(I'm terribly sorry about this. I've writer's block atm, so I used a trick my friend told me about. Take a dictionary and pick a random word out of it and that becomes your title. Unfortunately for you guys, it was 'Incontrovertible'.)
Summary- This was obvious. He felt like an idiot for not noticing it earlier, but now that he did. It was undeniable, indisputable. It was incontrovertible.
Pairings: Doctor/Rose
Rating: K+
*****
Have you ever been so close to a problem that you have to take a few steps back to see its entirety? That was the Doctor's excuse. At least, that was the one the Doctor gave Jack afterwards in the pub over two hyper vodkas. He 'needed to see the big picture'. Jack merely snorted and wondered what the hell took the Doctor so long to see what everyone else did immediately.
He should have spotted it earlier. The bright smiles, the silvery laughs, the way light always played on her hair to look like the last rays of sunset on a clear day. How her eyes contained sheer joy in the quiet moments they found between the running. When he reviewed his memories of her, the universe seemed brighter, just because she was there. Perhaps, if there had been less running and more of those moments, he would have known before he closed the rift again.
The realisation had crashed over him exactly 3 days, 8 hours and 57 minutes after he guided the TARDIS through the rift, and it hit him like a hammer blow. He felt like an idiot for not noticing it earlier, but now that he did. It was undeniable, indisputable. The Doctor reeled back from the shock of the realisation. He backed into the control panel wall and promptly broke down. He could feel the actron energy in his tears stinging his cheeks and lips. The Doctor's lungs refused to work as he choked back a sob. How could he be so stupid? He was supposed to be a Time Lord for Rassilion's sake. How could he miss something so blindingly obvious? Only now did he understand the knowing looks they'd received. The way people talked about her in a whisper whenever she'd gone. With the TARDIS's grated floor digging into his side and an indent pressing into his neck, understanding dawned. They all saw what he'd missed, blindly passed over in the flurry of adventure and danger.
But now, he'd lost her. After she was trapped in Pete's world the first time, he, almost subconiously, programmed the TARDIS to keep her room as she'd left it, a complete tip. Sometimes, when a particular adventure went disastrously wrong, he would stand outside the white door leading to that room, one palm pressed against the wood, just like he had done at Canary Wharf. He would stay there, motionless until the anger died and the sorrow dissipated, but never twisting the knob and throwing the door open, no matter now much he wanted to. The closest he had gotten was after the Master died. He twisted the knob around, and heard the metal click as the door came loose. One little push was all it would take to bypass the barrier that had held him back thus far. He imagined what would be on the other side. Her bed, her books, her pillow with the impression of where her head lay the last time she slept on the TARDIS. Suddenly the Doctor couldn't do it. He snapped the door shut, sank against the door and let out all the anguish he'd bottled away. The whimpers and sobs echoed back from the empty walls. The next morning, he found himself shivering and curled up with his back to the white wood.
The Doctor locked that night away in his memories. Locked in the same place he kept his memories of the Time War.
And then he stood by and let the rift close, separating them for the second time. After she had fought so hard to make it back to him, he abandoned her again on the same god-forsaken bay. He saw the pain he caused her, and couldn't bring himself to inflict it again. He couldn't show her the stars and tear her away from them again. It would destroy both of them.
If only he'd known. If only he understood that one little fact that changed everything.
He was in love with Rose Tyler.
It was incontrovertible.