Wrote this like a month ago and didn't realize I hadn't put it over here. (I publish everything on tumblr and forget what I've moved over here...). But yeah, have some angst while I work on the next chapter of Watch it Burn and some other projects!

At first, she forgets tiny details. She barely even realizes that the memories are fading.

It's the way he would stroke his thumb across hers a certain way when he was flirting and a different way when he was warning her that they were about to run. Which ties he habitually paired with which oxfords and the way he ran his fingers along the sides of a book when he was engrossed in reading.

It's been six months since Bad Wolf Bay when her first thought upon hearing something funny from a coworker is to tell the Doctor, Rose's heart drops through her stomach. She should know better by now. But she tucks it away to tell him one day and tries to imagine his face when she tells him.

She panics when she realizes that she can't remember what his laugh sounds like.

She stutters out an excuse to her team leader and heads to her flat and collapses against the door, heaving out sobs and desperately trying to recall the cadence of his happiness. His unexpected hearty laugh, his giggle, the sound he made when he'd been laughing hard for a few minutes. She couldn't remember how any of it sounded and it feels like she's lost something incredibly precious.

It was like forgetting the words to her favorite song. They were always laughing together, it was the background music to their relationship and she'd gone and forgotten it and she can't believe it.

Rose works hard to hold onto the little things from that moment on but they slip through her fingers, particles of sand streaming out of a closed fist.

As the months pass she loses the exact shade of brown that his eyes were, the feel of leather-coated arms around her, how he would rest his chin on her head when he held onto her for a long time (those days where they almost lost each other)

(and then when they had actually lost each other there was no touch and that was the worst injustice)

She was positive that the feeling of his hand in hers was something she would never lose even as she lost the memory of how his eyes crinkled when he smiled and the way he'd draw out the word "well" for ages.

(When she forgets the way it felt when his slim fingers entwined with hers, she cries for a day.)

(The essence of the Doctor and the love she felt for him still burned strong and bright and untarnished by time in Rose's heart and she decided that was what really mattered.)