Rose Tyler, abandoned and in pain, closed the door to her bedroom and turned to look at herself in her mirror. She saw muddy brown eyes swimming in pools of tears. She vaguelly wondered what was holding the tears back. Then she blinked, and they cascaded down her cheeks.
Rose thought it would hurt the worst right after he disappeared, leaving her on that godforsaken beach in Norway a little over three weeks ago. She was wrong. She thought she'd cry the most right after he disappeared, and then would never stop. She was right on the first account, wrong on the second. The hurt sunk in much deeper, the pain ripping a gaping wound in her heart, one that throbbed painfully and would not let up. There was only pain, and the exhaustion that came with dealing with that pain. She didn't have the energy to cry.
Oh, wait. She took that back. There were the little things. Those stupid little things that reminded her of him, or the TARDIS, or something they had seen on one adventure or another. It could be as commonplace as seeing someone wear white trainers, or as comical as a child bouncing on a trampoline she could imagine having Cassandra's face, or as personal as seeing a man in a brown pinstripe suit kiss his wife, but each time brought her to tears. Sometimes heart-wrenching sobs. She took to wearing dark sunglasses, so no one would see her puffy red eyes. They just never seemed to go away...
And Rose could tell that her Mum didn't like it. Thought it was unhealthy, the way she didn't leave the house and would sulk in her room all day and night. Thought yes, she was grieving, but it's not as if he was really dead, and she had to move on, to try and get over with it and live her life, as the Doctor would've wanted. Mum wanted Rose to go see someone, a grief counselor, to help her "get over it."
What if she didn't want to get over it? If she didn't keep thinking about him all the time, wouldn't she forget him? That pain was a reminder, it was proof of what happened. That, and her dead mobile phone and cold TARDIS key. (The phone wouldn't work in this universe.) If that reminder went away, it would be like she was betraying him. She might start forgetting him, the little details, like what he sounded like with a Scottish accent, or how his shampoo smelled, and then the big things, like what he looked like when he smiled right at her, or how warm his hand was when it was intertwined with hers.
She swiped her hand under her eyes, harshly brushing away the tears. She didn't have to worry about ruining her makeup- she never wore any around her eyes anymore. It made a mess when she cried, and was the tell-tale sign to her family that she had been crying in the first place. That was the only sign, though, thank goodness. Other than that, they didn't know when she cried. She tried to hide it from them, so they would think she was moving on, and moving forward. She didn't sob anymore, or heave. She cried silently, the tears slipping quietly down her face.
She grabbed a pillow from her bed and clutched it to her, looking out her window through tear-blurred eyes. When her tears dried, and she felt numb and tired, she slowly laid down on her bed, as if it hurt to move quickly, and fell into a dreamless sleep.
Her mother checked in on her a little while later, and she saw the puffy eyes of her daughter, which had not been so puffy before she had gone to her room, and left to make an appointment with the grief counselor.
Rose Tyler, second-in-command at Torchwood Institute, looked herself over once more in her mirror before leaving for work. She shrugged on a navy blazer befitting the second-in-command of a respectable, extensive institute, and left her apartment. She had moved out of her parents' house just a month before. She got in her car, a spare of her Dad's, and drove to work. Normal day, normal life.
Three months since the Doctor left. Almost two months since she had been deemed fit for work at Torchwood. Twenty-seven days since she had been deemed "well on the road to recovery" and had been allowed to cut her three-days-a-week counselling sessions down to once a week. Yep, Rose Tyler was "all better" in the eyes of everyone around her. And she was.
Her counselor had helped her realize that it was normal for her to feel such pain and despair at the loss of the Doctor. He had helped her understand that the Doctor had made such an impression on her because she was still only nineteen, and at that age very impressionable, what with being just out of adolescence. Of course she would miss him after he left, like a child who had their old baby blanket folded up and put away. Completely normal. There was no need to fret about the loss anymore, she should merely remember with fondness her memories of him, memories that were like lovely daydreams and fantasies, memories that were to be left seperate from The Real World.
And that's exactly what they became. Fantastical fantasies, as if Rose had read them in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel, with the story told in her point of view. So Rose smiled when she thought of the Doctor, smiled when she thought of all their adventures together, and continued on with her life. She ate chips, worked, slept, and watched telly. Normal life.
And then it all changed.
Normal day, normal life, normal day at work. Well, as normal as you can get, working at Torchwood.
"Hang on, Janie, those need to be filed under 'armor', not 'weapons,'" Rose pointed out to a mousy brunette about her own age.
"Oh, I'm sorry Miss Tyler, I hadn't realized-" Janie replied, almost dropping the pieces of plate armor. It wouldn't matter much if she did, though; Rose knew they were indestructible.
"It's Rose."
"What?"
"Just Rose, not the whole "Miss Tyler" nine yards. Okay?" Rose smiled at Janie.
"Uh... Right, Miss Rose," Janie flashed a smile before bustling off. Rose quirked a smile and continued her daily roam around the building, seeing if anyone needed help. A moment later, an ear-splitting siren went off. Rose winced, then headed in the direction of the shouting. It took twenty minutes to sort the problem out, with the siren blaring the entire time, so that Rose had to lip-read to understand what anyone was saying. Apparently some tree-eating goop had broken out of its container, fallen onto a desk, and had promptly eaten through the wooden desk like acid. It was the goo that Rose had coined 'liquid termites.' She could hardly understand what anyone was saying, what with that stupid siren. She was sure she'd go deaf. Somehow she managed to sort it all out and get maintenence up there to take care of the rest, while she attempted to continue her walk. Finally Security turned the siren off, and Rose was able to hear again. Her hearing cleared just in time to hear someone curse as she was passing by a closet.
"-brilliant, another closet. Why must I always get these stupid closets?" A clatter. "Barely enough room to move, not to mention the dark and having to work my way to the door, which I don't even know the location nor direction of, I mean really, I know it shouldn't exactly appear right out front of Big Ben, but a normal streetcorner would be fine by me, yes sir-!"
"Hullo?" Rose called out. She knocked on the door. "Are you a'right in there?"
"What? Sorry- can't hear you. Hold on." Another clatter, and what sounded suspiciously like a dull thump.
Rose looked at the door in bewilderment. Her first thought was that someone had hired an eccentric maintenence man. She heard a crash.
"Look, you, what you doing in there?" A clang, then the sound of wood scraping against concrete.
"You know, you could open the door," the voice snapped. It sounded a bit strained, as if the owner of the voice was trying to push something heavy.
"Oh, right, sorry," Rose said sheepishly. She quickly opened the door, the person inside turned to face her, and she came face-to-face with the last person she had expected to see. Messy brown hair, deep brown eyes, brown pinstripe suit...
"Oh my god," Rose said softly. She took a step back, her eyes wide, her hands covering her mouth. "Oh my god," she said again.
The Doctor was also in shock, but recovered much more quickly. After all, he was the one who set the coordinates. He just didn't think the first person he would see would be, in fact, Rose. His hearts skipped a beat, and he grinned at her.
"Ro-"
"Oh no. Oh no no no no no." Oh god, she was going mad. She thought the counseling had worked. No, it did work. This was all in her head. Completely all in her mind. Bad brain. Bad bad bad brain. She would have to smack it later. Oh god. See? Thinking about smacking her own brain- that's called mad, Rose. So she really was going mad. Oh bugger.
"Rose?" The Doctor looked at her, his smile now confused, and reached out a hand. This was not exactly the greeting he had expected. Not that he had wanted to greet her this way either. He had wanted to park the Tardis someplace, like near a lamp post so it wouldn't seem that out of place, go to her house, ring the doorbell, force Jackie to keep her mouth shut and let him sneak upstairs, knock on the door to her room, and actually wait long enough for her to open it before he grabbed her, snogged the daylights out of her, and told her he loved her. Something like that. Not stepping out of a closet and trying to make it seem casual, that was for sure.
Rose dashed away the tears that had sprung at the corners of her eyes. Oh damn, she was going to mess up her makeup... Mascara running down her face making her look like a zombie was definitely a lovely sight for all the employees to see. But she couldn't help it, the waterworks were already starting.
"I'm sorry," she choked out, and ran. She sped into the elevator at the end of the hall, got in, and didn't even spare a backwards glance, scared to think she would still see the Doctor instead of the maintenence man. She breathed deeply, stopping her crying. She would go home, take a long, hot bath, and go to sleep. She was just tired, that's all. In the morning, she would be good as new.
The Doctor stared after her, baffled.
Sorry?
Author's Hype:
Just to clarify, Rose has been slightly influenced by her counselor into thinking that her adventures with the Doctor were just fantastical fairy tales. It makes them easier to deal with, and makes it easier for her to look back on without breaking down and crying. Of course, now she's going to have a rude awakening, and have to come to terms all over again that no, they weren't just exaggerated tales, everything happened, and all the pain that went with it. Her counselor obviously did not expect the man in her tales to come back- she had to tell him that he died so they wouldn't think she was even more insane.
Anyways, hoped you liked the first chapter. First Doctor Who fic, and I don't think I've made a complete botch of it. Just yet, anyways. And hopefully I never will.