A/N: This is my second Who fic, written in response to the Three Little Words ficathon at Livejournal, where the words "I love you" have to figure into the story in the context of a certain prompt. The prompt was 9/Rose - blood / ice / storm, and with this in mind, I decided to set it during the trip to the ice planet Woman Wept (Rose describes it to Mickey in "Boom Town"). Since she says it was "a while ago," I'd place this as sometime after "World War Three".

I hope you all enjoy the fluff, and reviews are always appreciated!

Woman Wept

She sometimes feels as though she'll never get used to this—the feeling of his hand in hers, taking her places no human on Earth had ever been meant to go. At least, she'd believed no human had ever been meant to go to other planets, until she'd met him.

He's changed a lot of things that she believed in.

It's dead freezing, and she can't feel the tips of her fingers, but it doesn't matter, because she's still aware of her hand in his. As the icy wind whips her hair back, she speeds her pace a little to catch up to him—his stride is longer than hers—and says, "Where are we going, Doctor?"

"You'll see. Oh, you're going to love it, Rose. It's fantastic." And always, the smile that crosses his lips as he says fantastic makes her smile, too.

As they reach a flat expanse of what he tells her is a beach—seems odd, that there can be a beach on a planet of ice—she gasps as she takes it in. Sees what he meant—it is fantastic. Bloody fantastic.

There is nothing to ruin this place, not like back on Earth. She's seen the American sitcoms, where the beaches are always filled with people, maybe only a mile or two away from highrises and office buildings and just… civilization. She'd never thought she could think that word with scorn, but now, faced with this place, this untouched beauty, she feels differently.

It is a thousand miles worth of ice, and just ahead of them, there is the sea, frozen in all its roiling glory. The waves must be a hundred feet tall, foaming, towering menaces, but when they are frozen solid, it's oddly beautiful. The thought of a sea this vast being frozen is unsettling, but not when she sees it like this.

"It's… it's gorgeous," she says, awed. "But how…?"

"Solar event," he tells her, walking her closer, down to the shoreline and into the sea, under the waves. "Froze the sea right in the middle of some kind of storm. No one really knows the particulars. Happened so long ago that no one would, and, well, you can see that everyone's forgotten this place… not me, though. Never me. I knew you'd love it."

She walks under the frozen waves, taking a breath and twirling, reaching her hands up, skidding a little in her trainers but always amazed at the splendor surrounding her. Traveling with the Doctor, it's never a guarantee—there can be horror, there can be lives lost… but there can also be days like this, days when the sheer magnificence of all he shows her makes her want to cry.

As she twirls, he watches her, smiling from one large ear to the other, reaching out to steady her as she almost slips. His hands on her waist make her want to ask him to dance, something silly like that, but she doesn't—he doesn't seem like the dancing type.

She thanks him for steadying her, smiling a little and trying not to blush, and takes a step back, reaching up to touch an icicle with her index finger. The end of it is knife-sharp, and she swears under her breath as it cuts her, leaving a drop of blood welling from her fingertip. "Ow!"

She sticks her finger in her mouth for a second, licking it to wash the blood away, and since she's so preoccupied with this, she doesn't notice the Doctor's eyes lingering on her finger in her mouth, doesn't notice him having to turn away for a second to keep himself under control.

After he turns back, he walks to her. She's now wrapped her finger in the hem of her shirt, applying pressure to it. "All right now?"

"Yeah, think so. Who cuts their finger on an icicle?" she laughs, and he reaches over, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and keeping her close to him as they walk further into the icy vastness. It's still cold as she's ever been, but somehow, next to him, she's always warm.

As they stand under the waves, she looks out, pointing with her free hand. "Look! Doctor, it's snowing!"

She says those words as giddy as a child would, and he looks out to see a veritable blizzard, turning everything in his sightline whiter than white. His first thought is that they'll never make it back to the TARDIS in this, but Rose is laughing, laughing and smiling and happier than he's ever seen her. And even if they're stuck for now in this frozen place, it's worth it just for that.

He sits them down on the ice, shrugging one arm out of his leather jacket and wrapping it over her, pressing her close against his body. "Here. May as well keep warm; we can't walk back in a storm this bad."

"Oh, I don't want to walk back just yet. I want to see this. It's brilliant."

The wonder in her eyes captivates him. She's no doubt seen snow before, but here, like this, it's like she's seeing it for the first time. She's almost like a child, staring with fascination out at the snow, curled close against him in the middle of a storm.

She looks up after a second, a smile quirking her lips. "You know, I heard on a nature channel once that if you really want to keep warm in the cold, you should curl up together naked. Generates body heat."

He shakes his head, laughing. "I love you and these fantastical notions of yours," he says, as close as he can get to the words he wants to say.

"I'm sorry, I'm the one with the fantastical notions? Me? Well, then, I love how deluded you are," she laughs, and as she nestles closer in his arms, all either of them can think is that this is where they always want to be.