(no subject)
title: when rose dreams (or, four times rose tyler missed the doctor after almost being sucked into a void between worlds)
rating: pg
pairing(s): rose/doctor, mentions of mickey/jake, so if that's not your cuppa...
spoilers: all of s1 and s2, especially Doomsday
summary: the year after the breach is sealed is long and lonely for rose tyler. but even in sadness can there be strength, and even through hell is there hope. she doesn't--hasn't--given up or forgotten, and that's victory enough, sometimes. [post-Doomsday angst/romance-ish]
a/n: This is my entrance into writing Who-fic, so I apologize for any glaring fandom offenses. I really appreciate feedback, especially in entering a new fandom. I also have to thank new friend rosa_acicularis for a section in here, because her recent, fantastic fic Tomorrow inspired the fireworks/storm recollection. Hope every enjoys!
- - -
i. month two. (hands)
A month has passed. Four long weeks. Thirty-one days. And she still--
In her mind, Rose replays the moment it all went to hell, an endless loop of her fingers slipping away from the lever and her arms reaching out in vain. The blue-white lightning crackling around her, the void sucking everything into its maw, mindless and noiseless destruction tossing and turning her body and her hands just reaching. And the Doctor's face. The black horror and drowning sorrow and desperate panic on his face as he held onto his lever with one strong, capable, familiar hand--
("This is my fightin' hand!")
--and called out to her with his other, his legs in a wide, solid stance, his mouth twisted up around her name.
That is the moment Rose takes care to remember. The way that it almost seemed as if their hands would touch, that everything would be alright, that the void would seal and she would grieve over her lost mother and friend in the Doctor's arms. But she would be in the Doctor's arms.
Sometimes she is scared of how angry she is at Pete Tyler. Her dad, even though he really isn't (the Doctor was right about some things) but--Pete is family now. And she should be grateful, shouldn't she? Family is all she has. He saved her life. But there the anger is, burning away in her heart, wailing in some secret chamber she won't ever unearth for anyone but herself to know. The silent, sinister voice that says she would have rather spent eternity in the rift, gone the way of the Cybermen and the Daleks, rather than this...this erasure from her other world.
(Was there a search party for her and her mum, over there? Did all her aunties and mates and cousins and neighbors come to mourn the Tylers, who were alive and well on the other side an inconceivable barrier? )
It could be worse, Rose knows. Instead of the empty, blank space her fingers grasped as she flew into the void, she could have still been clutching the lever when Pete transported her back to his world. The impotent rage then, the screaming unfairness then would have been too much to bear. To win, only to lose. At least now, she knows she lost either way.
Even so, the movie plays out in her mind with relentless, torturous technicolor and sound. The Doctor's voice, raw and unearthly, as he called her name. The pain naked in his tone, the bottomless vulnerability in his eyes...
(Rose remembers seeing a glimpse of it once, the last time he thought he was seeing her die. Remembers the guilt latent in his words, the way the time-vortex opened worlds upon worlds upon galaxies inside her head, unlocked centuries and eons of secrets and wonders and all she could see--all she could hear, and taste, and smell, and feel--was the Doctor's pain of watching her burn up.)
... and she waited so long for him to open to her like that, and he chose the moment before it all bloody well exploded to reveal who he really was. There's irony in that, and a fair bit of tragedy.
Rose closes her eyes now and does not see the Doctor who was always so in control, so ready for the next adventure. She closes her eyes now and sees the Doctor in that moment that hung forever, the energy lighting his face like some sort of terrible sun, bright and beautiful and deadly dangerous. There was fear so apparent in the tremble of his lips. And the loneliness was already creeping into his features, the resignation of being left alone again--
Perhaps that is the source of all her resentment towards this life, this gift of life given to her by the Pete Tyler of another world than her own. That she misses the Doctor isn't the exact root of her heartache, though she does, and always will. That the Doctor is sure to miss her is what hurts so much. She's saved his life just as he's saved hers, and there are horrifying moments in the middle of the night or in the early reaches of morning when the thought occurs to Rose: she's not there to knock aside any Autons or turn a Dalek into dust. And it's vain, possibly even delusional, because Sarah Jane taught Rose better than most anything else could that the Doctor has lived before his Companions and continues to live after his Companions, but...
Rose's own life seemed to begin when the Doctor extended his hand and invited her onboard the TARDIS. And Rose's own life seemed to end when the Doctor extended his hand and begged her silently not to go.
(She left anyway, and all she can think of, all she can remember is his palm facing out in supplication, the arcing curves of his fingers, the strong bones of his wrist.)
The decision wasn't hers. It was never going to be hers--
("There's a storm coming," he says, and the fireworks reflect in his gaze--)
--she knows that, she saw how Sarah Jane was left eventually, how the Doctor outlived his relationships with humans and how that must have chipped away at him. She knows she was going to be parted with him one day, whether by circumstance or his own choice, to head off all the eventual hurt.
Except this: when she said "and I'm never gonna leave," he didn't argue, and the memory of the strength of his hand in hers is what spells out the hope that must have lurked in his hearts. If she was given the chance, she would have stayed till she couldn't move one more limb, till she was old and grey and mad, sorting her pills and fighting hostile alien beings in one go.
It kills her slowly, those memories and those possibilities. When she sleeps, her own hands reach out for someone who's not there.
And somewhere in the dark, so deep even she can't hear it yet, a voice calls out her name.
ii. month five. (eyes)
When Rose dreams of the Doctor, she dreams of the way he looked at her when he said goodbye.
His eyes. Oh, his eyes. Eyes so dark it's like they're swallowed by the shadows. There are storms in the penetrating black of his pupils, the drowning brown-blue-green-everycolor of his irises. A girl could get lost in eyes like his--eyes that seem older than existence, but are young, really--young and fierce and lonely. So very, very lonely, and why not? He has the weight of several worlds on his shoulders, those lovely, thin shoulders, and beneath the manic glee etched in his every feature, it's his eyes that have always betrayed the cost of that fate.
(He loves each new place and face he sees with no hint of restraint, just wild bliss and innate curiosity. But every death, every sacrifice burns another piece of him away, and ashes fill Rose's mouth when she thinks to think of it.)
He's nine-hundred-years old, but there are things that are older. Truths that are ingrained in the very pattern of the stars. The hum of the TARDIS, the heat of the sun, the cold burn of space in all its infinite possibilities. He is just as they are, impossible yet true, and so, so singular. But not alone, not really.
Rose has felt it, seen it, tasted it, the touch of his mouth against hers. The unlimited power and thrill of seeing the triumvirate of past, present, possible future. She's kissed him twice when her body wasn't her body, and though the memories are nothing but aches in the lowdown deep of her belly, she knows every curve and cell of him as surely as he knows the name of every constellation. She's still the Bad Wolf, and the moon tugs at her blood with secrets of what she was and what she could be. The TARDIS still whispers in her ear, in her heart, a song of ties and bonds and forevers.
("I want to keep you safe. My Doctor.")
But there are some things Rose will never know, aren't there? Clues she couldn't leave herself to lead herself here.
His eyes. His eyes when he said goodbye, the things left unsaid--
(All that she never realized--never thought to think about...everything she knows of him pales now in the face of everything she will never get the chance to learn.)
And yet. In Rose's dreams, when the emptiness opens up the floors beneath her feet, plunging her into that dizzy, crashing place of loneliness, she goes to her window-but-not, in her old room-but-not, and she stares out into the night. The spread of the galaxy above is familiar like a ghost, and her dreamself touches the cool glass, leaves a watery imprint behind as she slips back into bed.
And when Rose raises her lashes, when she wakes up, there is a balm soothing the pain clanging away in her heart, a refrain of immutable fact.
The Doctor loved her, just as Rose loved him, and it's this truth that keeps her company now, after the life she knew was bitterly blown away, scattered to the reaches of the universe like autumn leaves.
(Love, the abiding, unwavering belief in and of its power, the certainty that what she felt is what he felt, and if she feels it still--if she feels it always-- then so must he.)
There is no wall between worlds that is powerful enough to block the fact that she belongs to him. And even though there is a gaping, torn space in the fabric of her life, a space which the Doctor used to occupy with all his irrepressible irreverence, Rose can still hear his voice. Can still smell his leather and jam smell. Can still feel his arm pressed against hers. And that's enough to prove that he still belongs to her, too.
(Love. In his eyes, the infinity of his eyes, that's what Rose is stubbornly, desperately, resignedly sure she saw. She sees. She has always seen.)
Not unrequited, not even unrealized. Just unsaid, and the words swim in her heart every time she chances a look to the sky. Because in the sky, the moon and the sun and the clouds and the planets and the stars, she see hope. She knows that the barrier between her world and his is just as ever-changing as any element of space--that one day, she will see him again. She must.
Until then, all she can do is live the one life the Doctor can never have, while the Doctor lives the one life Rose will always want.
Because there was a promise she remembers in his gaze. Maybe forever wasn't theirs to have, but--the future is. It has to be.
iii. month ten. (mouth)
It's watching Mickey and Jake together that finally alerts Rose to just how sorry a state she's in. Which in itself is a bit sorry, isn't it? That Mickey's life should be making her feel bad about her own life?
The smiles that Mickey and his partner share, though, standing on the front stoop...Rose feels like an odd sense of deja vu. Like she's the one looking in on something she hasn't got, like Mickey must have felt so many times watching her fly away in the TARDIS with the Doctor, sharing her own smiles with him. Tender and knowing and eager and easy, such quicksilver smiles at the drop of a hat. Smiles that were shared with embraces, with the fleeting touch of a finger to a cheek, or a hand to an elbow. Smiles that feel foreign now, alien almost, and Rose allows herself a smirk at that thought, but nothing more.
The problem is, it feels like treason to smile those smiles without the Doctor, to share in secrets and snickering jokes with anyone else. Oh, Rose still grins, and oftentimes she laughs, and holding her tiny little baby brother is a sort of happiness that she can't even name, it's so new. But Rose never smiles now like she did when Sycorax ash fell on Christmas Day, or when she escaped a television set, her face finally a face again. She never smiles like each day is something new and grand and undiscovered, because after all she's done--after all she's seen--it feels weirdly like a grave disservice against who she is to attack this life with the same sort awe and zeal.
(She can't go back. She can't move forward. She can't stay here. There's no place for Rose Tyler, it seems, except for in a spinning blue box that is neither here nor there, that is always backwards and forwards and everywhere at once. There is that strange sort of incompletion when she sees couples walk hand in hand now, a lingering sense of loss for all that knew. But more importantly, for all she did not know for sure, all that she did not get to find out.)
And then Mickey and Jake kiss, snogging right on the doorstep as Rose rolls her eyes and says goodnight--
When she shuts the door, she leans her back against it, taking deep breaths around the longing rising up in her chest. It's been ages since she's even been around with a man who isn't Mickey, Jake, or Pete, let alone been kissed by a bloke. Her heart stops and stutters back to life whenever she thinks on the fact that really, the Doctor was the last man she ever kissed, even though it was actually Cassandra in control of her body. It's sad--in both the melodramatic, tragic way, and the utterly pathetic one, too.
(The feel of the planes of his chest and thighs against hers, the way his hair, all that mad, messy hair, felt between her fingers, the way his mouth responded against hers...though it's fuzzy, like a foggy mirror, the memory is what she has to keep her company on those lonely nights when her mum is out with the baby and Pete, and Mickey is out on the town. Sometimes there are men at work who cast her speculative glances, but it's really no secret her heart is already occupied.)
A part of her wishes it weren't so. Wishes she could go to Torchwood and begin a new file, or go walking in the city, or even take out a bloody Internet ad! Anything to forget what isn't hers to have anymore. Anything to just move on. It's what the Doctor would've wanted, if he was here--
But then, if the Doctor were here, she wouldn't have to be moving on, like some sort of ghost in a city that won't stop. If the Doctor were here...but he's not.
(It's not the same, here. Nothing is the same. Nothing is truly parallel. A whisper in his ear as Christmas trees spin: "Help me.")
She thinks of the Doctor telling her to have a fantastic life, once upon a time. Thinks of how that would be the best way to honor him. But she doesn't want to honor him, like some sort of memorial for the dead. He's not dead, she is, and even though she can see the way his lips move to goodbye in her mind's eye, the words are replaced, the sounds muted until all she hears is, "Am I ever going to see you again?" and then, "You can't."
Well. If ever there was a way to better make her more determined to prove him wrong, Rose has yet to find it. Telling her she can't--she doesn't take kindly to that word. She likes to think that's why the Doctor liked her. Her tenacity, her determination. She's never been the brains, but she's always had heart, and this is where she can put it to good use. No good sitting around, feeling sorry for herself, waiting for fate to take care of the rest.
(No future. No A-levels, no job, no life. Until the Doctor--)
Rose will find a way to break down those walls between her world and his. She will find a way to jumpstart her life again, so that she's not watching at doors, ducking her head at lovers sharing kisses. She will find a way back to the Doctor, because she said she was in it for life, and she is. That life and this one.
(If only so she can tell him Mickey's dating a bloke, because honestly, who would love that more than the Doctor?
The laughter bubbles up in her when she thinks of him cackling in that mad way he has, or making some sort of gruff, transparently-affectionate joke about Mickey being thick. She thinks of the multitude of reactions playing across the Doctor's expressive, elastic face, and she smiles at the thought of his smile.)
When she thinks of seeing him again, the vast, expansive possibility of joy crashing through her, of letting her laughter mingle with his, until her breath is his breath, her happiness is his happiness, Rose finally feels pieces click within her.
So she tucks her feet up under her knees, sips her tea, and plans.
Thinks of the Doctor's mouth when he said goodbye. And how it will look when he says "Hello, again."
iv. month twelve: heart (both of them, actually)
The TARDIS key is cold against Rose's skin these days.
It doesn't discourage her, though, does quite the opposite, in fact. She spends hours and hours scouring Torchwood's files, making Mickey comb through internet forums for any hint of information that might help her. And through it all, the key dangles on a chain beneath her clothes, cool and still, the curve of it biting into her flesh every time she thinks she's close to an answer and she presses her hand over her chest.
She's never sure that she is, though. Close.
The Doctor knew what he was talking about, apparently, in all his fatilistic wisdom. The void is sealed tight--there is no way safely across that nothingness, into her old world, into his arms. When he said two universes would collapse should they touch again, Rose thinks he meant it to be that way forever. Not just in Bad Wolf Bay, not just with her fingers itching to comb through a hologram. If she disobeys the laws of time, she could bring two entire existences crumbling to their knees. The only other option is going through the void. Amidst Daleks and Cybermen and Beasts and fears and darkness, all of it howling through her, tearing her apart.
(She doesn't care. He burnt up the sun to see her one last time. Can't she walk through Hell?)
The key lays against the valley of her breast, and no matter how she rubs the small treasure in her palm, the metal doesn't warm between her fingers. The magic is gone, dead.
Rose works harder, longer, fiercer than ever. There is no such thing as magic, she tells herself. Science and matter, yes, manipulated by forces most don't understand. But not magic. And somehow, that's even better than a miracle--because miracles are rather shoddy in when and how they come about, but in science, she has learned, there is always an answer to every question. It's only a matter of how hard a person is willing to look, and exactly what sort of outcome a person is willing to accept.
(Nothing short of being in front of him again. Nothing short of seeing Barcelona, which, come to think of it, he never did get around to showing her.)
There are those at Torchwood who refuse to help her, of course. There are those at Torchwood who would rather the void not even be mentioned, let alone be tampered with. Pete and mum spend a whole night bawling her out, screaming about foolishness and recklessness and losing her for nothing. But Mickey stays silent, because Mickey understands--they lost Rose a long time ago.
And finding the Doctor again? That's hardly nothing. That's everything.
(Once upon a time, there was a Slitheen that regressed into an egg. The Doctor gave her a new life. The Doctor wanted to give Rose a new life, too. That opportunity for a second chance, to begin anew. But she's finally realized second chances are for regrets, not to make life better. And the only thing Rose regrets about the time she spent with the Doctor is the fact that it ever had to end.)
So. A second chance, after all. A second chance to lean close and take control and listen to his hearts beat. To feel the key heat against her own heart. To feel the energy and the time and the space flow through her, to know that the curse of the Time Lord was prolonged just a bit longer.
Because Rose hasn't withered away. She is healthy and alive and as long as that is true, there is no reason that she shouldn't take her trial by fire, find a way to travel through the void without getting lost or annihilated, particle by particle.
(It's not impossible. Nothing is impossible. She has survived werewolves and cybermen and daleks. She has been saved by the Doctor and she has saved the Doctor. She has saved herself.
She is not scared.
She is so scared.)
There is faith in every throb of her pulse, though, in every crash of her heart against her ribs. That old, glorious faith unfolding its wings and taking flight in her soul, the surety that just on the other side, victory is certain.
Rose continues to research, and plan, and hope for the impossible. Rose continues to dream.
- -finis- -
rating: pg
pairing(s): rose/doctor, mentions of mickey/jake, so if that's not your cuppa...
spoilers: all of s1 and s2, especially Doomsday
summary: the year after the breach is sealed is long and lonely for rose tyler. but even in sadness can there be strength, and even through hell is there hope. she doesn't--hasn't--given up or forgotten, and that's victory enough, sometimes. [post-Doomsday angst/romance-ish]
a/n: This is my entrance into writing Who-fic, so I apologize for any glaring fandom offenses. I really appreciate feedback, especially in entering a new fandom. I also have to thank new friend rosa_acicularis for a section in here, because her recent, fantastic fic Tomorrow inspired the fireworks/storm recollection. Hope every enjoys!
- - -
i. month two. (hands)
A month has passed. Four long weeks. Thirty-one days. And she still--
In her mind, Rose replays the moment it all went to hell, an endless loop of her fingers slipping away from the lever and her arms reaching out in vain. The blue-white lightning crackling around her, the void sucking everything into its maw, mindless and noiseless destruction tossing and turning her body and her hands just reaching. And the Doctor's face. The black horror and drowning sorrow and desperate panic on his face as he held onto his lever with one strong, capable, familiar hand--
("This is my fightin' hand!")
--and called out to her with his other, his legs in a wide, solid stance, his mouth twisted up around her name.
That is the moment Rose takes care to remember. The way that it almost seemed as if their hands would touch, that everything would be alright, that the void would seal and she would grieve over her lost mother and friend in the Doctor's arms. But she would be in the Doctor's arms.
Sometimes she is scared of how angry she is at Pete Tyler. Her dad, even though he really isn't (the Doctor was right about some things) but--Pete is family now. And she should be grateful, shouldn't she? Family is all she has. He saved her life. But there the anger is, burning away in her heart, wailing in some secret chamber she won't ever unearth for anyone but herself to know. The silent, sinister voice that says she would have rather spent eternity in the rift, gone the way of the Cybermen and the Daleks, rather than this...this erasure from her other world.
(Was there a search party for her and her mum, over there? Did all her aunties and mates and cousins and neighbors come to mourn the Tylers, who were alive and well on the other side an inconceivable barrier? )
It could be worse, Rose knows. Instead of the empty, blank space her fingers grasped as she flew into the void, she could have still been clutching the lever when Pete transported her back to his world. The impotent rage then, the screaming unfairness then would have been too much to bear. To win, only to lose. At least now, she knows she lost either way.
Even so, the movie plays out in her mind with relentless, torturous technicolor and sound. The Doctor's voice, raw and unearthly, as he called her name. The pain naked in his tone, the bottomless vulnerability in his eyes...
(Rose remembers seeing a glimpse of it once, the last time he thought he was seeing her die. Remembers the guilt latent in his words, the way the time-vortex opened worlds upon worlds upon galaxies inside her head, unlocked centuries and eons of secrets and wonders and all she could see--all she could hear, and taste, and smell, and feel--was the Doctor's pain of watching her burn up.)
... and she waited so long for him to open to her like that, and he chose the moment before it all bloody well exploded to reveal who he really was. There's irony in that, and a fair bit of tragedy.
Rose closes her eyes now and does not see the Doctor who was always so in control, so ready for the next adventure. She closes her eyes now and sees the Doctor in that moment that hung forever, the energy lighting his face like some sort of terrible sun, bright and beautiful and deadly dangerous. There was fear so apparent in the tremble of his lips. And the loneliness was already creeping into his features, the resignation of being left alone again--
Perhaps that is the source of all her resentment towards this life, this gift of life given to her by the Pete Tyler of another world than her own. That she misses the Doctor isn't the exact root of her heartache, though she does, and always will. That the Doctor is sure to miss her is what hurts so much. She's saved his life just as he's saved hers, and there are horrifying moments in the middle of the night or in the early reaches of morning when the thought occurs to Rose: she's not there to knock aside any Autons or turn a Dalek into dust. And it's vain, possibly even delusional, because Sarah Jane taught Rose better than most anything else could that the Doctor has lived before his Companions and continues to live after his Companions, but...
Rose's own life seemed to begin when the Doctor extended his hand and invited her onboard the TARDIS. And Rose's own life seemed to end when the Doctor extended his hand and begged her silently not to go.
(She left anyway, and all she can think of, all she can remember is his palm facing out in supplication, the arcing curves of his fingers, the strong bones of his wrist.)
The decision wasn't hers. It was never going to be hers--
("There's a storm coming," he says, and the fireworks reflect in his gaze--)
--she knows that, she saw how Sarah Jane was left eventually, how the Doctor outlived his relationships with humans and how that must have chipped away at him. She knows she was going to be parted with him one day, whether by circumstance or his own choice, to head off all the eventual hurt.
Except this: when she said "and I'm never gonna leave," he didn't argue, and the memory of the strength of his hand in hers is what spells out the hope that must have lurked in his hearts. If she was given the chance, she would have stayed till she couldn't move one more limb, till she was old and grey and mad, sorting her pills and fighting hostile alien beings in one go.
It kills her slowly, those memories and those possibilities. When she sleeps, her own hands reach out for someone who's not there.
And somewhere in the dark, so deep even she can't hear it yet, a voice calls out her name.
ii. month five. (eyes)
When Rose dreams of the Doctor, she dreams of the way he looked at her when he said goodbye.
His eyes. Oh, his eyes. Eyes so dark it's like they're swallowed by the shadows. There are storms in the penetrating black of his pupils, the drowning brown-blue-green-everycolor of his irises. A girl could get lost in eyes like his--eyes that seem older than existence, but are young, really--young and fierce and lonely. So very, very lonely, and why not? He has the weight of several worlds on his shoulders, those lovely, thin shoulders, and beneath the manic glee etched in his every feature, it's his eyes that have always betrayed the cost of that fate.
(He loves each new place and face he sees with no hint of restraint, just wild bliss and innate curiosity. But every death, every sacrifice burns another piece of him away, and ashes fill Rose's mouth when she thinks to think of it.)
He's nine-hundred-years old, but there are things that are older. Truths that are ingrained in the very pattern of the stars. The hum of the TARDIS, the heat of the sun, the cold burn of space in all its infinite possibilities. He is just as they are, impossible yet true, and so, so singular. But not alone, not really.
Rose has felt it, seen it, tasted it, the touch of his mouth against hers. The unlimited power and thrill of seeing the triumvirate of past, present, possible future. She's kissed him twice when her body wasn't her body, and though the memories are nothing but aches in the lowdown deep of her belly, she knows every curve and cell of him as surely as he knows the name of every constellation. She's still the Bad Wolf, and the moon tugs at her blood with secrets of what she was and what she could be. The TARDIS still whispers in her ear, in her heart, a song of ties and bonds and forevers.
("I want to keep you safe. My Doctor.")
But there are some things Rose will never know, aren't there? Clues she couldn't leave herself to lead herself here.
His eyes. His eyes when he said goodbye, the things left unsaid--
(All that she never realized--never thought to think about...everything she knows of him pales now in the face of everything she will never get the chance to learn.)
And yet. In Rose's dreams, when the emptiness opens up the floors beneath her feet, plunging her into that dizzy, crashing place of loneliness, she goes to her window-but-not, in her old room-but-not, and she stares out into the night. The spread of the galaxy above is familiar like a ghost, and her dreamself touches the cool glass, leaves a watery imprint behind as she slips back into bed.
And when Rose raises her lashes, when she wakes up, there is a balm soothing the pain clanging away in her heart, a refrain of immutable fact.
The Doctor loved her, just as Rose loved him, and it's this truth that keeps her company now, after the life she knew was bitterly blown away, scattered to the reaches of the universe like autumn leaves.
(Love, the abiding, unwavering belief in and of its power, the certainty that what she felt is what he felt, and if she feels it still--if she feels it always-- then so must he.)
There is no wall between worlds that is powerful enough to block the fact that she belongs to him. And even though there is a gaping, torn space in the fabric of her life, a space which the Doctor used to occupy with all his irrepressible irreverence, Rose can still hear his voice. Can still smell his leather and jam smell. Can still feel his arm pressed against hers. And that's enough to prove that he still belongs to her, too.
(Love. In his eyes, the infinity of his eyes, that's what Rose is stubbornly, desperately, resignedly sure she saw. She sees. She has always seen.)
Not unrequited, not even unrealized. Just unsaid, and the words swim in her heart every time she chances a look to the sky. Because in the sky, the moon and the sun and the clouds and the planets and the stars, she see hope. She knows that the barrier between her world and his is just as ever-changing as any element of space--that one day, she will see him again. She must.
Until then, all she can do is live the one life the Doctor can never have, while the Doctor lives the one life Rose will always want.
Because there was a promise she remembers in his gaze. Maybe forever wasn't theirs to have, but--the future is. It has to be.
iii. month ten. (mouth)
It's watching Mickey and Jake together that finally alerts Rose to just how sorry a state she's in. Which in itself is a bit sorry, isn't it? That Mickey's life should be making her feel bad about her own life?
The smiles that Mickey and his partner share, though, standing on the front stoop...Rose feels like an odd sense of deja vu. Like she's the one looking in on something she hasn't got, like Mickey must have felt so many times watching her fly away in the TARDIS with the Doctor, sharing her own smiles with him. Tender and knowing and eager and easy, such quicksilver smiles at the drop of a hat. Smiles that were shared with embraces, with the fleeting touch of a finger to a cheek, or a hand to an elbow. Smiles that feel foreign now, alien almost, and Rose allows herself a smirk at that thought, but nothing more.
The problem is, it feels like treason to smile those smiles without the Doctor, to share in secrets and snickering jokes with anyone else. Oh, Rose still grins, and oftentimes she laughs, and holding her tiny little baby brother is a sort of happiness that she can't even name, it's so new. But Rose never smiles now like she did when Sycorax ash fell on Christmas Day, or when she escaped a television set, her face finally a face again. She never smiles like each day is something new and grand and undiscovered, because after all she's done--after all she's seen--it feels weirdly like a grave disservice against who she is to attack this life with the same sort awe and zeal.
(She can't go back. She can't move forward. She can't stay here. There's no place for Rose Tyler, it seems, except for in a spinning blue box that is neither here nor there, that is always backwards and forwards and everywhere at once. There is that strange sort of incompletion when she sees couples walk hand in hand now, a lingering sense of loss for all that knew. But more importantly, for all she did not know for sure, all that she did not get to find out.)
And then Mickey and Jake kiss, snogging right on the doorstep as Rose rolls her eyes and says goodnight--
When she shuts the door, she leans her back against it, taking deep breaths around the longing rising up in her chest. It's been ages since she's even been around with a man who isn't Mickey, Jake, or Pete, let alone been kissed by a bloke. Her heart stops and stutters back to life whenever she thinks on the fact that really, the Doctor was the last man she ever kissed, even though it was actually Cassandra in control of her body. It's sad--in both the melodramatic, tragic way, and the utterly pathetic one, too.
(The feel of the planes of his chest and thighs against hers, the way his hair, all that mad, messy hair, felt between her fingers, the way his mouth responded against hers...though it's fuzzy, like a foggy mirror, the memory is what she has to keep her company on those lonely nights when her mum is out with the baby and Pete, and Mickey is out on the town. Sometimes there are men at work who cast her speculative glances, but it's really no secret her heart is already occupied.)
A part of her wishes it weren't so. Wishes she could go to Torchwood and begin a new file, or go walking in the city, or even take out a bloody Internet ad! Anything to forget what isn't hers to have anymore. Anything to just move on. It's what the Doctor would've wanted, if he was here--
But then, if the Doctor were here, she wouldn't have to be moving on, like some sort of ghost in a city that won't stop. If the Doctor were here...but he's not.
(It's not the same, here. Nothing is the same. Nothing is truly parallel. A whisper in his ear as Christmas trees spin: "Help me.")
She thinks of the Doctor telling her to have a fantastic life, once upon a time. Thinks of how that would be the best way to honor him. But she doesn't want to honor him, like some sort of memorial for the dead. He's not dead, she is, and even though she can see the way his lips move to goodbye in her mind's eye, the words are replaced, the sounds muted until all she hears is, "Am I ever going to see you again?" and then, "You can't."
Well. If ever there was a way to better make her more determined to prove him wrong, Rose has yet to find it. Telling her she can't--she doesn't take kindly to that word. She likes to think that's why the Doctor liked her. Her tenacity, her determination. She's never been the brains, but she's always had heart, and this is where she can put it to good use. No good sitting around, feeling sorry for herself, waiting for fate to take care of the rest.
(No future. No A-levels, no job, no life. Until the Doctor--)
Rose will find a way to break down those walls between her world and his. She will find a way to jumpstart her life again, so that she's not watching at doors, ducking her head at lovers sharing kisses. She will find a way back to the Doctor, because she said she was in it for life, and she is. That life and this one.
(If only so she can tell him Mickey's dating a bloke, because honestly, who would love that more than the Doctor?
The laughter bubbles up in her when she thinks of him cackling in that mad way he has, or making some sort of gruff, transparently-affectionate joke about Mickey being thick. She thinks of the multitude of reactions playing across the Doctor's expressive, elastic face, and she smiles at the thought of his smile.)
When she thinks of seeing him again, the vast, expansive possibility of joy crashing through her, of letting her laughter mingle with his, until her breath is his breath, her happiness is his happiness, Rose finally feels pieces click within her.
So she tucks her feet up under her knees, sips her tea, and plans.
Thinks of the Doctor's mouth when he said goodbye. And how it will look when he says "Hello, again."
iv. month twelve: heart (both of them, actually)
The TARDIS key is cold against Rose's skin these days.
It doesn't discourage her, though, does quite the opposite, in fact. She spends hours and hours scouring Torchwood's files, making Mickey comb through internet forums for any hint of information that might help her. And through it all, the key dangles on a chain beneath her clothes, cool and still, the curve of it biting into her flesh every time she thinks she's close to an answer and she presses her hand over her chest.
She's never sure that she is, though. Close.
The Doctor knew what he was talking about, apparently, in all his fatilistic wisdom. The void is sealed tight--there is no way safely across that nothingness, into her old world, into his arms. When he said two universes would collapse should they touch again, Rose thinks he meant it to be that way forever. Not just in Bad Wolf Bay, not just with her fingers itching to comb through a hologram. If she disobeys the laws of time, she could bring two entire existences crumbling to their knees. The only other option is going through the void. Amidst Daleks and Cybermen and Beasts and fears and darkness, all of it howling through her, tearing her apart.
(She doesn't care. He burnt up the sun to see her one last time. Can't she walk through Hell?)
The key lays against the valley of her breast, and no matter how she rubs the small treasure in her palm, the metal doesn't warm between her fingers. The magic is gone, dead.
Rose works harder, longer, fiercer than ever. There is no such thing as magic, she tells herself. Science and matter, yes, manipulated by forces most don't understand. But not magic. And somehow, that's even better than a miracle--because miracles are rather shoddy in when and how they come about, but in science, she has learned, there is always an answer to every question. It's only a matter of how hard a person is willing to look, and exactly what sort of outcome a person is willing to accept.
(Nothing short of being in front of him again. Nothing short of seeing Barcelona, which, come to think of it, he never did get around to showing her.)
There are those at Torchwood who refuse to help her, of course. There are those at Torchwood who would rather the void not even be mentioned, let alone be tampered with. Pete and mum spend a whole night bawling her out, screaming about foolishness and recklessness and losing her for nothing. But Mickey stays silent, because Mickey understands--they lost Rose a long time ago.
And finding the Doctor again? That's hardly nothing. That's everything.
(Once upon a time, there was a Slitheen that regressed into an egg. The Doctor gave her a new life. The Doctor wanted to give Rose a new life, too. That opportunity for a second chance, to begin anew. But she's finally realized second chances are for regrets, not to make life better. And the only thing Rose regrets about the time she spent with the Doctor is the fact that it ever had to end.)
So. A second chance, after all. A second chance to lean close and take control and listen to his hearts beat. To feel the key heat against her own heart. To feel the energy and the time and the space flow through her, to know that the curse of the Time Lord was prolonged just a bit longer.
Because Rose hasn't withered away. She is healthy and alive and as long as that is true, there is no reason that she shouldn't take her trial by fire, find a way to travel through the void without getting lost or annihilated, particle by particle.
(It's not impossible. Nothing is impossible. She has survived werewolves and cybermen and daleks. She has been saved by the Doctor and she has saved the Doctor. She has saved herself.
She is not scared.
She is so scared.)
There is faith in every throb of her pulse, though, in every crash of her heart against her ribs. That old, glorious faith unfolding its wings and taking flight in her soul, the surety that just on the other side, victory is certain.
Rose continues to research, and plan, and hope for the impossible. Rose continues to dream.
- -finis- -