AU In which neither side ever really recovers from that infamous moment at the end of series 2.

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, or anything that is recognisable.

I just wanna be ok, be ok, be ok,

I just wanna be ok today.

I just wanna feel today, feel today, feel today,

I just wanna feel something today.

Open me up and you will see

I'm a gallery of broken hearts

I'm beyond repair let me be

And give me back my broken parts.

Ingrid Michaelson, Be OK.

Not all stories have happy endings.

Afterwards; approximately six decades and twenty companions.

Later, he steps outside and looks up at the sky, eyes distant. He is on an unnamed planet - he vaguely remembers it from days long gone, but it doesn't particularly matter anymore - his past has begun to blur, leaving a certain period painfully clear. Sometimes, when he is feeling happier, he mirthlessly calls this "the Universe's gift to him". But his mood is always cut short as soon as his mind processes further, which happens awfully fast with his advanced thinking. Any mention of universes is bound to lead his thoughts to a familiar destination, involving the words "parallel" and " sealed".

He allows himself to properly look at the sky, instead of the aimless staring that has been happening for the past minutes - or was it hours? - for a Lord of Time, he has been quite bad at keeping track of it recently. Jagged cliffs stretch up towards the stars. The stars, which stayed beautiful, even when all the beauty in his life was ripped away in the matter of a few seconds. It's hardly fair, but nothing ever is. He knew from the very beginning that it wouldn't last forever, but now it is all too soon and he feels like he is drowning in a world that seems so suddenly large now that he has no one to face it with him.

He sinks to the ground, letting his precious trench coat sweep up the dirt. He has too much to escape from, and nowhere to escape to. After all, his memories follow him everywhere he goes. A flash of blonde hair, the echo of an infectious smile - he has long since decided the Universe has taken it upon itself to torture him whenever possible.

He wonders how, and if, he will ever be alright again. Because now he has had a taste of pure, unadulterated joy, how will anything ever compare? Once again, he feels terribly alone, the emptiness in his hearts having no distractions to fill it with. Of course there have been companions. Some simply wanting to see the stars, and using the perfect opportunity they are given when he tries to find something to divert him from his disasterous course.
Some who truthfully wanted to help him, though why they thought they could achieve that he'll never know. The short period just after it happened had been a blur of barely legal interplanetary bars, numbing alcohol, drunken nights and skin on skin. He remembers it taking his first companion quite a while to pull him out of that routine.
Then there are the others - people coming to him to escape their own lives which are starting to seem so unimportant to him. Those are usually the ones who leave first, saying they can't stand his blank face, that his expression scares them. That they don't want to continue travelling if it makes people end up in the state that he is and will be in for the foreseeable future. He can never be bothered to explain. He just hopes that one day the pain will feel less, that he will wake up and be able to look out of the TARDIS doors without feeling his hearts collapse all over again.

One day, he tells himself, one day. In the meantime he keeps on moving, because surely if he runs hard enough, fast enough, far enough, his past won't catch up with him. He knows there is an inevitable moment coming when everything will fall down upon him, but it wouldn't be today, and he was just going to focus on that. He was taking it day by day, repeating the words "just keep moving" in his mind as the only thing he had left to hold onto.

He had ridden the crest of the wave too long, and now he had crashed with it as it reached the shore, leaving him stuck in the endless shallows that had become his new life. But it was a good wave, he tells himself. The best.

He slumps forward, feeling a sudden anger fill him - why could he not just move on? Why was this having such an effect on him? His people would have been ashamed. He was not worthy to be a Time Lord.
That's true, another voice in his head says, but not because of her. She was the best thing that ever happened to you. She was too good. You did not deserve her, yet now you selfishly believe that she would have chosen you too. She will be moving on, wherever she is, you know she will. They all do, they all forget you in the end.

With a silent snarl, he forcibly pushes these aspects of his personality back deep inside, where he cannot hear their quarrels. This was why he needed distractions; he lived for them. If his mind was left for it's own devices he would slowly go insane. Sometimes, he wonders if the past companions he has had were real, or just figments of his imagination. Was she even real? It suddenly seems so long ago that he saw her. Was she just a creation his mind boiled up, only that to take it away again as if the War wasn't torment enough? She was real, he tells himself - over and over again, because now he is questioning his own judgement.

He looks at the sky again, straightening his aching back. It is then that he remembers that they were once here together, though on the other side of the planet, far towards his left. He thinks that is why he feels such a slight connection with it.

He starts mapping out the stars, naming them and sorting them into compelx categories in his head. When he runs out, he begins to count, slowing down his personal time so that the milliseconds are easier to keep track of.
Mildly, it occurrs to him that he has never told any human of this ability. Inwardly he shrugs; it may have been that it wasn't possible then. So many things have become possible since then - at least he thinks so; it's so hard to keep track when the one thing he really wants remains stoic. And even if he crossed now - her grave was not what he wanted to see. Even worse, if she was still alive, with a husband, kids. He knows he is selfish, but then again, selfishness is such a human concept.

897 239 472 375, 836 967.514298 seconds later the door locks behind him, and the TARDIS prepares for yet another destination.

On a level, the TARDIS understands that if the Doctor ever stopped running, neither of them would be better off; no matter how much she wants to help him face up to the truth.

Present: 2006, August.

A girl is left standing on a beach that a man in another universe has cursed countless times already. For her, however, the pain is still fresh, and every step she takes rubs against her, razor sharp, and infinitely more excruciating.

Her family open their mouths, anxious words filling the air but none reaching her. She opens her mouth to try and tell them, explain how her heart has been cruelly ripped into two, but her throat stocks, and she feels useless.
Although she can distinctly feel a touch there as she is led towards the jeep, her hand has never felt more empty.

In the end they decide to stay near the beach, buying a small cottage overlooking the sea. Her blank face does most of the convincing.
The last shred of hope she has left has attached itself to the sand where she had stood, watching a figure fade, and she didn't know what would happen if that too was wrenched away from her.

Surprisingly enough, the beach becomes her comfort - she often spends hours sitting on the wet sand, listening to the steady sound of the waves rushing in and out. She is waiting for a change in the pattern she knows will never come, for someone to come and stop the sound driving her insane.

She knows that many people have has their heart broken, but she cannot imagine anyone's being left in the state hers is - mangled, already faltering in its weak beat. How she longs for another pair to come and join her single one, making it whole again. Sometimes she hears the four beat pattern at night, in the kind of dreams that leave her waking up tangled up in her sheets, pillow stained with salt. Her mother has almost given up on washing her bedclothes.

Her family worries, of course, when she doesn't divert from her pattern of eating, sleeping and staring at the ocean in all weathers. She gets a job, at the local supermarket's - aware that it is not exactly the emblem of the "fantastic life" she was told to have but not really caring. She wouldn't be surprised if her fellow workers didn't know she existed - in the last few months she has become very good at fading into the background.

Afterwards; the End

Eventually, she is forced to accept that her story does not have a happy ending, and that no prince is going to come and rescue her. Her life isn't a fairy tale. She can't move on though, because a chunk of her heart is missing, and even when she tries, all she feels is an empty space. She likes to believe that the missing piece is up there somewhere, far away from her grounded body, wild and free with its counterpart. There has been no moment when she has hated the earth as much as she does now.

Inwardly, she knows that one day she will wake up and find that the hole in her chest has shrunk. The human mind is equipped to deal with loss in many ways, but if none of them work, it will always resort to the memory. And though she tries to replay her time with him so often before she goes to sleep, it has already become blurry around the edges, and a part of her is relieved. She hopes that he, wherever he is, is OK, but she knows it won't be the case; at least not yet. He always did find some way to blame himself for every single working of the universe.

Her subconscious promises itself that it will force her to get a better job when the time is right, but for now it keeps silent.

When two people get properly broken, the universe doesn't stop. There is no flash of light, no crash of drums. The earth continues its course and the planets carry on spinning. People live, and people die, in a cycle that repeats over and over again, simply missing out two that were previously destined to become a part of it.

Not all stories have happy endings. But very few stories have even a fraction of the happiness that the story of the Doctor and Rose had. And in the end, it was worth the heart break.

A/N Please review and tell me what you think - or if you have any specific ideas for the next parts - Rose's timeline will go mainly forwards from Doomsday onwards, while the Doctor's will skip past concepts such as things being chronological, as he does.

Love to all my followers and alerters who have stuck by me over my period of writer's block! Also, keep watching I am currently writing a long awaited epilogue and perhaps a prologue to my story, Shattered.
Once again, please review if you liked it, or if you didn't!