Chapter Text
You fell in love with a storm.
Did you really think
you would get out
unscathed?
Storm Bringers. Your Soul is a River. – Nikita Gill.
14th of June 2010.
The world ends with a white wall.
It ends with a white wall on a dark, semi-abandoned tower. It ends with a malfunctioning lever, a yellow disk and a wrong universe. It ends with arms around her and a scream ringing in her ears.
The world ends with a white wall, a universe away from the one she loves.
Rose doesn’t know how long she stays there, curling against the wall as if it could open any second and let her through to the right universe. She doesn’t know how long it is or how much more she would have stayed there, not moving, her ear pressed against the plaster as if that would let her hear the Doctor. As if it was only a wall separating them and not two whole universes and the void in between. The only thing she knows is that by the time her mum coaches her away, night has fallen and her whole body is aching.
“Rose, sweetheart,” her mum says in a soft voice she hasn’t used since Rose was ten years old. “Come on up, it’s getting late.”
Rose stares at her, not blinking and barely breathing, for a few seconds. She’s been so numb to everything that the sight of her face is jarring.
“Mum?”
Jackie is crouching on the floor beside her. Her eyes are sad and pained but she offers a tired smile all the same. “Come on.” She wraps her hands around Rose’s wrists and gives her a gentle tug. “You need some sleep: it’s been a really long day. And a nice cuppa will do you good, you’ll see.”
Rose wants to snap at her because what will tea accomplish in this situation? When the Doctor’s... When she’s... The words die in her throat, filling her mouth with ash.
Jackie and tea always go hand in hand, since it’s the only thing her mum manages not to burn, and Rose knows it’s the only way Jackie can see to help her now. Yelling won’t get Rose anywhere. Not with her mum, not now. There’s nothing that Rose can do, yelling or not yelling. It’s not like she has access to a TARDIS so she can access its (her) heart and send herself home. Not this time.
No, she’s stuck. She has no TARDIS, no means, no Doctor. Rose has nothing.
“Where are we stayin’?” she asks, unlocking her limbs and letting her mum pull her up. Everything hurts from being curled up for so long and her head is killing her. “We don’t have any money.” Because Rose can’t be sure that their currencies are the same or that the ten quid she has in her pocket are worth anything in this universe.
Jackie gets her to her feet but doesn’t let go of her wrists. “Pete...” she hesitates at the name, half a word half a gasp. There’s something weird in her voice and in her face and Rose hates herself for not checking on how her mum is dealing with the whole Parallel Pete thing. “Pete’s takin’ us in,” she says with a nod towards the door. Rose hadn’t noticed Pete and Mickey still waiting by the entrance but there they are. “He has a flat not too far from here.”
“Millharbour,” Pete adds. “It’s a ten minute walk.”
Rose doesn’t think she can manage to make it out of the building, let alone a ten minute walk. She feels ready to crumble right then and there, but she can’t do that to her mum. So instead of breaking apart she takes a deep breath and steps back, escaping her mother’s grip. She’s so very, very tired that the only thing she wants to do is lose consciousness for a while so that maybe when she wakes up everything will stop looking like the worst of nightmares.
“’Kay,” she nods, trying to steel herself. It doesn’t work and she sounds as defeated as she feels. “Let’s go.”
The Torchwood in her universe had been light, neat and tidy. It was a clearly used base with dozens of soldiers and scientists coming and going. This Torchwood is dark and empty, abandoned. Papers and cables cover the whole room like a battle had taken part in this side, too. The foyer is dark and quiet, the only souls the two security guards by the doors who nod at them when they walk by.
Pete is not lying and his flat is a little more than ten minutes away. They walk through the streets still busy with people even though it’s late. The sky is clear, a plane blinking above them and the more persistent of stars twinkling in the sky despite the light pollution. Rose can smell street food and hear people talking.
It looks... normal. Everything looks the same. The sights, the sounds, the smells... it’s all the same. Like the TARDIS could materialize in the corner of the street any second, the Doctor bouncing out with a wide grin, hands in his pockets, and going: “What are you waiting for, Rose Tyler? It’s not like this is a time machine, you know? Time’s a-ticking!”
But there’s no familiar grinding and whooshing and no matter how hard she looks she can’t spot any blue boxes.
Pete takes them to a block of flats, although skyscraper would be a better name. There’s a concierge on the hall and he greets Pete with a smile which vanishes when he spots Jackie, Rose and Mickey. His eyes linger on Jackie and by how far up his forehead his eyebrows go it’s clear that he’s bursting with questions but he keeps them to himself.
“Have a nice night, Mr. Tyler,” he says instead of the dozens of things Rose knows he’s dying to ask.
“Thank you, Ralph.”
The foyer looks like the reception of a hotel instead of a block of flats and Rose catches her mother taking note of everything from the corner of her eye. Pete takes them to the lift and up and up they go, floor after floor scrolling in the small screen until with a «ding» they’re being let out on the forty second floor.
Pete’s flat is a bachelor’s flat: all white and black, big windows, sharp edges, minimalist design and modern everything. It doesn’t look very lived in, more like an hotel room than a home.
“What happened to the mansion?” Rose asks taking in the impersonal decor.
“You have a mansion?” cries her mother.
Mickey smirks at Rose and her lips twitch in response, the closest she can get at the moment.
“I sold it a few years ago,” the man says looking weary. “It brought... Let’s just say it didn’t remind me of happy times.”
Rose wants to kick herself in the face. Of course the mansion where dozens of people got murdered and his wife got kidnapped to be lobotomized and become a robot against her will doesn’t bring the best of memories.
“I’m sorry,” she tells him, hoping he will see it in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to bring it up.”
He nods at her in absolution and forces a smile. “Let me give you the tour.”
Pete’s duplex, while luxurious and clearly expensive, doesn’t have much. The kitchen and living room in an open floor plan on the bottom floor and two bedrooms with their respective bathrooms on the top floor. Only, Pete converted the second bedroom into a home office because no one would be using that room anyway. There are hardly any pictures and everything is far too tidy: it doesn’t look like somebody lives there.
Pete takes the couch in the office, leaving the bedroom for Rose and Jackie, and Mickey goes home. Rose is given a clean T-shirt to sleep in, too big on her but it’s not like Pete has women’s clothing lying around, and a toothbrush to vanish the taste of tears and battle from her mouth.
It’s when she’s curled under the covers trying to sleep that it hits her. Because there’s no usual humming of the TARDIS in the background. And while they have spent several nights outside the TARDIS before, their adventures taking them on overnight trips often enough, there’s something about this silence that feels final.
Once the breach collapses that’s it! You’ll never be able to see her again! You own mother!
Her mother rubs her back as she cries twisting unto herself and Rose wishes she could have taken the couch in the office instead. So she could be alone in her grief. Alone-er. She falls asleep with tears in her cheeks and her mother whispering reassurances in her ears.
15th of June 2010.
Things go wrong at breakfast almost immediately.
A full night of sleep has done Rose a lot of good. Her head still hurts, as it’s to be expected from a whole night of few sleep and lots of tears, but it’s not as bad as it was the night before. Things seem less bleak in the morning sun. After all, the Doctor has been known to misjudge the finality and fatality of situations before and Rose’s sure he’s looking for a way back to her right that moment. She’s never gonna leave him but he’s never gonna leave her either.
(At least not now that the Daleks and Cybermen have all gone and the danger has passed.)
“We need to talk about what we’re saying to the press before this gets out,” says Pete casually over tea and toast. “The concierge saw you yesterday and, while I trust Ralph, he’s not the only person on this building. I can’t keep you locked in for the rest of your lives so we’ll have to come up with some sort of cover story.”
Rose stares at him, the tea she was about to bring to her lips stopping mid-air. His words make a shiver of unease crawl up her spine. For the rest of your lives…
“What do you mean?” Jackie asks with a slight frown.
Pete looks down at his coffee and grimaces. “Jackie Tyler, the original Jackie Tyler-” The current Jackie Tyler scowls at the title. “-the one from this universe,” Pete corrects himself because he had lived with a Jackie Tyler for twenty years and knows how to spot a storm coming. “died over three years ago. We had a funeral and her name is on the memorial plaque at Battersea.” He pauses for a moment, his eyes haunted. “Jackie Tyler died. So Jackie Tyler can’t show up out of the blue as if nothing has happened.”
“Can’t I change my name?” she suggests. “Go back to Jackie Prentice or something?”
He chuckles and shakes his head as if she’s said something stupid and funny. “Your face is all over the internet next to mine, Jacks,” he says. “She was the wife of a billionaire, one of the richest women in all of Great Britain.”
Her eyes light up for a second, the thought of being ‘one of the richest women in all of Great Britain’ overriding all the other topics in the conversation. Rose would have snorted if the whole conversation hadn’t been slowly turning her veins to ice.
“Not now, Jacks,” he says cutting her off before she can get started. He’s definitely a man who married a Jackie Tyler. “The thing is, the moment anyone sees your face, especially if it’s by my side, there’s gonna be a big fallout.”
There’s a few seconds of silence while everybody thinks of the obvious solution but none of them can bring themselves to suggest it.
“I’m not letting you go,” he says curtly before Jackie and Rose can voice it. “Not again.”
I’m supposed to go? To another world and then it gets sealed off? Forever?
The memory, only a few hours old but with the sensation of having passed half a life-time ago, tears a gasp from her lips. She curls herself in her seat, watching the conversation happening in front of her like it’s a train wreck that she’s unable to stop.
“Alright, what then?” her Mum asks. “Cause I’m not being your lookalike mistress, I’m just telling ya.” And she wags a warning finger in his direction. “Do you have cloning in this universe? I’m not being a clone. I could be a twin. A long lost twin, like in the soap operas.”
Pete shoots her a classical ‘have you lost your mind?’ look. “I was thinking more on the lines of ‘you were severely traumatized and spent the past few years hiding from the spotlight and pretending to be dead seemed the way to go’.”
“Ah,” Jackie says and her face falls with disappointment. “I guess that could work, too. But what about Rose?”
“Well, she can be a close friend you made in that retirement place?”
“She’s my daughter!”
Pete scowls. “Well, she’s not mine! My Jackie and I didn’t have any kids and everybody on this planet knows that!”
“’Coz hidden children are so unheard of!” she sneers.
“Life is not a soap opera, Jacks!”
“Well, she’s my daughter and I’m not lying about it so shut it! I’m not leaving her!”
I made my choice a long time ago and I’m never gonna leave you.
Her teacup slips from her fingers, landing on the table with a loud clang but she can’t bring herself to mind. The noise stops her mother’s ranting and she and Pete both look at her as if just remembering she’s still in the room.
“What are you doin’?” she bits out.
Pete gives her a confused look. “We’re talking adjustment plans?”
“Why?” she asks and her voice sounds more desperate than what she’d intended.
“Because you’re going to need an identity in this universe. You can’t just go around like you don’t exist because that’s bound to cause lots of problems and if we can avoid it by giving you ID’s and backgrounds...”
ID’s and backgrounds. As if they’re staying. As if this will be permanent.
“But we’re not stayin’,” she says and looks to her mum with begging eyes, pleading her to understand, to back her up. “We can’t stay. The Doctor... The Doctor will come any time now and we’ll go back to our proper universe.”
Her Mum’s face falls. “Rose...”
“And how can you talk about stayin’ as if you’ve given up?” Rose feels like a volcano in the middle of an eruption. She can’t stop her words, she can only watch them come. “What about Bev and Cousin Mo? What about your friends? Are you so happy to leave them all behind for a mansion? Are you really that selfish?”
Jackie glares at her in the patented Jackie Tyler look that says Rose just crossed a line and twenty-one is not too old for a smack. Rose backs down gasping for air. Her eyes are burning with tears she refuses to shed and her chest is aching with sobs that try to escape.
“The Doctor is coming back,” she says in a small voice. “He’s coming for us.” He’s coming for me.
“Rose...” Jackie says again and her eyes are full of pity.
The room feels infinitely small, as if there’s not enough air for Rose and her heaving gasps. She stands up so fast the chair crashes behind her but she can’t bring herself to mind. She’s chocking in this impersonal flat and she needs air. Now.
“I need...” she struggles. “I need to go.”
Her mother also starts to raise, one hand extended towards Rose and her face crumbling as if her daughter is breaking her heart. Rose is gone before she can fully get to her feet.
Rose finds herself on the top floor of Torchwood Tower, but she’s not quite sure how she made it there. She’s running on adrenaline and desperation and something she can’t quite name. There’s fear, too, as she runs to the computers in the abandoned table and tries to make them work.
They’re dead, all of them. It does nothing when Rose frenetically presses all the possible buttons, moves all the mouses, hits all the screens and even hurls one unfortunate monitor against the wall. The wall.
“Take me back!” she shouts at the empty room, as if the instruments (or maybe the universe itself) will take pity on her and do what she wishes. “Takemebactakemebacktakemeback! Take me back!” She grabs another monitor and it follows the same path as the previous one. And like a switch has been flipped she fills with anger, pushing and throwing and basically breaking everything in her reach. “TAKE ME BACK!” Crash! There goes the monitor. “TAKE ME BACK!” And crash! There follows the computer case. “I need to go back! I need to-” Her scream breaks into a sob.
The anger that has been fuelling her, making her chest burn leaves her as suddenly as it appeared. Rose falls to her knees in the middle of the messy room, her legs not strong enough to support her anymore.
Another sob tears through her throat and her chest cracks open.
“I need to go back,” the words leave her lips in a broken whisper. She’s still not sure who she’s talking to.
It feels too much like that time the Doctor sent her home, stranding himself thousands of years into the future. The last time he’d died and changed his face, so she’s terrified what the consequences this time will be. It’s a hundred times worse this time, too, because the last time she had the TARDIS and the words following them; she had something she could do, some way to help, take the matter into her own hands. And he’d had Jack, Lynda-with-a-y and the rest of the humans on Platform One with him. This time he has no one, no hands to hold.
He’s all alone.
“I need to go back,” she pleads to the damned wall.
She needs it more than anything, more than breathing. The Doctor’s gone and Rose feels an emptiness in her veins she hadn’t realized had been full in the first place. A void in her soul as big as the one keeping them apart.
“Oh, Rose!”
It’s Mickey, panting by the door as if he’s run all the way here. He probably has. Her mother must have called him. And he’s come, of course he has. Mickey, who has always been there for her when she needs him the most. There’s no way he wouldn’t come now.
The sight of him only makes it worse, the floodgates bursting wide open. Her throat is a knot so tight it hurts and the keening wail that leaves her lips can’t be defined as anything else than her heart crying out in heartbreak. For her, for him, for them both. She curls onto herself and ends with her forehead pressed against the floor. Almost like she’s praying. But Rose doesn’t believe in God anymore, if she ever did. She has met the Devil itself but the only thing she believes in has been ripped from her.
Mickey kneels by her side and pulls her into his arms. Like he did when Jimmy Stone broke her heart. She clutches onto him. Hard.
“I need him,” she cries into his shoulder. “He’s gone and I need him.”
He rubs her back and hums softly in an attempt of comfort. It does nothing because how can Rose be comforted when she’s lost her home, her world and her life all in one? No hums or hugs will ever be able to patch the hole in her soul.
“I need him, Mickey,” she tells him again. Even if every syllable it’s a fight to get out, it feels better to say them than to keep them inside. “I need him.” And then she tells him the worst part, the worst bit in this whole damn mess: “He needs me.”
Mickey holds her as she cries, falls apart and breaks into a hundred pieces.
“You’ll get back,” he tells her once she’s calmed down enough to hear what he’s saying. “There’s no way he’s letting something as insignificant as another universe stop him from getting to you.”
She looks up at that, a shadow of a smile at his wording. “You really think so?”
“Rose…” Mickey looks at her like she’s an idiot. “We both know he would go to the ends of the universe for you. I don’t know, maybe he already has, knowing you two. He’s not leaving you behind. There’s no way.”
But Mickey hadn’t heard him scream. Hadn’t seen the dread on his face as she let go of the clamp to grab the lever, the way he had stretched trying to reach for her even if they both knew he was too far away, the terror on his eyes when her grip had failed or the horrified relief when she came back with the yellow disk thing after he sent her away in the first place.
“The things you used to cross,” she starts slowly. “What did you do with those?”
Mickey grins. “Now that’s more like the Rose Tyler I know,” he says. “Let’s go ask Pete.”
“He said they wouldn’t work anymore,” Pete tells them, but he gives her one of the disks all the same.
Rose stares him down resolutely, she still hasn’t forgiven the conversation they had at breakfast. “He’s been wrong before.” Because he has, almost as many times as he’s been right. But they always make it okay in the end and this time it’s not going to be any different.
It can’t.
“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.” There’s a sad understanding on his eyes. “We’ve already checked. It’s useless now.”
It does look fairly useless but Rose slips it over her head all the same. It settles against her chest, dangling a bit. It looks more like a kid’s toy than highly sophisticated piece of technology, but she’s seen weirder things. She presses it with both hands, hoping with all her soul. Hoping and wishing so hard she can almost visualize herself on the other side, the Doctor waiting for her with that slack-jawed expression he gets when she does something particularly impossible. The plastic digs into her sternum.
Take me home she thinks to the universe as a whole. Take me home.
When she opens her eyes she’s till in Pete’s office on the man’s flat. Pete and Mickey are still standing there in front of her, pitying expressions on their faces. She’s still in the wrong universe.
Rose wants to hurl the yellow disk against the nearest wall but she holds back. She doesn’t know how many of these there are and she isn’t about to be destroying any of her only possible transports out of there.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, she remembers the Doctor telling her this after he burned a batch of pancakes in an attempt of making her breakfast. The TARDIS kitchen had filled with smoke and the pan was completely ruined, but he hadn’t let the smile fall from his face. The second batch had been even worse and Rose had laughed at him for ages.
She swallows; the memory, something so silly and domestic she wouldn’t have thought of it twice any other day, now a stake through her heart.
“I need to talk to whoever made this,” she tells him trying to put all her strength, all her determination, into her voice.
Pete sees right through to her but nods all the same. He’s been through the same thing she has and knows how it feels to be ripped apart from the one you love.
“I’ll put you in touch.”
Try, try again.
18th of June 2010.
The chips are wrong in this universe. They look fairly similar and they taste almost like the ones Rose is used to, but there’s something different enough to be jarring. She can’t quite put her finger on it, but she knows there’s something different.
“I know,” Mickey tells her when he sees Rose’s scrunched nose. “If you get them with vinegar you don’t notice so much.”
Mickey has always loved his chips with vinegar but Rose likes them better with only salt. It has been a topic of debate between the two of them for ages, both of them trying to convince the other that their way is better. In the end they resolved it by always getting their own chips each, so it’s not like she could complain much. She shoots him a sceptical look but grabs one of the chips from the basket he’s offering up to her and brings it to her mouth.
Fuck him, he’s right.
She can’t believe he’s going to win in the end just because they’ve ended up in a wrong universe. His superior smirk is as annoying as ever and for a second Rose feels like their back on the Powell State, bickering over some thing or another, young and content, two kids with their whole life ahead of them.
“How’s things in the flat?” Mickey asks around a mouthful of his own chips.
Rose shrugs. There is a reason why she’s run from the quiet rooms and is now on the loud busy streets of London with her ex-boyfriend.
“They’re still…” Mickey looks for the right word. “Tiptoeing?”
It’s been four days since… since. Pete and her mum have been, for the lack of a better word, tiptoeing around Rose ever since her outburst during breakfast. As if they’re afraid anything they say will set her off again.
Rose can’t really blame them for that.
The first morning, once she’d come back, was really awkward. Mickey couldn’t stay for long, work and debriefs waiting for him, but he promised to swing by with take-away around dinner. Rose and Pete spent most of the day locked up in the man’s office talking with the main scientist in charge of the Breach Project. The man, Doctor Blake, argued against sharing state secrets with a complete stranger and only Pete’s not-so-subtle threats managed to make him talk. He didn’t make it easy, using a lot of complicated words and science terminology that went way over Rose’s head. The one thing she managed to understand, because he was clear to stress it several times, was that the ‘Dimensional Breach Transporter’ would not be working again, ever, because the breach wasn’t there anymore.
“What about other breaches?” Rose asked. “Or cracks?”
He snorted. “There are no cracks. We would have noticed.”
Let’s just say she hadn’t liked him at all.
The next day didn’t go much better, with Rose moping all day and her mother brewing her cups of tea what felt like every five minutes. Pete didn’t go to work, staying the whole day locked up inside with them although disappearing for long periods of time into his office. Whenever Jackie wasn’t anxiously hovering over her daughter, she was anxiously (and longingly) staring at the door of that office.
Rose isn’t sure which is worse.
After another day of the same thing, with stilted conversations, guarded looks and pinning stares, Rose has decided that enough is enough. All the staying inside has only made her headache a constant never-ending thing and she knows she needs some fresh air as soon as possible or she’s going to end up maiming someone. Mickey gets out early every other Friday, at two instead of five, so Rose has kidnapped him for the afternoon. He’s bought her some chips and now they’re strolling through Jubilee Park which is nice enough if a bit small and full with people wanting to escape the tall buildings in the area. It’s literally one minute away from the tower in Canary Wharf where both Torchwoods (and Mickey) are located, so Rose can understand why he comes here to spend some of his breaks.
“Yeah,” she answers in the end. “It’s getting really annoyin’.” Then, because she really doesn’t want to talk about her Mum or Pete, she deliberately changes the subject. “How’s your grandmother?”
“Still as tough as ever,” he allows her with a knowing smile. “She kept trying to kick me out the house until I left. Said I was too old to be staying with her.”
“I bet she just hated having to tidy up after you.”
Mickey gasps offended. “Excuse me, I can clean after myself!”
She shoots him a disbelieving look. “I’ve been to your room, remember?”
“It’s not that bad,” he says with a pout.
Rose has no doubts that, while Mickey might have grown a lot during this time they’ve been apart, this is not one of the things that have changed.
“I’ve been to a lot of strange places and none of them were half as messy as your room.” She lessens the bite with a teasing smile.
“Yours wasn’t much better, you know?” he reminds her. “I always ended up stepping on your clothes because you always leave them on the floor.”
“At least I don’t leave half-rotten food in my drawer for the ants to find.”
“That was one time!” he says in protest. “And, anyway, I’ve gotten much better now. I had to, spending a year travelling with Jake. Can’t afford to be careless with your pants when you’ve only got seven of them.”
Rose knows some of what he has been up to during his time here, but he hasn’t gone into details yet. She knows it’s been a lot longer for him than for her: more than three years for him while it’s been shy of nine months for her. It’s weird when she thinks about it, how he’s twenty six, almost twenty seven, now and so much older than her. He’s closer to thirty than she is to twenty five and that’s a disturbing thought.
“What happened?” she asks. “With the Cybermen and everything?”
He looks tired all of a sudden, looking far older than the Mickey she left in this universe all those months ago. “It’s a long story,” he warns.
“So start tellin’ it.”
They find an empty spot under one of the trees, quite the feat seeing how packed the park is in the sunny June afternoon, and he does. He tells her about how he and Jake had decided to just drive to Paris and start dismantling the factories that were sure to be there, when Pete had found them. How he had told them not to be idiots who went blindly looking for factories, which would surely be a waste of time, when there were better ways to do things.
“The government claimed it was an act of political terrorism. That Lumic was a terrorist who wanted to take down the government and that’s why he killed the president,” he says. “That he implanted chips in people’s heads through his technology to gain an army of his own.”
“That’s not too far off,” she notes. “But they left out the part about brainwashed killing robots.”
“They considered it would be too much to handle.” Which, fair. Rose lives the life she lives and she still finds Cybermen a bit too much too handle. “But the government knew the truth and some opposed to us dismantling Cybermen factories,” Mickey explains. “Claimed they were living things and should be given rights. That we should find a way to help them, a cure, instead of killing ‘em off.”
He tells her how the British Government ordered them to seal the Cybermen inside the factories, to stop them from making even more, instead of using the code in Rose’s phone to destroy them. Only Pete, Mickey and Jake at the beginning but with a team that kept growing and growing, sealing base after base all over the world with the upmost secrecy because they knew if word got out massive panic would follow. Three became five and then ten and then twenty, working in the field and from an abandoned warehouse in Battersea.
“All the while the debates kept going and going. And then we started finding abandoned bases.” His face is grave.
“They were coming here,” Rose guesses.
He nods. “They infiltrated Torchwood, killing off everyone and turning them into Cybermen. Our Torchwood was working on a breach into the universe and the Cybermen used it to vanish.” He barks out a laugh. “Problem solved, right?”
The government, he tells her, was worried about their disappearance. About the Cybermen coming back, stronger in number and in power, and about what else could come out that breach. The Cybermen had killed all Torchcwood staff, meaning also every single person who knew something of the breach and hijacked all the instruments before leaving. The scientists they sent to check on the breach started getting sick, some of them even dying.
“The rip in the wall of the universe was highly toxic, as it turns out. Who would have guessed?” He wags his eyebrows at that, tugging a smile out of her. “So we needed a way to fix it before it started spreading all through London.”
“I’m guessin’ it wasn’t that easy.”
No, it wasn’t. The government made Pete the new Torchwood Director and Mickey and their little band out in Battersea became the new London Branch, tasked with trying to figure out the big mess. They couldn’t close the breach because it was still open on the other side and they had like a million Cybermen hanging in the Void acting as a tether and connecting the two universes together.
“It’s like that time on the spaceship and pre-revolutionary France, remember?” he tells her, as if Rose could ever forget that day. “The Doctor couldn’t close the windows because some of the robots were still in France.”
“You had to break the link.” She remembers the Doctor, jumping with that horse to the past and breaking the window. Trapping the robots and himself in the past for what she dreaded it would be forever. It wasn’t fun.
It’s definitely been more than five and a half hours since they’ve been apart. Closer to ninety, actually. Still no sign of him.
“It took a while but we made it. And the rest, well… you know it,” Mickey finishes with a shrug. Rose, much to her chagrin, does indeed know it. She wishes she didn’t. She wishes they stayed in the TARDIS and she had forgotten about laundry for a while longer. She wishes they’d chosen a random planet instead, with a thrilling adventure that would have sent them running for their lives, hand-in-hand, giddy and careless. She wishes they had stayed in, that she had let herself be convinced to watch the 32nd century remake series of The Lord of The Rings and later popped in to have tea with Tolkien. She wishes she had told him she loves him, although she’s sure he knows.
He has to.
Mickey must see the gloom on her face because he quickly changes the subject.
“Anyway, it’s good to finally have someone around who knows good television,” he says. “Did you know that Star Trek was never a thing here?”
“What??!”
It had been enough of a blow for Rose and Jackie to learn that EastEnders hadn’t been made in this universe to now add one of her favourite comfort shows to the list of things she might never be able to see again. Mickey nods sympathetically beside her, understanding her pain: he had, after all, been the one to introduce her to the show while they were kids and they spent many afternoons holed up in his living room watching the series with interest.
“They have this thing called Star Wars here,” he tells her wrinkling his nose. “A lot of my mates are mad for it but it’s not the same.”
They spend the next twenty minutes going through every piece of media Rose can think of, filling two imaginary lists: ‘things we’re going to miss’ and ‘things you need to watch to catch up’.
“What about Superman?” she asks at one point. “Batman, WonderWoman and the whole… thing.” Because she remembers how much he loved them as a kid and had to endure many hours of his rambling. His pained pout tells her enough. “Oh, Micks, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright.” He smirks. “We have real superheroes in this universe anyway.”
She blinks at him. “Come again?” Because it sounded like he claimed they have real superheroes in Pete’s World. When he nods with enthusiasm she gapes. “You’ve got to be kiddin’ me.”
“No! I’m serious!” And he tells her about this billionaire genius who flies around in a metal suit dismantling terrorist groups and blowing up crazy robots. It’s so ludicrous she doesn’t believe him until he shows her a video of said guy in action on his phone.
And afterwards she’s still suspicious of the whole thing, because there’s no way a guy who goes around calling himself Iron Man can be for real.
Rose leaves Mickey in the evening, after he’s given her a tour of the flat he shares with Jake and she has assessed that, yes, he does tidy up a bit more in this universe. They’ve spent the afternoon getting started on her pop culture education and it’s the best time Rose has had in four days. Mickey offers her a sofa to crash into but her headache is coming back with a vengeance after too many hours watching the telly and the only thing she wants to do is curl up on her bed and stop existing for a while.
Unsurprisingly, the universe disagrees with her plans.
It happens fast. One second she’s walking through the street, the next there’s a flash of orange and she’s standing in the big, yet dimly lit, hall of a Victorian house. Rose has been teleported before, enough times to not be disoriented by the change of surroundings and to know it wasn’t a transmat, a short-range teleport or a Dimensional Breach Transporter. It was something else.
She doesn’t let herself get her hopes up: something tells her she’s still in the wrong universe. An itching under her skin that reminds her that everything is wrongwrongwrong.
There’s a person standing in front of her on the hall. They’re wearing a mustard coloured robe with a hood hiding their face from her. Their hands are loosely clasped behind their back, at ease. Not at all surprised by appearing blondes in jeans and jumpers.
“Who are you?” Rose demands. “Where am I?”
The person lowers their hood, letting the soft light form the old lamps in the walls illuminate the face underneath. It’s when Rose sees the smooth and bald head that she realizes the strange person must be some sort of monk. She hopes there aren’t any werewolves this time,
“They call me the Ancient One,” she says in a clear voice and a RP accent. Rose has lived with the Doctor for long enough to not be taken aback by mysterious beings with no proper names and British accents. “You’re in the London Sanctum, home to the Masters of the Mystics Arts.”
Right. That means nothing to Rose, although the ‘Masters of the Mystics Arts’ thing piques her interest. Not enough to let down her guard, though, and she narrows her eyes at the woman.
“Why am I here?” She realizes why might not be as important as how in the moment, given the circumstances of her arrival, and changes course. “How did I get here? Did you teleport me or somethin’? What do you want?”
The Ancient One smiles at Rose, as if she finds her efforts amusing, and turns around in one smooth move that makes her cloak/tunic flare dramatically. She walks towards the stairs in the middle of the hall with her hands behind her back. Instead of answering one of Rose’s questions she throws “Walk with me,” over her shoulder and starts going up the stairs without a second glance.
It’s infuriating, the way she expects her to comply. Rose looks at the door behind her: while she’s bursting with questions she’s not so sure about following the cryptic stranger who has kidnapped her further inside their lair. If she gets outside and finds out where she is, she can call Mickey so he and Jake can swing by to help. Or maybe they can come back later the three of them. She can hear cars and people outside the door so she’s hoping she’s still in London. If she goes-
“Tea?”
Rose blinks and she finds herself in an office. Shelves filled with books of all sorts cover one of the walls while another is made up by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city below. Still London, from what Rose can see. In the middle of the office there’s a wooden desk and the Ancient One sits behind it. She has a porcelain tea set in front of her, a teacup in her hands she’s offering to Rose.
She stares at the woman, realizing with a shiver that she’s dealing with someone infinitely powerful and immensely old. She has ancient eyes, just like the Doctor, that have seen too many things, lived too many lives. But, unlike the Doctor, she doesn’t try to hide it with manic cheerfulness or icy outrage: she wears it plainly on her face for all to see and for a second she looks more alien than the Doctor ever did.
Rose plops down in one of the chairs in front of the table. “Do you have something stronger?”
The stranger smiles. “It’s black tea and rum,” she explains. Rose has never been a big fan of either of them, but she has a feeling she’s going to need it for the conversation that will follow.
“What do you want?” she asks again, this time far less demanding and a bit more calm. She takes a long sip as she waits for the answer: it’s not as bad as she’d thought it would be, a hint of lemon battling the sharp taste of rum.
“The Masters of the Mystics Arts,” the Ancient One begins after taking a sip of her own tea. Rose wonders if hers is also spiced or if it goes against whatever religious believes this monk has dedicated herself to. “-belong to an ancient order of sorcerers committed to protecting-”
“Hold on, sorcerers? Like wizards?” She bites back the ‘is magic real in this universe?’ that is itching to leave her lips. She’s met ghosts, the devil and all sorts of aliens but never wizards of any kind. It’s exciting. “As in Harry Potter?”
“No.”
Rose pouts. “But you said-”
“We are a secret order committed to protect the Earth from mystical threats coming from other dimensions.” And at that she shoots Rose a pointed look.
Her blood runs cold and her fingers clench around the cup. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lies going for nonchalant and assured but ending up with shaky and scared instead. This woman has kidnapped Rose in the middle of the street because she knows somehow where Rose really comes from. It can’t be anything good if she’s just told her her whole thing is dealing with extradimensional threats.
The other woman gives her a pleasant smile that doesn’t match the seriousness in her eyes. “Do you really want us to play that game, Rose Tyler?”
“How do you know my name?”
Rose hasn’t introduced herself, hasn’t even mentioned her first name. And there’s no Rose Tyler in this universe that the Ancient One could have used to get her name. Well, she guesses there was the dog, but she’s not thinking about that. Rose has only been here for four days and it’s the first time she’s left the apartment. There’s no way this woman can know her name and it makes her a hundred times more dangerous and a hundred times scarier.
“I can see everything,” the Ancient One says. “All that is, all that was, all that ever could be.” Hot pain flashes behind her eyes at the familiarity of the words. She’s certain she has heard them before but she can’t recall when. Wincing, she brings a hand to her head. It’s killing her. “And you, Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, can be so much…”
Anger surges inside her and she pushes through the pain. If this woman is as all-knowing as she says then it makes no sense for Rose to be sitting here.
“Then you should know I’m not a threat!” she explodes. “I didn’t want to come here, it was an accident! I don’t wanna harm anyone! I’m just trying-” I’m just trying to go home she can’t bring herself to finish the sentence. “If you can see the future you should know I won’t bring doom and death or anything.” Because the future might always be uncertain but Rose knows herself. She and the Doctor save people, they don’t destroy them.
This woman has called her Defender of the Earth, but that title is wrong. She has defended so much more than the Earth: she has defended planets which names she can’t even pronounce and has saved whole galaxies. She has defended people from all sorts of places and backgrounds, each one of them as important as the rest. Yet… she deflates, there is no defending now. Not while she’s stuck here.
“You of all people should know it doesn’t work like that,” the Ancient One talks softly now. Maybe she can see the sad turn Rose’s thoughts have taken. “I can see possibilities of the future, hundreds, thousands of them. But even the littlest of changes can be catastrophic,” she explains. “And you’re an unknown variable in this universe. A foreign body. You don’t belong here.”
Rose knows that all too well and she lets it be known with a sharp laugh devoid of any amusement. “Believe me, I know that,” she bites out bitterly then hesitates. “Can you see…? If you can see the future and you’re magic… Could you tell me how I can get back?”
If this woman can wave a hand and send her back to her proper universe Rose will be thankful to her for the rest of her life. And so will the Doctor once he gets over his joy and his shock at learning about wizards and magic. Hope bubbles on her chest and she waits with baited breath for the deliverance.
The Ancient One sets her old eyes on her. Then she smiles at her, a soft thing tinged with sadness and fondness, as if Rose is a child asking difficult questions. And she probably is to her, this ancient being with eyes like a Time Lord.
“I sense there’s a great greatness in your future,” she says instead of answering the question. She stands up and walks to the old window, clasping her hands behind her back yet once again. “There are many paths laid out for you to follow, that I can see,” she turns back to her to tell her that. “but I don’t know how to get you back to the one you love.”
Rose refuses to believe that. She can’t. “I can’t stay here. You’ve said it yourself: I don’t belong here.”
The Ancient One turns back to the window, watching the people down below on the street with interest. She looks at them for a long while, her lips slightly tilted upwards as if the oblivious humans are a fascinating thing. Rose wants to get up and wipe that stupid smirk out her face and her urge only grows as the seconds pass and the woman keeps ignoring her.
“It’s a funny thing: belonging,” she says in the end. “Does a potato belong in England? One should think so, seeing that is ever-present in your cuisine, but your lot didn’t know of its existence until less than five centuries ago. Now it’s everywhere, in every continent, in every country. You could take a flower from one end of the world to another and if the soil was fertile it would be able to dig roots, flourish and thrive.”
The metaphor is as subtle as a brick to the face and it makes Rose curl up her lip in disagreement. She doesn’t want to belong in this universe. She knows her place, where she really belongs, and it’s in a blue box, floating through space with his hand on hers and adventure at their heels. The Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler it’s what it should be, not The Doctor in the TARDIS alone and Rose Tyler by herself in Pete’s World.
“I’m not a flower,” she grumbles. “And I already found the place where I belong and it’s not here.”
The sorceress turns to her with an amused twinkle in her eyes. “That is silly. People don’t just belong to one place: they belong to many. That’s the most beautiful thing of the human race: we can belong anywhere. Everywhere.”
She tries to think of staying. With her Mum and Mickey and a version of her Dad. She could get a job, something thrilling, and pass her days. Or she could go travelling, seeing all the places she hasn’t seen, too busy exploring the rest of the universe. She could live without the adventure, she knows, without the thrill of the unknown. But she can’t live without him, she can’t bear the thought of him alone.
“So I will never be able to go back?” she asks the all-knowing woman. A familiar lump has found its way to her throat and the ever present ache in her chest, in her very soul, comes back with a vengeance. “I can’t never see him again, then?”
“I didn’t say that. Nothing is set in stone,” The Ancient One tires to cheer her up. “I told you there are many paths for you to follow and some of them will get you back to your Doctor.”
The spark of hope is back, alleviating the ache in her chest. It might be a lie, she knows, the woman could be just trying to placate her, stop the crying before it starts. But Rose believes in the Doctor and she knows their story still has chapters to go. It can’t end like this. She won’t let it.
With her resolve comes the headache once again. It makes her vision flash white for a second and she presses the pad of her thumb between her eyes with a groan to try to alleviate the growing pressure.
“You’ve been having headaches?” the Ancient One asks her.
Rose nods without opening her eyes. “Since I got stranded here. It must be because of all the stress.” Or because of all the crying, more likely.
“It’s not that.” Cold fingers brush her forehead. “Hmm. You’re out of synch.”
“What?”
“You’re out of synch with this universe and that’s what causing the headaches,” she explains. “I could help you if you want.”
Rose takes one look at her whole Buddhist monk outfit and jokes: “What? You’re gonna tell me that my chakras are all wrong?”
“Yes.” The smile is back, but at least this time she seems to actually mean it. “But, also, you are literally out of synch. Your home universe runs four times slower than this one. Your soul and body are running in two different times.”
“Oh?” That doesn’t sound good. Like a hell of a jetlag.
“May I?”
If she really has a way to magically get rid of her migraine she will take it. It’s been torturing her on and off for four whole days and at this point she will accept anything to make it disappear. The sorceress makes her stand in the middle of the office, right in front of her. She pushes one shoulder back, hovering her hand to her waist and, quick as lightning, throws the other one forward. It hits Rose right in the chest before she can even blink with a strength that surprises her and she falls and falls and floats?
Rose finds herself hovering over her body, which is falling in slow motion towards the ground. With wide eyes she looks down at herself, only to find her hands translucent and glowing gold. Her blue jumper, for some reason, has turned pink. Everything has taken a golden sheen and, as she watches her body get closer and closer to the ground, she knows she’s dead. She must be.
But the Ancient One pulls back her outstretched arm and Rose gets sucked right back into her body, gasping for air even though she doesn’t need it.
“What the fuck was that?!”
“I pushed your astral form out of your physical form. Separated your soul from your body, or so to speak. Upon putting back your soul, it became one with your body again, this time running at the same speed.” The headache, Rose notes, is miraculously gone. “Better now?”
A memory comes to her. The Doctor, hair mussed and with a brilliant grin standing next to an alien machine whirring as it starts up. “First principle of computer science, Rose Tyler: if something stops working always turn it off and on again!”
“Did you just reboot me like a computer?”
Another amused smile is gifted to her. “You could call it that, yes.”
She feels lighter and more centred. Without the pounding of her head she can finally hear herself think.
“Does that mean I have to bring my mum here? So you can reboot her too?” She tries to imagine Jackie’s reaction and knows that the screaming would be heard even in the other universe.
“No. Your companions adjusted instantly,” The Ancient One says. “Your case was a bit different. There is part of you still left in that other universe and part of it that you bring with you, which will keep you from ever fully being in synch. I recommend meditation for better centring and to keep the headaches away.”
Rose doesn’t know how to respond to that. While she’s felt from the start that she left a part of herself with the Doctor and that it is now missing, it’s weird to have it confirmed out loud. Instead of dwelling on that she goes:
“So there will be no kidnapping my mum, then?”
“Even I’m not that brave.”
19th of June 2010.
“Can I come in?”
Rose looks up to see Pete hovering by the door. He has a solemn expression on his face that lets her know that the conversation he wants to have with her is serious. She closes the book she was reading, an introductory volume to meditation the Ancient One lent her to get her started, to focus all her attention on him.
“You’re back.” Pete had left early in the morning to do some business and was out for most of the day. He didn’t mention what the business was, but it must have been something because he looks shaken. “Everythin’ okay?”
“Yeah,” he says. Then: “Well…” Then: “Kind off?” Then: “I bought a house.”
Rose blinks at him. Out of all the words she expected to come out of his mouth, those were at the bottom of the list. “That’s… good?”
She has to remind herself that he is a billionaire with more money than she can imagine. It makes her a bit sick, because she’s always resented people like that; as a kid who has spent her whole life with nothing until it made her strong enough to take on everything. Yet now this fake version of her dad stands in front of her telling her he’s bought a house like one says they’ve bought strawberries for dessert. Like it’s just another Tuesday (or Saturday in this case) for him. He probably has a dozen houses all over the world and buying a new one is no skin of his back.
But for Rose, though, a house is not a split second decision. It’s a childhood dream she had left behind when she’d jumped onto a magic blue box to see the stars. It’s tentative words spoken on an impossible planet on the edge of nothingness. It’s a mortgage and carpets and curtains. It’s an act of love and commitment, not a passing fancy.
Pete is so rich he probably doesn’t even have mortgages.
Still, something about the experience must have left him unsettled because he keeps silent with a troubled expression. He’s stands in the doorway, his expectant face turned towards her.
“Do you want a seat?” she offers even though they’re in his room which both Rose and Jackie have taken over for the time being. There’s a stool in the corner and Pete drags it to sit by the bed, in front of Rose. He looks vulnerable in this second, more like the Pete Tyler she met on a stolen day in 1987 than ever, and it tugs at her heartstrings. “Are you okay?”
“It’s not a house,” he blurts out. “It’s an estate. 55 acres. I bought a mansion.”
Rose gapes at him. She knows he’s so rich it probably doesn’t make much of a difference, but to her it does. The guilty look in his eyes tell her the answer before she even asks the question. She asks it all the same. “Have you bought a mansion just because my mom said she wanted one?”
“Of course not.” He scoffs offended, hesitates and rectifies. “Maybe,” he concedes. And like the damn has burst open a torrent of words follow right after. “It’s not the one you knew. It’s in Hertfordshire, I think you’ll like it. I just thought… This flat is too small for the three of us. Jackie is going to end up murdering one of us if we keep going like this: it’s not sustainable. It will be much easier if we have a whole house and a garden to stop stepping on each other’s toes. And this way your mother can go outside for a bit.”
Jackie hasn’t left the flat in five days and it’s making her a bit crazy. Rose isn’t getting any closer to figuring out how to get back to the Doctor and she can’t ask her Mum to be locked up like a prisoner until he comes back for them. While Rose and Pete can leave and roam, Jackie can’t until they figure some things out. Still…
“You could’ve just bought a house,” she notes, sadness and amusement waging a war in her voice. “A cottage or a cabin, not a whole mansion.” 55 acres, he’s said.
He smiles at that. “You have to understand that I have a lot of money, Rose, and nothing to spend it on. And I never do things by halves.”
It’s something both Pete’s have in common, it seems. And speaking of things both Pete’s have in common…
“My Mum…” she starts.
“I expect nothing from her,” he’s quick to reassure. “Nor from you either. I’m not doing this to trick Jackie or to bribe her into being with me. I know I’m not-” he cuts himself off. “The manor is big: it’s why I bought it. We can stay in different parts of the house and don’t have to see each other at all. Or you could stay there and I could keep living here if it makes either of you uncomfortable. I don’t expect anything to happen between your mother and I just because I bought her a house.”
It’s all the thought that he has put into it that lets Rose know it’s the opposite of what he wants to happen. She remembers the desperate hug in the hallway. And she’s not blind: she’s seen how they look at each other.
“Do you want something to happen?”
Guilt makes his lips curl down. “Jackie… Your Jackie reminds me of my Jacks. Not the Jackie of this universe, but the Jackie I met and fell in love with. The Jackie from before everything started going well and we became rich. The Jackie before the money and the power, before the parties and the press.” He smiles to himself, a soft nostalgic thing that makes him look years younger. “I met her when I was twenty five,” he says. “I was carrying a silly invention of mine and I couldn’t see where I was going. I knocked into her in the street and told her to watch where she went. She started yelling at me like no one has yelled at me before and I knew right then.”
It’s the same story Rose has heard a dozen times before from her mum. It makes her glad, somehow, that this is also a multiversal constant. Although it also makes her wonder were the divergence began. Her birth? Is she the reason her dad died and his inventions didn’t succeed?
“Your Jackie reminds me of that first Jackie,” Pete keeps going, derailing the train of thought that Rose shouldn’t be entertaining. “We were married for many years and did a lot of growing up together. And of growing apart, too.” He looks down at his hands and Rose can’t help remembering the conversation they had in his first manor before he even knew who she was about the problems the marriage had. “Your Jackie is different and yet the same on the most important things. And I don’t want to replace my Jackie, because there’s no replacing all those years we spent together, just like I know I can’t replace her Pete. But I do want to get to know her.”
It’s a mess, the whole thing, a big damn mess, but it’s also sort of sweet. A part of Rose likes to believe that the only man who could ever make her mum truly happy was some version of Pete Tyler, despite all the arguing. Maybe because all of it: he certainly doesn’t let himself be pushed around.
“I’m kind of excited, though,” he confesses his smile turning into a shy thing. “Is it stupid? I feel like I’m twenty years old again. She makes me feel like I’m twenty again.”
He does look less stressed out than the Pete she first met in this universe. And he’s spent the last few days basically locked up in small flat with two women. But there’s a light in his eyes that Rose has never seen on him before.
“Have you told her that?”
He looks at her, a determined set on his brow. “I will,” he assures. “I just wanted to… check with you first.”
There’s this man basically asking her if he can date her mum, and he’s her dad but not really and they’re trapped in the wrong universe. Rose never thought she would ever have to face something like this. But in her heart she knows what the right answer is.
“You should go for it,” she tells him. Because most of all she just wants her mother to be happy and he’s the answer. “You should tell her how you feel.”
Rose doesn’t know how this thing will go once the Doctor comes back. Jackie won’t want to leave Rose behind and Rose doesn’t want to cause her mother to lose yet another Pete Tyler. But Jackie Tyler has already given up enough things in life because of Rose for her to let her give this one up also. And maybe there’s a small part of Rose who just wants to see her parents together.
“Should I do that before or after I tell her about the manor?” he makes a half-hearted attempt to joke before turning serious. “We do need to talk about the story we’re telling the press,” and he shoots a pointed glance at her. She has been avoiding him and all conversations surrounding the topic of backgrounds since the first day.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” she says quickly. Usually this is enough to get him to drop the topic.
Not this time. “Rose, you can’t go around without an identity. It was fine when you were staying in the flat, but if you’re going outside…”
The hole in the knee of her jeans is suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. She toys with the strands that hang from the edges while she thinks of the best words to express herself. “I just think it’s a waste of time,” she says. “When the Doctor comes back…”
Pete doesn’t say anything, just exhales sharply from his nose and Rose doesn’t need to look up to know what his face is doing at the moment. He’s never had much faith in the Doctor returning, but he doesn’t know him like she does. He doesn’t know them.
“You can’t stay locked up until he does,” it’s what he says instead. “And you will need an identity if you want to interact with people.” He hesitates then adds: “We could use your help at Torchwood, you know?”
Rose bristles. Torchwood is right at the top of her list of most hated words. But, objectively, she knows it’s not Pete’s Torchwood who stranded her in this universe. And he has a point. What’s the alternative? She can’t go back to working on a shop: she wouldn’t survive it.
“Just think about it,” Pete offers softly. “There’s a spot open for you while you figure things out if you want.” And with that he stands up, nodding at her. He’s clearly not waiting for an answer right at that moment because he goes straight for the door just to stop with his hand on the knob. “I was thinking Chinese for dinner tonight, what do you think?”
“Sure.”
Hours later she finds herself in Mickey’s doorstep, a bag of cold Chinese food hanging from her arm. She’s still trying to erase the image of her mother doing her best to rip Pete’s shirt off as they kiss passionately in his study. She doesn’t think it will ever fully go away. But there’s a lesson learnt in that: never again is she walking into a room without knocking first. She thought she was way past the age of being traumatized, but it seems that’s not the case.
“Rose?” It’s both a greeting and a question.
She offers the bag of food as payment. “I think my Mum and Pete are having sex right now and I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
The wanker outright laughs at her misery.
21st of June 2010.
Rose stands in the middle of Canary Wharf. Torchwood Tower is as tall and imposing as ever, but far more lively than she has seen it before. People in suits and business attire come and go, most of them focused on their own things but a few slow their pace to throw Rose and Mickey confused looks. Probably because they're just standing there, staring at the skyscraper with patience (Mickey) and trepidation (Rose). She ignores them all, just stands in the middle of the street, taking it all in. She can’t believe she’s really doing this.
Bile rises in her throat but she swallows it down: the place doesn’t bring her the best happy memories.
“You ready?” Mickey stands next to her, as he always has. His features have gone soft with concern and he leans in to talk lowly into her ear. “We can do this another day. You don’t have to start so soon.”
“No,” she says, voice as steady as she can make it. “I’m ready.”
I’m ready.
You see,
You may be damaged and broken and unhinged.
But so are shooting stars and comets.
Damaged, Broken and Unhinged. Your Soul is a River. – Nikita Gill.