DW Fic: Event Horizon
Afterwards, hours later when her father has ceased to attempt reasoning with her and her mother has stopped trying to console her, Rose stands at the top of the cliffs overlooking the beach. The cliffs neatly surround the beach; only the steeply-sloping trail they drove down allows access to the place she had stood with him, for those two minutes he could stay.
There are a lot of things you need to get across this universe, but you know the thing you need most of all? he had asked her, not that long ago. Only a lifetime ago. He’d answered his own question. You need a hand to hold.
The coldness of the metal railing bites through her knitted armwarmers. She is grateful for this strange sensation against her palms; it is something that she can observe from the empty, echo-y place inside her, as if she is someone else. Would she like to be someone else right now? Wind whips her hair across her face, and she does not move to tuck it away: why restrain it now, when she never has before?
But nothing is like it was before, she doesn’t let herself think. And some part of me should be free even if I’m left behind and stuck here. Those thoughts aren’t the ones she wants to have, and they don’t belong to the person she’s grown to be. That’s old, shopgirl, bus-riding Rose. She couldn’t be that girl again if she tried, not after meeting the whole wonderful world face-to-face.
The ocean pounds against the beach, a few hundred feet below her. The tide is coming in, filling up the cove and bringing water to leap over the rocks and find the hidden crevices below. It occurs to her now that she doesn’t know how far this ocean extends, or what’s on the other side of it- Greenland, perhaps? Or somewhere else altogether? Momentarily distracted, she wonders how far she could go if she borrowed her father’s lorry and picked a road to drive down at random. Rose turns; the rocky coastline of Norway extends as far as she can see in either direction, the ocean behind her and a road in front of her.
Rose steps away from the railing, onto the road. It curves away, out of sight, and she doesn’t know where she’s going, but maybe around some near or distant bend, somewhere away from this shrinking beach, that hand that fit hers so well will slip into it once again.
There are a lot of things you need to get across this universe, but you know the thing you need most of all? he had asked her, not that long ago. Only a lifetime ago. He’d answered his own question. You need a hand to hold.
The coldness of the metal railing bites through her knitted armwarmers. She is grateful for this strange sensation against her palms; it is something that she can observe from the empty, echo-y place inside her, as if she is someone else. Would she like to be someone else right now? Wind whips her hair across her face, and she does not move to tuck it away: why restrain it now, when she never has before?
But nothing is like it was before, she doesn’t let herself think. And some part of me should be free even if I’m left behind and stuck here. Those thoughts aren’t the ones she wants to have, and they don’t belong to the person she’s grown to be. That’s old, shopgirl, bus-riding Rose. She couldn’t be that girl again if she tried, not after meeting the whole wonderful world face-to-face.
The ocean pounds against the beach, a few hundred feet below her. The tide is coming in, filling up the cove and bringing water to leap over the rocks and find the hidden crevices below. It occurs to her now that she doesn’t know how far this ocean extends, or what’s on the other side of it- Greenland, perhaps? Or somewhere else altogether? Momentarily distracted, she wonders how far she could go if she borrowed her father’s lorry and picked a road to drive down at random. Rose turns; the rocky coastline of Norway extends as far as she can see in either direction, the ocean behind her and a road in front of her.
Rose steps away from the railing, onto the road. It curves away, out of sight, and she doesn’t know where she’s going, but maybe around some near or distant bend, somewhere away from this shrinking beach, that hand that fit hers so well will slip into it once again.