Chapter Seven – Letting Go

The Doctor brushed his fingers against Rose's neck, searching in vain for a pulse. When he found none, he touched her cheek in an unsteady caress. His hand shook as he smoothed her hair one last time, and then Jack held him as he began to weep.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He was rubbish at being a Time Lord. Always ran out of time, and even now, at the depths of despair, he recognized the irony. He could save the universe in his sleep, and yet when it mattered—really mattered—he could do nothing but stand by and let his hearts shatter.

He'd been too late to prevent the Daleks from killing hundreds of billions of innocent people. When war had come to Gallifrey, he'd had a brilliant plan to save the universe, but in the end he'd run out of time . . . and as a result, his people had perished alongside the Daleks, and he'd survived to bear the guilt of failure.

He'd run out of time on the beach in Norway, so long ago. He'd wanted to tell Rose how much she meant to him, how she'd changed him, how she'd made him into a better man, but the feelings had been too strong; by the time he'd mastered them enough to speak, it had been too late . . . and he'd been left alone, to live as a mere shadow of the man he'd been with her at his side.

Now, once again, time had slipped through his fingers while he stood by, impotent and heartsbroken. Rose had lived her fantastic life, but not with him. He wanted to feel happy for her, to rejoice that, even though she'd missed him, she'd gone on and made her life worthwhile. But grief rose up and overshadowed reason.

Rage battled with anguish and resignation, surging through his body like a burning poison. After all he'd done—the worlds he'd brought back from the edge of catastrophe, the villains he'd defeated, the people he'd saved—was it too much to ask for just a sliver of happiness? A tiny bit of redemption to give him the strength to go on alone? But he deserved neither hope, nor joy. Not with all the people he'd failed to save, the worlds he'd watched fall. He'd done the best he could, and that wasn't nearly good enough, not for the last Time Lord.

And yet, how could the universe have been so cruel as to give her back only in time to watch her die? At least he'd been there, as she'd wanted, to hold her hand and show her the stars one last time. But who would hold his hand, now?

His thoughts went around in circles, until he couldn't reason, or breathe, or imagine living another moment with the weight of his grief.

Worst of all, the Doctor knew without a doubt that the entire situation could have been prevented. If he hadn't allowed emotions to cloud his logic, if he hadn't been so desperately eager to accept the gift he thought the universe had given him, then none of this would have happened. He could have paused to analyse things, to figure out that maybe he should investigate just a little before plunging in head-first. He could have had patience, and then things might have turned out differently.

If he'd acted with discretion and all the wisdom that his thousand years ought to have provided, then he might have had Rose at his side right now, laughing and holding his hand, so vibrant and alive. He might have had a chance at a few stolen years of happiness.

But he hadn't done any of those things. As usual, he'd rushed off without thinking of the consequences; without a doubt he'd paid the price.

"Doctor," said Jack quietly, from the doorway. "It's time."

"Not yet," he replied. Fresh tears spilled from his eyes, following the dried tracks down his face. He could feel Jack's gaze burning into his back, but it didn't matter what the man thought. "I'm not ready."

He felt Jack kneel beside him, but he didn't shift his gaze. Jack exhaled hard, and when he spoke, his voice held a tremble that reminded the Doctor that the other man also grieved for the woman he'd loved and lost. He felt a pang of sympathy, but only for a moment, before his own anguish rose to smother everything else.

Jack laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed with commiseration. "It's been twenty-four hours. It's time to let her go."

The Doctor shook his head once, violently. "I can't."

"As long as we remember her," Jack said, "she isn't gone. And, seeing as how I can't die, that means that Rose will never be forgotten. Not until the end of time—I promise you that."

A sob broke from the Doctor's throat, just one, and then he breathed deeply, in and out. He tried to relax his arms, but his body refused to cooperate. He shook his head. "Just a little longer . . . please."

Jack stood and looked down at him with sad eyes. "When you're ready, then."

"Thank you," the Doctor whispered.

The pain washed through him again, and silently he began to rock back and forth, cradling Rose's body in his arms as though he would never let go.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Where are we?" Jack asked, looking out of the open TARDIS doors onto an expanse of black space. No sun lit the area, but from the light of distant stars he could see a vast field of asteroids. They tumbled about in a chaotic dance, swirling and spinning. Every so often one would collide with another with a spectacular spray of sparks and debris.

The Doctor joined him at the door, hands in his pockets. "Home," he said.

"Your world? Gallifrey?"

He nodded. "What's left of it, anyway. The sun collapsed into itself . . . you can almost make out the horizon of an infant black hole, if you look just there. The remnants of the planet and moons circle 'round, like the rings of Saturn. Eventually they'll all be pulled in. But for now, they remain—testament to a great civilisation. Testament to the folly of the Time Lords. Testament of. . . ." and he stopped, his voice choked. He cleared his throat and finished, "Testament of one man's desperation to save what he loved."

Jack put a hand on the Doctor's shoulder, to lend support, to offer comfort. But he doubted anything he did would reach the Doctor today. Today they laid Rose to rest.

When the Doctor had asked to be allowed to choose Rose's final resting place, Jack had agreed without question. He'd had more than fifty years with Rose. Not enough time, but then, all of eternity wouldn't be enough to spend with someone like Rose. At least he'd had all those years as her husband. The Doctor had spent less than two years with her, and instead of the joyous reunion he'd hoped for, he'd found her again only in time to watch her die. Jack could afford to be generous.

Rose wouldn't have wanted to be buried anywhere on earth. Jack hadn't expected this, though—for the Doctor to choose the site of his long-dead homeworld, a place of bittersweet, eternal regret.

The Doctor's eyes glistened with unshed tears as he looked out at the battlefield that had once been his home. Jack stood beside him, hiding his own grief to support one who didn't know how to deal with this sort of pain. Time Lords didn't cry—they wouldn't dare express such ape-like emotions—but who was left who would punish him for caring, for loving, for grieving?

"How do you go on?" the Doctor asked, so softly that Jack nearly didn't hear him.

In over two hundred years, Jack had formed attachments and lost people he loved more times than he cared to count. It hurt—God, how it hurt! But if anything, it had taught him that you couldn't let the pain control you; you couldn't let the fear of being left behind prevent you from loving, from being loved. Because that unending loneliness was somehow worse than the pain of loss.

"How do you go on?" the Doctor repeated, his voice rough with sorrow.

"You cry," Jack replied. "You scream. You curse the universe. And you live, day by day. The pain never goes away and you never forget. But each day it eases, just a little, until one day you wake up and you realize that she wasn't the last thing you thought of before you fell asleep, or the first thing on your mind when you woke. And then, one day you discover that you've gone several hours without thinking of her at all. And you feel guilty that you could forget—that you let yourself forget—and so you punish yourself by dragging up all the memories you can think of, trying to make the wound bleed, just so you know that you still feel pain. Just so you know that you haven't gone numb, or forgotten her."

"And then?" The Doctor turned his head so that Jack stood within his vision, just out of focus, but there, reassuring and comforting.

"You continue to heal, until the pain becomes an ache at the back of your chest: constant but not overwhelming. And it stays that way, until one day you figure out that it's okay for you to move on, that she wouldn't hate you for learning to live again; that it's okay to laugh, and smile, and see the beauty in the universe as you once did. And one day . . . one day you wake up and you find that it doesn't hurt to think of her the way it once did. You find that you can look back at what you shared and remember the good times without guilt, or shame, or that overpowering sense of loss. It takes a long time, but it does happen . . . eventually."

"I loved her," the Doctor admitted, after a long silence.

"She knew," Jack said quietly, still grasping the Doctor's shoulder. He swallowed against the knot in his throat. "She always knew."

The Doctor nodded. He fiddled with his sonic screwdriver for a moment, then aimed it out the door. A fine mist shot out into space, glittering where the light of distant suns struck it. Slowly the dust dispersed, spread out and became one with the remains of Gallifrey. Rose had become part of the universe she loved so well, the universe that had been better off for her being there, and which now seemed dull and empty.

Debris spun past, and somehow, Jack doubted that either one of them would come back here.