shivered. He would have to take it out soon. It was too uncomfortable. It smelt of paradox, but he wasn't really sure why. Metal and time-radiation and paradox. Only a hint of Bad Wolf.

He had once thought the Bad Wolf was eternal, stretching far beyond his time with her. That it had brought them together, brought her to him and brought her to the Earth in atoms and cells for him. And that in its creation it had seen him wither and die, only to be reborn as hers, for her alone.

She had been made to save him and so he had been made for her.

He reached into his pocket and pulled the necklace out again. It was too uncomfortable. He traced the letters as he had done on New Earth, but saw not the letters of a forgettable primary friend, but the letters eternal, that had brought her to him and him to her.

BW.

Bad Wolf.

And his hearts broke all over again.

Even as a child of seven it was there. Waiting, biding its time, calling him to her. A message to lead her to him. How could he have missed it before? His own branding, his primal ownership, for all of time and space to see, printed on her chest from the age of seven.

He had been right.

And it broke him to know it.

He was fire and raging lava once more, but of course, it had no purpose. How did it help him to know that it was destined, now that she was gone? Just another reminder that he had ruined the life that had been so beautifully determined by the vortex, outside of time and dimension.

He could not do this to himself. Oh, how he wanted to, but he had to let go. It would be a waste to let himself be destroyed for the love of her.

Not when it couldn't save her.

He stood with new purpose, careful not to wake Martha, and wandered the TARDIS, hoping she would show him the room he had till now been avoiding. He found the right door. He leaned on it. He ran a hand over it. And he opened it.

His senses were overloaded with Rose. She was there, in the smells, in the pictures over her mirror and the colours of her bedspread. She was there, everywhere, eternal.

He sat on the bed and took in the brightness. It was unfair that the empty room could be so bright. So innocent of the fact that she would never come back.

He held the necklace in front of him and his eyebrows furrowed. He could feel his lips growing taut and the back of his mouth sting. He swallowed and cleared his throat. His other hand idly stroked the bedspread and it caught up in his fingers in swirling patterns. The material scratched and ruffled in his fingers like a toneless song, the tinkering and tingling of the necklace joining it.

It had to stop.

The tingling, the bleeding of his insides in the word that had once meant a flower but now held everything.

Rose.

He placed the necklace on the bedspread and immediately grieved that absence of the tingling under his fingers. He stood and walked toward the door, the soft thud of his feet on the floor jarring his ears. In his head there was fire and rage and grief and waterfalls of Rose.

But there was also silence and decision.

He closed the door. He knew the TARDIS would not show it to him again.

It was over.

He was alone. Alone with his two silver, bleeding hearts.