Rose Tyler paces the beach listlessly. She does that quite often these days. No one - not Pete or Jackie or Mickey - ever tries to stop her, or to follow her, or to ask her about what she does here, although she can tell by the way they watch her leave how badly they sometimes want to.
Each time it is a little bit different. Sometimes she cries a little, sometimes she bawls, sometimes she sheds no tears at all. Sometimes what should be grief takes on inexplicably joyful overtones as memories, often ones so seemingly insignificant she would never have dwelled on them were she still with him, fill the hollowed-out spaces in her heart with bittersweetness.
She pretends she does not know why she feels so compelled to do this. She fears if she acknowledges the little flame in her heart she has worked so long to keep kindled that it will die. She believes if she admits to herself that she still hopes he will one day return to her that the universes will conspire against her to make sure he never does.
It is not the same beach. Not today, although there have been occasions she has been driven by some deep yearning to travel all the way back to that one. But if she closes her eyes and blocks out everything but the sound of the waves and the smell of wet salt, she can pretend that she does not notice the difference. And she does keep her eyes closed, usually, because it can be hard to bear otherwise. It seems sometimes that everywhere she looks there is something to remind her of him.
Right now, her eyes are open. It is dusk, and as the sky grows dark she thinks of how the Earth is really just spinning (spinning at a thousand miles per hour with them clinging to its skin, and to each other's, as she listens to his voice and tries to understand), and the sun has not gone anywhere, has not gone out (but it will, five billion years from now, and maybe in this universe there will be someone to watch it), and nothing has ended, not really, except maybe one day, and that is an awfully small sort of death when for all she knows whole planets could be perishing at this very moment (she is sure he could save them if he were there, and so could she if she were with him). Then the moon comes out, and the stars with it (each one a solar system surrounded by whole new worlds, some she has been to and many she has not and now never will), and the light caught in the transient facets of the rolling waves (so unlike the ones on Woman Wept that will sparkle the same way for all eternity, frozen forever in one specific sort of beauty) goes from gold to silver. The horizon fades away, lost to the night, and the ocean and the sky seem to meld together and stretch on to infinity. It seems to Rose Tyler that she is standing on the edge of an abyss, and that if she took one step forward she would fall into the stars.
At this point, she always goes a little bit mad. She imagines that somewhere beneath the crash of the waves she can hear the hum of the TARDIS, and that it is calling to her, inviting her to step off of the edge of the world. At this point, her common sense always kicks back in and tells her that it is futile, and that she really ought to be heading back home. It tells her it is not safe to be out and alone in the dark, that she of all people should know how dangerous the world can be, and to beware of the Big Bad Wolf. On most nights, she listens to this voice of reason.
Tonight is not most nights. Tonight she decides to listen to the call of infinity instead.
As she stands in silence, something buried deep inside of her is drawn out by the vision of vastness before her. The humming grows louder and more real. It fills her ears and her head and her entire body, resonating with the beat of her heart. Then it turns into something else, a sort of music she knows no word for, though she remembers having heard it once before.
It sounds a bit like singing.
It is beautiful, but so powerful that it threatens to overwhelm her. It sounds exactly the way a supernova looks (the Doctor took her to see one once; she nearly lost her sight but it was worth it, and she swears that it still would have been even if she had). She thinks she might very well go deaf now, but even if she does she will hear the echoes of this music playing in her head for the rest of her life.
She tries to find the source of the song, but it seems to be coming from all around her. The stars are singing, and the sea, and the sand. Every molecule in the air around her quivers and vibrates as though dancing She breathes the music in and it becomes a part of her. Her blood is singing, and her bones, and her heart. Her body begins to shake. The singing rocks her mind like an earthquake rocks a sleeping city. Her thoughts come loose. The mental barriers she has built up crumble, and the Wolf comes bursting through. Rose Tyler remembers.
She remembers that it was she, not the Doctor, who sang the Daleks away. She remembers that she could hear the entire universe singing in her head, although she does not recall quite what that was like. What she heard made sense to her then, but in her memory it is too fast and too complex and she cannot quite make out what it means. She remembers -- and she trembles as it comes back to her -- that he kissed her, and that with his kiss he saved her life as she had saved his. And suddenly, out of her memories of the song, five words leap out of a crescendo and into her awareness. They are spoken in his voice - in both of his voices - and she can see his face as she hears them, and can feel his hand around hers.
"Oh Rose," he says, and his eyes shine like the stars above her, "I love you."
Then, as suddenly as it began, the song comes to a stop. The last few notes crash down around her like fallen stars and sizzle out at her feet, and once more she finds herself standing alone on the beach.
Time passes, as time will do. Rose returns to the beach a few times, but she never hears the song there again. Eventually, she stops going.
Sometimes when she is quiet she can catch a few notes off of their guard. It almost never happens in the same place or under the same conditions twice. Sometimes she is alone, sometimes she is with her family, and sometimes she is surrounded by strangers. Sometimes she is at home, sometimes she is in a public building, sometimes she is out on the street. Wherever she is, she always makes sure to take time to listen; more than once, the singing tells her something that she desperately needs to know.
Rose Tyler lives. Sometimes she cries, though more and more often it is about something other than him. Sometimes she smiles, and to everyone around her when she does so the world seems a just a little bit brighter.
Sometimes she misses him, and she always will. But he once told her to have a fantastic life, and she is determined that, if he ever does come back, he will be proud of her.
Everywhere she looks she sees something of him there. There was time when that would have caused her pain, but now it gives her strength.