Key to the Secret Heart
The Doctor stood at the console fiddling with some doohickey whose purpose he had long forgotten when he remembered what the Empress of the Racnoss had called Donna Noble. The key to The Secret Heart. It was an apt name in more than the literal sense that the Empress had intended it. The bride and almost-companion truly was the key to a secret heart. One he hadn't even been sure he still had. Not after the Time War anyways. One that had been slowly unearthed over the course of a year or two before being trampled by the Cybermen and Daleks, sucked into the Void, and burned in a dying star. One he didn't know he had until he lost it. And then there was his key, pulled to the heart of the TARDIS, pulled to his heart, and dressed in glittering white. He could recall in his mind's eye the way she turned to him with her dress swishing in a circle, rustling gently against the grating, and he fancied that he could almost hear the tumblers of a lock turning.
Because that was the moment, wasn't it? The moment he knew that the heart he thought he lost could still beat again. He hadn't accepted it then, but the lock was rusted and needed a bit of jimmying. It was good of the key to keep turning, to keep pushing at the tumblers at just the right moment that the lock was soon opened. One tumbler after another being pushed and prodded by the key; a smile on the rooftop, a laugh beneath the Thames, the key moved ever closer to the final click.
When she refused his offer, he made to leave, to leave her behind and never see her again because he terrified her. And the lock was half open, teetering on the edge of that last tumbler, when she asked one favour. She requested the answer to the one question she'd been asking all day.
"What was her name?" The key was inserted into the lock, and turned once more.
"Her name was Rose." With a final click, the lock finally opened wide.
It hurt him to admit that, hurt him to say that name. It almost choked him with tears on its way up into the world, the precious name of that girl that showed him there was a heart in him after all. And here was this woman in front of him who was all slaps and loud words, yet who was so gentle and understanding that she could open the lock to the secret heart he didn't know could still beat. She was the key, his key.
He turned the lever and pushed the buttons and spun the wheel, and the TARDIS was flying instead of dematerializing because he wanted to give his Donna Noble a show. With the snow still falling and the TARDIS sailing upwards into space and time, he hoped she appreciated the spectacle. Because for a spaceship who didn't do much flying, and for a man with two hearts who didn't realize he had one, they somehow managed both with Donna Noble. And he hoped, he truly hoped, that he was lucky.
