A/N: This took forever. I have no excuses.
All is golden, a slow, lazy gold, flowing past her eyes like honey. At first she doesn't notice it, but the noise is persistent.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Scrunching up her nose, she rolls over.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Go away, she wills the noise.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Suddenly, her golden sanctuary is gone. Instead, Rose sees the glow of her alarm clock. 6:23, it flashes. Groaning, she turns her head away.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound is almost patronizing. One arm reaches out, fumbles for a moment, and then hits the clock on what Rose assumes is the off button. Instead, she knocks the clock off its balance, and it tumbles to the floor with a crash.
"Fuck," she swears to herself, and throws the covers off.
0000
Rose rushes in the kitchen pouring herself a cup of coffee and downs it. She's about to rush back out the door, but Jackie stops out the door.
"Oi!" her mother protests. "That's not good for ya. Have a banana or something."
Rose blanches, pretending it's from the burn of the coffee rather than the burn of memory. "I hate bananas," she says, and leaves the house.
0000
"You look like shit," remarks Mel, as Rose passes by her cubicle.
"Shut up," Rose deflects, making a beeline for her office. "Jenna," Rose instructs her assistant, "If anyone asks, I'm not here. Or dead."
"Yes, ma'am."
Rose ignores the mocking note in Jenna's tone and stomps into her office, slamming the door behind her. Onside, she sighs, letting go of all the tension that has built up between her shoulders though the morning. It hasn't been three hours since she got up, but she can tell it's gonna be one of those days.
Those days, of course, referring to the days that occur -- ooh -- every month or two where she can't fall asleep because there isn't that little pressure of a time machine's humming inside her mind and (squeezing her eyes closed and just wishing, wishing) she can almost, almost hear that sound of its engines but it kills her (makes her want to scream and cry and do all sorts of things grown-ups probably shouldn't do) that she just can't quite hear it for real.
Opening her eyes once more, she trudges over to her desk, collapsing into her chair. Automatically, her eyes flickers over to her inbox. Rose cringes when catches hold of the ominous words: mission report: Tyler, Rose : mission 0286.
Rose hates paperwork.
Slipping her iPod into her pocket and tucking her laptop under her arm, Rose decides that right now would be an excellent time to hide away in an Unidentified Artifacts Storage Closet and play solitaire.
0000
"Mummy, I wanna biscuit." Large doe eyes stare at her, all hopeful and beseeching. Jackie adopts her sternest expression.
"You're shameless, you are." She scolds the two-year-old. "It's only eleven AM! No desserts until after supper."
Tony pouts like only a true toddler could. "But Mummy!"
Jackie finishes the shirt she was folding. "Shush, hun. Why don't you help Mummy fold the laundry?" Pop music interrupts their conversation. Jackie shakes her head. "Rose must've left her mobile here," she says more to herself than Tony, whom is at moment quite busy in sulking about his loss of early biscuits. Traveling over to the next room over, Rose's room, Jackie spots her daughter's mobile on the dresser. Before she stop herself, Jackie picks the phone up, pressing the 'Talk' button.
"Hello?" She answers, cautiously, and quite bewildered at her own nosiness.
"Hello? Rose?" Jackie nearly gasps. It's a man. She checks the caller ID. Sam Hallet. Rose doesn't have a Sam Hallet on her team, does she? Jake, Mickey, Mel, Kirk, Jenna – but no Sam.
"Sorry, hun," Jackie apologizes, "Rose forgot her mobile at home. But I could give you her work number."
"Oh, that be brilliant, thank you."
His choice of words surprises her for instant, and she silently berates herself. It's not like that stick of an alien twit owned the word or anything. Plenty of people said the word everyday. Jackie dismissed the issue. Really, she was becoming as bad as Rose.
"Here it is, --- --- ----, the person on the other end should be able to track her down for ya."
"Thanks much."
Jackie slid the mobile closed with a smile on her face. Maybe, just maybe, her daughter was finally moving on.
0000
"Rose."
The person in question looks up, the picture of a dear caught in headlights. Sheepishly, she closes her laptop and pulls the iPod ear buds from her ears. "Wha'?" she says, trying to look as innocent as possible.
Mickey rolls his eyes. "Well one, it's nearly lunch time and your mission report paperwork is still on your desk, and two, there's a bloke that's called you three times in the last hour. Sam Hallet?"
"Oh. Right. Um." Instinctively, she reaches for her pocket where she usually keeps her phone, only to find herself uselessly patting at limp material. "Shit. Must've left my mobile at home. I'll call him back through the office."
"Right," confirmed Mickey. Then, with an air of slyness, he said, "Just remember that all Torchwood calls are recorded. Best not too get too dirty wi' ya man."
Rose scoffs. "Oh, my god. Mickey. What are you, thirteen?" She beings to gather up her things.
"You love it," he grins, and they start for the lift together.
"Wrong. Couldn't get more wrong if you suggested that I had a gay pet penguin from Mars."
Mickey looks over to her, his eyes slightly widened in alarm. "I think you've been on the internet for too long."
"Ugh, stop it, really. I'm not in the mood for this." The two arrive at the lift, and Mickey pushes the 'up' button with his thumb.
As suddenly as anything, the good humor drops from Mickey's lips. "Are you…" He licks his lips. "Is it one of those days?"
Rose swallows, feeling the burn of unshed tears sting her eyes, but she refuses to cry. She absolutely refuses to break down in front of her best mate in the middle of the bloody lift in the middle of the bloody day.
"Yeah." She says. There's a slight swoosh, and Rose identifies it as the sound that Mickey's unkempt hair makes against the material of his jacket as he looks away. The two of them fidget, unconsciously swaying away from each other to compensate for the elephant in the lift.
"It's just," Rose begins again. "I'm trying to get over…that, and, that part of my life, but…I don't know if I am, or…or I'm just, like, lying to myself." She turns her head to look and him. Wordlessly, Mickey pushes some button on the lift wall, and then Rose can't feel the lift floor rising underneath her feet any more. For a long moment the two remain silent, and Rose wants to talk but can't think of anything at all. Her mind is suddenly and inconveniently blank.
"I'm sorry Rose. That you can't see him." Rose looks at him, and almost. Even though he's twenty-four and part of a team that deals with bloody alien interaction, Mickey is Mickey. He's the same bloke that held her hand when Jimmy was gone, the same bloke that tried to hold her hand even when she didn't want him to and hold her back, and the same bloke who's willing to do it again now that her old life is a universe and a half away.
She smiles, without a clear idea of why she does so. "It's not just that. It's everything. It's the TARDIS and the running and all those planets and moons and time periods that I can never, ever go to anymore."
Mickey is the one smiling now. "Don't lie, Rose. You wanted the Doctor. You wanted the picket fence and the dog and the two-point-four kids."
Rose exhales, exasperated. "No. No!I never wanted that. Not ever." He's about to protest but she interrupts. "Not even when we were together and serious. I knew you wanted it, you practically even proposed." She watches his face as it his expression sours ever so slightly. "I never wanted that. I'm sorry, but I didn't."
She expects him to blown up with angry or maybe fall silent with sadness. He doesn't do either. Sometimes she forgets that he's moves on, and its the part of herself she hates the most.
"That's why you went with him, right? Cause he's not the settling-down type, either."
"I guess. But you know...he didn't understand it either. You blokes are can be so thick. All those times he tried to send me back...He wanted to keep me safe...of course, from the Daleks and monsters and whatever...but it was also from him. He knew he couldn't do the picket fence and everything. I guess he didn't want me to get my hopes up." Her voice quiets. "He didn't want to hurt me. But that didn't stop him, did it?" Her voice cracks, and she hates it. "I don't suppose you've ever had someone who you would do anything for -- just anything -- and they thought you didn't love them exactly as they were?"
There isn't much to say. "I'm sorry, Rose," Mickey says anyway, and she's glad he did.
"Yeah."
Mickey pushes the button again, and they spend the rest of the ride in silence.
0000
Same Hallet pats about his person. "Keys, keys, keys," he mutters. He swears he had them a moment before. He glances at his fob watch and groans. If he didn't find his keys soon he'd be late. He closes the fob watch (not noticing the flash of light), and pauses in his search. It's funny, his fob watch. He'd never noticed it much before. When did he buy it? Where?
He can't quite remember -- even the idea of the watch is elusive, and he has to concentrate hard to think about it. The watch...he bought it... Something with gold, he imagines, and doesn't immediately recognize the oddity of the memory. "Gold, watch, molto bene ,ravens, keys...Keys!" Sam suddenly remembers. He bounds to his bedroom and snatches the keys off the dresser. "Good."
Then he rushes off into the night, forgetting all about the watch.