Because I saw a tumblr post about 10 getting a ring for Rose, and I wanted to write about it.
As Clara hovered about the control panel, carefully inspecting the numerous buttons and levers, the Doctor toyed with the small object in his hands. Try as he might, the Doctor couldn't stop fiddling with the girl's ring. It was small and thin, beautiful without bearing excessive decoration, and it suited Clara perfectly. He wondered what memories she associated with for it to have been so valuable. Ordinary cherished thoughts weren't enough to pay for a vehicle.
The Doctor twisted the ring around his finger. Was it from a friend or family member, or a love interest?
He was about to ask when thoughts of other rings flooded his mind, a ring he'd acquired long ago for a girl and another he'd given to a companion for her and her husband. His ring, for the girl he'd never given it to, would've paid for a thousand ships, though he would never sell it, not for anything, save the chance to see her again.
He glanced up at Clara, admiration blossoming in his hearts. She'd been able to do something he couldn't, something selfless and brave, an action he should've been able to perform himself. Even when he could sell the ring, he would've died, truly died, before giving it up. His memories were one thing, stories and experiences of grief and loss, of suffering and death, but the ring was entirely different.
The Doctor's mind was not a place of solitude or happiness. On its own, it was a database of information he'd gathered through years of traveling, but it was tarnished with grief and loss, the death of his people, the loss of his loved ones. Grief coated his mind like dust in a dirty room.
There were things worse than death, he'd found. Things such as the love of his life being trapped in a parallel dimension with a cloned replica of himself. A clone that could give her everything he couldn't, without being properly him.
The Doctor stifled a sigh. The regeneration he was then was terrified of commitment; the creature he was now had leapt into it with River almost without thought, without consideration of how desecrating it was to Rose's memory. Now, he could jump into a relationship with a woman he flirted with endlessly but had no true romantic connections with, but when it came to Rose, the love of not one but two regenerations, he couldn't even voice his affection. He still felt something for her, despite being a different regeneration with no contact with her, and he couldn't even voice his past or present affection for Rose Tyler.
And, when he almost told her, they separated in the middle of his sentence. He considered it sheer luck to have run into her again; it was another chance, a final opportunity, to be with the woman he loved, no matter for how long.
And his clone had told her how he felt. The human mix of Doctor and Donna, and therefore not even a pure version himself, had stolen the three words from his lips, and she'd kissed him, the clone, not the one who had stood with her through thick and thin. The clone who possessed his mind, memories of their adventures, without earning them.
His last regeneration had to work to show that it was still the Doctor, that he was still her Time Lord, before she opened up to him. All his clone had to do was steal his thoughts and words, and she was his.
What Rose Tyler didn't know was that it was she who broke his discomfort for commitment enough for him to take precautions should he fully overcome his fear.
Clara's ring slipped through the Doctor's trembling fingers and hit the cold TARDIS floor. His head whipped up, expecting Clara to descend upon his hunched form with questions, but she hadn't looked away from the control panel. The Doctor paused before reaching down and picking up the small ring.
The Doctor had bought a ring for Rose Tyler. He hadn't thought that he would ever work up the courage to ask the question, but he wanted to be prepared in case courage or adrenaline gave him boldness to voice that which fear kept silent. Everyone he loved died or left him; surely the loss of Rose, inevitable as it was, would be less painful if they never acted on their love.
As it turned out, it was worse to have avoided acting on his feelings fully, avoided the possibility of their relationship to enter a new stage. At least he would have more good memories to ease his pain, because, no matter how much it would pain him for their relationship to be yanked cruelly away, at least he would've been able to experience life where they both acted upon their feelings. A life where they could kiss each other without being possessed, love each other fully and obviously.
Despite firmly believing that they would never be united, the Doctor had stopped at a planet renowned for its jewels and jewelry. They'd crafted a band more beautiful than anything he had ever visualized for her, and he concealed it on his person from her, securely so that it would never be lost, but accessible should he have use of it.
She'd never seen it, and the Doctor hoped she didn't know about it. Such a secret ought to be revealed by the person who did it. Even the current Doctor wouldn't verbalize it, and he was more worthy to acknowledge his actions than the clone, but he still wasn't him, wasn't the true regeneration.
He kept Rose's ring on a necklace he wore underneath his clothes, hidden from the common eye. It nearly choked him, dangling heavily from his neck, hammering into his hearts with every step. It was burdened with the unimaginable weight of the unknown, of what could have been.
Of the millions of deities in their world, there was none he could equate himself with more in that moment than Atlas. Rather than hold up the world, however, the Doctor was held down by one, an eternity of possibilities wrapped into a thin, elegant band.
What memories and eternities of possibilities did Clara's hold?
The TARDIS landed smoothly in front of Clara's house, and the Doctor rose from the ground. He burst into action, allowing outward happiness at their successful journey to mask his inward despair. He flailed his limbs and babbled as he messed with the control panel and bounded up to Clara.
Clara Oswin Oswald, his impossible girl. Sharp but kind, stubborn and loyal. She reminded him of Rose, yet simultaneously seemed completely opposite.
Suddenly, she snapped at him about not being a ghost, and the Doctor was fully alert. Shock and indignation filled him, both at her ironic incorrectness and at his thoughts being condemned by her.
Quickly, the Doctor relinquished her ring. He was ashamed of himself for being so caught up in his past that it clouded his view of the present. Rose wouldn't want him comparing every woman he met to her, wouldn't want him to ignore a companion in favor of sulking. He'd done that once with Martha, and he didn't want to do it again.
The look of gratitude on Clara's face banished the Doctor's self-pitying thoughts from his mind. Her kind gaze sent waves of happiness through the Doctor. She kissed the ring and bounced away, her joy tugging the Doctor's lips into a soft smile.
He fingered the ring hanging around his neck. It was practically weightless, Clara's words banishing, temporarily, the depression that accompanied his failure to act upon his feelings.
Clara had a way of alleviating his stress and focusing his priorities, banishing his ghosts as easily as she resurrected them, and the Doctor wouldn't take her presence for granted. The Doctor wouldn't make the same mistakes again, he vowed.
Besides, maybe someday, the right woman would wear Rose's ring.