like sunlight fading on your sheets

I think it is, she tells him. I think lots of things are easy, if you don't worry about them. Angsty Rose/Ten drabble.

;;

He stands next to her as worlds end, crash, collapse. Her hair blows in her face, golden strands against tan skin, and pink tongue peeking in between white teeth.

Does it get easier? She asks; her voice is soft, and heavy, like velvet. Doctor? Do you think?

There's a pause. In the few moments, Rose reaches over, tangles her fingers with his. She does this like it's as simple as breathing, and his two hearts beat fast and strong, trapped inside his ribs.

Well- He looks out into space, the skies, lit up with a million different suns; galaxies. I don't know, he says. Is it supposed to be easy?

He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, Rose is looking at him.

I think it is, she tells him. I think lots of things are easy, if you don't worry about them.

Sometimes, the Doctor says, not quite sure what he's answering anymore, it's good to worry.

Rose squeezes his hand.

Yeah, okay, she says. Okay.

;;

(He lost Rose. In the space between spaces, in between the cracks in a universe, in the stars and the dark, dark, night and in the waves that lapped up on a beach neither wanted to stand on. He can still feel the wind, sometimes.)

(I love you- but he hadn't answered. Another question she posed, another one he wouldn't, couldn't-)

(Some things, he tells Donna, a long, long time after, are quite hard to let go of.)

;;

He has pictures of her in a book. They're not of anything important, really. In one, she's smiling, and in another, she's shielding her face, and in a different one, she's yelling at someone in the distance. Maybe Mickey. He doesn't remember.

(I still remember you, he whispers to the sky. I'm not-)

(I won't, he tells himself once, I won't, but already he can feel her smile slipping away from him, like grains of sand, through his fingers.)

;;

(I love you, he says, out loud. Just once. Just to prove he can say it.

Rose is sleeping next to him, her head on his shoulder.

I love you, I love you, I love you, he whispers into her goldensunshine hair, I love you. I do.

Or maybe he just thinks it.)

;;

The important thing, is that, later, Rose gets love.

He doesn't, but that's what he's learned to deal with. And he- he has pictures, anyway, and the TARDIS, and there will be others, after Rose, different people and maybe he won't be in love with them, but he doesn't really have to be.

And it's not like- she's just a human, and he doesn't do domesticity, does he, and she's just someone he'll forget in a hundred years, someone who will disappear and fade and go away, like she should because she's not like him, she's not, and he shouldn't care this much, really, so what if he does, so what if Rose Tyler can't be replaced, it shouldn't matter, at all and-

;;

(Don't forget me, she breathes in his ear.

Never, he grins, arms wrapped around her waist, never, ever, ever, Rose Tyler.)

;;

He gets in the TARDIS.

He does not look back when he goes.

;;

fin.