Title: Cold
Author: Mary (
stillxmyxheart)
Beta: Rebekah (
bekkis)
Rating: G
Genre: Angst
Word Count: 480
Characters: Rose, Ten (Rose/Ten)
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize? Ain't mine.
Summary: She knows he will return for her, and so she waits.
A/N: Written for Challenge 10, "Photos", at
then_theres_us (picture used is behind the cut before the fic)
Everything here is cold. The wind that stings her cheeks with the freezing spray it carries from the waves, the wet, densely packed sand, even the rock she sits on, so cold it bleeds through her clothes and her legs grow numb as she sits.
Even though it's summer elsewhere in this part of the world, here it is always cold.
If he were here, he'd probably say it was due to closing the hole between the worlds, or some temporal anomaly, or something long and complicated he'd rattle off with barely a pause for breath while she listened and nodded along with a knowing grin.
But he is not here and she is, and it is cold.
They think she's crazy, her mum and Pete and Mickey for coming here as often as she does, but they don't know that feeling that gnaws at her stomach when she's at home, the feeling that grows stronger the longer she stays still. The feeling that if
-when-
he returns for her, it will be here, on this beach, and she can't miss him, she must be here when he comes. She must be ready for him.
She sits for hours until she's aware of the growing darkness. She stayed through the night once, that first time she came back here, until Mickey came for her at four a.m., angry with her for making her mother worry. He'd found her nearly frozen, skin white and lips blue, shivering violently on her rock.
That had scared him badly, her mother and Pete even more so, and they'd done everything short of having her sign an oath in blood to make her swear to them that she'd never sit on the beach at night again.
She loved them so she promised, but it didn't stop her from sitting at the window of her tiny room at a nearby hotel, straining her ears for the sound of those engines.
Tears fall from her eyes now, and they're so warm they almost burn on her cold cheeks
-all those little receptors in your skin, the tears wake them up again and oh God she can almost feel his hand on her cheek, his breath warm and light on her lips-
and she watches the sun set, the air temperature already dropping substantially.
"I miss you," she whispers and the wind rips the words from her mouth, carrying them away across the water.
*****
He is alone in the TARDIS, making an impressive show of doing absolutely nothing, when he hears it, a whispery wind that sweeps around the console, brushes against his neck, ruffles his hair lightly and he closes his eyes, his breath hitching in his throat because he can almost feel her lips on his neck, her fingers in his hair. He remembers how to breathe and whispers into the silence.
"I miss you, too."