Because it hurts
“They’re people?” “They were, until they had all their humanity taken away… All emotions removed.” “Why no emotions?” “Because it hurts.”
She thinks about that sometimes over the years. After everything. After the walls have sealed them universes apart. After she sees the Doctor one last time but only to say goodbye, to tell her that this is the end, that she can never come back. After everyone moves on and carves a space for themselves in this new world that had left a gap just for them.
She thinks about the Doctor stood before a cyberman’s head as he told her, “An old friend of mine. Well, enemy.” She thinks about the way he couldn’t distinguish between the two for a moment. She thinks about the way he’d spilt about old monsters and the world he’d burned to destroy them. She thinks about Sarah-Jane, an old friend he’d never been able to speak of.
She thinks she understands some of that now. She wonders if he keeps silent about her the way he did Sarah-Jane. Thinks she’d understand that too. She thinks about Sarah-Jane telling her the Doctor had been called home by the Timelords, how she’d never seen him again. She thinks about the way the Doctor never talks about them; talks about the beautiful planet, the trees, the grass and the two suns it used to orbit.
She thinks about the Doctor screaming at the Nestene, trying to bargain with it even after it’s shown itself to be hostile. She thinks about the Doctor and how his pity for the Gelth had made him blind to their intents. She thinks about the way he wears his scars and if she’s one of them now, or if he keeps her hidden away with his memories of people. She wonders if he still lets his pain and his anger fuel his need to save another planet, another people. She wonders if it still burns a hole through his hand the way there’s a burning in the back of her mind.
She thinks she understands him in a way she never could before as she fights to prove him wrong. Words and numbers falling from her lips in a way that reminds her of Jack, remind her of him. Things come to her easier these days, things she’d never understood before when they’d gotten lost in techno babble back before. Before she’d gotten stuck. Before Jack had stayed behind to fix the Earth. Before they’d left him alone, despite their best intentions.
Things slot into place for her now in a way that she doesn’t understand how but comes from the golden, burning place in the back of her mind that she knows shouldn’t exist. Should be locked behind fortified doors. Shouldn’t still be glittering, but hollow and cold. Shouldn’t leak secrets of the universe into her ears. Should leave her clueless and frustrated, grasping at dead ends in a way that’s expected of a girl off a council estate that never finished her A levels. A girl that had followed a stranger to the stars and picked up a few more along the way because she hadn’t understood then; but she’d seen the same lonely shadow in him that she’d felt in herself.
But she understands things now that she shouldn’t. She understands dimensional travel. Understands the cracks in the walls and the scars in the void that never completely heal if you press just right. Understands the physics and theory better than anyone of her time period should, let alone her. Understands why monsters are easier to face than the ones you’ve lost. Understands why there had been locked doors on the TARDIS in the same way she can’t bring herself to decorate the blank room she’s found herself occupying.
And she wonders if the fire ever burns out for the Doctor in the way the universe feels a little too heavy for her sometimes. She wonders if he sees her in the way she hears his words in her mouth. And the shadows she’d seen him seem heavier in her own eyes these days. She thinks about her mum’s words on that fateful day.
“You even look like him.” “How do you mean? I suppose I do, yeah.” “You've changed so much.” “For the better.”
She thinks about how it had filled her with pride at the time. She thinks about how she’d thought she was fitting into this new world that he’d shown her. How she’d become more than just another nineteen-year-old girl from the Estates. She thinks about how she doesn’t bother to fit into this world. How she doesn’t try to force this world to make space for her where there is none. She thinks about how that sentiment has become even more true in his absence. She does look like him. From the way she carries herself to the way she carries her scars and her secrets, lets them make her someone else.
She thinks about the worlds she’s seen dying as the stars blink out of existence across reality as she fights her way back to him. She thinks about the way she’s let every single one of them harden her when she couldn’t save everyone. She thinks about the nonchalant way the Doctor had spoken of the empty Earth before the sun had swallowed it whole. She thinks she understands how he’d focused on the survival of the species of the planet living amongst the stars instead of fixating on the planet he couldn’t save. She thinks about the lone survivor of a planet with its twin suns and the little blue box that remains its planet’s only reminders of its existence after the universe moved on.
She thinks about all the people they hadn’t been able to save. About how every single one of them had burned deep inside of her, fueling a resolution to do better next time. She thinks about how the first few fires had burned her before she learned how to put up the appropriate armour up. She thinks about the Doctor and his own armour. She wonders what taught him to put walls up between himself and the fires.
But mostly she thinks about the ways the years slip by her unnoticed, despite her mortality and the way she feels as though she’s never getting any closer to what feels just out of reach. And she wonders if it’s the same for him. She wonders if his immortality weighs on him the way her humanity weighs on her. She thinks she understands now the adamant way he’d spoken of humanity and how it hurts, the way there’d been no room for argument. The conviction in his words as a man burned too many times.
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Missy Elliott To Perform at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth This Summer, But Why?-- published on Dallas Observer
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