AN/ This short fic takes place during 'The Christmas Invasion.' It's quite sad and angsty, so it's probably not best to read this if you're already kinda sad.What can you except when you have the word 'grieve' as your prompt? Doctor Who is owned by the BBC. Reviews are appreciated.
The time had come for me to grieve. My Doctor was gone. Things had gone wrong. He may not recover. I could feel him slipping away, faint and distant. He was in their care, not that Rose, Jackie or Mickey would know what to do. He needed comfort and he had them. They needed comfort and they had each other.
Rose would grieve too. I knew this. She would grieve for the fallen Doctor. She would grieve for the Doctor that was, for the Doctor she had known, and for the Doctor who wouldn't wake up. In part, I grieved for him as well. There were some large differences between my grief and her grief though.
When Rose cried, she had her mother and Mickey to turn to.
Who did I have?
It was certainly not the first time I had been left alone, all but forgotten down on the cold street. This seemed almost like one time too many. As the Doctor shut down, I shut down too. Shut down to grieve.
It happened slowly as the realisation set in. The grieving process is slow. It wants to take its time to leech out as much pain as it can. This is the case for most humans who grieve, and it was the case for me.
First the lights dimmed. Then the heating turned off. Then the water. Then I let everything else go so that a cold, inky blackness was all that remained inside. I became a vast, empty tomb.
It was so quiet. It was amazing. It reminded me of the silence that followed the Time War. It unnerved me, and did nothing to help my grief.
I tried to focus on outside noises, but nothing in particular caught my attention. It was just traffic and some random people walking past. They ignored me. Everyone ignores the strange blue box.
I tried to focus on my Doctor. I tried to find his mind. I thought that perhaps I could help him somehow…but no. He was so lost and distant that simply finding his mind was near impossible. I could feel him slipping further and further away with each passing moment.
I felt some friction deep within myself. It was a painful, heavy grinding. The Doctor would have been able to sooth it if he were here, but he wasn't. In fact, it was his absence, his silence, that was causing it.
I became desperate.
I knew it was futile, but I still listened. I listened for the sounds of the other Time Lords. I listened for the other TARDISes. I listened for some little piece of home.
Nothing. They were gone. Had been for a long time.
I was a fool for even trying.
I was alone.
Rose would never grieve for them as the Doctor and I did.
The painful friction got worse. It was like a hole was re-opening itself inside me. At one time, that hole had been filled with the others. When the war came, they left and the hole remained behind. My Doctor managed to patch the hole a little bit on his own. Rose and captain Jack managed to patch it more. But the events of our last adventure had re-opened the hole again.
Grief. A hole called grief.
I was alone. I could find no one to give me the comfort I so desperately needed. I couldn't call for help. The only one who could listen couldn't respond.
I was alone.
Another difference between Rose and I was that she could cry. I lacked the ability, though not the want, to do so.
If there ever was a time when I wished I could cry, it was now. Sitting on the cold pavement in London on Christmas Eve, grieving silently by myself.