Like it Burns

You belong with me / not swallowed in the sea

She gives herself four days before she gets out of bed. On the fourth hour of the fourth day she goes to her father, the man who looks like father, talks like him, smiles that same pained smile like her father did—but isn't. Really. He really isn't her father. She doesn't let herself come to terms with that, just talks without understanding.

They motion a lot around each other because she can't find the emotion that's supposed to be behind her words and he can't find the understanding he's supposed to instantly feel toward her. He smiles at her for Jackie, hugs her for Jackie and tells her everything is going to be all right, for Jackie. Rose feels like it's all a play act sometimes and she goes along with it but she never smiles and he never really understands. So she gesticulates and he nods and the lines on his face form concern when she tells him she doesn't dream anymore and she can always smell the sea.

She asks him to move the house and he does—hires a moving crew the next morning and within a month the house is just where she asked, on the beach of Bad Wolf Bay. It over looks the ocean but she never looks out her window. Never touches her hand to the glass and breathes, just breathes.

She always stands on the rocks, sometimes for hours, and stares out at the water. She doesn't dream at night, and he no longer calls for her. She thinks maybe he's forgotten her and part of her, the whole of her, is too numb to feel the weight of it. All she understands is the heaviness in her chest and how it feels like something's collapsing but will never just cave in on itself and let her be. She doesn't want to feel it because when it does collapse, she knows she won't survive it.

A month goes by, then two, four, six, almost a year. She's at the beach every day now, sometimes for hours. Her fingers trace names in the sand-Sarah Jane, Madame Pompadour, Rose Tyler. Her name is always last, drawn neatly with the tips of her fingers in the wet sand. She lies down and listens to the water creep to her side and dose her hair in salt and sea. She watches the ocean swallow her name with her palms buried in the sand.

Her mother asks her if she's broken and Rose just pulls her hair back into a knot and answers her, "It just hurts."

No one touches her and no one says his name. It's been a year and the sand still feels like it's haunted by the image of him—standing, saying her name. She stands against the tide until it soaks her thighs and she thinks about what she meant to him and just how long it takes to get rid of the knowledge—the weight of what it means to be without him.

Sometimes Jackie comes outside, watches her from behind but never says anything. Rose doesn't tell her to go away, just lets her stand, silent and cold in the breeze. She wonders if Jackie understands grief the same way. She wonders what kind of luck it must take to get the love of your life back after nineteen years. She thinks her luck has probably run out by now.

Jackie wants her to go to Torchwood, apply for a job. A few representatives have stopped by since the move but Rose doesn't come out of her room. She sits at the window, but doesn't touch the glass. The sounds of muffled conversation float upstairs but she doesn't strain to hear their words. She waits until the door closes and the house is silent before she stands and watches three men in suits walk down their driveway to the beach. Their feet trample her old footprints and she watches them disappear into the water. She can't find a trace of herself anywhere.

Later, her feet trace the patterns of their footprints in the sand as she walks, her mind tracing patterns of things her lips never said. She wants to scream but when she opens her mouth it feels dry, covered in sand. Once she broke a vase—threw it at a window and watched them both break, numb, indifferent. It didn't make her feel much of anything.

Her mind is blank when Mickey pulls her back inside, tells her to change because her body is soaked from the rain she couldn't feel. He'd caught her standing waist deep in the ocean with her hands at her sides and her hair in her mouth. He didn't say anything to her, just took her by the wrist and brought her back inside—placed her by the fire and let her drip on the mantle.

They'd given up telling her things, reassuring her that life would go on, that it was better this way. That there was more to life than him and his machine. She was normal now, Jackie insisted, she could grow up properly.

"What were you worried I'd turn into?" Rose asked, long ago on the stairs with the clock ticking on the wall behind them.

"This," Jackie answered and moved past her up the stairs, toward the sound of the baby crying.

Rose, on her knees in front of the fire, stretches her hands out to touch the embers and her fingers burn when she gets too close. She pulls them back, wincing, and sucking out the pain. Her eyes shine in the light of the fire, drip water down her cheeks that blends with the water in her hair and she smiles in a puddle of ocean with her fingers curled against her chest.

She lets herself feel the burn and she starts to sob at the memory of her hands against the wall of a blue room and her throat screaming for them to take her back, please, please just take her back to him. She could feel him through the barrier and it only made it worse. They walked her outside, into the sunlight and she didn't cry after her hands left the wall. She didn't cry for days after, just sat, silent and still and quietly understanding that this was her life and she couldn't remember how to feel any of it.

Rose sobs while it rains outside and the fire warms her skin and she cries like the time on the beach when she told him she loved him and he faded away without telling her. It was that moment, the moment she needed, the thing she needed from him that he could never give her. The thing that time would never allow them and she knew, knows, that it never will. So she cries for lost loves, for lost understanding, and for going so many years without really feeling anything at all.

Rose Tyler remembers laughter, and bravery, and belonging. She remembers coffee and late nights with no words between them and the smell of his jacket in the rain. She remembers what everything felt like and while she laughs and sobs with the tears on her lips she thanks him quietly for letting her live—for letting everything feel like it burns.