Rose told the Doctor she loved him exactly once, with the taste of ash on her tongue and despair clutched in her palms, the words lost on a gray beach on a Thursday afternoon.

She didn't need to hear them in return; she didn't need to, but all the same the desire was there, clawing at her chest, frantic and hopeful and twisting because she would never see him again, would never hear his babble and see his mad arching grin again.

She says "I love you," because it is easy, it is small, it is some shred of humanity she can give him in return for all of those moments before.

The Doctor told Rose he loved her exactly three thousand four-hundred and seventy six times with no words at all, because he was a Time Lord and was still centuries later, tangled in the semantics of Gallifreyan with its lack of words for affection.

Instead he tells her in the hitch of his breath on her moist knickers, in the weight of his chest against hers, her legs wrapped around his torso; the tilt of his grin hidden by the top of the duvet, their bodies still slick with sweat. His fingers splayed across her ribs, spanning her frail human heart; this is an "I", there is a "love" caught against the upturned arch of her throat when she comes with a wordless cry, the "you" lost somewhere under the jumbled pile of their clothes scattered across the console room's floor.

In the taste of his sweat and the rough whorl of his palm on hers, in the dark shadows hidden by his half unbuttoned shirt, dusted across the stars silent above them as they move as one on some nameless and ancient planet.

He shows her this because it is all he can give her, these ribbons of time stacked one upon the other; trying to offset the days between them as they drift apart across a ragged void, make this easier for her when he leaves like he always does, for the moments after.

In the middle, there was the melody of ragged breath and hearts beating in tandem, the rush of blood as they ran across a glittering universe with the taste of dreams fresh in their mouths, staining their skin. The taste of him on her lips, the feel of his hair snarled around her fingers, the perfect tilt of two bodies in lazy orbit around each other.

For all of the endings and the beginnings, there was this.