Disclaimer: I do not own, nor ever will I own Doctor Who. That belongs to the BBC and Steven Moffat, the rascally devil.

A/N: I got inspiration for this story from the song Paint by The Paper Kites. If you want to listen to the song while reading this chapter, I think it really adds an extra dimension to the story.

"You know when I was a kid, the thing that made me the saddest was that you couldn't eat cherry blossoms."

The Doctor smiled, "Sure you could, they just wouldn't taste any good."

"Ha, you're a poet"

The Doctor laughed and Rose grinned. He had extended the TARDIS airfield so they were sitting on the edge of the door just talking, legs dangling out into space. Rose stared into the thick bluish-black of the universe, pinpricked with starlight, feeling so light and weightless, her hair drifting up around her face.

The Doctor's face suddenly lit up. Old eyes looked young again.

"I know exactly where we should go next" He jumped up from the edge of the TARDIS and half skipped towards the console. Rose stood up and closed the door.

"Ataali 7, planet in the Ritornellous system." He proceeded to flick some random knobs and levers. "Humans colonised it ages ago, after the last species that inhabited it wiped themselves out in the great hat war. Haven't been there for years, the Prime-Minister still owes me a game of chess boxing… anyway, they're famous for their edible cherry blossoms, of course they're not actually cherry blossoms, they're Ataalian Miskrits, but tomato, tomato…" He pulled another lever.

"The Prime Minister owes you a game of ch… oh never mind" Rose laughed and leaned back to sit on the captain's chair. After a few seconds she spoke again.

"Do they taste good, the blossoms"?

"Never tried them, I didn't stay on the planet long enough. Had to make a quick get away. Apparently telling the King's sister she's stupid counts as a federal offence" He shrugged. "Humans and your silly traditions." He pulled another leaver and the TARDIS started shaking. When it stopped, the Doctor didn't wait a second. He ran out of the TARDIS door with his brown trench coat over his arm, Rose following in tow.

"Allons-y Rose Tyler!"

Ataali 7 was beautiful. It was dusted with a light veil of snow, like icing sugar. Cherry blossom trees, with their pastel pink flowers, dotted the landscape.

It was quiet. So quiet you could almost hear a hum, the planet turning, travelling through space. The sky was grey but a white sun shone through the clouds. Snowflakes slid down their fluffy white noses, melting halfway across their lips. Raindrops the size of pearls hung frozen on tree limbs like tiny crystals.

Rose took in a deep breath. The air was so cold; it felt like the ice had travelled to her lungs.

"Doctor, if its so cold, how come the blossoms are still flowering" she asked as she clung to his side. The Doctor, it seemed, was impervious to the cold.

"Genetic Engineering, the whole planet's in recession. Their only income is these little flowers, can't afford to waste a whole season."

Rose walked up to a nearby tree and plucked two blossoms from its branches. She passed one to the Doctor and held the other tentatively to her lips while the Doctor scanned his with the sonic screwdriver.

"No trace of toxins or anything not good, it's all organic material. A bit cold, but that's it."

Rose slowly put the beautiful flower into her mouth. She gagged. It tasted like sour spinach. She almost choked on the bad taste. The Doctor just stared at her.

"Oh, come on. It can't be that bad" he said while putting his own in his mouth. He immediately spat it out. He gagged a little and tried to wipe the taste off his tongue with his hands. Rose just couldn't hold in her laughter and was soon rolling around in the snow, making an impression of this memory in fine ice crystals. The Doctor joined in. When their laughter died down he grabbed Rose's hand and squeezed it. He was still grinning.

"One day, Dame Rose of Powell Estate, I promise, I will find you a cherry blossom that tastes like the food of the gods."

It was times like those that she held onto. When everything else just seemed dark and bleak, she held onto those shining days. She put the Doctors hand in hers. His skin wrapped around his bones and veins lined his body like tiny blue creepers. He was sleeping. Wrinkles covered his ancient face, showing his age too clearly. The very human Doctor slowly opened his eyes. It took a moment for him to register that Rose was beside him. Every movement, every blink, every shuffle, every reaching out of his hand, was slower than it once was, but he smiled his familiar smile and squeezed her hand gently.

"Hello Rose Tyler." He cupped her face in a withered palm.

"You know that's not my…"

"I know." He interrupted her.

"Please don't call me that." She snapped.

"You're right, I'm…I'm sorry."

She sighed. "No… no, it's okay, that was harsh. I can…" She took a deep breath. "I can be Rose for today."

"Alright…" The Doctor whispered softly from dry lips with a sad smile.

They sat in compatible silence for a time, The Doctor found it hard to say how long. Time seemed to lose meaning within the confines of this room's grey walls. There were no ticking clocks to count it, what remained was only the steady beep and whir the machines that held him just on the edge of this universe. It'd been 47 seconds Rose acknowledged.

"You know," joked The Doctor, voice weary but light, "I can honestly say didn't really see this coming…" His words died off slowly. She just bowed her head.

"You shouldn't be alone," remarked the Doctor suddenly. Rose looked up at him to face him, still not speaking.

"I don't want you to be alone, because although you'll tell yourself alone is easier, it's never worth it, and that's coming from me. We all need someone in the end." The Doctor coughed. "I have you."

Rose remained unresponsive. The Doctor's voice became slower. He could feel death coming closer. It was neither a bright light nor a grim shadow. Death felt like a curtain of warm water flowing down the surface of cold, bare skin. It was the horizon swallowing the raging fire of a sun. Calming the hot passion of the sky. He didn't want to die, but it was time.

"I think I'm going now?" It was half a question.

The Doctor reached out to his Rose and seized her face in his hands, lined with the tracks of silent tears. "I love you so much Rose. If those greedy fingers of time take away everything, even if you remember nothing else, you must remember this. Take this knowledge wherever you go, because it's so, so important. It is the most important thing in the entirety of every universe there is. You. Are. Loved."

And with those words his let go and Rose watched as the flickering lights of wonder left her loves eyes.

"I love you too," she whispered.

Approximately Sixty Year Before:

It was a Saturday morning, but Torchwood had called at stranger hours. It was probably just admin stuff, but her commander had a serious problem with knowing when it was sensible to call employees. 6am on a weekend for example was not Rose's "prime time", whether it came down to her level of physical dishevelment, or just general drowsiness. But Rose didn't want to miss anything, just in case it was something important. She loathed thinking what would happen if she called in sick and there was an alien invasion. She'd miss out on all the fun.

She tapped an impatient rhythm on the worn leather of the steering wheel. It was an old car; she'd bought it second-hand. Of course Pete had more than enough money to buy her a proper vehicle; one that would start smoothly and without the tired cough of being driven one too many times. Without the chipping paint around the edges of the driver's door. But Rose refused every time he offered. This car was the one thing she'd payed for, truly earned, herself. So she didn't mind the peeling leather, or the rusty door handles, because it was hers and hers alone.

The traffic was stagnant. Rose looked down at the passenger seat beside her. A little gift-wrapped package lay nestled in-between an abandoned cardigan and the Torchwood issue backpack every employee was expected to have on them at all times. It was The Doctor's 'birthday' in a week. He had never celebrated birthdays before, last year and the year before he just seemed to get around it, but this year Jackie had practically forced the party hat onto his head. Rose only half sympathised.

And as she sluggishly inched her wreck of a car forward, Rose deemed this life to be pretty good one. She had a beautiful home, courtesy of Pete, a steady job, and a wonderful sort-of-boyfriend. It's what she'd always dreamed of as a little girl, living in Powell Estate. It was the life she'd created for her little wooden dolls, and the happy endings she'd dreamed of when playing pretend with Mickey. Of course Rose missed the stars. The little pinpoints of light that held so much wonder and so many adventures. She could tell The Doctor did too. It was obvious to anyone who knew him well. On lazy Sundays he'd itch for some sort of action, some release, and so he got himself into some sort of trouble more than she supposed was proper. Despite this he was getting better at being human everyday.

They'd been living in this Universe for just a little over three years now. Rose was slowly moving up the ranks of Torchwood. Through her own merit she might add. Pete wouldn't have given her any sort of special privilege even if she'd asked.

In her own little private moments, Rose took the time to dream that one of these days The Doctor would finally ask her to marry him. Rose hoped it wasn't too presumptuous of her. Not that those doubts stopped her from dropping little hints. And she had been fairly obvious about it. But with The Doctor, who knew whether anything would get through that thick skull of his. It was one of Rose's favourite pastimes to dream of the future. They would have a small wedding if she could manage to rein Jackie in, only people they actually knew and liked. Once Rose and The Doctor together had finally managed to save up enough money, they would buy a small house in the countryside. Rose would swap in Torchwood for an ordinary job and be a proper grown-up for once. They would have a daughter, and they would name her Frida, and Rose would plant her a garden of sunflowers to play in. Rose shook her head. The traffic was starting to move again, and there was plenty of time for the future when she actually arrived there.

Her phone made a noise from her bag. She reached through the canvas folds and turned her head to look at the message. It was a text from Pete, telling her to buy more milk on the way home. Rose rolled her eyes. The man drank the stuff by the galleon. And that's where it happened. Years later they told her it was a motorcyclist drugged up on Ice. He'd driven straight through a tricky intersection and into the side of the car that Rose had been occupying. They said he'd died on impact. They both had.

Tyres screeching. Glass Breaking. Metal Bending. A horrible fire, burning her every cell. It was excruciating and it dug its way into her mind. Fire licking at her senses, a sickening yellow.

And then, through her stifled red screams, she could see it all. All that was, is, and could ever be. Tender timelines were invading her already fragile vision, whispering unintelligible sounds in her ears. Rose wanted to run from it. To run so very far away, but she couldn't fight her own mind. She wanted instinctually to somehow scrape it clean from her head. With a knife, with anything, anything that would make the baffling mess disappear.

Dually however, there was something awfully, frighteningly hollow about it all. A darkness in the back of her mind that just felt wrong, so vast, so open and blank; the agony of loneliness.

Then the pain stopped. The fire just went out, like it was never there to begin with. Oh but the feeling in her head stayed the same. Suddenly the world looked so easy. She saw the equation in the bird's flight, the poetry in the spin of a bike's wheel. She could hear the music of the universe, the harmonies of the planets. She could see how everyone was connected. They were all instruments in an orchestra, part of something bigger, something she had never before hoped to comprehend. But she didn't want to see it. It terrified her. It was all so disorienting. Rose pressed her palms hard against her temples and tightly scrunched up her eyes, taking in deep breaths.

After Rose calmed down somewhat, she managed to climb out of her pretzel of a car. Confused onlookers watched her stumble away uneasily, but did nothing to stop her. The Bystander Effect… something whispered in the back of her mind, but she simply ignored it in favour of making sure she was still in one piece and had all limbs accounted for.

Despite the fact that Rose's vision maintained it's stubborn blurriness, the Torchwood officer in her kicked in and she managed to make it all the way to the ladies room of a nearby café before being sick in a waste bin.

As her vision cleared up, Rose looked down at her hands. They were so dirty. She walked as steadily as she could, over to the single cracked china washbasin. There were no mirrors in the bathroom. Nothing to help her asses he overall wellbeing.

Even as Rose ran her hands under clean water, the dirt wasn't coming off. She squeezed on more soap from the dispenser, but no matter what she did, the dirt wouldn't budge. That was when she noticed it didn't just cover her hands, but her arms and legs as well. She was properly scared now. She shut her eyes tightly and scrunched them up again until her face hurt. Maybe this was the shock catching up with her. She would need a new car… the stray thought formed as she tried to breathe deeply and gain some semblance of focus.

Rose walked out of the bathroom. With the current state of her clothes, she hoped she didn't frighten any of the shop's customers.

"Can if I borrow a mirror or something?" She asked the lady at the counter. That wasn't nice, why was she being rude? This was just a stranger; she didn't need to be rude. "Please." Rose added in quickly. The girl didn't look up, focused on her phone, and simply slid a small mirror across from the other side of the table. "Right, thanks." Rose said quickly before rushing back to the bathroom.

She held the worn, old mirror up to her face to check for damages but quickly dropped it. It shattered into pieces on the floor and waves of glass dust dispersed across the bathroom tile. Her hands clasped her mouth to muffle any screams. Her heart skidded to halt in her chest. There was a stranger in the mirror.

Rose crawled over to the collection of broken mirror pieces before picking up the largest shard. In her haste she sliced open her palm and droplets of scarlet blood dribbled down her forearm, but she ignored the pain. She held the piece of mirror up to her face again. The woman staring back at her was not Rose Tyler.

The woman had an exotic air around her. She had short but dead straight black hair, which pooled at her shoulders like satin, and dark skin the colour dead autumn leaves. Her eyes were large and black, reminding her vaguely of ink in a bottle cap. Her chin was narrow, but her nose took surprising prominence on her face. This couldn't be her, but when Rose blinked, the woman blinked and when she brought her injured hand up to the mirror, scarlet blood dripped from the woman's as well. However before her eyes golden dust collected around the wound, along with a gentle prickling feeling. When the dust disappeared, the gash was gone.

It wasn't possible and that was the truth. She was gold star human and that wasn't something she wanted to change, but her mind started entertaining impossible ideas. Creeping black vines of speculation dug roots in the back of her brain and the universe begin to whisper dangerous thoughts in her ear.

Taking staggered breaths, Rose slowly placed her hand across her chest before ripping it away like she'd been burnt. No…no, this was impossible, entirely improbable. "But it's the truth…" a traitorous voice whispered in the recesses of her mind. And it was right. She couldn't forget what she had felt there. In the moment when she had placed her palm to her chest.

A double heart beat.

This time Rose couldn't completely muffle the screams.

This was all wrong. It was all backwards. Perhaps her Doctor would know what to do, know how to fix her. He would know. He always knew. A fever came over her. Suddenly all she could see was the path in front of her, the path that would lead her to the Doctor. Rose picked herself up from the tiled bathroom floor, not caring when shards of forgotten glass sliced at her bare feet. She ran out of the café ignoring the strange looks she was receiving from the customers. She ran because that's what she did, that's what they always did, her and her Doctor. She ran all the way home, though she was found getting used to her new body quite awkward. She could feel it start to get tired but Rose just kept on running and by the time she reached the Tyler Mansion she was gasping for breath and drenched in a cloak of sweat.

She climbed the bluestone steps, key in had, preparing her heart (hearts, she corrected herself). As carefully as she could manage she slipped the key into the lock. She didn't turn it. The world ground to a heavy halt. Yet, she noted, the wind still weaved between the strands of her now black hair, the song of the morning birds still resounded though the cold rays of early sunshine, and yet her hand remained still. She couldn't open the door (and not because, as she realised later, it had been her TARDIS key that she had held in her hand). She couldn't open the door, not like this, not with two hearts beating is her chest. Rose started to panic. Those hearts, they would be a constant reminder of the life they could have had. Her kind, gorgeous, and so very human Doctor, he waited for her behind that door. The door she felt become heavy grinding steel under her touch. What could she tell him?

"Hello Darling, I was in a car crash today and I regenerated, apparently I'm a Time Lord. Oh, and now we can't spend the rest of our lives with each other anymore. Woops."

The very idea was laughable, but Rose didn't feel like laughing. She imagined The Doctor's face once he knew. The heartbreak in eyes that had only just begun to heal. Dark thoughts started to speak to her again. Wasn't it better letting him think that she was dead? Her hand begun to slide down the door's wooden panels. Maybe he could move on with his life, be loved again by someone who could give him that beautiful life. The life, after nine hundred years of pain and loss and suffering, there was no question he deserved. She began to pull the key out of the lock. In the back of her head she knew she couldn't do that to him, but she needed escape all of this. She couldn't deal with it. Rose, for the first time in a long time, felt that her many adventures, her trials and her heartbreak had only made her younger. She felt like a child. The Doctor would know. He always knew about these kinds of things, but she couldn't go back to him like this. The Doctor thought she was brave. But she wasn't brave enough. Perhaps she had been once, but that time had passed. As she walked back the other way, down the bluestone steps, dappled in sunlight, she knew she was making the wrong decision. But she had already pulled her key out of the lock and she knew, just as surely, that she wasn't capable of bringing herself to slide it back in.

She felt light warm her dark skin, as she walked down the side of the house, eyes closed and fingers trailing along red brick.

Fate took too much pleasure in irony. Now she had somewhat of a clue to how the original Doctor felt. She loved him so much, too much, more than could be allowed because she couldn't stay. She couldn't face it all. She couldn't watch him wither and die before her eyes. It would destroy her. It would eat away at her day by day she knew. Slowly nibble at her sanity until nothing but the hollow rattle of empty bones remained. Rose Tyler the shell. And death was better than that. Most things in the universe were better than that.

The world remained quiet around her, only the soft rustle of wind through leaves like the fingers of a pianist. She finally reached the corner of the garden, eyes searching the shadows underneath the tall willow tree they had planted.

And there she was. The TARDIS, a blue police box as a salute to her mother. Rose stroked the blue wood and let herself inside, stepping out of the morning sun. She stroked the controls. They felt alien, then again, so did she. The human doctor had a while ago taught Rose how to fly her and ever since then Rose had nurtured a sort of freedom of which she couldn't explain. Now she was aching to get away from this world; to sprint forever into the sky and away from all the pain, away from a confrontation with the Doctor. Of course, she would be back to see him in the morning. But for Rose, the morning was so very far away.

Time to start running.