Disclaimer; don't own it yada yada yada……
Next chapter, quite sad, I know that you all want a reunion, but first there needs to be some drama and suspense, I can't just jump in and have the Doctor back with Rose when we don't even know how she is coping without the Doctor. So this chapter is Rose dealing, then it is The Doctor dealing.
The life hereafter
When life is miserable it is painful to endure it: when it is happy it is horrible to lose it: both come to the same thing. Life is something you do when you can't get to sleep.
xxx
Hours turned into days, days into weeks, slowly weeks into months, until years had gone by like a blur. Rose had lost count of what she did everyday, she got up and when she was hungry and went to bed when she was tired, other then that she had no comprehension of what occurred in her life. Her mum had long since given up hope to try and make Rose see reason and move on, but Rose was incapable of doing so.
She is a ghost of her former self, long ago her hair that was once long, bright and shining, was now short and had lost it former shine. Her skin that once was healthy and smooth, was now pale and clammy. She was now very thin and she looked like the tiniest wind would pick her up and dispose of her. But if anything had changed it were her eyes, those that had once been illuminated brown orbs that lit up every time she was excited or happy, now dull and life less, they never sparkled. She never smiles, she hardly speaks, and there is little indication that she is even aware of her own existence. Her mum sometimes walks by her door at night and hears her crying in her sleep, dreaming of a man that she wishes her heart would forget.
When her mum had found Rose few hundred meters away from the flat, Rose was in a tight ball silently crying to her self. Jackie had an idea about what had happened and she was thankful that it had, but seeing her daughter siting there like her world had ended, Jackie Tyler cursed the Doctor for sending Rose back. She knew that Rose would be upset that he had let her go, but to act like this, Jackie didn't understand.
xxx
Remembering the days that passed, Rose had refused to speak about it, only ever coming out of her room to use the toilet, she wouldn't eat and she didn't speak. Jackie remembered the first thing that Rose had said to her since her return home.
flashback
Jackie had been sitting in the lounge with a cup of tea in her hand curled up on the sofa, watching the telly, when she saw a small movement out of the corner of her eye.
"Rose is that you sweet heart?" she asked
No reply
"Sweet heart you can't go on like this for your whole life, you have to let go sometime, please sweet heart talk to me" she pleaded with Rose
"Happy now?" came the harsh reply
Puzzled Jackie asked "happy about what sweet heart?"
"That he sent me back. I know that is what you wanted, what you and Mickey wanted, me being here, tucked up safe where nothing can hurt me. Well I hope your happy now because I'm home now tucked in safely, where no nasty aliens can get me!" she said with venom. Jackie tried to get a better look at Rose, but Rose was in the dark kitchen and had yet to turn the light on.
"Rose sweet heart, it's true that I wanted you back, I hate the idea of you being out there not knowing if you are alive and well, but I now see just how much he means to you…."
"He means nothing, he sent me away without even a single goodbye, no thanks for travelling with me, just a shoo of the hand and I'm forgotten from his life. I don't mean anything to him, so in return he means nothing to me" Jackie could tell that Rose was crying, could hear the painful sobs that were racking her body.
End Flashback
Remembering that moment now Jackie didn't know who Rose had been trying to convince, Jackie, or herself.
Jackie knew that the Doctor meant so much to Rose, Rose had willingly sacrificed her life to save his by absorbing the Time Vortex. She knew this because the Doctor had told her last Christmas.
Flashback
Watching Mickey and Rose from the balcony, Jackie couldn't help but feel glad, glad that they were all still alive, glad that the Doctor was still with them and glad that the Doctor and Rose were still alive to enjoy Christmas with them. Smiling down at the couple Jackie felt a presence behind her.
"Thank you for bringing her back here, it's good to have her home for Christmas" she said to the shadow.
"Thought that it would be a good place to recover form my regeneration, you know safe London. But of course, no, there had to be an alien invasion didn't there!" came the sarcastic reply of the Doctor.
"I never did ask you, regenerations your way of cheating death, yeah?" Jackie asked.
"Yep"
"Well, you had to die first didn't you?"
"That would be the necessary step, yeah" said the Doctor wondering where the hell this was going.
"So you did die, Rose said something about Daleks, is that what killed you?" she asked curiously.
"Wasn't Daleks that killed me, was the Time Vortex" came the sombre reply.
"The thing Rose looked into, that's what killed you?"
"Yeah" the Doctor came to stand beside Jackie. "What Rose did should have been impossible. She was supposed to stay where she was and I was supposed to either die by my own hand or by those of the Daleks. I never expected to ever see Rose again, but she is resourceful, should have known that this one would have been harder to protect." He growled, frustrated "Quite stubborn your daughter when she wants to be. Rose looked into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS looked into her. Together they had come back to save me, she was fantastic Jackie; she killed every single last one of the Daleks with just a sweep of her hands." He chuckled remembering the emperors face when Rose had called him tiny. But his voice became sad and hollow as he described what happened next. "But after she had done all of that she wouldn't let go, she could see everything in time, everything that was, everything that is and everything that could be, the sun and the moon, but it was killing her Jackie, burning her up. I knew that if I didn't do anything that she would die, so I took the Time Vortex out of her and into me, I burned instead. She remembered nothing of what she did, she knows nothing of the way that she saved me, and she never will" he had been watching Rose with a prideful look in his eyes, and when Jackie searched deeper she found love.
"She can never know what she did Jackie, something like that would destroy her"
"How she saved you and saved millions of humans from the Daleks, what is so bad about that"
"Because I gave up my ninth self for her, and she loved him, just knowing that she was the reason that he died would tear her apart. But there is also the fact that she killed millions and millions of Daleks, granted they needed to be killed, but Rose has so much compassion in her that it would torture her to know that she had murdered another race. It is best that she never knows"
Looking down at just how happy Rose was, and then looking up and seeing the love that the Doctor held for her daughter, Jackie agreed with the Doctor.
End flashback
Remembering that moment Jackie couldn't help but wonder why the Doctor had sent Rose back. Why would some one with so much love for someone else send them away?
xxx
Rose was walking around the streets, not far from where she lived. She had a blank look on her face and her eyes were vacant of any emotion. People bumped into her, but she didn't seem to mind, it was like she was in her own world.
Three years today, I can't believe how long it has been. I hope he is happy, I hope that he isn't lonely and has someone to keep him company. I may never know why he sent me away, I don't care any more, don't care about much any more, I just pray that he is safe.
The weather had started cool down and clouds were staring to from. Rose didn't seem to notice them, and she didn't seem to notice the rain that had started to fall heavily. The water was socking through her clothes. Nothing seemed to bother Rose, she was lost in her memoires and thoughts that she had been trapped in for three years now.
Rose walked for hours, going well into the night. It was the sound that awoke Rose out of her thoughts, she thought that they were from her thoughts, praying that it wasn't just a trick of the mind. That sound, one that she hadn't heard for years, one that she never thought that she would ever hear again.
Running now, Rose pushed her wasted body towards the sound, the sound of her life starting again.
xxx
I suppose that it can be said that hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity- Robert G. Ingersoll.
xxx
A/N ok well that was the 3rd chapter, the next will be the Doctor coping, hope you enjoyed the chapter, it was a fun writing it. R&R please!
