Chapter 4
Rose sighed as she stumbled into consciousness, her mind filtering through the dregs of her dreams. She'd had the nightmare, again. Standing on that blasted beach, saying goodbye (and that was when she really knew. There was no real need for the sentence he never got to finish). Who knew small talk could be so painful? The look in his eyes, that devastated blankness, the false cheer that he forced himself to show because he hurt so damned much— sometimes she wanted to scream with the unfairness of it all. She'd promised him forever, dammit, and a large part of her always knew it was impossible, but she promised him anyway. And though he knew just as well as she did that forever wasn't theirs to share, he'd smiled anyway.
Look where that had gotten them: trapped apart, with everything she had once wanted as Fate's final laugh. Mickey, the friend who was always there for her, until he suddenly wasn't—here he was again, waiting at the Jeep. Jackie, her mum who drove her mad, but who she loved so dearly anyway. Suddenly there was a Pete Tyler again, and Jackie Tyler's heart had never filled that hole. Pete and Jackie slipped into place like they'd been made for each other and it hurt so much to see, because the human she loved the most in the universe had suddenly found everything that Rose had just lost. But they were there, the boy who loved her and the mum who had never given up on her and the only man who could ever be her father.
And as the Doctor spoke her name, echoing with love and loss beyond endurance, he vanished and she turned, knowing beyond a doubt that the person she needed was her mum. Her eyes were stinging with tear-melted mascara and overflowing, and Rose ran away from the empty spot where her heart used to stand towards the only strength she could find, because hers was all gone.
Her mother was running to meet her, and every step was a year, each breath a decade, and the posh new jacket that Jackie had happily bought on Pete's awkwardly given shopping spree hit Rose's arms with an empty whuff, holding not her mother's strong arms and brash comfort but a crumbling husk. Rose screamed, feeling the cloying taste of death entering her rictus mouth, but she couldn't stop, hollowing herself out as she watched Mickey and Pete disintegrate, screaming until there was nothing left but her horror and her loneliness, screaming until it wasn't a scream but a howl, and the blood that had torn itself from her throat ran gold.
And she was alone.
She sat up in the opulent bed of her room on the TARDIS, feeling sweaty, sick, and hurting, and the golden singing (not howling) presence in her mind braided her thoughts with a storm-cloud consciousness that was vast and alien and home. She was cocooned at the eye of the storm, and she was safe. Her heartbeat abandoned the frantic pace it had been setting, and her breath calmed to an everyday rhythm.
Rose got up shakily from her bed. The lovely silk nightshirt that the TARDIS had provided for her was soaked through with sweat, damp and uncomfortable in the cool air of her bedroom. She sighed and went into her bathroom, quickly stripping off her nightshirt and stepping into the warm rainfall of the shower. The washcloth sketched absentminded patterns on her skin as she washed herself, her mind serene in the sudden peace that came from her mental merge with the Doctor.
There was no use in attempting to go back to sleep now, she knew. After the change, the amount of sleep she'd needed had drastically decreased. The captive restlessness Rose had felt in those long still hours of the night while the rest of the world slept had sat like a weight on her mind, tainting every smile and laugh she shared with the people she loved. It became disturbingly easy to forget the continual human need for sleep as the years went by, and Jackie's yawns each night and Mickey's running jokes about his caffeine addiction were constant reminders of the distance that now existed between her and the rest of the human race.
Rose smiled painfully as she rinsed the jasmine-scented lather from her skin. Jackie had been the fastest to see the advantages of Rose's far less urgent sleep schedule, of course—Tony quickly became her duty, at least during the night.
And whenever Jackie wanted a nap. Or when she wanted to go shopping.
Rose's smile slipped as the TARDIS provided a quick blast of warm air to dry her. The loss of her little brother was a constant ache. She missed all of her family, to be sure. Each time she caught a glimpse of some alien sight that left her amazed or laughing a half-formed thought flickered in her brain to tell Jackie or Mickey about it later, only to remember that later would never come again.
She knew that Jackie and Mickey and Pete would live happy, full lives, though. Tony... Tony was still young, still trying to understand his place in life. He'd just turned eighteen when she had left, and he loved his big sister as much as she loved him. But there was only so long the "good genetics" excuse could work, no matter the hair dye and the makeup she applied carefully every day, and especially when both of your parents were very noticeably aging.
When she'd first been trapped in Pete's world, she was twenty-one. When she had been fatally wounded and the Bad Wolf transformation was finally completed, she was twenty-three.
Mickey had only looked a few years older than her, at the beginning. By the time she left, his hair had greyed at the temples. His jokes about becoming a 'dirty old man' to her barely hid the bewilderment that appeared in his eyes whenever he caught a glimpse of them together in a picture or a mirror. The Rose Tyler he'd fallen in love with was gone, replaced by this static representation. Rose closed her eyes against the lie in the mirror and submerged her mind again in the Doctor's rumbling power.
They were gone. She was here. And so was the Doctor. She had always thought (hoped) that finding him again would be enough.
It had to be.
