Title: "Incorporeal"
Author: Wish Wielder
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing / Character Focus: Rose Tyler
Challenge: 15 Minute Fic
Theme / Prompt: Word #27
Word Count: 472
Rating: M / PG-13
Summary: She feels nothing. Almost nothing, at least – she feels cold. She feels empty. She feels hollow. She feels like a ghost.
Notes: Post-Doomsday. Involves potentially suicidal themes, depending on your interpretation.
Disclaimer: "Doctor Who" and all respective properties are © the BBC. Megan D. (Wish Wielder) does not, has never, nor will ever own "Doctor Who".
"Incorporeal"
She feels nothing. Almost nothing, at least – she feels cold. She feels empty. She feels hollow.
She feels like a ghost.
It's with a touch of irony that she realizes that, as 'ghosts' were what started this whole mess. She had gone home to deliver a present of Bazoolium and laundry. She had arrived to find her mum ranting about the ghost of her grandfather. She lives now feeling just as spectral as the black image that had walked into their kitchen that morning.
It doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel possible. But she's been living this way for just over five months, and little by little, every morning, it slowly sinks in just how real it is.
Until she had heard his voice, calling out to her in her dreams. Calling out through the Void. Calling for her. And she followed, because for the first time in three months she actually felt just a little bit alive again.
Just a bit more solid.
She expected to find him there, but she found an image instead – something just as incorporeal as how she felt. Only he was the spectre, not her – he was the one who wasn't real.
Why wasn't he real?
She looks out from the top floor of Torchwood London, her pale hand pressed to the cool glass as she watches the busy lives unfold before her. They all think it's so important – so significant. They all think whatever they do on this rock matters.
They don't feel it spinning away beneath them at a thousand miles an hour, hurtling towards the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour. They don't feel themselves clinging so tightly to the skin of the planet.
But she doesn't anymore, either. She doesn't feel anything.
She doesn't feel the rush her life used to bring her. She doesn't feel the excitement of running for her life with that familiar hand wrapped so protectively around her own. She doesn't feel the comfort of his fingers between hers – she doesn't feel.
She's a ghost, trapped in an in-between of life and death and she doesn't know which one she likes more.
She's clinging to the skin of an alien planet that looks so much like her own, not quite feeling it anymore as it falls through space. And if she lets go…
…would she even tell the difference?
Is that who she's become?
There's a dull scream behind her, preceded by a crash. She recognizes the voice, just barely – Mickey. Dear, sweet, safe Mickey. He's still solid. He's still rooted. He's still clinging.
But as for her…she steps onto the shattered pane and stares at the bustling city below. And if she lets go…she thinks she might like it.
One more scream, barely recognizable, and for the first time in just over five months…she smiles.
"ROSE!"
A.n.: …I cut it like three minutes short, but that lovely little idea I had while starting this kinda kerplooshed and died right in the middle of it. …shpadoinkle, did I just write a Suicidal!Rose? Wow, ok…the idea really kerplooshed…sorry, y'all… But I guess it could be interpreted differently, so maybe that's better. Anyway…word was 'solid'.