Chapter 5, dears! Also, big thanks to MirrorFlower and DarkWind, who has reviewed every chapter!
"Miss Tyler," a familiar voice called out to her as she walked from the parking lot to the apartment building door, carrying her groceries. She turned to spot to see Wilf waking toward her.
She stopped and smiled at her landlord, "Hi, Wilf." She said cheerfully. "And it's Rose, not Miss Tyler."
"Rose," he responded with a smile. "Let me get the door for you." And he did so, unlocking the door and holding it open for her. He chatted with her as they made their way up the stairs, telling her about how he was finishing up his rounds of checking his buildings for the week. She remarked that it was unusual for a landlord to make rounds on a Saturday evening. "Used to do Saturday dinners with my daughter, but she's been too busy these days."
They'd reached Rose's door, and she noticed a slightly dejected expression from Wilf as she unlocked the door. "Wilf…do you want to come in for dinner?"
The responding smile made Rose's day. "I wouldn't want to bother you." He tried, but Rose shook her head and entered her apartment, leaving the door open and signaling with a bob of her head for him to follow her.
"I'm making lasagna." She said, dropping her groceries on the kitchen counter and turning to face him as he shut the door behind him. "Usually, I would eat my food on my couch and watch some bad TV. I'd much rather have a dinner guest."
"Well!" He clapped his hands together and looked at her with a brilliant smile on his face. "How can I help?"
He became a regular guest for dinner on days when she wasn't busy, and was always equally enthusiastic about it. They became close friends – he told her about how disappointed he'd been when he hadn't had any grandchildren, she told him how she felt she didn't fit anywhere in the world. They shared a love for the stars, and awe for everything in the sky. She even shared her affinity for old police telephone boxes from the fifties, which he recalled from his youth.
He started to take her out on his stargazing excursions – lugging around his telescope while he carried blankets and tea. They took turns looking through the telescope and pointed out anything they found interesting.
"Oh my god," he muttered on one of those days – she withdrew her gaze from the stars and looked to him. He didn't have the smile he usually wore when he found something he admired.
"What did you find?" she asked cheerfully, keeping the smile on her face.
"The stars…Rose, the stars are going out." His voice lifted an octave.
"What?" Rose said in disbelief, "Wilf, are you sure? That's not right, that can't be right."
He pulled her arm and pointed at the telescope. She looked through and withdrew too quickly, staring up at the sky in shock.
The stars were going out.
"Rose!" The sound of her name made her jump. She looked up from her computer, where she was working on the dimension canon.
They'd created a machine, a real machine, which was doing…something. They'd been trying it by using inanimate objects and sending them to where they hoped was a parallel world.
But they weren't coming back. The machine was supposed to bring whatever they'd sent after two minutes back. And nothing was coming back, and since nothing they were sending was coming back they couldn't check it for void stuff.
"Rose!" The shouting was accompanied by running footsteps. She looked up in shock when Mickey burst into her office, out of breath, reaching a dead stop when he reached her desk. She stared back at him with wide eyes, waiting for some sort of explanation. "It worked. It worked, Rose."
There was only one thing he could be talking about. Rose shot out of her chair, making it topple over, even though it was on wheels. She never lost eye contact with Mickey, who was still trying to catch his breath. "It worked?" She breathed, her heart pounding in her chest; beating so hard she could feel it everywhere in her body. Mickey nodded vehemently.
For a moment, everything stopped. All Rose was aware of was her heart, which seemed to go in slow motion, and her breathing, which had gone from normal to quick, shallow breaths.
And then she was running.
"Dammit Pete! It should be me!" Rose shouted angrily.
"Sit. Down." Pete yelled back.
There were in his office, one day after the dimension canon had worked. The shouting match seemed to shake the walls of the office, and before Pete had forcefully closed the blinds in the windows to the hall, she'd seen employees peering at them with wide or confused eyes. His hands were balled into fists, and his knuckles dug into the wooden top of the desk, on which he was supporting his weight. Rose was standing on the other side of the desk, her face contorted into an angry grimace.
"I have been working on this project since day one, I deserve to be the one to go through." Rose continued, still shouting and definitely not sitting. Her heart pounded in her ears and she glared angrily at her father. She did deserve this. She needed this.
"You are a communicator." Pete hissed at her. "Do you think I can afford to lose Torchwood's best alien communicator? Now SIT. DOWN."
Rose sat stiffly in the chair facing the desk, her back rigid and her posture still angry. Once she did, Pete heaved a sigh and sat heavily, rubbing his face tiredly. Rose saw this and examined her father's face more closely. He looked more tired than she'd thought, with heavy bags under his eyes and lines forming around the corners of his mouth.
"Rose," he started quietly. "The risk of sending you through to we don't know where is too high. The chances of you not finding your way back, or of getting stuck in the void, or of arriving somewhere dangerous is just too high."
It was Rose's turn to sigh. "I am Torchwood's best alien communicator, you just said it yourself. I can manage with so many species. My chances of communicating with life forms are higher than any one else's. My experiences with time and space travel make me the best candidate to test the dimension canon."
Pete examined her face, searching for something. "In all of your research, did you come across the reason we were doing this?"
Rose's eyes widened in surprise. "This is the next step for humans. Now that we know that there are other dimensions."
"And that is the reason you will always see on paper." Pete told her with a nod. Rose's eyes searched his face for answers.
"That's…not the reason?" She didn't know what to say.
And then a thought came to her.
A terrible thought.
A horrible, terrible thought.
"The…the stars are going out." She said quietly, looking up at her father.
He blinked at her in surprise, and took several minutes before he replied. "How did you know?"
Rose sighed. "Mr. Moss - Wilf - he and I are friends and he likes to stargaze, so sometimes I go with him." Rose had become very fond of Wilf, and she knew that fondness was coming through in her tone. "A few weeks ago, we were outside and stargazing and he said the stars were going out. I didn't believe him." She let out a huff of air. "I mean, stars going out. Stars don't go out. But then I looked in that damn telescope." She stood and started to pace around the office. "And Pete, the stars were going out." She looked at her father. "So that's why we're building a dimension canon."
Pete sighed. "We need The Doctor."
Rose's face hardened. "So the stars are going out and we're building a device that will launch someone through the dimensions, seeing if it's just here or if it's everywhere. And regardless of that, we need The Doctor."
"Yes."
"And you've spent the last hour trying to tell me that I'm not going." She spat. Her father looked at her in defeat. "I have the best chance. The best. Chance. Of finding him. I will find him." She blinked, and for a moment, her eyes shone gold, and Pete stepped back.
Pete advanced until he was only a foot away from his daughter. He gripped her arms and searched her eyes. "Rose?"
She looked at him, her hazel eyes hard and her posture stiff. They stood like that for several minutes before Rose's eyes welled up with tears. A sob broke through her lips before she clamped them shut. "I need to find him, Pete."
He stared her down for a few minutes before nodding mutely.
"Rose, we have to stop for the day." Richard Paler told her. Starting the process of shutting off the different parts of the dimension canon, signaling the rest of the team to do the same.
"No, doctor Paler, one more jump!" Rose insisted.
The dimension canon had been working for a full week and Rose had been doing as many jumps as she could handle in a day, which was sometimes three and sometimes up to five. She spent approximately two minutes wherever she landed, reporting back to doctor Paler as to if she'd landed in the right dimension, on the right planet, if it was close their right time. She travelled with a watch that adjusted to wherever she landed, and a translator attached like a cell phone clipped to her belt loops, and a stun gun that she carried in case of emergencies. She could usually sense if she was still in the wrong dimension if she felt the wrongness, the universe trying to throw her out. She'd learn what planet she was on by asking any inhabitants she met.
And everywhere she went, the stars were going out.
"You've made six jumps today, Rose, that's enough. You're exhausted – we have to make sure you're ready for this tomorrow and if you keep going this way you won't be." Paler told her, placing an arm on her shoulder.
Paler was a tall man in his early thirties, with wavy black hair and a wide face with high cheekbones. His deep green eyes were kind as they implored her to let it go, to get some rest. Her hazel eyes met his, unwavering. "Go home." He told her, gripping her shoulder tightly. "Get some rest."
"But I – " Rose tried, but Paler wasn't having it. He shook his head at her and gave her a small shove toward the door.
In a very mature, adult, stuck-in-the-wrong-universe move, she stuck her tongue out at him, which made him chuckle but didn't change his mind. She didn't see how he shook his head at her turned back with a wide grin on his face. She didn't see the rest of the team smile back and him, joining in the silent joke of Rose Tyler, defender of the universe and her refusal to rest.
Rose didn't feel the fatigue until she was out of the basement lab – she'd taken the stairs out of habit and struggled the catch her breath when she reached the top. The stress of the day was getting to her. She felt heavy, as though the void stuff that she knew now clung to her, weighing her down. She sat on the top step and buried her face in her hands. Eventually she let out a sigh and crossed her arms over her knees then rested her forehead on her forearms.
She wasn't sure how long she sat there, paying attention only to her breathing. She thought of going home – of driving back to her lonely apartment, of having a lonely microwave dinner on her lonely couch. She was so tired of being alone, of missing The Doctor, of this world, of everything. Exhaustion pressed down on her heart and lungs.
"Rose?" Doctor Paler's voice. She didn't lift her head, but mumbled a quiet acknowledgement. She heard him lightly climb the stairs and sit heavily next to her with a huff, the contrast in the noises almost comical. She turned her head to catch sight of him with her right eye, and he continued to stare straight ahead. She lowered her eyes again.
"I'm tired." His voice came as a shock, bringing her eyes back to him. "I'm so tired, Rose. We're here every day, working on this project, perfecting this project, so that we can send you hurtling through to the right dimension. We're here, staring at screens or reading papers and worrying, hoping to god that you didn't land somewhere dangerous, that the equipment won't malfunction. And it's exhausting."
Rose lifted her head and met his eyes for a moment, and she saw the exhaustion in her eyes, on his face. After a second, she tentatively rested her head on his shoulder, sighing deeply. "I'm so tired." She murmured. He didn't argue, or stiffen, he simply let her be.
He brought his right hand to her head, where it rested on his left shoulder, and gently stroked her hair. He rested her head against hers. "I know."
They stayed sitting together for a while, not saying anything, until Rose broke the silence. "Do you want to come over for dinner?"
He checked his watch and chuckled, "It's 10 PM."
"I know."
"Alright." He stood, grabbing her hands to help her up. They walked together, slowly, to the doors. He offered his hand, and she took it, grateful for the support.
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