A/N: HAI. It took me an obscene amount of time to edit this. I blame my other project that is all action while this one is boring and all touch-y feel-y crap. Huge thanks to the lovely Titanic-fanatic. This is my first piece that is BETA'D. Can't you tell? (You can. For once, I don't come off as completely dyslexic.)
This piece points out very obvious problems/emotions with the Doctor. Forgive me. I had the urge to use too many metaphors and ramble in second person.
It's a bit surreal the first time it happens. You know it's real because the planets are still spinning and all other life goes rushing on. But it doesn't feel real. You run and you laugh and you love, but memory is a boomerang and it always comes back to you. It's the words, the trick of the eye, the slightest reference or the smallest yearning that drag you back. You're hurting. You're bleeding. But you're perfectly fine at the same time and you can't quite believe that you've lost something.
By now you're used to it. By now you've mastered the art of dodging around that misery that comes hand-in-hand with insanity, but it still aches like it always does -- a slow drain of your humanity. It's an ever-present unsettlement in your gut, this guilt, and you can't help but long to just give in, to reach out and snatch some happiness, relish it before you continue on this journey of nightmares.
But you're old, so old, and you know yourself like you know the turn of stars as they perish. You know that if you step into this tempting downpour of bliss, you'll drown. You'll fall so fast, so far – miles past reason and logic and restraint. And when it ends, it's inevitable you are certain of this, your theories that you reminded her of in haste are realized. All blossoms, like her, grow. They bloom so magnificently in front of you, and you can almost pretend they'll stay like this into eternity. They don't. At they're finest moment they plunge into decent and wither. The girl who burned like the sun is no exception to this. You've seen the horrible process too many times to deceive yourself otherwise. Her petals will decay and turn to delicate dust with time, and when they do you'll want to, too. Become like her, dust.
You can't allow yourself to do that. You're always teetering dangerously on the line, and to fall would be an abomination.
You're not a person. You can't be, you're not allowed. Maybe at one time, when your hands were less bloodied by age and you didn't know the meaning of loss. Or perhaps this was all designed. You don't know – you're not sure of anything, anymore. You won't accept it, but it's true – you're not a person, no matter how much you try to emulate that existence. You are merely the puppet of the universe; a faithful slave to your own self-destruction.