I wrote this fic ages ago and just didn't upload it. Now… enjoy! Or not.

Really heavy fic- 100 guaranteed to destroy your good mood or your money back!

Excuse the down-ness. My boyfriend gave me a really heavy lecture on how the only true home I can have must be carried with me, anything else can be destroyed. Same with family, pets, friends, all can be taken away… incredibly nasty. He's dumped now.

Set b/w father's day and bad wolf. Any foreshadowing is a result of me having seen PotW.

He'd lost everything once. It had taken him months before he felt even remotely normal again, years before he felt he was worth something. Years before he stopped visiting the nearest pub in every place he went to.

Humans are stupid. They will do everything they can to make their world safe, then drive their cars while talking on the phone and drinking a can of soft drink. They hide from death, keep its remnants out of sight in wooden boxes, fear it because it alone is inescapable. And a damn sight more scary than taxes. You can get a tax return, but once your family has been taken from you, you can only hope you will be reunited in death and wait to see what happens.

A light in the control panel died out. He tapped it with his sonic screwdriver, and the light flickered back into life.

To have seen his great grandchildren die right in front of him, all less then a hundred years old, and living to tell the tale, not having been able to stop it…

Unforgivable. That even one dalek should survive was unthinkable. And yet one had.

He had run away like a coward. Like those humans who insist that aliens are a load of bunk because they're not ready to believe in them yet. Destroyed the fleet, yes, but run away.

The Tardis sparked haughtily at him, the sparks burning his hand, the pain reminding him like no other feeling that he was definitely alive.

He had run away to live another day. Run away to save the earth a million times over.

Run away to save the earth, but to see so many die. So many, humans and aliens. And trees. He was the bringer of death, but he saved the world with death.

How ironic.

Rose knew. She told him about Clive, about the man who had tracked him through the ages, through earth's time and space. She told him what he'd said, that the only thing he knew about the doctor was that everywhere he went, death followed.

And she had almost died.

She almost died on the viewing station in the year five million. He'd held her hand while gas filled zombies had tried to kill them both. She'd been chased by the Slitheen, and hidden within an iron box with him, and Harriet Jones, while a missile blew up Downing street.

And he let the dalek kill her.

That was the moment he knew how much she was worth to him. She was not just another stupid ape to him, but like family. Like a daughter. Losing her was like losing his family all over again- when he was back on the Tardis the mere thought of her loss was enough to make him shake with fear. He'd lost his family once. He didn't think he'd be able to live through it again.

He'd died for her. She'd been stupid enough not to think about what could happen if she saved her dad- but he'd been stupid enough to think she would think twice of it, stupid enough not to warn her what would happen if she did. He'd die to save her world, he'd die again to save the universe from the daleks if need be… he'd die so she could live. So she could live her life like any other human being of her time.

What would she do without him? Go back to working where he had found her? The building would be rebuilt when she got back, surely. Maybe she would go to a university … or maybe not.

Or maybe she would spend the rest of her days reminiscing about her travels and the good they'd done, wondering what they would have done next if he had not died.

No. She would do all the good in the world that she could, because she knew what happened if no one did. One person could make all the difference in the world.

And she would fail, because she couldn't cut and run the second that she won. One day she would have to become a no one, and she would not be happy. She couldn't live like that.

"Doctor?" Rose called from another room. She came into the control room.

"What?"

"You've been pretty quiet. What you been doing?"

"Nothing."

But in the end, he would live for her, because to exist is to live, and there is nothing anyone can do in life if it is not living. That is all anyone can do.

Even a nine hundred year old doctor.

Too depressing, damn it! I know, for my next trick lets get everyone drunk! And extremely silly. Please R&R.