Just a tiny drabble because my Doctor Who muse is playing nice these days. Dedicated to AngelofDarkness1605 – see, right fandom at last! ;)

"Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life," he said.

That's how Rose Tyler started running.

Time and relative dimension in space. Everywhere – anywhen, if she only asks nicely enough, if the fancy seizes him to take her here or there, around to see the wonders, across the whole universe. Anything, with that odd sound that came to echo in her dreams, and a few deft, obscure moves of his hands over the TARDIS' controls, buttons and levers and cables and screens he strokes amongst flashing lights – looking, for a moment, absolutely out of reach. He laughs, pulls this, fingers that, and off they go – Earth, planets. Dickens, Daleks, sights and chaos, exhilaration and fear all blending together, always. Adrenaline shoots through her veins, and that grin of his pulls at things deep within her chest, makes it hard to think. Run, he shouts, and so she does.

Her name is Rose Tyler, and he stresses every syllable while pronouncing it, like the words are something immensely important. She's that girl who dropped out of school and worked in a shop that blew up when he stopped by, she had a boyfriend, a loving mother and a lot of those normal, steady, tangible things that usually form the shape of a life. Now she knows that life is something more, something mad. She can feel the ground shifting beneath her feet, sometimes; it tells her to keep running, so much out there left to see, and she wonders if it will ever stop.

When the Doctor squeezes her hand, she tells herself it has to be forever.