Disclaimer: I don't own the Doctor, Rose or the TARDIS. The BBC still retains all rights to them all. Just borrowing them for some musings.

Rating: Suitable for all audiences.

Summary: The Doctor isn't the only one who misses Rose...

Missing Her

by Nightfox

"Rose Tyler..." Suddenly she was gone, the words left unsaid, dry as dust in his mouth. He felt the tears streaming down his face but they barely registered. She was gone, gone forever. No way to reach her, no way to even see her again, ever.

He didn't notice the lights flickering from green to yellow and back again, didn't notice the usual hum of the TARDIS go silent.

He'd barely wiped the moisture from his cheeks when suddenly there was a red haired woman in a long elaborate white gown staring at him in horror from the far side of the console.

He'd never felt like a "master" to her. She'd been attached to several Time Lords before him and she'd always done their bidding but she'd never felt the affection she did for the Doctor. She'd never felt such affection from any of the others either.

Her name was Rose." The door was shut and he was crying again. The TARDIS hurled herself into the sky but he was too consumed in grief to notice instead he reached absently for the controls to send her into the vortex, never noticing she wasn't even on the planet anymore.

He didn't notice that she hadn't lowered the air temperature as she usually did when he wasn't traveling with a human companion. He certainly didn't notice the blue and purple short sleeved shirt now tucked in a nook under the console instead of draped over one of the ralings in the console room.

He dropped down onto the jump seat but never noticed the lights failing to dim as they commonly did when he flew alone. He tried to wrestle his thoughts into some useful form but all he could see was Rose sobbing alone on that bleak Norwegian beach.

He staggered down to Rose's favorite room, the Library and curled up on her side of the sofa. Though he wasn't cold, he wrapped himself in her favorite throw blanket and sobbed silently as her scent surrounded him.

He never knew that on the monitor back in the console room, images of Rose played again and again on the screen. She was laughing, crying, fighting, frustrated, teasing, giggling, serious and sad. Sometimes she was accompanied by a big eared man with close cropped hair, brilliant bue eyes and a smile that could stretch from one large ear to the other. More often she was pictured with a tall slim man with spikey cinnamon hair and a brown striped suit at her side. The two were usually touching in some way. Fingers twined together, one hand absently stroking another, a small sturdy hand laid on a pinstriped sleeve, long slender fingers combing blonde hair back from a lovely smiling face looking up into his equally gentle smile.

She was being careful not to let him know. His hearts were bleeding already, his soul torn in two. He didn't need to see this. He didn't need to know that she missed Rose just as much as he did.

He never realized that when Rose had looked into her and she had looked into Rose, in that moment of comunion between TARDIS and human she'd given Rose more than just the power of the time vortex. The Bad Wolf was more than raw power and infinite knowledge. He'd been able to return the energy and most of the knowledge to her but he'd missed something vital, something that wasn't in his power to return to her even had he known it was there.

He would always be the most important person in the universe to her but there was a hole inside her that even he couldn't fill any more.

He had her soul but Rose had her heart.