Inexorable
1/1
Once upon a time, there was clarity in chaos. Certain truths held strong in the faces of impossibilities. Even in the furthest reaches of imagination there was a cemented reality; her hand in his. Then came the private storm, silently burning her into the confines of eternity.
__________________________________
The only thing she knows now is the inexorability of time. Forwards, backwards, never ending, faster or slower but never ceasing in its flow.
__________________________________
Down, down, down the rabbit hole she goes, twisting and turning through nothing and everything, the winds of time blowing her in every direction. She is unsure that it will ever end, but she lands with a hard crash into pavement. She is able to fling herself over and alleyway trashcan as she dry heaves into thrown away takeout. Pushing herself up, she only collapses again. She pants, her labored breath an omen in the still night.
__________________________________
The first trip takes her where she wants to go. Backwards, she knows instantly where she has been dropped. The familiar streets cracked by a supposed ‘earthquake’. She walks quietly through the chaos of strangers, bright medical vests creeping into her vision. She walks past victims of natural disaster and turns the corner. A familiar blue creeps into sight. And just like that, she knows. It took her where she wanted to go.
Not when.
__________________________________
One pill makes you larger / And one pill makes you small…
The words twist through the humid night air as she stares at the bottle on her dresser. Her eyes wander to her reflection (tangled hair, sunken eyes, pale skin), then back to the bottle. She picks them up, pouring a handful into her tired hands, and stares. Small, white, oblivion if she so chooses. She puts them back in and screws the lid on the bottle, throwing it into a forgotten draw. She has chosen her own oblivion.
__________________________________
“How do you define time?” she asks him one day, straddling his hips on the familiar grated floor.
“You can’t,” he says after a moment looking past her wistfully, “it just is.”
She doesn’t question him, but finds herself more confused than when she first posed the query. She leans down and kisses away his distant eyes, snapping him back to the reality of this moment.
__________________________________
She finds herself pulled into reality mid-fall. She doesn’t spare thought for where she’s fallen from or where’s she’s going to. The only thing she thinks about is that hand, his hand, interlocking with hers. That truth, that simple truth, but is it so simple anymore? She does not fall far, she finds, only a few feet. She hears speech a few yards away, an unmistakable voice.
“I believe in her!”
She disappears before she can process the words and later, as she drifts off on her apartment floor, she will wonder if this particular jump even happened at all.
__________________________________
She stumbles into a stark white room and for once she ends the jump herself. Pressing the button, she disappears from the one place she never wanted to see again.
__________________________________
When he takes her hand on that pre-historic planet and she promises forever, she realizes that in all of the impossibilities of her life, this is all she knows for sure. Her hand in his is the only concrete thing in the universe, and oddly enough, this suits her just fine.
__________________________________
It has been a particularly hairy adventure, even by their standards, and she is frantically running around the controls of the ship. She spares a glance at the unconscious Time Lord sprawled against the doors and bites her lip. The TARDIS is giving her mental shoves and directing her around the controls as best she can. Finally, when she hears the familiar whirring that signals dematerialization, she slumps into the jumpseat. She doesn’t want to know how close the TARDIS was to the molten lava angry citizens were about to dump them in. A half an hour later, he regains consciousness and whirls his head around to find her. He spots her looking half murderous and he gives her a sheepish smile.
“You’re going to teach me your language and how to fly the TARDIS, starting tomorrow.”
He smiles bashfully at her, knowing this is probably a good idea. As he pushes himself off the floor, he wonders if he should mention her singed hair.
__________________________________
She watches her own self twirling through paved streets in a familiar moment, and she knows. His answer was right, but incomplete. There is no way to define time, other than to let it show you. But there is a world to couple it with, an unfailing characteristic that is as much a definition as you can get.
Inexorable.
She watches herself enter Henrik’s and wonders for the first time, if perhaps she should stop herself.
__________________________________
It is only her second time, after Mickey demanding she wait a week to make sure there were no lasting effects on her health, she is practically bouncing with anticipation. As she fades away from one reality and into another, a strong jaw clenches and wonders if he should stop this before it starts.
__________________________________
The first time she is pitched into a universe besides the two she knows, she does not know. When she looks up, she does not recognize her surroundings, an whispers a small thanks to whatever power maybe brought her to the right place. She walks, she has no idea where to go, so she simply puts one foot in front of the other. She is stopped soon, however, by a flash of brown sweeping her of her feet. It takes her a few dizzying seconds to compose herself, but she soon returns the bone-crushing hug and wonders how she ever lived without it. Her name is tumbling off familiar lips over and over again and she finds herself unable to speak, so she pulls him closer. Finally, finally she is home. She pulls back to crash her lips against his, this impossible moment giving her the courage she never had before. And her entire body goes limp.
“Rose? What is it? What’s wrong?”
The blue eyes she stares radiate worry as the tears start streaming down her face. Blue. Not brown.
“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling out of his vicegrip and pressing the familiar button, “You’ll find me soon.”
__________________________________
She finishes a chapter in the book she has been reading aloud and looks over at the figure curled up next to her. Sleep eases the lines out of his features and she smiles at how boyish he looks. She brushes a piece of stray hair away from his forehead and closes the book. The TARDIS hums thankfully at her, they both know he has been unable to sleep lately, plagued by nightmares that have not come to him since his regeneration. She smiles again and stands up, dropping a kiss on his forehead before heading to the kitchen for a cup of tea.
__________________________________
She braves face as Torchwood bleeds into reality, pretends there aren’t tear tracks on her face or a quiver in her lip. She moves immediately past the concerned faces of her not-dad and best friend, out of the room and down to her office. She sits at her computer and types up the report of this encounter like she would any other; it is all she can do to keep herself composed.
__________________________________
Sometimes, the universe is kind and dumps her on different planets altogether, she knows instantly that she will not find him. She sees intergalactic rebellions and revolutions, weddings and funerals, everyday life and adventures. Sometimes, the universe is not so kind and dumps her on different planets altogether, reminding her quite painfully of what her life used to be.
__________________________________
She is more careful after that. Now she checks every Doctor she meets. And oh, she meets so many. She loses count somewhere after 20. There are Doctor’s who have never known her, there are Doctors that mourn her still, there are Doctors who have her still. One Doctor in particular stands out among the other parallels. The year is 1913 and a Doctor (not hers, never hers) has married a version of her (oddly enough named Lily) and he is actually a doctor. She finds out that they are in Dubai, and that Dr. John Smith has been away from Lily Tyler quite some time to treat an epidemic. She witnesses their reunion in the train station and she can’t help but smile, despite the deep ache in her soul that she feels. Every day, the belief that she will get her reunion seems smaller, and every parallel world she steps into confuses her reality more and more. Still, she likes that at least one version of her gets her happy ending.
__________________________________
No one ever sees her apartment, for she thinks they might shut her down if they do. Papers are scattered everywhere, some English, some not. The English ones are usually professional. Time stamps of materializations and information on jumps. They are what a rational mind should see. But the others, in a circular writing only two people in the universe understand, are personal notes. On the nights which she does not sleep, but feels the bone-deep exhaustion swims through her mind, she often writes in this language. If anyone could begin to understand this language, they would realize that there is a word repeated all throughout these notes.
Home.
__________________________________
Somewhen, a phone rings inside the TARDIS. A new man in suspenders and a bowtie picks up the phone given to him by his fiery-haired assistant.
“Doctor! Doctor, it’s Jack. I’ve got fantastic news, Rose is back! Doctor she found her way back to this universe, turns out you didn’t seal the breech as well as you thought at Canary Warf.”
The same redhead looks at the Doctor, not quite understanding where the sudden pain in his eyes has come from. She has to hold back her gasp as she can clearly see, for the first time since meeting him, each one of those 907 years in his eyes.
“I know, Jack, I know,” he tells the phone in a broken whisper, and hangs up.
__________________________________
In the beginning, she imagines that the alternate realities were hers. She quickly learns not to.
“That way madness lies,” she had whispered to an empty room.
Now, she reminds herself before jumps that it is not her world. She feels as though this is just a regular day of fieldwork. She can feel that infallible truth slipping from her grasp, just as she cannot quite remember what her hand feels like incased in his. Her hands have been cold for quite a while, so has her heart.
__________________________________
There is no beginning, middle, or end. It is not a straight line, it is not any shape. It is indefinable. Time is inexorable and she wonders when hers will run out.
__________________________________
She has twisted her way through enough of time and pace to ignore the biting disappointment when it’s not quite right, she expects it now. In the midst of a jump, she forgets why she is standing in front of a Tesco’s at twenty to midnight. She walks in and wanders through the isles picking up food like a normal grocery run. She gets to the meat section before she realizes. She is strangely calm as she gathers the rest of her items, eyes now scanning the store, and wonders if maybe she isn’t remembering, but forgetting. As she sees a flash black leather, and a moment later a mass of blond curls following, she sits hollowly staring at the spot. She doesn’t move until a security guard tells her it is closing time in no friendly manner. She pays for her items and walks out, wondering if she’s gone insane. Perhaps this is all a dream, maybe she’ll wake up any minute now and it will be 7:30, time to get reading for another day at work. She hears a familiar whirring in the distance and realizes the weight of the button dangling around her neck. She presses it absently, like fiddling with a charm on her necklace, and reappears in Torchwood, bag in her hand, still staring at an empty parking lot.
__________________________________
Mickey is the one to first suggest that they shut it down. It is after she comes back, covered in green slime and just shakes her head absently, brushing past him and the rest of the operatives. When he brings his concerns to her, he sees her display emotion for the first time in months. He might consider this progress if it hadn’t involved a lamp smashing centimeters from his head. He leaves it for now.
__________________________________
She is dumped out in front of a familiar sign. Giant lettering stares at her as she pieces together that she has landed in Cardiff again. She has barely steadied herself when she hears a familiar American accent.
“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again.”
She turns sharply on her feet and takes in the familiar face. He is back to wearing his Word War II getup and she stays silent, unaware of what she can say. If there’s one thing she’s used to, it’s making sure she doesn’t mess up the timelines.
“Don’t worry, you can talk to me, I already know the story,” he continues.
She stares at him for a while longer.
“Rosie,” he says hesitantly, “Say something, you’re making me nervous.”
“Hi, Jack,” she manages to croak out.
And then she is being swept into her arms, all thought of preserving timelines shattered as she melts into his embrace. She stays like that a moment, before uncurling her arms from around him.
“I’m sorry, Jack, I’m so sorry, but I have to go,”
She reaches down to her chest, and presses the button, watching his distraught face with teary eyes as she fades out of that world.
__________________________________
When she finds Donna Noble, that little bit of success is shadowed by horror rushing through her veins. The Doctor is dead, her Doctor, he’s dead and gone and it takes all her strength not to collapse there and then. But she fights it back because this can’t be real. She has seen so many realities, a hundred thousand worlds, and she knows in this instant that this is one reality she refuses to except.
__________________________________
Later, so much later, she runs like she hasn’t run in all her life. This is it, finally. Reunion. Absolution. Catharsis. And then a ray of light shatters everything.
__________________________________
It is later, so much later, when everything catches up with her. After all is won and all is lost, after the bruising kisses and burning heat of skin on skin, tucked soundly into him, that she realizes. This isn’t it, this isn’t her reality. This isn’t her Doctor, it can’t be. She has let herself get carried away, like she had hugging the first parallel Doctor, such a long time ago. She thinks of Dr. John Smith and Lily Tyler, she thinks of Jack and Cardiff, she thinks of so many places and times she’s gone and she thinks of the way her hand is incased in his at this very moment. She doesn’t remember her simple truth. All she knows is that time is inexorable. She plants a kiss on his forehead, making sure to keep her crying silent as she carefully extracts herself from his grip, avoiding a goodbye she does not want to face and puts on her clothes. She fiddles with the button in her hands, and puts it around her neck, sneaking one last look at her angel. His sleeping form stretches, feels for her warmth next to his. The sleepy smile immediate falls and eyes snap open.
“No! Rose!”
“I’m sorry,” she sobs, “You’re not my Doctor.”
And then she is gone. She finds herself back in Torchwood facing a shocked Peter Tyler. The button around her neck sparks and sputters and she rips it off to avoid being burned.
__________________________________
“Rose,” her not-dad stares at her, horrified, “What have you done?”
__________________________________
The only thing she knows now is the inexorability of time. Forwards, backwards, never ending, faster or slower but never ceasing in its flow.
__________________________________
Down, down, down the rabbit hole she goes, twisting and turning through nothing and everything, the winds of time blowing her in every direction. She is unsure that it will ever end, but she lands with a hard crash into pavement. She is able to fling herself over and alleyway trashcan as she dry heaves into thrown away takeout. Pushing herself up, she only collapses again. She pants, her labored breath an omen in the still night.
__________________________________
The first trip takes her where she wants to go. Backwards, she knows instantly where she has been dropped. The familiar streets cracked by a supposed ‘earthquake’. She walks quietly through the chaos of strangers, bright medical vests creeping into her vision. She walks past victims of natural disaster and turns the corner. A familiar blue creeps into sight. And just like that, she knows. It took her where she wanted to go.
Not when.
__________________________________
One pill makes you larger / And one pill makes you small…
The words twist through the humid night air as she stares at the bottle on her dresser. Her eyes wander to her reflection (tangled hair, sunken eyes, pale skin), then back to the bottle. She picks them up, pouring a handful into her tired hands, and stares. Small, white, oblivion if she so chooses. She puts them back in and screws the lid on the bottle, throwing it into a forgotten draw. She has chosen her own oblivion.
__________________________________
“How do you define time?” she asks him one day, straddling his hips on the familiar grated floor.
“You can’t,” he says after a moment looking past her wistfully, “it just is.”
She doesn’t question him, but finds herself more confused than when she first posed the query. She leans down and kisses away his distant eyes, snapping him back to the reality of this moment.
__________________________________
She finds herself pulled into reality mid-fall. She doesn’t spare thought for where she’s fallen from or where’s she’s going to. The only thing she thinks about is that hand, his hand, interlocking with hers. That truth, that simple truth, but is it so simple anymore? She does not fall far, she finds, only a few feet. She hears speech a few yards away, an unmistakable voice.
“I believe in her!”
She disappears before she can process the words and later, as she drifts off on her apartment floor, she will wonder if this particular jump even happened at all.
__________________________________
She stumbles into a stark white room and for once she ends the jump herself. Pressing the button, she disappears from the one place she never wanted to see again.
__________________________________
When he takes her hand on that pre-historic planet and she promises forever, she realizes that in all of the impossibilities of her life, this is all she knows for sure. Her hand in his is the only concrete thing in the universe, and oddly enough, this suits her just fine.
__________________________________
It has been a particularly hairy adventure, even by their standards, and she is frantically running around the controls of the ship. She spares a glance at the unconscious Time Lord sprawled against the doors and bites her lip. The TARDIS is giving her mental shoves and directing her around the controls as best she can. Finally, when she hears the familiar whirring that signals dematerialization, she slumps into the jumpseat. She doesn’t want to know how close the TARDIS was to the molten lava angry citizens were about to dump them in. A half an hour later, he regains consciousness and whirls his head around to find her. He spots her looking half murderous and he gives her a sheepish smile.
“You’re going to teach me your language and how to fly the TARDIS, starting tomorrow.”
He smiles bashfully at her, knowing this is probably a good idea. As he pushes himself off the floor, he wonders if he should mention her singed hair.
__________________________________
She watches her own self twirling through paved streets in a familiar moment, and she knows. His answer was right, but incomplete. There is no way to define time, other than to let it show you. But there is a world to couple it with, an unfailing characteristic that is as much a definition as you can get.
Inexorable.
She watches herself enter Henrik’s and wonders for the first time, if perhaps she should stop herself.
__________________________________
It is only her second time, after Mickey demanding she wait a week to make sure there were no lasting effects on her health, she is practically bouncing with anticipation. As she fades away from one reality and into another, a strong jaw clenches and wonders if he should stop this before it starts.
__________________________________
The first time she is pitched into a universe besides the two she knows, she does not know. When she looks up, she does not recognize her surroundings, an whispers a small thanks to whatever power maybe brought her to the right place. She walks, she has no idea where to go, so she simply puts one foot in front of the other. She is stopped soon, however, by a flash of brown sweeping her of her feet. It takes her a few dizzying seconds to compose herself, but she soon returns the bone-crushing hug and wonders how she ever lived without it. Her name is tumbling off familiar lips over and over again and she finds herself unable to speak, so she pulls him closer. Finally, finally she is home. She pulls back to crash her lips against his, this impossible moment giving her the courage she never had before. And her entire body goes limp.
“Rose? What is it? What’s wrong?”
The blue eyes she stares radiate worry as the tears start streaming down her face. Blue. Not brown.
“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling out of his vicegrip and pressing the familiar button, “You’ll find me soon.”
__________________________________
She finishes a chapter in the book she has been reading aloud and looks over at the figure curled up next to her. Sleep eases the lines out of his features and she smiles at how boyish he looks. She brushes a piece of stray hair away from his forehead and closes the book. The TARDIS hums thankfully at her, they both know he has been unable to sleep lately, plagued by nightmares that have not come to him since his regeneration. She smiles again and stands up, dropping a kiss on his forehead before heading to the kitchen for a cup of tea.
__________________________________
She braves face as Torchwood bleeds into reality, pretends there aren’t tear tracks on her face or a quiver in her lip. She moves immediately past the concerned faces of her not-dad and best friend, out of the room and down to her office. She sits at her computer and types up the report of this encounter like she would any other; it is all she can do to keep herself composed.
__________________________________
Sometimes, the universe is kind and dumps her on different planets altogether, she knows instantly that she will not find him. She sees intergalactic rebellions and revolutions, weddings and funerals, everyday life and adventures. Sometimes, the universe is not so kind and dumps her on different planets altogether, reminding her quite painfully of what her life used to be.
__________________________________
She is more careful after that. Now she checks every Doctor she meets. And oh, she meets so many. She loses count somewhere after 20. There are Doctor’s who have never known her, there are Doctors that mourn her still, there are Doctors who have her still. One Doctor in particular stands out among the other parallels. The year is 1913 and a Doctor (not hers, never hers) has married a version of her (oddly enough named Lily) and he is actually a doctor. She finds out that they are in Dubai, and that Dr. John Smith has been away from Lily Tyler quite some time to treat an epidemic. She witnesses their reunion in the train station and she can’t help but smile, despite the deep ache in her soul that she feels. Every day, the belief that she will get her reunion seems smaller, and every parallel world she steps into confuses her reality more and more. Still, she likes that at least one version of her gets her happy ending.
__________________________________
No one ever sees her apartment, for she thinks they might shut her down if they do. Papers are scattered everywhere, some English, some not. The English ones are usually professional. Time stamps of materializations and information on jumps. They are what a rational mind should see. But the others, in a circular writing only two people in the universe understand, are personal notes. On the nights which she does not sleep, but feels the bone-deep exhaustion swims through her mind, she often writes in this language. If anyone could begin to understand this language, they would realize that there is a word repeated all throughout these notes.
Home.
__________________________________
Somewhen, a phone rings inside the TARDIS. A new man in suspenders and a bowtie picks up the phone given to him by his fiery-haired assistant.
“Doctor! Doctor, it’s Jack. I’ve got fantastic news, Rose is back! Doctor she found her way back to this universe, turns out you didn’t seal the breech as well as you thought at Canary Warf.”
The same redhead looks at the Doctor, not quite understanding where the sudden pain in his eyes has come from. She has to hold back her gasp as she can clearly see, for the first time since meeting him, each one of those 907 years in his eyes.
“I know, Jack, I know,” he tells the phone in a broken whisper, and hangs up.
__________________________________
In the beginning, she imagines that the alternate realities were hers. She quickly learns not to.
“That way madness lies,” she had whispered to an empty room.
Now, she reminds herself before jumps that it is not her world. She feels as though this is just a regular day of fieldwork. She can feel that infallible truth slipping from her grasp, just as she cannot quite remember what her hand feels like incased in his. Her hands have been cold for quite a while, so has her heart.
__________________________________
There is no beginning, middle, or end. It is not a straight line, it is not any shape. It is indefinable. Time is inexorable and she wonders when hers will run out.
__________________________________
She has twisted her way through enough of time and pace to ignore the biting disappointment when it’s not quite right, she expects it now. In the midst of a jump, she forgets why she is standing in front of a Tesco’s at twenty to midnight. She walks in and wanders through the isles picking up food like a normal grocery run. She gets to the meat section before she realizes. She is strangely calm as she gathers the rest of her items, eyes now scanning the store, and wonders if maybe she isn’t remembering, but forgetting. As she sees a flash black leather, and a moment later a mass of blond curls following, she sits hollowly staring at the spot. She doesn’t move until a security guard tells her it is closing time in no friendly manner. She pays for her items and walks out, wondering if she’s gone insane. Perhaps this is all a dream, maybe she’ll wake up any minute now and it will be 7:30, time to get reading for another day at work. She hears a familiar whirring in the distance and realizes the weight of the button dangling around her neck. She presses it absently, like fiddling with a charm on her necklace, and reappears in Torchwood, bag in her hand, still staring at an empty parking lot.
__________________________________
Mickey is the one to first suggest that they shut it down. It is after she comes back, covered in green slime and just shakes her head absently, brushing past him and the rest of the operatives. When he brings his concerns to her, he sees her display emotion for the first time in months. He might consider this progress if it hadn’t involved a lamp smashing centimeters from his head. He leaves it for now.
__________________________________
She is dumped out in front of a familiar sign. Giant lettering stares at her as she pieces together that she has landed in Cardiff again. She has barely steadied herself when she hears a familiar American accent.
“Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again.”
She turns sharply on her feet and takes in the familiar face. He is back to wearing his Word War II getup and she stays silent, unaware of what she can say. If there’s one thing she’s used to, it’s making sure she doesn’t mess up the timelines.
“Don’t worry, you can talk to me, I already know the story,” he continues.
She stares at him for a while longer.
“Rosie,” he says hesitantly, “Say something, you’re making me nervous.”
“Hi, Jack,” she manages to croak out.
And then she is being swept into her arms, all thought of preserving timelines shattered as she melts into his embrace. She stays like that a moment, before uncurling her arms from around him.
“I’m sorry, Jack, I’m so sorry, but I have to go,”
She reaches down to her chest, and presses the button, watching his distraught face with teary eyes as she fades out of that world.
__________________________________
When she finds Donna Noble, that little bit of success is shadowed by horror rushing through her veins. The Doctor is dead, her Doctor, he’s dead and gone and it takes all her strength not to collapse there and then. But she fights it back because this can’t be real. She has seen so many realities, a hundred thousand worlds, and she knows in this instant that this is one reality she refuses to except.
__________________________________
Later, so much later, she runs like she hasn’t run in all her life. This is it, finally. Reunion. Absolution. Catharsis. And then a ray of light shatters everything.
__________________________________
It is later, so much later, when everything catches up with her. After all is won and all is lost, after the bruising kisses and burning heat of skin on skin, tucked soundly into him, that she realizes. This isn’t it, this isn’t her reality. This isn’t her Doctor, it can’t be. She has let herself get carried away, like she had hugging the first parallel Doctor, such a long time ago. She thinks of Dr. John Smith and Lily Tyler, she thinks of Jack and Cardiff, she thinks of so many places and times she’s gone and she thinks of the way her hand is incased in his at this very moment. She doesn’t remember her simple truth. All she knows is that time is inexorable. She plants a kiss on his forehead, making sure to keep her crying silent as she carefully extracts herself from his grip, avoiding a goodbye she does not want to face and puts on her clothes. She fiddles with the button in her hands, and puts it around her neck, sneaking one last look at her angel. His sleeping form stretches, feels for her warmth next to his. The sleepy smile immediate falls and eyes snap open.
“No! Rose!”
“I’m sorry,” she sobs, “You’re not my Doctor.”
And then she is gone. She finds herself back in Torchwood facing a shocked Peter Tyler. The button around her neck sparks and sputters and she rips it off to avoid being burned.
__________________________________
“Rose,” her not-dad stares at her, horrified, “What have you done?”
♠ ♠ ♠
Quite possibly the worst, yet longest thing I've ever written.