Writing this scene was inevitable. I considered avoiding it... but there's just too much potential :D So, this is probably going to get sort of chapter-y anyways and i'm only calling them one-shots since I am a far cry from the world's speediest updater, but anyway, I've surrendered completely to the post-Journey's End Doctor/Rose syndrome and finally managed to finish a left-on-the-beach scene. So, I hope this is semi-original, at least... I have other scenes, including a short one that was supposed to be the end of this one but got too long, coming; and a Donna story that i'm not sure should be a chapter in this or on its own. I was planning in this, but since I'm changing the overall fic name I'm thinking more one-shot.

So, anyway, read, hopefully enjoy, reviews are ridiculously appreciated- it means a lot to hear what you have to think, especially since I'm new to writing in this fandom. thanks ;D

He took her hand.

Rose let him. She looked over, wordlessly, and held the somber gaze of the man in the blue suit as firmly as she gripped his hand. It was the only answer she had to give.

There was nothing to say yet. The air was too full of one sound, the TARDIS' grinding hum reigning over the lap of the water and whirl of the wind. It had been the only sound singing in her dreams for so long now. Rose supposed she wouldn't hear it outside her dreams again.

The thought that made her eyes sting was that neither would he, this Doctor staring into her eyes as if reading a text inscribed on her pupils. He was losing mastery of time and space for a small corner of a universe with Rose Tyler, former shopgirl, and she wasn't sure what his own free will had to do with it.

She knew his eyebrows, those sideburns, those very proportional ears. And part of her wanted to simply reach out and cup his face, because this Doctor was hearing his oldest and dearest companion disappear for the very last time. But there was a sour taste in her mouth too, like when Shareen or another school friend would push to set her up with some bloke, whatever her say in the matter.

So she only held his hand.

She'd held it before. This exact hand, not just an identical one with the same bony knuckles for her fingertips to rest against. Not just the same feel to the skin the Doctor's hand had always had- comfortably dry, running a bit cool. It had been this hand gripping hers while he swore he was the same man after he'd changed, this hand she'd pulled through the sleeve of those ridiculous pajamas, this hand she'd brushed hers over with a prayer her Doctor would wake up in time to save the world and Christmas too. It had felt wrong then, as had he, too warm and near feverish with all that burning energy pulsing through him down to his fingertips.

She couldn't distinguish it now from the hand she'd grown accustomed to holding, not even by temperature, human or not. Probably the hand had adjusted to whatever his hybrid biology required, or maybe when this hand had fallen through the clouds something of that cool air lingered for keeps.

The air felt empty the moment the last humming echo was gone, and the repetitive rush of the waves stretched the silence like a ticking clock.

She couldn't look away. She couldn't pull her hand back. And he wouldn't, either. His Adam's apple bobbed, so familiarly it made her own throat ache.

All thoughts that the Doctor was more than one man had flown off into the wind when his warm breath and three words- just three words- had brushed her ear. It was only when the TARDIS' engines started that she came to and realized she'd made a choice. She'd kissed the wrong Doctor – or maybe the right one, the one both of him wanted her to kiss and stay with in this universe, the one she knew her mother would want her to stay with.

A human Doctor who could give her everything he never could and nothing that he'd given her once. No more stars, even if they'd kept them from fading into darkness.

One of them had to say something, because they wouldn't have much time before Jackie Tyler grew impatient and beat them to it. Rose could see her mother in the corner of her eye, crunching sand yards behind them as she shifted her weight and crossed her arms. Rose didn't want her mother to have to speak up first because they already had nothing to say to each other.

It wasn't that she had nothing to say. It was that there was too much, much too much to process or explain what she was thinking, and she didn't know how to get started climbing out of alright back to brilliant.

There was one word, of course, on the tip of her tongue. Had been for years now. The last time he'd gone and become a new man on her, without a word of warning- at least not a word of sense that Rose Tyler, former shopgirl, could follow at the time- he'd taken her hand with that word. And then it was alright. Not brilliant yet, but there a shard of brilliance rekindling in that fantastic word- Run.

Run, unfortunately, would be a bit silly to say now, since there wasn't anything to run from and she didn't know what they were running to yet. That had been the beginning to another story, one that was still going but was- different. Again. They'd had their hellos and after all she'd just snogged him so that wouldn't do either.

For the second time in her life Rose found herself standing in Bad Wolf Bay with no idea what to say to the one man she thought she could talk to forever.

His lips parted first. Rose knew from the way his eyebrows folded in towards his nose exactly what he was going to say.

"I'm sorry," he said, pale and squinting in the Norway sun.

In so many ways she was sorry too, to see that wonderful blue box and its Doctor (her real Doctor, her mind whispered traitorously) fade away, leaving her stranded again and this new man without all the things she thought of as part of the Doctor.

"Don't be," Rose said thickly, instead. Strands of her hair slapped against her eyes and she could have cursed the wind, since it wasn't exactly helping her hold back the liquid welling in them. The words whipped against her heart even harder. She almost wanted to say don't you dare be sorry with me now but it wasn't this Doctor she was angry at- or maybe it was, just now she couldn't work out where the Doctor who stayed stopped and the one who'd left began. "Please. Don't do that." She hesitated, worrying her lower lip and glancing down at their joined hands. She met his eyes again with as much steel as she could muster. "Doctor," she added, as if his name was always meant to be the last note of her request.

His eyes, still a brown so deep Rose thought she could swim in it, stayed sober even though his lips turned up in a smile. "Alright," he said, taking a deep breath of the salty ocean air. "No apologies. Am I that sort of a man?" he mused, apparently to the sky, before fixing his gaze intently on her. "Do you want me to be that sort of man?" said the Doctor, very quietly.

"I'm not asking you to be anything else," she said, loosening her fingers from his grip. "Only- you've never needed to apologize to me. Never have done… really." Rose swallowed and found herself gulping air. So many times he could have apologized to her. Any of the times she'd been stranded. Any of the times he'd gotten them in trouble. But sorry spoke of regret and she'd never regretted a single second with the Doctor. She'd rather thought it meant something he didn't apologize to her. Like he knew he didn't need to.

Except right before this second regeneration, this delayed one. He said I'm sorry more to her than Donna and Jack but then he didn't change and she was too relieved to wonder what for. Rose wondered if he'd known, then, if he'd already been planning to leave her with this second self. She wasn't ready to ask. She was afraid of the answer.

He reached out with his free hand. She flinched, and his left hand only brushed by her face, gently tucking her hair behind her ear and out of her eyes. "Lot of things I never said to you," he said lowly. "Things I should've- " He looked away, but the movement of his throat gave his feelings away. "Barcelona," he said with his put-on cheer, looking back to her. "We never did get there, Rose- there was so much to see and I never showed you Barcelona. Oh, I thought about that. I was gonna take you-"

"Barcelona?" said Jackie Tyler, sand crunching under her boots. They turned as one to face her, waiting behind them with her arms folded and her mobile in her hand. "What're you fussing about Spain for? It's only Spain, we do still have that here, Doctor. What? 'Scuse me for being worried with the too of you just standing there whispering at each other, but can't you fret about Spain once we're out of bloody Norway? Rose, I- What?"

They might have been slightly hysterical, but they were laughing. Rose finally let go of the Doctor's hand to bring her hands towards her stomach as she half-doubled over, tears finally falling down her cheeks as he laughed. His shoulder bumped hers and out of the corner of her eye she could see a real grin on his face again. His grin didn't do anything to stop the wild fluttering in her stomach. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Good to know there's still Spain," said the Doctor, half-gasping. "I'd miss the rain and its plain and all- I can't see why there wouldn't have been a Spain-"

"There isn't a Portugal," said Rose, rubbing at the water in her eyes and catching her breath. "Spain's a bit bigger, here."

"Oh but I like Portugal," said the Doctor, frowning. "They do the best fandango in Portugal- no Portugal, that's weird."

"It's a parallel universe," said Rose. "It's all a bit weird- not for Dad, of course, but it's still new for us. New's always a little weird."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Good weird or bad weird?"

"Different-weird," said Rose, lifting her chin. "I can get used to different, you know. Got some practice."

"Yeah," said the Doctor, grinning. "Me too." He stepped a little closer.

Jackie cleared her throat. "Practice whatever you like-"

"Mum!" said Rose, glancing over her shoulder.

"- can we see about getting ourselves home first? My mobile's shorted out, sweetheart- give me yours a minute, will you?" Jackie, not-so-subtly, was scanning her daughter's face with concern, making sure she was alright even as she held out her hand.

Rose pulled it out of her jacket pocket easily and flicked it open, the iridescent blue glow reflecting on her thumbnail. "No worries, Mum," she said, breathing as easily as she could. "You'll be able to get through Dad fine on this. Still hasn't ever lost its charge," she said to the Doctor.

"Superphone," he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

"Exactly," said Rose.

"Pete?" said Jackie, walking away with the phone to her ear and talking over the waves. "We're home! … No, in Norway … yes, Rose too, she's fine- what're you doing at Control, you're supposed to be with Tony- Peter Alan Tyler, my baby had better not be at that Hub… I don't care if-"

Rose looked at the Doctor, who was looking over at Jackie as well. "They're really happy," she said, and even trying to be funny she couldn't make it sound ironic.

"I believe that," he said, nodding, and looked off to the horizon line where the water and sky bled into each other in an indistinguishable foggy blue.

"She'll probably be on the phone awhile," said Rose, tracing her foot through the sand. She felt his eyes on her and looked up. "Knowing my mum," she said, managing a slight smile.

"This is all rather embarrassing," he muttered.

"What?" she said, too sharply, and followed immediately with a gentler, "What do you mean?"

"Calling for your dad to come pick us up- like some schoolboy without a license. I'll have to get a car," he said suddenly. "Had cars, once. Even built one. Not exactly my preferred mode of travel, obviously, slow-going, only two directions unless something's gone interestingly, but they're not bad, for human travel," said the Doctor.

"Travel," Rose repeated, watching him carefully.

"Weellll," he said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and jamming them back in, leaving his thumbs twiddling against the blue suit. "I suppose you wouldn't- we probably should-"

"What?" said Rose, stepping to his side and looking up at him.

"Go places," he blurted out. "If you want," he added. "Barcelona, for one. I wonder if the planet's still out there here- if we suppose they're different too, depending on what changed, where this universe splintered off from our own- but even so, the city's nice. Spain-and-Portugal, that could be- nice," said the Doctor, looking at her sidelong.

"Could be," said Rose noncommittally. "And you know, there's Pompeii."

He looked at her. "You mean the ashes?" he said, brow furrowed. "I know it gets a lot of tourists, Rose, but I'd really rather-"

"It's not in ashes," said Rose, drawing out the words and watching for his reaction. "When I left the Arsenal were playing Pompeii. They've got quite the football team, took the European Cup last year. Supposed to be beautiful there."

"No," he said, eyes wide.

"Yes," she countered. "I was going to ask you about that- I'd sort of think a volcano meant to erupt would erupt, even if different decisions led to different things or whatever makes a parallel universe- parallel."

The Doctor rubbed at his left ear. "Ahh, well, it's hard to say with parallel universe- which is sort of a misnomer really," he said, "since they're not so much running alongside as breaking off the fluxing but primarily linear progression of time, I suppose more properly they're tangent universes- and you never know what can end up changing, since all those little wavy strands leftover from big, matter-ish… stuff, they reach farther than you'd – What?"

She bumped her shoulder against his. "Something I should know?"

He stared at her for a moment. "I might have had something to do with Vesuvius erupting." His throat bobbed. "Had to- it was Pompeii or the world."

Rose let her hand drift back down to hang alongside the Doctor's. "Anything to worry about here?" she asked softly.

"Suppose not," he said. The backs of their hands touched and they both kept them there. "Pyrovillia was one of the twenty-seven planets, the Pyroviles- humanoids, not the cuddly kind- fell to Earth when it was taken. But it was never taken from this universe- only the one we've just left… so I suppose no Pyroviles ever troubled Pompeii."

"And no Doctor would've been there to stop them," said Rose, grabbing his hand decidedly.

"Now there's a thought," he said, his expression absent and his eyes suddenly distant. Still, he squeezed her hand. "No me. I've run all around this planet- well, not this planet exactly, that's the point- but I have gotten slightly involved in your history. As you know."

"Oh I gathered," said Rose. "Queen Victoria got possessed by the wolf here, by the way, without you and me. They had to have a coup. No Empire of the Wolf- no more Empire. The British Republic. I've missed the queen and country bit. No royal family at all. But we've still got Harriet Jones."

"Good egg, that Harriet Jones," said the Doctor warmly. "Considering her successor… well, if there's anyone I owe an apology to, it's the other Harriet- our Harriet Jones."

"She died," said Rose, and he looked at her sharply. "Opening the subwave network. I told him, the other Doctor… I forgot for a moment-"

"That you didn't tell me too," he finished quietly, moving his shoulder closer to hers. The Doctor exhaled through his teeth, working his jaw.

"I could- catch you up on those hours," said Rose, watching a flat hard look appear slide into his eyes. It softened as he turned them back to her. "Got time for catching up, you and me."

"I'm glad," he said, and the way he looked at her she wanted to kiss him again. From the look in his eye she thought he might kiss her.

"Alright," called Jackie, walking back towards them, phone still tucked between her ear and shoulder. The Doctor moved a few inches out of Rose's personal space, but kept his eyes on hers.

"Are we?" the Doctor asked Rose, quietly.

She smiled, close-lipped. "Don't think that was a question," she whispered back.

"Your father's sent a car for us from Bergen, he says it's a fast car but it's still another hour and a half 'fore it even gets here," Jackie shouted as she trudged back towards them. She didn't really need to shout across the short distance and closing.

"I'm asking you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said into her hair, his lips brushing her ear. Rose shivered. "Besides that we're facing several hours unable to escape your mother. We alright?"

"I think we're best off finding a nice log or flat rock and having a sit, what do you think, Rose? Doctor?" said Jackie, and then into the phone, "Yes, I told you, Pete, it's him, or she wouldn't still be here, now would she?"

"We'll be better than alright," said Rose, and turned her head to press her lips against his cheek. She left her lips pushed into his skin for a moment because he smelled the same, as fresh and steadying as crisp air in the middle of night. Only the Doctor could leave her and stay with her forever in the same second.

"Brilliant," said the Doctor, louder and brightly, and it might have been to Rose or to Jackie. Rose silently agreed.

Jackie finished making a kissing noise into the phone and clicked it off. "It really is good to have you here, Doctor," she said, with a pleased sigh.

The Doctor looked at Rose, and she at him. "Isn't it just," he said, smiling, and then he nodded at something over Rose's shoulder. "I see logs," he told Jackie, pointing. "Bit down the beach. Something lump-shaped, anyways. Let's take a look, Rose," he said, and his face came alive. "We can share one, if you like."

Stuck with you, that's not so bad.

Yeah?

"Not you, though, Jackie," the Doctor added quickly. "You'll have to get your own log."

"Rude," warned Rose, ducking her chin to hide her half-smile in her hair.

"I think I'd be disappointed if he wasn't," said Jackie, shaking her head and not quite smiling. Her eyes, though, were all relief. "Go on, then," she said. "I'll try and keep up."

The Doctor tugged lightly on Rose's arm, as if to check. When he stepped, she stepped with him. He seemed to be waiting.

"Run," exclaimed Rose, as if it was obvious, and he grinned wolfishly and took to his heels, yanking her after.

And together, they ran.