He wakes up.
It's not something he wanted to do, because he's starving himself for a reason and it's the fifth time in about as many days as he's passed out and his heart has given out. He was hoping that maybe this time was it, maybe this time he'd finally have some peace because he doesn't want to come back again. He groans and doesn't bother to sit up, rather, he rolls to his side in the most undignified manner he can muster, focusing his vision on some cobblestones about seven feet away from his head.
There's the click of feet approaching on the cobbles, and he drags his attention to it for reasons he cannot fathom, as a pair of distinctly un-19th Century trainers come into view. They're white, and half-covered by a pair of blue tracksuit bottoms, dirty and scuffed and worn as if they've seen a lot of use. They stop right before him, and he looks up in time to see knees bend into a squatting position, two slender hands folded into someone's lap. Whoever they are they have distinctly un-19th century nails, far too well-kept and pretty, and once more he wonders at the technological advancements that are set to happen to his race in the next century.
One of the hands moves out of his line of sight, and he feels it in his hair, gently brushing away the grimy mess from his face, soft and uncertain care in the touch. "Blimey." A painfully familiar London accent says above him, "Look what the cat dragged in."
He doesn't remember getting up, or how he managed to get his shaky legs to start walking, but somehow it happened and somehow he manages to find himself at an eatery, her standing behind him and just out of his line of sight, at all times. She tells him to open the door of the inn and he's not quite sure why he obeys, but he does and the smell of wood-fire and home cooked meals assaults his nostrils, grease, fat and butter making his mouth water and his stomach churn. A hand falls on his shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze that's almost feather-light and he steps into the dimly-lit bar, wobbling slightly on his feet. He's met with a round of jeers and whistles. Last time he came here, he stormed out, swearing to starve himself to death until he died for good, and he knows what they're all thinking, about how weak his resolve must have been if it's been a month and he's shown up again on their doorstep.
He ignores them on her orders and takes a seat at a table close to the fire, and when the barkeep comes over to him, he very nearly doesn't order. She convinces him to, in a mixture of bossy bullying and plaintive begging that he remembers clearly and he finally settles on getting steak and chips. They don't do chips right here, he thinks as he hands over his last coins, they're always slightly too greasy or slightly overcooked, but he'll take what he can, and she keeps on telling him that the carbs are just what he needs right now.
He eats one of the (overly) greasy potato slices on his plate, and realises how hungry he really was, because he's never tasted something quite so good in his life. She laughs and teases him about it, reaching over his shoulder to grab a chip of her own, and that's when her hand passes right through the plate.
"You're a dream." He says, in no uncertain terms and it gets him into a fight, because the wife of the town butcher happened to be walking past as he said it.
She rouses him gently, with soothing words and soft touches, singing lullabyes his mother used to know. That's his second clue that she's all in his head, because he never taught them to her when he knew her before and he doubts that she's learnt them since. But it works and it rouses him, and he looks about to find what killed him this time, only to find a butcher's knife about 12 inches long buried in his chest. He pulls it out, screams and passes out again.
This time he dies of blood-loss.
She doesn't fade as the days roll by, if anything she grows stronger in her presence and sometimes when he catches her off guard, he can almost see her face. He turns around at unexpected moments, or chances a glance into water-pitchers or mirrors when he thinks that he'll be able to see her, but she's always a little too fast for him, manages to turn away at just the right time, so all he sees is that glorious waterfall of golden hair she has, with the regrowth just beginning to show.
She coaxes him into sobriety, next, after getting him to get into the habit of eating again, and he kicks the booze cold-turkey, because she manages to guilt him just the right amount and never pushes too hard. The hangover is hell, but she places her hand on his forehead and rests her head against the back of his neck, other arm coming to rest around his middle when he stands for the first time in three years without swaying. Her touch is pleasantly cool against his skin, even though his logical mind tells him that this can't be happening, that she is a hallucination and that everything she's doing is just the projection of his own mind.
But she's helping him, so if his own mind has made this the way for him to live, he's going to take what he can get and hold on to her. There's something not quite healthy about that, but if this is the sort of insanity he has to cope with, he's glad.
Because there are worse forms of schizophrenia, which usually end in other people dying, not his own person being saved.
He doesn't see her for a week and he panics, thinking she has left him for good when he kicked the alcohol, but when he lets himself into his little flat at the end of Marigold Street, after a hard day's work at the cobblers, she's there, standing by the window with her back towards him.
His heart soars with joy at the sight of her, and he tells her of the things he's done in the week she was away, animatedly and with hand movements and jokes, which make her laugh and it's the best sound he's ever heard.
She stays with him for a few hours this time, He comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her middle and they both stare out the window at the gas lamp-lit streets below.
She's silent for nearly two hours as he whispers sweet nothings and false promises into her ears, but as dawn breaks over the streets, she says, very quietly, "You should go to Cardiff."
And so he goes.
It takes him three more weeks of working to save up the money for the train ticket, and it's only through her silent form of encouragement that he gets there in the end, and due to a stupid comment he makes at his first trip into the bar, he ends up dead outside with a beer-bottle stuck into his chest.
"Oh, you were going so well." She says, almost in a disappointed tone, and he daren't reply because there are two women bending over him and running all sorts of tests upon him. What follows is a grueling test as he dies, again and again and again, but she's with him through it all, silently encouraging him, and making snide comments about the women who are doing this to him, and where she'd like to stick their riding crops. He laughs, and they think he's mad.
He does too.
He lets her go, finally, twenty years after he first saw her, because he thinks enough is enough, and he can't submit himself to this madness any longer. She cries, the night he tells her she has to leave him, she sobs into his shirt for hours, and he buries his hand in her hair, pressing her to him and clinging to her like it's the last chance he'll ever have, because he knows that's what it will have to be if he's ever going to regain any sense of sanity in this ever-changing world.
It's eighty years later, when she's finally faded from his thoughts that he reads her name on a list of the dead and realises just what a fool he's been.
"Rose." He says softly, as he looks about the Cardiff hub, splendid in its' emptiness, "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay, Jack." She says, behind him, and he nearly weeps with joy. "It's always been okay."
.
A/n: Yes, I know Rose didn't really die, but let me have my cake and eat it too.
Might continue this/write a companion (hee!) fic set about the Face of Boe, because a couple of ideas for something like that have been floating about my head for a few days. But for now I kinda want to leave it where it's at.
Also: HOW AWESOME WAS PARTNERS IN CRIME?! AND OMG TOTALLY UNEXPECTED WAS THAT MOMENT AT THE END. (I utter no spoilers here.)
Leave a little review? –shakes tin emploringly-