The Space Between Days (John Smith)
The last Time Lady of Gallifrey stood before her TARDIS console, staring blankly at the display -- seeing nothing. Behind her dark and filling eyes, one piece of her life played on its horrifying guilty loop. She'd lost them before, either to love or change or will or anger or enemies or even the press of time, but never to the ignominious end of an accident. There'd been nothing noble or good about it. The cliff face was strong enough to hold them both. Sitting on it was nothing compared to the danger she and John Smith had gone through together. Daleks, Slitheen...
But in the end, what took her last Companion was standing up from the cliff face overlooking the Ruby Falls of Tresaluna. His foot slipped. The rock face under him crumbled. That look of surprise, then the flash of panic, his long-fingered reaching hand, the open 'O' of his mouth. Rose dropped her head, hissing in a breath that caught in her throat. It'd been four months, 12 days, 21 hours, and 32 minutes since he died. Sometimes she could push it aside and work. Sometimes...
A blaring alarm shook her out of her grief. Dashing fingers under black-rimmed eyes, Rose tugged the console at a better slant and whipped on her glasses. Squinting at the reading, she mumbled, "But tha's impossible." Energy readings like that wouldn't be seen on Earth for over a million years. Naturally, Earth, again. And again, as she pushed levers and smacked buttons, she'd come running. She loved them, loved their imperfectness and their brilliance, and most of all, the hope that clung to them even when there was no right for them to retain it. They were beautiful, every one of them. A half-smile touched her mouth as the TARDIS engines wheezed on toward their destination.
London, of course. She stepped onto the night-silvered grass of a park and headed for the street. The readings had come in bursts from what looked like it was a department store. The glass doors slid with a ding and an automated welcome voice. She ducked behind a rack of ladies clothing as she checked her sonic for a direction. Upstairs, then. The directory read 'Shoes' and 'Housewares'. Shoes first, she thought.