Disclaimer: All I want for Christmas…are the rights to DW. And a car.

A/N: So, I've finally finished finals. Yay for that. Sorry for taking such an unholy time in updating. It was school, but now that that's over, I can get back to what really matters: FanFiction. Ha! Hope you enjoy the following. Set during/after "The End of the World."

I Was Testing You

It was a good question. Brilliant, actually, if you really thought about it. Why had he taken her to the destruction of her planet, of everything she knew and loved? Her people were all gone. She truly had been the last human, last of her kind, in those few hours. He could pretend. Act innocent, as if he hadn't always had an ulterior motive. As if he hadn't know exactly what he'd been doing when he did it. Except he had.

He'd known exactly what he'd been thinking when he'd asked her where she wanted to go first. She'd poked fun at him, so he forgot 100…1000 years in the future. And, instead, he took her to the end. Or at least what she would consider the end. He took her to the end of the world as she knew it. He let her feel what it was like to be alone, to be the very last of her kind.

But why? First trip in the TARDIS with this brilliant, brilliant girl, and he took her to see horror and destruction when there were all these fantastic places in the universe to show her. But, just by asking, he was fooling himself again. Because he knew the answer.

He'd taken her to the end of the world because he'd wanted to test her. She'd proven herself to him once already. He didn't ask just anyone on board his ship. She'd saved him and, in the process, she'd saved the world. No, she wasn't ordinary. Not in the least. But he had to know just how extraordinary she really was. And there was only one way to find this out.

So he'd tested her. He'd put her into his shoes. He'd lost his planet and his people, everything he had known and loved. It had been her turn. He'd known at the time that it was wrong, that he shouldn't have, that she was too young to go through what he'd gone through. But he hadn't been able to help himself. He'd had a need to see what she could do, what she was capable of. And, oh, she hadn't disappointed him.

Sure, she'd whined a bit. Complained some here and there. But, in the end, she'd stood at that window, eyes glazed over watching her planet fade into atoms. And she hadn't been thinking about herself. Didn't even seem to care she'd almost burned to death mere minutes ago. Because the world had gone, and no one had been watching, and somehow that mattered more.

When he'd asked for her hand, then, he knew. He knew he hadn't made a mistake. In fact, asking Rose Tyler to travel with him might have been one of the best decisions he'd ever made. So, he took her hand and walked her back to the TARDIS. The look on her face echoed his own so well, he'd found himself with the sudden and overwhelming need of stealing it away and replacing it with the smile she'd had before he destroyed her world. There was no reason the two of them had to suffer. He was in misery enough for them both. Besides, it didn't seem right until Rose was smiling.

So he'd taken it away, everything she knew, and then he'd given it back tenfold. He showed her the end, so when she went back to the beginning, she'd know what it was she was living for.