Author's Note: I hadn't intended to write AU, but this tale has decided to go down a divergent path. This is set in that very last moment of Journey's End, a moment when all roads are open.

Silence. So quiet. The sound of wet fabric peeling away was like a shout.

The Doctor stripped off his suit-coat, letting it drip rainwater.

Well.

The hum of his ship was loud in his head. He released the handbrake.

Alone again.

He checked the thrusters, though the numbers barely caught his eye.

Everyone's safe. Everyone well. Everyone somewhere they belong.

Somewhere else.

His fingers brushed over the controls, changing nothing.

Donna. Five years. A life . All forgotten.

Well, perhaps she'll be better. Home. And safe.

His head tipped back, eyes roving, uncomprehending, over the ceiling.

And I've left her again. Lost her again.

I promised never to leave her.

He leaned against the console.

Lost again.

Lost her again.

I f I could have... if I could…

His eyes stared off, far away. Something like a cry was building in his chest, unable to loose itself.

Lost again.

He stilled. Hours passed. Perhaps days. Perhaps he'd never shift again.

Lost.

A shock ran through his hand, drawing his attention. Rainwater had dripped from his tie onto the controls, which sparked and fizzled irritably.

The Doctor sighed. He supposed he'd better move.

1

"Oh come on, now!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes.

He'd reset the coordinates four times in the last two days. Four times! First the old girl had tried taking him to a little planet just on the other side of Betelgeuse. He sent her back into the Vortex. No need to lay his woes down on someone else, which is what he'd end up doing at this point.

She tried again while he was drinking tea, staring at the bright yellow wall of the kitchen. Earth, 1969. England. He reset the coordinates with quick, annoyed gestures. He didn't want to see anyone. Not the Brigadier. Or anyone from UNIT, for that matter. And not someone new. Definitely not.

And again. He'd been napping, laid out on his sleeping mat. Sleep seemed very appealing today. The shake of the ship pulled him awake with a start, and the next judder shook him off his mat. He raced, half-dressed, to the console room, which had moved rather far away. Dirty trick. What was his ship trying to do now?

Set down on Balhoun, apparently. He groaned. He absolutely did not want to deal with the polite, ritualized discussion of Balhoun social salons. Interesting, yes. Easy to deal with, no.

He shot them back into the Vortex, growling at his ship under his breath

"Ancient mad crackpot overbearing tin! Trying to tell me where I ought to go, you think I need to be told what to do, you're even older than me, and probably even madder, an' I'm tired of these hijinks, all right? Don't you try that again, meddling bin. In a minute I'm going to get the hammer and fix each of these controls in place, try and get out of that, if you can, you unreliable triply concussed…"

His ship gave off a wave of cranky amusement. She was happy to get him annoyed at the moment. Apparently she thought that he was better annoyed than whatever else he'd been lately.

Apathetic. The word leapt into his mind.

He was not apathetic. He was…tired. Very tired. He just needed to be alone for a bit, was all.

He turned on his heel, leaving the console room. Where had the kitchen gotten itself to?

…………………………………….

Three hours later, he was running back in, two fingers stuck in a jar of marmalade. Comfort food would have been nice, if he could get a minute to eat it. This wasn't the minute, apparently; the ship was going into another landing cycle.

"Where have you gotten to now?" he moaned, peering into the main monitor.

She'd tried for Earth again. Somewhere in England. Sometime in the Victorian era. Around December the twenty-second.

Christmas.

The Doctor closed his eyes. "Oh not again!! No,no,no,no,no! We are leaving! Right now!" He couldn't stomach a Christmas, not right now. He wouldn't.

What had the TARDIS come here for, though? He took a quick glance at the timeline-well, it was interesting, and there was something a little off, several points that could…

He shook his head, and set down the marmalade, releasing the handbrake, which resisted under his fingers. The TARDIS shook and rattled into the Vortex. Sparks shocked his fingers as he worked. There was the loud crack of shattering glass.

He sighed.

The TARDIS had made her point; if he didn't choose a destination, she would.

"Fine."

He needed somewhere quiet. Somewhere uninhabited. Somewhere… uncomplicated.

A list of planets ticked past in his mind. A few likely prospects. He picked one. Set the calibrations. Added another equation to the anomaly-dispersion, checked the phase-manipulator. Far out in the boondocks, it was. Third arm of a tiny galaxy. Century…he didn't particularly care. Set a random number.

The number changed. He glanced up at the central column, which glowed the way a guilty child whistles. The wires looped through the ceiling-grate quivered.

He gave a hint of a shrug. Well, let her pick the date, then.

Coordinates all ready to go. Nudge the ship in the proper direction.

The grating beneath his feet juddered as one of the stabilizers overcompensated. He rushed around the console, re-adjusting. Hold that with one hand, this with two fingers, those with the other three-oh, hadn't working with the proper number of pilots been a treat.

He shook his head against the thought, and braced his legs as the TARDIS pivoted through what felt like a chronal anomaly. He hated those.

And then the ship was still. The central column glowed.

With a quick pat for the console, he took his great-coat from the hat-rack, and opened the door.

Outside, yellow grasses stretched away to the horizon.

He stepped out.

So quiet.

The view was the same in every direction, gilded by sunlight that poured over the plain. Low hills rolled up and away, meeting in the distance with a sky that went on forever. Nothing rose above the calf-high grass.

A breeze sighed around him, ruffling his coat.

The Doctor took a deep breath, his eyes closing for a moment.

Yes. This will do.

He locked the TARDIS door, turned on his heel. And began to walk, leaving his ship standing tall and alone on the plain.

…………………………………………….

Breezes sighed, rippling the grass in waves. It crackled beneath his feet as he walked, snapping like straw. The steady sound of his footfalls served as a counterpoint to the sigh of the wind, punctuated by the cry of small birds disturbed in his passage.

He didn't think. His legs set a rhythm of their own accord. It was rare that he wasn't thinking of something. Or several somethings. But today he only moved through the world, observed. Color and shape, sound and silence.

Light brought out the layered colors of the grass, running the gamut from ivory-white to rich, deep brown. Seed heads attached themselves to his trousers, prickling at the skin beneath.

Birds cried as they threw themselves into the bone-dry air, whirls of color and sound.

"Wheep-wheep-wheep-wheep!"

"Cara-Ca! Cara-Ca!"

There were no markers here. No signs of direction or distance. No tree, no river. Just the grass; rolling, endless, ageless.

Small burrows changed the course of his steps. Once or twice he saw the builders; small fat rodents that chattered at him before diving into their holes, segmented lizards that darted away in clouds of kicked-up dust.

The red-gold sun kept pace with him, trekking across its infinite expanse of sky. The land beneath his feet tipped up, rolled down, swelled up again. His legs moved in constant measure, carrying him to the top of another rise. For a moment, he simply stood, letting the ever-present wind brush across his face.

Time stood still here. Not literally, he knew. He always knew. But there was agelessness about this world. No past. No future. Only the present; small animals living and dying, grass growing. And the wind, forever sighing overhead.

He walked on.

Peace sank into his mind, filtering through like drops of decontaminant in poisoned water. The constant breeze felt as if it was blowing not only around him, but through him as well, clearing out heat and confusion.

Small, bright clouds crossed the vault of the sky, dappling the land in light and shadow as the sun sank lower. It was setting faster than he had expected. He hadn't been walking that long, had he? Topping another hill, he turned, back the way he had come. Even with his rather good vision, he couldn't discern the merest speck of blue in the vast and rolling land.

He reached for the TARDIS in his mind. She was far away. Rather farther than he'd expected. In a mixture of sensation and information, she told him just how long he'd been gone. Almost eighteen hours.

Surprising. It hadn't felt like much time at all. He glanced up at the sky. It would be dark long before he reached the TARDIS. And he didn't fancy twisting an ankle or displacing a joint out here. That would hurt to repair.

He dug a hand deep into one of the inner pockets of his coat, searching, and smiled to himself as his long fingers grasped the edge of a space-blanket he'd tucked in there. Ought to have been a boy guide, he ought.

As darkness fell, he shook his blanket out, and stretched his long frame across it, staring up at the myriad of stars.

There were so many. Sometimes he forgot what just looking at them was like. Not cataloguing. Not analyzing. Just looking.

"So which one are we going to?"

"That one-no…that one."

The peace nearly dissipated.

He didn't need to think about that. He stored the memory away.

The arm of the galaxy rose in the east as the night moved on. Beautiful. He watched the stars dance overhead.

Once, he'd watched a sky like this, but then it had been filled with comets. Red, yellow, silver, purple.

A long time ago.

His eyes began to close, slowly. Just on the brink of darkness, something tickled the edge of his awareness.

But sleep gave him no time to riddle it out.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The sun had not begun to rise when his eyes opened. Only the barest hint of grey on the horizon gave away its presence.

Slowly, light suffused the sky, tinting the clouds in greens and reds. Unseen birds sent up a bright chorus of greeting and calling, threat and defense.

Audubon had been right, he thought to himself. Birdsong was much prettier when you didn't know what it meant.

He stretched as the sun broke free of the horizon, standing as he moved, noting the bit of stiffness in his legs. His eyes roved out over a world just waking.

A little warning belled in his mind, snagging his awareness. He linked to his ship. She was safe. But she…missed him. Wanted him back.

Poor old thing. Well, he'd take a round-about way back to her, finish his little ramble.

The sun rose higher, and he followed its course on the ground. The wind rushed against his body. A bit stronger today.

It had been a few hours, and the TARDIS had calmed, knowing he was on his way. Topping another rise, he glanced down absently.

Then he stared.

Two things caught the Doctor's attention. First, the green. The yellow grass gave way as if cut by a blade, replaced by row upon row of green. Crops. Albeit spotted with brown and yellow, a little worse for wear, but definitely cultivated. Habitation. Somebody was living here. And-yes, there were long, low buildings, grey in the midst of the fields. And if he paid attention, he could pick up sentient minds, thinking minds. A few very close.

And then the distant wall of brown. A great cloud, towering on the horizon. He stared at it, his eyebrows rising.

"Ah. Sandstorm. This won't be fun."

A sound, distant and intermittent, cut the air. The Doctor's head jerked towards the noise. Was that weapon fire? He moved down the brow of the hill.

The grass crackled and snapped. Someone was running. He turned-

Arms wrapped tightly around his waist. What the-

Before he could move, his ears were filled with words.

"Oh, it's you, really is! I couldn't be sure, I just thought, up on the hill, and it couldn't be, but it is! It's you!"

Blue-black eyes sparkled at him, framed in a creamy face. The girl hugged him again-then her head shot up.

"Oh. Skirmish line forming. Got to go!"

She flashed a smile, releasing her hold and jogging away.

"Don't leave, I'll be back. And get into a combine before the sands hit!"

And the bright gold hair was disappearing through the crop field.

The Doctor's chest heaved.

Hair. Eyes. That smile. Can't be.

His cognitive wheels seemed to have jammed. The face. He'd only seen it once in sunlight. And then it had been…

The memory clicked. The Doctor's eyes grew wide.

He drew another breath. The guns spattered. Just as they had on Messaline.

He breathed a word.

"Jenny."