A/N: This was written for a Secret Santa on Instagram. I hope the recipient of this likes it!
Rose never wanted any of this to end. The Doctor had changed her life the moment he had grabbed her hand and told her to run, and sometimes it felt like they'd never stopped running since. She didn't want to, because with the Doctor you were always running into something new and exciting and dangerous and it thrilled her to the core.
But between all the running and the flurry of movement, there were moments of quiet. Of stillness. The Doctor was a raging inferno, and he was a calm breeze. He was the rapid change from one day to another, and he was the slow movement of the planets. He was every war that had ever existed, and he was the armistice that had ended them all. So, as much as the Doctor couldn't stop running, he always took time to stand still.
The Christmas after he regenerated into a younger man with terribly old eyes, Rose invited him to the Tyler family Christmas dinner. He had joked about her mum not wanting him there before more seriously saying that he didn't want to intrude and that maybe they could just go somewhere in the TARDIS, and he'd drop her back in time for Christmas Day. The planet Leitis was very festive this time of year, he said, it was completely covered in snow and they had the most beautiful trees-
She'd stopped him and smiled gently, reassuring him that of course they'd be happy to have him there, in fact she'd prefer it to running around the galaxy, much as she enjoyed that. It hadn't taken him long after that to accept, and Rose didn't miss the relieved look that briefly crossed his face before he'd grinned and yelled "Allons-y!"
Christmas that year had been quiet. Or, as quiet as the Tyler family could be when they all got together, not to mention the added presence of the Doctor. He'd taken her out for chips on Christmas Eve, just like old times. They'd walked and talked and laughed, and then they'd kissed under a sprig of mistletoe that Jackie had hung up, and it had been everything that Rose had ever wanted.
That moment could have lasted for seconds or for hours; time (as was usual with the Doctor) didn't mean a thing. All that mattered was that they were there, and they were together, and it was all Rose could have asked for.
For those few minutes, hours, days, years that they were together, Rose was happy. She was going to stay with the Doctor forever, that she was certain of, and everything would be as perfect as it had been on that Christmas Eve. Of course, she wasn't naïve; a part of her knew that it would end someday, but she chose to ignore those thoughts and just live. The Doctor, too, forgot that everyone leaves him in the end, which made it so difficult for him to move on after she disappeared into the parallel world.
He kept going, for her sake, and he found other people to travel and to laugh and to live with, although he never found someone with whom he could share a bond like he had had with Rose for a long time. And then when they all left him, as he should have known they would, it was one loss too many. He shut himself away from the world so he could remember (and forget) in peace.
His face remained young, but his eyes grew older and sadder, and it was many years before Clara Oswald brought the light back into his life.
(He thinks it was years anyway. Time had no meaning in that rundown police box sitting silently on a cloud.)
And when he becomes the man with the face that (almost) matches the eyes, he will still remember how it felt to love Rose Tyler, and he will still hold her somewhere in his hearts, unable to quite let go.
A/N: So this didn't turn out like I intended. I'm not actually sure what I intended but this is what happened so I'm going to roll with it. I hope you guys liked it! Please leave a review if you have a moment. Bye!