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Once, Rose Tyler met a traveler from an antique land. And he showed her things, worlds and pasts and possibilities, a thousand things that she'd taken for impossibilities, yet they were laid out right before her. And she never wanted it to end.
This time, the Doctor told her only that they were visiting a planet she wouldn't have heard of. So she stepped out of the TARDIS same as always, expecting nothing and prepared for the miraculous.
But she wasn't quite prepared for this: emptiness. Sand stretched as far as she could see in every direction, until it met with the dull, dark sky. Great howling winds swirled dust around her, and yet the sand on the ground seemed hardly to stir. Here and there a glassy spire jutted out from the surface, and she couldn't tell whether they were very small or very far away. Perhaps it was beautiful, in a surreal, macabre way, but it gave her a chill.
She heard the Doctor behind her, giving a low whistle as he surveyed the surroundings. His presence came as a relief, but the sound unnerved her even more.
"Whoops! Looks like we went a century or two too far into the future." But he had that carefree grin on, and now she did feel better. A little. The wind still whistled, the sand still stung her skin.
Solemnly, the Doctor remarked, "This was a beautiful planet. A great civilization. Now there's nothing, not one living thing left." A pause, and he preempted her question. "There was nothing to be done."
When she looked into his face, she thought of the remarks others had made, that his eyes were full of secrets and never smiled. Rose couldn't see it exactly, not the way they could, but she saw enough to know two things: that he kept more secrets than he would ever share, and that he hurt more than he would ever say.
He spoke softly, then, either to himself of to the air. "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." Rose thought the words felt familiar, maybe, probably.
Thin bands of sand danced in the air, lonely ghost-forms on the empty planet. She stared for some time in a silence of both fascination and terror.
Eventually the Doctor lilted, "Well! Back in the TARDIS, shall we? Let's give it another go, a little further back this time." Rose was happy to follow and leave the eerie emptiness behind. How simple, how beautifully simple, to rewind back to a time when everything was fine.
For a moment, before it faded away, the TARDIS stood as the sole monolith amongst the lone and level sands.
"Rose? Rose, are you alright?"
A tap on the shoulder brought her back to an open window, overlooking a painfully familiar London--she was starting to get used to the airships, now. A book lay on the sill, a big, thick anthology of poetry, turned open to the letter S. The Pete who wasn't her Pete had given it to her in hopes of distracting her.
After too long, she replied, "Yes Mum, fine."
"Thinking about him again, aren't you?"
Rose wasn't quite certain, now, whether it was a dream or a memory that her mind had painted over the London vista. Whatever it was, it seemed to be happening more often lately.
"I see him everywhere. I can't stop."