Biding Time (Doctor Who/Torchwood)

Hello all!  So here is the opening chapter to a story I began writing a year ago.  Reading all of your work has inspired me to come back to it, and finally make it complete.  While I have no illusions that it is anywhere as thorough or accomplished as many of the other stories on here, I am hoping to learn and improve in the writing of it.  If there is anything at all you like about it, I'd love to hear from you.  In the meantime, here goes!

The steady jostling of her insides as though she had suddenly been tossed into a blender, woke her from the sleep that had claimed her.  She reached for the SUV door handle to find a measure of stability, and once found, stole a glance at the driver to read the emotion on his face.  The descent to the beach was a rocky one, testing the shock absorbers on any vehicle to their limit, but this one had met the challenge many times before.  More important was the driver's response... but in this case, not to the incline.  This driver had more at stake in the reasons for the journey.

"Mickey", Rose began hesitantly, "surely after everything you've seen, and everything you've been through, you can understand this.  You must.  It's all I have left."

"Yeah," came the resigned reply, "I understand.  That's the trouble.  It's always been the trouble.  I understand how you feel, because I understand how I feel.  I can't get free of him, either."

"Do you really want to?  I mean, really?  How can anything else we do ever compare?  I can't help it.  It's like I'll spend every day I have left, waiting.  For something to happen..." She turned to look out the window at the dusky sky.  Night was coming, and the chill was setting in.  

"Not something, Rose.  Someone.  You'll always be waiting for someone to happen."

 She smiled, then.  In that big, full, and glowing way that both elated him and broke his heart into pieces. 

"Yes.  He is more like an event, isn't he?  A fiery, cataclysmic event  And the shock waves just reach out forever," and her voice trailed away, softly.  

She kept her eyes on the horizon.  If there was a way, any way, the Doctor would find it.  She had to believe that.  It was what kept her getting up in the morning, kept her living the slow, plodding, hopelessly normal life she had returned to once more.  One foot in front of the other, step after endless step, with the remnants of all the miracles she had witnessed running through her veins, threading hope through her being.  It made it bearable, if only just.  And when the waiting became too much, she returned here.  This was as close to home as she could get, now.  It was as close to  him as she could get...

The jostling stopped, and the occasional skidding of the tires began, signalling the arrival on the beach, and the sandy surface beneath them.  She was here!  Finally, truly, here.  Her heart took up its tripping beat, the one that skipped, laughed and danced at the possibility of his nearness.  She breathed deeply, and consciously squelched the sensation that he might be waiting for her.  He wouldn't be.  He couldn't be.  Not yet, anyway.  But he was working on it, surely.  And one day, perhaps...

"Where are we stopping, then?" Mickey broke into her thoughts, suddenly, and the now wistful smile faltered.  

"The usual place," she replied, shifting restlessly in the seat.  

She looked out at the waves that were fading from rolling rushes to the shore, into placid ripples under the setting sun.  Home.  Directly ahead, the cliff jutted out into the water, rising above it in sharp contrast to the smooth, liquid skyline.  Her sigh conveyed such a mixture of joy and sadness that Mickey had to avoid her gaze, hiding the onset of tears that would betray him.

"Stop!  Stop!" Rose undid the seatbelt and fumbled with the lock on the door.

It was as though she could not be contained anymore, craving the sand beneath her feet and the scent of the water surrounding her.  She ignored Mickey's exasperated comment as she leapt from the vehicle, and began running.  

The cool air embraced her and the lapping water welcomed her footprints, eagerly rushing to claim them.  She kept running, mouth open, tasting the flavour of the place, of the memories with which it bathed her and the hope that fed her hunger for all that had been and might be again.  When her lungs finally ached with each breath, and her limbs began to grow heavy, she slowed the pace and stopped at the base of the cliff.  Leaning against it, she sighned.  It's solid, enduring strength felt good at her back; reassuring, immovable, unchanging.  Yet, deep within, she knew there was virtually nothing in the universe like that.  She had seen a time when even this rock would be no more than a gritty spray of particles, floating in the darkness of space.  She had been to the end of the world... this one, anyway.  And she had watched that final death, with the Doctor at her side.  The wind suddenly wailed low, and its melancholy cry echoed the sorrow that rushed in to engulf her spirit, strangling her initial joy in coming.  

It was only a sliver away from impossible to live without him.  And that is what her life had become... everything she was, everything she dreamed, everything that gave her reason to go on, hanging on a sliver.  The thread of memory and the conviction that he had always made the impossible possible kept bringing her back from the edge, and kept driving her to return here, where 'maybe' seemed closest to 'fact'.

Through her tear-glazed eyes she watched Mickey heave her bags from the back of the SUV.  The wind carried the sound of his ranting to her in disjointed pieces, and she smiled again.  She'd hurt this man, time and again, in her pursuit of adventure.  But that wasn't the worst of it.  She had broken his heart, stomped on his loyalty, and then clung to him in her mourning for another.  Still, he loved.  He loved enough to try and understand, to have followed her into the fray, to be taken from all he was familiar with, to battle enemies through time and space, and finally, to be trapped here, consigned to a fate he could have avoided, if only he'd fallen for someone else.  She loved him, dearly.  But she was not now, and could never be in love with him.  Her heart had been claimed too fully and completely by someone else.  Leftovers were all she had to offer, and Mickey accepted them.  

She watched as he made his way toward her, dragging her things along with him.  Her baggage  What she would need to spend the night here, alone, in relative comfort.  The daggers of guilt sliced through her, and propelled her away from the cliff, now fully present in the moment.  Brushing the stray blonde strands of her hair from her eyes, she forced a light-hearted smile onto a face now tightened with repressed emotion, and moved forward to meet him in the sand...