I used to wonder how you recovered from an adventure. When all the drama, everything you ever strove for was over, how do you cope? Can you return to how things once were, or are you always left wanting more? Looking around every corner for danger, never feeling safe again - paranoia, at it's most highly deserved.
I don't wonder any more. Ever since - well, I don't really want to think about that. Always makes the images flash behind my eyes and the panicky breathing to return. It's like he's there again, screaming for me - as terrified as I had ever seen him, as I'm in free fall towards the Void. It was the strangest feeling, that - like I was a bug in a bathtub being pulled towards a drain. Odd analogy, I know - but accurate.
Anyway.
Its been two years, four months, and sixteen days since. It's not gotten one iota easier. When I read Lord of the Rings last year, I ended up throwing the book against the wall when I finished. I left a dent in Pete's library paneling. I couldn't stand it. Frodo returned to the Shire after destroying the Ring, but he didn't stay there. He couldn't – it was not the same for him. He journeyed on. Gandalf realised that he was out of place, and found a way for him to move on. Will I have that luxury?
Mum and Mickey don't understand. They had lives here - people that they replaced. They had a niche. They had shoes to step into. I have nothing. I was a dog - a damn yorkie! - in this zeppelin-infested universe. Time ripples and flows around me, like I'm a huge rock in a small stream. Time eddies and pools around my ankles, and I am not a part of it. Not here. Mickey keeps trying to get me to settle down - settle down, with him! Like our whole lives weren't totally displaced. Like I wasn't off traveling the galaxy for two years. Like I'm the same old Rose who worked in a shop and whose idea of a grand adventure was trying a new chip stand for dinner. That Rose is dead and gone, and has been for ages, but he won't see it. He still has hope.
I wonder if I'm any better than poor hopeful Mickey. Constantly looking around the corner, always keeping an ear open for the sound of realities grinding together. The materialisation of a blue box that holds a madman and all of my hopes, my dreams, my future. I long for it. I dream of it, nights - I see it in my waking hours. Just a glimpse. But enough to make my heart stop, my stomach to flip. To make me run down the street, or alley, or tube platform - just to check. It's never him, of course. But I still hope.
The almost physical presence of the TARDIS doesn't help. Alien languages are never a mystery to me - and I hear plenty in my line of work. Damn Torchwood, but they still have the best system for dealing with aliens. It reminds me if my old life. It helps to make it seem real. My key, too - I still wear it, of course. I can't be parted from it. It's warmth is reassuring - yes, it's always warm. Even when I haven't worn it for several hours, or in the dead of winter. It's still warm. Just waiting for me to use it again. It hangs against my chest, a physical reminder that what I did was real. It keeps the wolf charm my mum bought me on my last birthday company - I'm not sure she realises the irony of her gift.
Even if she doesn't, did I? I don't remember being the Bad Wolf. He told me some - not enough, but some. He told me I scattered myself through time and space, left myself reminders. I don't see reminders here - not like I did then. Unless you count my wolf charm - which I do - I've only seen one instance of it. Perhaps I don't need as strong of a reminder now, as I did before I became her. The Bad Wolf, I mean. It sounds crazy, I know - but I can feel her. She's sleeping, now - curled up in a golden ball of fur in the floor of my mind - but she is alert. Waiting. She gives me hope. As her, I saw all possibilities, all futures - and I did not stop myself from choosing this one. There must be a way out. There has to be a way back. Why would she make me trap myself lifetimes away from the man I love?
I cried for hours after trying to read Wuthering Heights - one of my favourite books. I can't bear to look at it any longer. The pain in those words strikes too close to home. 'Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you! Oh God, it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life - I cannot live without my soul!' or, the perhaps even more applicable - 'if all else perished, and he remained I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.' a mighty stranger indeed. Those black words, printed so innocently on a book that I have read a hundred times if I have read it once, were like a knife to my soul. The truth of them is the worst of the bitter pills I have swallowed. Did I haunt him, like Cathy haunted Heathcliff? Is there a metaphorical window open for me?
Time is not linear. He always said that, and I believe it. Even if the way is closed for him now - it wasn't always closed. If I'm lucky - very lucky - he has visited this universe before. Perhaps I'll find him - a previous him. Maybe that's why he knew to save me from the basement and the Autons, oh so long ago. Maybe it was because I told him - convinced him that he had to. Perhaps not. But it makes me feel good to hope, and to imagine. To feel his hand in mine again, to see his smile! To run from something deadly - not alone, like in this life, but with the company of someone who understands. To be reunited, and to feel his arms around me as he swings me off the ground. Countless times, we've done that. I hold out hope for at least one more. To hear him finish what he started at Bad Wolf Bay. Oh, how I hope, and how I imagine!
And that's the secret. To moving on, I mean. Because you don't really move on - you just hope for things to be different. That's what keeps me going. The belief that I will see the Doctor again. That's why, even after the hundredth time I run after empty air, I will run again for the hundred and first with the same hope. Because, one day, it will be him. And I will be home.