Again
"Noooo!"
The sound is dragged out from the very depths of his soul. This can't be happening again. Again and again and again. It just keeps happening.
He can feel the sharp press of hot metal against his chest as he hangs over the precipice. The raging fire beneath the platform has eager tongues licking at the soles of her feet. The parchment skin of his face is starting to crack. He ignores it.
Her thin fingers slip through his, centimeter by centimeter and he desperately tries to close his own hand around hers but it isn't working. It never works.
Her eyes are wide in terror, the blue irises exposed and he can see each varied shade within, in startling and horrific clarity. Her hair was starting to sizzle, sparks jumping up into her curls, almost catching.
Her mouth is open on a scream but she can't even give voice to the word she is trying to say but it pierces him as if the word has been magnified a thousand times over. It goes through him with the force of a shotgun fired at close range, holes blown through his body.
"Doctor!"
He wants to shut his eyes, wants to close his ears somehow. This is too much. One too many times. One too many stabs to his hearts. He's bleeding on the inside, the vital fluid of life poisoning the rest of him.
But he can't shut it out. He won't do that to her. She has to know that someone cares, has to know that someone will miss her when she's gone.
He can see when she realizes it. That she is going to die. That her end is now on some godforsaken planet on the rim of the universe. And those clear blue eyes meet his.
She mouths, "I'm sorry."
And she lets go.
