So apparently I have a thing for writing fics about walls and characters named Rose. Whatever.
This is the first Doctor Who I'm uploading, though I have a lot written and am in the midst of editing. Rose and Ten just make me cry so much and will forever be my OTP, so... enjoy! And I think it's pretty obvious where she is in the flash-forwards here, but if you're confused, shoot me a PM or a review.
As always, I own nothing.
She used to live for those rare moments when she could see him with no walls between them.
Almost always, there was something in the way. A wall of hurt he'd put up in front of his past, to protect himself. A wall she threw up in sudden suspicion, wary of letting this stranger get too close.
She picks up a handful of sand absently, watches it stream through her fingers like the time in their too-short hourglass together.
A wall they built from both sides when he regenerated, mutual fear of change and rejection the bricks and mortar. An inadvertent barrier made from interruptions, walls named Sarah Jane and Mickey neither of them could quite cross.
She comes here sometimes, drives the hours alone to this stark and lonely stretch of beach, not so much out of hope as to mourn, to lay the flowers of her tears at the grave of something beautiful and tragic, something that should have been never-ending and eternal.
The glassy brown wall of his eyes whenever his past came up. The stormy hazel one in hers at any mention of her father. The blank wall of emotionless expression that slid down over his face when she was getting too close; the wide-eyed, thin-lipped wall that overtook hers when he wouldn't get close enough.
It's beautiful but alien out here, all grey skies on grey water and harsh white sand rippling soundlessly in the wind. Like him, heartbreakingly beautiful and just a little bit off. Always slightly out of reach.
And then, of course, the final walls that sealed her fate. The clinical white wall between them, a wall that spanned universes just to keep them apart. And the very walls of reality, always closing in, squeezing too tight, conspiring to cage her here and him there, clinging to that same stretch of wall yet so very far apart.
She bends over to drag a hand through the sand and promptly falls to her knees, the tears coming freely now, the walls of her memories unlocked.
But between those walls, when they were together and could surmount them, there was so much. There was the way her hand fit in his, the sound of his voice the first thing she heard every morning, the laughter they shared. The shape of his mouth when he smiled at her—he had a smile for every occasion, and oh, she knows them all—the determined set of his walk, all the laughs he let her have at his expense. And the look in his eyes sometimes, when he thought she didn't notice but she caught him watching… Oh, definitely no walls there.
She pounds her fist against the sand, because it is all she can do. The walls that separate them now are not tangible, at least not for her. But she would do anything to get through them. For now, though, she is stuck, and looking around at the endless sky and sea stretching for miles in every direction, she has never felt so trapped.