Rose Tyler, I
When you travelled the universe at the drop of a hat, and time bent itself to your whim, silly little things like holidays were easy to forget. It was easy to forget that on a tiny blue marble in a spiral of non-distinct stars, the 45th day of its yearly trip around the sun was important. It was easy to forget that the brilliant, sparkling creature beside him was from that tiny blue marble, and that the 45th day of her planet's year was special.
But part of travelling is an amazing ability to adopt things. You adopt accents, you adopt food, you adopt technology. He supposed it wasn't too much to ask that he adopt this day as a special day, though every day The Doctor spent with Rose Tyler was a special day, to be frank. She was… Rose Tyler was…
Rose Tyler was supernovas and exploding elements, skin the color of space and lips the color of the grass on Gallifrey. Rose Tyler was a sharp mind and beautiful humor and a heart so large she might as well have two. She had the joy of a Time Lord in her soul-she would walk beside him and see the wonder of the universe just as he saw it all those eons ago when he first stole the Tardis. Rose Tyler was golden hair and laughing eyes and bravery in the face of a fall.
She was the girl who had seen her world die, had faced her own death in a cellar in Cardiff years and years before her great grandmother would even be born, had stared into the heart of the Tardis and torn open the rift between worlds.
She was the girl who had shared his heart and shared his home and shared his bed, shared his life. She was the girl who would have stayed with him forever.
But now he was stuck on the wrong side of the wall, pain in his hearts that he wasn't sure he could bear. She had him, she had him with her, but he was alone.
The Doctor opened the door of the Tardis, looking out into the stars, and sighed. It ached, it ached so badly that some nights all he could do was cry and blame the universe for being so cruel.
Long ago he had discovered these spots, these little blips in space. They were like the glass spots on the surface of the ocean left by whales diving deep-perfect little windows into a world you couldn't touch. Now he looked out of the doors into a spot rimmed with pink and yellows, shimmering in the empty space between two stars. They were windows, portals, one way and completely closed off.
But he could look.
She was laughing at a bouquet of roses he was holding out to her. The light in her eyes danced and a flush was spreading over her cheeks as she inhaled deeply. He gripped her waist in his hands and tugged her close for a sweet kiss.
The Doctor tossed a single red rose into the void, "Rose Tyler, I…"
He watched as his own lips silently finished that sentence, watched as his own hands took hers, watched as he took his knee and produced a ring that looked decidedly alien in origin. And he watched her mouth 'Yes' back to him.