Just like that, it's gone.

The TARDIS disappears, leaving no traces of its presence behind. The wet sand previously beneath it is smooth and undisturbed. Impressionless. It betrays nothing.

She stares at the empty space, silent and disbelieving. She'd been so wrapped up in the moment, she hadn't even noticed him walk away, hadn't heard it start to take off, not until it was too late. She ran forward to try to stop it somehow, but of course she couldn't. The TARDIS faded away right before her eyes.

This was the plan all along, she realizes numbly. To leave her here. Again.

He didn't even say goodbye this time.

A noise beside her. Someone is standing there. She briefly glances at him when he takes her hand in his. But she can't take the sight of him for very long.

You're not real, she says, or maybe she just thinks it.

She lowers her eyes and gazes at nothingness instead.

"So," he says softly after a moment, "What's next?"

Rose pressed her forehead against the cool window of the company SUV, watching the beach and then the countryside zoom lazily by, feeling tired and a little sick and more than a little sorry for herself. When she was younger, the rumble of a bus on the road or a train on the tracks would lull her to sleep, but she had no such luck now, no matter how tired she may feel.

She could hear her mum chatting at the Doctor, or the man who said he was the Doctor, or the new Doctor, or the half-Doctor, or whatever he was. He was putting up with Jackie good-naturedly. It would have made Rose smile if he had been the other Doctor. The real Doctor, she couldn't help but think.

She closed her eyes and tried to block out the sound of his voice. Right now, more than anything, she wished she could just curl up into a lump and die, as silly and melodramatic as it she knew it sounded. Every word he spoke was like a stabbing pain in her ears, a reminder of the almost-was.

Rose could still taste him on her lips, the not-quite-Doctor. Fleshy and sweet and surprisingly human, and just a tiny bit salty from the ocean spray on the wind. She wasn't going to lie, not even to herself: it was a nice kiss. Very nice. She would know. She'd done her fair share of kissing over the years. She was, in fact, something of a kissing expert. And their snog had hit all the right notes, made her heart flutter and her chest warm and little heavenly choirs erupt in the back of her head.

At least, until she had heard the TARDIS leave.

It would have been so completely, utterly typical of him to let that happen. Let her kiss him as a distraction. Maybe he was more like the real Doctor than she thought.

In as small a movement as possible, she gently ran her thumb over her bottom lip, brushing away all traces of him. If Mickey were in the car, he would have teased her about sending mixed signals, would have made a joke about how now the Doctor knew how he felt.

If Mickey were in the car.

She winced when the car went over a bump, painfully reminding her of bruises and aches sustained over the last few days. She felt someone touch her hand, and knew it was him, the not-Doctor.

"You all right?" he asked quietly under the sound of Jackie's nonstop jabbering.

Rose nodded. She resisted the compulsion to pull her hand away. Whoever or whatever he was, she didn't have the energy to deal with his hurt feelings.

How odd it would have been to ride in a car again with the actual Doctor, she thought to herself with an almost-smile. How pedestrian. Or maybe not pedestrian, since a car was involved. She realized she didn't entirely know what the phrase meant.

"So why's there two of you, again?" Jackie asked from the front seat. The new Doctor dropped Rose's hand before Jackie could see them touching. "Are you a clone or what?"

"Biological metacrisis," he responded. "When that Dalek hit me, or when he hit the other me I should say, I started to regenerate. Didn't want to give up this body so soon—can you blame me?—so I sort of kept what energy I needed to heal myself, and leaked out the remaining energy into a biological vessel, and that was this hand, and now it's me in a new body, growth sped up a billion times by the rapid cell duplication. Brilliant regeneration theory, if I do say so myself. And I do say so."

He flashed a grin.

Jackie stared at him. "So…are you a clone or what?" she repeated.

His shoulders slumped just a little bit. "I grew out of a hand," he offered.

"Well it's not the worst place a fellow could come from, I s'pose," Jackie mused. "I've been with blokes from all over, mind you don't tell Pete that. Men's egos are such fragile things. No offense, Doctor."

"None taken."

"However it happened, I've just got to say I'm actually glad you're stuck here, maybe keep this one at home for a while." She nodded toward Rose, who closed her eyes again and fervently wished for this conversation to stop.

"You know she was just going to up and leave me here? Alone?" Jackie continued.

"You wouldn't be alone, you'd have Pete and Tony," Rose said, watching the asphalt fly by the car in a flurry of black-and-white.

"I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the Doctor," Jackie quipped. She turned back to him. "Thirty-six hours I was in labor with her, and here she's going to leave me for some chap she honestly barely knows from Adam. No offense, Doctor."

"None taken," he said, though Rose could tell by his smirk that he was thinking of a different kind of Adam, one with a tendency to faint and a strange little window in his head.

"She was just going to go running back to that man and leave everything here behind," Jackie said. "We have a life here, you know. A proper life. With mansions and cars and things. We don't even have to work now, you know that?"

She paused for a moment, contemplating. "I should have realized it was fishy when she got that job at Torchwood or what d'you call it."

"Still working at Torchwood, then?" the Doctor asked Rose.

"Yeah," she responded, fixing her gaze on the back of the seat in front of her. "Guess I am."

"She only took the job to get what she needed so she could find you and leave me behind," Jackie said. Rose could feel the Doctor shift uncomfortably in his seat in response. "Her poor old mum," Jackie continued, throwing a reproachful gaze back at her daughter.

"God, mum. Please stop."

Jackie sniffed. "I'm just making conversation, sweetheart. Lord knows you're making a right mess of it at the mo. Look at you, all that work and now you won't even give him the time of day! What's gotten into you? Your precious bleeding Doctor's right here!"

She looked back at him sharply. "No offense, Doctor."

"None taken. Been called much worse."

"You're not the Doctor," Rose blurted out.

There was a pause. "Not much worse than that," the Doctor said after a moment.

"What are you on about? Of course that's who he is!" Jackie said, reaching back to smack her daughter on the shoulder. "Look, he looks just like him and everything!"

"I know what he looks like. But he's not him," Rose insisted.

She glanced over at the Doctor, whose expression was inscrutable. "Sorry, you're just not," she finished.

"I am, though," he responded. "Just in a different body. A new body. A new new body. New new Doctor," he said, an encouraging smile on his face.

Rose looked away.

"Rose, we went through this before, last time I changed."

"This is different."

"How?"

"It just is," Rose insisted, not looking at him. She could feel him watching her though.

"Rose—"

Her mobile chose that moment to start ringing, its obnoxious pop-song ringtone slicing through the air. Rose heaved a heavy sigh and answered it, secretly grateful for the interruption.

"Agent Tyler," she said with a sigh.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" her boss barked on the other end. "I've been ringing you for days. DAYS. Do you know what day it is?"

"No," she said honestly. She'd lost track.

"Today is the day I fire your arse if you don't get in here right now!"

Rose sighed again. "I'm kind of in Norway right now."

The other end went silent. Then, perplexed, "Why the bloody hell are you in Norway?"

"It's a long story."

"Well you'd better tell it to me when you get here, then. I want you straight here, you understand? You and Mickey. No excuses. Got it?"

"Got it," Rose affirmed, unable to muster anything resembling enthusiasm. She suspected that this wasn't a good time to tell him about Mickey. "See you first thing when I get back."

She hung up to see her mother staring at her, fuming.

"God, what now?" Rose asked.

"You are not running back to that institution the moment you get back," Jackie lectured. "You need a proper night's sleep, you do, and a good meal. And a shower, I'd wager."

Rose shrugged. "I've got to go, it's work."

She chanced a look at the not-Doctor, who was still eying her with concern. She quickly looked away. "Besides, I can sleep in the car."

Jackie scowled at her. She shrugged and turned back around in her seat. "All right, sweetheart, if that's what you want," she said, resigned.

No, Rose thought as she settled back, leaned against the window, and closed her eyes. No, it wasn't what she wanted. She didn't want to go to Torchwood, she didn't want to be sitting in a stupid company car with someone who most definitely was not the Doctor, she didn't even want to be in this universe.

What a waste of so much hard work. What a waste of so much working and waiting and hoping.

Rose felt herself slowly drifting off into the comforting darkness of sleep. Maybe she was lucky. Maybe this was just a nightmare and she'd wake up in the TARDIS any moment now, and there he would be, and even if Donna was there, or Martha, it would be all right, everything would be fine, as long as she was in the TARDIS with him. Maybe this was all just a bad dream.

"Oh, that feels good," the Doctor said, letting out a groan as he stretched. Cars were rubbish things, he decided. Maybe more comfortable than what he'd used in his time at UNIT, but why did they have to be so slow? Normal, subjectively linear time just snailed on so. So. Slowly.

This was going to take some getting used to.

He wriggled his toes and arched his back and stuck his hands in his pockets and felt very glad to be outside, indeed. Not only was his tall and fidgety self cramped in both the car and the boat ride, but it had been rather awkward sitting there while Rose alternated between sleeping and pretending to sleep and Jackie chatted up the drivers and captain. He suspected those drivers might be putting in for an early retirement after their quality Jackie time.

Himself, he'd found uncustomarily quiet, hoping not to bother Rose. Instead, he'd spent the time familiarizing himself with this new body, since he hadn't had a proper chance to do so before.

Hands? Two. Feet? Check. Toes? Normal. Hair? Great hair.

Still wasn't a ginger though, you'd think if he'd absorbed some Donna, he'd at least get the benefit of some ginger-genes. But then, that was to be expected since he was, for all intents and purposes, a replica.

He winced at that.

During the boat trip, he'd occupied himself by feeling out his new insides, turning his attention inward to see what had changed. His circulatory system was different, what with the one heart. The single heart was an odd sensation indeed, very odd. He hadn't liked the one heartbeat very much back in Shakespeare's age and he wasn't sure he liked it now. He felt sort of empty without the other heart, but sensed that some other human bits had taken up too much room for it, some strange organs he hadn't needed before. Tonsils and gallbladder and appendix, really, what was all that about? He reminded himself to get the appendix removed as soon as possible, nasty thing.

But the heart. He was very, very aware of it, especially when Rose was near, odd enough. That was new. Rose had always captured his attention with alarming ease, but this was different, his (one, lonely) heart hammer-hammer-hammering roughly against his ribs, a small bird desperate and fluttering to escape its cage. His heart rate had dramatically increased when she placed her hand on his chest, and it had skyrocketed when she pulled him in for a kiss. (During the kiss, and for a few moments after, he wasn't sure what his heart was doing, because his mind went strangely blank, and he had trouble focusing on anything but the feel of Rose's arms around his neck and her lips on his.) He hadn't really experienced that particular sensation before, not when he wasn't exerting himself or running from danger, anyway. He wasn't entirely certain what it was about. Perhaps this human body was faulty somehow.

Or perhaps it had something to do with the radical change in his body chemistry. Strange new hormones and pheromones and other bizarre human things that didn't quite make sense yet.

Speaking of Rose.

She got out of the car after him, tired and bleary-eyed. She had changed clothes and shoes during the boat ride, pulled on a button-down top and a skinny-pants-and-jacket suit set and flimsy little ballet flats, a professional ensemble for her professional job at Torchwood. It didn't suit her, no, the colors didn't suit her at all, they were far too dull with their grey and their white, but the Doctor knew better than to criticize her fashion choices even when he and Rose were on the best of terms, lest his words be answered with a searing glare.

Rose and Jackie exchanged hugs, Jackie gave him a hug whether he wanted it or not (he didn't), and she got back in the car.

Now it was just him and Rose, alone for the first time in…well, years.

It was decidedly awkward.

Despite the kerfuffle earlier, he decided to remain upbeat for her sake. They'd been through this before, the last time he regenerated, and no, this wasn't any different.

Well, aside from the obvious differences.

He just needed to be a little patient, although that was something he'd never been good at, not really. He suspected he would have an even worse time of it in this new body with this new brain that randomly and often exuded hints of Donna, not to mention strange hormonal imbalances whenever Rose was in close proximity (perhaps something he should get checked out, he mused, though it made a sort of sense—regeneration, even a half-arsed semi-regeneration, always resulted in an explosion of fresh nerve endings that sent signals shocking throughout his frame at even the lightest whisper of wind in his hair or cloth on his skin, never mind the small explosions that erupted in his skull when Rose's fingers laced between his or when she grabbed him for that short-lived but glorious kiss, and suddenly he found himself lost in a whole other world of thought yet again).

And chocolate. An intense desire for chocolate was also particularly prevalent in this new human brain.

But soon enough, he and Rose would bounce back to normal, he thought with confidence—they'd ounce off into the blue, or the sunset, or the nearest place with chips. Or chocolate. Or jelly babies. Blimey, he was hungry.

"So this is Canary Wharf on the other side?" he asked, looking up at the zeppelins drifting lazily over the skyscrapers in what he'd deemed Other London. He shielded his eyes from the sun as it set over the horizon—had it always hurt his eyes like that? He couldn't help but feel like Batman on kryptonite. Or was that Superman? Or Wonder Woman? Had to be Batman. He liked Batman. All dark and broody and too smart for his own good.

Rose was staring at him.

"What?" he said, suddenly aware he had no idea what she'd just said.

"I just said 'Yeah'," she responded, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets.

They both stood for a moment. Rose avoided his gaze.

"Yeah well, looks about the same, doesn't it?" the Doctor added. "Same old Torchwood, same old world. Nearly."

"Hmm," Rose said noncommittally.

The Doctor found himself suddenly hating her pantsuit. He didn't care if the hatred was irrational, the suit was just wrong. Too stiff and boring and dull for Rose. He missed the bright pinks and vivid purples and joyful blues.

Stupid business clothes.

"So, we going in or what?" he asked.

Rose raised an eyebrow at him. "You're not coming with me?" she asked, or more accurately, stated.

"Well, the car is gone, so…aren't I?" He hadn't planned for this. What else was he supposed to do? Discover more new squishy human body parts? Play squishy human body part Bingo?

Rose hesitated, sighed. "Sure, whatever," she said, resigned. "Do what you like. Just don't…"

The Doctor grinned. "Wander off?" he finished.

He thought he saw the hint of a smile creep into her eyes. "Rule number one," he said, grinning at her hopefully. She allowed herself to smile a bit more.

"Was that a smile?" he teased.

"Shut up," she muttered, her small smile vanishing as they walked toward the building.

"Never. So what do we do first? File a report? Do some paperwork? 'Stopped the end of the universe again, requesting reimbursement for petrol', that sort of thing?"

Rose grimaced. "No. First I deal with my boss."