The Comeback

Chapter 9 - Comforting

~warning: This chapters makes reference to the episode Doomsday of Doctor Who. It may give you some spoilers if you haven't watched it~

Chapter 9 - Comforting

Trying to keep myself together, I take a glimpse at Cassidy and she is full sobbing, her nose running and her whole body shaking. She feels my gaze upon her and turns to meet my eyes, and she bursts out crying even harder. I don’t wait for a word or a sign or anything, I just move, wrapping my arms around her in a second, pulling her towards my body, protecting her. She keeps sobbing against my chest, holding on to my shirt for dear life. Her small body spasms with every sob and it breaks my heart more than the very episode we just watched.

Oh yeah, she’s crying —and I’m holding it— because we just watched Doomsday. We knew it was Rose’s goodbye, but we never imagined something like this and it broke our hearts as much as it broke the Doctor’s.

“It’s not fair! She said she would stay with him forever!” She complains with her voice muffled as she’s still hiding her face in my chest.

The credits keep rolling as the voice in the telly tells us to watch Doctor Who Confidential to know more about the behind the scenes of this episode. I don’t think we can take that, although we most likely will watch it anyways.

I don’t think there’s a human who didn’t cry with that episode. Russell T Davies, you broke us all.

“Why? They were meant to be together. Rose and her Doctor!” She cries and I hug her tighter, my own throat closed up with the lump I have there.  “His face when she… oh God!”

I hug her even tighter. Cass is not the type who cries like this over a TV show, or anything. The last time I saw her crying like this was when her pet, Mr Whiskies, her cat, died. She is very strong but this episode really broke her heart. She really loves Rose and the Doctor together, she even reads fan fiction about them… and now it will never officially happen. She always says that there are not two souls more meant to be than those two characters, that their relationship is so beautiful that it’s all she dreams about. She only wants to find a love like that. You think a girl like Cassidy would want a prince charming, but no, she wants her Doctor, just like Rose found him… to lose him.

“I know,” I tell her trying to sound stronger, but my voice is so shaky as well. It’s a miracle I’m not fully crying like Cass, that episode was the most heart-breaking thing I’ve ever seen.

I want to say something else, but I think that nothing can sooth that pain away. It’s hard to explain, when you’re so invested in a show, you feel the pain of the characters as your own. When the Doctor loses Rose in that parallel universe, knowing he can never go after her and he couldn’t even tell her he loves her… that kind of pain tears you apart. Leaving without saying goodbye has to be the worst thing in this world, I can’t even think of something worse. For both ends. Rose waiting to hear those words but losing him before he could tell her, and the Doctor, losing contact before he could tell her he loved her.

No, there’s nothing worse than that.

If I ever fall in love with someone as deep as the Doctor, I will tell her no matter what. I can’t risk something like this to happen. If I ever love someone like the Doctor loved Rose… then I have to tell her. That's the vow I’m taking today.

And I stare at Cass and think of these feelings I’m having for her. She’s been my best friend forever, since I can remember and I’ve always seen her like that: like my best friend. Almost like a boy, just like me. But today she looks like a girl, like a fragile girl who needs me as she sobs in my arms. And she’s changing, she’s not the seven-year-old girl anymore who used to play football with me although other girls wanted to have sleepovers and play girls games. She is turning into a girl, I think. At her twelve years, Cass is losing the child-like look and she’s becoming a butterfly, a lovely butterfly. She’s been doing this every day, but today I really notice it. I notice how Cass is not a boy like me, she is indeed a girl, a beautiful girl.