And days die young when you're gone and you're gone
There goes the sun, oceans away
And leaves the day for someone else.
The how I can't recall
But I'm staring at what was once the wall
Separating east and west
Now they meet amidst the broad daylight.
January
There is a grandfather clock, ancient and towering, in the hallway by the front door. Despite its age it still works, the pendulum swinging back and forth and back and forth in perfect rhythm, chiming away the hours.
Rose has to pass by the clock every day as she comes and goes from the house that has not quite yet become a home, but rarely spares it a passing glance these days. She slips in through the heavy doors as quietly as possible, the rest of the house is silent and asleep by now; she is usually the one to keep the latest hours at work. The lock clicks shut behind her, shutting out the frigid night air. She unwinds the thick knitted scarf from around her neck, bustling about with her mind on the place she has just returned from.
Without intention she suddenly pauses mid-step in front of the grandfather clock, attention diverted for no particular reason, head cocked to one side as she watches the hands slowly creep around to the unfailing tick tock, tick tock.
She stands there for a long while, lost in fleeting thoughts and snippets of memories, and closes her eyes briefly. Blurs and vestiges of laughter flash behind her eyelids. Remembrances are still as sharp and clear as though they were yesterday.
All the time in the world, she thinks ruefully, and now no time at all. Over a year in this house, a year passed with Torchwood, a year passed in this city that is simultaneously hers and not hers. Sometimes the days fly by and sometimes they drag, and she has no control over them and sits and watches her own time wind on.
Rose snaps her eyes open, the grandfather clock is chiming eleven and she is still standing in the shadowed hallway. She hangs her woolen coat and attempts to tip-toe upstairs, but despite her efforts floorboards creak and squeak beneath her feet. Rose never had quite got the hang of furtively sneaking about.
The house is Pete's, and it is cavernous, but it is not the same one Rose remembers running from all those years ago. She doubts anyone could have lived in the latter, and she has found herself reluctant to move out of this new one. She had gone looking for a place of her own not too long ago, but all of the flats were too bare and empty, and so small that she'd begun to feel suffocated by the walls and ceilings, and she couldn't stay. Pete's house, at least, doesn't close in around you.
She automatically crosses her bedroom to the towering windows and yanks the dense curtains to the side, exposing the clear glass and the room is at once flooded with moonlight. Jackie had argued that she could have chosen a room with a better view than the side garden and garage, but she had picked it for the abundant light, during the day and at night. She unbraids the still-platinum hair hanging down her back, and looks at her hands in the luminous glow - there is something comforting about standing in light that has traveled through space and time at such an unimaginable speed that it is often not thought of as traveling at all. Of what use to light is a concept of time? She looks out to the expanse of sky with a weariness that feels old.
Rose fades into sleep eventually, although sleep is not favorable to her. A year ago she would fight falling asleep, because upon waking she would experience the momentary disarray of not properly remembering where she was, and wondering why the room was not shaking and groaning around her as it should. Then the layers of dreams would abruptly fall away, and reality would settle all around her as the glowing numbers of the digital clock beside her bed came into focus. Too much sleeping resulted in too many tears.
But Rose, now, can't recall the last time she cried, or if she even can anymore. Torchwood has taken care of that for her, and she sleeps because she needs to. She dreams of foreign places that are familiar to her, of frozen oceans and rain falling on alien shores, and a darkening sky that fills with gathering clouds.
