Signs of Life
Summary: When the whole of time and space have been stolen from you, something else must fill the void. A darker look at Rose, and acceptance, post-Doomsday.
AN: This piece is meant to be a companion piece to a multi-chaptered story I have in the works, sort of a prequel of things to come. It is unbeta'ed, so any mistakes or blatant Americanisms are my own.
You take a turn wildly, just that little bit too fast, and your heart starts to pound. You're almost disappointed when all four tires stay on the road, and you punch the accelerator again. What started out as a short country drive to clear your head has you careening dangerously close to disaster, and all you can think about is how much you've missed this feeling.
Adrenaline flows through your veins, constant, like it has always been there replacing your blood, and for two short seconds as you round another hairpin turn you feel nearly normal. Weightless. Alive. Like a person who doesn't exist anymore, not in this universe.
You go farther and faster than you ever dared before, pushing against your own limits, your own sense of self-preservation, because you need something to fill that strangely shaped hole in your existence, and if you can't have anything else, fear will do. It's the fear that makes you feel alive, makes your skin tingle, your fingers twitch. You laugh into the wind, wild hair flying behind you.
The drive back to London is smooth and calm, and for the first time since you can remember, so are you. Your mum glances sideways as you step into the kitchen and remarks that you look well, that the drive in the fresh air must have done you good. You smile, mumbling something nonsensical in return.
The next day you buy a motorcycle.
It is yellow and flash and oh so fast, and Mickey Smith is the most jealous thing in the world as he looks at you astride it. You're not sure whether he's jealous of you or the bike, but it doesn't matter. Your mum pitches a fit, convinced you'll kill yourself, and Pete looks at you like he wants to say something fatherly but won't. He's not quite sure of his place with you yet.
You lay three feet of rubber on the asphalt as you peel out of the drive, and you don't look back.
You party. Club after club, night after night, the long lost Vitex heiress living it up. But you aren't living, you know that. You know what it feels to be truly alive, truly bursting with life, and this isn't it. But it's the closest you've got now, and when you crash into bed with the sun just breaking over the horizon, you're glad to be tired enough not to dream.
You take all the vices in turn, but the drugs don't do much but drag you down, and you don't like that feeling. You've been too long trying to climb out of the hole you'd gotten left in, and the coke just makes you feel like you've lost your shovel. You give it up after the second try, still wiping the dust from your nose as you run off in search of another way to feel alive.
The first time you wake in a strange part of town, in a strange flat, in a stranger's bed, you're properly ashamed. You don't look your mum in the eye for days, and you avoid Mickey like the plague. The third time, it's a bit easier, and the tenth time is easier still. It's not long before you lose track and all the faces start to blend together, following you through the weeks and months, and you think you're filling the holes in your mind, if not your heart.
When the test comes up positive, you vomit until there's nothing left and the taste of bile is sour and burning in the back of your throat. You stare hard into the mirror, at a face you don't recognize anymore, and swear to yourself that it's a mistake and not true. The denial sticks until the first time a foot (or a hand?) flutters its way across your abdomen, pressing and insistent. Until it's too late to think of "options," as if you'd had any to begin with.
The baby comes in the dark of night, a hard rain lashing at the windows, and you call her Tempest. In her eyes you see the far off galaxies of happier times, and she is the closest you've felt to heaven since you stood beneath a black hole on a damned planet and were the happiest you'd ever been.
You don't look to the stars anymore; you'd given it up some time ago. But the first time she smiles, you know you've got your own little piece of the universe to hold tight to, and for the first time it feels like it might be enough.