A/N: This has been my favourite chapter to write so far. I'm not quite sure what that says about me...
Jump No. 46
Rose walked tiredly out of the void, into a familiar stairwell. She sighed in exhaustion and looked behind her, as though she might see some ghost of the last jump, but there was nothing there except the stark white walls of the Torchwood Institute.
She sighed again, counting jumps in her head. Had she finally made it to a rest period?
She frowned at the very thought. The last time she had thought she'd reached a rest period she had rebelled at the very idea. She hadn't been ready to rest, she hadn't been ready to give up for a couple of days. She wanted, nay, needed to find The Doctor and there was no way that little things like the need to sleep were going to slow her down.
Now? Well, she didn't want to say it, still couldn't say it, but she was ready. Ready for a break. Not to give up. Readiness to give up meant readiness to give him up, give the world up, the universe, reality itself. And she had no right to give any of those things up.
But she kind of, sort of wanted to.
She brushed away the thought with a sharp click of her tongue. Thinking like this did no-one any good. She just had to suck it up. She just had to find him, for christ's sake!
She took in a deep breath and fought back the angry stab at the back of her throat that marked an oncoming onslaught of tears. She was stronger than this. She was better than this. She had to be. Someone had to be.
She pushed the nearest door open and slammed her body through the open space, into whichever room of whichever floor of the Torchwood building she had jumped into.
She froze.
Of all the places in all the dimensions in all the god damned universe, she just had to land here. Now.
She nearly threw herself on the floor and screamed right then and there, but she restrained. She used the last of her self-respect and restrained, transfixed, as she watched the scene in front of her.
There was an argument. She didn't need her ears to know what was going on. She was there, Rose Tyler, aged twenty and fearless, telling her companion that she would never leave him.
No.
Not here. Anywhere but here.
…please…
A small part in the back of her mind that had learnt to compartmentalize thanks to her time with The Doctor noted how odd it was that no-one had noticed her. She had slammed the door open. Were they really that self-absorbed in that moment not to know she was there?
Of course they were, she shot back to herself. Look at them, look at her…me…
She chuckled in the back of her throat, deep and mean. How could she ever have thought that he didn't know how she felt about him when she looked at him like that? There was nothing but devotion on her face. Devotion and desperation and love.
This was torture.
"I made my choice long ago and I'm never gonna leave you!" She heard herself say.
She nearly laughed at her younger self. Such naivety. Such aggravating promise.
She looked over at The Doctor who was angrily punching into the computer with his fingers. She hadn't understood that anger before. The first time she had been here. She understood it now.
There she was, so full of life, so unable to understand that time and space would eventually rip them apart. She had been living for the beautiful promise of the future and The Doctor had been clawing at each last detail of the present. He was used to being ripped apart from those he loved. And he had known in that moment, and many moments before, that she would be ripped from him. He'd known. Perhaps he hadn't known that it would be this particular day, but he had known it was coming. And he had protected himself from it by being him. Being aloof and mysterious and smart.
But she had given herself to him completely. Everything she was, everything she had. And in the last few seconds she had made it official. Nothing to go home to, no one else to live for. Just The Doctor.
She'd literally given him everything she had.
And then she'd lost him too.
"That's more like it, bit of a smile! The old team," she watched herself say with a smile that shone of a love beyond her twenty years.
"Hope and Glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake!" The Doctor picked up a magnaclamp and walked over to her. The other her. She felt a deep, deafening thud in the pit of her stomach. This was it. The moment that ruined her life, playing back in front of her like some terrible B-grade horror film.
"Which one's Shiver?"
"Oh, I'm Shake."
And there it was. That careless abandon that she hadn't quite understood the first time around. He was letting go of it all for the first time, taking hold of the present and hoping for the future, just like she was. And he only had seconds. Seconds of hope until she was gone and he would go back to…what exactly? Back to clutching to the present? What present had she left him with?
Loneliness, regret and failure.
It was what she was left with, at least.
This was why The Doctor never planned. Moments like these. And she had changed him, in that moment, to hope.
And then she had proved him right.
It didn't do to hope. It didn't help to plan.
It just made the pain worse, in the end.
"Let's do it!" The Doctor cried, bringing Rose out of her mind and back into the moment. She crouched down into the corner and braced herself. It wouldn't matter if she got pulled into the void; the dimension cannon would kick in eventually and she would get thrown somewhere else, anyway. She had nothing to fear from letting go. Not this time. But she wanted to watch. The masochist Rose Tyler wanted to watch her world crumble.
She watched as the other Rose and The Doctor held on to the magnaclamps. She held on too, watching on, entranced, as one would a car-wreck. She couldn't look away. Maybe she'd hold on long enough to see The Doctor when it was all over. Would he cry? She'd seen him shed tears for her in Jenny's genetic memory, but that had been after Bad Wolf Bay. What about here, now? Would he cry like she had? Bash his hands against the wall and call her name?
No. Of course he wouldn't. He was The Doctor.
Her stomach squirmed and she decided she didn't really want to see that anyway. She had seen him cry three times now, in her jumps and had no desire to see it again. He had cried in Jenny's mind, in his own dreams, and in that frightening scene in the TARDIS, when he had called himself The Time Lord Victorious. When he had sought to change history.
Her heart slammed against her chest.
She could do it. She could change history. She had the dimension cannon. She could rush in as the lever went offline and fix it, so that the other her would never have to let go. She could save herself and The Doctor. They could be together forever, just like they had finally planned. She could fix it all and never have to know the gripping, consuming hatred of everything and everyone and it would be fantastic!
Her heart smashed back into place.
This is what he had felt like. That other Doctor. The Time Lord Victorious. She was shaking with the possibility of her own power and she could feel the excess time energy of the Bad Wolf soaring through her veins, begging her to try it. She was all-powerful, omnipotent Goddess and she could change time if she wanted. She could repair it and make it beautiful again.
She could.
But she wouldn't.
And oh, how it hurt.
She glided along the floor, toward the void and tried desperately to hang on to something, anything. Cybermen and Daleks whirred passed her into the white wall. The Doctor and the other Rose grinned and cried out in triumph.
"Offline."
And now it was time for the end. She watched herself morbidly as she struggled to fix the lever. She couldn't tear her eyes away. She tried to stop herself from falling into the void so that she could watch, just to make sure she was saved. Which was ridiculous of course, because she had lived through this the first time, and knew that she would be saved. By Pete Tyler, her father and the reason she was alive today. She shuddered to think of what would have happened had he not chosen that exact moment to jump back to their reality. How had he known?
Sometimes the universe was full of miracles, her father had said. And he had never spoken more of it.
"Rose, hold on!"
This was it. Pete Tyler was about to appear. She was going to let go.
"HOLD ON!"
Where was he? She slid further toward them, hoping he wouldn't see her.
Come on, Pete Tyler! Where was he?
And then she realized.
Of course the universe wasn't full of miracles. The universe was full of time-travel and aliens and her, Rose Tyler.
Stupid, she thought. Of course he couldn't know when she would let go. Of course he wouldn't know where to stand. Only someone who had been there before and seen it happen could possible know that.
Only her.
She clutched onto the leg of a table and reached into her pants pocket, fumbling in her haste. She pulled out her Super Phone, the dimension cannon transmitter. It could send her back to Pete's World with the press of a button. She'd chosen not to use it when she had been stuck in The Doctor's dreams, but this time, there was more at stake than her life. This time it was her life and the history of the last few years. She took one last look at herself and The Doctor, knowing this was the moment and took a deep breath in before pushing that big threatening red button.
"Rose!"
She wheezed and wretched and screamed as her body fell into a heap on the floor.
"Rose, are you alright, sweetheart?"
She could feel her mother's arms around her, distantly, scorching her burning skin. The scientists weren't kidding when they said the emergency reset was painful.
"Get off me!" she shouted and jumped to her feet. She cried in pain as her limbs readjusted themselves.
"Rose, what's wrong? What happened to your clothes? Rose!"
"Mum, shut up!" she shouted, hoarsely. Her mother shrunk back and she felt immediately sorry. It wasn't her mother's fault. She didn't understand. But she really didn't have time for this. She needed Pete.
"Pete!" she said, seeking him out. Her eyes were swimming and she felt like vomiting. She took a deep breath and held herself back. There wasn't time.
"Rose, what's going on?" Pete asked, measured and systematically. Good old Pete.
"Stand here," she said, grabbing him and pulling him into place. "Sorry," she said, non-commitally as he tripped through her rough hold. 'I'm about to fall. Catch me. Be ready." She punched the yellow button around his neck and he disappeared, his face confused but strong.
She collapsed.
"Rose!" It was Mickey this time. He ran to her and held her, helping her to her feet.
"I was never here," she said, in the sternest voice she could manage. "You can't ever tell me I was here. Ever. Never talk about it, never think about it. Never!"
There wasn't time for them to understand, and there wasn't time for her to escape. She ran from them, kicking the door open and charging out of the room. The other her would appear in seconds. She had to be gone by the time she got there.
She ran and ran, as her legs burned and her breath caught and her heart screamed, until the void finally took her away from the pain.
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