A/N: As much as I like Rose, and as much as I'm sure I'll like the new girl in Doctor Who, Amelia is just very, very fun. I had to say SOMETHING about Rose. Sorry if it offends anyone who likes the pairing. To all of my readers and reviewers, thank you very much! It's lovely to hear from you or even (somewhat creepily, haha) know you're there.

Rose

He finds her weeping in a closet on the TARDIS. The Doctor doesn't know how Amy Pond got there, or how long she's sat, tears rolling down her red cheeks and her staring miserably into a soft yellow blouse with flowery patterns.

"Amy," he says slowly, hesitantly. He may be a Time Lord, but she is still a woman. And crying does not bode well for any man. It is also, unfortunately, now eternally "his turn" to handle her.

She stares up at him, strangely silent in her sorrow, her red eyes glancing up, studying him.

"I can't remember," she replies finally, her voice resounding and hollow.

"Remember what?" He kneels, and her lips quiver.

"Rose." He nearly shudders at the very mention, his eyes swimming in quiet fear.

"Amy?"

She fingers the pale fabric in her hands. "I can't remember what a rose smells like."

He strokes her hair and tries to find some response, but he searches his thousand years and finds shreds, every second a tiny pinprick in the life that grows more distant and yet is still there, perfectly preserved.

"We can take you to Earth to get some roses, Amy. It's as simple as-"

"No!" She bursts, and the Doctor is startled and perplexed in a fearful way. Her voice is softer then. "No, Doctor, that's not the point."

He waits, something that comes unnaturally for the Time Lord.

"It's that I can't remember it properly, Doctor. Every time I try to think of it, now, it will be compared to every flower I've smelt, whether it's the Glass Roses of Kluspex or the Talking Lilies of Galspart. It's... old, somehow. Ruined by my own experience." She swallows. "I thought that if I absorbed everything in the universe, it would push out bloody Leadworth and just leave beauty in its wake. But..."

"It doesn't work that way," the Doctor replies, hushing her. "Trust me, it will never work that way." Indeed, looking at the girl before him and noting the irony of the subject, the Doctor is more than trustworthy on the issue. When he remembers Rose, there is guilt. There is melancholy. And worse, there are holes. A Time Lord has an excellent memory, and a TARDIS to fill in the gaps for him. But sometimes, when his brain does stray to her, her scent is wrong. Her voice has the oddest tinge, the feeling that it's off somehow, and even the way she screamed or laughed is inexplicably different. Inexplicably, devastatingly wrong.

Amelia Pond wipes her tears away. "It's a stupid thing to be blubberin' over, I know."

"It's not," the Doctor murmurs wearily, and she looks to him. He cannot erase Rose with Amelia Pond, he knows. He cannot replace every woman in his life with another, cannot keep smelling Talking Lilies or Glass Roses to wash a different scent from his mind. But his treacherous mind is such a creature, such a repulsive thing. It loves Amelia Pond here and now, with his new nose and his new fingers and his new tastebuds. They all ache to experience her, and somehow, he knows that returning to Rose couldn't be the same. Not just because his body has changed, but because of time, the very element he thrives on. Rose is his past, and blast it all, he very much wants Amelia Pond to be his present and future.

So when she smiles, grins at him in that carefree, adoring manner, he has to love her. He has to grin back, and pull her up, and lead her to the kitchen (it takes an hour to find, as it's on the run), and eat fish sticks and custard with her until he can't imagine tasting anything else in his entire life and enjoying it so much, even when he knows in his clenching gut that he will.

Then she leans on the side of her stool to kiss him, and he decides nearly the same thing all over again.