A/N: This was written for Challenge 70 over at Livejournal's then_theres_us. The pictures that prompted it were a girl in heels and a dress standing with a bicycle, street signs showing the intersection between Romeo Place and Juliet Circle, and a page from Nicole Krauss' The History of Love, which mentions the movie North by Northwest and being alone in the middle of the night.
Enjoy the angst, and feedback is always appreciated!
Almost Everything I Wish I'd Said the Last Time I Saw You
There is no red bicycle here. In this universe, there was no twelve-year-old Rose and no Doctor to give her the bicycle (because she has realized now that that's the only explanation, although how and when he managed to get it to the Powell Estate, she'll never know).
She also has no wardrobe. Most of her clothes are sitting in a laundry bag back at her universe's (because this isn't her universe, no matter how much she tries to reconcile herself to it) Powell Estate. Pete talks to someone at this universe's Torchwood—it takes a lot of explaining, him having a wife and daughter all of a sudden—and she's given the clothes someone else's daughter has grown out of.
It's almost a blessing, she realizes. She's not sure she could have faced walking around in the same clothes he used to see her in, the particular favorites of his.
There is no red bicycle—not her red bicycle, anyway—but deep in Pete's garage she finds one that's passable. Some days, all she wants is to get out of the house, and today is one of those days. They try hard not to upset her, but it's unavoidable at some points—especially now, when Jackie finally told her the night before that she's pregnant. It's not that she begrudges her mum the happiness—anything but that; it's so good to see her with someone and happy after so many men who didn't pan out—but it's so suffocatingly domestic that sometimes she just wants to scream.
She's wearing a dress and heels, but knows she can manage a bike ride. ("You goin' my way, doll?" "Is there any other way to go, daddy-o?") She walks the bicycle out of the garage and gets on, not knowing where she will go but wanting to go anywhere but this place. It's not the whole of time and space, but it will have to do.
She wishes this were as simple as a normal breakup, as simple as avoiding the places he used to go. As simple as not needing to take a steadying breath whenever she glimpses The Mystery of Edwin Drood in a bookstore or library, whenever she hears Elvis Presley on the radio and remembers how they almost got there, whenever she's desperate enough to go looking for the words Bad Wolf, even knowing she'll find nothing.
She pedals hard, wishing she could outrun the memories, forget about him as easily as she forgot about other breakups over the years, but the pain in her leg muscles doesn't do much at all to lessen the pain in her heart. Pretending it does would be a lie.
This universe has a park not far from an intersection, and she stops when she reaches it after at least half an hour of cycling. Her dress is soaked through with sweat and sticking slightly to her, and she needs to lie down and cool off. She gets off the bike, looking at the street signs as she does so, needing to at least know where she is if she's going to get home tonight.
Romeo Place and Juliet Circle. It's ironic to her that that makes her want to cry. Years ago, Shareen had landed the part of Juliet in their school's production, which had left Rose to run lines with her when her fellow cast members weren't around. She'd done her duty as a good friend should, but in some fit of teenage rebelliousness, Rose had decided the whole thing was stupid, unromantic, contrived. After a year or two, she'd gone back to it, appreciated it for the wordplay, but she'd never gotten over her feelings about how unrealistic it seemed.
A pair of star-crossed lovers. It doesn't seem so unrealistic anymore.
She drags the bike into the park, lying on the grass next to it, staring up at the sun and the clouds. The sun she watched devour the earth once, holding hands with the man whose magical machine had taken her far away, the two of them together at the end of the world. The clouds she'd watched with the same man, the man who'd changed his face but not the way he looked at her, sprawled together on his jacket in grass that smelled of apples. She closes her eyes and inhales, but the smell of city air is the only thing that reaches her.
"I must be gone and live, or stay and die."
As she tries to push away the thoughts of the Doctor, another thought reaches her instead, a half-remembered stanza from Romeo and Juliet. It does nothing to push away the memories, brings them back full-force instead.
The TARDIS, alone, yelling desperately at an image that would never hear her, the image that wanted nothing more than this: "Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life."
A city street, his hand in hers, her mind still reeling from the terror of almost losing him. "They keep on trying to split us up, but they never, ever will."
A sunset on an alien planet, where he asks her a question. "How long are you gonna stay with me?"
The absolute certainty in her voice and her heart as she'd promised him, "Forever."
The same certainty that would do her in so soon after, when she'd looked into his eyes and told him with finality, "I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you."
She would have stayed with him until the ends of the earth, if it had meant she'd die by his side.
Tears leak from her closed eyes, onto her sun-warmed skin, and she doesn't have the heart to wipe them away just yet. She will lie there until evening comes, until she can look up at the stars and name every one of the ones he'd pointed out to her in that other universe, until she can pretend that somewhere in the sky she will see a blue box, and finally be able to go home.
When she returns to the Tyler mansion, it is nearly one o'clock in the morning. Her legs ache from pedaling, she has long since abandoned the heels for bare feet, and the dress could use a washing due to the grass stains.
She leaves a card on the dining room table, a congratulations to Pete and her mother, hoping it will make up for what Jackie must have perceived as a lack of enthusiasm earlier. It is a card filled with exclamation points and a smiley face or two for good measure, and in her heart, there really is happiness for the two of them, and optimism for her future as an older sister. If nothing else, her sibling will grow up hearing stories of time and love and stars.
She wanders through the halls of the mansion, finally arriving at the living room and going in, browsing Pete's DVD collection on an impulse. Mostly, it's a collection of American spy movies, and she has to laugh at that. She would think he gets enough excitement at Torchwood, but no, her father loves to live vicariously through Alfred Hitchcock's dashing men. She picks up North by Northwest, puts it into the DVD player. Cary Grant might conjure up romantic fantasies in other women, but for her, all the movie does is lull her into dreams of the man who grabbed her hand and told her to run.
It is on a night like this that Pete finds her curled asleep on the couch, the DVD menu playing an incessant repeat. It is the night that he carries her back to bed and puts her to sleep as though she is a child, a night where he gets a glimpse of the little girl his alternate self was never around for, a night where he truly begins to feel she is his, after all.
It is the night where Rose Tyler will wake up after hearing just one word, a message that crosses universes.
"Rose."