Blue. The first thing anyone knew of him was blue, a deep, pure, unearthly blue that was as dangerous as it was beautiful, a blue that haunted them and lurked behind their eyes all their lives, even if they'd only seen it once. Blue was just so easy to relate to him, in all of its aspects and variations. A bright, electrifying blue would represent his energy and his zany, wacky ways. A deep, mellow blue would stand for his genius and strange humor. A dark, stormy blue would signify his ferocity, his savageness, the raw, unutterable darkness within his heart… And a pale, gentle blue would characterize his fragility, his delicateness, how simple it was to break two hearts because they were both already broken. Blue spoke of everything he was, everything he had been, and everything he ever could be. Even though they didn't know it, that was why the first thing people knew of him was blue. Blue was the first thing he knew of him too, because it was the first thing he recalled when he awoke and the last thing he thought before he fell asleep. It was just that simple.

Only… It wasn't.

Because blue wasn't the first thing he knew of himself. Blue wasn't the first thing he recalled when he woke. Blue wasn't the last thing he thought before he fell asleep. And it would most certainly never be simple… He just wasn't that lucky.

He wasn't very lucky at all, in fact. He was alone now, you see. He was alone… That's how it was, mostly. Just he and that blue box everyone knew to look for if he was around, and those clamoring, suffocating voices in his head that whispered things, dark things, into his ears, drowning him, burning him, killing him. He was alone because he made it so, for the sake of no one else ever having to feel the way he did, sometimes. Guilty. Angry. Desolate. Empty. He had ended it all, you see. He had done it to himself. He had killed all of them, every last one, so that someone else wouldn't have to. It was a terrible weight to thrust on anyone's shoulders, but after all the self-loathing and silent guilt had passed, he was glad he had taken it on himself, rather than thrusting such a burden on someone else. That planet (his home) that he had destroyed for everything (anything) haunted his dreams, orange sky and silver leaves and red grass all burning, burning, but there was something else burning too, and that was what kept him awake at night.

Because blue was not what he knew of himself. What he knew was that he was alone, the last of his kind, that his name was the Doctor, and that he had once been in love with a girl who burned like starlight.

He remembered her, a young human girl who never finished high school and worked at a shop. She was a spunky blond girl who had eyes like storm clouds and who smiled with her tongue between her teeth. She was a hurricane in a pink jacket and a Cockney accent. She was a girl who had a boyfriend named Mickey and a mother named Jackie who slapped him (just like all the mothers…) before she ran away, left everything she knew behind just to travel with him – a lonely shell of a man – to see the universe. She teased him mercilessly, and he was cynical and unresponsive at first, but then he changed, and he stopped being her protector (not really) and started being her friend. Oh, and they were friends, they were close friends, they were best friends, but Rassilon were they so much more than that. And it was painful how much he wanted them to be even more. She was everything he wanted to hold on to. She was everything he wished he could have forever…

So, of course, he lost her.

That was what kept him awake at night; her face glued to the backs of his eyelids. Her smile, her laugh, even her angry glares were all he could see, all he could think, all he could hold onto when everything else faded away. It was unwise for him to hold so tightly to something that wasn't there (no, not anymore), but he had tried to hold on to other things before, and it just hadn't worked. He held fast to all his companions, of course he did, he loved them all, but he was a man who moved forward and tried never to look back, and often times the other ones got left in the dust as they withered into the same thing. Besides, any time he felt he could have some small comfort from the horrors life had inflicted upon him and damage her departure had done to his heart, he was punished for it, and even though he was stubborn as all Hell, he had to learn his lesson sometime. Sometimes (all the time) he wished he hadn't learned it the hard way.

But no matter what went on in hi mind when he slept, one thing always stayed the same: her. She was always there, always being torn away from him in a head-splitting, world-shattering blur of pain and cruel, twisted fate. And sometimes (most of the time) she wasn't really herself, but the Bad Wolf, a creature of time and space, with powers no one should ever have, least of all a little pink and yellow human shop girl who had never even gotten her A-levels. Ethereal gold light would pour from her eyes and from her skin, radiating through ever cell in her body as she burned, burned, burned with the power of the entire universe, until she fell through the Void and was lost to him forever. Then he would awaken (not before, not after), and he would fall against the cold grating of the floor and cry, a thing he rarely did, a thing he hated doing, but a thing he did regardless, because Rassilon, losing her was worse than it would be if both his hearts stopped beating… But then, that wouldn't really be so bad, he thought sometimes (far too often), because then maybe, just maybe, he'd be with her, wherever that was.

Only he didn't know where she was. He didn't know if she was alive or dead, peaceful or in pain, if she had moved on or if she ached to, ached for him like he ached for her. He just wanted to be with her again, but he was a lost man, a broken man, and he wasn't lucky enough for that. That's why he never believed that burning, golden specter that absorbed the heart of the TARDIS and was Rose but was not Rose when it appeared in his dreams and whispered in his ear that it would see him again. That she would see him again.

There was a reason he didn't sleep anymore.

((LINE)))

From a YouTube binge of clips and my sheer adoration of the show, it 'twas born.

Dunno what to say about this piece. It just sort of… Happened. I got out of school for winter break today and had every intention of doing absolutely nothing as soon as I got home, but then I found a bunch of Doctor Who song spoofs on YouTube and my fondness for the show just sort of bubbled over into this thing… Which is incredibly angsty, and I don't really know how that happened, because I was going for something that showed how much I cared for this little fandom, but then it just sort of went off in its own direction. Whatever. I'm still proud of it.

Also, not really sure why it turned into Doctor/Rose… Guess I just love them that much.

Anyways, I hope you like it!

- Vamp.