... . . . . ... . . . . ...

two hearts later

... . . . . ... . . . . ...

She feels awkward grieving when there is no actual loss. Just change; just quiet tears spread across a worn timeline until they stop. This must be what it means to soldier on.

Late 2006. Cybermen en mass. Probably the end of the world. Only a hippocampal scattering of cells within Rose’s body still carry that dead face. The new doctor is louder, more passionate, can slip from hyper to solemn as if channel hopping. He wears baseball boots, talks fervently about pop-culture, has unaccountably acquired a pair of reading glasses. They argue and flirt, rescue planets and universes in philanthropic nonchalance. They never step across the white chalked line.

He tells her about dark matter, stellar parallax, Wolf-Rayet stars, supernovae. She listens to his lips and hates him a little for it. She can see the end of the line somewhere in the distance, and wonders whether it would be better never having known.

There is never long enough, he has taught her that.

... . . . . ... . . . . ...

four hearts later

... . . . . ... . . . . ...

Every flicker of light here is a possibility, every insignificant number, spread angrily through the sky in elucidation that there could be some sort of equation that can heal this mistake, but she would not know how to find it if there was. This, is loss.

She can see how it is like mathematics, but is certain there is no geographical element involved. If time was as straightforward as distance then this cold, artificial world wouldn’t have such a heavy sky, poured like concrete over the warmth of six billion bodies. The mocking chant of the Gods has been translated through the scattering of a faded spectrum; so far from home the light is pale when it paints the air. It is foreign. Sealed.

Yes, geography is irrelevant.

She was never once anything other than Rose. She wore Barbie pink whilst they made footprints upon the future, ran her fingers across her lips when she wanted him to notice her. She spent at least forty minutes clinging to that wall. There was a time when she would choose not to react this way, strong by his own observed strength, but now time is different. Maybe this is before, she thinks. Maybe then was now, here. Maybe they can still change it together.

In childhood, Rose was taught through tired idioms; taught that people live shallow lives and that there is no shame in that. When all you know is payday and cheap flights to Tenerife and dry-cleaning the world is smaller, and then suddenly the universe expands. There was no dry-cleaning on the TARDIS, no creased white tickets between her fingers to remind her of the permanence of the life she once knew only as fiction. She should have noticed this precursory warning; sought out a way to change this fate.

Rose Tyler, always too busy feeling the moment, dragged home by her outgrown, proletarian genes. There was more to him than time; the ability to rewind and replace, begrudged immortality, infinite passion. The lonely remnant.

Gone, like a hologram with parted lips.

... . . . . ... . . . . ...

five hearts later

... . . . . ... . . . . ...

Rose Tyler has learnt that fate is stubborn.

She sees the kiss as more of a curiosity than anything; the product of what feels like several years of involuntary patience. He tastes like the Doctor.

She’ll never be a soulmate now, she knows. There are many things she will never be. She has learnt a whole knew way of living, has been gradually taught that it is justified to judge a man’s worth by the sum of his internal organs. And now she has to relearn everything all over again, put her trust in a new teacher.

Maybe this isn’t about maths after all, she thinks, maybe it’s about faith.

She has asked the Doctor about his anatomy before, a couple of casual questions, a long conversation and a whole science lesson. A blush, a frown and a sigh later, he teaches it better than Mr Sixth Form Biology ever did. She has sat on the arm of his chair as he marks a slow line across his chest, his eyes never leaving her own, explaining the advantage of his superior circulatory system in extreme situations. Oh, she thinks.

Rose, lying on the ground and wondering how long she’s been here.

She feels like Gaia slowly dying, exhausted from arranging the stars like an impossible connect-the-dots puzzle; her outstretched arms symbolising eventual surrender. Is this what he feels, she thinks. Exhaustion? Is he too tired to miss her?

Rose, picked up by strong arms and held, single heartbeat racing against her own, the yellow light above them momentarily dispersed into flickering chunks of iridescence. A chink in the universe, perhaps? A sympathetic air hole stamped into their polypropylene, globe-shaped coffin? Or just a glimmer from the casement window?

It could be enough, she thinks. He could be enough.

end