A/N: Hey everyone, if you've read this far thank you for sticking with me, and I hope you are keeping safe during this crazy time. Trigger warning for this chapter for self harm. If it's something that might get to you, please don't read it, and more importantly please reach out for help and take care of yourself.

If you're enjoying the story and have any comments I'd appreciate a review or message to hear your thoughts Stay safe out there.

Sleep mocks me. I'm about as tired as I've ever felt in my whole existence, yet can't get a moment of shut eye, even with Tardis doing her best to calm me. I turn over to my stomach, in a futile attempt to chase down dreamland. I can't bring myself to be angry at the situation when I just feel numb. At some point I found the strength to return to my bedroom where I now remain, enveloped in my bed

I'm not questioning whether the doctor is the right choice, whether this life on edge is right. It's perfect for me, all I've never known I wanted. But does he really want me? After the episode in the kitchen, I'm not certain. Where would I even go if the answer is a no? And what do I do when what is perfect for me breaks the heart of those who I've loved before?

Thoughts of them plague me, harass me. My mum and Mickey, that is. This would break their hearts. Or mine, at least. Deep down I know I can't face them again, not like this. I have no good options, but an eternity to make my choice. We could return an hour after I left and see them, having waiting a hundred years making my choice, and make up some lie about how nothing's changed and then.. and then what? Hope they don't notice I never age a day out of my 20s, even when my mum's gone full grey? Or do we just never return, letting them draw their own conclusions about what they'll assume was my inevitable death, leaving them to blame themselves for helping me, leaving them to live in fear of whatever was strong enough to defeat the doctor? Do we go back for the day and explain everything that happened and tell them that this is the last time they'll see my face? I'll be off gallivanting with the doctor, living my dream life among the stars and planets. I think that option might kill me.

I look up at the ceiling of my room, a portrait of a billion stars: The Milky Way. The doctor added that to help me feel more at home. The spiral galaxy slowly turns throughout the night, much faster than in real life but it was necessary when my life was to be so dearly short. It is the middle of the night when I finally decide to just pull myself out of bed, finding the dimly lit kitchen comforting as I sit over a hot cup of tea.

How do I deal with leaving them forever? It's not avoidable. We can't stay here in the Tardis in this in-between for millenia while I try to figure it out. These are things I can't talk to the doctor about; he's been pulling away enough as it is, the guilt inside of him gnaws at the corners of his conscience. He's a worrier, my doctor. Although I'm not sure I can still stake that claim. He's been worried that I'll grow to resent him, I'm sure, knowing that more than anything my mum wanted me to have a 'normal life'. Knowing how Mickey felt.

The last few days have been complicated, to say the least. Never have I felt so internally conflicted.

I stand, un-content with the thoughts racing around my brain, pouring the nearly full cup down the drain. Steam flows back out, it had barely cooled enough to drink. The Tardis is warm tonight; thin beads of sweat cling to my forehead and I internally curse myself for choosing some long pants and a top for bed. I decide to head for the shower, thinking a cool soothing moment could help lull me back to bed. My head feels foggy – like my brain isn't quite connected to the rest of me.

I leave the lights off in the bathroom to try to relax more. Stripping down, my clothes find a new home on the floor as I press my toes into the bath matt. Stepping into the shower, I marvel at the beautiful design. The Tardis can sort of redesign herself as she learns what you like; I'd only lived here a week when I learned this by finding the cold, sterile bathroom had transformed into an Earth-toned forest room. The shower floor had in-set pebbles and a rain head with grey and mossy toned tiles; the towels a bright cloud white and the walls a deep green and copper tone brown, real wood bench of redwoods and all topped off with matte grey fixtures.

I sit down under the rain head, water just warm enough to keep the shivers away. My arms are wrapped instinctively around my legs. I don't cry, I have nothing left to feel. I am simply empty. I suppose this is the default when the emotions in your heart feel condemning.

All sense leaves me as I try to forget everything about me, about life. The Tardis energies work to probe my mind, to calm me, but I shut them out. I need to be alone. It moves out of my head and now is only heard around the edges of my consciousness. Her tone shifts from a calming one to an alarmed one; I've never shut her out before. It's as if a tap had been turned on, draining all of the joy from my life. A better analogy would be the shutting of a door – the door to the doctors' room as he quickly shut me out of it.

So, so stupid. I never did learn how to keep this big mouth shut. I should have never asked him to commit.

'But where would that leave me now?' I ask myself this, but feel my head shake defiantly. I do not want to think about that, about him, about what never could be. He doesn't want me that way, apparently. I suppose he hasn't realized how perfect it could be – the Doctor and Rose, travelling the universe forever as we save it, one planet at a time. Maybe he hasn't realized how his hand perfectly fits into mine when he's stressed, or when I'm excited. How the hugs feel amazing, like home. Like nothing could ever go wrong in his arms.

'No, Rose. Just - just shut up!'

My eyes shut and I lean my head back against the wall. Escapee strands of hair from my bun latch onto my face. The stones under my bum begin to make me feel sore, so I stretch my legs out in front of me. I hit a small plastic object and it clinks across the shower. Opening my eyes, I see my razor sitting under the flow of water.

I'm moving without thinking, on an autopilot of sorts. I grab a bottle – shampoo – and slam it down against the razor. Once, twice – open. The plastic gives way and shatters, leaving three thin pieces of metal. I gather the plastic and place it on the ledge of the shower, and carefully pick up the two most bent bits of metal, leaving it in the plastic pile. The third I hold gingerly, staring at it for a long time. The anxious Tardis energy becomes more frantic, and some rational sense of thought at the back of my mind worries about her waking the doctor. She's not usually one to meddle, but then again, I'm usually one to consider something like this.

This is my fault, that all of this is happening. If only I'd thought faster, if the doctor hadn't felt the need to leave me behind, I wouldn't be faced with this impossible scenario.

The first lucid thought of the afternoon hits me 'I don't want to feel anything but this right now. I want to forget.' I haven't been able to maintain a clear focus since the kitchen. Every bad thing in the world feels as though it's piled onto my shoulders, high into the sky as if I personally did all of the terrible things in the universe.

More determined, I look down at the razor as water continues to pelt down. I grasp it in my right hand, placing my left down onto my naked legs.

The first cut is slow, shallow, calculated. I don't flinch as the steel bites me, but I take a deep breath, feeling it deeply. Calming, controlled. Something I have total control over. Something to make it better. Something to help me forget.

I press on, adding line after line moving from my wrist down to nearly my elbow. When I've finished I drop the blade with rest of the broken razor. Red blurs my vision.

A calming euphoria trickles through my body, down from my head, warming and radiating. I can no longer sense the Tardis' energies although I am certain it's there. I'm on my own plane of existence. I turn the water up to a hotter setting. I tuck my kneed to my chest and place my elbows together on them, wrists facing up as the blood leaks out of the cuts. I count them silently as the water warms. 26. Not deep, but bloody. Enough. I don't want to die, even if that were an option. I just want to hold onto a calm feeling, this… okay feeling for longer. I lay on my back (this shower could easily fit six people) and place my palms up. The warm water stings on the twenty-six new additions, but it's a pleasurable burn, prolonging the presence of the calm.

That was the first time I've been able to forget everything, even able to tune out the violently churning Tardis energy. I sit back up slowly.

This is how everything moves now, slowly. But I finally have a choice: painful slowly, or a happy slowly. I'm alone either way, I'm not sure that the doctor wants much to do with me anymore. He hasn't even stopped in for a chat since earlier. I suppose the eternal bachelor may never be ready to give that up for a commitment with me. But it hurts. Even moreso than the cuts.