Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Doctor Who in any way shape or form

One

He tiredly raised his hand to his eyes and tried to brush away the sleep that was threatening to overtake him. His ruffled brown hair fell into his eyes in its trademark straggly, floppy wave. The TARDIS hummed quietly as she maintained their orbit around the Doctors' chosen resting place. It was so quiet now, now that he was alone once more. Now that Rose was gone. Not just for a few minutes or hours or days or months or even years, but forever.

He couldn't keep doing this. Couldn't keep spending night after night in the TARDIS control room, forcing himself to stay awake, no matter what. He couldn't bring himself to look in her room, or even to walk past it. He felt like he was a prisoner, a prisoner within the confines of his mind. A prisoner of Rose Tyler.

Reinettes 'Lonely Angel', lonely was right, he was so many things to so many people, he gave them hope, helped them survive. So why was it that he had to lose the one thing that gave him hope and helped him survive? Why did he have to lose Rose?

"The appeal of being alone is not the absence of others, its the presence of me. My mind flits all the time and I think that irritates people around me, but it doesn't irritate me. It makes me very happy. When I'm with other people I can't find me. I become the spectre at the feast, but I'm not me." The words of a 20th Century comedian. Maybe they were right, offered him some comfort, but to the Doctor they were empty, hollow, lies. The appeal of being alone was not the presence of himself. He was a Time Lord, therefore he was always aware of himself, acutely aware of the whole of time and space, every single particle of every single thing both animate and inanimate. Everything except her.

He held his head in his hands, groaning slightly. He missed her so much, every day, every hour, every minute, every second, without fail she was in his thoughts. He pulled himself to his feet in several halting, clumsy movements. He had never been the most graceful of people, but lately, he had become even more ungainly and clumsy than even the most uncoordinated of humans and that was saying something. Even Rose would have handled herself better and that was saying something. He grinned slightly, she'd hate him for that.

He found himself wandering the corridors of the TARDIS, his mind full of everything and nothing. He found himself outside her door and before he realised what he was doing, he had reached out and opened it. He closed his eyes, his breath catching in his chest. Her scent washed over him in waves; something sweet, almost floral, mingled with something else, something he couldn't quite identify. He found it strangely comforting, almost like a link to her. She'd left part of herself there with him, in that room. For him.

"Rose." he murmured, lifting his leaden feet one by one and dragging them over the threshold. He'd never come in here whilst she was alive...wait, that wasn't right, she was still alive, in some parallel universe. Unreachable. Why did he feel like this? She was human, just like Sarah Jane and some of his other companions, yet he had never felt anything close to what he felt now for Rose, not for them. He remembered their time on Sanctuary Base, his time with Ida Scott. He had thought he was going to die. Not just regenerate, but die, cease to exist,

scatter into the air and become part of the time and space that he had been so aware of. He'd

never been more aware of his own mortality. He'd told her to tell Rose that...well actually he hadn't, he'd gotten scared at the last minute and had merely muttered that she knew, and besides, what he had wanted to say wasn't something that should be heard second hand, it was something he needed to tell her for himself. Yet he never had. He had never told her that he loved her. And now it was too late. She would never know.

"She already knew." came a voice in his head. The TARDIS was reaching out to him, trying to comfort her most loyal master. "She didn't need to hear the words to know."

Sudden madness seized him, or so it would seem to anyone that didn't know. "Rose Tyler!" he bellowed as loud and as hard as he could. "I LOVE YOU!" There, he'd said it. Just like he had that day in Norway. Only then, like now, she couldn't hear him. He'd never be able to offer her comfort with his vocal eloquence, never be able to hold her hand again and spend many a quiet moment with her, to revel in her child-like joy at each new world they saw.

Tears slipped down his cheeks, leaving salty trails in their wake. As they ran down his chin and onto his neck he risked a glance around him. The walls were of the same coppery coloured metal that ran throughout the TARDIS, in fact it was no different in basic appearance to the Doctors' own room. Whereas he revelled in order, everything in its place, Rose had an altogether different approach. The bed was rumpled, unmade, papers were strewn around the room. Beside the bed, there was a small leather bound book, stuffed full with yet more papers.

He reached out and took the blanket in his hands, allowing his fingers to intertwine in it. He caught her scent once more. Unable to resist, he sank down on her bed. He could still see the outline of her body in the bed. As he said a footprint looks nothing like a boot, he could see where she had lain, but had no indication from this alone what she looked like. He now had only his memories.

Overwhelmed by the sleep that he had thus far successfully kept at bay, he curled up on the mattress, allowing her scent to flow around him. His eye lids felt heavy and try as he might he could not keep them open. His eyelashes tickled his cheeks as he settled down upon her bed. He would never have dared do this before, but now he was so tired that he didn't care, couldn't care.

There he lay, in the silence that now stretched throughout the TARDIS. He was still lying there when the alarm sounded.