She is gone.

Trapped in another world, so close and so, so far away from him.

It takes a minute to sink in, a minute with his forehead, hands, hearts pressed up against that featureless white wall.

He doesn't know which is more blank, that wall or his face.

He pulls away, her face surfacing to the forefront of his memories and he knows he'll never forget it no matter how long he travels or if he never even sees her again.

His brilliant beautiful human is really gone forever this time and it's his fault. But he pushes off the wall and sets himself to fixing this world, this world without Rose Tyler in it, this world that will never again see her wonderful smile.

He has to move on; but he can't. He knows he never will. The only thing he can do for the moment is to go back to his beautiful ship like he had so many times before , take solace in the TARDIS's familiar green glow and know that somewhere, somewhen, Rose Tyler is alive and is moving on with a whole family and maybe an empty heart but he decides that she can't be worse off than him. After all, he has two, and they both feel as though they want to stop with the hollowness that's settled inside of them.

He moves almost mechanically, setting coordinates for a time far in the future, a place far from civilization, to a massive star on the brink of collapse that could give him one last chance to say goodbye.

He gets cut off as he's about to say the three most important words of his life, and tears he didn't know he had are sliding down his cheeks.

And then, quite out of nowhere, a redhead appears in the middle of his control room, kicking and screaming and throwing a right fit, and he shakes his anguish off and tries to help her the best he can.

Because he's the Doctor. And he is always alright.