Doctor,
Oh, I shouldn't have done that. It still hurts to even think about you. Saying your name makes it worse. I guess writing it does the same.
I'm not sure why I'm doing this. Mum said it might help. Actually, what she said was that I should try and talk to you, act like you can hear me. But I felt stupid, talking to an empty room when I knew you weren't there. You should've been there. You should be here, now. It isn't fair.
I said once that I'd stay with you forever. I meant it, Doctor. I really did. And I'm so sorry that the one promise I never, ever wanted to break was the one that I was forced to. I'm so sorry. For both of us. It isn't fair. Sometimes, I catch myself wishing that Pete – I still have trouble thinking of him as my father – hadn't come back to our reality just in time to save me. It's complicated, the way I'm feeling about this whole affair. But I think the really simple way of putting it is just this: I think I'd rather die with you than live without you. And then I think of how my death probably would've hurt you so much more than simply losing me like this, and I feel guilty for wanting that. I would never wish any of the pain I'm feeling on you. I've got a bad feeling that you're experiencing it anyways, though. And I'm sorry for that. I can't help but feel a bit responsible. And don't even try to tell me it's not my fault, I won't believe you. Just let me take the blame. It helps a little bit. I know it seems completely counterintuitive, but it does.
I'm not going to kill myself, if you're worrying about that. I did say that I'd rather die with you than live without you. But I suppose I'd rather live without you than die alone.
I don't have the words to express how much I miss you. How much I need you to be here. Maybe I don't need the words, because maybe you're feeling it, too. Maybe I wouldn't need the words if you were here, because you could just do that mind-meld trick that you do sometimes and then you'd know.
I had a thought yesterday. Remember that time we were trapped on a planet that was orbiting a black hole? I started wondering what would've happened if we'd gotten off that planet, but we hadn't managed to find the TARDIS. So we were stuck there, in that time, for the rest of our lives. I'd still have to go back to living a typical, slow life. I'd miss traveling around through time and space with you. And of course I'd miss my mum. But I meant what I said on that planet – being stuck with you wouldn't be so bad. I know for a fact that I'd much rather be trapped in the future with you than stuck in this parallel present with Mum, Mickey, and the man who isn't quite my dad. I think I'd rather be trapped anywhere with you than stuck here with them. I'd even rather be trapped here with you. It's not about where I am, or how agonizingly normal the life I'm being forced to live is. It's about being with you. Or, in this case, not being with you.
It's much easier to talk to you on paper. I mean, it's never been hard for me to talk to you. You're so sweet, and funny, and brilliant – or, in the words of the version of you I originally met, fantastic. You're my best friend, and it's easier for me to talk to you than it is for me to talk to anyone else. But that's not what I meant. It's easy to talk to you. It's much harder to say the things that matter. It's only now that you're gone (though maybe it would be more accurate to say that I'm gone) that I'm realizing just how many things I should've said to you that I never got around to saying. I thought we had forever.
I was wrong.
I feel like I should tell you a little about what's happening here. There's only a little to tell, really. It's been almost two weeks since you lost me. I've spent most of that time in my room. It's a nice room, actually. You remember how rich Pete is. It's nice and big and there's plenty of useless junk for me to throw at the walls when my missing you manifests itself in intense temper tantrums. Mom's always coming in trying to get me to eat, but I'm never hungry. Mickey comes by from time to time. He brings video games and DVDs of our favorite television shows and tries to cheer me up. Sometimes he manages to help a little bit. Other times I lock the door and don't let him in, because sometimes seeing him is just too painful and confusing. He means well. He doesn't know that seeing him makes me feel even more guilty than I already do.
I don't know what else to say. I guess I've covered the basics. I suppose I could emphasize one point – it isn't fair. None of this is even remotely fair. And I'm not fine. I tell my parents and Mickey otherwise, and I'd probably deny it if you were here, if I were speaking with you face-to-face, but I'm not fine. I'm on the other side of the world from fine. I'm in a separate parallel universe from fine.
Mum was right. This did help a little. It's not the same as actually being able to talk to you – no, it's nowhere near the same. But it does help a little bit. Not much. But a little.
All of my love,
Rose
-0-0-0-
Rose pushes the two pieces of lined paper that she's filled with her untidy scrawl, words to him, to the Doctor, across her desk, away from her. She doesn't want to reread what she's written for him. She'll probably never revisit those words, because doing so would probably only add the pain she was feeling while writing them as another layer of misery on top of the pain she's currently feeling. Still, she doesn't throw the papers away. They helped. They really did. Not much, but they did allow her to get rid of a tiny fraction of the weight on her chest. The burden of missing him is still as present as ever. But the burden of all the words she should've said to him but never did is slightly lessened. And the removal of even the slightest bit of her pain is absolutely worth the cramping of her hand and the dark metallic gray stain running down the side of her pinky finger and her hand, created when her skin rubbed against the words she'd already written.
"Rose, honey?" comes her mother's muffled voice from the other side of the door. "Time to go, okay?"
Quickly, she pulls the papers back to her, grabs her pencil, erases her name at the bottom of the page, and scribbles another few lines.
Oh, yeah – Mum's signed me up for this art class thing. She's trying to ease me back into society or something. She isn't making me get a new job yet, but I'm sure that'll be next. Personally, I'd rather stay right here, like I have since I got to this place. I'd rather stay here in the dark, wishing myself to wherever you are. But I suppose this isn't so bad. I've always liked to draw. I don't know. Mum thinks it'll help, and maybe she's right. She was right about this.
All of my love,
Rose
-0-0-0-
Their assignment is still life.
The class is gathered around a table with a bunch of small objects – apples, flowers in pots, little statues – on it. There are perhaps twenty students, and the table isn't that large, so they're packed in with very little elbow room between them. Rose can barely stand being in the same room as other people. She certainly can't handle being in close quarters with them, not right now.
So she takes a little jade horse from the table and moves to a smaller desk, taking several erasers and pencils with her. This earns her a raised eyebrow from the teacher, an small aging woman with dark hair streaked with gray named Jess, but she doesn't say anything. Rose doesn't need her permission, anyways. She can't stay there, looking at all those people. Not when there's a tiny redhead wearing a Union Jack t-shirt just like the one she'd worn when they went back to the London Blitz in 1941. Not when the glanced a blonde girl and dark-haired boy keep exchanging remind her so much of the ones she used to exchange with him. Not when there's a brown-haired boy in square glasses just like the ones he wears and a black leather jacket just like the one he never used to take off. Or maybe she's just going crazy, seeing him everywhere. Maybe those glances are nothing like the ones she used to exchange with him. Maybe the glasses and the jacket don't resemble his at all. But it's not all her imagination. She's certainly not imagining the tattoo on the arm of a girl with spikey hair, dark eye makeup, and a t-shirt for some rock band Rose doesn't know. A tattoo of two words in ornate black print.
BAD WOLF
That was what did it for her, really – those two words appearing once again in her life. Before, they were a message, telling her she could get back to him. But not anymore. Now, they're just the universe's way of torturing her to insanity, assaulting her with constant reminders of the life she will never be able to return to. Back then, they were a gift. Now, they're simply cruel.
So she sits apart from the group, staring at the jade statue of the horse. She hears the scratching as the pencil moves across the paper, guided by her hand, but she isn't watching the paper. She's watching the subject and trusting her hands to coordinate with what she's seeing.
"Miss Tyler?"
Rose starts slightly at the sudden voice, but recovers quickly and glances up to see Jess looking down at her desk. "What are you drawing?" she asks gently, her eyes fixed on the paper.
"A horse," Rose replies simply, wanting to use as few words as possible. In reply, Jess just raises her eyebrows quizzically, and Rose looks down at what she's drawn for the first time.
Because it isn't a horse.
It's a face. A man's face. Just a rough sketch with the details left to be filled in, but very, very recognizable. The slim features, wide eyes, eager grin, hair that sticks up in the front… he's unmistakable.
"The assignment is still life, honey," Jess tells her.
"I know," Rose replies irritably, picking up her pencil and resuming her sketch, but this time she watches herself making the motions, carefully and consciously filling in the details of the face she knows so well. "This is still life."
"Honey –"
"He's not moving, is he?" she points out without looking up. "And he's alive, yes?"
"I don't know," Jess replies. "Maybe you just made him up in your head."
"No." Rose shakes her head, blinking forcefully to shove back tears as she adds a bright, wild sparkle to his eyes. "I wouldn't do that."
"Alright, then," Jess says, backing up – she seems, Rose notes, to be a rather submissive person. "I'll let you get on with it." And she turns and walks back to the table where the other students sit. And Rose is left sitting there, adding all of the tiny little details that make him him, contemplating the meaning of still life. Because it doesn't really describe what it means, does it? The things you draw when working in still life aren't alive. No, it more accurately describes what Rose is drawing now. Still, but alive.
Still in her life.
That's it, then. How she'll cope, or perhaps how she'll fall apart more efficiently. She won't let go of him. She'll keep him in her life in as many ways as possible. She'll hang on as tightly as she can. After all, there's no way that she'll ever move on – why would she even waste time trying?
So she'll hold onto him. She'll keep him in her life. She'll remember him, no matter how much it hurts, because that pain is hers. It's the only thing left connecting her to him, and she'll be damned if she's going to lose the last piece of him she has.
So over the course of the art class, she finishes that sketch of him. She creates him perfectly, the wildness of his hair, the shine in his eyes, the goofy grin. And she draws him again, this time with a much more serious expression, wearing his glasses as he peers at the screen on the TARDIS controls. And then she draws him again, this time the version of him she originally met, remembering and replicating his face the first time she ever saw him, the dead serious (but somehow still bright) expression on his face as he uttered the first word he ever said to her: run.
She draws him three times in a two-hour art class. And in the bottom left-hand corner of each drawing, she carefully writes two words, even though it hurts. In the corner of each drawing, she writes his name.
The Doctor.