Post "Doomsday"
SPOILERS and…
FYI: I've only seen a few eps. There may be some inaccuracies in here. I just found my self crying at the end of this ep so…..here it is.
The Time Lords weren't beings prone to deep affections, even among their own peoples. But traveling around as much as The Doctor had changed them just as it would change more emotional races.
This, however, did not mean that they would be able to show it, regardless of how much exposure they absorbed. They did not fly into rages, did not become overly giddy, and most certainly did not cry.
Until their last son.
Hearing Rose tell her own mother she was going to stay by his side sent a shockwave through him, but hearing Rose say she loved him stole his breath away. She loved him, a man who'd lived nine hundred years bouncing about the place. An ex-soldier from the front lines of the Time War. Then and there he'd wished he could be solid so he could hold her….even kiss her for reasons other than spontaneity or life-saving.
"Rose Tyler…" he'd whispered, doing all he could to show her through his eyes, should the time run out, that out of all those who traveled with him, she alone would be called his Love. And when some historian on some random planet decided to add his adventures to history, that's what she'd be called. Rose, The Doctor's Love.
But as he'd said those words, the hole shut and his last glimpse of her had been a sobbing woman reaching out for his in vain.
As was told, Time Lords were supposed to be impervious to fits of emotion.
But he'd cried. He'd cried because he'd fallen in love. Because he hadn't said it, though he knew by her watery smile and her tears that she knew.
He'd fallen in love the second he saw her, really. When she tightened her grip on his hand in the shop rather than run, that had been the moment he'd begun, unconsciously, to love the little human girl from London.
He hoped she wouldn't really give up, if the look on her face through her tears had been any indication. She'd probably join Torchwood and seek out a way back to him, or a way to call him. He knew how the Void worked, of course, but he'd not lived nine hundred years to underestimate his fellow sentient races.
Now, sitting as he was in her bedroom aboard the Tardis, he was filled again with an impossible hope. He'd see her again, whether in life or death, and he would confess how he felt, and he'd beg her to forgive him for not getting to the point.
Until then, he'd travel about, take random bystanders like her on intergalactic adventures, and just be generally silly as he'd always been. But he wouldn't forget her, no matter how painful it was to look at her in the photos scattered about her dresser: pictures of her and her mum, of Adam and Micky and, wonderfully, just as many of her and him together.
He left her room silently, only stopping to pick up his favorite shot of them, and locked the door.
"Tardis, old girl, don't let anyone in there, even me. Not unless Rose says so." The ship agreed and suddenly, the door vanished. He took a breath as he plopped into his seat at the controls, placing the photo of a beaming him holding an equally giddy Rose in his arms at a fair on Alpha Centauri on the panel itself.
He wiped his tear-streaked face and squared his shoulders.
It was time to go.