She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
- Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty
Rose…
A single word representing an entire world, a loss and a joy like no other. She was, to him, representative of everything both good and bad in the world. It had been many a year since she had walked the TARDIS, but her presence was ever lingering in the tiniest of ways. A scratch on the control panel reminded him of a rather rough landing on one of Jupiter's many moons, shampoo stuffed in the back of one of the ship's many bathrooms, a silver key, hanging forgotten on the hook. Most predominantly, a locked room, sealed off to all but the Doctor, untouched, bed still unmade, untouched and waiting for its owner. Invisible to all but the keenest observer, the ghost of their past still wandered the rooms of the blue box.
There were days when the unpolished English accent rang so clearly in his mind that he could have sworn that the blonde were about to pop her head around the corner and flash him that toothy grin.
Yet, she never did. Rose Tyler, an entire dimension separating him, was living out her life as contently as humanly possible, with yet another version of himself- a luxury and lifestyle he would never have been able to give her. It was, in those first nights without Rose, the first time in his long life and many incarnations that he had hated himself for what he was… his origin, his endless years and his long, lonely journeys across the galaxy.
Rose had left an impossibly large black hole in his heart. A love that had once built him up now tore him down. No light or life escaped the hole… She everything and everything was her. Rose was everywhere. Time, as it is said, heals all wounds. He had infinite amounts of it, but no galaxy, no triumph; no new friend could fill the void left by Rose Tyler. Countless friends and loves walked in and out of his long life, but, in the deep recesses of his mind, none came close to comparing with her. The blonde from Cardiff became the measurement by which he judged all that travelled with him, all he that he loved and all that he cared for.
Rose Tyler had brought unfathomable hope and joy to the sad, once-lonely man in the blue police box. She had taught him to love and when she had left, taken both of his hearts with her.