Chapter Text
Prologue
As long as Rose Tyler could remember, there were a few things that she absolutely adored: Mum, the colour pink, flowers (the pink ones), her bedroom (it was pink), and His Royal Highness, Crown Prince John X of the Kingdom of Gallifrey.
The family business was a florist shop located on Peckham Street, which was situated south of the Cadonflood river. The river divided the city of Arcadia into the wealthy, aristocratic north side, and the working class south side. The building that the shop was in had started out life as a pub in 1785 (Rose had asked her Mum if there were dinosaurs walking around the royal city of Arcadia back in olden times). Her Granddad and Gran had bought the abandoned corner of the old building and had turned into a flower shop before the War.
When Rose was an infant, her dad had been hit by a car, and tragically, he died. So then it was just Rose and Mum. But her mother was a wonderful woman. She showed Rose the value of hard work, was compassionate, cheerful, and fun-loving.
Little blonde-haired, golden brown-eyed Rose grew up surrounded by the sweet and fresh aroma of blossoms and greenery. By the time she was five years old, she knew the name of every flower that was sold in the shop just by sight, and knew most by smell. Of course, the pink ones were her favourite.
And like all of the loyal subjects of Gallifrey, the portraits of the beloved royal family hung in a place of honour on the wall behind the cash register. Often, she looked up at the regal face of King Alistair, and the kind face of Queen Doris. But the Prince was her favourite. Prince John X was her very own, real life, fifteen year old Prince Charming.
Her picture books were filled with his cutout face pasted over the faces of fairytale princes. She drew stick figure pictures of him holding hands with a certain blonde-haired, brown-eyed princess who always wore pink gowns, and always, they were standing in front of a simple, boxy, turreted castle with a moat.
For Halloween, she would dress up as a princess. She wore her mum's pink satin dress that she knew had the puffiest sleeves in the whole world. Her best friend, Mickey, who was a little bit older, always would take her trick or treating through the block of flats where they lived. She told everyone that he was Prince John, who happened to be dressed as a pirate.
Just before January 30th, every year Rose would make the Prince a birthday card covered with sparkles and hearts. Together, Rose and her mother would walk to the big, red postbox on the corner. Rose would stand on tiptoe, and push the envelope through the slot.
And most nights, she would hug her favorite teddy bear, press the play button on her pink CD player, and dance around her pink bedroom to her Sleeping Beauty CD.
“I love you, Prince John,” Rose would say before she kissed Mr. Tedopolous on his fuzzy brown cheek.
oOo
Prince John was seven when Queen Doris had come up with the plan.
"Darling, I don't see why this gaggle of palace children have to leave the palace every day and be carted off to school," the Queen had said to the King one summer afternoon. "We shall have our own jolly little school right here in the Palace. We certainly have the facilities. John can grow up having friends. You'd always wished that for him, right?"
"Brilliant idea, Dearest," King Alistair had agreed.
So the children of the secretaries, diplomats, executive staff, domestic staff, groundskeepers, etc... and Cousin Harry (the King and Queen's ward, Duke Harold Saxon, the Earl of Oakdown), were all schooled together. So the Prince grew up with a cadre of friends (and a few frenemies, like cousin Harry and his partner in crime, that surly Vislor Turlough, son of the head groundskeeper).
He had two best mates: Donna and Jack. Donna was the family chauffeur's granddaughter, and was constantly reminding him, "I am not Sabrina, and you are definitely not Harrison Ford or Humphrey Bogart, and I am never going to be in love with with you. Got it, Crown Boy?" Jack was the son of someone who worked in the American embassy. Somehow he'd wormed (conned? charmed?) his way into palace life. (The Queen adored him. The King tolerated him.) He didn't officially live there, but may as well have.
When Crown Prince John turned fifteen, he began to notice the pretty girls and lovely women who lived, worked, and flitted in and out of the palace. He flirted with the female staff in the hallways, and danced with diplomats' daughters at parties. He liked kissing and hugging and holding hands. He fancied himself a bit of a poet and wrote (really terrible) sonnets to that platinum blonde (and a little bit frightening) gate guard with the fierce and protective eyes who reminded him of that actress who played Captain Phasma... and to his mum's cute and bubbly ladies' maid who looked just like Daisy from that dull soap Downton Abbey soap opera that his Mum loved... and to the kind, quiet daughter of his father's tailor who could be Audrey Hepburn's twin.
One time, Donna and John had kissed, dared by Jack, and had immediately jumped away from each other and rubbed the lingering distaste off of their lips with their shirt sleeves, knowing that they were definitely best mates, not soulmates.
But it wasn't a girlfriend that Prince John longed for (not that he would even be allowed to have a girlfriend), he wanted what his parents had. Much of their work-time was spent sitting at an antique partners' desk. There, they would brainstorm how to improve the national library system; they would have an argument about the possibility of life on other planets; they hand-wrote replies to as many letters from their subjects as they could.
His parents were the picture of what a marriage could, and should, be. They held hands when they made public appearances; took meals in the kitchen happily chatting with the staff; they attended John's footie matches and cheered right along with the other parents. Most of all, they were devoted to each other. In a world where royals married other royals for political advantage, his parents had married for love.
They were soulmates.
And that is what he wanted.
oOo
When Rose was thirteen, away went the fairytale picture books, and up went the fold-out special edition mini posters from those gossipy, bubblegum magazines devoted to royals and boy bands. Twenty-three year old Prince John was fit, having grown out of his skinny, gangly stage. He'd filled out into a lean, muscular, tall man. Rose and her friends would coo how he was sooooooooo cute in his university robes or cricket whites, hot in jeans and an indie-band t-shirt when he went clubbing. But in his regal princely attire, he was gorgeous.
Rose would turn on the pop radio station, and dance around her pink bedroom. She imagined that she was wearing a skin tight sequinned mini-dress and four inch rhinestone stilettos, and Prince John was wearing second-skin jeans and that tight Superman t-shirt. They were on the dance-floor at one of those posh clubs in Soho -- the kind with the red velvet rope and a tall, bald bouncer who would always usher them in without a question.
oOo
He was twenty-three and restless. He'd finished university (early) with a doctorate in astrophysics, and really didn't want to move back to the palace. He wanted to travel. So he got his pilot's license, bought a two-person jet, and hopped continents for a year, visiting the world's most renown and historic observatories, advanced radio telescopes, and deep space arrays. At one point, he'd even been invited by NASA to join the next astronaut training class. He was at Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA when he called his dad to let him know that he wouldn't be back for a while. "Just imagine! Me! The first royal in space!" But that plan was quickly squashed as too risky for the next monarch, and he returned home and did the next best thing: taught at Gallifrey university hoping that perhaps someday, one of his students would set foot on Mars.
oOo
She turned twenty. The scrapbooks dedicated to Prince John, and all of those clipped pictures from Smash Hits magazine were lovingly and safely packed away in plastic bins, and the life-sized stand-up cardboard cutout of the Prince -- with lips a bit worn from fingertips-to-lips goodbye kisses -- was carefully flattened and slipped under her bed.
Now, a framed portrait of His Royal Highness and an always-fresh and perfect pink rose in a silver vase graced her bedside table. His was the first face she saw in the morning, and the last she said goodnight to.
And she was no longer living in her childhood flat. She was on her own. Her dream of going to university had burst when her mum had died unexpectedly -- just when she'd found love again. But Rose had inherited the family business... that small, but bustling and profitable (enough) florist shop.
And she no longer had a crush on Crown Prince John of Gallifrey. Rose Tyler was in love. No one believed her, but deep in her heart, she knew her love for the man that she had never met was totally and completely and undeniably real.
oOo
He was thirty. And single. The King and Queen consistently nagged him to at least try to meet some nice (aka marriageable) women. They even arranged some blind dates with both noble-born and commoners (how very un-royal and inappropriate wagged aristocratic tongues). Some of the meetings were pleasant, but all were a bust. He made some new friends, but none of them sparked his soul.
"Her hand didn't fit in mine, Jack. It was cold and limp and felt like I was touching a mushy pear."
"I couldn't see any sparkle in her eyes. I took her to the planetarium and she fell asleep. Asleep! How can anyone fall asleep when there are stars! If she'd just kept her eyes open she'd have seen the wonders of the universe. And she was wearing a pear-shaped diamond ring."
"Blimey. If this were 1939 I would have sought out the nearest bomb shelter. When she laughed, all I could hear was air raid siren. And she went on and on and on about nothing. Literally nothing, well, except her family's pear orchard."
"Her perfume smelled like pears. I'm completely serious. Pear perfume. I almost threw up."
"She ordered a pear-tini at dinner, and then she kissed me. Just lunged at me, and of course, she tasted like pear."
"I'm serious. The universe is conspiring against me with all of those pears. I just want a soulmate, Jack! Is that too much to ask? My parents are soulmates, my grandparents were soulmates. It runs in families, right? I'm starting to worry it isn't gonna happen for me."
"Keep looking, Doc. She's out there. But... you sure you don't want to use those five senses of yours and test me out?"
"Jack...."
oOo
Twenty-five year old Rose had settled in to the life of a shopkeep. She really did love her shop. Brightening people’s days in big or small ways, making a celebration a bit more beautiful, or helping soften the pain of tragedy or a broken heart — this job wasn’t just her vocation. Floral design was her passion. And at least in this aspect of her life, she was perfectly happy and content.
Of course her parents had named her Rose, and she’d stopped rolling her eyes at people’s comments a long time ago. “Rose is such an appropriate name!” “That’s so sweet! Rose sells roses!” “You were named after the shop, weren't you?” Well, she did still roll her eyes at that last one, because the antique carved wooden sign -- from the shop's former life as a pub -- hanging outside above the door proudly stated The Wolf and Rose - Est. 1785 and she was certain she wasn’t over two hundred years old, even if some days she felt like it. Today was one of those days.
Normally, creating the flower arrangements for a wedding brought her joy and fulfillment. But not this wedding. It was 5:30 am, and she’d been up for almost thirty-six hours. And even though this wedding would pay more than all of last year’s jobs combined - multiplied by three - she’d felt nothing but pain and misery every minute of the past three months.
How did this even happen? she'd asked repeatedly over the past few months. Of all of the shops in the whole country, how’d my shop get chosen? This is wrong. So, so wrong. And Rose Tyler felt that all-too-familiar sense of complete wrongness deep within her soul.
And that magic place on her neck screamed, begged, and cried out to Rose to find the other half of her soul.
oOo
"Don't go that way, John. The wolf was seen there in that wood last night."
Thirty-four year old John followed his best friend, Jack, taking the trail that circled the small lake instead of the one that went through the woods. He ran until his lungs burned, pushing himself much harder than he probably should have on such an important day. But he kept going. As long as the physical pain was there, he had something to keep his mind occupied.
He was two months shy of thirty-five years old, and today was his wedding day.
But he wasn't marrying his soulmate.
King John had never found her.