A/N: Dedicated to everyone who actually reads and reviews- love ya all!

Epilogue

I knew this man once. This wonderful, brilliant, absolutely crazy man.

He saved planets, stars; people on a daily basis, but not once did anyone ever thank him for it. Most places forgot him, almost as soon as he was gone.

He never asked for thanks- but then again he never asked for the trouble either, but he got that. He got a lot of that.

And I loved him, so much. Still do.

His name is the Doctor.

I never thought gods could die- because that's what the Doctor was, to me. A god. Perfect, in every way imaginable, in my eyes. I was obsessed with him. I would have died for him- I did, in a way. I was ready, so ready, to leave my old life- even my mum- behind in a split second to go and travel with him.

I loved every minute, the travelling- I wouldn't change any of it. Not even the monsters, the near-death experiences, the fear- I wanted it all. Because it is commemoration of the time I spent with the Doctor.

I never thought it would end.

* * *

He comes to visit me, every Sunday of every week. For the past ten years.

The Doctor.

Every time I see him, I am struck by just how much he looks the same. He told me once, so long ago; outside a simple, ordinary café, that he doesn't age, he regenerates.

But now he does neither.

Of course, I don't actually see him. Nobody can.

But I know he's there. I do see him, in a way- I can sense him, picture him in my mind. As if he's sitting right next to me, but without being there. Only ever in the background, the periphery; never seen clearly.

But I don't care. Anything of him is better than nothing. It means I don't become some hollow, dead shell of loss, obsessed with my memories. I would easily have done that, a decade ago; when he died, the weeks and months passed in such dead, flat chaos. I felt nothing. I didn't know how to.

I didn't know what to do- how do you react when the whole centre of your life, your existence just, disappears? How do you live when life itself becomes a meaningless thing? In the sense of the word, I suppose Rose Tyler died when the Doctor did.

Maybe I should start somewhere else.

* * *

It has been ten years- ten long years- since my Doctor died.

For nine centuries, he had been so impossibly lucky- escaping the monsters time and time again; managing to cheat death ten times before the creature in the black hood and the scythe caught up with him. I learnt quickly- in the most painful way possibly- that not even the Doctor could run forever.

And so he died. He tells me, all the time; that it wasn't my fault, but I know it was. But I don't wallow in self-hatred all my life, spending every moment wishing, wishing, wishing away the years, trying to turn back time so we've never went there. Never got caught up in it all; never died. I don't waste what precious life I have in regret. The Doctor doesn't.

And I have to live on, for the both of us.

* * *

The weekend is not my relaxation time. It is my time of work.

I have a lot of things to do on the weekend- for starters I have my memories to visit.

"Hello, mum." I whisper, placing the flowers gently in front of the marble headstone. The light shines off the newly cut marble, glittering in the early winter sunlight. It's new- I had it replaced, just a month ago. The previous one had only been less than two years old, but my dear old mum deserved the best. Even in death, I was going to treat her like a queen. I smile thinly to myself- she would have told me I should have it replaced every year, if she'd been here. "How's you been?"

I get no answer, but I expected none- not all of the dead speak to me. Only one.

I stay for a moment, just reading the words I had had engraved;

Jackie Tyler

1st February 1967- 22nd April 2018 (51)

In Loving Memory

of a Mother who forgave me so much.

Fifty-one years old. Too young. But she was ready, I think.

She went peacefully, in her sleep- my smile turns to a laugh as I realise that if she was still here, she'd be telling me right now she'd have wished she went a different way- "dying in your sleep is so undignified, Rose! Why couldn't I have gone dramatically, like in a boat accident, or a zeppelin crash?!"

That would have been so Jackie.

"MUM!"

I turn, the voice making the moment vanish, but I didn't mind- not when I see who is running towards me.

Within seconds, two clumsy bundles of clothes had launched themselves at my lap, giggling as only children can. My two children.

I know- it is so fanatical, to think that every sad story ends with children, who have been named after the dead person. But mine is not like that.

I have children because I wanted them- but also, I suppose, because so many people were worried about me for years that I felt that I had to act like I had moved on, settled down; got over the Doctor.

But the truth is, I haven't- the Doctor is and always will be my life. I know that now. Nothing- nobody- can take his place.

But they don't need to know that. The Doctor is my secret, to be kept to myself; close to my heart, for me and me only.

"Hello my darlings!" They squirm and wriggle away from me as I ruffled their hair affectionately. Alanka and Jack have lovely hair- all black and curly. It's not mine, obviously.

It's Mickey's.

I suppose you're sitting there, snorting in disbelief- how could I leave the Doctor, for Mickey?

But the truth is that I was tired- so very tired- of being pressured and questioned and muttered about behind my back. After he died, I went back home- the Sisters offered me a Terminal Two-Way Hyperlink; it enabled me to travel through several dimensions, but also one ticket back too.

So I went home, sobbed my broken heart out to Jackie and Mickey and everyone who'd ever known about the Doctor. And then I went back. They didn't understand why I went back to that planet, that world where I'd lost everything.

But I couldn't leave him there. On his own. I knew he'd been lonely in life- I couldn't bear the thought that he'd be stuck there, alone, forever.

So I went and I stayed. For years and years, I existed; drifted through the minutes in a sort of life haze. I didn't live, I was just…there. Until people started talking. Saying I had been grieving for long enough- it was time for me to forget the Doctor, to move on with my life.

But they didn't get it- the Doctor was my life.

So I married Mickey, to appease them. Don't get me wrong, I love Mickey- in his own, special way, he's the love of my life.

But the Doctor is the love of my life, and beyond that.

Mickey knew, right from the start, that he couldn't be what the Doctor was. He wasn't the replacement, because I wasn't looking for one. Out of everybody, Mickey understood. He'd met the Doctor- seen us together. He knew what we had, and it was stronger than anything that could possibly ever exist between two humans. And so he became my best friend under the pretence of my husband . The man I couldn't live without; helping me keep up this façade of normality; when every Sunday I talked to the dead man I loved so much.

Mickey knew about the Sundays- he could hear me, talking away the hours of that one day, to thin air. Every hour of every Sunday I spend in there, talking, talking, talking- and he lets me, hardly ever mentioning it. I have probably broken his heart over and over again, but he forgives so many things- the fact that I have the Doctor's clothes- his suit, his coat, his countless ties- all folded up, all his things in boxes under the bed. My bed, not Mickey's.

He's over-looked so many things; the fact that we have a doubled garage, but he's only allowed to keep one car in it, the other space occupied by the TARDIS. He didn't mind that the very first thing I did, the moment I was let out of hospital, was take my two newborn children up into this attic to show the Doctor. He'd come when I called him, even though it was the wrong day, and I'd felt such unbelievable pride when the Doctor had touched the two tiny babies in my arms with the hesitance of someone way out his depth; the first touch they ever felt, besides my own- even before Mickey's.

But I couldn't help wondering, at that time- what would have happened if we hadn't gone to Gilia; if would've been the Doctor's children I held in my arms, not Mickey's.

Mickey evens lets me sit the children down, beside the fire, and tell them stories- so many countless stories; about animated plastic, catnuns and Daleks and werewolves and tin dogs… he watches in silence as I fill our children with the Doctor. I don't know how he can stay here, with the Doctor sewn into the very fabric of his life, with a crazy wife who talks to thin air on the same day of every week.

Except it's not; the air in that room- the room I had specifically created for this sole purpose- is thick, so dense you can cut it. The Doctor's presence is tangible- I can smell him in that room. The very particles are infused with him- sunlight, pines, lavender, and something else I couldn't ever name; the scent I smelt every time I hugged him; clutched him as close to me as I could. Even now, after such a long time, I can still remember it- it's a constant layer engrained on the inside of my nose. I smell it- his hair, his coat, his skin- every time I inhale.

Given that I am not religious- not in the slightest- my Sundays are sacred; nothing ever comes between our visits. I have rescheduled birthday parties, missed deadlines, ignored invitations, interviews, you name it- they all take a backseat for the Doctor.

Because I can't let him go.

I am thirty-five now- and I have been called so many things because of the Doctor. Crazy, obsessed, cruel, desperate, mad, pitiful. Most of them have come from Mickey.

I have put the man through so much- and yet somehow he cannot leave me.

It is so much like the Doctor and me. He could have done whatever he wanted to me- yelled, insulted me, abused me; and I would have come back, time and time again. Because I would have loved him anyway. And I love him more now, because I know the Doctor would never do that, even though he knows he could've.

And Mickey stays with me, knowing full well that I see the Doctor every time I speak to him.

I do not deserve Mickey. And yet he stays. For me.

* * *

"I met someone yesterday, Doctor." I say, my voice echoing through the room. It is in the attic, light shining through the floor the ceiling slanted windows. It is the one room that I have kept dust-free. Every other room in the house is cleaned once a month. This one is cleaned every Sunday.

I have kept it bare, because I need nothing when I am here; this is for talking, not leisure, or relaxing or whatever. When I go in the morning, six o'clock exactly without fail, I take only a single, tall candle in a bracket. When it burns itself out, I leave. Not before, not after.

I sit on the bare floor- the unadorned floorboards swept clean- the candle by my side, and wait. Wait for him.

And then he is there; beside me, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me; standing beside the empty fireplace. Anywhere in the room. I can track his movements so easily now- it is unconscious- my senses creating a mental map of his movements. He doesn't need to make a noise; I know he is there as soon as he is.

"Her name's Rose. Rose Tyler." I laugh quietly to myself; the sound is quiet, sad in a humorous way. "She's from a parallel world, Doctor." I feel him sit down next to me. He is inches from my skin, and yet I look- knowing I stare directly into his eyes- into empty space. I turn my head, staring intently into the corner- and there he is; right in the corner of my eye, I see him; blurry and hardly substantial. I can practically smell his confusion, his curiosity, his disbelief.

"Apparently the universes are breaking up, something to with reality, and a bomb. People can travel between parallels." I explained, understanding his disbelief. "She just came up to me, in the street. Younger- more like twenty two than thirty five. It's so weird, seeing yourself, Doctor. Especially in the street, in the middle of normal life…"

On the periphery of my vision, I see him move, his reaching towards me- I feel a slight touch on my hand; so cold, and so fleeting that I could blink, pass it off as imagination, had I not seen him place his hand over mine. I clutch his fingers tightly. "She told me that on her world- the parallel world, you are alive"- I feel the hand in mine clench- "That you never died. But we're not together, at all- she was trapped on a parallel world two years ago, and she never saw the Doctor again. And then he met other people, who travelled with him…" My eyebrows rise and I look at him- still seeing nothing as I smile. "That so you, Doctor- you grieve by moving on, finding another woman to take my place…" The hand is wrenched from mine, and I sense him move, to the window.

In the sunlight I can see him, clearer than anything. Rather than seeing him, I see the dust motes take on his shape, gathering loosely together until I can almost see his silhouette- looking out onto the garden, hands in his pockets…

I have become so attuned to him that I can even hear the dead speak now. Sometimes, he speaks and I heard him, deep in my mind. His lovely voice is now an echo of its former self, but it still so very, very beautiful.

But mostly, he prefers to write it down.

The white walls and floor are covered in black writing- how he writes it and what with, I don't know. But I never knew that much about the Doctor before he died. Funny how it would cost him his life to get him to be truly honest with me.

I repaint the walls and floor every eight months, when he's covered every imaginable inch of the whiteness. It needed a good repaint, I realised. The entire room looked like it had been splashed with black paint.

"Just think of it, Doctor," I whisper, tears threatening to spill down my face. "In a different world, you didn't die, but I never got to see you at all."

Only silence meets my words, save for the squeak of invisible fingers on glass, as the Doctor writes his response in the fog of the window pane.

Would you prefer that?

"No." I say, leaping up, dashing across the room until I am standing beside him. Already, the four words on the pane have dripped beyond recognition. "I don't waste what life I still have left on wishing you were still alive, Doctor. You are here, with me. That is all I need."

I kiss him then, all of my senses intensified- I know, without looking or calculating, that I will kiss him on the lips.

I have never missed once.

His lips are cold under mine; I dimly feel a faint coldness on my back in the shape of hands. A tiny part of my mind stops to wonder what I must look like; standing still, my arms around an invisible person's neck; curled around in mid-air.

We break apart, and I stare- my chin slightly tipped upwards- I know exactly how many degrees I have to look up to be able to stare into his eyes. I have done it so very many times; and for a moment I can see him- feel his arms wrapped around me, staring at me with so much of the love that he kept locked away when he was alive.

"Oh, Doctor." I whisper, my voice so inaudible that even I cannot hear it, but I know he hears. I clutch at him tightly, every cell in my body silent, having grown tired of screaming the illogicality at me and being completely and utterly ignored every time. I know and do not care than it is impossible to lean into thin air and not fall over. I smile to myself. A lot of things in my life are so impossible.

Because, if I have known anything as solidly as I know this- it is that we are so together, the Doctor and me. Two people, entwined in passionate loss- a package deal. When I grow weaker, and eventually pass on, then… then the Doctor and I will truly be together. I will finally see him again- properly, both of us side by side, watching the universe grow old. Together in our own little glorious world. Forever.

Nothing can take me away from him; I am just the crazy woman, living in the great big house that makes so many weird noise- chuckles; long-winded explanations in a crazy, energetic voice; the rustle of a long brown coat; strange whirrs of a sonic screwdriver… spending her years talking to a ghost.

But the most incredible ghost anyone could ever have.

A/N: I really do love this story! I think it's one of my favourites… very sad and very lovely at the same time. I think that's a point for my dreams, eh, people?!

Come on, reviews? It's not you get a story like THIS everyday…

Right, originally this was just this story, but now it's the Forever Cycle. I have a one shot called "Broken Hearts" and a mini-story called "Living Through Tomorrow" to upload. They'll be up soon, promise. Might even do one today...