kalleah | Voyages of Discovery (Chapter One)

I'm so pleased to share this first chapter. At the moment, I'm working on chapter fifteen, so we've got a long road to hoe together. It was challenging to write The Calm Before The Storm (which really should be read before this) with the full knowledge that the storm of Doomsday loomed in the future for the Doctor and Rose. This is the story of what happened next, for Rose, for the Doctor, and yes, for Jacob.

Enormous thanks to my lovely betas,

ivydoor,

platypus, and

sensiblecat for their fantastic help in getting this into shape and keeping me on track.

I've referenced Antoine de Saint-Exupery's book The Little Prince in this chapter, and for anyone who has not read it, an online version with full text and illustrations is available. It is a classic, and a work of genius.

"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous."
Thomas Merton

--

"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Doctor's whispers and beckoning in her dreams called Rose home, or so she thought.

She packed her few belongings and drove with her mum, Pete, and Mickey, watching them covertly when they nodded off for sleep against a car window or focused intently on driving. She studied their faces, quietly saying goodbye to them, over and over again. He's coming for me, she thought, and felt hope and fear and an ache of loss, although she knew she did not regret the decision she had made long before and since repeated.

When she stood on the beach, staring through his translucent form, she realized with a shock that he was not coming to spirit her away; he was coming to say goodbye. Her stomach turned and she thought, when the realization hit her, that she might sick up. She stifled her agony and tried to summon up all the courage and bright spirits that she had, but in the end, he faded away with the indistinct taste of her tears in his mind. She told him she loved him, and she knew he would have responded in kind given another few seconds. He loved her. She knew that and hadn't needed to hear the words. She needed to say them to him, to make sure he knew she did. What she regretted was what, in her shock and dismay, she had left unsaid. Have a good life. Don't be alone. Be happy without me. Let Jacob help you.

The trip back to London, so familiar, but not her home, was longer than any she had ever imagined. When she returned, she flopped on the bed in the room Pete had told her would be hers, and told herself she had to learn to make the best of what she had. He wanted that, had always wanted that for her. She had her work, far beyond anything she would have imagined before she had met the Doctor, and she would cope. Rose Tyler would not let herself roll over and die. She couldn't because if she did, she thought he might know, even with all the worlds between them, and do the same. If I am strong enough, she thought fiercely, he can be, too.

So she returned to her unexpected life in London, threw herself into her work with Torchwood, and tried to ignore the loving, worried stares of her family. Months passed. Then, in one of her aimless rambles throughout Pete's sprawling mansion, she found home where she least expected it.

The room, perhaps an old servant's quarters in the house's former days, was rectangular and perfectly proportioned. The only concession to luxury was a stone fireplace cut into one wall. At a right angle, a twin bed and table stood, with a shelf underneath. The shelf, for the moment, was empty, but she already began to plan the collection she would keep there. A lone lamp stood on the table, unlit and with dust covering the faded lampshade. A well-worn armchair, in the corner opposite the fireplace, already seemed to be inviting her to laze in its comforting embrace. The floor was bare wood planks. She peered into a doorway to one side and found an en-suite bathroom with a long, claw-footed porcelain tub with the usual toilet and pedestal sink.

She whirled down the hallway, found Pete and Jackie, and dragged them back to the little room. "Can I move in here?" she asked, without hesitation.

"Rose," her mother said, a hint of whine and protest in her voice. She had one hand protectively over her swelling belly, with Pete standing just over her shoulder. "It's so small. Your room is so nice, isn't it?" She painted on a supportive smile.

"I want this one," said Rose. "Can I have it?"

"Sure, of course, sweetheart," Jackie said quickly. Pete's agreement was swift. She caught his eyes and thought, fleetingly, that he was perhaps the only person in all of this strange world that understood her, and she both loved and deeply resented him for it.

They couldn't know why she felt home for the first time since she lost her grip on the lever and tumbled into a life she never wanted or expected. When they had gone, Rose sat on the bed, hearing the springs in the mattress squeak softly in protest. She looked around again, and for a moment, a strange, otherworldly shadow flickered in the corner of her eye. She followed it and the fireplace, no magic portal, yawned emptily back at her.

Her belongings, few as they were, quickly filled the small space. Flames crackled merrily in her fireplace and the new, white down blanket was folded neatly at the foot of the bed. A single photo, grainy and indistinct, in an unadorned wooden frame, stood on the table. The Doctor's face, beaming and suffused with love in the pink light of first dawn, smiled up at her. She had a few other photos of him or them from her mobile, taken during various exploits across time and space, but she loved this one best. He had woken her up after their first night of lovemaking to show her a brilliant sunrise, and she had snapped a photo on impulse to capture that moment. His eyes sparkled with delight and adoration for her. She had thought, at the time, that it was odd to roll out of bed in the wee hours before first light instead of leisurely making love again, but she had trusted him enough to play along.

That, she thought, summed it up nicely. She had trusted him enough to play along. And he, in the end, had come to trust her, to put his faith in her promise of "forever," and her hands had slipped from the lever. Have you not pledged yourself to him, forsaking all others? Jacob had asked, and she knew it was the truth, for her. In his own way, he had done the same for her. With all their soul-searching, all the love and affection between them, all her worry about him living a good life after she was gone, she had never anticipated that she, too, might have to learn to live without him. It was bittersweet to know that she shared this lesson with him, all that distance away.

So now, when she was not throwing herself headlong into her work with Torchwood, or working with Tim, her private tutor, on her A-levels, Rose curled in the small armchair and read avidly, hearing conversations in her mind that she could have shared with the Doctor, or Jacob, about her readings.

One day, she was curled up in that chair, reading a book that Tim had passed her with a smile the day before. "This isn't in the reading list," he had said, "but it will move you profoundly." She was curious that her proper, educated tutor would have handed her a children's book with such a statement, but he had, and she had learned to trust his recommendations. The Little Prince, by Antoine Saint-Exupery. She opened the book and began to read.

"To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . ."

Rose's eyes moved to the photo of the Doctor, eyes shining and full of joy, on her table, and touched his cheek lightly with one finger. "Did I tame you?" she asked, softly. "Or did you tame me?"

"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."

"Who will be responsible for you now?" she asked the photo. He did not reply, but his expression did not change, still bright and happy and unknowing of the separation to come. She traced the page with one fingertip as if to channel her love into the gesture, and closed the book with a sigh. Tim would not mind if she kept his copy for a while.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Neil Finn, "Wherever You are"