Watching and Wishing

AN: This story operates under the assumption that JE and the metacrisis did not occur. I apologize if this is absolute rubbish (likely) as it is my first fic and was written while I was most decidedly not paying attention in one of my literature classes last semester.

Night found Rose staring up at the stars. She only allowed herself to do so every couple of months give or take. If she didn't limit herself she knew she would start moping and spend too much time longing for a life among those stars that was no longer hers. She'd once been told to have a fantastic life and that's exactly what she strove to do every single day. As it was, allowing this occasional luxury of seeing the sparkling expanse of beauty stretched out above her helped Rose to maintain hope.

The stars helped her remember. Sometimes she forgot some of the small details about travelling through them with the strangest, most wonderful alien in all of the universes. Sometimes she needed to forget in order to keep her sanity. But when she began to forget the feel of his hand in hers, the sound of gentle humming produced by the TARDIS, or the excitement of stepping onto a new planet and running for her life, she watched the stars. Those nights, Rose let herself remember everything.

Looking up at the sky, she made a wish on every single star that she could see that she would make it back home one day. Home to that mad man and the magnificent blue box who had stolen him such a long time ago. She had made the same wish every time she'd gazed at the stars for the last two hundred years to no avail. But the stars gave her hope. Maybe this time something would hear her heart crying out and grant its deepest desire.

Until that day Rose would keep protecting this Earth from behind the scenes and trying to find her way back. This universe didn't need her. It had created other people to protect it and they did so brilliantly. Rose only interfered when absolutely necessary. The rest of the time she just observed and guided this universe's protectors to where they needed to be with them none the wiser to her existence. She wasn't supposed to exist here and anything she did beyond this caused dangerous ripples. She made things easier for the defenders of this alternate universe but she wanted to get back to her universe. Back where she could make a real difference. Back to where she could feel needed again instead of just lonely.

Rose wanted to think that the Doctor might need her, but she knew better. She had once thought she needed the Doctor but she'd learned to live without him. She'd discovered that she could make a difference using everything he'd taught her even though they were separated. The Doctor probably hadn't even needed as much time to adjust as she had. He had lived over nine hundred years without her after all. She had filled his need for companionship after the Time War, helped him pick up the pieces, but the initial crisis was over and Rose knew that others were just as qualified and capable of helping him as she was and she hoped that he had found them and had continued healing. She might desperately want to be the one who was with him but she knew she wasn't truly needed. Just as she knew that she would be able to defend the universe more effectively if she were by his side, holding his hand as they ran through the universe. Rose knew all of this. She wanted to be with him more than anything. She just didn't need him anymore.

With those thoughts ringing in her head, the first time Rose had acknowledged all of them together as a single, coherent train of reasoning, even though she'd come to the conclusion subconsciously long ago, a familiar golden haze more brilliant than the stars filled her vision. A melody she thought she'd never hear again rang in her head and with a smile and a flash, Rose Tyler disappeared from the universe she had spent the last two centuries in. No one noticed her departure or missed her once she was gone. Her reappearance in her home universe was another story. Those who had already mourned her rejoiced. The magnificent blue box welcomed her cub home with a song and the mad man took her hand as she reclaimed her place in the universe. They travelled once again, two powerful entities that were together not out of a misguided notion of necessity, but because they knew it was better with two. Side by side, hand in hand, the Doctor and Rose Tyler walked among the stars she had once wished upon and protected the universe that needed them.