Work Text:
Part of Rose was always there. Dårlig Ulv-Stranden. She’d be halfway listening to Mickey and her mom chat over tea, the other half hearing harsh wind whip across the bay to carry a chill and the tang of saltwater. It was too much to bear, but she didn’t have a choice.
At her lowest, Rose had driven back there. Only a few times. She didn’t know what she hoped to find there- if she thought she might just see him standing in the mist or hear his voice in the waves and the gulls, or if she just needed to feel the pain fresh, like pressing on a bruise.
She didn’t have any photos of the Doctor. The fall through the gate busted her phone, and it wasn’t on anyone’s mind in their last fleeting moments. She drew him once, as best as she could from memory, but she wasn’t an artist. She tucked it away and never tried again, terrified her memory would warp and change with time, that it wouldn’t be her Doctor looking up at her through the paper. It would be a stranger, a man she knew to be him, but unfamiliar and a little frightening.
Maybe if she went back to the bay just one more time, she’d remember. She couldn’t kid herself into thinking he’d come back for her (even though she would rip apart both universes just to burn up in his arms), but maybe the bitter cold, the squawking of gulls, and the salt in the air and in her eyes would spark something and she’d see him in her mind for just a moment, as she knew him. She could close her eyes and feel the warmth radiating from his body, his hand on her arm and his lips gently pressed to her forehead. She could lean in and feel how solid he was, bury her face in his leather jacket and breathe in his comforting scent. She could feel his hands running up and down her back, strong and deft, and completely melt into him. Her Doctor, her home.
Or maybe not. Rose opened her eyes. The house felt gray and damp. Tony’s babbling, pots clinking in the kitchen, Dog-Rose’s yaps and her mother’s irate voice floated down the hall. She could smell tonight’s dinner simmering on the stove. Rose curled tight into herself on the couch and hugged the blanket in a strangling grip, hot tears squeezing out of her screwed-shut eyes. The house was full of people, full of laughter and love, but Rose had never been more alone. Four voices, too many for such a small house, crowded her head, and she knew that the one she wanted more than anything was the one she would never have again.
The lights and the sounds dulled as Rose pulled the scratchy blanket over her head. It all ebbed out as she drifted, as she always would, back to the bay. As the exhaustion of tears pulled her gently into sleep she tried to hear it, the last thing he said to her. “Rose Tyler.” She heard it in her dreams most nights, but his voice was just a little wrong.