Words like a Rose
He writes.
He's always kept a logbook. Logbooks, really, if he's being honest. There's a whole shelf of them in the library, under Cooking: silicone-based, which might explain why no one but him ever reads them. He keeps them there for a reason.
But now he writes other things. It started when he was human and kept his Journal of Impossible Things, and it seems to have stuck now that he's got two hearts and all his memories back. It started when he'd returned from imprisoning the Family, to find Martha... didn't want to know.
Martha's brilliant, really, she is. She's everything he could want in a companion.
Almost.
There are some things she's a bit rubbish at, if he's going to be honest with himself. She doesn't question him as much as he probably needs. He knows she looks up to him in a way that, quite frankly, disturbs him, so he tries not to see it.
So he keeps his journals, writes things down, to try and keep himself together. He'd learned his lesson with Big Ears, that he's missing the counterbalance, the keel that kept him even and upright for nine hundred years (plus a few: who's counting?). He learned his lesson with Donna (oh, now there's someone brilliant, and ginger, the lucky woman) that sometimes he needs a good smack. But no one smacks him, so he writes it all down instead, in the hopes that maybe seeing it on the page in black and white will give him those moments of second thoughts that he seems to be a bit rubbish at, really.
He also writes more than that. He tries to write down what she was like. He writes their adventures, filling in the details that Big Ears' log books were missing, embellishing them into what he wishes they'd been. He writes poetry to her---that he hides, carefully, in the back of the Raxicoricofallapatorian-Nestene dictionary where no one's ever likely to look, even if half of it is in Gallifreyan and nobody but him can read it. It's still too personal. It's too close to his hearts. He'd rather no one ever knew that he writes.
He's pretty rubbish at it, though. No matter what he does, the words just aren't enough. He can't capture the way she tucked back her hair, or grinned at him, or the nuances of that Cockney accent falling on his ears. He speaks hundreds of languages, and none of them have words for the color of her hair where the bleach was growing out or the color of her eyes under twin red suns. All of them have words for the way his hearts ache at her memory, and none of them are quite enough.
But he keeps trying, even though he knows, in his hearts, that it's impossible.
There are no words like a Rose.
He's always kept a logbook. Logbooks, really, if he's being honest. There's a whole shelf of them in the library, under Cooking: silicone-based, which might explain why no one but him ever reads them. He keeps them there for a reason.
But now he writes other things. It started when he was human and kept his Journal of Impossible Things, and it seems to have stuck now that he's got two hearts and all his memories back. It started when he'd returned from imprisoning the Family, to find Martha... didn't want to know.
Martha's brilliant, really, she is. She's everything he could want in a companion.
Almost.
There are some things she's a bit rubbish at, if he's going to be honest with himself. She doesn't question him as much as he probably needs. He knows she looks up to him in a way that, quite frankly, disturbs him, so he tries not to see it.
So he keeps his journals, writes things down, to try and keep himself together. He'd learned his lesson with Big Ears, that he's missing the counterbalance, the keel that kept him even and upright for nine hundred years (plus a few: who's counting?). He learned his lesson with Donna (oh, now there's someone brilliant, and ginger, the lucky woman) that sometimes he needs a good smack. But no one smacks him, so he writes it all down instead, in the hopes that maybe seeing it on the page in black and white will give him those moments of second thoughts that he seems to be a bit rubbish at, really.
He also writes more than that. He tries to write down what she was like. He writes their adventures, filling in the details that Big Ears' log books were missing, embellishing them into what he wishes they'd been. He writes poetry to her---that he hides, carefully, in the back of the Raxicoricofallapatorian-Nestene dictionary where no one's ever likely to look, even if half of it is in Gallifreyan and nobody but him can read it. It's still too personal. It's too close to his hearts. He'd rather no one ever knew that he writes.
He's pretty rubbish at it, though. No matter what he does, the words just aren't enough. He can't capture the way she tucked back her hair, or grinned at him, or the nuances of that Cockney accent falling on his ears. He speaks hundreds of languages, and none of them have words for the color of her hair where the bleach was growing out or the color of her eyes under twin red suns. All of them have words for the way his hearts ache at her memory, and none of them are quite enough.
But he keeps trying, even though he knows, in his hearts, that it's impossible.
There are no words like a Rose.