The Doctor stood at the TARDIS console

The Doctor stood at the TARDIS console. Jamee was asleep in her room, just the way the Doctor longed to be. He longed to close his eyes and not see Rose. To dream about something that didn't leave his two hearts straining to continue keeping what little there was left of the Doctor alive. He longed not to hurt anymore.

He had been thinking of Rose. Well, actually that changed nothing, the Doctor was always thinking of Rose. His every waking moment was filled with memories of his lost love. Every time he closed his eyes, every time he tried to sleep, Rose's face was all he could see. Her voice, calling him, was all he could hear.

Memories flooded his head as he tried to think of something else. To concentrate on the TARDIS, but the thing was, the TARDIS missed Rose too, so the task of taking his mind off her became all the more impossible.

The doctor gave up trying not to think of her, and instead let himself be overcome by memories of Rose, memories from throughout time and space. Old, forgotten times, times where everyone in the universe would be speaking their names in awe. Rose and The Doctor. The Bad Wolf and The Oncoming Storm. They were woven through history. Together. The doctor remembered the time when they discovered the hidden meaning of the 'Bad Wolf', when Rose had saved his life, and he had saved hers. Little did she know that Rose had saved his life almost every day, just by being there.

He had always loved her. He regretted never telling her that. Not until it was too late.

The Doctor whished he could go back, that he could hold her in his arms once more and whisper all the things he had hid away beneath his hearts. All the things he had never told her that he now knew he should.

He hoped she knew. He hoped she had some tiny inkling of just how much he had always loved her. She would never quite understand how much he needed her. No-one would. Rose Tyler was everything to the Doctor, and now, he had nothing.

The TARDIS hummed.

"Well, maybe not nothing," The Doctor almost grinned.

True, he did still have his TARDIS, the most magnificent ship in the entire universe - any of them - but even she could not repair the emptiness the Doctor had around him. The hollowness he felt whenever something reminded him of Rose, or the heartache that threatened to take over him whenever a song came on that made him think of her. Nothing could repair the Doctor. He was broken. And he knew he always would be now.

The Doctor let his thoughts wonder to the conversation he had with Rose the evening before she died. She had seemed so calm, so unafraid of death. It made his hearts hurt even more, if that was possible. Thinking of her like that. Dead and alone. Never again to hear her voice, never to take her hand in his and to feel her moving slightly closer to him. Her face, so warm and full of wonder, had been what had kept the Doctor alive for so long, and now, she was gone.

The Doctor frowned. His thoughts had wondered to Rose's gravestone, and the message she had left there. 'Everything had it's time and everything dies', well, that part was easy enough to work out. The Doctor had always said that, and he knew that Rose had believed him when he told her that everyone's time would come, some day, but that didn't make it any easier. No, it was the second part of Rose's final message that confused the Doctor so. 'Open the letter'. What?! Rose had always been amazing, thinking of things that even the Doctor didn't always notice, but 'open the letter'?

The TARDIS hummed.

"I know, old girl, I know," the Doctor slowly ran his hand across the TARDIS's beautiful controls, he felt that he was missing something really obvious. Something was staring him right in the face and he couldn't see it. Rose would know what to do, but then again, she had written the damn thing!

The TARDIS hummed again.

"What is it old girl?" the Doctor frowned even more. He was defiantly missing something now. Even his ship had worked out what Rose had meant. That's not to say that she wasn't the most incredible ship ever, but still…

The Doctor buried his head in his hands,

"Why, Rose? Why did you have to leave me?!" How had it come to this? His magnificent Rose, gone forever. He thought he had lost her once before, but she had come back from there, and there was no coming back from where Rose had been taken to now.

'The letter' why couldn't Rose have been more obvious? He knew the answer was staring him in the face, but couldn't she have given him plain instructions!

Another hum issued from The TARDIS.

"Help me! Come on old girl, I know you know what she meant, help me!" the Doctor yelled at the TARDIS, "please," he added, softly.

The TARDIS hummed once more, and a hidden compartment opened from underneath the TARDIS's extensive controls.

"Of course," the Doctor whispered, 'the letter' how could he have forgotten? A letter had been delivered, such a long time ago for the Doctor, but it mustn't have been so long for humankind, only a week or so after Rose had died, now that he thought about it.

The Doctor hit himself smartly on the top of the head, then withdrew quickly, complaining "Ow!"

Slowly, the Doctor reached into the draw and pulled out a long, fat envelope, adorned in Rose's familiar, slanted handwriting. It was so perfect, he thought, that one of the Doctor's hearts stopped completely, forcing the other to speed up to about 3 times it's usual pace, just to keep some tiny part of the Doctor alive.

He gently turned the envelope, caressing the feel of Rose's final message to him, stroking where her neat writing had pressed into the paper, leaving a tiny imprint on the fat page.

Reading the small note on the back of the envelope, the Doctor remembered why he hadn't read the letter until now, despite receiving the letter before Rose had returned to him, at a time when he had felt so low, he was clinging onto him old companion, Donna, for a tiny scrap of life. Something that she had given him, and given him rather more than a scrap of!

Donna had been fab! A laugh a day! Just what the Doctor had needed after suffering the loss of two further companions.

On the back of the envelope, in Rose's unforgettable handwriting, were the words

'Don't open until I tell you to!'

And that was why the Doctor had forgotten about the last piece of Rose. A piece that had rested in the TARDIS for so long the Doctor could barely remember receiving it. The Doctor had told no-one about the letter, which was quite possibly another of the reasons he hadn't given it a passing thought for all this time.

But now he opened it. The forgotten letter of the lost girl. Rose's last letter to the Doctor.

Looking around to check the Jamee was still asleep in her room, the doctor slowly unfolded the few pages that had been crammed together in order to fit them all into the smaller envelope.

His face fell, there weren't nearly as many pages as he would have liked, but he realised, with a bit of help form the TARDIS's stern humming, that the Doctor should be grateful for anything from Rose. He knew he would have to get over her eventually, but until then, the Doctor would cherish everything and anything from Rose, 'cuz that's all he had left. A letter, and some scrambled memories of a happier time.

Looking around once more, the Doctor sat on the old, comfy chair, where he had once sat with his arm around Rose, teasing Mickey with stories about far away places, and plots that nether person gave away enough details about to understand unless you had been there to witness it.

The Doctor let out a huge sigh. How he would love to hear Rose laugh like she had done, all that time ago. It felt like a lifetime had passed since he had laughed like he had with Rose, and he missed every moment of it.

A small tear escaped from the Doctor's tired eye and landed on the top page of Rose's last letter to him. He didn't raise a hand to wipe the tears that followed the first, as the Doctor bent his head and began to read.

'My dearest Doctor…'