The Doctor grumbles under his breath, shuffling his feet and impatiently rustling the contents of his bigger-on-the-inside pockets.
"This is stupid," he announces.
"It's not stupid!" Donna calls from her hiding-place behind a large marker, and the Doctor shoots her a withering glare.
"I thought you said I would have my privacy," he says drily.
Donna shrugs. "I can't hear everything you're saying."
With a sigh the Doctor can hear at twenty meters, Martha springs up, grabbing Donna by the arm. "We'll go away," she says. "But you've got to do this, okay?"
His responding grin is horribly tight. "Certainly! Nothing would make me happier."
Rolling their eyes—and it's almost eerie how in-unison it is; the Doctor wonders if that's an attribute all human women share, or if it's a skill they've developed purely in response to him—Martha and Donna head back for the TARDIS, Donna sending him one last worried look over her shoulder.
He smiles and waves and Donna sticks her tongue out at him.
Watching them every step of the way, until the door closes behind them, the Doctor delays for as long as he can make himself, before turning back around. It's just him in the room, now. Well, him and the remains and plaques and markers of a few hundred dead people.
"Right," he says, shifting his weight. Pushing up one sleeve, he looks at his watch, more for something to do than anything else. He doesn't need to look at a watch, after all. He's aware of every single second that ticks by, whether he wants to be or not.
He hums. "How long do you think I have to stand here before they'll buy it, hm? Three minutes? Five minutes?"
The plaque on the marble wall in front of him does not reply. Not that he expected it to; he'd be rather worried if it did.
"Three minutes," he says. "I'm already bored."
The Doctor sneaks a glance at the door, only to find Martha and Donna both pressed up against the glass, watching him. He heaves an irritated sigh.
"Welp," he says. "Suppose I should talk about something. Although it probably doesn't matter what it is, unless they can read lips. Ooh, can they read lips? It's possible that Donna can. Surely not from this distance, though. Oh, would you look at that, I've already talked through fifteen seconds. Brilliant, me! Just a small eternity to go."
Shoving his hands back in his pockets, he rocks back on his heels, clicking his tongue while he looks about the room. It's a nice space, if a bit bland. White and grey marble greet his eyes everywhere he looks, Doric columns and glass walls and flower arrangements and a metropolis of markers dotting the landscape. Some people sprang for elaborate statues to commemorate their loved ones, ridiculous things like horses or angels or lifelike busts or, in one particularly ridiculous and inexplicable case, a true-to-scale tiger, but many of the names here are marked only by simple plaques like the one on the wall in front of him, square and bronze and completely free of frills.
"I mean, it really is stupid," the Doctor says. "What's the point? How is talking supposed to help anything? Talking is just noise. We just vomit it out to convey information, or dispel the silence, or because we're needy and we need someone to validate our feelings. When we have feelings. Which we don't. Did I mention this is stupid?
"Besides," he continues, his voice ringing and strangely loud against the quiet, "it isn't as if she's dead."
The plaque on the wall begs to differ, but as far as the Doctor is concerned, the plaque on the wall can bugger off.
Rolling his eyes (great, now his companions' terrible habits are rubbing off on him), the Doctor rummages about in his pocket for a moment, withdrawing an only-slightly-battered bouquet of flowers. He looks down at them and snorts.
"Roses," he says. He shakes the bouquet at the plaque on the wall. "Terribly cliché, isn't it? I'll have you know, I didn't pick them out. If it had been up to me—which it most certainly was not, I was brought (no, dragged) here against my will—it would have been something different. Less predictable."
He glances back down at the bouquet, frowning at its lopsided bulk. Gently, he shifts the stems around, balancing the arrangement with another rose over here, a bit more greenery over there. A delicate scent wafts up toward him, and it doesn't smell like her, it's far too flowery for that, but he smiles nonetheless. When he's finished, the bouquet is still a bit crumpled in places, spotted here and there with a torn leaf or bruised petal, but it's still a very pretty (and almost obnoxiously cheerful) cluster of blush-tinted ivory winking up at him.
"But I suppose roses are sort of classic," he admits grudgingly. "And the color's nice. You would like it."
The petals are satin-soft beneath his touch, and even though he doesn't want to, he finds himself remembering the silky feel of her hair between his fingers, the gentle pressure of her lips on his cheek, the warmth of her hand in his.
"Like peonies," he says suddenly, shaking his head. "Paeonia lactiflora. You'd like those as well. Sort of fluttery and pink. They grow all the way from Tibet into China, even into Siberia. But you already know that, you would have seen them in the ornamental gardens, when we traveled to…"
His voice trails off. He swallows. No. This is not what he came here to do. He only came here to placate Martha and Donna. Nothing else.
"Let's talk about something else," he says, to himself more than anyone. "Like Donna! And Martha. You'd like them. Even if they do occasionally take on the completely unnecessary role of therapist and force you into uncomfortable situations, just because you almost offed yourself that one time. Well, maybe those two times. And your behavior has sometimes veered into the realm of 'reckless' or 'harmful' or even 'ridiculous, you stupid lovelorn ninny', as Donna very memorably put it once. But don't worry, there were always mitigating circumstances. Very mitigating. It didn't have anything to do with..."
He swallows. "Well. Like I said. Mitigating circumstances.
"Or, actually, no," he argues (and you know what they say about arguing with yourself, or talking to yourself, and whatever, he's never really cared for the things that they say, because more often than not, they are full of nothing but cobwebs and hot air), "no, it was because of you. Because of your fingers, rather. It's a silly thing to say, I know, but that doesn't make it untrue. All you had to do was hold on just a little bit longer."
He cinches his thumb and forefinger close together for emphasis. "Just a little bit longer. I didn't have any trouble holding on to my lever, after all. And we were subject to all the same conditions. And I know for a fact that you've got a ridiculous amount of grip strength in proportion to your body mass. Couldn't pry a box of biscuits out of your grabby little hands for the life of me. And they were my biscuits, to boot."
The Doctor is dimly aware that he's pacing now, like the words inside him are compelling him to move, like something inside will rupture if he doesn't.
"This is ridiculous," he says, scratching the back of his neck and skull, angrily ruffling the hair there. "This isn't helping. How is this supposed to help, me just talking to a wall? It isn't like I'll get anything back. What's the point?"
Revelation stops him in his tracks, clenches the muscles in his throat.
"Oh," he says.
His gaze drifting back toward the plaque, he points at it, like he's accusing it of something. "You," he says, "are a liar."
Stepping back, the Doctor laughs. "So that's it, then? That's the point of all this? Talking, looking for clarity or closure or any other rotten thing, and that's what I've come up with? You're a liar. Wonderful. Beautiful. Fantastic.
"But me thinking about it, me talking about it, doesn't change anything," he continues. "You lied to me. You said forever. You promised. You promised, fully knowing you couldn't deliver. You're not stupid. You knew how impossible it was. But you lied to me anyway.
"And me? I was stupid enough to believe you," he says, his fist tightening until flowers rattle and crumple in his grip. "You said forever, you said you would never leave, and you couldn't even hold on for even just a moment longer. I know you could have. But you didn't. You just didn't."
Suddenly he can't look at her name on the wall anymore. Chest heaving, breath burning in his ribs, he breaks his gaze away. His vision clouds and the only thing he's aware of now is how very loud his breaths are in the room, how very empty and white and lonely this place is.
His eyes shutter closed. "I just really need to have you here right now," he mumbles, his voice so quiet it's barely audible even to his own ears.
No one and nothing replies. Not that he expected otherwise. (Not that he ever hoped.)
Raking a hand over his face, he shakes himself internally. This was a bad idea. He never should have let Donna and Martha talk him into it. He doesn't feel better at all.
Before turning to leave—it's been closer to five minutes than three, now, so he has more than fulfilled his end of the bargain as far as he's concerned—the Doctor wonders what he's supposed to do with the flowers, exactly, since this isn't a traditional grave. (Something to be said for traditional headstones, he thinks; they sort of lend themselves nicely to having flowers dramatically draped over them.) There's a little metal cone sticking out of the wall next to the plaque, but it's already full of flowers, cheap silk things probably supplied by the local council. Shrugging, he pulls the silk flowers out, dropping them unceremoniously on the floor. He shoves his own bouquet in and ignores the small rainfall of bruised petals that flutter out.
But even though his feet itch to carry him away, he still can't quite move. It's like something has tethered him there, something invisible, but insistent.
The Doctor scowls. No. He won't let anything bind him to this moment; nothing and no one can hold him still.
He turns and walks away.
(He picks up a few of the fallen petals and slips them in his pocket first.)