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[pamymex3girl.livejournal.com]

Title: The red dress
Author: pamymex3girl
Rating: PG
Word count: 398
Characters/pairing: Jack, Rose,
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers: Set after doomsday so spoilers for that episode, mentions of 'Bad wolf' & 'The empty child'
Summary: A long time ago she wore a red dress. That is what he remembers the best.
Author's note: This drabble probably only makes sense in my head but i wrote. I wrote it mainly because my story for the het big bang will not cooperate and I thought this might help, it didn't. Also I know the title sucks but I couldn't think of anything else. Please review.

A long time ago she wore a red dress.

It seems strange, somehow, that that is what he remembers, that the image of her walking in wearing that beautiful dress is the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks of Rose Tyler.

(Somehow you’d think that it would be her hanging of that barrage balloon or the way she looks at him as he says his goodbyes, but it isn’t.)

It isn’t about what she’s wearing; it’s about what the moment represents.

It’s Safe.

(After all in that moment, in that memory, there is no danger, no fall that could end it all, no army of Daleks surrounding them, no fear, no death, just a simple party.)

That is, in the end, why he likes to think of that moment, because she’s safe.

(Now it doesn’t seem that way anymore, now he’s holding the list in his hands and her name is on it, now he really hates the image of the red cloth against her pale skin, because the contrast makes him imagine other things, things he doesn’t want to imagine.)

What he chooses not to remember is that in that moment, when she walks in and his eyes land on her, a sudden feeling of dread overpowered him. As if somehow, he knew that something was going to go wrong. But nothing went wrong and he forgot about it, forgot until after, when he’s standing on that satellite abandoned, and alone.  

In the months and years that followed he was grateful for that one moment, that memory of peace.

Now he hates it, that image of her, now that he’s standing here with the list in his hands and the ruins of Torchwood one at his feet, now he hates it. He wants to forget it, ban it from his mind, but it won’t go away.

(Now the red he imagines is not cloth but blood, now it is all over, now he will never see her again. For one second he images how it would feel to watch his blood fall on the ruins before him, but he dismisses it, it is not what she would have wanted. )

He dreams of her, wearing that dress, falling out of the sky, but he never catches her.

This is how the story ends and she is no longer safe.

Not even in his dreams.