Disclaimer: Oh look, this one isn't mine either. Fancy that.
AN: I promised myself I – oh, bugger. Forget it. I give up. Rose with 9 & 10.
Up until the time He walked into her life, her reading consisted of magazines and the occasional tabloid. Not exactly stellar literature, but books made her remember textbooks, and textbooks made her remember school, and school made her remember that she wasn't in it for that very reason.
She'd seen that amused look on his face the first time he'd found her in the library and not for the first time did she wonder just how much he knew about her that she'd never said out loud. Still, he'd left her alone; hadn't said a word, and after that he never seemed to go looking for her whenever she disappeared for hours on end.
The library on the TARDIS was big enough that she could have spent a lifetime reading and still only made a small dent. She's pretty sure he could have spent all nine hundred years reading and still not got through them all. She picks books at random, mostly, or anything that looks interesting just by the cover she catches out of the corner of her eye when she's across the room. Every now and then she finds a book sitting on the table that she hasn't left out and she reads it next. Savours each word and wonders why this one's important. Somehow she always finds out.
Two days before Canary Warf changes her world forever, she finds a book on the table she's never seen before. It's old and worn and the pictures are of orange skies and impossible mountains. And she devours every word like it's the greatest gift he's ever given her, and perhaps it is. She never stops to wonder why now, and later she's too busy crying herself to sleep each night to remember.
Ironically, it's the first clear thought she has in the Jeep on the way back from Bad Wolf Bay. Then she cries all that much harder because she knows it's not just him she's lost; it's everything.
She's never considered herself artistic. Hasn't touched paints since play school, but after a few months she finds an art store and buys the biggest canvas she can carry back to the house. And then she mixes blues and oranges and the most vibrant reds, colours washing together on the white, blending into something so beautiful she can't even find the words to describe it. Painting after painting, she fills her nights with colour and memories and in her sleep she dreams of a world she's never seen and a people who never even existed in the universe she walks during the day.
And after a while it's almost, just almost, enough.
