Pages from a Broken Book - The Ground is Firm Above Me, the Sky is Blue Below
Title: Page Seven: The Ground is Firm Above Me, the Sky is Blue Below
Author: azriona
Beta: the ever lovely jlrpuck
Rating: PG
Warning: Spoilery like crazy for Journey’s End.
Page Seven of the Pages from a Broken Book series
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four ~ Page Five ~ Page Six
Summary: He thinks he is ready to go home, to live his life, to be content in Rose’s world. There’s one more lesson he needs to learn. Told from 10.5’s POV.
Characters: Rose & 10.5
A/N: The photograph is one of mine, taken in the Tien Shan mountain range just outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
The Ground is Firm Above Me, The Sky is Blue Below
He wants to go home. He is ready now.
He does not say it, for fear that Rose will think he is running away again. More than being home with Rose, more than learning how to live the day after day, he wants for Rose to be proud of him.
The zeppelin leaves them on the other end of the Earth, in Bishkek.
The air hangar is strangely bright and crowded; the entire city has come to greet the ship and its passengers, and Rose holds his hand. She clutches her bag close to her, and he can feel her breathing, pressed to him, as they wait for their visas and stamps and passports to be authorized. The stern officials in wide caps have no joy in their austere faces; they glare and assume the worst. The other passengers, however, break into smiles and relieved laughter when they see their families on the other side of the glass.
They find themselves pulled through reception, carried by the sheer force of the waves of people around them, and soon stand outside the terminal, blinking in the bright morning sunlight. It is cold, far colder than either of them expected, and his breath hangs like crystal in the air. He feels out of place, light-headed, and the Russian swirling around him, as well as the now far-away drone of the zeppelin, makes him dizzy. He looks to the horizon and sees ice-blue mountains standing tall.
“Let’s go there,” he says to Rose, and she nods.
The ride to the mountains takes two hours over a badly paved road in a little tan car. The mountains do not move. He looks out the window, sees the wide fields and falling-down houses, and does not want to blink. Rose’s hand is warm in his; she yawns and lets her head fall on his shoulder. The rocking of the car lulls her to sleep. He hits his head on the roof when the little car goes over a particularly bad pothole.
“The size and shape of Belgium,” he says, and grins. The driver glances back but does not say anything; Rose sighs in her sleep and sets her hand on his stomach.
The mountains loom as they approach, closer and taller until they are ready to fall on them. The foothills are rolling waves of grass and dirt, and the driver goes carefully on the rocky roads, navigating through the streams, never stopping, never pausing for a moment. Rose wakes, and looks out the windows, her eyes wide.
“Where are we?”
“In the mountains,” he tells her, and she touches the glass. She keeps her hand in his, and he is glad she doesn’t pull away, because he doesn’t want to let her go.
They climb higher, past grassy meadows and along steep drops, until they reach the snow-caps, and the road has iced over. Still the driver presses on, and finally pulls to a stop next to a wood-slated building that might be falling down. Its owners step outside, drying their hands from breakfast, and peer curiously at the travelers who exit the car. They wear heavy coats and scarves, and he can feel the cold biting at his nose, on the back of his neck, and wishes they’d packed warmer things.
Rose tugs on his arm. “Look up,” she urges. “The mountains are beautiful.”
But he cannot turn away from the people, the safety of the building, the promise of the quiet he might find inside. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“No,” says Rose. “Let’s go up the mountain - do you think they can take us?”
The people seem to understand; one of them leaps off the porch and goes around the building with a certain sense of purpose. Within a few minutes, the young man returns on a rusty snowmobile, which buzzes and shudders, and Rose laughs.
“That looks like a very bad idea,” he says, careful to mask the trepidation.
“Let’s go anyway,” she says, and takes a step closer. He doesn’t move, nor does he let go of her, and she turns back with wide eyes. “Or...you can stay. I’ll go.”
“No,” he says quickly, and follows her. He won’t let her go alone. He would rather she sit with him, and look at the valley below, but he can’t stand the thought that she can go where he cannot follow.
He wants to be with Rose. He doesn’t want to climb aboard. He does anyway, and she sits between himself and the driver, his hands around her waist. They speed up the mountain. The snow is so bright he cannot see; he closes his eyes and lets his heart pound.
The air rushing past steals his breath; he can feel every rock hidden beneath the snow as they climb higher, nearly straight up and down. The engine is louder than anything he’s ever heard, and mixed with it is Rose’s laughter, ringing out on the mountain. He breathes in her hair and does not mind.
His chest throbs, in time with nothing, and he counts the seconds until the snowmobile stops, when he opens his eyes and looks around. Silently, he slips off the snowmobile, and takes several steps away, letting Rose and his thoughts slip through his fingers.
He stands at the top of everything, on a planet unrecognizable and untouched. The icy ground is cracked, as if brand-new. Like him, he thinks, rough and smooth and distant, yet there before him. The mountain peaks in the distance are so close he thinks he could touch them, if he stretched his hand out.
The wind whistles around him, whipping his hair in patterns. He breathes; the air is cold, tastes sharp like peppermint and smooth like ice. He breathes so deep, his lungs hurt to bursting.
The wind whistles, whispering a song as it whips around him. A world of ice, a song unheard. He wonders if this is how Donna felt, when they landed among the Ood, on a distant, unfamiliar planet, her eyes slowly opened to the horror of traveling with him. How she wanted to go home...
He wants to go home. He wanted the quiet of the mountains, at first, but there is no quiet to be found here, only a song in the wind he can’t quite make out. Your song will end soon, the Ood had told him. He wonders if the Other Him still thinks of them, of he and Rose, wandering the Earth, walking in circles, trying to find their way. He wonders if Martha stood on this mountain, when she walked the Earth for him, and looked out onto the valley below.
The snowmobile’s engine breaks into his thoughts; he turns and sees it racing back down the mountain without them. Rose waits for him, smiling, just a bit uncertain. Her hair flies in the breeze. There is a toboggan, bright purple, waiting on the ground behind her.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” she asks. He reaches for her and she takes his hand, stepping to him and pressing herself close.
“Lovely,” he echoes, and kisses her. The song ended for someone, yes, but not him.
Rose giggles, pulling away, letting her hands rest on his arms. “Your lips are cold. I forgot-" She looks up at him, frowning just a little. “You’re cold.”
“It’s cold here,” he tells her.
“Yes, but - you’re cold.”
“I guess that happens now,” he says. “Do we sled down?”
“Yes. They’ll feed us breakfast when we arrive.”
They sit on the toboggan, with Rose in front, nestled snugly between his legs. He keeps on foot firmly lodged in the snow beside them, and takes another look around.
“Can you hear it?” he asks, and Rose tilts her nose to the air.
“The wind?”
“The song.”
She sniffs, her eyes squinting, and he doesn’t dare to breathe for fear that she’ll hear the wrong music. The world is silent around them.
“Yes,” she says, thoughtfully. “Like someone crying in sorrow and hoping for joy, all at once.”
He pushes off. They fly down the mountain, bumping over the snow and ice, and he hears her squeal when every rock sends them momentarily aloft. He feels her heart pounding away, frantic and fast, and his own speeds to catch up.
The world races by; the song changes around them. He can barely breathe; the air stings his face and the blinding white snow bites his eyes. He sees the drop before them, but it is too late to stop. Rose cries out, not in joy or excitement, but fear, and he feels her entire body tense, her hands clenching at his arms.
They are airborne. They fly.
The race stops. Time itself stops.
He looks around, his heart in his throat, every heartbeat echoing in his ears. The sky is a deep blue, smooth and unbroken, and the ice on the ground glistens like diamonds. Rose’s warm weight is the only thing keeping him from floating away, over the horizon, into the world beyond. He can see everything laid out in carefully set patterns, the track they follow in the snow, the lodge below them where breakfast waits, the car that will take them back to the city, to the zeppelin, the zeppelin that will take them home. He can see Rose’s house, waiting patiently for them in London, and in it, the soft bed in her room where he will make love to her.
He sees this, and the song changes, shifts, takes these images and a dozen others besides, and wraps around them in a smooth ribbon of sound. He laughs - oh, how he laughs, how it tumbles out of him, filling him and overflowing. He feels lighter than anything, buoyant in a way he’s forgotten. The toboggan twists and lands, and they tumble out of it into the snow, the ice cracking as they fall, rolling to a stop.
Rose bursts into tears. He sits in the snow and pulls her into his lap, brushing the hair from her face, checking her over for bruises. “Are you hurt?”
“We almost died!” she cries out. “We almost-"
He stops her with a kiss, still smiling despite her terror, and she buries her face in his neck. “But we didn’t,” he whispers. She shakes with fear; he shakes with joy. He doesn’t know quite why, and he rubs her back, making the soft sounds he remembers her making when he wakes from nightmares, and slowly her breathing ebbs.
“You laughed,” she remembers, and he kisses her temple.
“I did.”
“You laughed.”
He stills. “Not like that.”
“I know, but-" She pulls herself up and kisses him. Her lips are warmer than his still, but her fingers on his cheeks are cold. She breaks the kiss; her eyes are wide and wet. He thinks of the bed waiting for them in London.
“Let’s go home,” he says. “Rose - I’m ready to go home.”
Her breath catches; her voice wavers. “Home?”
He rubs her cheek with his thumb. “With you.”
She kisses him, and he thinks he has found home already.
Jump to Page Eight
Author: azriona
Beta: the ever lovely jlrpuck
Rating: PG
Warning: Spoilery like crazy for Journey’s End.
Page Seven of the Pages from a Broken Book series
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four ~ Page Five ~ Page Six
Summary: He thinks he is ready to go home, to live his life, to be content in Rose’s world. There’s one more lesson he needs to learn. Told from 10.5’s POV.
Characters: Rose & 10.5
A/N: The photograph is one of mine, taken in the Tien Shan mountain range just outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
The Ground is Firm Above Me, The Sky is Blue Below
He wants to go home. He is ready now.
He does not say it, for fear that Rose will think he is running away again. More than being home with Rose, more than learning how to live the day after day, he wants for Rose to be proud of him.
The zeppelin leaves them on the other end of the Earth, in Bishkek.
The air hangar is strangely bright and crowded; the entire city has come to greet the ship and its passengers, and Rose holds his hand. She clutches her bag close to her, and he can feel her breathing, pressed to him, as they wait for their visas and stamps and passports to be authorized. The stern officials in wide caps have no joy in their austere faces; they glare and assume the worst. The other passengers, however, break into smiles and relieved laughter when they see their families on the other side of the glass.
They find themselves pulled through reception, carried by the sheer force of the waves of people around them, and soon stand outside the terminal, blinking in the bright morning sunlight. It is cold, far colder than either of them expected, and his breath hangs like crystal in the air. He feels out of place, light-headed, and the Russian swirling around him, as well as the now far-away drone of the zeppelin, makes him dizzy. He looks to the horizon and sees ice-blue mountains standing tall.
“Let’s go there,” he says to Rose, and she nods.
The ride to the mountains takes two hours over a badly paved road in a little tan car. The mountains do not move. He looks out the window, sees the wide fields and falling-down houses, and does not want to blink. Rose’s hand is warm in his; she yawns and lets her head fall on his shoulder. The rocking of the car lulls her to sleep. He hits his head on the roof when the little car goes over a particularly bad pothole.
“The size and shape of Belgium,” he says, and grins. The driver glances back but does not say anything; Rose sighs in her sleep and sets her hand on his stomach.
The mountains loom as they approach, closer and taller until they are ready to fall on them. The foothills are rolling waves of grass and dirt, and the driver goes carefully on the rocky roads, navigating through the streams, never stopping, never pausing for a moment. Rose wakes, and looks out the windows, her eyes wide.
“Where are we?”
“In the mountains,” he tells her, and she touches the glass. She keeps her hand in his, and he is glad she doesn’t pull away, because he doesn’t want to let her go.
They climb higher, past grassy meadows and along steep drops, until they reach the snow-caps, and the road has iced over. Still the driver presses on, and finally pulls to a stop next to a wood-slated building that might be falling down. Its owners step outside, drying their hands from breakfast, and peer curiously at the travelers who exit the car. They wear heavy coats and scarves, and he can feel the cold biting at his nose, on the back of his neck, and wishes they’d packed warmer things.
Rose tugs on his arm. “Look up,” she urges. “The mountains are beautiful.”
But he cannot turn away from the people, the safety of the building, the promise of the quiet he might find inside. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“No,” says Rose. “Let’s go up the mountain - do you think they can take us?”
The people seem to understand; one of them leaps off the porch and goes around the building with a certain sense of purpose. Within a few minutes, the young man returns on a rusty snowmobile, which buzzes and shudders, and Rose laughs.
“That looks like a very bad idea,” he says, careful to mask the trepidation.
“Let’s go anyway,” she says, and takes a step closer. He doesn’t move, nor does he let go of her, and she turns back with wide eyes. “Or...you can stay. I’ll go.”
“No,” he says quickly, and follows her. He won’t let her go alone. He would rather she sit with him, and look at the valley below, but he can’t stand the thought that she can go where he cannot follow.
He wants to be with Rose. He doesn’t want to climb aboard. He does anyway, and she sits between himself and the driver, his hands around her waist. They speed up the mountain. The snow is so bright he cannot see; he closes his eyes and lets his heart pound.
The air rushing past steals his breath; he can feel every rock hidden beneath the snow as they climb higher, nearly straight up and down. The engine is louder than anything he’s ever heard, and mixed with it is Rose’s laughter, ringing out on the mountain. He breathes in her hair and does not mind.
His chest throbs, in time with nothing, and he counts the seconds until the snowmobile stops, when he opens his eyes and looks around. Silently, he slips off the snowmobile, and takes several steps away, letting Rose and his thoughts slip through his fingers.
He stands at the top of everything, on a planet unrecognizable and untouched. The icy ground is cracked, as if brand-new. Like him, he thinks, rough and smooth and distant, yet there before him. The mountain peaks in the distance are so close he thinks he could touch them, if he stretched his hand out.
The wind whistles around him, whipping his hair in patterns. He breathes; the air is cold, tastes sharp like peppermint and smooth like ice. He breathes so deep, his lungs hurt to bursting.
The wind whistles, whispering a song as it whips around him. A world of ice, a song unheard. He wonders if this is how Donna felt, when they landed among the Ood, on a distant, unfamiliar planet, her eyes slowly opened to the horror of traveling with him. How she wanted to go home...
He wants to go home. He wanted the quiet of the mountains, at first, but there is no quiet to be found here, only a song in the wind he can’t quite make out. Your song will end soon, the Ood had told him. He wonders if the Other Him still thinks of them, of he and Rose, wandering the Earth, walking in circles, trying to find their way. He wonders if Martha stood on this mountain, when she walked the Earth for him, and looked out onto the valley below.
The snowmobile’s engine breaks into his thoughts; he turns and sees it racing back down the mountain without them. Rose waits for him, smiling, just a bit uncertain. Her hair flies in the breeze. There is a toboggan, bright purple, waiting on the ground behind her.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” she asks. He reaches for her and she takes his hand, stepping to him and pressing herself close.
“Lovely,” he echoes, and kisses her. The song ended for someone, yes, but not him.
Rose giggles, pulling away, letting her hands rest on his arms. “Your lips are cold. I forgot-" She looks up at him, frowning just a little. “You’re cold.”
“It’s cold here,” he tells her.
“Yes, but - you’re cold.”
“I guess that happens now,” he says. “Do we sled down?”
“Yes. They’ll feed us breakfast when we arrive.”
They sit on the toboggan, with Rose in front, nestled snugly between his legs. He keeps on foot firmly lodged in the snow beside them, and takes another look around.
“Can you hear it?” he asks, and Rose tilts her nose to the air.
“The wind?”
“The song.”
She sniffs, her eyes squinting, and he doesn’t dare to breathe for fear that she’ll hear the wrong music. The world is silent around them.
“Yes,” she says, thoughtfully. “Like someone crying in sorrow and hoping for joy, all at once.”
He pushes off. They fly down the mountain, bumping over the snow and ice, and he hears her squeal when every rock sends them momentarily aloft. He feels her heart pounding away, frantic and fast, and his own speeds to catch up.
The world races by; the song changes around them. He can barely breathe; the air stings his face and the blinding white snow bites his eyes. He sees the drop before them, but it is too late to stop. Rose cries out, not in joy or excitement, but fear, and he feels her entire body tense, her hands clenching at his arms.
They are airborne. They fly.
The race stops. Time itself stops.
He looks around, his heart in his throat, every heartbeat echoing in his ears. The sky is a deep blue, smooth and unbroken, and the ice on the ground glistens like diamonds. Rose’s warm weight is the only thing keeping him from floating away, over the horizon, into the world beyond. He can see everything laid out in carefully set patterns, the track they follow in the snow, the lodge below them where breakfast waits, the car that will take them back to the city, to the zeppelin, the zeppelin that will take them home. He can see Rose’s house, waiting patiently for them in London, and in it, the soft bed in her room where he will make love to her.
He sees this, and the song changes, shifts, takes these images and a dozen others besides, and wraps around them in a smooth ribbon of sound. He laughs - oh, how he laughs, how it tumbles out of him, filling him and overflowing. He feels lighter than anything, buoyant in a way he’s forgotten. The toboggan twists and lands, and they tumble out of it into the snow, the ice cracking as they fall, rolling to a stop.
Rose bursts into tears. He sits in the snow and pulls her into his lap, brushing the hair from her face, checking her over for bruises. “Are you hurt?”
“We almost died!” she cries out. “We almost-"
He stops her with a kiss, still smiling despite her terror, and she buries her face in his neck. “But we didn’t,” he whispers. She shakes with fear; he shakes with joy. He doesn’t know quite why, and he rubs her back, making the soft sounds he remembers her making when he wakes from nightmares, and slowly her breathing ebbs.
“You laughed,” she remembers, and he kisses her temple.
“I did.”
“You laughed.”
He stills. “Not like that.”
“I know, but-" She pulls herself up and kisses him. Her lips are warmer than his still, but her fingers on his cheeks are cold. She breaks the kiss; her eyes are wide and wet. He thinks of the bed waiting for them in London.
“Let’s go home,” he says. “Rose - I’m ready to go home.”
Her breath catches; her voice wavers. “Home?”
He rubs her cheek with his thumb. “With you.”
She kisses him, and he thinks he has found home already.
Jump to Page Eight