REMEMBER ALLONSY?

Disclaimer:Nothing is mine

Author's Note: Only ten minutes until "Journey's End"

My version of the scene after the "To be continued" bit of "The Stolen Earth"

"What does he mean he's 'regenerating'?" shrieked a blotchy eyed, runny-nosed Donna Noble, clinging on to Jack's coat with a vice-like grip. "Oh my God, he's burning!"

Wailing in fresh panic, her face chalk white, Donna turned away from the horrifying, terrifying scene being played out in front of her. The Doctor's face and hands were enclosed in what looked like bright yellow flames, so bright that it made her eyes ache. She squeezed them shut rather that look at the Doctor; her wonderful, insufferable best friend. Because she did…she loved this tall, skinny, talkative Martian Man. Maybe not in the same way as Rose, the sobbing shaking blonde woman clinging on to Jack's other side, but she'd grown very fond of him, despite their sibling-like bickering and didn't want him to 'change.' Whatever Rose had meant by 'change' anyway…

She was aware of a strong arm around her shoulders, holding her upright. That handsome man; Captain Jack Harkness. He was a complete stranger to her, yet she was pressed tightly against him as if he were a life raft. She tried to open her eyes again, to focus on the Doctor…she couldn't give up on him, not now, but it was so difficult; there was a roaring in her ears and the console room seemed to explode in a ball of light, like a firework. The central column exploded and her skin tingled with heat. It was too hot; too hot to think, too hot to breathe. The warm, stifling air hissed over her body, cradling her head and pressing against her eyelids. She felt something soft, like material beneath her fingertips and heard a woman screaming, screaming for the Doctor, until she realised that it was herself. Herself and Rose; two petrified female voices bleating in the confusion and the wreckage, as the world danced in front of them, before taking a fatigued final bow, and they fell, fell like newborn birds falling weak and scared from their nest. Into the jaws of darkness and hellish confusion as the floor came up to meet them and stole their consciousness.

"…No wait a minute, that was Club Med!" the Doctor said laughing in an aren't-I-just-hilarious sort of way, and bumping into her with his shoulder, his eyes twinkling. Rose smiled back at him, amusedly and reached down to take his hand, but to her horror… the Doctor disappeared. The tidy London street they had been walking along disappeared and she found herself in a different room. A bare, vast empty room with white walls, and her position beside the Doctor had changed too, as had his facial expression. Instead of being at his side, she was standing directly in front of him, and she could see that he was no longer smiling. His brow was furrowed, his eyes contained anger and disbelief, and it was being directed at her.

"I made my choice a long time ago," she heard herself saying shakily, "And I'm never going to leave you."

Then, an array of images passed across her eyes, flashing in and out of sequence. A pyjama-clad Doctor saying something incomprehensible to taunt the Sycorax leader; sitting at a table with him on an old spaceship with a lukewarm cup of tea, talking glumly and awkwardly about getting a mortgage; a quiff-haired Doctor marching towards her with a wide, delighted grin and pulling her into his arms; an image of him kneeling proudly beside her as they were made 'Sir' and 'Dame' by Queen Victoria; a faint, untouchable projection of the Doctor standing on a blustery beach with tears in his eyes, saying her name…

"Rose," said a cracked, familiar voice from somewhere above her. She felt a gentle hand on her face, felt the hard metal grating of the floor vibrating beneath her and smelt…burning electricity, metal and dust. The smell of the TARDIS. But there was another smell, too; a warm, comforting and achingly beautiful scent she associated with bananas and ball bearing cakes and bone-crushing hugs; running down a street, laughing; cups of tea and, and…home.

"Rose," said the tearful, yet heart warming voice again. She felt her eyelids prickle with tears and a lump rising in her throat; she hadn't heard that voice in so long; a few snatched seconds on a wet street didn't count…

Slowly, she opened her eyes, realising dimly that she was lying on her back on the TARDIS floor with a blurry brown and flesh-coloured shape looming above her.

"Doctor?" she said dazedly, a pair of gorgeously intense brown eyes swimming into focus.

"Hello," he said weakly, bending down and carefully wiping a tear from her wet cheeks. She frowned, looking at him properly through her eyelashes. His face was pale and sweaty, heavy with weariness and anxiety. There were definitely more lines creasing around his eyes and his forehead than she remembered but…he was the same. He was the same? But…but he couldn't be? How could he be the same? He had regenerated; she had watched through her tears, crying out for him as he'd tilted his head back, and once again burst into a ball of frightening, fantastical light. Yet, here were the same intelligent eyes that she felt had had the ability to look straight through her and read her thoughts; the chiseled, handsome bone structure of his face was exactly the same as the one that had haunted her dreams, as the one that had been splashed with his tears as he'd said goodbye to her at Bad Wolf Bay, if a little more shadowed across his jaw by day-old stubble. The same nose, the same sideburns, the same hair. Big, softly tousled mop of messy brown hair, which still looked as though he had been running his fingers through it in thought.

"You haven't changed," she gasped, touching a tentative hand to his face and struggling to sit up.

"Do you want me to?" he asked, with a half-smile, attempting to help her up, even though she could see that he could barely hold himself up. He looked fatigued and ashen, as if it were taking up every ounce of his energy to talk to her.

"No!" she said quickly, at last sitting up properly, raising a hand to her temple as her head spun, making her feel dizzy and disorientated.

"You did the last time," he told her, his face looking pained, though there was a glimmer of soft recognition in his eyes. Rose felt something warm and wet drop onto her cheek and trickle down her chin. A teardrop. One that was not her own, she realised, with a feeling of pity and helplessness, as if a tight, achy elastic band had fastened itself around her chest. It was the Doctor's. The Doctor was crying.

"I know," she muttered guiltily, a watery smile curving her lips as she reached up and grazed her thumb across the soft, satiny skin beneath his eyes. "But I'm very fond of this face," she admitted, with a dry sob. "I've only just found it again, I couldn't bear to lose it."

The Doctor tried to grin at her. The glimpse of white teeth was a mere ghost of the brilliant smile she'd missed so much. His eyes were too moist and shiny, his mouth too defeated. "And here's me thinking it wouldn't matter to you what I looked like," he joked feebly.

Fresh tears sprang to her eyes at the faintness of his voice; he sounded so weak and fragile and…broken.

"It doesn't!" she choked, grabbing his face with both her hands. "You're my Doctor," she began, but the almighty, heartfelt sob that escaped her lips drowned out her words and prevented her from continuing.

"I should think so, too," remarked the Doctor sadly, silent tears still coursing down his face, holding onto her shaking shoulders, his limp fingers curling desperately around the fabric of her jacket.

Rose nodded in agreement, and the pair exchanged an emotion-filled smile. "What happened?" she asked, unsurely, trying to shake off the feeling of nausea.

"My regeneration went a bit wrong he said," trying to make light of it, his eyes flickering to the floor, looking at something just beyond Rose's line of sight. "Actually, I say a bit, I mean 'very,'" he said gently brushing a strand of hair out of Rose's eyes, where it had been sticking to her damp cheeks, his own eyes wide and haunted. "The energy surge shattered the console and dissipated everything in its radius."

Rose pulled a face at his use of overly technical words, even though the foreboding in his words hit her like a tonne of bricks. Something had happened to him, though she innately knew that he wasn't about to tell her. Even dying, he was more concerned about looking after her…just as he always had been…

Half sitting up, half leaning on her elbows, with the Doctor kneeling against her, either for support or comfort, over the Doctor's shoulder Rose could make out the still unconscious forms of Jack and Donna. Licks of flames danced around them and the console, from the spirals of fire that had leapt up as a result of the Doctor's failed regeneration. She could hear the sound of a clanging bell coming from somewhere, like the toll of a sinking ship, along with the low, mournful hum of the TARDIS itself. The golden-hued walls had taken on a blood red, sickening appearance that blared of danger and insecurity, like being trapped in the belly of a beast.

Rose's hands crept to the Doctor's hairline, feeling the cold clamminess of his forehead and stroking a tuft of his soft hair.

"You're not ginger," she told him, trying to revert back to their easy, flirtatious camaraderie, but her voice sounded too choked up and thick.

"I'll manage," he said grimacing bravely, but she could see that his eyes were starting to lose focus and his already loose grasp on her shoulders was weakening.

"Will you?" she whimpered. If he hadn't regenerated, did that mean he was going to die? He couldn't, though! She'd rather have a new Doctor than no Doctor. After so many years apart, to find him and to have him taken away again was just cruelly unfair…

"Tell me you're not going to die," she said, so quietly that she was almost inaudible, tracing his face with her fingers, desperation clinging to every syllable.

"I don't know," whispered the Doctor, his face crumbling frighteningly, looking scared. No, more than scared; deadly afraid, his lips were trembling. He looked like a small child; lost and dependable. It was almost possible to see every one of his 903 years on his face, all of the suffering and the never-ending torment.

It was in that moment, as she stared up at him, that Rose, regardless of her tired emotional state, realised just how much and how powerfully she still loved him. Of course, she'd never stopped, but it was like trying to remember a favourite, missing photograph.

You see it, and it's so beautiful and brilliant that you memorize every inch of it, learn every outline, every minute detail and commit it to memory; so that even when you don't have it anymore you can still see it in your mind's eye; a carbon copy of the original. But then, when you see the photograph again, you realise that it was far lovelier than you remembered, that your studied mental picture hadn't been doing justice at all. The real photograph was so much better…she loved him so much more than she'd realised.

The depth of her feelings for this extraordinary man was overwhelming. Seeing him like this; it hurt, it made her feel physically ill. Desperation burnt at her throat and clawed at her chest, as if she'd swallowed ice. Ice and fire.

"Listen to me," she said, touching his cheek tenderly, trying to sound confident and authoritative, yet she was failing miserably; it sounded more as if she was pleading. Which in fact, she supposed she was. "I won't let you die, alright? I won't let you! I came back for you, so don't you dare leave me, Doctor!"

The Doctor smiled at her tiredly, a fat tear running over his lower lashes. "You certainly took your time," he remarked, trying to tease her.

Rose gave a small laugh, her face pink and streaked with black mascara, her eyes red and puffy. "Yeah well, like I said; I've been busy…been doing a lot of running"

He gave her a wistful smile, his eyes never leaving hers. His gaze was still so warm and intense that she felt as if she could lose herself in it. Never to find her way out.

She shifted slightly, her sweaty palms sticking to the cold floor as one of the Doctor's hands left her shoulder and fumbling, found her hand and caught it in his own. Rose stifled a cry as she entwined their fingers, their palms slotting into place around each other like pieces of a jigsaw. It felt old and comforting and warm and so, so right and familiar. Tears of…what? Relief? Disbelief? Nostalgia? Whatever they were, they welled up in her eyes again but she made no attempt to stop them. Rose squeezed his hand tightly, a memory of standing terrified in a darkened shop basement about to be killed by shop window dummies, flashing into her head; then feeling a large, rough hand take hers and hearing a gruff Northern voice urging her to run.

"Look, we still fit," she noted, a happy, tearful grin stretching her lips and she sniffed, gazing down at their joined hands; they were each holding the other's so tightly that their fingers hurt, but neither would ever think of letting go.

"That's more like it," said the Doctor, his face strained and absolutely white. Any minute now he was going to lose consciousness. "A bit of the old smile," he rasped, echoing some of her final words to him from that terrible, terrible day at Canary Wharf. He'd said them on purpose…he knew exactly how significant they were. Did they bring up the same, haunting images as they did for her? Did they fill him with the same dread and horror, and the feeling of utter loss and despair? She'd thought that that day was the worst day of her life; how could anything be worse than that? But she'd been wrong; this was far worse; losing him all over again, seeing him writhe in pain on the floor, this was the worst she'd ever felt…

"Oh, don't" she implored him, her eyes full and distressed. "Don't ta…"

"Rose," the Doctor interrupted her in a faint voice that sounded wheezy, like dead leaves and the old pages of a book. He clasped her hand even tighter and brought their joined fist up to her eye-level. "It's better with two," he said, his face crumpling as he remembered something she had said to him a very long time ago; a friendly, casual comment that had soon grown to hold so much more meaning for both of them. His eyes, though unfocused were gleaming, and again they drifted to something on the floor that she couldn't see.

"Yeah," she whispered back. "The old team; Shiver and Shake, remember?"

The Doctor's face seemed to fold in on itself and he swayed against her, his strength evaporating, but Rose clung on to him.

"Rose," he said wonderingly, as if something had just occurred to him. Something long forgotten. "Rose, I meant to tell you…"

Rose stilled, her eyes softening. Was he about to tell her? After years of being unsure, was he about to finally finish his sentence? But…he couldn't. That would be far too much like goodbye.

"Don't…don't, it's alright, it doesn't matter," she assured him, rubbing his hand, shaking her head at him.

"Yes it does," retorted the Doctor, and she definitely wasn't imagining the indignant note in his voice. Indignant and pleased. "Rose, I met someone called 'Alonso,'" he told her, sounding extremely proud of himself…and I said it, I said 'Allons-y Alonso!'"

"You…wh-Oh!"

For a split second Rose had been a bit oblivious as to what he was on about, but then something triggered in her mind and she remembered wearing a blue, fluffy cardigan, leaning against the TARDIS console with a wry smile on her face as the Doctor leapt around, pressing buttons, chirping on about how brilliant it would be to meet someone called 'Alonso', so then he could say 'Allons-y, Alonso' every time. Though, only a few seconds later she had burst his happy bubble by informing him that her mum was still on board…and then they'd landed at Torchwood.

That had been her last flight in the TARDIS, though at the time she hadn't known that. It had been the last time she'd seen the Doctor as his usual, cheery self. That day he'd landed at Torchwood with the aim of insulting a few people, telling off a handful of officials and stopping the 'Ghosts' from coming through. He hadn't intended on losing her…As soon as she'd seen the armed Torchwood officers outside as they'd landed, they should have left…they should have done what they were very good at and ran, hand in hand. But they hadn't. Despite her protests, the Doctor had gently moved Rose from the doorway, his hands at her waist, and had trundled out into Torchwood: London quite casually. Thus the events of her 'death' had been set in motion…

To think that it was this that he wanted to tell her…who had he been with when he'd met this 'Alonso'? Donna? Or had it been that other woman? Martha Jones? But…they wouldn't have understood; it had been Rose that the Doctor had first said it to; it would have been Rose who he wanted by his side when he met Alonso. But she hadn't been.

Rose felt her brow pull together and her eyes scrunch up as, quite without warning she let out a huge, wracking sob and threw her arms around the Doctor's neck and crushed him to her, burying her face between his neck and his shoulder. The Doctor responded with such enthusiasm that they actually toppled over; he gripped her tightly around the waist, one hand clutching at her back desperately, the other curled up in her hair.

Rose cried. Cried properly; she hadn't cried with such deep-set, curdling emotion since Bad Wolf Bay, when with the wind blowing her hair around her face and sand into her eyes, the image of the Doctor had flickered out, and she'd been left with the realisation that she really was never going to see him again, never going to be able to see that melting, brilliant smile of his again…she didn't even have a picture of him.

She knew that he wouldn't be able to make out anything from her noisy torrent of wails and lamentations as she cried, sopping tears and snot into his jacket as she pulled him tighter to her, needing to touch him as much as possible, to feel him pressed close against her as if she were afraid he'd disappear if she let go, yet she didn't think the Doctor minded. She could feel his body shaking against hers as he wept freely, digging his chin into her shoulder.

"I missed you," she said over and over again. "So, so much. Oh my God I missed you. Doctor, I missed you."

It was as if by saying it, by repeating it like a mantra, he'd be able to get half an idea of how much she really had missed him. Because 'I missed' you was worthless, it was useless and trite and banal and…insignificant…unsatisfactory. No words would ever be able to express that awful, dreary feeling of incompleteness that had been surrounding her since she lost him. How could words ever express the dull ache she'd experienced behind her eyes, the feeling of lead seeping into the pit of her stomach as she'd woken up every morning in a cold, strange bed in Pete's mansion, knowing that she would be facing another day feeling sad and lonely without the Doctor by her side, rather than waking up in a humming TARDIS, ready to be taken by the hand and shown the universe?

Nothing could ever describe the feeling of hollowness she'd felt every time she'd reached down to take the Doctor's hand whenever she'd been running as part of an mission for Torchwood, only to come into contact with empty air, to see nobody running beside her.

'I miss you,' definitely didn't cover that helpless, sinking feeling she'd felt every time she'd caught a glimpse of tall man in a suit milling about in a crowd, or seen the tail of a long brown trench coat go whipping round the corner and had hared after it, only to encounter a complete stranger.

"I should think so, too," he murmured as he pressed his head to hers, his warm breath tickling Rose's ear, her blonde hair falling down in wisps onto his face. "And I suppose…"

"Don't!" she warned him with a sound that was half laugh, half sob. If he dared say, "If it's my last chance to say it," she'd be tempted to dig her elbows into him, no matter how exhilarated she felt to be hugging him again.

"…If I'm being honest," he continued, with a laugh, smiling into her hair, but with tear-stained cheeks. " I missed you, too."

Rose beamed, still with her head resting against his shoulder and ruffled his hair, leaving her hand to linger where his hair met the back of his neck.

"Only a little bit, though," he added casually, though she could hear him smiling into his words and knew that he was teasing her. If his silent tears and the tender way he was holding her was anything to go by, he had in fact, missed her far more that either of them had fully realised.

Rose kept her arms wrapped around him but pulled away slightly so she could look at him properly. Tearful light brown eyes found equally teary dark brown ones, and they stared at each other intently, falling into a deep silence. Their shared look held everything; every misery, every regret, every pent-up desire, every feeling of loneliness since they parted.

The Doctor swallowed and the shine in his eyes died. He suddenly seemed extremely tired and vulnerable, as if he had at last allowed the universe to get the better of him and was too hurt, too broken and weary to care. Wordlessly, he untangled his hand from her hair, skimming her cheek and slackened his hold from around her, allowing Rose to gather him in her arms. For the first time, it was Rose holding the Doctor, her turn to comfort him, to hug him and not be hugged back. She was holding him in the same way he had held her at Sanctuary Base 6, when she'd been lost and frightened and he had simply taken hold of her, as if just by hugging her he could protect her and keep her safe, keep them both from falling into a black hole.

This reversal of roles was new and completely heartbreaking. Rose cradled him with such strength and affection, that for a moment they could both pretend that the universe wasn't steadily falling apart, that their sad, tumultuous paths weren't about to be wrenched apart again in the danger that was to be forced upon them within the next few hours. Both Rose and the Doctor knew that they shouldn't be together again…it should be impossible for them to be like this, to be seeing each other. Rose should not have been able to cross so many parallels to reach him, and because she had, it meant that the fabric of time was unraveling, that the universe was collapsing, but nevertheless, she had.

If they squeezed their eyes shut and blocked out the sounds of the roaring flames and the forlorn, distressing moan of the TARDIS, ignored the salty rivulets of tears dripping off both of their faces, it was almost possible to believe that they weren't clutching on to each other on borrowed time.

"You're such a bad liar," Rose breathed, as the Doctor nestled heavily against her shoulder, so close that his eyelashes fluttered against her neck.

"Oh, I know," he murmured quietly, closing his eyes contentedly as Rose pressed a tentative kiss to the top of his head.

Yet he did not open them again.

Rose felt the Doctor's body go limp and lifeless, felt his head loll sideways, unable to support itself…and for one dreadful, heart stopping moment Rose thought that the Doctor had died. That the last Time Lord, her beloved Sir Doctor of TARDIS had died in her arms…

But he hadn't, she realised, with dizzying relief as she felt his laboured breathing against her cheek, felt his chest rise and gently against hers. Cuddling him close, she rearranged her legs so that they weren't cramped beneath her and pulled the Doctor fully onto her lap, her hands going up and round his back beneath his jacket, feeling the soft cotton of his shirt at her fingers.

"I've got you," she mumbled into his hair. "I've got you, and I'm not leaving you."

Trying to stem her crying, she sniffed and rested her chin on top of his head. Looking blearily around the console room she saw that Donna was beginning to stir, and Jack too, bore signs of regaining consciousness.

The console was a mess of flaming wires and thick grey smoke, bits of charred metal debris falling onto the grated floor, which was littered with broken glass and cloudy-looking liquid.

Slightly to the left of the ruined central column, lying amongst she shards of glass, lay a dark, huddled form. The prone, splayed figure of a man lying on his back like a fallen soldier, brought down by the Oncoming Storm. This was what the Doctor had been looking at…

Rose gaped, a strangled sort of yelp emitting from the back of her throat, but she was unable even to cry out; her voice would not work.

There on the floor, lay a tall, thin man in a striped suit and white Converse. A man with a handsome chiseled face and fantastic dark hair…The Doctor.

But…how? Where did….?

The Doctor lay pale, seemingly sleeping next to the broken, smoking console, yet he was also huddled up in Rose's arms, one hand resting lightly on her collarbone.

There were two Doctors. Two.

'Better with two,' he'd told her, just minutes before, and she'd thought he had been referring to himself and Rose. Perhaps he hadn't. Perhaps he had been meaning himself and his newly discovered doppelganger…

Rose gave a dry sob. The irony was that she'd spent years longing to have the Doctor back, and now she had two, yet if two Doctor's meant…a galaxy-sized paradox or the destruction of the timeline, or worse still, the Doctor's death…

"Oh my God," she whimpered, holding onto him tightly and rocking his unconscious form backwards and forwards in distress. "What's happened to you? Oh my God, what's happened?"

As the TARDIS' sad, beautiful song rang out through the ailing, red-tinged room, Rose Tyler closed her eyes against the surging hell around her and cried helplessly into the Doctor's hair.

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