sixwordstories | (no subject)

She fell...

She fell.

She fell.

She fell.

She...

He prized his fingers from the clamp. He blinked, and found himself in front of the wall. Didn't remember walking there. Didn't remember pressing his hand against it. He could feel her, the last traces of her existence bleeding through the closing crack in reality, the faintest particles of life and Rose, wasted on a cold white wall.

He pressed his forehead against it, searching with his mind for traces of gold.

And then the crack sealed.

No, no, no, no, no. It can't be. It can't end like this. The Doctor and Rose, it's not...it can't...it can't! It's just a stupid wall. It's just a wall, it's just a wall and that...can't be.

She's not aware of the sobs that break up her words, nor the stinging in her palm from the plaster of that horrible wall, she can't be, because it's closing, it's sealing up forever, and if she can't claw her way back, if the Doctor can't work a last minute miracle, they'll be trapped at the same wall, at the same spot, an endless, unchanging, unyielding universe apart.

She's dimly aware of the alternate universe's Pete speaking. "It's stopped working." No, no it can't. It can't have. "He closed the breach."

No.

No. It isn't right. Because she knows this room, she's been in this room, she remembers walking in, this is almost the exact spot he'd walked up to earlier, not five minutes ago they were...it isn't. It can't be closed.

If she could just...if she could just...if it would just open up just for a moment just one last time, just long enough for her to bleed through again...it's just...it's not...

It isn't fair.

For a few moments, just a few, she thinks she can feel his warmth against the wall if she concentrates hard enough. If she falls quiet and listens, she can almost hear his breathing. If she could just press up close enough and wish hard enough...

She can't.

Nothing. There was nothing left. Any hovering traces of her disappeared, every physical aspect of her existence in this point and time is eradicated. Gone. In this moment, on this day, in this universe, there is no Rose Tyler. Rose Tyler does not exist here. It takes him a moment to fathom that, because in the last few years, she's never left his side. The Doctor and Rose. Moreso than any other companion, she'd been present, a fixed aspect in his life that he'd taken for granted would always be.

He should've learned this lesson, by now, but a part of him thought she'd be different. His Rose, who survived ingesting the heart of the TARDIS with nigh a scratch and sigh, who saw all of that power and let it go at his quiet suggestion.

She was gone.

"No."

No, no, no, no, nonononononononono, a thousand million times no. He slapped his hand against the wall twice, five times, six times, ten times, screaming at it, begging it. He was always relatively off-kilter, never quite stable, but with her he managed to keep his wits.

Not now.

"No, please, you can't, you can't, I've only just-"

The wall didn't care. The universe didn't care. Existence, reality, everything and every one and every fibre of the universe didn't care.

Well, he would make them care. Sod it, sod all of them, to hell with it all. The Time War, the world, none of it mattered without--

He pushed away from the wall, shoved himself to the TARDIS.

Gone.

Gone.

He's gone. It's all...everything's...she's trapped here and he's trapped there and the walls are sealed up tight, and there's no amount of wishing and screaming and begging that will change it. There's just...there's just an empty wall with a run of paint that shouldn't be there. No Doctor, no TARDIS, no adventures, no forever, no hand to hold.

She wants to stay here, she wants to deny the zeppelins circling outside the window behind her, blue for white, this entire reality just to see him again. She'd do it. She'd give it all up in a heartbeat if it meant she could go back.

She can't.

There's nothing left of him. No warmth, no sound, no faint impressions of the world she belongs in left against the wall. No hope.

She can't ignore the people in the room with her forever. She can't just stand and wait until they leave, she can't defy an entire universe just by willing it not to be. That's not how things work, she knows that. She can't just stop, even if she'd rather, she can't.

She can't go back. She can't stop. There's nowhere else to go but forward, empty and stumbling, to a world full of Zeppelins and mysteries and family and friends.

To a world without the only thing she wants.

Time passes. He's not sure how much of it, for him or for her, he's not sure about the troubles in the rest of the universe, he doesn't check back on Earth, he doesn't run or save anybody.

He doesn't cry. He doesn't sob. He doesn't scream or shout or run.

He just... works. Constantly. His jacket is shed, his sleeves are pushed up. He's covered in smudges of black, and bits of soot from something catching fire. He sliced open his hand twice, his arms three times, and his cheek once. Didn't matter.

He didn't stop.

The TARDIS said nothing. No opinion, no input, no stopping him or encouraging him, just hummed silently in the back of his mind.

He sent his voice across universes.

Rose

Powered by a burning star, he called for her, directed her, told her where to go. He hoped she would listen. She always had.

It's two months she can't really remember. Her mum and Pete quietly get married, her mum ends up pregnant. She finds herself on Torchwood's doorstep, because there's nothing else. She can't hide in bed and she can't just pretend this is her universe and she shouldn't be with the Doctor right now.

It's two months before the dream wakes her in the middle of the street, a dream too vivid to be one of her own, a dream of the Doctor calling her. Her mother, her father and Mickey all listen and believe, and they set out that night to follow the dream.

Because he's calling. Across universes and the vastness of the impossible, the Doctor is calling her.

It's another month of travel, crossing England, crossing the water, following blindly after that whispering, before they find themselves on a beach outside of Bergin.

It's the perfect place to find the Doctor again.

It's Bad Wolf Bay.

At first, there was nothing. Just cold and wet, the blowing wind and sand and salt, an endless beach. Absolutely nothing.

And there he was. Without a bang or a whisper, without a flicker, without anything, he was just... there. Standing on the beach, his clothes whipping gently in the wind. Still smudged and dirty, sleeves pushed up, jacket-less, with a cut on his cheek and his arms.

"Rose."

She stops only because the calling does. It could mean there's nothing. It could mean she's completely mad and chasing fantasies, or that there's one last whisper of him that had slowly faded away. It could. She trusts him enough to stand on windy, empty beach in Norway and wait.

She trusts him enough that when his voice cuts through the wind she isn't surprised. When she turns to see him, smudged and dirty and bleeding and real, it's so overwhelming she can't even think to run to him or to...say anything. It's not a surprise, but it's still overwhelming to see him again after three months of a universe without him.

The wind whips at her hair as she stares at him, and a part of her mind wonders if this is just a dream, or if she's managed to imagine an image of him just to make herself feel better.

Maybe it's a telepathic image, just like the voice that's been calling her all this time. "Are you...?"

The last traces of the universe are fading around him in a soft goodbye, and as time progresses, he's rooted more solidly there, with his shoes wet. He feels cold, even though he's got a superior physiology and he's able to withstand temperatures that make this feel like Florida in July, he still feels cold.

He can feel the TARDIS in his mind.

Barely.

He looks at her, though, really, really looks at her. A part of him acknowledges her family, parked a hundred yards away, but he doesn't spare them a glance, because his eyes are all for her.

"Yes." It comes with one short nod.

She doesn't know how, she doesn't really know why. He's there, he's found a way through after all. Those three months of waiting and forging onward are worth it to know he's made it through after all.

For a few moments she just stares, still waiting for him to flicker and fade away like an after image against the back of her eyelids. He doesn't. He nods, and he must be real.

She still doesn't run, she just...walks, as if moving too quickly will disturb the moment or banish him again. She reaches out as she crosses the distance, and places the palm of her hand against his cheek. "You're...really..."

Like the waves crashing in the distance, as reality sets in she surges forward and wraps her arms around him.

He's afraid, for a moment, that he's made a mistake. That he's read their whole relationship wrong, that she wasn't... that she didn't... that she'd prefer the TARDIS to him on this beach, right now.

And then she touches him, and he looks.... broken. And then she hugs him, and his arms wrap around her, holding her tight against his chest, just feeling her there, so real and solid, existing, fragile and human but determinedly, pointedly existing despite the intent of the universe.

Maybe this universe is more kind. He hopes so. It's his now.

"I am." He buries his face into her shoulder a second. Lets a long time tick by, before he pulls away. "Rose."

How does he tell her what he's given up? What he's signed them up for.

"There's no going back."

River stood there quietly for a moment, trying not to let the other woman's outburst get to her. "I'm sorry, sweetie. There's no going back."

It doesn't even matter who the woman is or what she's saying. There can't be no going back. This can't be it. It can't! "No!"

River's not even entirely sure where she is. She'd been running, running to stop ~~pretty boy~~ the Doctor from hooking himself up to the Library's computer; she couldn't let him be lost....

Only now she was lost. A strange crack of light had surrounded her, pulled her in, and it was only after she opened her eyes and relived the memory that she realized she'd seen that crack of light before.

But first, the younger woman - practically a girl, really - and her crying. She takes a tentative step closer, her footstep echoing loudly on the floor as a result of the protective spacegear she still wore. Okay, too noisy, not a good idea. "Calm down, love, you're...not going to make it any better by crying."

Hush, hush.

It's a dream, Rosie, you're okay now.