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The TARDIS was the loneliest place in the universe. After he burned up a sun and met the runaway bride, the place never seemed emptier. It had been filled with the sounds of laughter, of Rose Tyler, since that day so long ago when he took her hand and told her to run. That had been a lifetime ago.
Their story had been one of adventure and of falling. Falling through space, falling for each other. A brilliant story that ended before its time, that could have been so much more. There was still so much he’d wanted to tell her, show her.
There were reminders of her everywhere. The jacket she’d left on the railing of the staircase. The clothes she’d laid out on a chair for their next trip. The trip that would never happen.
One day, the Doctor decided to do something about it. He packed up everything, into a closet. But he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of her things. It was all so incredibly… Rose. She might come back, he told himself. If her things were gone, it would be agreeing that he would never see her again. That his pink and yellow human was truly lost, possibly moving on with another story of her own. He’s lost many things, but hope is not one of them, at least not yet.
It hadn’t been the same, even Donna had noticed with the Raknoss children. He needed someone. She should have been there, and any minute he almost expected her to walk into the console room, or to be telling a story about her family while they decided where they would go next. Of everything he’d seen in his centuries of life, she had been the most wonderful.
The universe was a cruel place. It had taken him away from her again too early, before he’d been able to say the words she’d desperately needed to hear. It had taken away everything, and now all he could do was keep his memories. It had taken their forever, but he could still give her one thing. He could make sure she was never forgotten.