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abcd · 03-09-2009, 12:10 PM

“You never found your place and now you don’t have one…”

Rosalind breaks as those wise words float through the air and bring her to her dying moments. There is a tingling sensation in her fingertips as if she’s being tickled with a feather. And then the pain begins and she feels like she’s drowning in it. And through the waters of her pain she remembers everything, especially the ducks. Those creatures from a time seemingly before time itself. A time when she was happy, and free, and full of compassion. She was with her father and there were no wars, no hidden enemies, no prospect of ruin. Life was black and white, and things were never “complicated”. She’s blind now, and all she can see is the past. That glorious past in which her life is saturated in nostalgia. Golden hues dance across her memory and bathe her in warmth. She’s not particularly religious, but she can't help but wonder if she’s approaching St. Peter’s Gate. The pain fades away and her life becomes a spectrum of colour. She smiles to herself because not a single part of it contains grey. She hears in colour now. A colour that tells her not to be afraid.

“Too late now” she thinks. She’s always been afraid.

“I’m sure I was made of sterner stuff than that…”

She just learnt how to hide it. She learnt how to hide her many fears.

Water.

Darkness.

Monsters in her cupboard.

Disappointment.

Failure.

Love.

Abandonment.

Betrayal.

Powerlessness.

Candy Floss.

Lampshades.

Needles.

“You were a nervy little soul…”

She remembers too much, too quickly. It’s a chain she cannot follow, doesn’t want to follow because she knows all too well where it ends.

Her mother’s tears on the day she was born.

Her father’s prayers as she lay in the incubator.

Her first birthday.

Her first word.

Her first steps.

Her first day at school.

Her first friend.

Her first crush.

Her first kiss.

Her first love.

Her first …

Her first op.

So many beginnings but only one end.

She remembers the colours of autumn leaves.

“You’d walk away and I’d never see you again. Then where would I be?”

The skies are cyan now. Everything is sharper, clearer. Everything makes sense now.

“I never felt afraid when I was with you…”

She tries to conjure an image of her father but fails. She can only see Harry. The man who picked up the pieces of Jocelyn’s betrayal. The man who could be sitting across from her or on the other side of the world. She doesn’t know; time and space have become irrelevant.

“I don’t want to be dead. There are books I want to read and I still hate my kitchen”

She realises now that those aren’t good enough reasons for her survival, for her life.

“You never found your place in the world…”

She laughs as she recalls these words from her now distant memory. No, she hasn’t found her place in the world but she sure as hell has one at its end.

It doesn’t stop her from wishing though.

It doesn’t stop her from wishing.

The world comes rushing back all at once and she knows this is the end.

“You’re MY outstanding officer!”

Ros’ dying heart sings at this. So Juliet was wrong, she had found her place. She’d found her place as an outstanding officer of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. And Ros knows that she'll keep that place until the universe dissolves in a hailstorm of star fire. Yes, she would keep that place, and she would keep it with Harry’s full approval because she, Rosalind Sarah Myers, had been his outstanding officer.

The last contribution Ros Myers makes to the world is that of a content sigh.

“If you go back there you’ll die…”

And in the 25 seconds between the injection and her death, she learns a lot of things.

“Me and You is broken, it has been from day one…”

She knows now that she didn’t love Adam, at least not enough.

She knows she'll never look back.

She knows she'll never return.

She knows that people with ‘nervy little souls’ like hers did not have a second opportunity on earth.

And so she leaves, answering one last question.

“Is there a light on?”