The Doctor knew what was going to happen the moment that Rose's lever became unlocked and slowly started to drift forward. The mess of tangled timelines that had been swirling around the white-walled room all day suddenly fell away, leaving behind one, true reality that there was now no way of stopping.

Still, as he watched her falling through space and helplessly being pulled into the void - the only woman he'd ever loved, his bondmate, his perfect, beautiful, human Rose - the Doctor prayed to anything in any universe that might hear him and begged for any other reality to take its place.

His prayers were answered in the unlikely form of Pete Tyler, who shimmered into existence just in time to catch Rose and instantly jettison them back into his parallel world. The last look that the Doctor got of her was a wide, fearful look as she glanced over her shoulders and met his eyes one last time. She didn't say a single word, but her mind screamed in desperation, and he was quite sure that his own thoughts echoed the sentiment exactly.

This time, when the bond broke, it almost felt like a release of sorts. It was the final blow before death - the last twist of pain before numb peace took over and washed away everything else. The Doctor shuffled towards the wall where the portal had been just a moment ago and stared hard at the place where a single, golden timeline disappeared into nothingness, its end cut off just as resolutely as his severed bond had been.

With everything in the Doctor's thoughts reaching desperately for a bondmate who was no longer there, he could just manage to make out the last remaining traces of Rose's mind. The breach had closed, but it hadn't stitched itself completely back together just yet. There were still tiny pockets - air bubbles of space left between his world and hers, and the Doctor pressed himself against the empty wall and used all of his remaining energy to reach out towards her.

He had been absolutely bristling and overflowing with words ever since he had come into this body, but he found that in this crucial moment, he had no more words left to give. Or rather, there were too many words and not enough time. The Doctor was instantly filled with a deep sense of self-loathing as he realized that he had unknowingly put himself into the exact same situation that he had been in the last time that he had been forced to say goodbye to Rose. He spent so much time talking and filling up their spare hours with mindless, useless chatter and none of it ever meant anything and now it was too late again and he had no one to blame but himself.

He still couldn't force himself to say goodbye, either (the one word he could never say, not to Rose - never to Rose) - so instead, the Doctor flooded the thin connection that they had left with all of the unspoken things that he had never been able to force himself to say out loud and the raw emotion that lay behind each and every single word.

Rose's thoughts still clung tight to him, refusing to let him go, but the breach gave them no choice as the wall between the two worlds suddenly came to a full and definitive close.

He never stopped trying, though. Even though the Doctor knew that he would never be able to look Rose Tyler in the eye and tell her "goodbye", he never once stopped fighting to get back to her in an attempt to do just that.

When he finally managed to find the last, fading doorway leading from his world to hers, the Doctor took only enough time to ensure that no sentient life existed in the nearby star system before forcing the star's core into collapse, creating a massive supernova powerful enough to send his projection to Rose in her world.

She was there, just as he knew that she would be - staring up at him as though she didn't dare believe the proof of her own eyes.

"You look like a ghost," she muttered in dismay.

The Doctor immediately boosted the signal to rectify the problem, but it didn't make the situation any easier as she stepped closer and looked up at him with an expression of wild, desperate longing.

"Can I ...?" she asked hesitantly, raising her hand to his cheek in a familiar gesture.

"I'm still just an image," the Doctor reminded her, shaking his head sadly and desperately attempting to remember the sensation of her touch against his skin and thoughts. "No touch."

"How long have we got?" she asked, her voice coming out uneven and choked with emotion.

"About two minutes," he replied, his mind instantly taking him back to the last time that he had had two minutes to say goodbye to Rose Tyler. He knew that he had to do better this time - he had to make this one count.

But the Doctor found himself filling the time as he always did - with his useless, pointless banter. He was happy to hear that there were more Tylers on the way, though (and even happier to hear that it as not Rose who was expecting), and he was immensely satisfied that Rose had managed to find herself a job at Torchwood doing what she always did, defending the earth.

"Am I ever going to see you again?" she asked, her voice breaking over her tears and hitting the Doctor like a knife right between his hearts.

"You can't," he replied quietly, fisting his hands at his sides in an attempt to resist the urge to reach out and brush away her tears.

"What are you gonna do?" she asked desperately.

"Oh, I've got the TARDIS - same old life, last of the Time Lords," the Doctor muttered dismissively, hating every single word that slipped through his lips that weren't the five words that he most desperately needed to say.

Rose got to them first, though - just as she always did. It took her a few attempts to force them out, but she got there in the end. "I love you," she sobbed, smiling up at him through her tears and silently begging him to respond - just this once, just this one last time, before it was too late ...

The three words hit the Doctor harder than he had expected them to, and he floundered for a moment as he tried to force himself to remember how to reciprocate. "Quite right, too," he sighed quietly. "And, I suppose ... if it's my last chance to say it ..."

Words, words, so many words and not enough time ... his mind cried out desperately as his own useless tongue stuttered and fumbled with the consonants and the lump in his throat threatened to choke them out altogether. Their bond was severed - the Doctor had no crutch that he could use now to express to her the depth and truth of his emotions. He knew that he had to use his words, if only he could find the courage to speak them ...

"Rose Tyler, I ..." But in the blink of an eye, the connection was gone, and Rose disappeared from before him like a wisp of smoke slipping through his fingers. He knew that at least three of the five words had reached her, but the last two - the most important two - were still sitting there on the tip of his tongue, begging to be released.

The Doctor forced himself to swallow them, hating the way that they tasted bitter in his throat and settled like a weight in his gut. But he knew that he deserved every last second of the painful torture, and in that moment, he determinedly refused to let those two words be spoken out loud ever again unless they were being given directly to Rose Tyler herself. Those two words - the last two, most important words in all of creation - were hers and hers alone. So the Doctor silently and efficiently bottled them up inside of his hearts and prepared to preserve them into eternity if he had to.

Reason told him that he would die with those words still sitting heavy in his chest, waiting around hopelessly for the day when they could finally be released, but the Doctor had always had a bit of an issue with listening to reason. He decided that perhaps, just this one last time, he would tell reason to sod off. He would keep those last two words safe, protected, and cherished until the day when he was finally able to see her again, and he would tell her - once and for all - the last two words that they both needed to hear.

Love you, love you, love you - to eternity and back, always and forever, even when it hurts, even when it makes no sense - Rose Tyler, I love you ...

A/N: Thank you so, so much to everyone who has favorited, followed, and commented on this story! There will be a final fic in this series summarizing series 3 & 4 and ending in a Journey's End fix-it, so stay tuned. There's a happy ending coming, I promise!

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