A Hand to Hold
By: Jessica Lewis
She told herself she would not cry. She would not let the tears fall down upon her pale cheeks as she turned away from the grave. She was all alone with no one else left to hold her hand. The last of them had been buried this morning. A burial she attended under the guise of being a distant relative. It had been over 50 years since she had come to call this universe home. 50 years since the man who grabbed her hand was split in two and she was given half of him to look after. This world, her world in so many ways, had made its first contact with alien races under her command. Back in the glory days when she hadn't yet realized the cruel game fate had played.
Back all those years ago she swore she could never love that man who was only half of the one she promised her forever. With bitterness in heart she proclaimed that he was but a shell to any who would listen and he always listened. She had worked so hard and had gone so far too only be left behind on that godforsaken beach. That far off man, the madman, had broken the promise he made when he told her that he would never do that to her. He had lied perhaps not intentionally but a lie is a lie nonetheless. The half man was not patient but rash, he was not compassionate but angry, he was not happy or joyful but sad. A sad, sad half man who knew he was only half but could remember being whole.
The madman had told her that she and the half man could live the one adventure he could never have. Perhaps that is was he truly thought or at least hoped. Perhaps that is what he made himself believe to better justify leaving. In his mind, she knew, he had left her not out of sacrificial love or bittersweet hope but out of self-preservation. He called it the curse of the Time Lords: watching every one you love wither and turn to dust. That is why he left her back on that beach because she had promised him her forever and he hadn't wanted to see her forever end. She knew that's what drove him that day and back then she had almost hated him when her crippling grief had subsided to an aching roar. Now though having watched her mother age and die, having to see her brother fall apart from a disease that had no cure, to watch her half man grow limp as his breath stopped and his one lonely heart stopped pumping. Now she understood.
It had been twenty years after the day when she hid the mirrors. She cursed the reflective pieces as they showed her youthful appearance. Her half man had long gone gray with lines of time marring his face. The lines spoke of happiness and sorrow, of love and loss, commitment and treachery. They had lived all those years together not knowing any other way. A fondness grew between them but they always seemed to be just passing each other by. As the years progressed he adapted to mortality with a grace she envied. His nightmares weaned and his anger became joy, his sadness became empathy, and the loneliness became kindness. She gave credit to him and him alone but he had till his last breath sworn it had been her that had helped him become a better man. She could not return the compliment because he became lighter she became darker and his apologies fell on deaf ears. Oh, she did blame him because how was the half man supposed to have known; at the end of the day she was the one who had stared into the heart of the Tardis: in order to save the man she loved. Her doctor, the Doctor who had vowed to never leave her behind but he had lied.
She didn't age and they could only tell her that she hadn't seemed to be aging at all. They couldn't give her an explanation but she hadn't expected one. The half man had babbled that he should have known. Should have seen and it was in those times when she would curse him. He would sound so much like her madman, her thief, whom from the moment he had taken her hand and whispered run had stolen her. The half man had told her before he died that bitterness will only lead to more heartache and that anger will only lead to suffering. He had pleaded with her to find beauty in the world again. To hear children laugh and not think of the time when those children would be naught but an old shell in a box beneath the earth. To look the sky and feel curiosity not the apathy of knowing what is out there and never being able to reach it as clearly as the memories that still invaded her head. She had told him she would try and perhaps she had meant it. Now though as she looked out across the water standing on the rocky beach of Bad Wolf Bay she knew she had lied to him. At least in this moment, not looking a day over nineteen, she thought she might have lied. She had lied to the last person to hold her hand.
Here she was Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, the Valiant Child, and the Bad Wolf stuck in a universe that was decades away from having usable space travel, alone, and no hope of ever finding what she was missing. On good days she would admit to still loving the doctor and on better days still she would admit to having loved her half man but neither were there any longer. The second had been borne away by time and the first had placed her away in this parallel world so she could always be young and so alive in his mind. He would never understand, she knew, how young she would always be but also he would never know how dead she was inside.