Norwegian Journey
by Camilla Sandman
Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Doomsday". Thanks to Wendy for quick beta :)
II
Rose visits Norway once a year.
She doesn't have a set time of the year she goes. Sometimes it is in winter, sometimes in spring, all depending on when she isn't busy saving the world - this other world - from aliens. She stays a week, always, and walks along the beach, always, watching the ocean slam into land and leave its mark.
She knows how it feels. The Doctor's mark is still burning on her, painful now that he is not with her anymore.
She misses him.
Norway is the last place she saw him, the last link to him that she still has. So she travels.
The first year she goes back is during winter. Jackie has given birth, and Pete is anxious father and Rose, Rose feels left over.
At first, Jackie and Pete try to talk her out of it, but she doesn't listen, never listens. They mean well, but they don't understand. Mickey does, and lends her his car without questions or accusations. He just looks, and sighs, and she knows he's waiting for her to let go. Maybe she is too.
Norway is cold, winds tearing through it and her without mercy. She thinks of oncoming storms, and buys a long scarf in a dusty shop smelling of burnt wood. She buys a postcard in Bergen and sends it to Jackie and buys a little troll and sticks it in Mickey's car as a gift to him.
She waits six whole days before she goes to the beach because, as long as she doesn't go, she can hope he is there. Wild, impossible hope, but he taught her to have that.
She hates him a little for it, especially when she finds the beach empty and roaring with the wrath of winds. Nothing there, not even the echo of his voice, and she drives home with a pounding head and burning eyes.
The second year it is spring when she goes. Jackie is away on a trip with little John Tyler, and Pete gives Rose his car and a promise not to tell anyone, not even his wife. He looks uncomfortable at her thanks, and she knows she'll never quite be his daughter. Perhaps it is the price for him being alive. Everything has a price.
The Doctor showed her that.
She stops to see a few sights this time, marvelling at snow-clad and jagged mountain tops, and the first hint of green on windswept trees. There is a smell of Earth and water in the air, life beginning anew. She gets Pete a postcard, and hopes he'll keep it.
She finds her beach filled with footprints, and closes her eyes to entertain the idea that they could be anybody's. When a group of kids run by, kicking a football, the noise ruining the illusion. She feels angry for a while, but watches them run with amusement anyway, their enthusiasm so very catching.
He would've thought so.
When she drives home, she tries to sing along to Norwegian songs on the radio, and doesn't really care that she gets the words wrong.
The third year, it is autumn. Mickey's moved to Paris for his new job, and Jake has left with him. Rose takes her own car and stacks of folders from work with her, because there's always things to catch up on these days. Who knew a Martian stop-over would create so much paperwork?
The Doctor, probably, which might explain why he never stayed for it.
She sleeps over at a quiet farm-turned-guest house, and gets up to watch the dawn, remembering trips around suns and through suns and how small they seem in space. Here, it looms large, burning at the horizon as it comes.
She watches the sunset at the same old beach, the sun seemingly being swallowed by the sea. She watches a couple walk by hand-in-hand, and screams at the sky until it is dark and she is out of breath and the memory of his hand in hers feels distant again.
On the way home, she defeats an alien disguised as a musk ox and probably saves the Earth. He would've enjoyed that, she knows, and enjoys it for him.
The fourth year, spring again, she brings Derek from work, because he asks and has a nice car and it feels wonderfully contrary to do so, like a rebellion against grief. But his lips feel too large when he kisses her, and his hair sticks to her fingers, and when he starts talking about promotions she tells him where to stick it and he dumps her car-less in Norway.
She does not send him a postcard.
She hitches a ride to her beach and sleeps there, dreaming of someone else's kiss, warm and demanding and alien. Just a dream, yet when she wakes her lips are warm from the sun and she lets that be a sort of sign.
It takes her a whole month to get home, walking part of the way, hitching rides other parts, and she doesn't mind at all.
Fifth year, it is summer. Heatwave wavering across Europe, and Norway too, and the tarmac seems to vibrate in the strong sun as she drives across it, eyes on the horizon that never comes any closer. Always a horizon or a star to chase, never running out of places to go. She's lived that life, and it ran out.
She goes swimming this time, running into the waves, gasping at the cold before drying herself in the heat. Tanning too, lazing in the sand as the wind is lazy across the land. A gentle caress, and she misses those.
She misses a lot of things, but in light of sun bouncing off water, it feels almost bearable.
The sixth year, she takes her half-brother along. Jackie's idea, but Rose doesn't oppose it, and John wants to see a moose like one from his favourite tv-show. They manage to spot several, and his delighted laugh makes her think about children and fathers and what might've been.
What is, is autumn in Norway, falling leaves showering their car as they drive through forested areas. John laughs, and Rose laughs, and teaches him all the naughty words a brother should've taught her.
They see a troll also, or so Rose explains it later as, since 'alien' is not a word her brother should repeat to mummy unless he wants to get sister in trouble.
She hesitates before she takes him to her beach, but in the end, she takes him because he won't understand, but he'll keep her from feeling alone. He seems to pick up on something still, taking her hand as they stand on the battered sand.
"Mum says you lost your boyfriend here," John says, looking up at her with innocent curiosity and no pity.
She thinks of the Doctor, everything he was and everything he wasn't, and decides with him not here to protest it, he'll just have to suffer being called that.
"Yeah," she says. "I lost my boyfriend."
"Mum says that's why you're sad and work too much," he goes on, and Rose makes a note that she best check one of these days how he hears all these things.
"Mum worries. That's a mum's job."
"Was he nice, your boyfriend?"
She smiles. "When he wanted to be. He was scary when he wanted to be too. And a complete arsehole as well."
"Arsehole," John repeats, savouring the word. "Is he going to come back?"
"No, it's impossible," she says, and it hurts. "But I like to make sure. He always enjoyed doing the impossible."
John thinks about this, chewing a bit on his lower lips. "Did you say goodbye to him?"
She looks at the beach, the sea pushing into land and wiping away all signs of footprints, as if no one walked there at all. But she knows. She remembers.
If that can be enough for the Doctor, who told her he always moves on, maybe it can be for her too.
"Yeah," she says quietly, the wind lifting her words and carrying them across, "I think I finally did."
They walk away, and soon, there is no trace of them, only sand and water and wind, howling like a wolf.
Rose visits Norway once a year, never without hope, and always knowing it to be impossible.
He always liked it like that.
FIN