The bell tolls, marking two o'clock
Never before had that been a significant time
I notice it now
I'd never noticed two o'clock before
A weight hangs over me as I watch the wooden box
Does it really have him in it?
I want to run up, pound on the lid, and tear it open.
Why is he in a box?
I feel like a child that wants to know what is beneath the wrapping of a present
A part of me is curious
A part of me wants to lift up the wrapping paper
But a part of me knows.
Knows what is beneath the lid.
Knows that he will be lying there
How could it have happened to him?
He was meant to regenerate, live, move on
Not lie with pale milky white skin
Looking up at a never-ending darkness
Four years
That was all I had had
Not enough to start a life
He hadn't even known me the way that he had
He was still the Doctor, but he wasn't the Doctor.
He was a copy, a clone
He was everything the Doctor had been, but there was something missing
Perhaps I had never been able to think of him as the Doctor
And that led him to be less like the Doctor
He had been my responsibility
And I had let him go
I hadn't loved him the way I'd loved the Doctor.
I had loved him, oh how I had loved him,
But I had loved the Doctor
The part of him that was something else
That was harder to love
And now all that was left of him was a pressed suit in a dusty box
I should have loved him more
I should have tried
I should never have let him stay
He hadn't even gone glamorously
Not the way he'd have wanted
Not in battle
Not defending anyone
Not saving lives
Crossing the street.
That was all it took.
The bravest man, taken out by a drunk driver
The third time I had lost the Doctor
It was forever
And I am a shadow of who I was, a fragment of the Rose the Doctor knew.
If he saw me today he wouldn't recognise me
The Doctor I was left with
Was gone
The Doctor who had left me
Was gone
I had loved them. I had loved them both.
I had loved them with my torn-up heart
My expired love.