She was gone.
Sometimes she was gone before he even knew she was there. He would think of her – skim his hands across the console and feel the buttons and levers and try to calm himself and his thoughts – but he would always feel it building. The emotions, the thoughts, the needs, the urges, and everything would build up until it collapsed and he would collapse in on himself.
He was dark.
He was a black hole, twirling and spinning and growing deeper and gloomier and everything hurt. Petrichor. Fire. Building up, crumbling down, building up, crumbling down – a pile of rubble. A pile of two hearts, broken and smashed with a love long lost and a woman never forgotten.
Had he loved her?
He slammed his fists against his temples, slammed his fists against the console. Messed with wires only to shock himself (was it an accident?) perhaps just so he could feel something, oh, god, anything that could ever compare to the thought of her running with him. Her hand in his. His lips on her forehead, hers on his, oh no, no – no. No. She was not his. She was not his to love, she was never his to love. He could have been hers but he – oh, god, he loved her. He loved her and it hurt and it burned because she was the fire swelling in his ribs, the fire that burned him inside out, the fire that charred the remains, the crumbles, of his two incessantly beating hearts.
Harder.
He thought of her and he thought of her and sometimes she would come back. Fingers on his cheek, fingers in his hair, crying on his shoulder, his neck, lips. Lips everywhere, fighting to find each other, him sobbing against her hair, his hands grasping at nothingness until he realized it wasn't her. It was his imagination and the sadness and the darkness all fighting to bring her back, bring her back to him, return her where she belonged.
Lonely.
He was lonely when Clara was gone and it got worse, then – usually it was just a nagging. A nagging at the back of his head reminding him of what he was missing. And he would think of her – porcelain, fire, burning embers, ghost fingers, legs. Legs. Legs for miles and years and legs that stretched galaxies and he let out a sob, collapsing against the doors and falling into a pile. He allowed himself a cry, sometimes, when no one could see him. And he would think of her. And he would love her, even though she was gone and she never knew.
Did she know?
He would curse himself until the end of time if she hadn't. If she thought for one second that he hadn't thought she was his world, his life, the first face this face saw, the first and the last, everything he wanted and needed and everything he wanted and he wanted her and she wanted him (had he imagined that she had wanted him?) once, once, after she nearly died and she had been alone and she needed comforting. He didn't comfort her.
He did later.
Van Gogh died and they hadn't made a difference and he took her into his arms and that night he took her into his arms once again and pressed kisses to her skin and everywhere except her lips. And he hugged her and he hugged her and he hugged her and he shouldn't have let go – why did he let go? Why would anyone let go when holding the entire world – the entire universe – every galaxy that could and would ever exist – in the palm of their hand? He loved her. He loved her.
He could paint poems for her in the stars above them and he could cast spells with his fingertips among the constellations of freckles buried in her skin and he would. He would give up everything he'd ever done and anything he could ever do just to see her, just to touch her, just to breathe the air from her lungs and feel his hearts become whole again or just one moment.
She slipped through his fingers faster than he could grasp her, like water – not like a river, or an ocean or a lake, no, no she was a Pond. And she could change her last name a million times over but she would always be his Pond and he would always call out to her in ten perfect letters, aligned by the stars and fixed by the Gods, Amelia Pond.
His Amelia Pond.
His.