I'm well into Season 6, past the whole River Song arc, and I'm still stuck on "The Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler" from Season 4. In my defense this is the first canon pairing I actually love since Dmitri/Anastasia. So...yeah. This is Tentoo/Rose, again; just a little fill-in moment for Journey's End, in those few seconds when Davros and Ten are outside the TARDIS being all dramatic.

Second First Time

The TARDIS was recovered safe and sound, the Reality Bomb thwarted, Davros overthrown, twenty-six of the twenty-seven planets returned to their proper places, and the Daleks destroyed. They were there, eight of them, the Doctor's Children of Time, all reeling with victory, all awaiting his orders to get the Earth back home as well. Rose Tyler had seen and done more things since meeting the Doctor than most could in a hundred lifetimes, but she thought her heart had never felt more complete than in this moment.

But the Doctor was always full of surprises. When she instinctively looked to her left, she found him—the other one, the one in the blue—beaming at her like she was the only thing he was seeing in all the universe.

"Hello," he said.

He was so breathtaking that it actually stunned her for a moment. He always was, with his wild chestnut hair and his matching eyes, but this was different. His eyes were alive and shining, his smile big and bright, and there was a tiny bit of shyness quietly hidden in every feature. He was like a little boy meeting the love of his life on the playground…like an aged man finding the woman he loves after decades of separation.

It was like, for the first time, the Doctor was looking at her like she was the only one, instead of another in a long, long line of people he would have to let go.

Rose was a little too overwhelmed, a little too dizzy, to really make sense of that at the moment, but she did not hesitate to speak to him, for the very first time, with a big smile that may have been just a little shy too.

"Hello."

(Also the title of the series came simply because I happened to be listening to Avril Lavigne and I'm awful with titles.)