A/N: This fic is a series of (...well, they're longer than drabbles, so I suppose you'd call them short, unrelated stories) focusing on love. Any pairings, any situation, and each chapter will be based around a quote.
Enjoy, and please review! :)
'Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.' -Henri Frederic Amiel
Rose Tyler hadn't really thought about love.
Her first love had been when she was five years old, and her mother bought her a pink bear. Rose was enamoured with the toy immediately, and dragged it everywhere with her. She'd named it Bill, much to her mother's amusement. Jackie'd told Rose that 'Bill' was actually a girl, hence the pink attire, but Rose refused to believe it.
Bill had been lost on their annual caravan visits down to Cornwall. They'd been on the beach, Rose cheerfully feeding Bill a ham sandwich when a seagull swooped down and clasped the bear with its teeth. Rose cried after it, following the bird and her bear all the way down to the edge of the pier. Jackie'd been able to stop Rose before she jumped off the dock and plummeted into the waves below.
Rose sobbed for a whole day, and spent the next one scouring the skies for the malicious bird. Needless to say, she never got Bill back.
Rose next experienced love when she'd began dating Mickey Smith. Kind, handsome, slightly dim Mickey Smith. He had adored her for as long as anyone could remember, and was overjoyed when she finally agreed to go to the movies with him.
It was a sweet, tender relationship. Rose felt safe in Mickey's arms, and he thought that this was him, for the rest of his life. Still, they were only fifteen years old, and Rose had other ideas.
She broke Mickey's heart the day she dumped him for Jimmy Stone.
Jimmy swept into Rose's life, and she fell for him hard and fast. He was a musician, and Rose loved to hear him play. He'd strum his battered guitar whilst sitting in his flat, and Rose watched him from the sofa, completely infatuated. She gave it all up for him; finished her education, moved in with him, convinced that they were so deep in love that nothing else mattered.
She was wrong.
He left her, packed up with another girl and left the country. Rose was hundreds of pounds in debt, and had no-where to go. She swallowed her pride, and marched back to her mother's flat, lugging her one suitcase stuffed with what Jimmy had left her.
Jackie welcomed her distressed daughter with open arms. What else could she do? She tucked Rose into bed, setting aside a mug of coffee by the bed and leaving the heartbroken girl to cry.
Rose wished that she was five again, hugging Bill and having no care in the world. That was the kind of love she wanted.
She'd broken Mickey's heart, and now Jimmy had broken hers.
Rose decided that she'd never love again.
But then she'd met a man called the Doctor. A man who could change his face, a man who let her discover the whole of time and space. A man who owned a magical time machine, ready to take her wherever she desired. A man who showed her how to love again.
And she did. She loved again. She loved him.
Why should he love her back? She wasn't the prettiest girl in the world. Back in the day, all the boys had fancied her at school, but she dismissed them. She didn't believe that she was beautiful, despite her mother's contradictions. She wasn't a saint either. She was selfish, jealous, and sometimes cold. Her background wasn't of the highest class; her mother was a former hairdresser who lived off benefits. She wasn't graceful; once she'd fallen off a chair whilst reaching for something, and she couldn't dance. She didn't get her GCSE's, due to the whole Jimmy Stone incident.
But the Doctor loved her. Not because of her appearance, or her background, or her intelligence. He loved her because she was herself.
