The transmission cut off. He had not finished his sentence.
"Rose Tyler," that was all he had gotten out before the hologram faded, and now he could never say it to her, never see her again to tell her what so desperately needed to be told.
His mouth was still open to deliver the next word, and as he shut it the tears began. He had held them back for her sake, but it didn't matter now; she couldn't see him now, couldn't see him ever again.
He pressed his lips together to hold in a scream. Looking down, he closed his eyes. Unconsciously he began to rock back and forth on the spot. His fingers clutched at his shirtsleeves just to have something to hold onto. Why hadn't he said it?
He staggered forward and clutched at the TARDIS controls to steady himself. Tears ran into his mouth, but all he could taste were the words left unsaid.
"I love you," he blurted, and the relief of releasing them was marred by the knowledge that she would never hear him say it.
"I love you," he repeated, and he sank to his knees. He could not stand any longer. "Oh god, I love you."
Feebly, he pounded a fist against the console. "I love you, I love you, I love you…"
Each statement was punctuated by a blow to the console. "I love you-" bang- "I love you-" bang- "I love you."
He swiped angrily at his wet face, but the tears kept coming and so he succumbed to their flow and let them drip onto his suit unheeded. What was the point? There was no one to see.
"I love you," he whispered, wishing he could send the words across universes to her, wishing he could send himself to her.
Why hadn't he said it?
Why had he never told her before, when he had the chance? There had been untold opportunities, yet he had failed to take advantage of them.
None, however, were so colossal as this. The last time he would ever see her and he had not managed to get the words out in time.
Time. The word was a cruel joke. What good was a time machine if you couldn't undo your mistakes?
"I love you," he said hoarsely, and then he shouted it. "I love you!" But the words only echoed around the TARDIS and it just emphasized how very empty it was in there, and how very alone he was.
Always alone. Every time he found someone, they left him somehow. He cared too much, that was his problem. It hurt, and he couldn't stop. If he didn't care, he would never hurt.
And this, this hurt so badly he thought he would die from the pain of it. But that wasn't right; he wouldn't die, because that's not how he worked. The curse of the TIme Lords: regeneration. He wouldn't die. He would become someone new; he would forget her, and that was a thought that could not be borne.
He had managed it last time, had clung to his previous self enough that not much had changed between them, but she had still been with him then.
And now she wasn't.
It was still beginning to sink in, what this meant. She was gone where he could never reach her again.
In a sick, horrible way it would have been better if she were dead. Instead this way he knew he would forever cling to hope-stupid, foolish hope-that it would be alright somehow, that she would find a way to come back for him or that he could get the TARDIS back to her side of the rift, without breaking the universe.
The universe, he thought in a fit of fury, is not worth this.
"I love you," he said again, just so he would remember how to say the words if the impossible ever happened. "I love you."
The impossible, combined with blind irrational helpless hope, was probably the real reason he shied away from the idea of regeneration. Quite aside from his own psychological changes, there was her reaction. His transition to his current body, he remembered, had taken some getting used to. It had been a little while before she had come to accept that he was the same Doctor he had been.
Except he wasn't, not really. His feelings for her hadn't changed, but his personality, his flavor-he was a different variety Doctor than the one who had grabbed her hand in a shop basement and whispered Run.
He'd like to think he was better, and if he was, it was due to her. She was the bedrock that had stabilized him through his depression and PTSD after the TIme War and the choice he'd had to make to end it. She had pulled him through that, and though he doubted he could ever forget what he'd done, she had reminded him that he could go on. She had molded him into a better man, a less bitter person.
She had made him, and now she had left him.
The void of space had never seemed so empty. The TARDIS sat in what had been the orbit around a sun he had used up to send the message he hadn't completed. A waste, like so much of his effort. So often he tried to save someone who couldn't be saved, to help where no help could be given. It was exhausting, and he was tired of it.
He sat for a long, long time. It was difficult to tell how time passes in the TARDIS, but he could have sat there until the end of the world and felt no difference; his world had already gone.
He was on the floor, sagging against the seat at the controls of the only constant in his life. The TARDIS had been there for him when nothing and no one else had.
But so had she, and if she could leave, nothing could be depended on. It was just him; it was always just him. But he didn't want it to be that way.
Usually he pitied humans for their single-heart cardiac system; now he envied them. Although he knew of course that the heart is not the true center of emotion, the ache in his chest was all too real, and it felt impossible that his hearts were not actually tearing in half.
"I love you," he choked out once more, through a throat clogged with tears. "I love you and I should have said it, why didn't I say it, why?"
He doubled over next to the chair. His fists beat at the floor. The TARDIS hummed comfortingly, but he was deaf to it. All he could see was her face, the last image of her he had seen before the last gap had closed. She had looked devastated, and it hurt him even more to know it was he who had hurt her so.
But he was glad at least that he had not broken down in front of her, because he knew that just as her pain hurt him, his would have hurt her. At least he had spared giving her that pain as well.
Yet the effort of avoiding tears of his own had required him to adopt a flippancy he did not feel. It had made him make jokes and waste their precious time. If he hadn't… If he had responded to her "I love you" in kind immediately, instead of trying to be funny…
If only, if only… He berated himself.
Why had he found it so difficult to say? He was having no difficulty now- and he said it again, to dig the barb deeper: "I love you. Rose Tyler, I love you. I love you. I love you..."
His voice gave out just as his legs had and he trailed off. He swallowed. His mouth was dry, but he could not fathom getting up to get a drink. He was tired beyond belief, but if he slept he would only dream of her, and he couldn't bear the thought of waking up to a reality without her by his side.
But at the thought of physical needs his stomach mutinied and demanded he get food before he collapsed. Reluctantly, he stood on shaky legs and wandered the TARDIS corridors until they led him someplace like a kitchen. He would not leave the TARDIS, would not go to Earth, because if he were around people he would become attached. Attachments ended painfully.
As he ate without tasting a thing he toyed with the idea of drinking. Time Lords were impervious to alcohol, but not if there were ginger in the drink, which is why he deliberately kept the ginger on hand near the drinks.
But did he want to get drunk? Not really. The pain would go away, but only temporarily, and he would only get hungover as well as heartbroken.
So instead he fixed himself some tea and warmed his hands around the mug as he fought in vain to not think about Jackie's tea awakening him after regeneration to fight off the Sycorax.
Thinking of Jackie, though, reminded him that Rose wasn't alone on the other side; she had her family. She even had her father, something she'd never had on this side. And as much as Jackie and the Doctor liked bickering with one another, he had to admit she was a good mum to Rose. Even Mickey would take care of her for him. She'd have a new brother soon. She would be happy without him, eventually.
He didn;t know if the same could be said of him, and he didn't know if he'd want it to be.
He drained the rest of the cup in one final gulp, but he couldn't make himself get up to put the cup away. He sat at the table, hands still wrapped around the empty mug, staring at nothing in particular. Numb.
Was this how it was always going to be? Would he sit here until he regenerated, over and over until he died (he only had two left in him) or forgot why he was sitting there?
She wouldn't want that for him, and he knew it. She would want him to move on, but how could he?
He had gotten no closure. There was no indication of any ending; other than the fact that the rift was closed and she was on the other side, he could fool himself that she was still here, would walk into the room with her tongue between her teeth as she smiled mischievously and asked him to take her somewhere exotic.
There was nothing to prove that she was gone except the terrible pain within him.