In Theory • Doctor Who

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE 
❝A Universe Apart❞

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Hands reached out to grip the sheets beside her only to find them cold and empty. Every time she woke up be it in the morning or in fear from night terrors, she would reach out beside her due to habit. She once had a warm body to share her bed with but those days were gone with no hope of returning.

It was dark, the moon was only a slither of silver breaking through loose clouds and the only illumination of her surroundings was from the streetlights outside. She was panting, eyes frantically searching for the one who was lost, the one who once shared her bed. Even though it was mid-winter and snow powdered the sidewalk, she was drenched in sweat and her skin prickled as her hot temperature met cool air. Nights like these were more common than they should be, waking up in the dead of night, lips poised to say his name yet no words came out. In the beginning, each night would be engulfed in tears and her voice would grow hoarse from lamenting her loss with screams or sobs or repetition of the name that wasn't really a name. Those nights had grown old and as winter took a firm hold over her bleak English land, her voice had become silent and not just at night; she refrained from idle conversation and even when pain spiked inside her, it was rare to hear even a mumble.

Nights like these reminded her that even though she was living, it wasn't life. The empty sheets beside her reminded her of the life once lived, the life so impossibly far away.

Once, a lifetime ago she was a naïve nineteen year old girl whose life revolved around the estate, her simple job at Henrik's and some good chips. Life was easy, normal and boring until she was swept off her feet by a mysterious man who told her to run. From that moment she stood by that man and never stopped running. Well, never stopped until she lost him. Now they were a universe apart, literally a universe apart and her life could never be mundane like it once had been.

Clenching the sheets that she had reached out to grab, she pulled them closer to her face so she could bury herself in the cold cotton. For the first night since late spring, tears fell from her eyes and dappled the sheets in her salty sorrows. Crying had been an emotion that had run dry early; for it to resurface on a night that wasn't particularly important brought confusion which lead to her onslaught of tears to quicken.

That night was one of many in which pain reasserted itself in the forms of tears and terrors that she had been free of for months.

Rose Tyler was a universe apart from the man she loved and there was absolutely nothing that could change that painful reality.

All she could do was grieve.