A huge THANK YOU to asimus and adkay for their help looking over this. I was worried that it might be taken as insensitive in relation to the recent destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans, however I've been reassured that it isn't inappropriate, adkay suggested a slight title alteration and even suggested that I dedicate it instead. I have little else I can offer, so I'm doing just that.
I just want to give another thank you to everyone out there who has reviewed this fic. Your continuing support and feedback is just wonderful. Thank you very much!
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Part Fourteen: A Sea of Silencexxxxx
It feels like water, almost like the sea gently lapping over her face, her mouth, her nose, her eyes; forcing her to gulp at life like a drowning dog. The sensations – wind, dirt, grit – that cling to her face make her feel like scratching at her skin before they pull her in, tug her under and further towards the end. That light at the end of the tunnel (or is it the corridor?) seems to offer reassurance as it calls her forward, testing, beckoning, whispering lies of peace and calm. But she knows they're lies, they have to be lies. That light only ever takes, it never gives.
She remembers something, something once said with a laugh, something once said as a warning, as a teasing, as many things that no longer have meaning to her.
Speak no evil.
See no evil.
Hear no evil.
They got the order wrong, she's sure, but it seems distant and yet almost fitting somehow. She must have been a bad girl for they took away her toys and they keep on taking. Sometimes the boy in the fancy house gives them back to her with a smile that only holds promise that one day he'll take them away again. One day soon. One day when she's not expecting it, when she's just getting used to having her teddy bears back again.
The one with his hands over his ears was taken yesterday and she thinks the others are missing, too, but she's not sure because she can't see in the dark and it's always dark now. The sun is a pretty dream that she remembers in colours that aren't real, because all that's real are shades of grey. She moves her fingers slowly in time to the beat of unheard music, or at least she thinks she does, because she can't tell anymore, not really. She feels like a jellyfish.
Do jellyfish feel?
Because she feels like one; no bone, no muscles, not even jelly, really, so perhaps she doesn't feel like one at all.
Sometimes the sea visits her, pulls at her, tugs at her, but she won't let it win, because the sea's nasty. It was her likeness to the sea that made them take her teddy bears. Her mum gave her all the toys she's ever had, but she can't remember her mum either.
Whispers from down the street come unbidden into her mind and let her wonder about the meaning of such words as 'possibility' and 'hope' and, sometimes, even 'happily ever after'. She thinks she once knew what they meant, but the darkness and the silence steal them from her and, even though she can't feel them, the dirt and the sweat and the wind that she knows to be there, surrounding her, continue to pull her under.
Something's different out there, she thinks, something's happening.
Somehow she knows she's moving. She knows that things around her are changing but she's not sure what or how. A blue spider whispers across her vision and enters her mind, filling her with all the 'happily ever after' it can muster. Slowly she thinks over it, digests it without feeling, listens to it without hearing, talks to it without saying a word, and looks at it without seeing anything at all and, when she's done, methodically casts it aside.
Once more the little blue spider comes to see her and she almost remembers the word 'friendship', but she's not quite sure what it means anymore and so she ignores it as she goes through the motions of trying to remember the 'hope' that the spider gave her as a gift. She doesn't remember 'hope' any more than 'happily ever after'.
Next comes 'possibility'.
Possibility.
It's such a strange word, she thinks, so oddly formed and snake like as it hisses at her. She almost discards it as she has the others, but something makes her want a second look. She remembers what 'want' means, because want is all she does now. She wants 'no' to stop and she wants 'yes' to go away, but she's not sure what the question is.
Somewhere in the midst of analysis, she realises that the motion has stopped; whatever changes are happening around her have taken on a different tone, one of determination. It's also an odd word, but she can only think on one at a time and she chooses to continue with 'possibility'.
The word brings faint promise of a face, memories of a time where the word meant anything she chose for it to mean; it brings her back to sensations of a time she's not sure she remembers or dreams. Time and space echo around her, contort within her; not to her will, because she's no master of them, more that they are her guide. Worlds flash by her in an instant, but nothing is constant, nothing stable, nothing but the same continued promise of possibility that he brings. She wants to follow him, but isn't sure how she can as the world around her continues to change.
Before her now he stands, tall and yet seeming too small inside his shell. He's diminished somewhat, not in her mind but in his own. He's standing by her side with a look of mixed 'fury' and 'disbelief' and 'hope' and 'possibility' all in one that 'happily ever after' doesn't seem so far away at all.
She waits for him to fade as he has before, but he continues to stand by her side, slowly coming into sharper focus. She's sure that he's holding her hand and wants to smile, but she can't remember how that works any more or even if it's appropriate, because he seems so sad and broken. She broke her favourite toy once, the doll that used to walk and talk and sing.
He's moving his mouth at her now. Gently and smoothly as if in practiced rhythm with the sensations of his fingers across the back of her hand. Ticklish…she remembers that now. Her fingers are twitching because the palms of her hand are tickly and the gentle brush of the little lines on the pads of his thumb are moving there now. She can feel it at the edges of her mind as she watches him talk in silence.
Doesn't he know that nothing comes out? She wants to ask, but she can't because sound isn't possible. It's a dream she once had about a girl and the boy she loved. They travelled in a little blue box that used to travel the universe beyond the darkness with their other companion. She likes that dream.
"…okay, Rose."
It's soft at first, the gentle murmur of his voice. It's so familiar, but it can't be real. So she reaches out to touch him with fingers she knows she shouldn't be able to control and senses she knows aren't real, not anymore.
She watches with detached fascination, like the man with the pointy ears that Mickey used to watch on the TV, - Mickey? – as her hand does as she tells it and reaches out to him. His mouth quirks upward at the end and she remembers…that's what it is to smile.
His face isn't soft, it's covered in thousands and thousands of coarse hairs. She wants to pull back, but Spock won't let her, he wants to document it and see if it's worth anything. A little voice in the back of her head whispers, is it safe to come out yet? And she wants to answer 'yes', but she remembers that that's a bad word and instead says 'no', so the voice retreats. Part of her longs to release the sad, scared little girl that's trapped behind those bars at the back of her mind, but she's not sure it's safe yet.
"You're safe, Rose."
Rose. She tries to make her face smile, but she's not sure if it works. That's her name, but then she remembers someone say that a 'Rose by any other name would smell as sweet' and thinks it might be right. 24. It's a bit long, the girl in the back of her mind says sceptically and she nods. Rose is much nicer, her mother gave her that one.
Something's happening to him. He's changing before her eyes once more. There's a word for it, a word that she thought was another lie and she's scared, because she doesn't know what to believe anymore. She finally sees the device in his hands, the one that's shooting at her eyes and wants to recoil. The word 'trust' is all but lost and yet she feels it implicitly with him. So she stays and she watches as the greys become red and yellow and pink and green and…rainbows; she can see rainbows in his eyes, in his face, his skin, and everything around her, but his eyes hold so much more.
There's a spiders web between them and she lets it stick to her. It doesn't pull away the dirt or the sweat, but throws pictures at her, pictures and sounds that come from her dreams. The cage in the back of her mind seems useless to her as the spider gives her the key to the lock, but she's still afraid to use it, still afraid that if she lets Rose out no one will be able to protect her or put her back together again; like Humpty Dumpty – and he had all the King's horses and the King's men to fail him. But Rose has her Doctor…she has her Doctor.
An incoherent sound reaches her tender ears and, at first, she's not sure where it came from. Her Doctor didn't like the sound and neither did his companion, the tall man who stands behind him. She knows this face to and Rose smiles as she realises that the noise was hers. It was her noise. She was allowed to keep it and to make it again…or even make a different one. One that forms a word. Any word she chooses. More than one if she wants. And she does want to, Rose wants to.
"My Doctor."
He smiles at her and she can't see him properly because of the salt water that's drowning her eyes. Salt and pain and relief. Tears. She remembers those well, because they were her constant companions when her teddy bears got stolen again and again.
"It's okay, Rose, I'm here."
Okay…is she okay? She doesn't think she is.
Everything around her has changed, but so much harder is the knowledge that everything within her has not only been changed but also destroyed. A mirror is seven years bad luck, she wonders what a mind is worth to those who break it. Surely more than seven years. Mirrors can be fixed with superglue, she remembers, but they're always cracked and you can never really find all the pieces. But the largest piece of her is standing in front of her. In all its glorious colour it shines from his eyes and looks into her soul, trying to put Humpty together again. He kept a part of her safe inside himself and protected it, but it doesn't really fit anymore. The spider's web held her together for so long, kept them together for so long, but she's not sure it's enough, because the cracks are bigger than the pieces that are meant to fit into them and the sides won't slot together like a jigsaw, because pieces are misshaped and missing.
She's broken, but she knows she is and she figures that proves she's in a better state than she was even moments before. He's her anchor.
"Rose, please say something."
"The effects of the device are instantaneous, but it cannot mend her mind."
The voice she remembers. It was kind when others were distant. It was the last time she saw red.
"Y'Lana," she whispers and her voice complies. It's an odd sound; hearing your voice after so long in a world of silent thoughts. It's different than she remembers, harsher, lower, scratchier, but it's hers.
"Your Doctor came," the older woman says and Rose can tell she's crying, "Just as you said he would."
"Broken," Rose replies and she knows that Y'Lana will know what she means. She knows because someone has to. Someone has to have been here before, someone has to have made it back, someone…before.
That's when Rose sees her.
She's smaller than Rose remembers, smaller but just as haunted. The girl's brown eyes lock with hers, but they're not asking forgiveness and Rose is glad, because she's not sure she could give it. Forgiveness wasn't what the girl was searching for in Rose, just as the need for it isn't what Rose is looking for within her. Rose wants something to hold onto…she wants hope. Of all the words the TARDIS threw at her 'hope' is the one she remembers the least and yet it's the one she wants the most. Hope to dream of something better. Hope to want for something more than a life of silent, sensation-less darkness. Hope that she can be whole again. But the girl isn't okay, isn't whole, the girl broke just as Rose did and she's still not whole…but she is determined.
Determination… Rose thinks, I can live with that…I have to, because he needs me and I owe it to him, because he was all that I had to keep me going.
But a small part of her still isn't sure. It isn't sure that this is all real, because she had a fake Doctor before, one that existed only in the fragmented patterns of her broken mind and she needs to know…she needs to truly believe that he isn't going to fade into nothingness again. So she finds the path that can break her or start binding her together again.
"Where to today then?" she asks, softly, clamouring towards the hope she desperately needs.
"Anywhere you want, Rose," he replies, echoing a conversation that only ever ended in sadness before. But she has to play it out.
"Anywhere?"
He nods. "Anywhere in time or space."
"Then I'd like to go home."
She waits for it, watches for the expression to fall and him to disappear.
But he doesn't.
He nods.
He smiles and it's her smile, the one he only ever gives to her. Her gift. So she smiles back.
"Let's get you home, Rose," he says softly and she feels a sensation on her cheeks, wet, salty tears, but she doesn't care because this time she can feel every point in their journey, just as she can feel his hand tightening around hers. He helps her to her feet and she can't bear to look down because she's not ready to see the broken shell of her body, wrapped only in the leather jacket that's surrounding her in the sweet smell and safety of her Doctor.
She doesn't look around as they leave. Doesn't see Y'Lana watching her as she fades into the distance. Doesn't see the destruction the Doctor left behind him. Doesn't see Kit as she slips away from the group. Doesn't see that every ounce of concentration and worry and will within the Doctor and Jack are focussed entirely on her. But she doesn't care because she can see. And smell. And taste. And touch. And gently, floating from the castle behind her, she can hear the gentle song of a broken child as she rocks back and forth watching as the broken body of her father is taken away…
"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
The big bad wolf, the big bad wolf?
Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?
Tra la la la la…"
And somewhere in the back of her broken, disjointed memories, she realises that no one on this planet should know it, because even she hasn't sung that song since she was a child. But as the TARDIS comes into view…as home beckons her, the thought scatters in the wind.
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End of Part Fourteen
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All typos and spelling mistakes are mine, this wasn't betad (none of this fic has been), this chapter was only read by others for comment on the content.
To be honest, I'm not sure what I think of this chapter, but I think I liked it. Either way, feel free to give me your opinions; feedback makes my day.
One chapter and an epilogue to go. I think I'll be sad to see this fic end.