He goes.

A part of him – the logical part, the clever part, the part that sticks to the science of it all and lets the other half of him handle the emotion – knows that there's no reason to. It's silly. Pointless, even. She's not dead, after all. She is so alive. Living a life, day after day with her family. She's okay. So why would he go?

The other part of him – the softer part, the emotional part, the part that pushes tears from the corners of his eyes and sends them rolling down his cheeks, the part that in this custom-made-for-her regeneration is so, so human – doesn't want to go, either. But for a completely different reason. This half of him knows that there is every reason in the universe for him to go, but this half also knows that those reasons don't count for anything when the one thing you want isn't in this universe at all. This half knows that putting himself through this would be foolhardy. It will only break his heart even more severely than it's already broken.

But he goes anyway.

He goes because despite the denial in his mind and the dread in his heart, it feels right to honor her memory. Because even if she isn't really dead, she truly no longer exists in this universe. Here, she is nothing more than a memory.

He doesn't know how these humans did it, but they seem to have erected a monument overnight. It's a long, smooth, stone wall, flawless granite stretching out in the garden they've created just across the street from that hateful building. The shadow that Canary Wharf casts seems to dim the brilliance of the monument, but it glows regardless, illuminated by the lights which have been placed in the ground to shine upon it and by all that lingers of the hundreds of people whose names are etched across that smooth granite slab.

They've put up a podium in front of the wall, nestled among the marigolds and the rose bushes (his sadistic mind finds cruel humor in their choice of flowers). Anyone and everyone is welcome to get up in front of the extraordinary crowd which has gathered in the garden in the shadow of Canary Wharf. It doesn't matter if they knew someone whose name is written in the granite or not. If they have something to say, they're allowed to get up and say it.

But every single person who speaks lost someone in the battle.

Parents who've lost children. Husbands who've lost wives (and the other way around). Teenagers who've lost parents. Men and women and children who've lost brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles and nieces and friends.

It's a beautiful service which begins at ten in the morning and lasts until the sky is growing dark. Normally with this sort of thing, when it goes for that long, you start to see the crowd slowly thinning, people subtly picking up their things and leaving, hoping to go unnoticed so as not to be thought disrespectful. But not today. Today, not a single person leaves the garden until every single person who wanted to speak has spoken.

He considers getting up there, saying a few words for her. But what would he say? I loved her. I still love her. I'll never stop loving her. I never got to finish my goodbye. And then as he dismounts the podium and makes his way back to his seat, he'll get pats on the back and tentative hugs and whispers of "I'm sorry for your loss" from people he's never met before. He doesn't need their sympathy. They've all lost someone, or at least most of them, but they can't understand.

So he remains silent.

He stays seated in his metal fold-out lawn chair in the garden under the shadow of Canary Wharf. Even after the service is over and people are leaving, he stays there. He's not the only one, either – quite a few others stay in their chairs, staring wistfully at the wall, brokenly at the building which towers above. They stay there as the sun dips below the man-made horizon and the light of the moon shines down on the garden, and the granite wall seems to glow. They stay there and watch as the people who organized the memorial take apart the podium and pack up the lawn chairs. They stay seated there until someone comes up to them and tells them that they don't have to leave, but they do have to stand up because they have to take the chairs away.

There are benches in the garden, places to sit, places to walk, places to stand. So many of the people who stayed after the memorial service stay in the garden even after the people who put together the service have gone. They stare at the wall and find the name of their lost loved one or ones. They wander through the flowers or sit on the benches with lost, blank looks on their face. But eventually, they all leave as well, back home to the loved one who remain.

Not him, though. He has no one left.

Being a Time Lord, he's never needed to sleep much at all. He's still not quite sure whether that's a blessing or a curse. But tonight, it's both.

He sits on a bench until he can't stand it anymore, and he has to walk straight up to that long granite wall and look through the names that are shallowly engraved in the smooth gray stone. They're in alphabetical order by last name, and he walks to the Ts, carefully scanning over all of the Tailors and Talbots, the Thomases and the Thompsons, the Traceys and the Tremaines and the Trudeaus, until finally…

Oh, Rassilon.

He knew that seeing her name here, like this, would hurt. But he never knew it would her this much. Seeing it… it makes it real, so much more real than it actually is. This is her memorial, her tribute, her tombstone, and to this world, she is dead.

Surely she must be, because there, neatly written in uniform capital letters engraved into smooth granite, among the names of so many others who died that day, are three little words:

ROSE MARION TYLER

Tears are welling up in his eyes as he lifts his hand, carefully brushing his fingers across the name, feeling the dips and ridges created by the writing. They are as real, as solid, as physical as he. They are proof that he will never see her again.

Written proof. Written in stone. On a better day, he would've laughed at that.

Just above her name is her mother's, JAQUELINE ANDREA SUZETTE TYLER. All four names of the woman who slapped him and called him a daft alien and occasionally kissed him, who endeared herself to him by raising the most brilliant daughter this universe or any other has ever seen. He misses her a little bit as well, but that missing is nothing compared to missing Rose. Missing Jackie is a paper cut, a little burn like the sort you get when you touch an oven before it's cool; missing Rose is a bullet burning through the center of his chest, tearing him apart, stopping both his hearts and he doesn't even want to regenerate at this point. Missing Rose is a death sentence.

Never getting to finish his goodbye to her, never getting to say the words that matter, is the cruel executioner raising his axe, preparing to deliver the killing blow.

He doesn't know what the final straw will be, but he knows that if he loses anyone else, if something were to happen to make him miss her even more than he does right now (if that's possible), that would be it. The end. The swing of the axe, the thud as it hits the chopping block. All too fast for him to burst into golden light and save the day as some new stranger. And honestly, he's not sure that he'd mind all that much.

Maybe if there is an afterlife – a heaven, if you will – he'll find her there.

He would die if it would bring him back to her, even for only a fraction of a second. Just enough time to choke out the words, "I love you." He would burn whole worlds, whole species, tear apart the cosmos just for one more minute with her. He would die if it meant he would see her again.

But there's nothing in the universe that can bring him back to her, or her to him.

It's not until the dawn begins to break that he realizes that he's been standing at the granite wall with his palm pressed against her name for hours. The time has just slipped by, dripping away, streaming through the cracks like sand into the bottom of an hourglass. And he wonders, vaguely, how much time he has left.

It's a fleeting thought, though, because he doesn't matter. All that matters to him right now is the memory of her.

She isn't buried here, of course. The wall is a monument, not a grave marker – the bodies of all the Canary Wharf dead sleep in the earth wherever their friends and family decided that they ought to rest. And besides, she isn't buried anywhere. She's so very much alive.

But only he knows that.

She isn't buried. But she has a grave.

Someone made a website dedicated the Battle of Canary Wharf – things like the facts, video clips taken during the battle, the list of the dead, messages from the families of those who died. And there are the locations of the graves of every single person who died at Canary Wharf.

She had no family left here to decide the location of her grave. He wonders briefly who chose the site for her, but doesn't contemplate on it for too long – instead, he simply heads for the cemetery. He chooses not to take the TARDIS there, and instead goes the old fashioned way: he walks.

It's not a great big fenced-in graveyard, like some commercial knockoff of a resting place. Nor is it a hillside covered in dead trees and cobwebs and spiders and dark, creepy mausoleums. It's nice, actually, as graveyards go. It's small, enclosed in a wooded area, and you have to be looking for it to find it – it's not the sort of place that you'd stumble on by accident. It feels serene, peaceful, almost even hopeful.

He finds them quickly – the three stones in the place which are obviously new. They still shine, the same sort of granite as the long wall in the garden, and they're all in a row, one beside the other.

MICKEY SMITH

JAQUELINE ANDREA SUZETTE TYLER

ROSE MARION TYLER

He sits down on the ground in front of Rose's grave, crossing his legs and looking down at the dirt. He doesn't speak to her grave or anything – that would be daft. There's no point in talking to a grave, it's just the pile of dirt over the dead body, it's not like the person's spirit is listening. And besides, Rose Tyler isn't buried underneath that dirt. She's so, so much further away. So far beyond his reach.

So no, he doesn't speak to the grave. He just sits there. And he puts flowers down on it, the bouquet that he stopped to buy from a little shop on his way here. The bouquet of twelve flawless red roses.

Roses for Rose. On a better day, he might've laughed at that.

After about two hours, he hears footsteps, and then someone sits down right beside him. He doesn't look at her, but out of the corner of his eye, he can tell that she's young. Probably twenty or so. Rose's age. She's pretty, with soft features and a button nose, and she wears just a little bit too much makeup – she doesn't need it, anyways, so it's silly. Her eyes are rich, warm brown, almost something like cinnamon; her hair is the darkest of brunette shades, falling in loose curls around her cheeks.

They sit there in silence for about a half an hour, both staring at the same grave, before they acknowledge each other.

"Hello," she finally murmurs.

"Hello," he replies.

The girl nods to Rose's grave. "How did you know her?"

"Ah, we –" He swallows. "We travelled together."

She looks up at him, a small grin growing on her lips despite everything. "You're that Doctor of hers, aren't you?"

That pulls his attention away from Rose's tombstone; he looks over at the girl, puzzled. "Yeah, that's me."

"She's mentioned you," the girl says, turning and staring off into space. "A lot. It's funny – that whole year-long disappearance, that freaked us all out. You'd think that after a scare like that, I'd become closer to her. But I didn't see her much. She was always out – 'travelling', Jackie would say. Always travelling." She sniffles, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "And then when I did see her, all she'd ever talk about was the travelling. And you. 'Doctor this, Doctor that'. Her handsome, funny madman without a name." She turns to look up at him again. "I'm Shareen," she says. "Shareen Costello."

"Shareen," he echoes. "She's mentioned you, yeah. You're her best mate."

Shareen looked away. "I was her best mate."

They're silent for a few minutes, and then she asks, "What did she say about me?"

"All sorts," he replies. "She quoted you quite a bit. 'Don't argue with the designated driver', she liked that one."

Shareen huffs a soft laugh, but there's no emotion behind it, no happiness. "Yeah. That's one of mine."

Another ten minutes pass in silence, and then out of the blue, Shareen says, "We went to France together when we were thirteen. School trip. Whole class was scheduled to go to the Louvre, but we gave the teachers the slip. Went across town, got on a train, and went to Parc Asterix. The police caught us while we were waiting in a queue for the Menhir Express, and we both got sent home." She gives another quiet laugh. "Biggest adventure we every went on, her and I. By the sounds of it, though, the two of you got up to loads more than that."

"I took her to Parc Asterix once," he says. On the day it opened, is what he chooses not to add onto the end of that sentence.

"Yeah?" Shareen replies, and the way she says it is so like the way Rose used to… the way Rose does. He wonders if she picked it up from Rose, or if it was the other way around. "Bet she liked that."

"Yeah," he agrees. "She kept asking. Didn't tell me why."

"Well, now you know," Shareen says quietly. "Nice, isn't it? Still learning new stuff about people you cared about, even after they're…" She trails off, and scrubs furiously at her cheek with the heel of her hand, as though determined to obliterate any evidence of tears. "I chose the spot, y'know," she says. "Me, an' a few other friends of hers and Jackie's. We thought they'd like it best." She looks around the graveyard, a sad smile forming on her face as more tears glisten in her cinnamon eyes. "It's nice, yeah? I come here most days. Just… sit with her. I dunno why, it's not like it helps anything." She swallows hard, and then stands. "I'm, ah… I should be going. It was nice to have met you, Doctor." And then she turns and trudges out of the graveyard, her head bent, her shoulders hunched, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her jeans.

He stays for a while longer. After a few minutes, he reaches out and picks up one of the twelve roses that he's laid on her grave, bringing it up to his face and inhaling deeply. The fragrance of the flower invades his nostrils; the sweet aroma feels like a thick, hazy fog as it creeps over his mind, blurring his vision (or maybe that's just the tears pooling in his eyes). It fills him up with memories of better days, all the time spent with her, because as poetically sappy as it sounds, she always did smell like roses. It wasn't a perfume she wore, she just naturally smelled that way. This is the scent which would envelope him when he embraced her. This is the scent which still fills the air in her pink-and-yellow bedroom, which still lingers on the clothes she's left behind. This is the sweet smell which fills his lungs with the essence of Rose Tyler.

He breathes her in. Gently, deeply, letting the fragrance which is so purely her break through any and all barriers and surround him completely. Seeping into his skin, settling in his hair, running through his veins. He feels so close to her.

But he's so, so far away.

In the end, he leaves only eleven roses on Rose Tyler's empty grave, because he cannot bring himself to part with the twelfth. He carries it with him as, with tears in his eyes, he stands and turns away from her tombstone; as he walks slowly back to the TARDIS through the bitter, stinging wind; as he steps through the door into his familiar blue box, and she hums and dims the lights to welcome him home.

Not that it's really home anymore. Home is where the heart is, yeah? That's the old Earth saying?

Well, if that's true, then home is with Rose.

He cautiously clips the bottom of the stem, handling the flower delicately, treating it with all the care and compassion that he can no longer give the real Rose. And then he finds a vase – it probably would've taken him forever to locate one, but the TARDIS is in a helpful mood, and it only takes him about ten minutes – fills it with water, and gently places the rose inside.

And then he places it gently on the console, just beside the Time Rotor. And when he takes off, leaving Earth in favor of the vast emptiness of deep space, the trip through the vortex is as stable as any he's ever experienced. None of the usual rattling and bumping and occasionally turning sideways; the worst he gets is a soft vibration. Not a single drop of water from the vase spills.

He collapses into the captain's seat, staring longingly at the single red rose in the little glass vase. Standing on the console as a tribute, a monument, more beautiful and more personal than any tombstone or gray granite wall. A single blossoming flower on the console of the TARDIS.

In memory of Rose Tyler.

-0-0-0-

This fic wrote itself. I needed to write a bit of tragic Tenth Doctor angst, and this just popped into my head. I think this is set between The Runaway Bride and Smith and Jones – I didn't have a time planned in my head while writing it, but that's the only time that makes sense, considering. Anyways, drop me a review and let me know what you think!

-Caskett54