Ashes ~ (a TenRose Fanfiction)

Wake Up

~Chapter 2
-The Doctor's POV

***

The first thing I know is we're not dead.
No matter how may tears are floating around us in darkness, I'm alive.
But one other thing I know is, I can't breathe. I thought we'd die immediately from impact, or fire, but when the pilot said water I knew there was a chance. I open my eyes to the stinging darkness of salt, and lights are flickering through the water around me. The plane is slowly sinking into the darkness of the ocean, and I know I can't open my mouth otherwise sea water will fill my lungs and matters will be much worse. My Timelord abilities help me to breathe for long periods of time underwater, but this is something else. Pressure piles up on me, and everyone else in the plane is either frantically swimming to the roof of the plane or is already dead. It's in pieces, but our end of the plane is still in a relatively secure structure. Immediately I turn my gaze to Rose beside me in the dim light. I unstrap us both in an ecstasy of fumbling and we're both cut free. But humans can hardly hold the breath for a few minutes, so I need to get out. Right now.

Rose is thrashing about so I grab her hand and shout to her. I pull her after me through the plane. She instinctively kicks, helping me find the way out. The water is weighing on to me and my eyes are stinging so much I feel like every other inch of me wants to give up right now, but I have to carry on. We have to survive. There's no chance I can save anyone from this, it's too late. Knowing aircraft quite well I drive straight for the exit, and of course the door won't open, but there's plenty of holes from the impact of the crash.  I swim out and find we are already too deep. Much too deep. But now is not a time to give up, we've got this far and we mustn't stop. With all the might in the world and thoughts only on Rose surviving. We begin to swim upward, but she's struggling from having to hold her breath for far too long. Her hand becomes loose in mine and I squeeze it tightly, pulling the weight of her after me. Not now Rose, I think to myself, Not now. I take the lead and swim to the light, my whole lungs constricting, binding themself into a tiny knot so I can't breathe.

I keep kicking and then suddenly, there's air. I choke and cough out water, and Rose is barely even able to cough. Tears filling my eyes, I pull her up and try to keep her upright in the sea which is creating small waves from the impact of the plane hitting the water. I scan around me, and find a piece of broken off wing from the plane. With all the power left in my two hearts, I keep kicking, supporting a heaving Rose. I reach the wing and push her atop. This is the point I need to check on her immediately, but I spot something out the corner of my eye. By some beautiful, goddammed miracle of a coincidence, is land. And it's not very far at all. I push the temporary raft made from the small piece wing, Rose led on top barely breathing, and know I have to save her. She's unmoving, and no longer spluttering of coughing which is making me ever more the worried as I continue to kick. Tears are starting to fall now, she has to be alive, she has to be. It is just then when my foot falls and I touch something. Land. We're here. I open my eyes from the pain of pushing Rose, and find us on a patch of beach.

Crying and coughing, I pick Rose off the piece of wing which saved us, and carry her to shore. I'm spluttering now, and I proceed to throw up a lot of sea water. Feeling utterly defeated, every cell in my body is telling me to collapse on the sand and await help, but no help is coming, and Rose needs me more than ever. I should take time to establish our surroundings, but right now I have more important things to do. I look at Rose's lifeless, pale body as I quickly lay her on the sand away from the shore. Immediately I check her pulse, and both my hearts sink as there is nothing, no beat or ringing drum. But I'm not giving up. Remembering training from the academy I left early on Gallifrey, I begin to perform CPR, my hands pushing down over Rose's heart.
"Come on, come on, come on" I say to Rose through pushes. Her whole body is being shaken with the force but there is nothing. I'm crying now, she can't leave me. "Rose! Come on, please!" I say through quickly cascading tears, "wake up!" I keep thumping and take the last resort. I open her mouth and press my lips against hers, breathing out air from my lungs into her. I pull back, nothing. More pushes. "Please!" I say, barely able to see her as I press my mouth over hers again, and heave in as much air out my lungs as possible.

I'm about to collapse, but just then, after one more kiss of life, her mouth flies open and her head falls back into the sand, her whole body vibrating as she takes in the largest breath. I choke on tears as her eyes open and she begins spluttering, turning red. Crying too much to imagine now, I sit her up and hit her back multiple times until she stops choking and chucks up a very large amount of sea water. "Rose!" I say and she properly comes round to her own senses. Her eyes lock with mine, and she sees the tears and the pain on my face and I see the pain in hers, and we wrap each other in the most crushing and meaningful hug in the history of the universe.