Post Pomp (5&6 of 22)
Apr. 18th, 2008 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocus
Chapter Five: One Hundred Days
I haven’t seen you again since I found the hydroponics chamber, Cara. I think that’s a good thing. It threw me quite a bit less than it should have. I shouldn’t be taking a hallucination in stride like that. At least I don’t think I should be. It made me question my sanity a bit. But it’s sane people who question their sanity, right? The insane ones never do. They just get on with the quietly being insane. Or the not so quietly being insane.
But, the garden. I found the manual but it’s written in new English. It’s a bit like reading Chaucer in school only in futuristic reverse. The TARDIS doesn’t seem to know what to do with the translation program. She recognizes it as close enough to English to not adjust it so that I can understand it easily. At least I hope that’s why she won’t translate it. I’m afraid to think it might be something else. That it might be because she’s slowly losing the ability to fully power her systems.
It makes sense to me that she might divert power from the least important systems. Right now, with only me around, the translation system is the most senseless to keep going. I know she’s diverting it from environmental control, too. The warmth in the TARDIS has dropped another two degrees. The air is still good to breathe and I still have hot water.
I did my best to communicate to her that I no longer need drinking water and she’s allowed me back more frequent showers again, every other day for seven minutes. Hopefully she can recycle that water close to indefinitely now I’m not consuming any of it. But I know some gets wasted as it clings to my hair and my body.
My mind wandered again. Sorry. The garden. I’ve decided to leave well enough alone for the most part until I can cipher out the manual. I simply harvest a few fruits and vegetables here and there and try not to interfere with any of the machinery or nutrient flows. They have been a welcome addition to my diet. I’ve gone without a protein source for seven days and I am feeling weakness so I know that I have to give in and eat the rat meat. I’m not looking forward to that.
Rose put down her pen and looked at her exposed hand for a moment before sliding the glove back over her unhealthily pale skin. Vitamin D deficiency was rapidly becoming an issue. She wasn’t sure what to do about it. She had found no vitamin or mineral supplements on the ship and the TARDIS had always added the appropriate mix to her food supply before.
She might find a book in the library that would tell her what she needed to know, if any of the vegetables in the garden had the vitamins she was missing. Sun exposure was usually the most recommended method but that obviously wasn’t happening any time soon.
She made her way through the dimly lit corridor to the library and searched the shelves. Even as she did, her worst fear about the translation program was realized. She stared at the vast banks of books and realized that except for one shelf that held 100 books, she couldn’t read any of them. She rummaged through the ones she could and found a book on natural and herbal remedies. Well, maybe it would have something.
She dropped the book on her bed on her way out of the TARDIS and slowly made her way to the frozen locker that held the alien rat meat. She stood outside the door, swallowing down nausea as she rested her forehead against it. “You can do this, Rose.”
“Cara. You came back.” Rose didn’t turn around but she felt the comforting presence of the other woman’s hand on her shoulder.
“It’s going to be all right. You have to do this.” Rose took a step back from the door and nodded her head. She put her hand on the door’s wheel and slowly turned it. She stopped short of the click that would operate its hydraulic system.
“It’s about survival, Rose. You are brave and you are smart and you are going to survive, but you have to do this,” Cara said firmly.
“I have to do this,” Rose repeated. She finished turning the wheel and the door hissed inwards and slid to the side. She walked inside and blindly reached for the nearest slab of meat.
Cara Mia’s footsteps echoed in the corridor behind her as she made her way back to the TARDIS. She felt the woman’s hand on her shoulder as she thawed and chopped the meat, Cara's words offering comfort as Rose sizzled the chunks in the pan with some cut up vegetables and spices. Saw the woman across the table offering her an encouraging smile as she sat with a plate in front of her.
“Food. It’s just food,” Cara told her. “A protein source that will keep you alive and healthy. It’s okay, Rose. You can do it. I know you can.”
Rose picked up her fork and speared a piece of the alien rat meat with it. Slowly she put it into her mouth and with grim determination she worked her way through the meal, Cara’s gentle smile never fading as she did so. The flavor of the meat was odd and gamey but in the end she was able to eat it all. She sighed when she finished. She’d made it past another hurdle to staying alive. Thank goodness Cara had been there. “I wouldn’t have made it alone,” she told her friend.
“I know,” said Cara. “That’s why I’m here."
Chapter Six: One Hundred Fifteen Days
I know not to expect
That you shall come for me
If I have lost my faith
I’ve saved my sanity
A whisper in a thought
Where hope has been laid waste
No mystery in the dark
My love has been misplaced
A stranger in my mind
Still longing for your touch
I cannot think of you
For it would be too much
The solace offered by
This emptiness of soul
A piece of me has died
To never be made whole
And if you do return
What might you think of me?
For I have lost my light
To this reality
Maudlin, isn’t it? I’m writing poetry now. Well, blame it on the Doctor. And not because I’m thinking about him, because really I’m not. Not that much anyway. Just because the poem mentions him doesn’t mean it’s about him. It’s about me. Not him. Won’t let it be about him.
Still his fault though. Because fifteen of the English language books he’s got in the library are books of poetry. Does me very little good in getting on with the act of survival, but they do pass time. So now I’ve got rhythm and rhyme and very little reason in my mind. Sentimentality doesn’t suit.
Yet… How can I not have extinguished that last flicker of hope that he might still manage a way to find me and bring me out of this darkness? I know he won’t. I know it. He’s forgotten me. I’m as sure of that as I am of anything. I was no more than a passing interest, someone to tell him how brilliant he was until he found someone who could tell him in a better way than I ever could.
But not in a way that was more meaningful. Because there isn’t one. Please, I don’t want to cry. I’ve gone so many days without crying. I emptied that place that had tears. I hardened my core and walked away from my love for him. Why does this revisit me here and now? One hundred fifteen days without him and I am reduced to a little girl lost because last night I had a dream.
I dreamed of him and Madame Pompeii, may cinders and ashes rain down on her head, let her be in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius, oh, what have I become that I let this bitterness rule me so? He was standing at a window staring up at the stars and she entered the room and spoke to him and he didn’t even turn around. Wouldn’t look at her. And he spoke sharply to her, irritation coloring his tone, as he sent her away.
Stupid dream. I know it would never happen that way. I was the one he sent away. I was the one he wouldn’t look at anymore. I was the one he expressed irritation with. Stupid Rose. Not half the beauty and a quarter of the brains of the beautiful Reinette Poisson. Poisson. Poison. Never noticed that before. That’s what she is. Poison. To me, to what I had with him. Poison. She’s killed me. Oh, so slowly, but she’s killed me.
And he doesn’t even notice me gone. Oh, why Doctor, did you leave me all alone to die?
Rose dissolved into tears of grief. No matter how brave she tried to be, no matter what she told herself, she missed him desperately, needed him back, wanted him back, under any circumstances. Not because she hated being alone but because she loved him. And that made her hate herself.
She huddled her jacket tighter around her body, pulling the blanket around her a little more snugly. She could see her breath in the air and she knew she had to abandon the TARDIS as living quarters. She had held out as long as she could because leaving the TARDIS behind meant leaving that last piece of him behind.
Once she moved onto the Pomp she wouldn’t have that daily reminder of him, what she’d had, what she’d lost. Perhaps it would be better that way. She could get on with the daily necessity of surviving without the pain of thinking.
She knew she needed to get up, that she needed to start her day with more than just a journal entry. There was food to prepare and eat, a shower to take as it was a shower day, and then she would have to think about packing her bag with the few essentials she needed. A couple changes of clothing, some books, her diary, and some photographs.
It would be a hard day for her. She hoped that meant she might see Cara. The woman had a habit of showing up when Rose needed her most and emotionally Rose did right now. She sighed as she hauled herself out of bed and got on with her day.
When the last of her packing was done she looked around her room on the TARDIS. She was leaving a lot behind. All of it belonged to a life that was no longer hers. She didn’t need it. It was easy enough to leave behind. But the TARDIS herself, that was the hardest.
“I know you’ve done your best, old girl, to keep me alive and I wish I could have done the same for you. But I can’t, and I can’t stay here anymore either. I’ll visit. I promise you I’ll visit, but it’s not safe for me to stay here anymore.”
She put her hand against the wall and was startled by the wave of grief that reared through her. It seemed the TARDIS would miss her, too. Tears fell from her eyes, unhindered. “I’m sorry he left you, too.” With a gasp and a final sob she hoisted her bag on her back and made her way to the door of what had once been her home and looked out onto the bigger ship.
This step was the hardest one she’d ever had to take. She knew there was no going back now to the person she had once been. She knew exactly what had been lost and what she was leaving behind. It wasn’t a step she had ever wanted to take. She took it anyway.
5. http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/39398.html
