The second time that the Doctor visited Satellite Five, he woke up disorientated, weak, and alone. And the blonde girl who helped him to his feet was not Rose Tyler, which made everything just that much more confusing. But as his mind slowly returned to him and he began to grasp the strange reality of his situation, he found himself thinking that if he had been separated from Rose, Lynda-with-a-y was at least a passable substitute.

She was sweet (really, he hadn't been lying about that), keen, and curious - and she had more fight in her than she originally let on. He liked her almost immediately and the fact that she seemed to like him back - and even trusted him enough to risk her life when he promised to get her out alive - was enough to make his head spin.

Maybe, he thought idly, this daft old face wasn't as useless as he had made himself to believe.

She really was eerily similar to Rose (though with significantly less psychic abilities), and her undeniable interest had him instantly falling into his default mode of flirtatious showing off. It seemed that 900 years in time and space still wasn't enough to teach him to grow up a bit.

But he liked the attention, and he secretly cherished the fact that he could still have this easy back-and-forth with someone other than Rose Tyler. It made him feel a little less hopelessly besotted, which in turn helped his mind to think more clearly in an attempt to find and rescue her.

But as soon as those two words lit up - bright, large, and undeniable before him - he knew that they were all in even deeper trouble than he had originally thought. It felt as though "Bad Wolf" was seared into his mind - a warning pushing him to move faster and find Rose before it was too late.

Still, he clung relentlessly to hope - just as he knew that she would - and didn't stop running until he laid eyes on her once more. He had 7.13 seconds where they both ran towards each other and he thought that just maybe he would get the chance to feel her in his arms once more and they would face this "Bad Wolf" together and defeat it once and for all.

But then, in a blinding flash of light, there was nothing left of Rose Tyler but a pile of dust.

And then just like that, everything became oh so very simple. The familiar, cold pit of emptiness and anger enveloped the Doctor like a tidal wave and he realized with a sudden rush of clarity just how far he had come since the Time War. The last time that he had felt like this, he had been certain that there would be no chance of climbing back out of that pit of sorrow and depression - but then he had met a young girl in the basement of a department store in London and she had changed everything.

Suddenly, the truth that he had been running from for far too long finally hit him square in the chest.

He was in love with Rose Tyler.

He was in love with her, and now she was gone forever.

So he fell back on the only thing that he had left that he knew he could depend upon - he became the general who had commanded armies and been the sole survivor to crawl his way out of the burning pit that was Gallifrey. He became the Oncoming Storm - a dangerous, powerful force of nature with a singular, deadly focus.

The Doctor had truly been prepared to tear the entire bloody space station in half in order to uncover who was responsible for all of the deaths on Satellite Five, and he had been prepared to make their own death as drawn out and painful as possible for taking his one final shred of hope from him when Jack insisted that there was something he was missing.

The Doctor felt his entire universe shift yet again as they all watched Lynda disappear into a pile of dust and then reappear again a few seconds later.

"Doctor, Rose is still alive!" Jack cried triumphantly.

And suddenly, it didn't matter what "Bad Wolf" was or who was behind this entire bloody disaster because Rose was still alive, and nothing in the universe was going to keep him from getting back to her.

But the universe, it seemed had one last bombshell to drop on him. The Doctor had already been through one devastating loss only to receive a promise almost too good to be true just a few hours later - but then they uncovered the fleet of ships waiting just on the edge of the solar system. The sight of the ships alone sent a bolt of fear coursing through his veins, and suddenly he realized that he still wasn't quite done playing the old Gallifreyan general just yet.

Because it seemed that no matter how much he destroyed and how many he killed, the daleks were determined to demolish the Doctor's hope at every turn. How foolish he had been to imagine that sacrificing his entire race would ever be enough to put an end to the Time War. How many years had he suffered alone, telling himself that it was for the best and that the universe was safe?

But it seemed that it had all been for nothing. Because the Time War was somehow impossibly here now - continuing to rage across all of time and space no matter what the Doctor did to try and stop it. And now it threatened to swallow the entire earth and his Rose with it. How much more would it try to steal from him before it was finally satisfied?

No more - and this time he meant it, with all his soul and all of his being. Not Rose. Not here. Don't you dare.

"I'm going to rescue her," the Doctor stated simply, sneering at the dalek who dared to threaten the one woman in the universe who he would never give up on. "I'm going to save Rose Tyler from the middle of the dalek fleet, and then I'm going to save the earth, and then - just to finish off - I'm going to wipe every last, stinking dalek out of the sky!"

"But you have no weapons, no defenses, no plan!" the dalek protested. The Doctor was pleased to note that at least this much hadn't changed - the daleks were still just as thick as they ever were.

"Yeah," he agreed, smiling dangerously at them through the monitor. "And doesn't that just scare you to death?"

"Rose!" he called over the transmission link, absolutely refusing to give the daleks a second more of his time and attention.

"Yes, Doctor?" she called back breathlessly.

There was so much that he needed to tell her, but the Doctor settled for the one promise that he knew he could keep - the one promise that he knew would give her the hope that she needed in order to survive just long enough for him to get the chance to tell her how much he absolutely, ridiculously, helplessly loved her.

"I'm coming to get you."