When Rose woke the next morning she was cocooned under her duvet, a set of rangy limbs pinning her to the bed, a man's snoring rattling her eardrums. There was something terribly domestic about this situation, just waking up in bed next to the man she loved, but it was so special she took care not to disturb him, wanting to enjoy his presence for as long as possible. He was a revelation in the bedroom, but actually she was more surprised at herself. She had a capacity for pleasure that astounded her, a willingness and an energy that matched that of the nine hundred year old alien lying exhausted in her bed. Whatever he gave her, she could take and give back more in return, and if he had a bold or outrageous idea she was happy to try it, and then suggest something of her own.
He snorted, scratched his head and then reached out blindly to fumble for her breast, before disappearing back into dreams. She turned over gently until they were lying face to face, sharing a pillow.
His eyes flickered at the movement, and his mouth formed a sleepy smile. 'Morning.'
She reached out, pressed her palm to his cheek, caressed his skin, just because she could. His smile widened a bit more, but his eyes stayed closed and he flailed an arm around until he found her back and hugged her close.
'I love you,' she said.
'I remember,' he murmured.
She trailed her hand down his shoulder, felt along his arm, found his hand and squeezed it. 'What are we going to do now?' she asked him.
His eyes opened, full of an easy warmth that bore no hint of concern, and he gave her a reassuring smile. 'What we always do. Run. I'll set a course as far away from Cybermen and energy signatures as possible and we'll let the timeline collapse on its own.'
A tear escaped unbidden from the corner of her eye, tracked a path towards her chin. 'How much time do we have?'
He lifted a shoulder. 'Not enough, as always.'
'And isn't there anything you can do?'
He followed the course of the tear with a fingertip, wiping it away. 'I tried that already. I thought I'd made a fixed point, changed events permanently, but I was wrong.' His smile became almost self-deprecating. 'Even I'm wrong sometimes. But something might come up. Let's hope that it will.'
'And you won't leave me?'
He stroked her cheek, tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. 'Never. And I won't send you away either. Whatever happens, we're together.'
'Until the end.'
'Til death do us…hang on.' He rolled away, scrabbled for something on the bedside table then extracted her hand from under the covers and slid it onto her ring finger. 'There,' he said proudly. 'Til death do us part. And I've already died once, so it'll have to try harder than that next time.'
She laced her fingers with his and snuggled into his side as his other arm came around her shoulders, pulling her tight. She lay, just listening to him breathe and trying to imprint the moment onto her memory, in case she woke up tomorrow and had forgotten him again. Eventually though, his foot began to tap under the covers and his fingers beat out a merry pattern against her arm.
'Time to get up,' he announced, to her complete lack of surprise. 'Can't lie around in bed all day.'
'Why not?' she pouted.
'Because I want you to have a shower with me. Come on.'
He didn't leave her alone in the shower, although the water had run cold by the time he'd finished ravishing her against the tiles. He didn't leave her alone while she was getting dressed either, stripping off her underwear as fast as she could put it on. He only left her alone when she informed him she needed to use the toilet and he wasn't allowed to follow her in there. He went to find fresh clothes instead and she beat him to the console room, finding the space more green tinged than usual, and significantly colder.
She approached the control panel with confidence initially, although her feet echoed on the metal floor and all the little noises the ship usually made seemed to have stilled into silence. The swirling screensaver was blank and dead, and the running lights had been switched off. Rose reached out to touch the grey metal, then stayed her hand, disturbed by a faint memory of remembered pain that made her fingertips tingle. She backed away and sat on the jumpseat instead, rubbing her arms against the chill and wishing that the man who said he'd never leave her hadn't left her.
He bounded into the room a few minutes later, grinning wildly and punched a few buttons without paying much attention, finishing with a ring on the ridiculous bell he was so fond of. The ship shuddered briefly, then the rotor wheezed into active life and a couple of seconds later the dematerialisation cycle initiated and shut down again just as quickly.
'Where are we?' she asked, glancing around at the emerald light pulsing through the walls.
He gestured grandly at the doors. 'The restaurant at the end of the universe. It isn't really at the end of the universe, but the restaurant at the arse end of nowhere didn't have the same ring. It has a very good view and does a mean steak. I have a permanent reservation.' He flipped his hand. 'Off you go and take a look.'
She eyed the walls suspiciously. The temperature was now so cold she could see her breath in the air and the throb of light had intensified, a jade heartbeat banging against her eyeballs. The Doctor didn't seem to have noticed.
'After you,' she said.
He shrugged, clumped down the ramp and pushed the doors wide. The minute he'd exited the ship the engine noise cut out and all the lights failed, plunging Rose into darkness only punctuated by one square of brilliant white light. She folded her arms, feeling nausea that was instantly familiar rise in her guts. The Doctor's silhouette appeared in the doorway and he strode over to the console without speaking and kicked it hard.
'There's something wrong.' Rose didn't bother to phrase it as a question, she could tell by the murderous expression on his face, the way he started slamming a steering wheel on the console to one side repeatedly. He marched around to the keyboard, typed away at it urgently to little effect then hit the heel of his palm against a certain point on the metal structure and the panel which concealed the heart of the TARDIS swung open slowly, revealing an empty, dark space. He fumbled in his pocket, retrieved the screwdriver and pushed a few buttons but the blue light at the end didn't activate and the tool was silent and dead.
Rose picked herself off the seat, paced slowly towards the doors to see what kind of trouble she was in. On the other side was a bare white room, with a lever on either side, a couple of computers, an upturned chair or two and a deserted office. There weren't any people, and little sign of their presence, other than a half-drunk cup of coffee, still warm.
She approached the blank wall beyond the levers slowly. There was a smoothness about it, a luminescence that was familiar but it wasn't entirely clean. The closer she got, the more sure she was that someone had been drawing on it.
'Where are we?' she called, stepping closer to the wall.
'Look out of the window,' he yelled, amidst a chorus of shrieking metal.
Rose turned in the direction of the window instead. She was somewhere high up, looking out of a modern, steel framed window at a London skyline she recognised. Smoke curled from several of the buildings, reflected firelight danced across window panes; from somewhere far below the blue lights of emergency vehicles stained the white skyscraper walls.
'Where's the restaurant?' she called back, already sure of the answer.
'No restaurant. This is just the end of the universe. The TARDIS has brought us to the epicentre of the energy spikes – this is where it all starts, this is the rip in reality. And she's switched herself off so I can't escape. We're stuck here until the end of time, which looks like it might be about twenty minutes.'
Rose fiddled with one of the enormous levers and it moved easily under her touch, but the drawing called her back. She approached it step by slow step. From a distance it looked a lot like the Cyberman pencilled on Chloe Webber's wardrobe but the closer she got the more differences she noticed.
'There's something here,' she said, but she was talking to herself rather than him. 'It's taller than me but I don't think it's a robot. There are no bars on the sides of its head. And it looks like it's wearing a coat, a long coat, and trousers I think.'
She reached out a hand towards the image. It had that strange mixture of sharp and ill-defined that the traced Cyberman had had, but it didn't seem to be moving. Rather, from the outline of the face, the nose, chin and the roughly sketched hairline, it resembled a man, standing with his ear to the wall, listening. She bent towards it, wondering what the man had possibly hoped to hear in the ruins of reality.
Then she heard her name, a whisper, less than a whisper, a syllable expelled on a sigh, and she realised with a jerk that it was coming from the other side of the wall. She moved closer, stretched out her hand, fingertips centimetres, then millimetres away from making contact. Then she touched it.
She heard her name again, but it was a shout this time. 'Rose. Get away from the wall.'
She tried to snatch her hand back, but there was a wind in her ears, a wind that whipped her hair into her eyes, a wind so strong she lost her footing and fell forward. Running footsteps were coming full pelt towards her and a voice, an achingly familiar voice, said three words with an edge of pain so raw it brought tears to her eyes.
'I remember,' she tried to reply, but the wind had her now and she couldn't even look round.
She fell into the void.
The Car Crash Bride and The Postman's Daughter are available now on Amazon.