Hi, well I'm new to the Doctor Who fanfiction community,but not at all to the fandom! This is my first Doctor Who fanfiction, however, and my first time writing the characters, so apologies for any OOC moments - especially with Twelve! I really appreciate any reviews/comments.

I have become very nostalgic lately, and I have started reading Doctor Who fanfiction again... and this is what happened. It was meant to be a quick one-shot, but then it got too long for my liking, so it may go on a bit... but it is supposed to be a Christmas fic, I swear! It'll get there eventually. Oh, and one more thing, have a very merry Christmas!

Together they cruised the celestial shatters of distant deep plum nebulas, screeching like wild things as their blue box tossed their adrenalized legs away from beneath them, chuckling as they then became a tangled, pheromonal mess of limbs and hair. The blonde's tongue hitched behind her front teeth, and a gorgeous smile crumpled her face. Atop of her, the Doctor reciprocated with an equally deserved beam.

Gods... she was the epitome of human beauty. He could rarely concentrate around her.

He scrambled up and away from his thoughts with a wobble that misplaced his flocks of chocolate hair - unbefitting of his once brash and proud assertions that his russet tresses were really, actually, implausibly gratify-defying. His sidekick had been incredulous, bursting into episodic fits of wrinkling laughter as he, like an infantile, pouted, insistent of his hair's somehow 'inexplicable' credentials.

His long slender hand offered itself up for her as if by some marvellous second-nature, and she safely hooked her fingers around his, goggling at how, just as a key compliments a lock, they seemed rather fitting, slotting into place wholly, wholly-

Holy crap! Rose landed on her behind with a mousy bump, startled. What the hell?

It was then she heard the Doctor's shrill whimper of cackles, his mirth cultivating in a reluctant scrape of spilling tears from his grinning eyes. The bastard. What a complete pillock.

'Oi! S'not funny!' But she couldn't hamper the small giggle from permeating her words.

'Well,' he accentuated the exclamation, 'it sort of is.' Her glare threw him in another direction. 'Well,' he began again, 'if sort of actually means really, really, really, incredibly not at all funny in any way. Ever.' He took a sheepish nod.

'You need to buy yourself a new dictionary, mate. Oh, and when you do, look up sod. There'll be a little picture of you right there, and the caption will read, "The Oncoming Sod, King of all bloody-minded sods.'

He cocked an eyebrow, 'Been there, done that, actually got a whole fruit stand from it... long story, very long story...' He chattered off to the distance, in a world only he could see. The blonde coughed.

He snapped back his eyes, returning to the present, and continued, 'Planet named Sodonia, inhabited by the great Sodianoxyraxcatarian people, or for time-saving purposes often named the-'

'No way,' she waggled a finger at him. 'You're having me on.'

'Do I ever?' He flashed her a somewhat ambiguous grin, and she could tell no more or no less from it. Hell, he was unbelievable! Unbelievably... gorgeous. Her internalised voice flamed into an externalised blush, and she squirmed uncomfortably.

The Doctor was apparently unawares. 'Anyway, you are speaking to her majesty Queen Doctor of the Sods, saviour of Sodonia.' He studied her face; did he just imagine - no, couldn't have been.

'Queen.'

He shrugged nonchalantly. 'They're a gender-neutral planet, with an extreme anatomical evolution. They get confused.'

She shook her head at him. He whirled back from her, fiddling with his extrapolator, pumping the wotsit; he had bowed, accentuating the curvature of his neck, the plumpness of the lump affixed unshakably in his throat. He tried to swallow it down.

A few moments passed. 'Rose?' She met his gaze, instantly, passionately.

'How long are you going to stay with me?' The grotesque shadow scratched into his eyes and crouched there, peeling his scab of personal boundaries with a squelch.

She patched up his blinding insecurities with a sparkling, rose-petal smile of which she must have sought inspiration from her name.

'Forever.' It was merely a whisper in his darkness, yet is shone brilliant in gold, and he was awakened to her devotion in a spur, a rush of feeling. He trusted her completely, loved her fully and entirely. And he believed her. They would stay together always.

But it wouldn't last! It wouldn't last! 'Er... hello?' His reverie ripped. He drew, no whipped, open his eyelids, like rumpled Japanese shutters.

'Er... hello, mister?' That wasn't Rose.

She wasn't there.

The TARDIS undulated before him, some monstrous kraken of which he felt submerge his subconscious in ripples. He risked a glance down at his steely hands; they wrinkled, elongated, pearly white fingers returning like worms to a corpse.

'Mister?'

The Doctor squeezed his head, as if hoping to trap his old memories. 'Shut up! Shut up, shut up!' His Scottish accent erupted forth.

'Oi!'

And then he awoke into his real world. The earth was hard and cold underneath him, the grass stony under winter's harsh, numbing breath of which had given him immediate whiplash. The titanic, age-old oaks beside him crackled their own private song, with the lonely moonlight waltzing wretchedly upon the dark floor in response.

The Doctor wiped down his face. He was seated he figured, almost slumped perhaps. And something was definitely digging into the groove of his back...

He turned. Aha! The old girl! He patted the TARDIS affectionately. But wasn't he usually inside when he was flying her?

He sniffed. Earth, like that didn't happen often. He supposed the TARDIS wanted to comfort him.

In a brisk assault of the senses, he became aware of the small presence beside him, and the pair of eyes so bemusedly focused on his ship.

He put on his grumpy face. 'What? Can't you tell I was sleeping?' The Doctor lectured the five year old.

She regarded him with a fierce glower, cheeks flushing. It was quite unnerving, scary even. The Oncoming Storm, the saviour, the destroyer, of worlds, all stern in his previous reproach, felt himself taken aback by this small earthling.

'You 'ad your eyes open,' she insisted, pulling at her rucksack straps.

'Don't be so stupid. You had your eyes closed.'

The girl frowned, opened her mouth to protest.

The Doctor dismissed her, 'Shh! Shh,' he regarded her for the first time, '... human child!' He waved his arms at her. 'Your constant mumbling fails to prove you're not as dim as the rest of them. So you can stop now. It's a waste of good oxygen.' Knotting her arms, the youngster grew a face of murder, and they lapsed into a silence.

The Doctor coughed, needing to form a embarrassing contradiction. 'What year is it?' She was unresponsive, regarding his words as an unbreakable law, just in order to aggravate. 'Oh come on. This isn't Mastermind. It's not a million pound question.'

She arched her eyebrow, considering this weird man in complete seriousness. Shrugging, she blasted, '1991. 24th December.'

'Ah, give the girl a gold star,' and as he processed her answer, 'Awful year.' He jumped up, slipped into his TARDIS. 'Don't want to stay around here too long.'

He sighed up at his machine, whirling, whining in the gloom.

These memories of her he couldn't shake from him; his mind was a warzone, ablaze with regrets, oh a thousand regrets. Regrets for his Rose. He knew he shouldn't feel this way; his torn hearts were scythed aeons ago, and he used to swear time was the universe's greatest healer. He only wanted one thing now, just the one: peace, some peace on Christmas Eve.

'What you doing?' It was the shrill whining again. What was it with these human children?

TO BE CONTINUED.