Disclaimer: I definitely do not own Doctor Who. How do I know? Well, for one, I'm not British and I don't have any affiliations with the BBC. Also, if I did own Doctor Who, I would steal David Tennant and never let him go...same with Ten's glasses and suit and tie and chucks. So it's pretty obvious I don't own the franchise, yeah? Anywho, I hope you like!

A/N: Much thanks to dimyavie for beta'ing this. She's crazy awesome when it comes to noticing things I don't and making boring stuff poetic and such. I love it! Thanks, Sis!

He follows me everywhere, even through space and time. It's as if I look behind me, into a busy crowd, and He's there. Always lingering - my one, true companion. No matter how I try to evade Death's icy and clutching hands, He finds a new way to trick me and always takes something close to my hearts.

And sometimes that something is a someone.

I am no stranger to loss. After all, living for nearly a millennia presents countless opportunities to see people and things die, to see them take one final and shuddering breath and blink out of existence forever. Forgotten in time.

But I'll never forget my run-ins with Death, nor those He stole from me.

Yet sometimes when I close my eyes, I see that one day I'll lose her, I'll lose Rose. Of course, she is only human and therefore bound to the rules and limits of mortality, but I still see Him in the darkness behind closed lids. I am witness to Death gathering her glowing soul into the folds of His raven-black robes, hiding her youth and life from me for the rest of time. I can no longer look into her eyes and see her life glowing within their depths. I can no longer see any glow, for she is dead and gone from my reach.

Death leaves me with this gray, frozen resemblance of my Rose. Death leaves me alone to cradle memories in my arms and feel the warmth seep from Rose's veins as I grasp her chilled body against my chest.

In those moments of premonition, I mentally break down and weep. I weep for Rose, for Gallifrey, and for everything and everyone I've sworn to protect but failed.

But when I open my eyes, I'm my usual self; cheeky, rude, and slightly mad. So when I see Rose, alive and absentmindedly smiling at something on the TARDIS console, I hide behind the mask of the Doctor in the pinstripe suit and chucks, leaning casually against one of the twisting columns in the control room. I cannot let her see what I see when Death invades my thoughts; it would be too dangerous for her and possibly change history.

As much as I hate it, history must stay the way it was written, regardless of how much I want to keep Rose alive in my own.

She knows something is up, I can tell whenever I steal a glance at her eyes. She doesn't question me about it, thankfully, for I don't know if I could truthfully answer her anyway, but whenever she's near me I know she yearns for me to bare my soul before her.

I cannot, for it would be too painful for her, for my Rose.

I cannot, because it would tear me apart inside to admit my deepest fear.

"Doctor?" Rose looks at me, an amused glint in her eyes. "This thingy on the console looks an awful lot like the top of that old monkey's stick from The Lion King."

Slipping into my tenth persona, I reply, "Aw, come on. Show some respect to wise old Rafiki." Then, just to make her smile wider, I try my best to impersonate the baboon's dialect. "Da top o' dat stick be very helpful in a glitch. And how do I know dis? 'Cuz da Doctor, he knows all." Rose throws her head back and laughs, a honey-sweet sound I shall treasure forever, even long after I've witnessed her final passage.

Smiling, I walk toward the console and take Rose's hand in mine like I've done so many times before. "You are such a dork, you know that?" she says, looking up at me. "But I s'pose you wouldn't be the Doctor if you weren't. So I'm okay with it." She rests her fair-haired head against my shoulder and I can feel her sigh contentedly. I drop my smile, along with the façade on my face, and stroke her hair gently. Almost regrettably, I relish this moment of companionable silence, this moment when the two of us are all we'll ever need, along with the TARDIS. So I close my eyes for a second of rapture.

And I see His ebony hood where a face should be, replaced only by an endless expanse of nothingness. And even though He is faceless, I know Death is grinning at me.