Title: Bad Wolf
Rating: PG
Summary: Rose faces the loneliness and rejection of being sent home without the Doctor.
The rain was pounding on the window. Rose could hear it tapping, insistent, trying to get through the pane. Eyes open and blurred with tears, she turned from the ceiling she'd been staring at blankly and looked out the window at the darkness outside just as the heavy thunder rolled overhead. She was exhausted, but she couldn't sleep.
Finally giving up the fight, she sat up and put her feet on the floor, grabbing her clothes from the day before off the floor and dressing quickly. She didn't bother turning on the light - not in her bedroom, or the hallway, or the living room as she made her way to the front door and slipped outside. As she locked it behind her, she paused for a moment to stare at the keys on the chain. Two keys - one to her apartment and one to the Tardis. Two lives. Two paths. And trapped here on Earth, she had only one choice.
Her feet were moving, though she wasn't quite sure yet where she was going. Down the hall and to the door, down the steps with the rain pounding the glass wall. Lightning flashed, casting a white glow over the darkened courtyard between the buildings. At the bottom of the steps, she stepped out into the pounding rain, and let it soak her through. Icy cold and thick enough to make the whole world around her hiss, it nearly blinded her as she headed away from her apartment, in the opposite direction of the Tardis. She had spent the better part of the past week inside of the Doctor's ship, and the past two days she had thought of little other than how she might pry open the console. How to access the heart of the Tardis...
She wasn't sure where she was going until she got there. Until she stood in the rain, letting it hide the tears that were streaming down her face, and stared at the graffiti scrawled across the pavement. Bad Wolf. It was no coincidence; she knew that. What she didn't know was what it meant. What could it mean, when it had been following her for so long?
She breathed deep, the cool humidity of electrically charged air. The thunder rolled again overhead as she tipped her head back and stared up at the sky. As a child, she had loved to play in the rain. Now it reminded her of so much more - the warm showers of a dozen planets. All she'd had to do was tell him she liked the rain, and he'd taken her to a rainforest more gorgeous than anything she could have imagined. More magnificent than anything that could possibly exist on Earth.
Dripping wet and shivering with cold, she sat down on the pavement and let the rain cover her. It wasn't comfortable, but it was comforting. She was safe here, out of sight, her soft sobs covered by the hissing rain on the pavement. Here she could cry, and not make excuses. Here, she could be angry and no one would tell her she was wrong. She could love and she could hate and not feel guilty for either. She could imagine what might have been - what would still be if she could find a way to get that damned console open - and she could mourn as she slowly came to the realization that the Doctor's Tardis had done precisely what he'd intended it to, and it would do no more.
But those words, written on her world from the moment she'd met him, gave her hope, however faint. Lowering her head, she watched as her fingers absently traced the words in the mud. Bad Wolf. It gave her faith. She would get back to him. And then...
Well, then she would die.
She cried until she had no more tears. Until she was shivering and exhausted. Then, finally, she dragged herself to her feet, and headed for home. As she slid the key into the lock, and closed the door behind her, she realized she was too tired to make it back to her bed. Besides, she didn't really want to be there anyway. She wanted to be right here, where she could still smell him, still feel him, still see his ghost. Curling up into a ball under the console of the Tardis, she rested her head on her arm and quietly cried herself to sleep.