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Stage One: Denial
“I’m always alright.”
He laughs because someone has to when everyone else is screaming or crying. They’re doing all those human things. He’s not human so he doesn’t have to join in if he doesn’t want to.
The biggest lies are the ones you tell yourself. It becomes a game, two truths and a lie.
Truth: This isn’t the first time you’ve lost someone.
Truth: Losing people never stops hurting.
Lie: You get used to it.
(You never do.)
She’s fine, he tells himself. She got what she wanted, in the end. (Everything except what she really wanted, which was me.)
On the inside, he’s still screaming her name, but there’s no point now in saying so out loud. Nobody’s left to mourn her except him. Sure, she might have had mates from her school but everyone who knew her, the real Rose Tyler, they’re with her in Pete’s world.
Sarah Jane showed him. In the end, they all move on. It’s for the best. He was always on the verge of breaking his promise to Jackie anyway.
Rose is safe now. Safe from everything. Safe from him.
Everything is fine.
Stage Two: Anger
“They took her face and just chucked her out in the street. As a consequence that makes this simple... very, very simple. Because now, Detective Inspector Bishop, there is no power on this earth that can stop me!”
He can’t smash through the Void, bring her back; he can’t. He can’t!
“Some Time Lord you are, can’t even pass through to a parallel universe,” he mutters to himself. He should have told her to hold on tighter. (Not that she’d listen. She never listened to him! And look where that got her.) He should have tied her to something, used the sonic to make the lever go back up so that Rose, lovely heroic Rose, wouldn’t have had reach out to finish the ghost shift in time.
She should have listened to him! Held on tighter! Not been such a stupid brainless ape (and there’s a phrase he hasn’t used in a while) so stupid, all of it, stupid.
He should have told her sooner. About everything. Living on without her. That’s the curse of the Time Lords.
She told him, “Forever.” And he was stupid enough to believe in her. He did.
Stage Three: Bargaining
“I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demigods and would-be gods; out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing... just one thing... I believe in her.”
Rose will find a way through, he tells himself. All he needs is just a glimpse, and then he’ll be fine. Every crack in the universe, he scours, whispering her name.
“Rose.”
All he needs to do is be able to say goodbye. That will make things better. Rose will come through. He’ll make this goodbye perfect, better than all the other one’s he’s had to make.
He’ll convince people to name star systems after her so that it never feels like she’s left him. He’ll tell her that, the next time he sees her. All he needs is a chance to say goodbye. Just one chance. One last chance to say it.
“Rose Tyler.”
Stage Four: Depression
These new people, they’re not Rose. Objectively, he understands that nobody can be Rose, but all the same, it’s not good enough. They watch him from a distance, and so does he. Oh, he’ll invite them into the TARDIS for a lark about time and space, doing the same old thing, but he’s just going through the motions.
He wonders if taking all these new people along makes him any different from the Isolus, any different from a child who doesn’t want to be alone.
None of these new people would understand why he needs to not be alone, why he needs to mourn her. Rose Tyler, Defender of Earth, the Valiant Child, Bad Wolf.
Even the person who said he’d never be alone again, left him alone.
Stage Five: Acceptance
“He needs you. That’s very me.”
Thirteen lifetimes isn’t long enough for him to get there yet.