Pages from a Broken Book - Einstein’s Dreams
Title: Page Eight: Einstein’s Dreams
Author: azriona
Beta: the ever lovely jlrpuck
Rating: PG
Warning: Spoilery like crazy for Journey’s End.
Page Eight of the Pages from a Broken Book series
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four ~ Page Five ~ Page Six ~ Page Seven
Summary: He is a Lord stripped of Time, but it’s all he can really think about now, and he has plenty of time in which to do so. Inspired by the book by Alan Lightman. Told from 10.5’s POV.
Characters: Rose & 10.5
A/N: The book that 10.5 finds is called Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman; it’s also the source of the italicized quotes.
Einstein’s Dreams
He finds the book on the second day out of Bishkek in the passenger bay on the zeppelin. He asks the other passengers, but none of them claim it, so he slips it into his shirt pocket, and feels the weight of it through dinner.
He begins to read while Rose brushes her teeth, and when she falls asleep in the dim light, he keeps reading, unable to put it down.
“You change your clothes but not your book,” Rose kids him when she finds him reading the book on the fourth day. “It’s a very short book; you have to have finished it!”
“Three times.”
Rose sits next to him on the bed, tucking her knees under her chin. Her hair is still mussed from sleep; the light from the miniscule lavatory streams into the room, vibrating in time with the drone of the engines. Their sound still bothers him, the engines, still rattles his heart in unpleasant ways. But the nightmares are less frequent, less frightening, and when he wakes gasping, Rose is there beside him.
He hasn’t made love to her yet. They haven’t discussed it, but he thinks she understands that he is waiting, just a little longer, until this first journey is finished, and he can set it aside and walk away.
“What’s it about?” she asks, her mouth partially covered by her folded arms.
“Time. How time flows in a thousand different ways, each in its own little world. Forward, backward, slowing down, speeding up, non-existent, ever-present, stopping entirely.”
“A proper book for you, then.”
He smiles. “I suppose it is.”
“Had you read it before?”
“Oh, hated it.”
She grins at him. “Then why read it three times over? And carry it with you wherever you go?”
“Because-" He lets the book close and fall against his chest, where his heart can beat against it. “I like it.”
Rose studies him; her eyes narrow as she focuses. Her lips turn inward and she presses them together, then leans forward and presses them to his. Before he can let his hand drift into her hair, or taste the strawberries she’s had for breakfast, she pulls away, and rests her head on his leg, warm and still. The fabric of his trousers flutters with her breath, and he rests his hand on her shoulder.
“I hated it,” he says, the words spilling out, not because she asked, but because she didn’t, “because it was wrong. And it was right. All the ways he thinks time moves, in all the different worlds - up and down and here and there. It’s all true, all of them, all at once, and not at all.”
“And now?” Her voice is so quiet, her fingers so still.
“I read, and remember,” he says after a moment. Her fingers drift on his leg; he holds his breath.
“Do you miss it?” she asks, her voice low. He lets his head fall back against the wall. The ceiling is smooth and shadowed.
“Yes.” He is almost surprised how easily the word is said, how well he sounds saying it. Neither of them say anything else.
They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats.
The days in which the zeppelin does not land are almost unbearable. He wakes when the sunlight streams through the windows, and Rose is wrapped in his arms. Awake and hungry, they pull themselves out of bed, shower, dress, join the other passengers in the passenger bay. They find a table, sit and eat, and thus assuage their hunger.
Having eaten, they re-assess. There will be no landing, and thus nothing that must be done. He opens his book and reads; she joins the other passengers for a game of cards. She returns when she is lonely for him, and rests her head on his shoulder. He is tired, worn from his nightmares, and she follows him to their stateroom, waiting while he sleeps.
He wakes, is refreshed, and they sit by a window, look for houses and cities below, heads close together. They look for pictures in the clouds around them, giggle when they recognize each other’s imaginations, and match their breaths together.
He is surprised when the shadows lengthen and the sun slips below the mountains. Rose dozes next to him, the golden glow of sunset warming her face. He watches Rose’s eyelashes flutter, and thinks how good it will be to kiss her when she wakes.
For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
He waits for Rose in the passenger bay, watching the clouds roll past. The drone of the engines is forever in the back of his mind, a disquieting comfort of a sort. Disquieting because the reverberations refuse to sit well with him; comforting because they grow more familiar with every day that passes. When he woke that morning, he had trouble remembering the sound of the TARDIS, and he slammed the door on his way out of the stateroom, though Rose lay in bed asleep.
He sits in the same place in the passenger bay, towards the rear, where the view through the windows that line the bay is the best, where he can overlook the other passengers as they play cards and laugh amongst themselves. He hasn’t really met them yet, hasn’t introduced himself, although Rose has done these things, has made friends, played with the babies on her knees. He is content to watch.
He waits for Rose, drinking his tea. She will join him, sit near him, steal the untouched croissant from his plate, and they will read the days-old copies of the International Herald Tribune and the Weekly Telegraph, until the breakfast things are cleared away by the stewards just before lunch. He likes the quiet mornings with her, no words spoken between them. He likes how comfortable she is next to him, how comfortable he is with her.
When she appears, his chest swells and he reaches to pour her cup of tea. He almost misses the shadow that crosses her face - and when she turns, not to join him, but to sit with another group of passengers, his heart skips a beat. He sets the hot water down again, his eyes resting on her, and she talks to the family on the far side of the bay, settles herself at their table, and shows no inclination to move.
The clouds roll past. The stewards move through, clearing the breakfast things from newly abandoned tables. He holds onto his tea, asks for more water, and watches Rose. She glances at him from time to time, her face a mask, and he wonders what keeps her away. She talks with the parents, dandles their child on her knee. He watches her laugh, but it is hollow. He watches her eyes dart across the room, anxious to find him but moving away when she sees him focused on her. He sees her breath catch when her companions move to leave the table. She returns the baby, and stands alone, hands clenching and unclenching, until she begins the solitary walk to join him.
It takes a very long time.
“Hello,” she says, hesitant, when she finally stands opposite him. She does not sit.
“I saved you water for your tea,” he says, and her smile shakes.
“Only it’s different here, isn’t it?” she asks him. “Sweeter - I don’t need to add as much sugar as I did before.”
“I thought it was just me,” he replies. “Tea should be constant.”
“Nothing’s constant,” she says, and slips into the seat opposite him. “I-" She glances out at the clouds, clenching her hands together. He thinks he can see her shaking, and he reaches out to put his hand over hers.
“Rose - are you-"
“I’m fine,” she says quickly, but she doesn’t look at him, and her hands are cold. “Only...”
She moves then, quickly, and joins him on his side of the table, burrowing herself into his side, wrapping her arms around him. He lets his arms fall around her, somewhat surprised by her sudden show of affection when she’s been so clearly holding herself away all morning. And now it is nearly mid-day, and the stewards are replacing soiled tablecloths with clean linen, preparing the bay for lunch.
“It is you, isn’t it?” asks Rose, urgent, anxious, uncertain. “I’m not dreaming you, am I? It’s you, sitting here, with me?”
“It’s me,” he says, almost bewildered, but not quite. The clouds roll past, the engines churn, and the steward comes to take their water and tea away.
A life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time get stuck alone.
These are the things he thinks about on the long days, when the other passengers play cards and joke and laugh on the far side of the bay. He sits with a cup of tea and a biscuit, and watches the clouds pass by.
He thinks about the deep chasm in his chest where a second heart ought to beat.
He thinks about the place in his head where the absence of a thousand Time Lords ought to loom, and yet like his name, there is nothing to sense.
He thinks about Jack, and how, if there had not been Rose to consider, the Other Him would have left him on Earth with Jack. He thinks he would have come to see Jack as a brother, just another man left behind by a Doctor who could not stand the sight of him, could not bear the thought of his impossible existence.
He thinks about Donna, his sister, his conscience, his mother in the end. His twin, having both shared the same thoughts and words, incubated in the same womb of the TARDIS before being birthed, one after the other, into the Dalek ship. He does not think she will keep the Time Lord mind. He hopes he is wrong. He would rather think of the Other Him with at least Donna to keep him company, to stay his hand. Donna is so strong, so brilliant - surely, she would be all right.
He thinks about Dalek Caan, and the prophecy fulfilled. Which came first, the prophecy or the action? Had he not destroyed the Daleks, would the world have turned in upon itself?
He thinks of Sarah Jane, with a son, carrying death on a chain around her neck.
He thinks of Martha Jones, with a husband, carrying death in a key in her pocket.
He thinks of Mickey, who alone knows Rose best in the Other World. If there cannot be a Donna, at least there is a Mickey.
He thinks of the TARDIS, and of Gallifrey, and the Master, and Jenny, and Romana. Of Susan and Jamie and Adric and Ace.
A shout from the other passengers, who continue to play their games, but it does not register with him. He glances at them only long enough to determine that Rose is not with them.
He thinks of Rose. The way she swung on the chain to save him from the Autons. How she pitied the Dalek and ordered it to die with tears in her throat. How she glowed with Vortex, and shrunk back in fear. How she curls in the night, drawing her knees upwards, her hands resting on his chest. How the crystal moonlight sculpts her face in blue and silver stone.
He feels the pressure on his arm, and pulls his eyes away from the clouds; Rose has slipped beside him, wrapped her arm around his, and now rests her head on his shoulder.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she says lightly.
“I cannot wait to be at home,” he whispers into her hair, and she reaches up for a kiss.
At every point of decision...the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people but with different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.
The zeppelin stops in Paris on the sixth day. They go to the Tower during the few hours on the ground and take the lift to the top, where small children race back and forth in an attempt to make the Tower sway, and the adults stand near one of the railings, overlooking the city. Rose takes his arms and wraps them around her, and they try to spot Belgium on the horizon.
“What would have happened,” he asks, thinking of the day in Chartres, “if we hadn’t gone back to the ship?”
Rose frowns and presses back against him. “I would have followed you to Paris, of course. And we would have found a way back to London.”
“I would have made you miserable.”
“You would have left me, I think,” says Rose, her tone flat and thoughtful. He rests his lips against her hair. “You were looking for something, and I think you would have realized that I couldn’t give it to you. And off you’d go, leaving me behind.”
He thinks she might be right.
“You still might,” she adds, and this surprises him.
“Leave you?”
“Yes. Sometimes I think I should let you. You’re carving yourself a new life, and I think maybe it would be better if you did it independently of me.”
His arms tighten around her, not liking the idea. Still she manages to wiggle her way around to face him. He can feel her entire body pressed up against him, the cool warmth of her causing his heart to pound frantically. No one on the Tower notices, and if they do, they smile and leave them alone.
“If you were human,” says Rose, “and there wasn’t a me, what would you do?”
“That’s playing What If.”
“We’ve been playing What If all this time. Life is nothing but a series of What Ifs.”
“But that What If doesn’t even exist. Why not ask what if I hadn’t lost you at Canary Wharf in the first place, Rose? What if the lever hadn’t slipped? Or what if Pete hadn’t caught you? What if you never came back for me at the Game Station? What if Donna had left the TARDIS with the rest of us?”
He frowns suddenly, and steps away. “You saw a What If, Rose. What if Donna had never been there at all?”
“Didn’t happen,” says Rose, following him across the deck, and he sits heavily on a steel bench. She rests her hands on his, and he grips them tightly.
“Somewhere, it did. Somewhere, there’s a world where I let myself die because there was no Donna to stop me. Where the Daleks kill me on the Game Station because you can’t come back to save me. Where I don’t return to ask you a second time to be my companion.”
Rose sits next to him, still holding his hands.
“Do you think,” he says slowly, “there’s a world where Gallifrey exists?”
“Must be,” she says, and he closes his eyes. He could try - he could push his mind out a little, he knows he could, and look for them. If Gallifrey exists, he’d know it. The Time Lords there might even help him.
Or they might not.
“Would you be you, if Gallifrey existed here?” she asks, and the worry creases her face. “If you hadn’t done whatever you did? Would you have still met me?”
Ah.
“Yes,” he says, and he is certain.
It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.
They lie on the bed facing each other, fully clothed, not touching. His arm is tucked under his head; he can hear the blood in his ears surge with every heartbeat. The sunlight drifts in through the windows, catching the dust which floats in the air. The engines rise and fall, but he can ignore the pain they cause. The seconds pass one by one by one, almost without thinking about it.
Rose’s fingers rest on the bedspread, slightly curved and still. She keeps her gaze down, unable to meet his eyes, and the thin line of tension and fear runs through her, palpable, increasing with every hazy second.
They are almost home. Even now, the zeppelin navigates the Channel. In an hour, they will land in London. In two, they will unlock the door to Rose’s house. In three, they will be in another bed, facing each other, breath matching breath, second passing second, bodies slick against the cotton.
But now, he knows that she is tense and afraid, because his own muscles ache and his heart pounds. He knows she cannot speak, because he himself is certain to say the wrong thing. He knows she is afraid to touch him, because if he touches her, the sunlight that dances with the dust will shatter.
Her hand moves, cautiously, so that it barely brushes his. His heart pounds. He wears his anticipation like winter clothing, each article added every day since the mountain. He feels the desire inside him roll and turn.
When Rose turns her gaze to his, he sees it reflected in her eyes, and he stills. The fear lessens, the anticipation crescendos. He moves his hand, just enough, so that they touch. Her skin is cool against his own.
Her smile is hesitant, shy. He hopes the smile he gives to her reassures her, though of what, he’s not certain. His heart pounds, his thoughts spin, and he cannot speak. He wonders if this is what it feels like to be nervous.
Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
“Do you miss it?” Rose asks, her voice low. The sunlight behind her dims as they pass through clouds, and the engines redouble the effort to push them home.
“Yes.” He is almost surprised how easily the word is said, how well he sounds saying it. Neither of them say anything else.
Jump to Page Nine
Author: azriona
Beta: the ever lovely jlrpuck
Rating: PG
Warning: Spoilery like crazy for Journey’s End.
Page Eight of the Pages from a Broken Book series
Page One ~ Page Two ~ Page Three ~ Page Four ~ Page Five ~ Page Six ~ Page Seven
Summary: He is a Lord stripped of Time, but it’s all he can really think about now, and he has plenty of time in which to do so. Inspired by the book by Alan Lightman. Told from 10.5’s POV.
Characters: Rose & 10.5
A/N: The book that 10.5 finds is called Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman; it’s also the source of the italicized quotes.
Einstein’s Dreams
He finds the book on the second day out of Bishkek in the passenger bay on the zeppelin. He asks the other passengers, but none of them claim it, so he slips it into his shirt pocket, and feels the weight of it through dinner.
He begins to read while Rose brushes her teeth, and when she falls asleep in the dim light, he keeps reading, unable to put it down.
“You change your clothes but not your book,” Rose kids him when she finds him reading the book on the fourth day. “It’s a very short book; you have to have finished it!”
“Three times.”
Rose sits next to him on the bed, tucking her knees under her chin. Her hair is still mussed from sleep; the light from the miniscule lavatory streams into the room, vibrating in time with the drone of the engines. Their sound still bothers him, the engines, still rattles his heart in unpleasant ways. But the nightmares are less frequent, less frightening, and when he wakes gasping, Rose is there beside him.
He hasn’t made love to her yet. They haven’t discussed it, but he thinks she understands that he is waiting, just a little longer, until this first journey is finished, and he can set it aside and walk away.
“What’s it about?” she asks, her mouth partially covered by her folded arms.
“Time. How time flows in a thousand different ways, each in its own little world. Forward, backward, slowing down, speeding up, non-existent, ever-present, stopping entirely.”
“A proper book for you, then.”
He smiles. “I suppose it is.”
“Had you read it before?”
“Oh, hated it.”
She grins at him. “Then why read it three times over? And carry it with you wherever you go?”
“Because-" He lets the book close and fall against his chest, where his heart can beat against it. “I like it.”
Rose studies him; her eyes narrow as she focuses. Her lips turn inward and she presses them together, then leans forward and presses them to his. Before he can let his hand drift into her hair, or taste the strawberries she’s had for breakfast, she pulls away, and rests her head on his leg, warm and still. The fabric of his trousers flutters with her breath, and he rests his hand on her shoulder.
“I hated it,” he says, the words spilling out, not because she asked, but because she didn’t, “because it was wrong. And it was right. All the ways he thinks time moves, in all the different worlds - up and down and here and there. It’s all true, all of them, all at once, and not at all.”
“And now?” Her voice is so quiet, her fingers so still.
“I read, and remember,” he says after a moment. Her fingers drift on his leg; he holds his breath.
“Do you miss it?” she asks, her voice low. He lets his head fall back against the wall. The ceiling is smooth and shadowed.
“Yes.” He is almost surprised how easily the word is said, how well he sounds saying it. Neither of them say anything else.
They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats.
The days in which the zeppelin does not land are almost unbearable. He wakes when the sunlight streams through the windows, and Rose is wrapped in his arms. Awake and hungry, they pull themselves out of bed, shower, dress, join the other passengers in the passenger bay. They find a table, sit and eat, and thus assuage their hunger.
Having eaten, they re-assess. There will be no landing, and thus nothing that must be done. He opens his book and reads; she joins the other passengers for a game of cards. She returns when she is lonely for him, and rests her head on his shoulder. He is tired, worn from his nightmares, and she follows him to their stateroom, waiting while he sleeps.
He wakes, is refreshed, and they sit by a window, look for houses and cities below, heads close together. They look for pictures in the clouds around them, giggle when they recognize each other’s imaginations, and match their breaths together.
He is surprised when the shadows lengthen and the sun slips below the mountains. Rose dozes next to him, the golden glow of sunset warming her face. He watches Rose’s eyelashes flutter, and thinks how good it will be to kiss her when she wakes.
For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
He waits for Rose in the passenger bay, watching the clouds roll past. The drone of the engines is forever in the back of his mind, a disquieting comfort of a sort. Disquieting because the reverberations refuse to sit well with him; comforting because they grow more familiar with every day that passes. When he woke that morning, he had trouble remembering the sound of the TARDIS, and he slammed the door on his way out of the stateroom, though Rose lay in bed asleep.
He sits in the same place in the passenger bay, towards the rear, where the view through the windows that line the bay is the best, where he can overlook the other passengers as they play cards and laugh amongst themselves. He hasn’t really met them yet, hasn’t introduced himself, although Rose has done these things, has made friends, played with the babies on her knees. He is content to watch.
He waits for Rose, drinking his tea. She will join him, sit near him, steal the untouched croissant from his plate, and they will read the days-old copies of the International Herald Tribune and the Weekly Telegraph, until the breakfast things are cleared away by the stewards just before lunch. He likes the quiet mornings with her, no words spoken between them. He likes how comfortable she is next to him, how comfortable he is with her.
When she appears, his chest swells and he reaches to pour her cup of tea. He almost misses the shadow that crosses her face - and when she turns, not to join him, but to sit with another group of passengers, his heart skips a beat. He sets the hot water down again, his eyes resting on her, and she talks to the family on the far side of the bay, settles herself at their table, and shows no inclination to move.
The clouds roll past. The stewards move through, clearing the breakfast things from newly abandoned tables. He holds onto his tea, asks for more water, and watches Rose. She glances at him from time to time, her face a mask, and he wonders what keeps her away. She talks with the parents, dandles their child on her knee. He watches her laugh, but it is hollow. He watches her eyes dart across the room, anxious to find him but moving away when she sees him focused on her. He sees her breath catch when her companions move to leave the table. She returns the baby, and stands alone, hands clenching and unclenching, until she begins the solitary walk to join him.
It takes a very long time.
“Hello,” she says, hesitant, when she finally stands opposite him. She does not sit.
“I saved you water for your tea,” he says, and her smile shakes.
“Only it’s different here, isn’t it?” she asks him. “Sweeter - I don’t need to add as much sugar as I did before.”
“I thought it was just me,” he replies. “Tea should be constant.”
“Nothing’s constant,” she says, and slips into the seat opposite him. “I-" She glances out at the clouds, clenching her hands together. He thinks he can see her shaking, and he reaches out to put his hand over hers.
“Rose - are you-"
“I’m fine,” she says quickly, but she doesn’t look at him, and her hands are cold. “Only...”
She moves then, quickly, and joins him on his side of the table, burrowing herself into his side, wrapping her arms around him. He lets his arms fall around her, somewhat surprised by her sudden show of affection when she’s been so clearly holding herself away all morning. And now it is nearly mid-day, and the stewards are replacing soiled tablecloths with clean linen, preparing the bay for lunch.
“It is you, isn’t it?” asks Rose, urgent, anxious, uncertain. “I’m not dreaming you, am I? It’s you, sitting here, with me?”
“It’s me,” he says, almost bewildered, but not quite. The clouds roll past, the engines churn, and the steward comes to take their water and tea away.
A life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time get stuck alone.
These are the things he thinks about on the long days, when the other passengers play cards and joke and laugh on the far side of the bay. He sits with a cup of tea and a biscuit, and watches the clouds pass by.
He thinks about the deep chasm in his chest where a second heart ought to beat.
He thinks about the place in his head where the absence of a thousand Time Lords ought to loom, and yet like his name, there is nothing to sense.
He thinks about Jack, and how, if there had not been Rose to consider, the Other Him would have left him on Earth with Jack. He thinks he would have come to see Jack as a brother, just another man left behind by a Doctor who could not stand the sight of him, could not bear the thought of his impossible existence.
He thinks about Donna, his sister, his conscience, his mother in the end. His twin, having both shared the same thoughts and words, incubated in the same womb of the TARDIS before being birthed, one after the other, into the Dalek ship. He does not think she will keep the Time Lord mind. He hopes he is wrong. He would rather think of the Other Him with at least Donna to keep him company, to stay his hand. Donna is so strong, so brilliant - surely, she would be all right.
He thinks about Dalek Caan, and the prophecy fulfilled. Which came first, the prophecy or the action? Had he not destroyed the Daleks, would the world have turned in upon itself?
He thinks of Sarah Jane, with a son, carrying death on a chain around her neck.
He thinks of Martha Jones, with a husband, carrying death in a key in her pocket.
He thinks of Mickey, who alone knows Rose best in the Other World. If there cannot be a Donna, at least there is a Mickey.
He thinks of the TARDIS, and of Gallifrey, and the Master, and Jenny, and Romana. Of Susan and Jamie and Adric and Ace.
A shout from the other passengers, who continue to play their games, but it does not register with him. He glances at them only long enough to determine that Rose is not with them.
He thinks of Rose. The way she swung on the chain to save him from the Autons. How she pitied the Dalek and ordered it to die with tears in her throat. How she glowed with Vortex, and shrunk back in fear. How she curls in the night, drawing her knees upwards, her hands resting on his chest. How the crystal moonlight sculpts her face in blue and silver stone.
He feels the pressure on his arm, and pulls his eyes away from the clouds; Rose has slipped beside him, wrapped her arm around his, and now rests her head on his shoulder.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she says lightly.
“I cannot wait to be at home,” he whispers into her hair, and she reaches up for a kiss.
At every point of decision...the world splits into three worlds, each with the same people but with different fates for those people. In time, there are an infinity of worlds.
The zeppelin stops in Paris on the sixth day. They go to the Tower during the few hours on the ground and take the lift to the top, where small children race back and forth in an attempt to make the Tower sway, and the adults stand near one of the railings, overlooking the city. Rose takes his arms and wraps them around her, and they try to spot Belgium on the horizon.
“What would have happened,” he asks, thinking of the day in Chartres, “if we hadn’t gone back to the ship?”
Rose frowns and presses back against him. “I would have followed you to Paris, of course. And we would have found a way back to London.”
“I would have made you miserable.”
“You would have left me, I think,” says Rose, her tone flat and thoughtful. He rests his lips against her hair. “You were looking for something, and I think you would have realized that I couldn’t give it to you. And off you’d go, leaving me behind.”
He thinks she might be right.
“You still might,” she adds, and this surprises him.
“Leave you?”
“Yes. Sometimes I think I should let you. You’re carving yourself a new life, and I think maybe it would be better if you did it independently of me.”
His arms tighten around her, not liking the idea. Still she manages to wiggle her way around to face him. He can feel her entire body pressed up against him, the cool warmth of her causing his heart to pound frantically. No one on the Tower notices, and if they do, they smile and leave them alone.
“If you were human,” says Rose, “and there wasn’t a me, what would you do?”
“That’s playing What If.”
“We’ve been playing What If all this time. Life is nothing but a series of What Ifs.”
“But that What If doesn’t even exist. Why not ask what if I hadn’t lost you at Canary Wharf in the first place, Rose? What if the lever hadn’t slipped? Or what if Pete hadn’t caught you? What if you never came back for me at the Game Station? What if Donna had left the TARDIS with the rest of us?”
He frowns suddenly, and steps away. “You saw a What If, Rose. What if Donna had never been there at all?”
“Didn’t happen,” says Rose, following him across the deck, and he sits heavily on a steel bench. She rests her hands on his, and he grips them tightly.
“Somewhere, it did. Somewhere, there’s a world where I let myself die because there was no Donna to stop me. Where the Daleks kill me on the Game Station because you can’t come back to save me. Where I don’t return to ask you a second time to be my companion.”
Rose sits next to him, still holding his hands.
“Do you think,” he says slowly, “there’s a world where Gallifrey exists?”
“Must be,” she says, and he closes his eyes. He could try - he could push his mind out a little, he knows he could, and look for them. If Gallifrey exists, he’d know it. The Time Lords there might even help him.
Or they might not.
“Would you be you, if Gallifrey existed here?” she asks, and the worry creases her face. “If you hadn’t done whatever you did? Would you have still met me?”
Ah.
“Yes,” he says, and he is certain.
It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.
They lie on the bed facing each other, fully clothed, not touching. His arm is tucked under his head; he can hear the blood in his ears surge with every heartbeat. The sunlight drifts in through the windows, catching the dust which floats in the air. The engines rise and fall, but he can ignore the pain they cause. The seconds pass one by one by one, almost without thinking about it.
Rose’s fingers rest on the bedspread, slightly curved and still. She keeps her gaze down, unable to meet his eyes, and the thin line of tension and fear runs through her, palpable, increasing with every hazy second.
They are almost home. Even now, the zeppelin navigates the Channel. In an hour, they will land in London. In two, they will unlock the door to Rose’s house. In three, they will be in another bed, facing each other, breath matching breath, second passing second, bodies slick against the cotton.
But now, he knows that she is tense and afraid, because his own muscles ache and his heart pounds. He knows she cannot speak, because he himself is certain to say the wrong thing. He knows she is afraid to touch him, because if he touches her, the sunlight that dances with the dust will shatter.
Her hand moves, cautiously, so that it barely brushes his. His heart pounds. He wears his anticipation like winter clothing, each article added every day since the mountain. He feels the desire inside him roll and turn.
When Rose turns her gaze to his, he sees it reflected in her eyes, and he stills. The fear lessens, the anticipation crescendos. He moves his hand, just enough, so that they touch. Her skin is cool against his own.
Her smile is hesitant, shy. He hopes the smile he gives to her reassures her, though of what, he’s not certain. His heart pounds, his thoughts spin, and he cannot speak. He wonders if this is what it feels like to be nervous.
Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
“Do you miss it?” Rose asks, her voice low. The sunlight behind her dims as they pass through clouds, and the engines redouble the effort to push them home.
“Yes.” He is almost surprised how easily the word is said, how well he sounds saying it. Neither of them say anything else.
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