Chips

A/N: I know it's been done a million times, but if you've got this far, please keep going, even if it's just to tell me it's cliché!

Features the Doctor after another regeneration (which hopefully won't happen for a very long time!).

Disclaimer: Believe me. If I were the BBC, DT and BP would never ever leave the show, not even when they got old and wrinkly.

Numbly, he wandered the streets of a town he dimly recognised as London, not knowing nor caring exactly where or even when in London he was. A cloud had settled over his memories, obscuring his vision and keeping his thoughts stuck on replay. Rose Tyler, dead. The image burnt through him, seemingly pasted onto the inside of his eyelids – it was all he could see. He mumbled his apologies as he walked straight into strangers, again and again, bumping roughly off them and earning himself a glare.

So many companions weaving in and out of his life. Others had died before Rose, so why did this feel like the first time he had ever experienced death, like he was being ripped apart by the rawness of it all?

He was supposed to protect her. Bring her home in one piece. Apparently, responsibility was not his forte.

This incarnation's tear ducts seemed to be playing up. Perhaps everything played up once you reached your eleventh body, he thought. Was it worth it, having this body, living? He would happily have traded this and all subsequent regenerations to give Rose a chance to live.

Sometimes, he wanted to say her name, to talk about her, to talk to her even. Sometimes he even tried, but the words would never come. He hoped she would understand; it wasn't by choice that he never mentioned her.

With a sigh, he reached a bench and dropped himself onto it, dimly noting the brunette at the other end happily munching on something or other. He tried not to dwell on the irrepressible feeling of guilt bubbling through him.

"Chip?"

With a slight jump, the Doctor looked around at the girl, about to decline, when he finally registered exactly who he was sitting next to: Rose. A pre-Doctor, pre-hair dye Rose, but Rose all the same He stared at her, expression haunted and disbelieving. Of all the times he could have ended up in…

She smiled. "No offence, but you look like you could do with one. They're not poisoned or anythin', y'know," she added laughingly as his mouth hung agape.

He let the enormity of it wash over him, swamp him for a few moments, and he basked in it. Rose, alive, breathing, well, happy, laughing, sitting right next to him on a bench in London. It took everything he had to stay where he was and not launch himself in her direction. He wanted to laugh. Rose, alive, breathing…

Then…then it hit him. Rose, dead, cold. He felt a similar coldness spread from his stomach through every vein in his body, down to his feet and up to his head until it was pressing him in, trapping him, suffocating him. Talking to this version of her could not bring her back. And he wanted to run, tear at his hair and run until his muscles gave out and he physically could not run anymore. He stood up suddenly, needing to escape, remove himself from her presence. He almost sent the chips flying out of her hand, and she looked up at him, shocked. Coincidence was a cruel and kind friend.

"Are you OK?"

"I –" It took the Doctor a few moments to determine whether his hearts were being ripped apart by hope or despair. This girl was undeniably Rose – perhaps about seventeen or eighteen, with what should be her whole life ahead of her. An urge to scream, run, find his 9th incarnation and warn him to never, ever invite the blonde he would soon meet on board the TARDIS was overcome by the desire to sit and talk to the Rose of this time. Did she know that the simple choice she would make in just a year or so's time would dictate her death but three years later?

Brown eyes sparkled with concern, dark brown hair flailed in the wind, tendrils being whipped off to fly wildly about her head. She was beautiful. And she was waiting patiently for an answer.

"Not really. But I'll get by." The Doctor didn't even take note of his subtle new Welsh accent, but she did, and she liked it. It was a warm accent, softly lilting, and she trusted it.

To his immense surprise, he found his legs taking him back to the bench and sitting him down by her side. He didn't know whether to curse or thank them, so instead he kept his eyes trained on her, needlessly committing every single feature to an already complete memory. If she was alive here…

He shook his head, trying to shake the images, the memories. This was not his Rose. She would be, in a few months' time, but for now…he had no right to be here talking to her, not really. He surveyed her through stormy grey eyes, biting on his lip to stop a torrent of emotion pouring forth. The irises darkened further as the image of Rose, still and cold on the TARDIS floor, came unbidden to the surface of his mind and snatched away the live Rose in front of him.

"Are – are you sure you're alright?" Concerned for a stranger, in a time when most strangers were either after your money or your phone number. He marvelled at her, and she noted how he seemed to come back from a very, very long way away. His eyes lightened a shade, as though something in him, once long buried, had come up for air. "What's wrong?"

He didn't want to say it out loud in case it somehow made it real. We met an enemy we couldn't fight. They ripped my old body to shreds. They murdered you. I'm sorry."My friend is dead." But he could, because she wasn't dead, she was sitting right there with him. If he told himself that enough times, maybe he'd believe it.

"Oh," she said in a small voice. "I'm sorry." But there was a huge magnetic pull about this man, one she could not shake off nor ignore, and it kept her talking despite the voice in her head screaming at her to shut up. "What's your name?"

"I'm – " He swallowed, pondering this for a moment while Rose titled her head to the side encouragingly. If he said his name was 'the Doctor', she was bound to remember and that could change things drastically. Small as the action would seem, what if she met him looking like a completely different man but with the same suspicious name and didn't trust him enough to join him? However, he no longer cared about changing history; his reasons were selfish. He wanted Rose in the TARDIS, wanted his ninth and tenth incarnations to have that time with her, despite what it would mean. Ever since Rose stepped foot in that blue box, she had chased reason and the greater good out of the window. She was the only thing left.

And he had given her up enough, lately. "John Smith. My name's John Smith. What about you?"

"Rose, Rose Tyler."

Reaching his hand over to the newspaper in hers, he quickly stole a chip and popped it into his mouth, grinning even though his hearts were black and his eyes were dead. Rose stirred something in him, whatever time she was from, especially when she smiled like she was doing now, tongue between her teeth, eyes widening indignantly. "Nice to meet you, Rose Tyler. These're good chips."

END.

Pulls face Terrible? Alright? What did you think? I apologise for using an idea that seems to grab everyone, but it really wouldn't let go of me.