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She feels silly touching the sparkling stones of her necklace for what must be the tenth time as she watches her Doctor absolutely destroy the restaurant’s dance floor.
(No, really–he’s got the sonic set to 1358b-diamond-yellow, which is apparently the perfect setting for ripping up floorboards in search of a secret trapdoor.
Just another date night with the Doctor.)
He’s never really struck her as the gift-giving sort, but she thinks he must be if he got her this. He’d made her wait in the hall before scurrying through some door she’d never seen before, engraved with the language of his people. She’d assumed it was his room–-she could’ve sworn the door had looked different the first time she’d traveled with him, but in hindsight that probably wasn’t an accurate basis for making assumptions; the console room alone was proof that the TARDIS could redecorate just as completely and suddenly as the Doctor could regenerate. He’d probably gotten a new room with each body, not that she’d ever really known the Doctor to use his room, anyways. For all that he’d bemoaned domestics and dependency and the “complete inability of humans to decorate their bedrooms properly, Rose” (said with a matching wrinkle of his nose as he took in the bright pink walls that the TARDIS had provided her with, a slightly embarrassing yet much appreciated reminder of home), the Doctor had spent an obnoxious amount of time sprawled out next to her in her bed, or across her floor, or in the fluffy red armchair that sat by her bookshelf, or in the galley while she made food, or on the library couch as she drank tea, or… anywhere, really, that she was. Where Rose wandered, the Doctor had followed–-which was ironic, when one thought about who had run away with whom-–and she’d never wanted to invade his space.
Still, she’d wondered what the engraving meant. She’d wondered if it was his name, beautiful, chiming syllables that she’d heard but never seen.
She’d been jarred out of her thoughts by the Doctor’s return, upon which he’d presented her with none other than the gorgeous jewelry set that she’d admired on Fabula Prime, oh so long ago. They’d reminded her of the Doctor, a bit-–vast and impossible and sparkling like the night sky, but it’d been one of the very first times she’d let the Doctor use his credit stick and had been wary of overspending. Rose was all too familiar with debt and financial dependency, and the scars of her last experience were still a little too fresh when she’d first come aboard the TARDIS.
He must’ve bought the jewelry that very day they visited, while she’d been off in search of a decent food vendor. After all, he hardly would’ve remembered years down the line; not the exact date and time and market and stall and jewelry set–-or so she’d thought, until he’d told her a bit about it.
They’re white point stars, he’d said as he brushed his thumb over the earrings, his eyes never leaving her wide, surprised ones. They… they’re from Gallifrey.
Rose lifts her hand to her ears, gently brushing the precious stones as she half-heartedly grins at the Doctor’s exuberance upon finding the trapdoor. She hadn’t known back then what she’d been looking at, and she’s almost nervous now wearing something that must mean so much to the Doctor. He’d hardly been able to take his eyes off her while they were dancing earlier, and she wonders if he’d been looking at her and seeing his planet, his people, everything he’d lost.
He doesn’t strike her as the gift-giving sort, and yet he’d given her this: this beautiful thing that she’d been taken with two entire incarnations ago, expensive and beautiful and reminiscent of a home that she knew was so, so hard for him to think about, even after all this time.
He gives her new worlds and long-lost times and his hand in hers every single day, but something about this felt special.
“Rose!” he calls out, and though she can tell he’s trying to behave for the benefit of the crowd around them, she can’t help but smile at the undercurrent of delight in his tone. “I was wrong, it’s not poisonous gas,” he begins, and she doesn’t even have time to ask him why the hell he opened a door that he thought would release poisonous gas before he continues. “It’s a bomb!”
Or perhaps not trying to behave for the benefit of the crowd around them.
Just another date night.
To say that life on the TARDIS could get overwhelming would be a massive understatement.
They’d been taking things slow, and for good reason--he and Rose had had much longer to grow apart than they’d had to be together, and he was loathe to risk losing her now, after all they had been through, just because he’d rushed them both into a relationship that neither of them were ready for.
Before, he’d loved her enough to fight off his anticipation and restlessness and unwavering desire. Now, he loves her enough to succumb to it with patience.
Still, all of the time in the universe (or rather the multiverse, as it seemed that simply staying in just one was not quite so easy a feat these days) could not have prepared him for this.
He’s known… well, not quite from the moment they’d first found each other again, because when he’d first seen her his brain had simply stopped, grinded to a halt as his eyes drank her in, and he couldn’t have focused on a single thing other than the repeated mantra of her name (RoseRoseRose) as he held her again with arms that he thought would never get to know her touch.
But soon after that, at least. He’s known since approximately then that eventually… eventually he would have to tell her about the room on the TARDIS that was somehow both hers from him and also his from her--hers from him in the literal sense, and his from her in that her very presence managed to comfort him within those walls, despite the fact that she’d never once stepped foot through the door, not physically. He’d brought her in instead, piece by piece, gift by gift, and with each one the memories of her and all of the feelings she evoked in him seemed to saturate the shelves and the walls and the floor until he could practically bask in them all, until he could simply rest in this place that had been created for them and let the nostalgia and yearning wash over him until he all but drowned in it.
There’s a certain irony to there’s no time like the present when applied to his current situation, and the Doctor sighs as he tries to come up with some form of explanation for what, exactly, he’s been doing all of these long years. Quite frankly, even with a couple millennia of experience he’s not quite the expert in human reactions, and he’s not entirely sure how well-received this will be.
It’s not like he’s taken a few months to overthink it or anything so nonsensical as that. He’s just waiting for the right moment.
To his dismay–-and amusement-–he is not the one who runs out of patience first.
The first time it happens, he dismisses it as coincidence. Or perhaps convenience, as it were, and his oldest friend helping him out.
He wouldn’t say that they’re crashing, not really-–the handbrakes are still working, after all, and he’s pretty sure one of the stabilizers is still functioning at full capacity. He’d followed a mauve alert straight through a mid-vortex time storm, and his sexy ship was not exactly thrilled with him at the moment.
(Come to think of it, that might’ve had something to do with it as well).
“Rose!” he yells, trying not to let his fear overcome him as a rough jerk of the ship nearly throws her across the room before she gets a tight grip on one of the bigger levers next to her. “Rose, can you see the viewscreen?”
“Yeah!” she shouts back, only now she’s upside-down, and bugger, it’s been awhile since the artificial gravity went wonky inside the ship.
“I need you to tell me what’s on it!” he calls back, hurriedly turning a few knobs as a horrid clanging alarm starts ringing. “I need to know what we’re chasing, to see if there’s a better way to follow it!”
“Yeah, ‘m not a big fan of the current one,” she snorts sarcastically, glancing up at the viewscreen.
“Well?” the Doctor asks after a long moment, wishing he could look at her but instead finding himself quite busy trying to get the outer shields up and running again when he notices they’re about to cut through an asteroid belt. “Rose, what is it?”
“Doctor, I really think you need to see this yourself,” she calls back, and somehow her words sound uncertain and scared and excited all at once.
“A bit preoccupied over here!”
“No, really, I just–-blimey, I wish I could show you,” she groans, and they both blink in surprise when a book drops onto the console in front of her.
Only it’s not just a book, it’s a journal. The one he’d gotten on the day he’d found her again, actually, that could turn her thoughts into images with just the press of her fingertips. The one he’d been looking at for her, specifically, although he’d never exactly gotten around to telling her that.
“Doctor–-”
“Touch one of the pages,” he instructs her, pulling himself across the console with a lever in order to reach a button that will hopefully restore gravity (of course, he forgets to factor in the function of the lever, and winces when Rose shrieks as gravity is restored with the starboard wall as its center; needless to say, he presses the button again). “Touch one of the pages and think of what you saw!”
Blessedly, the journal turns out to be as good as it was described.
Less blessedly, the drawing on the page is of a girl dangling out of his TARDIS, holding an older man by the ankle. She’s decidedly not Rose, unless Rose in the future looks quite a bit different–-dresses much preppier, dyes her hair brown, and develops a habit of coming within inches of falling out of moving vehicles. He’s decidedly not the Doctor, unless the Doctor ages quite a bit, wears ridiculous sunglasses and a magician’s coat, and decides that holding onto an electric guitar is somehow more important than grabbing onto the girl that’s trying to save his life.
Well, perhaps it’s too early to make assumptions.
(Much to his exasperation, they end up catching the rather odd duo. It turns out that he was half right. That woman was not Rose. But unfortunately, he would regenerate into an old man wearing a costume and clutching a guitar instead of not-Rose. Pity.
A future Rose wasn’t even on board that day, since she was helping Jack out on a Torchwood project. Double pity.)
“You are not going to be living this one down, mister,” Clara not-Rose Oswald says to his elder self. He is most certainly not jealous of the effect of future-him’s eyebrows and how well they sharpen his irritated glare.
“Don’t think I’m picking you up again next Wednesday, not with that attitude,” his twelfth incarnation scowls, his thick Scottish accent roughening the words. It burns at his heart a little bit, the shape of the sound, and he wonders if his future self carries the memory of Amelia Pond with him as closely as he still does. Although he never would’ve lived it down, he almost wishes he could hear her smugly poking fun at his next self.
“Rose will,” Clara sing-songs, and the Doctor grimaces at the idea of this new and charming yet undeniably confounding woman teaming up with his–-with Rose.
Even without any sassy, stubborn redheads present, he has a feeling he’ll have his work cut out for him.
“That’s right,” Rose says sternly, wagging a finger teasingly at his future self. “No being late for picking up the companions, Doctor. Not on purpose, at least, since we all know you’re bound to do it accidentally.”
The Doctor does not frown when she offers up a tongue-touched smile to belly her words.
The elder Doctor’s gaze does not linger on said smile as though thoroughly distracted and mesmerized by its power.
“Hang on,” Clara says, blinking across the console at the hand Rose has just waved at her linear Doctor. “Is–-why aren’t you—I’ve never seen you without—”
“There!” the elder Doctor announces loudly, flipping the viewscreen around so aggressively that all three of them jump as they turn to stare at it. “Locked on to our runaway TARDIS. With just a little help from the thrust capacitors, we can jump right in and land in the console room. Do not say-–”
“Geronimo!” the Doctor exclaims, shooting his future self a smug grin before Clara’s earlier words finally finish registering in his brain. His gaze drops to where the elder Doctor’s hand rests on the dematerialization lever, wedding ring shining clear as day in the light of the console room.
Oh, bugger.
(It’s not as though he wasn’t planning on it, in any case. For Rassilon’s sake, he already has a ring.
And a bond sure would’ve made that entire nightmare easier, anyway-–Rose never would’ve had to use a journal if she had been able to show him telepathically what she’d seen–-
And what was that with the journal, anyways? Where had that come from?)
The Doctor narrows his eyes at the TARDIS, whose hum increases in volume ever so slightly under his scrutiny.
“I’m watching you,” the Doctor mutters, before huffing and going off to find Rose.
The second time it happens is most definitely not coincidence. The Doctor almost drops the cup Rose hands him when he sees just which one it is.
“Aren’t they lovely?” she grins, holding up the hand-painted teapot from Shakespearean England for him to gape at. “Went into the galley to make tea, and the old girl had the whole set laid out on the counter, ready to go!”
“Oh, did she?” the Doctor asks politely, giving the TARDIS an emphatic mental shove as he sips his tea. “Quite a lovely paint job, you know. Southwark, 1599 from a local craftsman. Nice bloke. Bit jumpy.”
“What’d you do, save his shop?” Rose jokes, and it takes the Doctor a moment to put together what she’s implying. “Rescue a family member? Find a kitten?” She gestures cheekily at the meticulously painted cat adorning her own cup before sipping at her own tea, sneaking gleeful glances at the art every few moments.
“Something like that,” the Doctor agrees with a wistful smile, silently cursing himself all the while.
“Oh! We should’ve gotten a pair of these!” Rose exclaims, and the Doctor glances over to see Rose holding up a familiar “I heart New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York” T-shirt with a delighted grin, but then her face falls slightly. “Who’d you get this one with? Martha?” she asks carefully, and the Doctor forces a grin.
Now look what you’ve done, he grumbles at the TARDIS. The Doctor hadn’t previously witnessed a telepathic scoff, but he does so now, his ship completely unrepentant for her behavior.
“No, I don’t recall, actually,” he shrugs, scratching at the back of his head anxiously in a gesture reminiscent of his last self. “I haven’t bought everything in this wardrobe, you know. Some of it I’ve… er, stolen. But a lot of it was… acquired by the TARDIS.”
“So, also stolen.”
“...Borrowed.”
“Oh, were you plannin’ on givin’ it back, then?” Rose teases, and he rolls his eyes.
“She’s a young woman. She likes thrift shopping,” the Doctor snorts, only to yelp when he rounds a corner only to crash right in to a rather poorly-placed (or perhaps rather ingeniously so) hat rack. He swears it wasn’t there the last time they were in the wardrobe room.
“Well, she’s got better taste than you,” Rose sighs, and the Doctor tries not to scowl. “Oh, look at that though-–it’s just my size! I’m in luck.”
“Yeah,” he sighs in exasperation. “Very lucky.”
“Look, this has to stop,” the Doctor declares, marching to the armchair in the middle of the room and flopping into it as the door clicks shut. “You need to let me do this.”
His ship doesn’t even deign to respond to his words.
“First of all, this is just depressing,” the Doctor continues on, gesturing to the empty spots on the shelves where some of the gifts that she’d passed along to Rose used to lay. “I worked hard to fill those shelves. Me! Not you, me! My gifts, I get to give them to her.”
The change in pitch of the TARDIS’s hum is simple, but effective.
“I don’t care which one of us made the shelves, I chose the gifts,” the Doctor argues. “And what if I was going to show her this room? It looked right impressive, every shelf perfectly full without overflowing. You’re ruining that.”
In the span of a second that it takes him to blink, the shelves of his ninth incarnation stretch the tiniest bit. Just over a few centimeters on one end, but enough to leave a small space on the edge of each shelf.
The Doctor’s eye twitches.
“Look, I have a plan, okay? You just have to be patient.”
The briefest image of a calendar flickers in his mind, a blur of months full of days very pointedly marked off in thick black marker.
“And Rose says I’m the rude one,” he grumbles, picking himself up out of the chair and stalking over to the shelves of his tenth self. “Unbelievable. But if that’s how you’re going to play it, I’m taking this now,” the Doctor states moodily, grabbing the ring box and slipping it into his pocket. “Not taking any chances.”
When he takes Rose to dinner that night, she’s wearing a swirly pair of earrings from the 1920’s.
The Doctor doesn’t know whether to smile or scowl.
He holds the hairpin delicately in his palms, feeling its weight center him in place as he sits on a bench in the breathtaking courtyard of the Xiu family. He can hear Rose conversing with Lin inside; the girl had taken an immediate liking to her, not that the Doctor could really blame her. Rose had saved her in the end, simply by paying attention to her when no one else had.
If his instincts are correct, he suspects Lin is attempting to give Rose a gift at the moment-–jewelry, most likely, having seen how much the kindhearted girl values the beautifully crafted accessories that she adorns each day. She’s sentimental and kind, and Rose is the sort of person that one can just tell will love and appreciate the gesture.
Still, though, he hadn’t predicted this earlier, when they’d split up in the marketplace looking for clues as to where the kidnappers had set up base, and he’d gone ahead and bought Rose something while she’d been in the shop across the street.
It’s gorgeous, truly, and reminiscent of the era–-they’d landed smack dab in the middle of the Ming dynasty this time, though he’d been aiming for the Qin dynasty and missed it by a landslide. The wood of the single-pronged zan is coated with silver paint, and the carved dragon that makes up the top is embellished with pieces of jade and pearls.
He hears the creak of a door and hastily slides his hands into his pockets, still holding onto his treasure in his right hand as he turns to see Lin and Rose exiting the house and wearing matching smiles. Sure enough, Rose has a jade pendant resting atop her shirt, right above where he knows her TARDIS key lies below the fabric.
“Ready?” he asks lightly, nodding a polite farewell at Lin, who bows slightly in thanks before returning inside.
“Ready,” Rose agrees, skipping over and slipping her hand into the crook of his elbow-–his right elbow.
The Doctor hesitates, gaze lingering on the pendant around Rose’s neck and the bright, cheery grin on her face, one he’s seen before directed at his ship after picking up a tea cup, some earrings, a journal.
One he’s seen directed at himself as she touched her earrings carefully, listening intently as he admitted to her that the diamonds that adorned them had come from his lost home.
He wants it directed at him again.
“I got you something earlier,” he says awkwardly, fidgeting slightly before pulling his hand out of his pocket so quickly that he accidentally displaces her grip on his arm. He thrusts the gift in her direction, hearts skipping around a bit as she takes the accessory and examines it with wide, curious eyes.
“Oh. Thank you,” she breathes out, and her smile is blinding.
The Doctor’s hearts soar.
He still can’t always win.
The next time they land in the Wylven District of Pelos Major, the custom is to give one’s partner a rather revealing outfit symbolizing fertility upon becoming of age. The locals take one look at the Doctor, hand clasped firmly in Rose’s, and drag him off to the shops.
Ears burning in embarrassment, he throws the impressively sheer scrap of fabric straight onto the shelves, not daring to look and see where it lands.
Thankfully, his ship doesn’t protest.
He’s still not ready.
Well, he is, in every way that counts–-he wants to spend the rest of his life with Rose. He lives with Rose. He… he loves Rose.
And none of that is new, but what is new is that he gets to act on it now. He gets to take her on dates, kiss her under alien moons, hold her as she wakes up in the morning, grumpy and still bleary with sleep. He’s always wanted everything with Rose, but now he actually has it, and he really shouldn’t be all that nervous about this. It’s not even a Gallifreyan custom, really; it’s oh so very human, and he wonders if that’s part of what makes it so scary, what makes him feel like it’s never quite the right time.
Just to test the waters, he gives her the mask he’d bought in a Venice filled with vampires, and takes her out to a universe-famous Mardi Gras celebration on New New New Orleans, nearly a millennium after she was born.
No nerves, but the weight of the ring still feels heavy in his pocket.
Rose sighs, turning down another hallway that she swears looks exactly like the last three.
Usually, the old girl is very helpful and accommodating when it comes to guiding her places. Rose likes to think that the ship feels something of a sisterly affection towards her, which she absolutely returns. It’s hard, after all, to not feel a connection with someone after you’ve seen their heart.
Tonight, though, she’s been wandering for fifteen minutes with next to no help at all from her dear friend, and Rose frowns and strokes the walls thoughtfully.
“I need your help with this one,” she pleads gently. She’s never fully gotten the hang of telepathy, as much as her husband had tried before he passed and as much as the Doctor has tried to help on occasion, though in truth the rare moments of connection often seem to make him more skittish than anything. Regardless, she does her best to push all of her concern and desperation towards the ship as if to explain why the situation was so important.
They had met Clara Oswald earlier that day, and she’d helped them thwart the Great Intelligence before refusing to travel with them when they’d dropped her off.
Rose suspects that the rejection is hitting the Doctor harder than he’d like to admit; Clara is the first person he’s asked aboard since the Ponds, who had both joined him quite readily. But it runs deeper than that–-Rose isn’t sure how sensitive she could possibly be to timelines (certainly not as in tune as the Doctor is), but something about leaving Clara on Earth had simply felt wrong, the crawling sensation still creeping across her skin long after they’d entered the Vortex. It felt like she should’ve known what the problem was, like something was tugging just at the edges of her memory, but she couldn’t quite grasp anything beyond the fact that Clara Oswald was supposed to be on board with them.
If they’ve potentially damaged time, she knows the Doctor must be in a state of panic.
“Please, let me help him,” she tries again. “Help me find his room.”
When she turns around next, she is greeted by the door that she’d studied so closely, back on one of their first few dates together. The Gallifreyan writing is inscribed just as neatly as she remembers it, and her heart pounds a little as she opens the door.
It’s not at all what Rose expects, and she freezes at the sight of the Doctor sitting in a sole armchair in the dead center of the room, his ninth incarnation’s jacket lying crumpled in his lap.
She isn’t really sure how to describe the room she’s entered, though it’s certainly not a bedroom. An antique shop would be a better comparison, or perhaps a collector’s personal exhibit. The only furniture aside from the chair are three large bookshelves, nearly filled with a rather eclectic group of items that didn’t seem to be arranged in any particular order. The shelves don’t match either: the first is almost industrial, metal and utilitarian and straight to the point; the second is wooden and somewhat ornate, with slender, elegant curves embellishing the corners in a very aesthetically pleasing manner; the third reminds her rather distinctly of the console room, with sleek, almost futuristic metal siding holding up polished glass shelves with a slightly turquoise tint to them.
The Doctor bolts upright when he notices her there, and Rose cringes at the vulnerability to his expression, realizing immediately that he hadn’t expected her to find this room–-probably hadn’t ever wanted her to find this room. The thought hurts a little, contrasted with how welcome he is in her space. She’s even started to think of her bedroom as theirs, as he began to occupy it with her far more often than not.
Still, she tries to be mature about it. She knows how important personal space and privacy has always been to the man with so much pain in his past, and while she wishes more than anything that she could help him in some way, she knows that no amount of time spent together will ever entitle her to his past, not if he isn’t willing to share it.
“Alright?” she asks with forced lightness, and when the Doctor’s shoulders slump she can’t help but rush forward to wrap her arms around him.
“I’m always alright,” he answers back, and the words that Rose hasn’t heard since her husband was alive pierce right through her heart.
“We can go back for her in the morning,” she suggests, though it comes out with a weight of finality that she hadn’t intended to project. The Doctor simply hums his agreement and continues to hold her tightly, tucking his chin over her head and rubbing his cheek against her hair.
After a long moment, he pulls back just far enough to meet her eyes.
“Aren’t you going to ask?”
“Do you want me to?” she responds, wishing she could read the answer in the lines of his face.
He’s quiet for a minute, one hand rubbing absently across the length of her spine before he finally settles on an answer.
“It might be easier that way,” he admits with a sigh. “I’m not sure where I’d even begin otherwise.”
The odd statement confuses her a bit, and she decides that perhaps she should start with the most basic question. “Is this your room?”
To her surprise, he laughs, and although she has no idea why he’s so amused, she can’t help but smile as she feels him shake against her, happy to be the cause of some of the day’s tension leaving his body.
“The engraving on the door,” he gets out at last. “In Gallifreyan, it says arkytior, which in English, translates to-–”
“Rose,” she finishes, startled, recalling a story her other Doctor had told her many years ago.
“Exactly,” the Doctor smiles, nostalgia and sadness softening the edges of his expression. “In my head, I’ve been calling this ‘the Rose room.’”
That takes her by surprise, and she twists in the Doctor’s arms to get a better look at the shelves surrounding them again. He releases her after a light squeeze, catching her hand in his as he follows her. Rose’s breath catches when she moves closer to the first set of shelves and faint traces of recognition wash over her. There’s a gown that looks vaguely similar to the one she’d worn when she met Charles Dickens. There’s a music box that is engraved with waves that she swears look exactly like the ones they’d walked under on Woman Wept. There’s a snowglobe of the Cardiff Millenium Center, but when she picks it up and gives it a shake, she catches sight of a small blue box in a familiar shade of blue parked in front of the building.
She moves without thinking to the next set of shelves, throat tight when she sees the tie she’d bought his last incarnation sitting in one of the emptier stretches of wood. She sees guitar picks and drumsticks and clockwork hearts and wolf figurines and jewelry and notebooks and…
“Gifts,” the Doctor says quietly behind her. “They’re… they’re gifts.”
Rose remembers exactly how she’d felt when he’d handed her that jewelry set, the one she’d been eyeing up on one of their first trips together–-stunned into silence, half choked up and chest tight and overwhelmed with love-–and this… this is all of that, multiplied tenfold and then some.
“Why didn’t you ever give me one of them?” she manages, reaching out gently to feel the divinely soft fabric of a fluffy pink blanket.
“I did, when it counted the most.”
“What, at Christmas?” she frowns, digging through her memories in search of when he might have given her something back then.
“Not at Christmas,” the Doctor says shortly, and swallows hard. He hesitates for only a moment before bringing their joined hands up to his lips and pressing the lightest of kisses to her old wedding ring.
All of the air leaves her lungs in the span of a second and she can hardly breathe with the weight of the emotion that overcomes her. Distantly she feels his arms around her again, supporting her as she tries to process what he’s said and all of the implications.
She likes to think that after so long together, she’s quite familiar with the Doctor’s thought processes and reasoning. She understands, even if she doesn’t always like it or agree with him. But she’s never really realized that he’d thought of her future with his metacrisis like that.
“Doctor,” she exhales helplessly, unable to say more. She just squeezes him tighter, trying to press herself even closer into the man that somehow doesn’t seem to realize that he’s always given her everything.
“Rose Tyler,” he says, the way he always says her name-–like each syllable is precious–-and she knows he understands.
“Thank you,” she tells him anyway, and he squeezes her back and leans in again to press his lips to hers.
He tells her about them one by one, day by day, night by night.
Some of the gifts are self-explanatory–-trinkets that she’d admired on their travels and that she hadn’t noticed him subtly buying when her back was turned, or clear reminders of adventures past. There are ancient ticket stubs and alien postcards and culturally significant accessories and her heart swells with affection at the thought of the Doctor collecting these memories much like filling a scrapbook.
Others are trickier, especially the ones that she wasn’t there for-–and her heart breaks for him during those conversations, proof she never would’ve asked for that he hadn’t forgotten her, hadn’t let go of her. She holds his hand as he tells her the story of a fob watch, cuddles into his side as he recounts the tale behind the stasis-preserved rose, and laughs with him a bit as they both admire a Van Gogh painting that no art historian has ever seen. Some of the stories are familiar to her already, but hearing them from this incarnation’s lips and pairing them with something tangible renews the stories for her, making them new again.
The armchair in the Rose room is quickly replaced by a loveseat that looks like something Rose’s grandparents would’ve owned (and that she loves dearly), and slowly but surely the shelves get emptier as different objects get displaced to different rooms on the ship. It hardly matters, as the two of them begin to fill the empty spaces with trinkets from current travels, replacing the old mementos he’d kept for her with new memories they choose to preserve together.
Time passes, and slowly but surely, what was once hers seamlessly becomes theirs.
A weight lifts from him, both literally and figuratively.
He realizes at some point that it was ridiculous of him to think that he should be waiting for the right time–their time is now. Here and now, running across time and space hand in hand, this time when they are finally together without obstacle, without reservation, and without fear; when her lips are his to claim, and his hand is hers to hold, and when forever is theirs for the keeping.
They have each other, wholly and absolutely, and it’s the only part of the picture that matters, really. Once he puts that into focus, all of the rest of it-–the setting, the details-–is nothing more than just a backdrop.
The next time the Doctor regenerates, there is a new ring on his finger, a new ring on her finger, and two new sets of stylish shelves sitting side by side in their room.