Bigger versions of the cover art are here and here. Individual songs are linked in the song titles before each ficlet.



“Mummy?” five year old Rose Tyler asked, reaching for her mother’s hand. “I’m lonely.”

“Oh, Rose,” Jackie Tyler chided her daughter. “I don’t have time to coddle you.”

Rose was left alone in the kitchen as her mother stormed out of the apartment, and she decided that she was going to go look at pictures of her daddy.



“Theta! Come here!” Dinara called. Theta looked up.

“Leave me alone,” he mumbled, clutching on to his schoolbooks. “I don’t want to play.”

Dinara shook her head, but left him alone.

And he wondered why she gave up so easily.






In their fourty-fifth year on fourty-second century Earth, Rose Tyler caught pneumonia.

The doctors were sure it was a fluke – pneumonia didn’t exist anymore, you see, and therefore she couldn’t have it. But all the symptoms were there, and she lay in her bed, lungs sore and eyes shut.

In their fourty-sixth year on fourty-second century Earth, the Doctor, destroyer of worlds, the oncoming storm, buried his wife, Rose Tyler, in the ruins of ancient London. And yet again he was a lonely god.

In his fourty-seventh year on fourty-second century Earth, the Doctor could no longer imagine her faint whispers in his ear. He could no longer remember what she looked like all those years ago, when they first met. He could not recall her smell, nor her touch, nor her laugh. All he knew was that she had been, and they had been.

In his fourty-eighth year on fourty-second century Earth, the Doctor, whose name was written forever in the stars, let his life drain from him, and refused to be reborn.

In their fourty-ninth year on fourty-second century Earth, the Doctor and Rose were yet again united, under the soil of ancient London, where they had walked hand and hand two thousand years earlier, on their way to explore the stars.






“He’s gonna come, just you watch, Shareen. My Prince Charming,” Rose told her best friend, who snorted.

“Right then. And lemme guess, he looks identical to Jude Law,” Shareen said, smirking.

Rose rolled her eyes. “Possibly.” What she was envisioning in her mind was a tall man, with long, sandy blonde hair and bright green eyes. And he would come and save her from a life of working day after day at Henrik’s department store. “I gotta go back to work,” Rose mumbled.

“God, when are you going to quit that horrible job? It’s eating you alive,” Shareen commented, and Rose shrugged.

“When I’m dead, I guess.”



So, Prince Charming had come, apparently, but he didn’t have long blonde hair and a red Ferrari, but instead looked like he had just come from a U-Boat with cropped hair and a leather jacket. And he had arrived in a blue box.

Rose rolled her eyes. And he almost got her killed, too. Just her luck.

But she looked around the enormity that was the inside of the TARDIS, and her breath caught in her throat. She looked over at her Prince, fiddling with the controls, and she smiled. He had saved her, however, and for that she was forever grateful.






“Run! Run!” the Doctor shouted, grabbing Rose’s hand, both of them giggling as they ran away from the exploding forest.

The collapsed on the field next to the wreckage, laughing. Rose curled up into him, hands still clasped together.



He pressed his cheek against the cold wall. His hand raised and touched the wall. A tingling feeling erupted in his fingertips as he listened.

He listened for giggling, and for explosions, and for heavy breathing. He felt for warmth, and for Rose.

All he felt was the unbearable cold of the manufactured wall. All he heard was the dull buzzing of the void machine.






“You have to give it up, Rose. Just try to act normal.”

Faces passing in one great blur, cold wind striking her cheeks. The mindless existence she led through her everyday life, confined to that planet, stuck in that universe, alone, without a lifeline.

She had to give it up. The life, the knowledge of an entire unknown universe, and him. So she tried to act normal. Inside, though, her heart was alone in its existence as she led a lonely life through Pete’s World.






“What are you turning into?” The words echoed in his mind as they made their way back to the TARDIS. Adam’s continuous chattering barred the way for any further conversation on that subject, however.

But later, after Adam had been shown his room, it was just the Doctor and Rose like always.

“Rose, I—” he started, unable to think of what to say.

“Shhh,” she said, and planted a soft kiss on his lips. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

So whenever he thought about that question, “What are you turning into?” he always thought of Rose, and remembered that as long as she was there, he would only be her Doctor.






“Mmmmm, I love this,” Rose said, breathing in the sweet air of the planet as she and the Doctor lay down on the dewy grass. “Just…being here.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed. “We have all the time in the world.”






“Come with me,” he said, feeling a sudden urge to whisk her away to some fairytale land with him. And the wonderful thing was that he had the means to do so.

She looked at him, confused, but let him take her hand in his and squeeze it. He grinned at her, and she smiled back, no trepidation in her expression.

“We’re getting a way from here,” he told her, voice thick with excitement. At this moment she grinned back.

“Okay,” she said, voice high. She squeezed his hand, and he looked down at her.

He tugged at her arm. “Let’s go,” he said, and they started to run.






Rose woke up one morning, head pounding, as if a car had run over it. She wondered if she and Shareen had too much to drink the night before, and her hand fumbled on the night table for her mobile.

Strangely, her mobile wasn’t there, where it usually was. Rose looked around the room. And even more strangely, her room wasn’t there. She was in an entirely different room altogether.

She sat up, confused and slightly frightened. And quickly, everything rushed back to her. The sheer force of sensation caused her to fall back on her pillow, head colliding with the soft material. She didn’t cry as she remembered what had happened. She simply laid there, stomach tight and throat dry.

An hour or so later she slowly turned over and looked at the clock. And like a ghost, she slowly got out of bed and prepared for the day ahead. Because no matter how hard she tried, time would not stop for her. Not any more.



“So, let’s finally make that trip to Barce—” he looked up, and realized he was talking to himself. A faint twinge, buried under years of regret and experience, ached in his side.

“Right then,” he told himself. A pause. “She’s gone.”

And slowly he flicked the switches on the control board of the TARDIS, planning his next course through space and time, because they were all he had left.






They were on the Planet Ix, watching the android-making process. Machines clamping, noise almost unbearable. The Doctor took Rose’s hand.

She giggled as a cute, red, round robot came toward her and offered her a drink. She declined the drink, but kept laughing, saying that she wanted one as a pet.

He saw he joy, and her love, and he squeezed her hand. “Rose,” he said.

She looked at him, her eyes bright. “Yes?”

He shook his head. “Nevermind.”



She laughed hysterically as the Doctor glared at her. “Omigod, you’re hilarious! I love you,” she told him, almost crying with laughter. A smile started to form on his features.

“I l—” he began, but cut himself off. “Me too.”



“Tell Rose…tell her I…oh, she knows.”



“I l—” she started to say, but her tears choked her throat up. “I love you,” she let out, sobbing.

He smiled. “Quite right too. And, I suppose, if it’s the last chance I have to say it…” he trailed off, and she looked up at him, black tears streaking down her cheeks. “Rose Tyler, I—”






She returned to Bad Wolf Bay one year, on her own, and waited. She knew he wouldn’t come. She knew he didn’t he know she was there. She knew he probably had moved on. That’s what hundreds of years old aliens do, don’t they?

She looked up at the stars, and remembered a time when it used to be her up there. She closed her eyes, and wished that some how, some way, she could go back to what life was like before.

The next morning she woke up, sprawled out on the beach in her tent and watched the waves crash against the rocks.

That’s when she decided she was going to get him back.






“I’m so glad I found you,” she whispers in his ear, holding him. He smiles at her, gaze never leaving her eyes, and links his fingers through hers.

“Me too,” he replies.






Rose sat on the couch, head propped up on her arm. She was chewing her lip, looking down at her fingernails.

“Rose, what’s wrong?”

Rose looked up abruptly. “Nothing, mum,” she said quickly. “Just thinking.”

Jackie sat down next to Rose. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know he meant a lot to you…”

“He’s not dead,” Rose said, her voice sharp. “He’s just different.”

Jackie looked at her daughter and didn’t say anything. Rose sighed, and leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder. “I was nineteen, mum. I didn’t even think. And now he’s gone, but he’s not…” she trailed off and sighed deeply, starting to feel herself tear up. “I miss him. He came and everything felt all right and now he’s gone and—” she cut herself off, otherwise she was going to cry.

Her mother took her daughter’s hand. “It’s okay,” she said softly.

Rose nodded and stood up, slowly walking to the doorway to the room where the Doctor, or the man who said he was the Doctor, was sleeping. Her eyes scanned over his new face, and she rested her head against the doorway, wondering when he was going to wake up.






“Rose…we…we can’t,” he said, voice rough.

“Why not?” she asked, indignant, arms around his neck.

“Because,” he said, feebly attempting to push her off. “We just can’t. It doesn’t work like that.”

Rose pouted and glared at him. She didn’t say anything, which made the Doctor quite nervous about what she was going to do next.

She walked toward him, fast paced, and kissed him. He didn’t respond at first, but then let himself get carried away as she ran her hands through his hair.

Her breathing grew heavier as she kissed him deeper, bringing one of his hands to touch her chest. This was beyond her imagination, that this would actually happen, that they would—

“Rose! Wake up!”

Her head popped up from where she was leaning on the table, eyes wide with surprise. “Wot?” she asked, groggy.

“You were having a very tumultuous dream,” the Doctor explained, and Rose grew bright red.

“Yeah. I guess so,” she agreed, and sighed as he walked past her. Of course it was a dream, she thought, and stood up.



It was now or never, she thought to herself. She reached out to him. "No touch," he replied, his voice soft.

She could barely stop herself from crying. She knew she'd regret never taking the chance to be with him.

And they talked, and talked, and talked and for Rose it all passed by too quickly. "So?" she asked, when he told her the universes would collapse if they were to be together again. She had laughed after she said that, but deep down inside she knew that she wanted it. Just to be with him.

She started to cry as she told him she loved him, feeling her gut twisting inside her as she realized that she would do anything to stay with him.

She looked up, and he was gone.





“What is your problem?” she yells at him, storming back into the TARDIS. “I just…I just can’t understand you.”

“Of course you can’t,” he snarls. “With your stupid, weak, tiny little human brain.”

“Oh, here we go again!” She throws her hands up in the air. “I’m not the one in need of serious help.”

“I’m fine on my own,” he snaps back, but as he looks down, she can tell he doesn’t mean it.

They stand in silence for what seems like a lifetime, until the Doctor starts to fool with the controls. He glances at Rose, but she’s still looking down at her hands.

“I’m here,” she finally whispers, and then looks up at him. “For you.”

He nods his head and attempts a smile. “I know.”