Rose Tyler spent so much time traveling hundreds of miles to walk onto a beach in Norway. She stood on the sand and it was like standing in a walk-in fridge, but she stood with the wind of Dårlig Ulv Stranden through her hair. There were a hundred different things through her head, but above all else she was trying to decide what exactly to tell him. Whether to tell him the truth.

A few feet in front of her, an image appeared. It looked like a see-through screen, but there he stood. The Doctor. Her Doctor.

"Where are you?" she asked, her voice quavering from the tension of where they stood.

"Inside the TARDIS." He shifted how he stood slightly as he did. It was easy to forget that he didn't just always stand still if he wasn't Doctoring about, gesturing and blabbering on and on. Like when he wasn't being looked at, he was a statue that hardly moved. "There's one tiny little gap in the Universe left, just about to close, and it takes a lot of power to send this projection. I'm in orbit around a supernova." His eyes grew wistful, for a moment, as he glanced about at something she couldn't see.

She wondered if he could see her like she was seeing him, or if it was for her benefit only. He probably had some clever idea. She'd never know.

"I'm burning up a sun just to say goodbye."

"You look like a ghost."

"Hold on," he responded, using his sonic screwdriver on something she couldn't see. Suddenly, instead of looking like a pre-recorded message from the 22nd century, he came into full view. He was there, standing on the beach with her.

Never the type to pray, Rose pleaded with the universe for a long moment, and asked, "Can I?" Her arm reached out. Her fingers almost close enough to touch his arm.

"I'm still just an image. No touch." He said it in the way she'd gotten used to, where his feelings bled out through every pore if you just knew to look. She knew to look. She watched as he looked like he needed a hug more badly than she'd ever seen.

"Can't you come through properly?" It was hard to keep her voice from breaking. Every inch of her body was screaming.

The Doctor shook his head. Not emphatically, but in resignation."The whole thing would fracture. Two universes would collapse."

She couldn't help herself. "So?" She bit her lip afterwards.

"Where are we?" Avoiding her sort-of question, but she didn't blame him. It wasn't fair, not really, for her to say that. "Where did the gap come out?"

"We're in Norway."

"Norway. Right." He looked surprised. She supposed now she was glad it was Norway rather than China, or Brazil, or the Arctic.

"About fifty miles out of Burgen. It's called Dårlig Ulv Stranden." The irony was impossible to miss. She'd sent the words through time and space for herself, but she hadn't remembered sending them here. One final call to bring her to the Doctor.

"Dalek?"

The connection must not have been as good as advertised. Not to mention that it was one of the reasons they were even needing this conversation. She imagined all the places they could have gone, but she couldn't imagine somewhere she wanted to be more than the TARDIS.

"No it's Dårlig. Norwegian for bad." She couldn't help but laugh at it, now she said it out loud. "This translates as Bad Wolf Bay."

The Doctor put on a smile. It wasn't a real, full smile, but she liked to see it anyways.

"How long have we got?"

The Doctor glanced around again before saying, "About two minutes."

"I can't think of what to say." She thought about it. Her stomach churned and she felt bile threaten to come up her throat.

"You've still got Mister Mickey, then?"

If there was ever a time the Doctor stopped making fun of Mickey, that's when she'd be worried that it wasn't him anymore. "There's, em, five of us now. Mum, Dad, Mickey, and the baby."

The Doctor's face faltered. His lip quivered, and he looked stunned. "You're not?"

Rose remembered their time together. Their goofy antics, their love and the fire that raged in her when she thought about him. She remembered how lonely he was when they first met, and how he had thrived in their time together. How he had seemed so genuinely happy. If she told him, and he knew, it would break his hearts. She hesitated.

"No. It's Mum. She's three months gone. More Tylers on the way." She brushed a piece of hair behind her ear, and she has to break eye contact. She wants nothing but to look at him, but she's afraid that she won't be able to hold this up if she does before she's ready.

When her gaze does come back up to him, she can see his eyes. They are eyes that know her as well as she knows them. She wonders if he knows.

"And what about you?" He tried to move on from the subject. "Are you?"

"Yeah, I'm back working in the shop." She decided to distract from the pieces of her heart sinking the pit of her chest by yanking the Doctor around a bit.

She remembers when they first met, and how she spent her days grabbing chips between shifts and laughing with Mickey. How she was only a couple years out of school and already more responsible than her mum in a lot of ways. How she must have looked to him. "Oh, good for you."

"Shut up. No, I'm not." She laughed again, but it's a tense laugh. There's no joy, just trying to keep herself stable for the most important conversation in her life. "There's still a Torchwood on this planet, and it's open for business. I think I know a thing or two about aliens."

"Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth." Rose had decided what she would miss the most about the Doctor is the way he looked at her. His big brown eyes, looking at her that way, was the thing that made her fall in love with him.

She was removed from her thoughts by more stupid, useless words. "You're dead, officially, back home. So many people died that day, and you've gone missing. You're on a list of the dead." He laughed, but it was the same laugh she'd just shared. Not a laugh, more of a comma. "Here you are, living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have." She would never miss that look. The look where his eyes became endless pits, and she could see the nine hundred years of life sinking away into the distance.

"Am I ever going to see you again?" She wanted to find some way out. Some way to tell him there was that life, day to day, waiting for him here. A family, a new proper family, that wouldn't even wait for him to arrive.

"You can't."

She hated that word. And how he said it like it was a fact, of all space and time, and that nothing could ever change it. She hated that he was probably right.

"What're you going to do?" Without me. It didn't need to be said.

There he was, the Doctor she'd met on some boring day at her boring job. The man who stood out in any crowd, no matter how ordinary his suit. "Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life, last of the Time Lords."

"On your own." Tears welled in her eyes, finally, and she choked back a proper sob. "I, I love you."

"Quite right, too." The Doctor smiled. This was a real smile, and she tried to imprint every crease of his cheeks into her memory, forever. "And, I suppose, if it's one last chance to say it."

He looked at her like she was made of stars and burned like the sun. "Rose Tyler."

But he never finished the sentence. She saw as his image didn't fade away, but merely vanished, as though she had been talking to nothing but air the entire time. The bile that had teased her came up through her throat, and she heaved her breakfast onto the sands. She heard her mother's footsteps behind her, and she felt arms wrap around her sides.