"What was her name?"
"Her name was Rose."
"What was so great about Rose?"
"What was she like?"
"She was BLONDE?"
"She was brilliant…"
Enough.
The Doctor had never liked the past tense very much – always found it a bit maudlin, somehow. He was more a present continuous sort of Time Lord, even future if he was in a specially good mood. But not the past perfect, or worst still, the imperfect. The continuous action that had ceased, irretrievably. On the whole, he liked the English language a lot. It had amusing words like serendipity and antidisestablishmentarianism. It had its little quirks, like the silent k. But he wasn't especially fond of English grammar tenses. No, they weren't cute or natty.
Yet another way in which humans were ridiculously primitive, he reflected. In Gallifreyan there were seventeen different tenses, and his all time favourite, his desert island, love-it-to-pieces tense was, without a doubt, the infinite continuous. The all-encompassing, embracing, inclusive infinite continuous. It was typical of a race like the Time Lords to make up a whole grammar tense for the concept of forever, but there you go. Better than the stupid past imperfect.
He'd been using it far too much recently, in reference to a certain person who was both Present and Perfect, two facts that his grammar had forgotten. It was all part of a habit he'd got into whilst travelling with Martha – a side effect of remaining ambiguous on all things Rose-related. A stupid move when he came to think about it, which was why he made every effort not to think about it. For one, it implied that Rose was gone forever, a completed action. For another, the idea that she wasn't just unreachable but non existent set a formula to his grief, a protocol to a unique situation. Apart from anything, he resented the implication that his sorrow must ultimately result in acceptance – acceptance being unacceptable when it came to the loss of Rose Tyler.
"She is…" he told himself through gritted teeth, but even the present third person conjugation of the verb 'to be' wasn't quite satisfactory. There was no guarantee in the stupid present tense, no safety net. Given that she was a constant reminder, an infinite away, the Gallifreyan tense was only appropriate.
"Rosenya qeniethe" he whispered, allowing himself a smile. Because the past tense was stupid, and completely inappropriate. Rose Tyler was so alive.
Translation of my completely made up Gallifreyan:
Rosenya qeniethe: My beloved Rose (possessive affectionate suffix) is, was and will be (infinite continuous tense).