Disclaimer:It’s so not mine, it’s almost untrue.

Characters: 10, Rose.

Summary: He’s spent so much time running. Maybe it’s time he stopped? Post-Doomsday. 10/Rose. AU, I guess.

A/N: I was trying to write Chapter 12 of ‘Ecstacia’ and Chapter 2 of ‘Tiger in the Dark.’ This is what happened instead. Inspired by ‘Time After Time’ by Cyndi Lauper. I felt the need for a bit of a happy ending… Hope you like it!

He runs towards the TARDIS, followed close behind by men with guns and a warrant for his arrest. His arm stretches out, reaching instinctively for a hand that ought to be there, but isn’t. He rounds a corner, hand feeling empty, and picks up speed as a shot is fired and hits a tree off to his right.

So close now, so close. He cannot afford to lose himself now, not when he has spent the past two days working so hard to save his own life, and the lives of everyone on this planet. So much bloodshed. He pushes the thought out of his mind as he continues on, his ship coming into view as he crests a small hill. There is nothing to be done for the dead now.

There. Fifty metres to go. He delves inside the pocket of his jacket for his key, skidding to a stop and then fumbling with the lock. He gets the door open just as the mob reach the top of the hill. He stumbles inside, pushing the door shut behind him as he collapses to his knees, respiratory bypass system doing nothing to help his current shortness of breath. He hears guns firing outside, shouts from the men who want his head as their trophy. He pulls himself up from the floor.

He makes his way to the console and takes himself away, back to the safety of the Vortex where he can pretend for a little while that everything is as it should be, that nothing ever went wrong. That nobody ever left for him to miss.

Run. Run for your life.

It’s what he does – he runs, runs for his life. Every day. He runs to live. It defines him, almost.

He used to make her run.

The first time they met he took her hand and said, run. Didn’t even give her so much as a ‘hello’ first, just grabbed her and made her run for her life. And they never stopped. They ran. Hands clasped together in the face of danger, helping the universe, running for their lives. It was how they lived, until she was gone. Rose.

He sighs, walks towards her old bedroom without thinking. He’s sitting himself down on the side of her bed before he fully realises where he is.

He can still smell her here, but that’s mostly memory now. He can still remember every little detail about her - how her hand felt in his; how she gave him a little spark of hope when all else was lost; how she gave him back the will to run to save his life, instead of just giving up and giving in to death on the multiple occasions when it offered to take him away from life and loss and pain. She ran with him everywhere, anywhere.

Perhaps if they had stopped sometimes, he muses, perhaps if they had slowed down just the tiniest bit, she would not be lost to him now. She would not be lost, and he would still have a hand to hold on those times when running to save his life was not a choice. And all the times in between. He misses the feel of her hand in his.

Of course, there have been others. Cherished friends; Martha and Donna and Astrid and Jack. Others whose names he never had time to learn. Others still he simply never bothered to learn. But it has never been the same without her there, hand sliding willingly into his as they ran, keeping him anchored as he led her to safety time after time.

Until that last time. When time finally caught up with them, when they couldn’t run fast enough or far enough before the universe came and spirited her away.

It still hurts, when he lets himself think about it.

He supposes that it was unfair of him, to force her to run for her life so often. What must she have thought? That she was only good enough if she ran? That she could only live if she ran as fast and as hard as she could? And what of now? Sometimes it is all he can do to get the images of her out of his head, imagined scenarios in which she lives her life recklessly, carelessly, still running even without him there. Running in her sleep, even. Hiding from everything.

It’s never what he wanted for her, or even what he wanted for himself, but the thought of stopping now hurts too much to bear without her there to help him through it. Stopping means he has time to think, and to feel all of the pain that has collected over his long years of loneliness. Time to think about everything he has lost. He cannot stop without her. And so he does the only thing he can think of to do under the circumstances.

He runs to her, integrity of the universe be damned.

--

He steps out of the TARDIS into a world he has not seen in years, the impossible achieved against all odds. He takes a moment to pause and breathe in the air, savouring every second of this experience. His eyes slip closed and a soft breeze caresses his face. He smiles. Seconds pass, meld into minutes. Time passes him by.

When he eventually opens his eyes she is there as if by magic, standing in front of him and looking up at him as though he is a ghost, as though she must be dreaming. “Doctor…” he thinks she says, but her lips don’t move and so he can’t be sure.

“Hello,” he says, unable to keep the smile out of his voice, unable to take his eyes off her face. She is beautiful. The earth revolves slowly beneath their feet.

“Hello,” she replies, her eyes lighting up now that he has spoken, now that he seems that bit more real to her.

He takes a step forward, reaches out to brush her hand with his. They both start at the contact after so long of being apart.

No more running, not now.

“Walk with me?” he asks, eyebrows raised in hope.

She smiles. Her hand slips into his, fingers closing together and squeezing gently. He squeezes back. “Everywhere,” she says. “Anywhere.”