"Don't tell me you've never thought about it."

"About what?"

"Running away, Rose. Just…running."

Rose turned the words over in her mind. Over and over again.

Of course she had. She lived a mundane life, with her mundane mother, her mundane job, her mundane…everything. The shades of pink that screamed from her walls and bedspread met her eyes like a dull gray and the London air never felt cool enough or hot enough, no matter what the weather forecast. It was all lukewarm.

She craved it. The thought of some magnificent no one taking her by the hand and whisking her away to the furthest corner of the universe. But he never came.

She slowly folded the blouses as Donna rambled. Ms. Noble was a few years older than Rose, but sometime she acted like she was twelve. Rose was beyond her years, so they made an interesting pair. Donna would come in to the store just to smile at Rose and talk about ridiculous things. She would usually buy something small like piece of jewelry just to make certain Rose wouldn't get fired for dilly-dallying on the job. But, in all honesty, Rose wouldn't really have minded.

It was all getting to be too much. There was no light at the end of the tunnel because she'd never entered the tunnel in the first place. And maybe that was supposed to be comforting—that she never had to stress because she'd never left the nest. But it wasn't. She wasn't going to college or working her way up the career ladder. She was just…there. Stagnant.

She felt like crying.

Rose turned her head up and grinned at Donna. "Nope! I like it where I am. Nowhere else I'd rather be!"

Donna huffed. "Bloody boring, you are." Rose turned her head back down to the blouses and smirked to herself, although she felt a tear at the inner corner of her eye. Donna could afford to live in her fantasies. Somehow, she was blissfully unaware of how much she really was missing. How much they both were missing…

There were days when she wondered if they weren't really dreams. Those nights when she'd wake up in a cold sweat, overwhelmed because in her sleep some blasted eccentric bastard in a blue suit with really nice hair had pulled her from the crosshairs of a frightening otherworldly creature just in the nick of time. Those nights when she'd wake up, somehow expecting the walls to be blue or steel, not pink or purple. It all felt wrong, like something key had been torn from the core of her…like someone had tried to cut out something important and forgot to use the anesthesia.

And she'd get out of bed before the alarm went off. She'd make the tea and swallow it down before it cooled just to feel it burn her throat. She'd smile at her mother and quip about something ridiculous she'd heard on the telly or some new diet she wanted to try out. She'd take her shower and get dressed. She'd drive to work. And all the while, she'd let herself feel catatonic unless she knew somebody was watching.

Deep down, she could feel the emptiness. A hollowness so wide she sometimes expected to hear its echo when she thrummed her fingers against her chest. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three…four.

"Rose Tyler!"

Rose whipped around from where she was standing in the middle of Henrik's. She must've looked ridiculous, staring off into space, rolling her fingers against her chest.

"Yeah?" The coworker gave her some quick instructions, asked her to take the lottery money downstairs to the boss. More mundane work.

She strode to the elevator. As she rode down, something akin to déjà vu sent a shiver down her spine—both in the frightening and exciting way.

The door "ding"-ed open and she stared out cautiously. She didn't want to leave the elevator. Not because of what she was afraid she'd find, but what she was afraid wouldn't be there. But what would (or wouldn't) be in the basement of Henrik's?

Rose carefully stepped out, looking left and right. No sign of anything nefarious, she joked to herself. It was the first honestly snarky thought she'd had in a long while.

Taking quick steps towards her boss's door, she stopped midway and looked on either side of her. Mannequins. She wrinkled her brow. Yeah, I work in a Henrik's. Of course there are bloody mannequins. For some reason, it didn't sit right with her. She poked one. No response. Why should there be? A mannequin is inanimate, you git! Rose smiled to herself. Just like her to argue with her own mind.

Turning away, she walked to her boss's door and knocked.

"Run."

Rose threw the covers off and heaved for breath. This time, she swore she could feel his hand. Smell the leather of his jacket. See the blue of his eyes. She hardly ever dreamt of this man; it was usually the one in the pinstriped suit. But tonight the clarity of the dream, the vividness made her wonder if she'd been dreaming before or was dreaming now…the world she awoke to felt too gray to be life, too blurred to be reality.

And she was right. It wasn't.