A/N: Woo, exams are over ...for now...
And, yay, last chapter. Didn't like this one too much; language sort of ran away from me and went a bit flowery...
Her room was dimly lit, the air tepid. It would be downright silly to assume anything yet, not in this light. Although...
He took one or two steps forward onto the plush carpeting, quieting his own breathing, listening for the one thing that would confirm his wish.
Nothing.
The Doctor's breath hitched as he tried to calm his pulse, panic nearly ripping him to shreds. Willing himself not to lose his sanity as he padded forward.
One step forward. Breath, hitching in his throat, as he strained his ears for something, anything. Two steps back.
The darkness taunted him with its black, gaping maw, the beast of his own soul.
His fingers twitched in a need to flick them at the gloom. Out, vile spirit. Get thee hence.
He shook his head as a dog ridding its of pesky flies does, the ghastly death rattle of his own not a few hours ago ringing in his ears, tugging at his nerves.
His knee met the frame of her bed. (apparently not so superior physiology then...)
He looked down, squinting in the half-light - wait- the half-light that was now steadily brightening. Just a little.
His hearts nearly stopped at what he saw. Eyes widening, the whites a vast sea.
She lay there in the choking ocean of covers, the epitome of Death itself. Skin paler than milk, lips tinged blue-purple.
The Doctor had seen so much death over the long book of his life - but it didn't make it any easier to see it. Not at all.
He wanted to rant, rave, scream. His entire world, his reason for living lay motionless before him and -
Yet...he couldn't. For an incarnation who never shut up...he was speechless. Emotion had stolen his tongue.
Knees harshly met the floor, the pain dim, barely registering.
He felt...numb.
Reached out a hand. Some part of him thought he could save her.
His movements were listless, with no vigour, no energy. Why would he feel that anyway? As though in slow motion, and then-
His fingertips, repelled by some force. They sent of golden ripples that spun off into the distant ether. He pressed again, the surface energy sending a pleasant buzz through him. Shaking it off, feeling rather guilty at briefly enjoying it, he touched the invisible force field again, with rising panic and frustration.
The least he could do was take Rose home to her mother- and endure the very depths of Hell and the slaps that came with it and -no. He winced at the very thought. He would give her a proper, traditional cremation, on the forests edge of Moonshine. He would whisper a solemn eulogy, garbled in his native tongue. And then when she was reduced to naught but ashes, he would-
Cry.
He didn't even register the lone tear that ran its lonely course down his cheek.
Emhallon...
She only used that when...well...like the last time she sang when Gallifrey burned as he fled across the stars.
Something unspeakably powerful irradiated from the barrier, make the hairs on his hands and nape quiver.
The Wolf Child shall not be harmed.
The Doctor just about suppressed a derisive snort. He felt utter apathy now. How could his TARDIS help now, of all things. The most powerful time machine was, ironically, too late. Like him.
He could feel her trying to repel him -and from the room itself. He bridled; tried to speak, and then-
The TARDIS chimed, and he watched as gold tendrils began to seep from under the bed, unraveling and curling, slipping gracefully through the air to wrap around his now dead companion's prone figure.
His ship, in all her majesty- although he thought she was just showing off, really- burbled and chirped, but it hurt his mind. The only thing he picked up out of the haze was...
No.
"Oh, no. No, you can't do this. I'm telling you now, you can't. Even I wouldn't, and- " She silenced him with a single echoing chime.
The barrier was reverberating with gold and sheer time and space and power and was thickening with every second.
His breath caught again, hearts choking his windpipe. He fell to his knees, defeated.
The TARDIS played to win. And she had won.
The room seem to implode with gold and then he was still once more.
Her skin was pale ice beneath his fingertips as he pressed two of them to the column of her throat. It fluttered weakly, yet with a vivacious promise of life, but not, seeming regular then jumping off the mark. A hummingbird caught in his grasp.
His gaze turned briefly to the IV bag beside her bed. It traced the path of the rubber tubing down to her left arm, where the glint of a needle disappeares beneath the pallid skin, and the steady, repetitive drip of the precious saline solution is only a reminder of what he'd nearly lost.
As he remembers, the inky darkness howls and claws at his soul, making it that little more blackened, the edges that a little more ragged and worn.
He doesn't really know what to think anymore. Did he, honestly, do the right thing? Really and truly.
But, when it was his own happiness, his love interests...Didn't he have a choice? Even when it nearly ended them both?
A heavy sigh left him. He was there to catch her, but only this time. Her skin has been buzzing with heat and the entity that now watched over her.
There was also a faint golden thread connecting their mind. He could feel her, curled up in the back of his mind, sleeping peacefully, lazy as a kitten.
And yet some aura of herown soul -gold and a light pink- was bruised and tarnished. He could feel her hurt, and it clashed with his, masking it, make guilt fill him.
What had he done?
His former self was right, he thought bitterly. It was because of him that she nearly died. (Well, she sort of did, but that was beside the point)
And so had he. The glazed eyes, the signs of cardiac arrest...It haunted him. He died, inside, the moment she shunned him. And for good reasoning too.
Coward.
His eyes slammed shut as angry tears threatened to fall; elbows slumped lopsidely on his knees as he crumpled into a small ball of doubt on the carpeted floor.
There was no telling how long he wept for. All he knew was that a thousand emotions all came out at once. He wept for his sins, his foolishness, his callousness. He wept for his own loss, too burdened with survivour's guilt. He wept for Gallifrey, his family, his children that were no more. Just nothing. Dust and ashes.
A hand, smaller than his own and warm against his curved back finally brought him to his senses. Along with a single word:
"Doctor..." And then he wept as the sound of his companion's voice, whipping around and hauling her into him -catheter and equipment be damned- with a ferocity that troubled her.
He was clinging to her like a pice of lifesaving apparatus rescuing him from a swirling sea, dampening her- or rather, his- shirt with his sorrow.
His startled companion could only hold him as he sobbed on her right shoulder, nearly crushing her with his obvious grief. Bewildered beyong comparison...and she'd never know why.
Because, after that day, something seemed to have stolen the Doctor's voice.
Yes, 'tis the end. I'm ashamed that just this one took so long...but I already have the next colour written [mostly], and will hopefully be posted at the weekend. It's called Obsidian. Look out for it :)