Rose,
Even now, even after all this time to wrap my mind around the impossible, I still can't seem to accept the fact that you're gone. There isn't a day that goes by when I don't expect to see you running through the TARDIS doors, or burning something in the kitchen, or laughing at me while jump around and tinker. And when that certain mood strikes me, when I feel like I'm being crushed by the weight of my past or my decisions, I keep expecting to turn the corner and find you waiting for me with a fresh cup of tea and more understanding in your eyes than I ever had a right to. You always seemed to know exactly when I needed you; when I desperately craved your gentle touches and soft "C'mon, then" to allow me to talk, to admit my own pain and my mistakes. After it was over, when the wave of anguish subsided, I would feel free and calm in a way I only could with you, because no matter what I said, no matter what injustice I admitted feeling responsible for, you would still look at me with faultless devotion, still grab my hand and chase after me on the next adventure.
Now, I have nothing to soothe the pain, to help carry the weight of my choices, to balance me out. Not the way you could. I'm left with this pale facsimile, these letters to nowhere, to try to unburden myself to the only one that I…the only one that could still look at me like I was someone who deserved you…in such a way that…I could almost believe it too.
After the fire, and ash, and smoke, the molten rock that buried the dead and the living alike…I really wish I could see that look, no matter how unworthy I am.
Pompeii or the world. Those were my choices.
I had to sentence twenty thousand people to death. I had to sacrifice them. Because if they didn't die, the whole world would burn.
Fixed point in time…because I made it happen.
But Donna…oh, Donna. She's brave, that one. You'd like her. She stood up to me in a way no one has since…
She argued, and she fought and she cried…and then she asked me to save just one family. Just one. Because I couldn't save Pompeii…but I could save them.
I don't know, Rose. I can't…I'm lost, Rose. I can't seem to find that joy of exploration that I had before. Oh, I was always running from something, but there was an exhilaration in it, still a sense of wonder and excitement. Now…it's just pain and death and chaos, no matter where I go. I'm losing all the hope I used to have about a new experience.
Donna was right. Sometimes, I need someone.
If it can't be you-and it can't, it can never be again, no matter how much of me doesn't want to accept it-then at least there's her.
It's all just such a waste…making the effort to save one person while allowing so many others to burn.
Or allowing thousands to burn for the sake of billions.
Or giving up the one person that made me feel whole for the sake of two universes that will never know what it cost us.
Rose or the universes. It's still so damn hard not to pick you, Rose.