Were she anything other than what she was, the fleeting thought - We're about to die - would have stuck with her, filled her up with despair and panic and regret -- but she had long ago given up on those useless emotions. Rose knew, knew, beyond any doubt, that there was always hope. And, even when it looked hopeless, you didn't give up. You kept trying, you kept on going. Even when there wasn't really a plan. You never gave in. You fought.
And so, when the planet fell away under their island and the rumbling stopped altogether to be replaced with an eerie wind -- and then nothing, as they rose higher into the atmosphere and closer toward that great island above them in orbit -- she did the only thing she knew she could do: she started describing what she saw.
"The entire island is being pulled into space," she said. "There's a... Well, it looks an awful lot like another island, and we're being pulled toward it. Wait, I can see over the edge now. There are trees, and water, and a wall. It looks like it's night on the island, but the sun is still shining over it. Must be some form of atmospheric and weather control over this place. We're descending down into it now..."
She wasn't calm, exactly; stress came through in her voice. But she wasn't shouting, and she wasn't letting fear or shock get the better of her. Still, she wrapped her arm more tightly around Matt's waist as she lost sight of the cityscape floating there in the middle of the water, surrounded by a great wall. She could only guess that they were being placed into the water close by the city itself.
In a moment when she blinked, there was a strange change in the air around them. When she opened her eyes, she was standing, sea-flecked and sweating, in the center of a corridor. Instead of holding onto Matt's waist, she was holding onto a pair of keys. 1201, emblazoned on the metal, along with Tyler. She looked across the corridor, and found a bronze 1201 staring at her from the center of a green-painted door to a flat. She frowned, and slotted one of the keys in her hand into the lock.