Author's Notes: Written for Timepetalsprompts weekly ficlet theme - In Between. Extremely angsty and my first attempt at Dimension hopping!Rose. If you enjoyed reading this story (well, enjoy may not be the best word for having your heart broken...) please, please leave a comment/favourite. They mean a lot to me and keep me writing and they literally take less than a minute of your time. A simple thank you is enough to make my day.
In between life and death, hanging onto a thread of hope in the midst of empty emotions and heavy darkness.
In between coming and going, eyes closed, fists clenched.
In between sleeping and waking - passing through the gates and stopping at the threshold.
She's hanging on.
Squeezing air into her lungs, telling herself that her ears work, it's just the cruelty of the travel that she can't hear a thing.
She's hanging on.
Waiting with baited breath, longing for the journey to end, to see light again, to feel the wind on her face.
She's hanging on.
Between the sharp, blinding pains in her stomach and the Void pressing in on her from all sides, she wants to scream. Her mouth remains firmly shut however as she's spinning into madness and beyond.
She's hanging on.
When her eyes close, and she shuts out the world where she became stuck - this near-perfect chaos of things assembled from nothing and everything -, she can remember. She can see. She can hear. She can feel.
Him.
The only thing that keeps her going.
A swirl of colours and voices and breaths and touches.
Blue eyes.
Brown eyes.
The ocean and the earth.
The fire and the wind.
And oh how she needs them right now.
Anything.
Everything…
She clutches the cold metal of the cannon tighter; never opening her eyes and forces herself to breathe.
Blue. Brown.
She'll be okay.
Ocean. Wind.
The eye of the storm - she's not dead yet.
Fire. And Earth.
Warmth and light - she hugs herself tight, imagining it's him.
It's been long. Two years, to be exact, since she started her journey. She's only gone home twice. Home… Well, not home. But the place she's supposed to think of as home. To Mum. And Dad. And Mickey. And Tony.
It's never been home, not since she arrived.
Not since he just left her there.
The tears sting and she wishes she would have thought of something else.
She screams so loudly her throat bleeds, she can feel the metallic taste bubbling upwards, whooshing down when she swallows and cries harder. She can't hear a thing. The silence is maddening.
Her fingers dig into the cannon, knuckles white, and gasps, eyes wide open now, staring straight ahead and she can almost see a light there, a little blink of blackness that's not as dark as the rest of her surroundings. Her heart soars but she quiets it down swiftly, ruthlessly.
We're not out yet, she reminds herself.
Closing her eyes, she tries to conjure up the image of the Doctor - the brown coat, the warm smile, the rumpled jacket, the well-worn shoes…
She can't.
The tears come again, but she doesn't surrender. She's not beaten yet. Not her. Rose Tyler, she promised him forever. She's not going to break that oath now.
She's hanging on.
Brown eyes, hair pointing in all directions imaginable, brown coat… Brown…
It doesn't work and she crumbles finally, curling her body around the cool grey of the cannon, thinking that maybe she should just let go. Two years it's been, after all.
Then, suddenly, a memory stirs and she's caught so much by surprise that her eyes open involuntarily, staring wide and open into the darkness, but seeing something else entirely.
She's on the Tardis, in one of the hallways, lost again, not wanting to call for the Doctor, give him the satisfaction of finding her wrong-footed. It's dark and she's breathing hard, trying not to let the anxiety overwhelm her. Putting her hand on the walls, she feels the ship's calming presence and relaxes her shoulders, taking a few slow steps towards a door on her right, where the lights are still on.
She's about to knock, make sure she isn't disturbing the Doctor (if he's in there at all - wouldn't be the first time she finds herself in an empty room) when the door opens. She jumps a bit, but at the reassuring hum of the Tardis squares her shoulders and enters.
What she finds there takes her breath away - not because it's so spectacular - it's quite a simple room, bare, without much furnishing, the only item that could be considered luxurious being the enormous double bed at the far wall. But she sees something she never has before. The Doctor. Asleep. Leather jacket still on his back, trousers and jumper still in place, the only thing he discarded being his boots. She smiles at that and shakes her head a little before her eyes overflow with tears.
This is not the Doctor she was looking for with her eyes closed and her heart wide open, inside the Void. But it is the Doctor who comes when she needs him the most. She should have known, really. All things considered, she should have just known.
But the tears come nonetheless and cascade down her face, sobs shaking her frame so violently she stumbles and falls beside the bed. He grunts in his sleep, but doesn't wake and she breaks down, clutching at the sheets, trying to remain as quiet as she can while her heart is being wrenched out of her chest.
The twist of the knife, and she was bleeding out already before making this trip. She was looking for comfort, for familiarity, for love to get her through the worst part of the journey and she got it. But at what price?
Recovering slightly, forcing herself to stop with this nonsense because she doesn't have the time, she never had the time, she stands up, and makes her way to the other side of the bed, to his side. She kneels down in front of him and takes his large hands into her own, kissing them softly, holding them to her cheek, trembling from head to foot.
"Oh Doctor, my Doctor, my beautiful, daft, fantastic Doctor," she whispers and presses his fingers closer to her skin. When they move of their own accord she jumps slightly, and looks up. His eyes are open - blue pools of love swallowing her whole and the tears come again as she's pulled away, back to reality, back to the Void, to the darkness, away from the man she fell in love with and whom she's never gonna see again.
Her cries of no become audible as she nears the source of light she detected earlier and she knows she's nearly out of the Void. Scrambling, Rose tries to hold back, to hold onto the memory, to the vision, to whatever it was that took her back to this version of the Doctor whom she couldn't ever see again in the real world, even if she finds his next regeneration.
The cannon pulls her through and she lands on a purple patch of grass, her screams quite loud now, her fingers hurting from clutching the metal so tight, her heart shattering violently in her chest. Shaking, shrieking, hammering at the grass until her knuckles bleed, she repeats "You can't do this to me" until her voice becomes too raw to work anymore, then she mouths the words silently.
And finally, finally she admits she can't go on, that she's broken beyond repair and her quest for finding her way again is a failure. Laying her head gently on the grass, she watches the violet strands sway in the breeze and lets the numbness overtake her.
She stays there as the snow starts to fall, letting it cover her and soothe away the hurt, freeze her heart and numb the wounds.