Hi guys! Thanks for the awesome reviews and follows- they really mean a lot! I hope you guys like this chapter! I got to update early because I'm home sick with a fever. :-( but anyway. I have to apologize for some of the grammar/general errors made in the last chapter- in my excitement to upload I didn't spend too long editing. Also, sorry for making you guys tear up with the first chapter. In some ways it means a lot but in others it makes me feel awful XD Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this chapter. We get to take a look at Rose and her life. Allonsy!~~
Stormy clouds cast their veil of grey over the scenery, washing color out of everything and creating the sense of nighttime, even though the large bell tower from the nearby church steeple had just beat out three gongs. The last strike of the bell wavered in the air, carried by the wind until it faded into an echo and finally died. Trees rustled slightly, the branches and limbs moaning and the August-green leaves chattering eerily. The church, the solitary guardian of its small plot of land, creaked under the force of the oncoming storm but held fast.
Nearby children were riding on bicycles and calling out to one another, their cheerful laughter captured by the wind and carried wherever the breeze took it. Amidst the grey and the morose atmosphere, their jubilance seemed displaced and unnatural. In a place where logically things stood alone, a tree with its own space, the church, the solitary grave standing under its edifice, their companionship felt like an insult. Not that these objects could feel offended though, but one creature who naturally did not belong in these surroundings, did feel rather perturbed.
She was kneeling by the grave, her jeans soaking up the dew from the lush grass. Hands were cradled in her lap, twisting and turning. Blonde hair whipped around her face, a few strands sticking to the tear tracks that made their way down her high cheekbones and dignified jaw. Her shoulders were quaking, both from sheer sorrow but also from the exhaustion of carrying such heavy burdens on their delicate form.
This was Rose Tyler, and she was broken.
She was broken because of the life she had led thus far, in her twenty odd years of life. Growing up in a small flat with her fiercely loving but slightly airy mother, then living an adventure of a lifetime and falling in love with every aspect of her life and the one constant who had shown her how brightly stars shine, and then spending day after day with someone like that man, but also different, and also one she loved very much. Spending her life with him became a whole different kind of adventure. Sure, they still fought the occasional alien, working with the corporation established in the other world to destroy her. And the thrill of that kept them both sated. Living a life of affluence was a transition, but one Rose settled into well enough. Having her father, well, half-sort-of-real father, was like finding a piece to a jigsaw puzzle, and it made her Mum happy. And Tony. Tony, her little brother who liked to play with toy airplanes and trains.
But the man she had spent the time beside the most, at least in the universe she inhabited now, made her life so much more than the life she thought she would live. Sure, at a time in her life she expected to always travel the stars with her ancient companion, but in realizing that that life was no longer possible, she convinced herself that what she really loved about that life wasn't the traveling, but the man himself. And she had him, but in some ways he was better. He could spent his life with her. He was the Doctor, but also so much more.
He went by Doctor John Noble-Smith. She was Mrs. John Noble-Smith to be.
But the 'to be' would never be fulfilled. Their history would never be written.
It was his name on that solitary grave stone. And that was what had truly broken Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth.
She choked back a sob and raised a clammy hand to wipe away her tears. "I-" She began, but couldn't find the words. "I can't believe you're here." It had been a month since his death, and the beginning of her darkest days.
The name etched into the white marble stone stared back at her, incapable of responding.
"I mean, you were always so alive. And good and strong and perfect." The last word broke a dam she had been suppressing, and fresh tears streamed down her face. "You weren't him, but that was okay. It was always okay because you were you. We defended the earth, made our own stories for people to tell. And I loved you." She looked up at the church and bit her bottom lip, fighting to control herself.
"And you loved me. And you told me, in all the ways he couldn't. You lead a life with me. You taught me-" She looked at his name, as if it would conjure him up and she would be able to tell him in person. "You taught me that life here, with you and with a house and a mortgage could be an adventure if you just chose to make it one."
Her mind flashed to an image of him, standing before her, holding a bouquet of yellow and pink roses, that classic grin nearly splitting his face in two. "Rose Tyler, I have a surprise for you."
"What?" She asked, her voice lilting in a gentle laugh.
He waggled his eyebrows and shook his head. "It's a surprise."
Rose rolled her gentle brown eyes. "Doctor, really, what is it?"
The Doctor gave Rose her flowers. "Here."
The woman looked down at her namesake flora, and grinned up at him. "Giving me pink and yellow roses, real original. But really sweet." She added, taking a step forward and pecking him softly on the lips. He leaned down and deepened the contact, but then reluctantly pulled away.
His brown eyes smoldered briefly, but then transitioned to a more chaste expression, and he grinned again.
"Look at what's holding the roses together."
Rose was reluctant to do so, since kissing the Doctor was a very nice activity indeed, but decided to go along with his game. Her eyes rested to the rubber band holding the stems but then shot to the object dangling from them.
"Are those… house keys?"
A bitter smile broke over Rose's mouth. "I still can't believe you made us leave the mansion and move house without asking me."
If he were here, he would have laughed sheepishly at her comment and pull her in for a kiss just to make her less angry.
She really felt like her heart was about to rip into two, sitting in the grey cemetery- if one could call it that. The Doctor had been buried alongside the church the pair had chosen for their wedding, just two weeks before he was prematurely taken from her. If his life couldn't begin in that building, at least he could spend eternity resting beside it.
A zeppelin roared overhead, interrupting the sounds of nature and Rose's lonely monologue. She looked up overhead and brought her eyebrows together in anger. Her eyes ablaze, almost literally, with her turbulent emotions, Rose returned her focus to the grave.
"It was your fault for dying, you know. Always thinkin' you were stronger than everybody else, always overestimating your abilities. But you were human, good and proper. One heart, one life, and one death." Her tears were hot now, and her words felt thick and full of venom, and so she spat them out at the grave, in fear that holding them back would poison her. "What the hell did you think would happen, going on that mission for Torchwood? Three units had been sent out, and none of them had returned. I told you to stay. Everyone told you to stay. But you went out alone. You wouldn't even take me, even though I told you I was never gonna leave you. And you left ME!" She screamed the last word, bending over and throwing her fists to the ground and beating them, her sobs loud as they racked her chest. Rose felt as though she were her younger self again, back when she was almost pulled through the void, pounding on the white wall keeping her from the real Doctor. Now, instead of a wall and the universe, the ground and a grave separated them. This new distance seemed worse, more heartbreaking and impossible.
"You left me here with nothin'. You let yourself be killed to stop them. But it didn't have to be you, it was never supposed to be you." Rose, at the back of her mind, was aware of the double-entendre of her words, but ignored it because of how ridiculous the idea was. "I was supposed to have a forever with you. Our forever. Growing old and having kids and a life." Her words were quiet, muffled by the ground. Around her, the wind picked up speed, casting a chill through her frail figure.
"Doctor." She said the name, the word tumbling out of her mouth like a silent prayer. "Come back."
But he could not answer her.
"I said come back! Come back!" She drew herself up and threw grass towards his final resting place. "It isn't fair! Why were you the one who had to die? I wish it were me." She breathed out the last sentence as if it were a confession. Swallowing, Rose said thickly. "I wish I were dead."
Once more, she looked at the impressive white marble headstone before her. Doctor John Noble-Smith.
His epitaph contained just four short words. The Stuff of Legend
Rose swallowed her last sob she would cry that day. Her bones creaking from the uncomfortable position she had held for so long, she got up and dusted the pieces of grass off of her wet trousers.
"Someday."
She wished that day would come soon.
The Doctor, the proper one, the one in the universe he properly belonged to –or, he thought he belonged to, but he was always moving around, and he was good and properly old, so maybe he didn't belong to this universe-maybe he belonged to one with bananas and no apples and lots and lots of bowties and fezzes and also lots of duck ponds with good and proper ducks swimming in said ponds and quacking like ducks in a duck pond should quack, which, he guessed, is probably very heartily, if quacks can be hearty-he would have to figure that out, because really he didn't have the slightest of a clue, and that was rare for him, and frankly he wasn't too fond of the feeling- was dancing around the console, laughing giddly, ignoring the sparks flying from the two loose large wires in the TARDIS's underbelly.
"Right, Sexy old Gal, if I'm right, and I probably am because I'm most right about most everything most of the time on most of my adventures-hmm… that was a lot of 'mosts'.. most, most, most-IF I am right about it, then I should be able to hop across the universes without ripping a hold in time and space, without causing any paradoxes, and without creating any sort of chaos whatsoever. Ask me why, Sexy. Go on." The Doctor flicked his fringe of light brown hair back and fixed his bowtie pompously. A small hum came from his machine.
"Because of Big Bang 2.0. Because I am a genius, and because I am an Impossible Man who does impossible things and makes them possible. SO!" He brought one lever down and then back up, hit a few buttons, spun around, and grasped his console as if his lives depended on it.
"Geronimo!"
But what the Doctor didn't realize, as he catapulted through the Vortex, the first laugh in a long while accompanying the whorp-whorp of the TARDIS's engines, was how wrong he was. But one mustn't blame the Doctor for this, because he is rarely wrong. There was one thing that would be impossible to do on his journey, and it would destroy him.
This was the beginning of the end for the Doctor.
…. Sorry? I hope you all enjoyed it, though. While writing this, I was sort of reminded of the first chapter, so I hope that isn't… bad. Happy 2013, by the way! Do you have any resolutions? I have an idea if you don't, and it's easy to uphold… review review review! (how about, like, five maybe to get an update?) And follow! Reviews make me happy, and a happy writer means lots of updates- though I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to in the next few weeks (schools, research papers, midterms, typical excuses, blah blah blah)
Anyway, happy weekend everyone- stay awesome!