It was just a wall. She had saved entire planets, traveled millions of years into the future and the past, and consumed the fabric of the universe. It was just a mere 2-dimensional expanse of white matter; surely it would only take one of his eternal breaths to knock it down.
But he didn’t come. She pounded against the wall with her feeble hands, but he still didn’t come. Emotions overtook her mind, as panic set in. Why wasn’t he coming? Then the frustration. Why can’t I do anything? It seemed so simple, yet sometimes the simplest cages are the strongest.
Action was futile, and she fell still for a moment. If I can just feel him… she placed her hand against the wall and called out. There was silence, but something changed in her heart. She felt warm again, like he was standing there beside her.
She leaned in toward the wall and rested her head on it. Again silence, but her own breaths echoed in her soul as if they were those of another. How could he be there? She couldn’t see him, she couldn’t touch him, yet the sensation shined brighter in her mind than the white emptiness before her. He was alive, and he was there.
She wanted desperately to cling to that wall. She wanted to live between the beats of his twin hearts. But she knew he was only a shadow of who he once was. The great fire of love was now nothing more than a single dancing flame, giving her nothing more than the strength to turn around.
The people behind her loved her, and they were still flesh and bone. Yet she felt an emptiness inside her, like half of her heart was gone. It was left on the other side of the wall.
Both of them still existed, but in parallel, running alongside each other, yet never intersecting. She possessed the peace that the greatest love of her life was still out there somewhere, but at the same time a bitter sadness welled up within her.
It would have been one thing if he had died, if he had been blown to pieces. She would see his eyes in the twinkling of the stars, and hear his voice in the whispering wind. But instead reality was a cruel irony. He was still alive, but across the thinnest, yet most deafening chasm. She would never look into those eyes again, nor hear his voice.
Yet the earth she tread was the same. The people, the places, they were all the same. He still came to her in flashbacks, in echoes. All of the pieces of their romance still persisted, save that pearly smile and perky tuft of hair.
Sometimes she wished she had been cast into a different world, even a fiery purgatory. Then at least the London fall wouldn’t remind her of him. Then she wouldn’t keep looking over her shoulder, expecting to hear the churning of engines and the slow emergence of a raggedy old blue box.
She had traveled through space and time, she had touched paradoxes, and breathed galaxies. Yet it wasn’t until now that she realized the depths of hell that the universe was capable of sustaining. Every day her heart ached. Tears rained down upon a gray earth that merely stood before her, mocking her with its similarity to her past life.
But she needed to stay strong. He was still out there. Inside her soul just a little glimmer of hope remained. She never stopped feeling the pain, but after a while she just became unafraid to feel it. The hurt grew into her like a vine, and became a part of her.
Her steps were heavy, and her lungs carried the weight of a thousand screaming worlds. She felt too large, too hardened by experience, while the world around her small and artificial. People laughed at silly things, and became angered at those even more trivial. Yet there was one thing that still made her feel in balance with the environment.
Whenever she became especially depressed, she walked out onto the edge of the ocean, on a beach by a sea of regret. Then the salt in her wounds burned a little less, as her dark thoughts were drowned out by the roaring waves.
Then one day, when she was staring off into the marine void, his ghost came to her, a little clearer than usual. The blood in her veins rushed, as her heart skipped a beat, and then quickened. He was here.
She rushed to him, but only to discover nothing more than an image, weakly trickling through a closing rift between their worlds. Yet for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, she could look into his eyes, and heard his voice once again.
This moment stood apart from time. It was a universe unto itself, yet just a fleeting second that quickly burnt out like a single match. He said her name, and then again, he was gone.
She felt the comfort of knowing he still existed, but the wound inside her soul was opened up, and the pain rushed in quicker than it ever had before. This time, was he gone forever? Had the last ounce of hope that was left within her just been swiftly stolen?
As her heart sank lower, her attachment to that beach became stronger, and she visited it more and more. It slowly became the only thing that could calm her restless spirit.
Each grain of sand represented a civilization that she had beheld, and each crashing white cap the cry of an oppressed child. By the ocean she saw the universe and by the ocean her memory of him began to change.
His warm gaze melted into the the setting sun. His strong, but calming voice faded into the screams of gulls. And the grass upon the dunes blew in the wind as wildly, yet perfectly, as his not-ginger hair.
This world around her that had seemed so bleak in the wake of him, gradually started to appear beautiful again. It was then that she began to realize the truth.
She saw the universe in his eyes, and she loved him. She loved him because he was closer to the heartbeat of reality than any other living being. He was a gateway to a million worlds, a portal to a billion times. The depth of her love was not for him, but the deepest beauty behind him. And that beauty was still there.
The stars still shone above her, a trillion roaring spheres of hydrogen reduced to a blanket of sparkling glimmers before her eyes. The trees still danced in the wind, changing with the seasons and emitting the richest colors. And the joy of humanity still persisted in the laughs of the loved ones around her.
The epiphany hit her mind as strongly as the waves that crashed against that sandy shore. He had never entered her life to merely love her forever. He was the oncoming storm, the most volatile, yet wonderful creature in existence. No, he served a much greater purpose.
Through him, she was taught to see the universe for what it really was. The pain and love, the agony and victory, the fear and courage, every color of the truth was painted in a deeper hue than she could have ever possibly imagined before she met him.
Now, her mind’s eye experienced a level of the contrasts and shades of reality that brought on a more tender compassion, more complete triumph, and a stronger braveness. She no longer needed him, because she had become everything that he stood for. She now walked the earth with his feet, and saw the world through his eyes.
This realization finally laced her heart with peace, and filled her soul with contentment. And she set forth unto the world with a new light burning within her, determined to confront every ounce of fear and suffering to the farthest corners of the galaxy, a galaxy in desperate need of a Doctor.
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