A/N: Alright, firstly, I have to apologise for the use of the word 'sabotagee' in the last chapter. I did mean saboteur, and I can only asssume that the terrible grammatical error that I made is an Australian thing. Anyone who watched the NRL final a few weeks ago might have noticed one commentator ( I won't mention any names) use the word "Winniest". As in, Melbourne Storm is one of the most winniest teams in the league. So, sorry.

Also, thanks to everyone who reviewed. I love you, man. ;)

xxx xxx

"Rose!"

Where the hell had she got to?

He knew she moved better on the sand than he did, but this was ridiculous.

"Rose! Stop!"

Wait! There was something moving to his right. Darting in and out of the dunes, moonlight bouncing from smooth blonde hair-

"Rose, Rose! Stop, Rose!"

The Doctor hooked right and scrambled down the dune. By time he reached the bottom, slipping and sliding to a halt on his knees, Rose was far ahead of him again. Not looking back.

When I catch you, Rose Tyler.

His own words haunted him. The Doctor hadn't caught Rose a week ago on the icy slopes of Ilium Neocort. What made him think he would catch her on the ergs of the Betian desert?

"Well, sitting around here certainly won't get me anywhere." The Doctor scolded himself.

He climbed to his feet, brushed the clinging white sand from his pants. There were holes in both knees from his numerous trips and falls. His belt was gone thanks to Odjya, so the lip of his pants clung desperately to his lean hips. It was high school fashion all over again.

"I will catch you, Rose Tyler." He said, staring off into the darkness for a moment.

And he ran.

Not far away, though well out of reach, Rose was slowing down.

Her breath was fire in her throat. Her head pounded, and there was the sharp sting of tears behind her eyes.

"That bitch." She muttered, taking a few last stumbling stops before she stopped entirely.

There was a pain in her chest that she couldn't quite put a finger to. Rose ground her teeth together, trying hard not to cry. It was his choice, after all. However wrong he was.

"That bitch," she said again, "That bloody witch."

Rose slumped to her knees. All that maddening energy that had possessed her minutes earlier seemed to have evaporated.

He didn't know. He couldn't have known. But no. Of course he knew.

"He's not like that!" Rose cried, driving her hands hard through her hair.

She tried to think, tried to remember the scene exactly. Maybe she had just mistaken some innocent gesture as…

As what? There was no mistake about it. Odjya and the Doctor, the two had clearly been enjoying a moment together. Really enjoying it.

"No, no, no," Rose wrenched her hands clear from her hair, and pressed the heel of her palms against her closed eyes, "He wouldn't. He couldn't."

But the more she thought about it, the less reasons she could think of why he wouldn't. He and Odjya were the last of their kind. Rose herself knew how lonely he was, behind the grinning, blushing, feigning annoyance.

Just one man, alone in all the universe.

"I was there." Rose whimpered, "You always had me."

xxx

"Idiot."

Odjya stared after the Doctor. For a long while after he had disappeared from view, she kept her eyes on the spot she'd last seen him. Her expression was fond, as if she could still see him.

"Chasing after his pet ape."

The time lady shook herself, and all warm emotion in her expression was sucked back into the void of her being. She could still taste the Doctor's mouth on hers. Hot and honey sweet, as though he kept that entire library of his knowledge on the tip of his tongue.

He did taste good, she had to admit. Damn that stupid monkey for ruining things.

Odjya sighed. She supposed it didn't particularly matter; the Doctor had always been a gamble. A nice prize, but not essential to the plan. Not essential to the future.

"At last, you've answered my question." she said softly. "And the answer is no."

The question remained an object of debate. There had always been a question between them, since the first night of their meeting.

Odjya supposed the question was if their meeting would really change anything either of them would have done had they not met.

The Doctor had chased his monkey. Odjya had her project in its final stage.

"No." she said, "It really didn't matter."

Her eyes clouded over as she continued to stare. The slightest wisp of a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth.

It was time to go. There were things to be done.

"Goodbye, Doctor. I do hope you find what you're searching for."

With those last words, Odjya turned. Very deliberately, she put the glittering black ocean, still twenty miles distant, to her back.

She had only been walking for a minute when the ground trembled beneath her.

Odjya's hand dropped to her belt, groping for a weapon. There were none. She cursed silently, remembering she'd left both axes back at that night's camp. The Doctor had insisted she leave Rose something to defend herself with.

"Damn."

Sand fountained up around her. The ground buckled, throwing Odjya off her feet.

With a shriek of grinding metal, a giant wedge head rose above her.

Odjya screamed.

xxx

"Rose? Are you alright?"

Rose was still trying to sort her thoughts out when she heard the softly spoken words.

"Huh?"

She glanced up to see the Doctor standing over her. For the first moment while they stared at each other, his expression was a mix of concern and anxiety. Then the moment passed and he broke into a broad grin, showing off all of his thirty thousand white teeth.

"I knew I'd find you." He said with a laugh.

Rose merely nodded. She didn't trust herself to speak without screaming.

That bitch. That bitch!

"What you saw before…" the Doctor gulped, and flicked his gaze off Rose, to some spot far in the distance. "It wasn't like you think. Odjya just… you know what's she's like."

When Rose didn't respond to this, he continued. His voice faltered a few times before tuning into full ramble mode.

"I went with her because she said we had things to discuss. But, you know, I don't think that's what she wanted at all. And I, uh, I know, um, you know. I know her and I are, uh, the same. Male and female. Well, I'm male, and she's female. But we're both time lords." The Doctor gave Rose a pleading look, "I think she thought I would want to uh, with her."

"Did you?"

The Doctor took a big step back away from her. His expression was wild, and Rose wondered for a moment if she'd accidentally announced she was considering becoming the new Dalek emperor instead of asking an obvious question.

"Did I um, what?" the Doctor queried. As discreetly as he could, he pulled his pants back up to the level of his hips.

Rose looked at him over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. She didn't bother repeating the question, and settled on a more tactful approach to obtaining answers. "Where is she, anyway?"

"Who? Odjya?" the Doctor was blushing furiously.

Now he had Rose back, safe and sound, he didn't know what to do with her. Obviously she had to find out about the desert worms. And certainly he would have to tell her the probable fate of Beta's Gallifryans.

"Who else?" Rose snapped. She was on her last nerve, and even that was twitching.

Here, in the bloody desert on a bloody deserted bloody planet in the middle of bloody nowhere, stuck with bloody time bloody lords. Who didn't even have the bloody decency to give her a bloody straight bloody answer!

"She's uh, um. I don't know, actually. Obviously she didn't follow me."

Obviously not.

"Well I'm fine here." Rose said, trying hard to keep the bitterness out of her voice, "Maybe you should go and look for her."

"She- she'll- she'll be alright. I am sorry, Rose. I didn't mean for that to happen. And I certainly didn't mean for you to walk in on anything." The Doctor cringed when he realised what he'd said. He spoke quickly to try and make up for it. "Mostly I didn't mean for it to happen, though. We were just talking, and next thing I know. Bam. You know how these things are."

"Yeah."

Spontaneous decisions often turned out that way. Like the decision of a teenage girl to accompany a centuries old time lord on his misadventures across the galaxy. Gee, that was going well.

"She said she could have children."

The Doctor looked horrified at his own words. He stared at Rose like a deer caught in the headlights, with much the same expression as a man about to become witness to an unspeakable accident.

Except in this case, he had the sinking feeling that the unspeakable accident was about to happen to him.

There was a pause where the earth itself held its breath, then Rose spoke.

"Can she?"

So can I. Some awesome emotion was boiling inside her, born of days of being rejected and ridiculed and shoved aside. Rose felt her skin would blister from the force of that internal heat.

"Er, yes." The Doctor shifted uncomfortably, "At least, that's what she says. I don't know if it's true. At any rate, it's not important."

Rose uttered a snorting grunt, and rose to her feet. Her expression was unreadable, blank, emotionless, but the Doctor thought he could see the faintest of quivers at her hands…

"Not important."

He startled at her words. For an instant, his eyes locked on hers, then he tore his gaze away.

"No."

"Why wouldn't it be important? You two could be the last two," Rose made an expansive gesture. The tremble in her hands was obvious now. "Time lords in the entire universe! Anywhere, anytime, and you're the last!"

"I'm not ready to settle down yet." The Doctor joked, hoping to break the tension.

"Yeah? What about in a million years, when you're done travelling? I won't be there, then. I'll be long gone. You'll have had a thousand other girls since me. What then?"

"There won't be thousand other girls."

Rose snorted. "You won't even remember my name!"

That utter bitch!

The Doctor took a step towards her. His thoughts of Odjya at that moment were following much the same path as Rose's. That wicked little witch had set him up, he was sure.

"Don't do this, Rose." He pleaded, reaching out for her hand. She jerked away from him, and stood a step away, fuming. "I don't love her. I don't even like her. There's no way I would ever want to spend eternity with her."

Rose had a moment where she wondered what it would be like to live forever, or close enough to forever that it made little difference. Probably it wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

"Then I'll make things easy for you." She said, silently cursing her voice for faltering as she spoke, "Good bye."

"Rose, no. I love you."

There. He said it. Hope she listened, 'cause he was all out of cards after that.

"You'll get over it."

With that, she turned, and walked away from him.

For minutes he was too stunned to go after her. And when he finally roused himself into action, she was gone.

xxx

Rose wandered around for a long time before she decided where to go.

There wasn't really many options open to her. Either she could get her ass into gear and get back to the TARDIS before the Doctor did, and leave him stranded with Odjya. Or she could take her time and head off to Ilium Neocort, to live a life of mud and moths with the Rax.

Since neither of those options seemed particularly attractive, Rose racked her brain and came up with a third destination.

The Gallifryan lab. According to Odjya, it would be close to the ocean. Something about the beach being a good spot for monitoring currents and therefore global weather patterns. Why time lords would care about global weather patterns was a mystery to Rose. It wasn't as if a strong southerly gust one summer's day would cause a time war six million years later. But whatever.

"Maybe there's people there." Rose told herself.

Although of course any people there would be Gallifryans, and most likely think she was some sort of trained monkey. That considered, her main reason for making a course for the lab was simple; time lords meant time machines. And if she had a TARDIS of her own, Rose could get back to earth without the Doctor. Because if she didn't see the Doctor, she wouldn't be tempted to beg him to take her back. Because it was for the best, for both of them.

"Yeah, right."

Armed nothing more than a canteen of stale water, Rose continued on towards the ocean.

Dawn blossomed around her.

xxx

The last vestiges of night etched deep shadows on a solitary figure, hopelessly lost in a sea of sand.

"Am I the last living soul?" the lonely demanded of the world in general, "Am I the last living soul?" there was a hint of a tune in his voice, "Am I the last living soul?"

Since he didn't know the rest of the song, the Doctor stopped singing. The nagging feeling of total dejection soon crept into him again, so he tried to cheer himself by naming all the stars in the sky without looking at them.

He gave up after a few minutes, and glanced up.

"Osirius Ten, of course." He groaned, slapping a hand to his forehead, "The Dakura satellite."

The Doctor stared up at the fading stars for a minute longer, figuring it was safe enough. What was there in the desert for him to trip over?

"Miroki, Aurillioli, Jsrpi, Ki-"

He gave a short yelp as the ground rolled away from beneath him. After a moment of flailing to keep his balance, the Doctor toppled over backwards and crashed to the desert floor.

"Bloody hell," he muttered, sitting up and rubbing his head, "Anyone would think I'd been drinking."

Which he planned to do excessively when he found Rose and got back to the TARDIS. But never mind that now.

"Hullo. What's this?"

A half yard away, covered in sand, there lay a short, brownish object. Curious, the Doctor plucked it up out of the sand.

Warm liquid seeped out of the broader end of the thing, and oozed between his fingers. The Doctor frowned, his eyes working slowly down the object. It wasn't offensive in appearance, and not particularly to touch, just warm and resilient. But the smell… the smell was both sweet and sour, like bad breath and wet animal and… blood.

"Cripes!" the Doctor dropped the object, and wrung his hand like he'd been burnt.

He stared at his hand for a moment before risking a glance at forsaken appendage. An arm, cut off at the elbow. The Doctor felt a wave of nausea rise in his stomach.

"It can't be." He moaned, staring at the severed arm, "Not her."

But who else? The arm was slim, the wiry muscles slack in death. The hand was mottled with old battle scars and fresh wounds. Palms were still dripping blood from deep black wounds that looked like serrated bite marks. The dirty smudge his foot had left was obvious even in the poor light.

"Odjya." The Doctor sighed.

He glanced around for any other bits and pieces that might belong to the time lady. There was nothing, just a few small, dark stains. A ring of churned up sand. And an arm.

"I hope you don't regenerate inside one of those worms." The Doctor said to the arm.

He dug a narrow trench, and gingerly placed the arm inside. By time he'd covered it over with sand, his face was flushed with unspoken emotions. Anger, at her, at himself. Grief, for the entire wasted opportunity, for that last tiny piece of optimism he'd ever clung to for the survival of his race.

But mostly, more than anything else, he was relieved. So easily could the arm he found have belonged to Rose. It could have been her that he buried that morning.

Then again, he didn't know where Rose was, either. Hours had passed since she left him standing there, staring dumbly after her. If Odjya was dead, there was no real reason to believe that Rose wasn't as well.

"Not Rose."

The thought filled him. Rose could be dead, because he'd been stupid and selfish and let her walk away.

And even if the worms didn't get her, where would she go? He'd already stumbled across the camp, and nothing had been taken. Without food, without a weapon, how long could Rose expect to survive in the desert?

A few days maybe, if the worms didn't get her first. Not long enough for her to get back to Gymnophiona. Surely Rose knew that.

"She wouldn't have gone there anyway." The Doctor told himself. "Either she's wandering around in circles like I am, or she's going somewhere close by."

The only place he could think of that she might go was the ocean lab. What on Beta that would possess her to go there, he didn't know. There was nothing there, after all. Nothing except failed genetic experiments, and a few gnawed bones.

"Well, hopefully the experiments failed." The Doctor said aloud.

A second later, he was on his feet and running. Twenty miles away, the ocean glistened gold in the dawn light.

"Rose!"

xxx

"Bloody worms." Odjya groaned.

She rubbed the stump of her arm, wondering vaguely if it would grow back. She was on her last regeneration now, since being attacked by dozens of ravenous larvae worms months back.

Being on her last regeneration meant that she healed small things much easier, but the big things took a while. It was possible her arm wouldn't have regrown by time she reached Gymnophiona.

"Annoying," she sighed, "But not important."

After all, it didn't really matter how many eggs she carried. A bagful in one hand, another bagful over her shoulder. It would be the same as if she had both arms. And after that, nothing would matter. The project would be complete.

In the beginning, she never would have guessed that it would have taken a thousand years. And it wouldn't have, if her TARDIS hadn't been lost forever to the sucking mud of Lake Ilium Neocort. It was almost funny, how a bad job parking had cost her a thousand years, and eleven regenerations.

Odjya almost laughed.

Not long now.

xxx

Once, when Rose was small, she had accompanied Jackie on a camping trip. The trip was planned as a surprise for Jackie's then-boyfriend, an outdoorsy sort whom Rose remembered always wearing a swagman's hat and smoking rollies.

Half way to their destination, Tom (was that his name?) had said that he thought there was a 'weird' sound coming from the engine of the battered '70 Ford Thunderbird. Sure enough, ten minutes later the Thunderbird gave a weak cough and rolled to a stop.

Without the privilege of mobile phones, and with nothing so much as a farm house nearby, the three would-be campers had trekked the fifteen miles back to the nearest fuel station.

That fifteen miles had seemed like a thousand to Rose, and even in the pleasant English spring, it had been hot work.

Ten years and a million miles later, Rose was feeling much the same she had that day. Except that the trip was longer this time, made longer still by the ups and downs of rolling desert dunes, and incredibly hot.

"Wish I was back in the bloody snow." Rose grumbled, shoulders hunched, trudging.

Thanks to the relative coolness of the dragon trail, she walked barefoot. Her shoes, laced tied together, were slung over her shoulder. They slapped against her back and hip as she walked, steadily driving her crazy.

At high noon she stopped to rest. What precious little water she carried with her was fast running out. The ocean looked to be no more than five miles away, ten at the most.

God it was hot.

Rose nestled further into the deep shade of a tall dune, digging her toes into the wet dragon trail sand. She was comfortable, lying there in the sand.

All day she had managed not to think of the Doctor. But right then, with nothing to take her mind off him, Rose felt herself missing him acutely. She wondered if she would ever him again. Probably not, if Odjya had anything to say about it.

As the heat lulled her into a shallow sleep, Rose could think of nothing but the Doctor.

She even thought she saw him standing over her.

xxx xxx

Does anybody understand this story? No? Nevermind.

Only two chapters left. Gasp. So close!
Also, does anyone know where I can get a poster of David Tennant naked? Or is that just creepy? Heh heh heh.