A/N: No apologies for this. No, I've got no idea why my muse has gone here except to say that she is a vile and vicious creature that I've apparently not fed enough recently because I sat down tonight with an open new document and this is what she's given me. Please read and review because my muse thrives on it… reviews make her happy, and perhaps will drive her out of this murderous path she's taken. If you feed her she may finish the other four bloody fics I've got on the go now that are far happier creatures than what you'll find below.
Disclaimer: I so obviously don't own Doctor Who; I just like to borrow the characters and mutate their inner voices. Please don't sue, my house is small, my car is useless and my dogs are pains in the arse, but they're all I have.
In Silence, Prayer
By: Danae Bowen
In silence all truths come to pass. In silence all knowledge is obvious and all beliefs are solid. In silence all prayers are screams, all water tears, all dreams a horror. In silence one moment will pass and the world will cease its spin.
In silence a single heartbeat will sound like the steady beating drums of insanity, while all the pieces of anything that ever mattered shatter and scatter throughout the cosmos, leaving no trail to be found.
All that is, all that was, and all that ever shall be fall through his fingers in a solitary, elongated moment of silence that accomplished all that the wrath of a thousand enemies never could. The lord of time, the oncoming storm, brought to his knees by silence.
He knew it would happen eventually; promises would break, hearts would disintegrate, and all throughout lies would drip from his tongue to fall upon deaf ears until he would return alone to his TARDIS, his destiny. He figured her to go screaming, leaving him with the shrill sound of her terror reverberating off the walls of his skull; he figured he'd reach for her, fingers just that far away. He figured it would be sudden and absolute, leaving him to berate himself for his lack of action and slow movements. He figured time would be his enemy, moving too quickly for him to dash in with his infamous eleventh hour rescues. Sometimes he figured she'd just go home and leave him to walk his path alone while she moved on.
But she was only human; tiny and frail, easily broken. Twenty years or eighty, a life span in a blink, far too young, but still, she lay in silence. It wasn't anyone's fault, which made it that much harder for the lonely Gallifreyan to accept. It just happened. He'd bounded into her room that morning, grinning from ear to ear, promises of finally coming through with that trip to Barcelona spilling from his lips, but receiving no response from the tiny spitfire he'd come to treasure. He'd leapt on the bed, intending to rile his young companion awake, but she'd not reacted, not even to curl deeper into her warm blankets. When he'd reached his hand out to her, her flesh was cold to the touch, her heartbeat slow and fluttering, air barely passing between her parted lips.
Bile rose instantly in his throat as he ripped the covers from her body and pulled her out of the bed, rushing down the corridors to the infirmary. In minutes he had her hooked up to life support machines, each tube and cold piece of metal working to do what her body wouldn't, each monitor cursed at in a hundred languages when it confirmed his deepest fears. It happened sometimes with humans, for no real reason; their bodies just had enough and stopped. It could have been the transport the Daleks used on Satellite 5, it could have been leftovers from the time vortex energy she'd taken upon herself, it could have been the purple soup she'd eaten for a week last month when they stopped on Hynar IV. A residual effect from Cassandra taking her brain, or the Wire taking her face. It could have been something in the air on the Impossible Planet, or even radiation from the Cyberman factory on Pete's World. For all the Doctor could discern, it could have been the meal they'd eaten at Jackie's two nights before, because wasn't that pot roast just awful? Rationally, he could list a thousand things they'd done, eaten or visited in the last year that could have prompted Rose Tyler's body to begin a slow, permanent shutdown, effectively silencing the youthful energy she'd brought back into his existence. Rationally, the Doctor knew he couldn't have foreseen this. Rationally, the Doctor knew he couldn't have stopped this. Rationally, the Doctor knew that any action he took now would never change the flat lined neuro monitor telling him that Rose had left him long before he'd opened the door to her room. Rationally, the Doctor knew the wet streaks staining his cheeks were nothing to be ashamed of as his best friend slipped away, all that ever made her special gone in the night. Rationally, he should be thinking of how to tell Jackie her daughter had died, not thinking of how he should have known something was wrong when she'd gone to bed pale the night before, or how he should have been there at the very least to hold her while her brain shut down, if only to ease her fear, if only to not let her die alone.
He shouldn't hate his fingers as they unhook the machines he'd only just hooked up a minute past - had it really been three hours?
He shouldn't hate his lungs as they wheeze air through his closing throat, even as he can't take his eyes from her chest, pleading with her to draw one more breath all by herself. One more breath is hope, yeah?
He shouldn't hate his hearts, even as they dissolve into tiny shards of shrapnel in his chest, proving once and for all that Rose Tyler had been the most dangerous creature in creation. More than ten seconds between beeps on her heart monitor now.
He shouldn't hate his voice as it breaks with desperation, crawling into the tiny patients bed with her, wrapping his arms around her still body. "Please," he whispers, but he doesn't recognize the sound that emerges.
He shouldn't hate himself for understanding that his presence with her now didn't matter, that even while her body winds down the last moments of her life, he wasn't with her when it could have made a difference.
He shouldn't hate the TARDIS for dimming the lights, a mournful sound issuing down every corridor and through every room as the ship cries for the loss of half her family.
He shouldn't hate the Earth as he realizes he has to take his companion home, one final time. The earth will receive her, take her deep within it, and protect her like the TARDIS and he never could.
He shouldn't hate her for leaving him; he knew she always would.
"How long are you going to stay with me?"
"Forever."
He should have called her a liar that day, but he wanted so desperately to believe the lie that all he could do was grin at her like a mad fool. He shouldn't hate her for leaving, he should hate himself for believing in a fabricated reality.
How long had it been since her heart monitor had last beeped? He searched his various trains of thought, realizing it had been at least thirty seconds since his last confirmation that she still lived. Blind panic stalled both his hearts, his voice breaking into a keening whimper as he presses a hand to her chest desperately praying for one more beat, one last second to exist in the radiance that was his Rose.
He prayed to turn blind. Prayed to turn deaf. Prayed for death to take away the fresh agony that shredded the soul that Rose had coaxed back to life. He prayed for one more moment to find his voice so he could tell her finally that he loved her.
In the end, the Doctor's prayers were met with the same response as his hand held to her chest.
Absolute silence.
~~Fin