A/N: Hi guys! This is my first Doctor Who story. Let me know how I've done and please review! Hope you like it :)
It is at times like these that the Doctor realizes that nobody knows him better than the TARDIS. He is simply getting a room ready for the impossible, wonderful Clara when the box is suddenly there.
He'd started doing it since Rose, keeping one thing of theirs. Not to remember them—no, the Doctor doesn't forget. He just likes to have something, if only to give him a little bit of faith sometimes.
With shaking fingers, the Doctor pushes up the lid of the box.
The first thing he notices is lipstick, which is unmistakably Rose Tyler's. He picks it up and turns it over in his palm before popping the tube open. It is a pink color that is nowhere near as extraordinary as the smile that it once framed.
The Doctor wants so badly to think of Queen Victoria or Charles Dickens or even the Cybermen, but it's his half-human clone who springs to mind instead. It barely stings now, but the memory of how much it hurt isn't far either.
He knows that he is lucky to have had any time with her at all. Out of all the people in this universe and the others, Rose Tyler chose to run with him, travel with him, love him. The truth is, while thousands of people feel blessed to have met the Doctor, he is the one who is thankful when it comes to his friends. It's not about him choosing them; it's about them choosing him. And Rose certainly chose him. So, in the end, it is with a smile that he sets the lipstick tube aside.
The next item that catches the Doctor's eye is an empty flask, and he can't help but chuckle. He still can't figure out how Captain Jack Harkness will one day be one of the oldest and wisest beings in the universe, but surprises like that are why the Doctor enjoys traveling so much.
There is something different about Jack for the Doctor. None of his companions can ever understand what the Doctor feels like, how it feels to lose people you love simply because that is the nature of your existence. Cursed with immortality, Jack knows. Jack has the same fears that the Doctor does.
They will never discuss such matters, however. Their interactions mostly involve the Doctor reprimanding Jack for his incessant flirting. Still, there is a silent understanding between them, one that the Doctor deeply appreciates. For this friendship, the Doctor is willing to put up with Jack's unrelenting charm, because Jack's mere existence makes him feel just a little bit less lonely.
Mickey Smith left just one item on the TARDIS, a knit hat that the Doctor suspects is supposed to be proof that Mickey was there. Out of them all, Mickey would be the most skeptical that the Doctor remembers everybody. It's funny then that he would turn out to be one of the Doctor's greatest reasons for believing in humanity.
The Doctor holds the hat and muses over that for a few seconds, his fingers drawing circles on the soft material. For him, Mickey was fundamentally an unremarkable human. From the beginning, it was obvious that Rose had something else, but Mickey was ordinary, uninteresting. And yet, he became a hero.
The Doctor chuckles to think of it now—Mickey Smith, the hero. But there is no doubt in the Doctor's mind that Mickey deserves that title. He is an unremarkable human being and yet, he is a hero. This is everything that the human race means to the Doctor, that the most ordinary person can do the most extraordinary things. For reinforcing this, Mickey Smith means more to the Doctor than the Doctor will ever let him know.
Of course, the Doctor keeps Mickey's wife's stethoscope right next to the knit hat. He likes to remember Martha Jones as a doctor, both brave and kind, not as the fighter that she would later become. Regret fills him when he thinks of the woman who William Shakespeare appreciated more than the Doctor ever did while she was with him.
Martha was brilliant, but sometimes all that the Doctor could see was that she was not Rose. He hates himself for that, because she deserved better. The Doctor needed Martha to be there for him, and she was. That was it—no strings attached. And the Doctor, famous for his good deeds, could barely appreciate her.
So when she called him, a full-fledged doctor and UNIT officer, he was there. That was it—no strings attached. Still, the Doctor carries much regret with him when it comes to Martha Jones. His friends have always made him more feeling, more human, but he feels that Martha was the one who came out more like him, and that scares him a great deal.
The next keepsake hurts more than any of the previous ones. It is a white veil from the first time that Donna Noble tried to get married, the veil that she was wearing when she first encountered the Doctor. It still pains him to look at it. The Doctor knows that traveling with him is a risk, but he never imagined that anyone could suffer as much as Donna did.
Donna saved the Doctor's life, but she will never know. She was imperative in saving Earth from the Sontarans, but she will never know. On a distant planet, the Ood sing her name in wonder, but she will never know. Donna Noble, who to this day thinks of herself as just a temp, will never know that she was once the most important woman in existence.
The Doctor is known to many in the universe but not to one red-haired woman in Chiswick, so it is with a heavy heart that he gently sets the veil aside. He cannot bear to look at it anymore, but he is thankful that at least he has his memories of their time together. It is more than he can say for one of the most wonderful friends he has ever had.
Next, the Doctor turns to a print of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers dedicated to Amelia Pond, because to put it simply, she is a masterpiece. She was inspiration to the great artist and she is inspiration to the Doctor. It's more than her immovable faith in him; it's everything that Amy is.
Amy is brash, stubborn, and too quick to take risks, but she will do whatever she can to help others, especially the people she loves. Her fiery red hair is matched only by her fierce spirit. She has seen terrifying things and been in more danger than most people could even imagine, but she never turns down an adventure. It is for Amy and people like her that the Doctor keeps going.
Amy is both the little girl who waited under the stars for the Doctor and the woman who once saved a star whale when even he did not think it possible. She gets under his skin like the mother-in-law that she is and questions him like the best friend that she is. She is Amelia Pond, and the Doctor cannot bear to think that she is gone from his life, so he doesn't admit it. He speaks of her as if she is still there and his only comfort is that if only as the whisper in the back of his mind, she truly is.
The Doctor then takes a few moments to study the helmet of the famed Lone Centurion. Rory Williams, or Rory Pond as the Doctor prefers to call him, was not the Doctor's typical kind of friend, or so he thought. Rory wanted steadiness; he wanted to settle down. The Doctor was always moving, finding new places and new people. The one thing that the Doctor and Rory found common ground on was the most important: love.
The Doctor and Rory would both do everything in their power to protect the ones that they loved, and this was what made the Doctor love him. Rory Williams, who aspired to have a stable home and good family, took on the dangers of traveling the universe to be with Amy. He watched over her for two thousand years without knowing what it could do to him. He raised an army and fought the Battle of Demon's Run to rescue her.
So, whenever the Doctor thinks about love, he thinks about Rory Williams. He thinks about a man who was scared but overcame his fears for his wife. He thinks about a man who wanted stability but chose uncertainty for his wife. He thinks about a man who was a nurse but became a warrior for his wife. For the Doctor, Rory Williams is someone who holds nothing back when it comes to love. He is as all people who claim to love should be, and there are few qualities that the Doctor admires more than this one.
Naturally, thoughts of Rory and Amy evoke thoughts of their daughter, so the Doctor's eye wanders to another tube of lipstick. This time, it is hallucinogenic and belongs to River Song, a woman who the Doctor has still not figured out. He has never, in all his many years, met someone so infuriating. River Song is someone who thinks she knows so much better than he does, and though the Doctor will never admit it, she is often right.
His relationship with River is twisted and nearly unbelievable. He is going forward, she is going backward, and it all still works. They argue, they flirt, they even kiss, and the Doctor doesn't know what to make of any of it. When it comes to River, he doesn't think. He just is, and he loves every second of it.
River Song is a child of the TARDIS, a convicted murderer, an archaeologist, and wife to the Doctor. She is crazy enough to take dives off of skyscrapers and destroy time for the sake of love and break her own wrist to keep the Doctor believing. She is a wonderful, ridiculous anomaly, and the Doctor is just beginning to understand how much he lost in the Library that fateful day.
The Doctor is still contemplating River Song when he hears a knock at the door.
"Is this it?" a female voice asks.
Clara Oswald walks through the door and smiles, looking around the bedroom.
"Clara!" the Doctor exclaims. "Clara Oswin Oswald, hello! Welcome to your room! What do you say? Do you like it? Cool, right?"
"It's lovely," Clara smiles. "What's that you've got there? Present for me?"
"Not quite," the Doctor says, hurriedly putting River's lipstick back in and closing the box. "Just clearing some space out for you."
"No housewarming gift then?" Clara asks. "I'm so disappointed, Doctor."
"How about a trip?" the Doctor proposes, sliding out of the room and stashing the box away into one of the many nooks of the TARDIS. "The past, the future, the farthest corner of the universe, a closer corner of the universe? Though the universe doesn't quite have corners… It's more like a giant sphere but not exactly round, but—"
"That might just do," Clara interrupts, running out after him.
"Which one?" he grins.
"We'll get to them all, won't we?" Clara says hopefully. "I can't possibly know where to start."
The Doctor fiddles with the controls, and the TARDIS whirs into action.
"Well then, we're off!" he yells. "Are you ready?"
Clara is too busy keeping herself standing to reply, but the smile on her face is more than enough to tell the Doctor her answer.
He does not dwell on the box anymore. A new day, a new adventure, a new friend. Painful though it can be, this is the life of the Doctor, and he wouldn't trade it for anything else in the universe.