Invisible Cities

It's the Doctor who finds the box. Of course it is. If anyone was going to find the journals she began keeping somewhat obsessively when she was first trapped in Pete's World, well, it's only right and proper for the one to unearth that particular discovery to be the Doctor.

Rose doesn't care, not really. They aren't a secret and she has no qualms about sharing her words, her art, and her thoughts with him. He is, after all, the subject of much of her creations and whilst she isn't exactly thrilled for him to see her at her darkest, her lowest, there is a much larger part of her that is almost desperate to share that with him. She needs him to know all of her just as she wants to know all of him.

"Rose, what," he trails off as he looks more closely at the notebooks. "I believe these belong to you."

He tries to give the box to her but she shakes her head, "They're my journals. When we were first separated, I started writing. I started sketching. I started creating again. It was just a way for me to make some sense of the noise in my head. It helped me to cope. A little anyway."

"Creating again?"

She nods, "I used to love art when I was younger. I wanted to study it, did I ever tell you that? Had I gone to university, it would have been for art. Also, some literature and languages would have been mixed in but my main focus would have been art."

"Why didn't you?"

"Poor choices, peer pressure, stubborn youthful stupidity, and then, well, life."

The Doctor moves the box to the side and holds his hand out for Rose. "I don't have to read them. I know how private something like this can be, how vulnerable it can leave you and, whilst I am curious and do very much want to know, I also don't want to push you into doing something that you're not comfortable with."

She sits down next to him on their bed, "I want you to. I'm not saying that I'm not a little nervous about you reading some of the things in them but I want you to know what my life was without you." She reaches into the box and pulls out a book that is larger than the others, her sketchbook. "This one is filled with pencil drawings, charcoal, even some watercolour paintings. There are sketches and even some photos mixed up in the other books too but this book, this book, is just my art."

She gently touches the cover as she continues, "I am actually very proud of this book."

The Doctor takes the sketchbook from her carefully, "You're certain you don't mind?"

"I am. I think part of me had always planned to give these to you one day. I just hadn't worked out the details of how that might happen and this is better than anything I could have imagined anyway." She shakes her head, continuing "I hadn't really done anything creative like this in years but then, when I first got trapped here, all I could think about was how to get back. That's why I agreed to work for Torchwood, you know."

The Doctor nods, silently encouraging her to continue.

She paused for a moment to collect herself. "Anyway, when it was decided that I was pestering the science department too much, Pete would force me to leave. On one such day, I was aimlessly walking through London, furious that I was being kept from my project and my way back to you. I know it's not what was happening but it really felt like they were trying to force me to stay here. And I know it's not rational, I do, but every time Pete sent me home, that was when I truly felt like a prisoner. Anyway, that day I happened to pass by a shop advertising art supplies and I ended up buying pallets and a few sketchbooks and a bunch of different types of paints and, well, anything else that struck my fancy."

Rose laughed softly, "I bought so much stuff that day that I actually had to hire a car to get me and all of my bags back my flat. But it felt good to do it. It was almost as though, now that I had a plan, a real way to spend my downtime, somehow everything was going to work itself out. And well, I suppose it did."

As she spoke, the Doctor was glancing through her sketches. All of them depicting random scenes from their adventures, the TARDIS herself, there were quite a few portraits of the Doctor (both faces that Rose had known), aliens and tech, and people that they had met on their travels.

He looked up at her, "Yes, it did. Better than I could have ever hoped for. These are beautiful. I didn't know you were so talented. Although I shouldn't be surprised."

"I didn't have any photos. And I was so afraid that I was going to start forgetting, well, everything, really. I couldn't stand the thought that one day I might wake up and not be able to remember exactly what colour your eyes are. I panicked and had to do something."

She doesn't even realize that she's crying until the Doctor's hands come up and gently wipe away her tears before gently pulling her towards him and wrapping his arms around her. Rose holds onto him tightly, as though they are about to be torn away from each other again at any moment.

She mumbles something that is lost in his shirt, "What was that, love?"

She lifts her head, "I just really need to have you here right now. And I am so grateful that you are here. And that, somehow, we found our way back to each other, even when you were right, and it should have been impossible," she trails off.

"Rose, please, look at me. I am here and you are here. Your family is here. Everyone is together and all of us are exactly where we are supposed to be. Your mum and Pete and Tony are back on earth living their lives. You and I are travelling through space and time in our brand new TARDIS. We're okay now. We're back to being the stuff of legends. Just as it should be."

"I'm being silly, I know. It's just," she trailed off, trying to get her emotions under control.

"Today was one of the scary days," he continues for her. "I am so sorry you had to see me like that. I am."

"When I walked in the medical centre and I saw you all bruised and bloody. Your eyes were closed. At first I couldn't even tell if you were breathing. I was terrified that you were dead."

He brushes away her tears that have started again, "I know. I know. I'm so sorry I scared you. I had to get the survivors out of the house before the explosion and when I realized the wall wasn't going to hold I moved as quickly as I could to protect myself from most of the blast."

Rose shook her head, "No, I know and I would have done the exact same thing. I just hate the thought of us losing each other again."

"And that didn't happen."

"I know and I am so relieved. Really as soon as I took your hand and you opened your eyes, I knew it was safe for me to start breathing again."

"I always say 'trouble's just the bits in-between' but I know that doesn't make it any easier. The violence, the death. You and I both know how beautiful and amazing the universe it and we also know how dark and terrifying it can be," he paused for a moment to help collect his thoughts. "Do you want to know something? Something I am not proud of at all?"

"Yes, of course I do."

"I have always been a coward but now, with one life and one heart, I think that for the first time in my life I'm honestly beginning to understand what it means to be afraid for myself."

She was silent as she waited for him to continue.

"After the war, I honestly believed that I wanted to die. I've told you how I would have died in the explosion in Henrik's that night had I not found you, haven't I?"

That particular confession still makes a knot form in her stomach, even more so now when it conjures up unwanted images of the universe where he did commit suicide, but she nods and whispers, "Yes."

"Even then, I wasn't truly afraid of death. Not the way I am now. I don't want to die anymore. I want to live. I want to live with you for as long as we can possibly have. I want to travel far into the future and see if we can find ways to extend our lives safely. I'm no longer even certain if that is right or wrong but I still want forever with you."

Rose smiled, "Me too. I want that so much. Really, it's the only thing I've wanted since we first met."

The Doctor looks at her for a long moment. He takes a deep breath that he releases in a sigh before shaking off his melancholy thoughts. Placing a gentle kiss on her forehead, he shifts then and turns to stretch out on their bed. Rose watches him, bemused, for a moment as an afternoon kip is not usually the type of thing that is of any interest to him. He smiles when he notices her confusion before he reaches over and picks up the book laying on his bedside table and she smiles back in understanding.

"I think you and I have more than earned a quiet afternoon at home," he says.

The Doctor then holds out his arm in invitation and Rose cuddles up to him. She rests with her ear over his heart and her arm on his torso as he begins to read.

"In every age someone, looking at Fedora as it was, imagined a way of making it the ideal city, but while he constructed his miniature model, Fedora was already no longer the same as before, and what had been until yesterday a possible future became only a toy in a glass globe."

As the Doctor and Rose lost themselves in fantastical cities and conversations between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, the TARDIS drifted contentedly in the vortex, happy that she and her two pilots, at least for today, were safe once more and exactly where they all belong.

N.B. The title and the quoted text the Doctor reads are from the novel 'Invisible Cities' by Italo Calvino. Well worth a read if you haven't already.