A/N: So this is it, dear readers. You and me on the last page. Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

The Understanding of the River and the Rose

Rose walked the barefoot on the beach of Bad Wolf Bay. The sand squished between her toes as gulls flocked overhead and the waves pounded on the shore. Rose looked back behind her. She'd come herself today, she didn't know about... Him. After that last fervent kiss, she couldn't get the other... The other Doctor's face out of her mind. Which was silly, they were the same.

She loved the Doctor, she really did, but she still couldn't get the other Doctor out of her mind. She'd left him after she'd sworn forever. It didn't feel right, not working to get back to him.

Rose sighed and the wind whipped her hair around her face. It'd gotten a bit longer in the year since she'd met the human Doctor, it was just below her shoulder now. Rose leaned down to see a little rivulet of water running out of a small pond...well, Tide pool. The rivulet ran into the ocean waves joining the rumble and the roar- the great melody of the ocean.

Rose sighed and looked up, before squinting. A white figure stood watching the ocean. For some reason it seemed to be fading in and out of existence.

The blond began running, the sand kicking up in the spray and the breeze whipping away the particles of rock and shell. Rose skidded to a stop and the white figure turned, revealing a very familiar person.

The curly haired woman smirked. It was strange, though she was there, the wind didn't affect her hair or her smooth white clothes.

Oh.

"You're not really here, are you?"

"No."

Rose frowned, "How are you here?"

Was it her imagination, or had River's smirk turned into a sad smile? "I'm a hologram, though, it makes it easier that I'm dead."

"What?"

"I died in a library because of shadows. The tenth one, your second Doctor, saved my consciousness in it... The library I mean."

Rose didn't really know what that meant.

River turned her gaze back over the ocean. "He hasn't visited. He doesn't like endings of course. You should know that... How is the meta-crisis?"

"Oh, I don't know... He's..." Rose realized something as River stood there expectantly. River was... Locked in some sort of library. Alone. Without the Doctor. Here she was, thinking about how the meta-crisis wasn't the Doctor, when he was. She had the Doctor, and River didn't.

Rose took a deep breath, "He's daft. Just like him."

River nodded, before Rose dared to ask the question, "Is... Is he alone?"

"He was, but not anymore. Donna, you knew her, she... Had to leave. He can't ever see her again. After all of you left, he traveled alone until he regenerated and crashed in my mother's yard... I suppose that's how it all begins, that man and his blue box just crashing into your life."

Rose returned River's smile.

The two stood on the beach exchanging stories of the Doctor. The pink and yellow human and the bright half Time Lady hologram- a wisp of white against the shore. Both of them the Doctor's wives. One of them turned Time Lady to marry the Time Lord, the other one married to a Time Lord turned human.

The two with the most right to wage a jealous war- conversing with laughs and smirks about the Doctor.

The River and the Rose.