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Rose has a routine each time her body has rematerialized after a jump. She checked herself over, assessing for any damage—all of tests using the dimension canon had been successful, but there was always the risk.
Satisfied that she wasn’t missing anything important, she looked around herself. Sometimes she landed in a city, a town, a space station, with little to no rhyme or reason. There were times she landed just missing the Doctor, and other times that there was no possible way he’d been there. It was frustrating, to say the least.
She was in a field near a tree line, no sounds of people in earshot. It was still night, but dawn hinted at the horizon. She looked at the sky and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw stars, stars that remained in place as she stared at them. She also noted that her view of the stars was clear; no light pollution meant that she was in the countryside, or at least away from a city. What countryside, she thought, was a different question.
Rose pulled on the cord around her neck and grasped her TARDIS key in her hand. For the first time it was warm, warm enough to indicate that the TARDIS was here. She cancelled the automatic return jump on the dimension canon and headed into the tree line.
She followed a dirt road, looking for any indication of the Doctor’s presence. Explosions and yelling were likely, but she indulged in a day dream of finding him in the middle of an excited rant, explaining an intricate scientific concept while jumping around the room. Rose thought that he could make an astrophysics lecture sound like poetry.
An abandoned barn, unpainted and weathered, stuck out to her as the sky began to lighten. She went off the road towards and edged the door open.
The TARDIS stood before her, windows dark and silent. Rose raised her hand and let her fingers drift lightly down the raised letters of POLICE CALL BOX. Her hand was steady as she used her key to open the door and push it open. She thought for a moment that she should savor the moment—this had been so long coming that Rose had stopped counting the jumps she’d done, although that was mostly so she could have a sense of plausible deniability when she refused to tell her mum the number—but the overwhelming sense of rightness, of home, stripped all hesitation from her.
The lights were dimmed inside as she walked up the ramp, hands brushing against the corals struts she passed. She touched the console with reverence and said, “Hello, Old Girl.”
She felt the TARDIS’s telepathic field push against her mind—the impression of happiness came from the ship. The lights brightened in a returned greeting and Rose thought briefly about the advanced smart-home system in her parents’ house. It had nothing on a sentient transdimensional space ship. She could tell that the TARDIS felt smug at her comparison.
“Is the Doctor here?” Rose asked, looking up at the ceiling.
The lights dimmed again, and one of the screens lit up with the Doctor’s face.
“This working?” the Doctor on the screen asked, face scrunched up. “Martha, before I change, here’s a list of instructions for when I’m human.”
Human? she thought. He changed into a human? She didn’t think that was possible. And who’s Martha? Rose felt a flash of irritation, but begrudgingly let it go with a sigh. She hated even the idea that she’d been replaced, but she hated the idea of the Doctor being along much more. Still, no one could force her to be happy about it.
She watched the Doctor give this Martha instructions on how to keep him safe, keep the universe safe, from this unknown family. The goal seems easy; stay hidden for three months and let the family die out. The Doctor always had to give them a choice.
The Doctor somehow put his whole essence, everything about him that was Time Lord, into a fob watch and rewrote his DNA to be entirely human. Rose found some sort of headgear, metallic and connected to the TARDIS, and figured it was related somehow.
“Can you tell me the date?” Another screen flashed and showed the date: the beginning of November, 1913. The TARDIS also showed her the location, a small town not far from London.
She wondered how much time was left before the three months were up, and the TARDIS must have either felt the question or intuited where her mind would go next and the screen with the date changed to show a timer in terms of how long it’s been, breaking it down from months all the way down to milliseconds. It’d been nearly four weeks since the Doctor and Martha arrived.
Rose laughed at the TARDIS being that petty and said, “You’re just the same as him, you know? Can’t sit still for a second.” Rose had a hand on the console and the TARDIS shocked her, light like a prank buzzer. “You’re right, you’ve sat still now for many seconds.” The TARDIS shocked her again.
“So, he’s in town then, yeah? In disguise with this Martha keeping an eye on him?” The TARDIS lights flickered for a moment. “Then I’d better give her a hand. Wardrobe room in the same place?”
The TARDIS made it easy on her and moved the wardrobe closer to the console room, so she wouldn’t have to remember which hallway had the bins. Rose picked something simple that looked reasonable for a small town in the era.
When she returned to the console room, the TARDIS had a map up on one screen, and on another one was flashing images of a school—a boarding school. “He’s a teacher?” The TARDIS’s lights flashed and she grinned. Rose thought that the Doctor would like that, if he were able to sit still for that long. Maybe this human version of him could sit still that long.
Rose put her hand on the center console again, letting her palm and fingers linger there. The metal warmed unnaturally under her hand and she was overwhelmed with relief. The Doctor wasn’t there to greet her and she wouldn’t see him, proper him, for months, but the TARDIS was happy to see her.
“I missed you, too, old girl.”
------
The TARDIS had left out a small luggage bag for her to take with her as she left. It didn’t take long for Rose to make it to the school, and it was bustling with morning activity when she made it to the grounds. Boys in formal uniforms and teachers in robes and hats walked briskly around the courtyard. Rose thought that it was uncomfortably militaristic.
She was wandering the halls of the school, and was surprised that it took someone that long to stop her. Then again, it wasn’t like she had to check in with a receptionist.
Rose was halfway through the door of the empty library when a man’s voice said, “Excuse me miss, can I help you?”
The main, older with a few more bits of decoration on his uniform, was tall with a stiff posture she could recognize from some of the soldiers she knew at Torchwood.
Trying to think fast, think like the Doctor, she said, “Yeah—yes. I’m looking for the headmaster. I’m answering the notice for an open position.” She hoped the gamble worked, because if the only option was dinner lady again, she’d spent the next two months in the spa in the TARDIS.
“Ah, you are in luck, then. You are here for the librarian post, I presume?”
“Yes. Yes! Love books, especially Dickens. Lovely fellow,” she said, rambling. “I’ve heard, anyways.”
“Good, good. We were not aware that you were arriving today, but we are happy to have you, Miss...?” he trailed off.
“Tyler, sir. Rose Tyler.”
“Well, Miss Tyler, allow me to have someone show you to your quarters.” The headmaster turned on his heel before walking briskly away, and Rose followed after a delay.
------
Working in a library was not the worst place for her to be as she looked for the Doctor or for Martha over the next few days. Students and faculty came in regularly enough to pass her days easily enough. The problem was, however, that none of these patrons were the Doctor.
She made a point to eat with the students and some of the faculty each night in the dining halls to look for him, but plan fell short, too. Then again, none of the professors seemed to, either. She asked the nurse, a Matron Redfern, about it on the second night and the matron said that the professors tended to take their meals in their rooms.
Damned inconvenient, she’d say.
Rose’s room was located near the servants’ quarters, but she had her own little room to herself that was included in her pay.
She tried to look around the second night after the students’ curfew, but she was stopped by a teacher and was patronizingly escorted back to her room, as he detailed the dangers of a woman walking alone at night. It was pretty clear that she had a curfew, too, however unofficial.
It wasn’t until she’d been in the position for nearly a week that she heard a crash and a yelp while she was tidying some of the shelves.
Rose turned and saw a robed teacher (the robes were really just silly, she thought) on the floor, surrounded by books. The teacher groaned and her stomach clenched—this was the Doctor. Rather, the human form of the Doctor that is uncoordinated enough to fall down so thoroughly, sprawled out on the floor. She snickered, internally, as she thought of her first Doctor calling the human race stupid apes.
How does it feel now? she asked in her head, as if he could hear her.
She realized that she’d been standing over him without helping for a moment too long when she kneeled beside him and helped him pick up his books.
The Doctor sat up, apologizing for his clumsiness and confirming that he wasn’t injured before standing and taking the books from her. She could help but notice a difference in his speech pattern. This man was missing the Doctor’s urgency, his excitement to finish his current thought so he could start on the next one.
She smiled at him and asked, “Are you returning these?”
“What? Oh, ah, yes. I am returning them, makes sense,” he said, rambling in an awkward way before putting the pile on the counter. He wiped his hands discreetly on his suit jacket and she wondered if his hands were sweaty. The Doctor’s hands were never sweaty.
Rose nodded pulled the stack of books towards her cart of sparse returns.
“You are Miss Tyler, yes? I heard that they had hired a librarian. I have only just started myself, about a month back.”
“I’m glad to hear I’m not the only new face then, yeah? And it seems like you have me at a disadvantage, sir.” Secretly, Rose had always wanted to say that. It feels like it’s in every period drama, and she loved a period drama. The Doctor made fun of her for it every time she wanted to watch one, saying that he could take her to the time period if she wanted.
“Oh! Yes, I’m Smith John,” he stopped, realizing the mistake. “John Smith! I teach literature.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Smith,” she said.
They exchanged pleasantries back and forth for a few moments until the Doctor—no, John— stumbled his way through a goodbye while walking backwards out of the library.
Rose noticed, almost too late, that he was going to crash into the closed library doors. She called out to him as his back hit the door. John managed to turn the handle and make his way out of the room while still on his feet.
Alone again, Rose mentally ticked a box on her checklist. She knew the name of the Doctor’s human persona (an old reliable John Smith) and the subject he taught. It shouldn’t be too much work going forward to figure out the location of his living quarters.
She supposed that she just had to learn the location of the fob watch (likely could figure out his rooms at the same time) and figure out which person here was Martha and then she’d feel like she has her bearings.
Rose let a chuckle escape her as she thought, briefly, that her biggest challenge would be the teacher’s two left feet.
-------
John came by the library near daily going forward. She figured he’d be the type to hoard books in his quarters and bring them back all at once, judging the stack he brought the first time. But afterwards, he would take out one book at a time and return them before taking out a new one.
Rose knew that John was flirting with her, but it didn’t make her feel the same way that she would when she held his hand while in a dead sprint or when he would kiss her forehead and call her brilliant.
It was sweet, bashful and honest, but she felt relaxed when she noticed that she wasn’t taken in by it. She loved the Doctor and she missed him to the point of aching. She was happy to know that her heart wasn’t so fair-weathered that a different man wearing his face could sweep her off her feet.
Another week passed like this, every day John coming to return a book before taking out a new one and flirting with her clumsily, before she’d finally meet Martha. She’d asked the matron about Martha, to see if she could find her sooner, but the matron only said that Martha Jones was a maid. The matron seemed dismissive of Martha in a way that didn’t sit well with Rose.
A young and pretty black woman in a servant’s uniform entered the library in a hurry before settling when she laid eyes on John. They both looked at her and John said, “Ah, Martha. You look like you are in a rush.”
“No, no rush. Just looking to see if the library needs any tidying,” Martha said. Blimey, she was a bad actress, Rose thought.
John didn’t seem to notice Martha’s poorly crafted cover-up and nodded along. Rose said, “Actually, I could use a hand if you’re offering, Martha.” She nodded, surprised. “If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Smith?”
John nodded again, to Rose this time, before departing and barely remembering to take his new book with him. He left the two of them standing on opposite sides of the counter.
When the door shut behind him, Rose turned to Martha and said, “I’m so glad I finally get to meet you.”
Martha’s surprised expression didn’t diminish. “You are?”
“Yeah,” Rose said, leaning her elbows on the counter. She wasn’t sure how else to continue other than saying, “My name’s Rose, I used to travel with the Doctor.” Martha gasped and Rose kept going, “It going to take a team effort to keep that man alive for the next six weeks.”
“Oh, my god,” Martha said. “The Doctor said you were stuck somewhere and you couldn’t get back.”
Rose felt a little thrill that the Doctor talked about her, continued to think about her in her absence.
She shrugged and said, “You’d be surprised what money and desperation can get you.”
Martha seemed to shudder and said, “No, I think I know.” Rose smiled, her tongue against her teeth. She looked forward to that story.
“I saw the video the Doctor left on the TARDIS, with the instructions. Do you know anymore that you can share?”
Martha shared what she could, but even she didn’t have much information. The Doctor dropped the turning human bomb on her with barely any time to prepare to process.
“Using the energy of a time lord to destroy the universe is pretty bad,” Rose said. “I just got back to this one, don’t think I’m quite ready for it to be destroyed.”
Martha softened a little at her joke before asking, her face turning serious, “Why are you here?”
“I told the Doctor I was never gonna leave him,” Rose said, shrugging a shoulder. “I want to keep that promise.” Martha’s face shifted, unhappy, and Rose changed course. “A couple years back I met another former companion of the Doctor’s and, being honest, neither of us handled that right. I want to do it better this time. Figured we could trade stories about the Doctor embarrassing himself and have supper together?”
Martha looked skeptical.
“I could tell you about the time he got jealous of a cat?” That cracked her and a smile spread across Martha’s face.
“Yeah, alright. I’ll trade you for the time Shakespeare hit on us both.”
“Deal.”
Rose and Martha traded stories for the rest of the afternoon, struggling to not draw unwanted attention to the library, until the warning bell for the evening meal rang.
Martha sighed and, at Rose’s questioning look, said, “I have to bring the Doctor his supper.”
Rose rolled her eyes and said, “When we get back, we’ll have to ask Sarah Jane if she was a dinner lady, too, when she traveled with him.”
Martha laughed and then was quiet for a moment. “You know, I thought I knew how I felt about you already, with the way the Doctor carried on about you.” Martha shook her head. “You know he compared me to you constantly in the beginning? It was always Rose this or Rose that. Proper annoying, it was.”
Not knowing what else to say, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be,” Martha said, waving her hands. “You’re pretty alright, Rose.”
“Well, I think you’re brilliant, Martha Jones. I can see why he brought you along.”
Martha and Rose spent most evenings going forward in Rose’s room chatting, sharing stories, and planning. It sometimes felt like sleepovers, without the pizza or bad films and significantly worse plumbing.
Rose was right, though, the fob watch was in the rooms he kept at the top of the landing.
------
There were only a few weeks left to their countdown when Martha and Rose joined Jenny, another servant at the school, at the local tavern one evening. Rose was in stitches listening to Jenny try to unsuccessfully shush Martha as she ranted about equal rights.
“I have no regrets,” Martha said after relenting, taking a sip of her pint.
“I have one: drinking outside in this weather. Why can’t we drink inside again?” Rose asked.
“Add it to the list!” Martha said in a raised voice with a raised pint.
“You know why!” Jenny said. “Honestly, I know you come from London with them Suffragettes, but that’s miles away!”
Rose snorted, “Yeah, miles. So far, a few miles.”
“Thank god it’ll be over soon, and then we’ll be out of here,” Martha added.
“Over soon? Where’re the two of you going?” Jenny asked.
Rose smiled at Martha slyly and said, “Oh, the stars.” Martha smiled back at her.
Jenny looked back and forth at the both of them and said over her pint, “You’re just as bad as her. You both don’t say half mad things.”
Martha opened her mouth, likely to make another comeback, when the night sky lit up in a flash.
“Did you see that? What was that?” Martha asked.
“See what?” Jenny replied.
Martha’s eyes met Rose’s. The Family. They stood in tandem, plans formulating in their heads, when John’s enthusiastic voice rang out, “Ah, lovely evening, Martha, Jenny.” He paused for a second. “Miss Tyler,” he said, shyer, ducking his head a bit.
An object, brightly lit and green, shot across the sky.
“Did you see that?” Rose asked him, pointing in the direction that the ship went.
“Oh, that’s beautiful,” Jenny said.
“Ah, all gone now. Most commonly known as a meteorite. It’s just rocks falling to the ground, that’s all.”
“It looks like it came down in the woods,” Rose said to Martha, nearly disregarding what John said in its entirety. Something fell to Earth alright, but she’d bet that rocks weren’t it.
“No, no, no. No, they always look close when they’re miles off. Nothing left but a cinder. Now, I should escort you back to the school. Ladies?”
Rose said, “I think I’d like to see for myself. Be a grand adventure if we found something. Maybe you could walk Jenny back, while Martha and I check?” She walked away before he could respond, with an arm looped in Martha’s elbow.
“Thanks, Mister Smith!” Martha called back to John.
They walk towards where the light fell until they reached a field with visible disruptions in the grass, but no ship was visible. The ship clearly landed here.
“Maybe they landed and took off again?” Rose asked.
“Hope so. Still, should we open the watch?”
“No, the Doctor was clear in the video, to only open it if there’s danger.”
------
The next day, John found her in the hallway while Rose was stretching her legs on a walk, meeting on the landing halfway down the stairs. John was carrying the book he took out the day prior.
“Ah! Miss Tyler,” he said. “Lovely! I was just coming to see you.”
She smiled at him and held her hand out for the book. “Do you want me to take that off your hands, Mr. Smith?”
“Oh, yes! Very thoughtful, Miss Tyler.” He handed her the book, hesitated for a moment and swallowed before continuing. “I wanted show you something this evening in my office, if you are free.”
“Do I get a hint?”
“I have been having these incredible, impossible dreams, and I thought you might like hearing about them.” She stilled briefly at his words—was he remembering? she wondered. What impact would that have on the Family being able to find him?
John must not have noticed her hesitation and when she tuned back into him, he had stopped talking about his dreams and started gesturing to a flier attached to the bulletin board on the wall.
“Have you heard about this dance tomorrow?” She shook her head. “It is this annual event put on by the town. Not especially formal, but locals say that it is good fun. Are you planning on attending?”
“Hadn’t been—just heard about it now,” she said, being deliberately obstinate for the fun of it.
He laughed and said, “Yes, quite right. Would you be interested? In going—with me?”
Rose looked back at the flier and then to John’s wide-eyed eager face and couldn’t think of a good reason not to. While freer with touches than the last, this body was much less inclined to dance with her. It could be fun, and she could hold it over his head later.
“Sounds nice, Mr. Smith. Thank you offering, I’d love to go.”
He breathed out the air he’d been holding in and said, “Wonderful! And please, call me John. I insist.”
She nodded and said in return, “I insist on Rose, then.”
“Rose Tyler,” he said, and she loved to hear her name in his voice again. He said it the same way the Doctor did when he was feeling playful—with a change in pitch at the end of Tyler. “I will see you for supper, then?”
“Sure.”
He nodded, smile bright, and he started to walk backwards away from her towards the rest of the stairs. She made a noise, trying to alert him, but he kept smiling at her and not noticing where he was going. She grabbed on to the front of his suit jacket before he went tumbling down the stairs and John’s eyes widened at the perceived impropriety before realizing what she prevented.
Rose let go of him and he straightened his clothing. “My hero!”
“I’m begging ya here,” she said. “Look where you’re going. Please.”
------
Rose met John in his rooms after she closed the library for the day. He met her at the door and didn’t move to stop her from wandering slowly throughout the room, taking in the details. She stopped at the fob watch on the mantlepiece and knew it’s what held the Doctor from the Gallifreyan writing on the case. The Doctor had promised to teach her how to read it, one day.
He pulled her attention when he handed her a blue journal. “I call it my Journal of Impossible Things,” he said with a smile.
She opened it and was immediately greeted with a rather impressive drawing of a Slitheen (she mentally sounded out Rax-i-cor-i-co-fall-a-pat-or-i-us in her brain like a tongue twister), followed by another of a dalek, and then a few pages after that came a battalion of cybermen. Each page was filled from top to bottom with writing in a neat hand and some events had names that she didn’t recognize, likely from before he knew her. “You’ve dreamt these up?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. Every night, I dream I’m a time travelling alien with two hearts named the Doctor! Flying around in a little blue box and saving planets. All very fantastic.”
Rose looked at him, at his eyes, for any kind of understanding that these stories were real and this life as John Smith was the story, but nothing was there. She let her finger rest on an undetailed drawing of the TARDIS and asked, “Is this the blue box?”
He nodded. “It’s like a magic carpet; you walk in and walk out someplace else entirely.”
“In a small blue box?” She hesitated for a moment, knowing the joke would mostly be for herself and asked, “Is it bigger on the inside?”
That seemed to puzzle him for a moment, and he scratched at the light stubble on his chin before saying, “Yes, yes I suppose it is. But, there is stranger still. I wanted to show you the journal because,” he took the journal from her and flipped to another page, turning it back to her, “I dreamed of you.”
She looked at a decent rendition of her own face, hair down and obscuring one eye. She’d been wearing it up to go with the era since she left the TARDIS on the first day. “You’ve dreamed of me?”
“Couple weeks before you arrived, see?” He pointed to the date at the top corner on the page, declaring the date to be the twenty second of October, 1913. “It’s why I was so startled when I saw you in the library. It was literally seeing what I thought was a figment of my imagination walking around. I thought I was going mad, but I would prefer to think of it as providence.”
“So, it was shock that put you on the ground and not being jeopardy friendly?”
John blushed a bit and rubbed the back of his head. “Well, definitely not more than the Doctor is, at any rate.”
“What do we do, in your dreams? Am I in all of them?”
“We see wonders! From planets made of ice to ancient Rome!” Her heart clenched at the thought of Woman Wept, of going with her first Doctor. “But, no, your counterpart in my dreams seems to disappear later on…” he trailed off.
She didn’t want to linger on that, on Canary Wharf and the worst day of her life, so she turned to a page completely at random and looked at it without reading it. “Seems like we do an awful amount of running in these dreams.”
“Towards adventure and away from enemies, hand in hand!” He cleared his throat. “Ah, I can’t say I’m one for running, but perhaps you would like to take a walk into town with me tomorrow?”
“Sounds lovely,” Rose said as a knock came from the door. It was Martha with a tray for tea. “Hello, Martha! Mr. Smith was telling me about some dreams he’s been having.”
Martha’s eyebrows raised. “Anything interesting?”
“Oh, yes,” she said and turned back to John. “May I borrow this?”
------
That night Rose and Martha poured over the journal, although they tried to keep to the stories that they were there for, out of respect. Rose let Martha take over looking at it for a bit when she saw a sketch of the clockwork robots and a description of Madame de Pompadour. Ugh.
“Do you think he remembers too much?” Martha asked.
“I don’t know. How much is too much?”
“What if remembering like this makes him smell enough like a Time Lord to attract the Family?”
“That’s a good question, but it looks like John’s been dreaming like this since you first got here. I’d think that the family would already have found him if that were the case.”
Martha sighed and leaned back on Rose’s bed. “Yeah, good point. Is it bad that I sort of want them to find us so we can get the Doctor back? I’m so tired of cleaning up after these kids. I’d rather be studying for my exams.”
Rose’s interactions with the students were unremarkable for the most part. Nearly all of them came to the library at some point or another, but only a few that were regulars stuck out. The rest she ignored wholesale—she didn’t have time for a bunch of entitled teens, not when she was still living in the estates and certainly not now.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that John Smith is barely anything like the Doctor.”
“Really, you think so?” Martha asked, tilting her head at Rose.
“Absolutely—I’ve been here for five weeks and do you know how many times he’s gone off on tangents about temporal physics?”
Martha laughed, shaking her head.
“Not once. That’s not right. If I didn’t know he turned himself human, I’d have him sectioned.” Martha threw her head back in a laugh at that.
“Suppose you’re right. That and he can’t keep his blasted feet beneath him. I’ve never seen the Doctor so much as stumble.”
“Seriously, though, what is with that? Is it the one heart? It’d be an excellent research project, Doctor Jones.”
------
Rose went to meet John the next afternoon for their walk in the courtyard and saw him in the middle of instructing a group of students. She’d had a lot of jarring experiences since landing in 1913, but watching the image of the Doctor, no matter how everything else was so indicative of John Smith, instructing a group of children using firearms stopped her in her tracks.
She stood on the edge of the grass to watch, silent and miserable for a long moment. Before he could turn to see her, she walked away to wait for him somewhere else.
They walked into town with Rose’s hand in the crook of John’s elbow. Sometimes, when he got particularly excited about what they were talking about, he’d cover her hand with his and it felt the same as lacing their fingers together under an alien sky.
Almost the same, she amended. She was still unable to ignore the differences between the men. Rose said, “I was surprised to see you with the boys, earlier, training weapons. I don’t think I could’ve imagined you with a gun, let alone teaching children how to use one.”
“It’s an important thing to know. Great Britain at peace, and long may it reign, but that might not last forever.”
Martha and Rose noticed the night prior that John had written about World War I in his journal. She thought about the operations she and Mickey ran with the alternate Torchwood; they certainly weren’t unarmed during them.
“Still, they’re just kids. Think they really need to learn all that stuff so young?”
“Why not? Nothing so bad about military discipline.”
“And where did you learn that?”
“Gallifrey,” he answered without a moment’s hesitation. Once the name came out, he looked like he confused himself.
“Oh,” she said. “And where’s that?”
Rose looked at John’s face and silently begged him to say in a haughty, high and mighty tone that Gallifrey was the Shining Planet of the Seven Systems, located in the constellation of Kasterborous at the heart of the Medusa Cascade.
His face remained puzzled for a moment before it smoothed and he said, “Ireland.”
She managed to not let the disappointment show on her face and she needed to redirect. “Great Britain’s at peace, but you wrote about a war next year.”
“It was just a dream,” he dismissed.
“You wrote about it in such detail, with trenches and gunfire.”
“Well then, we can be thankful it’s not true. And I’ll admit mankind doesn’t need warfare and bloodshed to prove itself. Everyday life can provide honour and valour, and let’s hope that from now on this, this country can find its heroes in smaller places,” John said, coming closer to sounding like the Doctor than he had in front of her this whole time.
“In the most…” he continued after a second, but then drifted, distracted.
Rose looked around and saw what he saw: a tragedy in the making of a woman pushing a baby carriage dangerously close to where a piano was hoisted in the air in an attempt to get it into the second floor of a building.
“…Ordinary of—of deeds.” John crabbed a cricket ball from a kid standing next to him and threw it at the scaffolding next to the building. The ball connects, and the wooden planks fall, sending a brick flying into a large container of milk. The container fell and stopped the tram before the piano crashed down a few feet ahead of them.
She watched the workers rush to the woman and baby and she said, “I’m impressed.” She was impressed and she’d deal with the Doctor’s inflated ego for saying so when she had to.
“Ah, just lucky,” he replied.
Rose stuck her hand in his elbow again with a wide smile, tugged lightly at his arm and said, “I don’t know. I think you could save the world with a satsuma.”
“A satsuma? Ha! What on Earth is a satsuma?”
------
Rose had made a trip back to the TARDIS when she had a few minutes to get a dress for the dance. The perfect one conveniently hung from a coat rack the moment she entered the wardrobe room. It was a dark gray, with accents of TARDIS blue throughout, and it fit her well without limiting her movement.
She thanked the TARDIS before changing and heading back to the school. She met John in his rooms and she enjoyed the stunned look on his face when he saw her.
He walked over to her and took her hands in his. “You look stunning,” he said, and she realized he was leaning down to kiss her. She subtly turned her head and his lips landed on her cheek; he wasn’t the Doctor, regardless if they shared a face. If John was perturbed by that, he hid it well.
The door banged open and Martha rushed in, out of breath. She put one hand against a wall to steady herself. “They found us,” she said.
John tried to reprimand her for entering without knocking, but Rose shushed him.
“They found us?” Rose asked.
“Yes, I’ve seen them. They look like people, like us, like normal. We’ve got to open the watch.” Martha went to the mantle, her hands grasping where the watch was, and Rose filled with dread. “Oh my god, it’s gone. Where is it?”
“What are you talking about?” John asked.
“You had a watch; a fob watch. Right there.”
“Did I? I don’t remember.”
“You did,” Rose said, taking a look around the office herself. “You absolutely did.”
“Rose? Does it matter? It’s just a watch, didn’t even notice that it was gone.”
“Oh, but we need it. They’ve got Jenny—possessed her or copied her or something else—and we need the Doctor! Now tell me, where’s the watch?” Martha asked, frantic.
“Oh, I see what this is,” John said eyes sliding to Rose. “Cultural differences. It must be so confusing for you, Martha. The Doctor is what we call a story.”
“Oi! Rude!” Rose said.
“You complete ass. This is not you!” She pointed to all of him. “This is 1913.”
“Yes, good,” John patronized. “This is 1913.”
Martha looked like she wanted to kill him and she wasn’t wrong for it, thought Rose. Still, she got between them and put an arm around Martha’s shoulders.
“I think Martha is just a bit hysterical from, ah—woman’s troubles?” Martha glared at her, but John blanched. “Let me just have a moment with her and I’ll meet you outside in a tick?” He rushed out.
“Hysteria? Woman’s troubles?” Martha asked, tone full of offense, stepping out from under Rose’s arm.
“What? Worked every time in PE,” Rose replied with a shrug. “I’m going to follow him, keep him safe at the dance. You keep looking for the watch, yeah?”
Martha nodded, momentarily appeased, and said, “What if we can’t find it?”
“We try it your way—telling him and seeing if he remembers anything. If all else fails and we don’t have any other choice, we get him back to the TARDIS and wait the family out from there.”
“What if we never find it? What if we don’t get the Doctor back?” Martha asked.
Rose shrugged again. She didn’t want to think of never getting to see the Doctor again; it wasn’t an option for her, but she empathized with Martha. “The TARDIS has an emergency program in place—sends it back to when and where the companion needs to go, should the Doctor die or be permanently incapacitated. Should send you back home.”
“Just me? What about you?”
“I don’t have a home in this universe, not anymore. Not without the Doctor.” Martha smiled sadly at Rose, and she returned a half smile before joining John outside.
------
Rose was on edge the whole walk to the dance, and it lingered after they got inside. John did manage to lead her through a couple of dances before he left her to grab them some punch.
She scanned the crowd for trouble and saw when Martha ran in, frantic. “I couldn’t find the watch,” she said when she reached Rose.
“Martha? What are you doing here?” John said, joining them by a table. “I thought you were having, erm, woman’s troubles.”
“Oh, I’ll give you woman troubles, Mister.”
“Martha!”
Rose hit him on the arm. “Rude,” she said.
“We don’t have time for this! Doctor, you need to come with us, now. Back to the TARDIS where it’s safe.”
“Not this again—”
“She’s right, John,” Rose said softly and John looked at her, confused. “The Doctor is real and we need him.”
“Not you, too, Rose. Or is this some kind of practical joke?”
Martha groaned and pulled his sonic screwdriver out of her pocket. “What’s this, then? Go on, you know what it is. What’s it called?”
John took it gingerly, like it was a bomb about to go off.
Rose put a hand on his arm, smiling sadly at him. “You’re not John Smith. You’re the Doctor, the man from your journal. You just don’t remember being him.” He looked at her in disbelief.
Then, the door banged open and shouts came from the crowd. Jenny, a man Rose had met from the village, and a student—Baines?—pushed through the crowd wielding advanced looking weapons. They were flanked by nightmare inducing scarecrows, walking on their own.
The man, Mister Clark, demanded silence from the room. A Mister Chambers asked, “What’s going on?” and was vaporized for his efforts.
Martha looked to John. “Everything I just told you? Forget it! Don’t say anything,” she said, urgently. Rose stood a little bit in front of him, slightly blocking the family’s view of him.
Baines said, “We asked for silence! Now then, we have a few questions for Mister Smith.”
“No, it’s better than that,” a young voice said. It belonged to little Lucy Cartwright and Rose felt sad—she’d seen Lucy around town and had often snuck her books from the library. The girl was sweet and had a thirst for the written word. “The teacher, he’s the Doctor. I heard them talking.”
The rest of the family took a deep breath in through the nose, and Rose would honestly say that the action was more alien than their weaponry.
“You turned yourself human,” Baines said like he’d figured out the puzzle.
“Of course I’m human,” John said, because human or no he had a gob on him. “I was born human, as were you, Baines. And Jenny, and you Mister Clark. What is going on? This is madness!”
“Oh, a human brain, too. Simple, thick, and dull,” Baines said.
“But he’s not good to us like this,” Jenny added.
“We need a Time Lord,” said Mister Clark.
“Easily done.” Baines stepped forward and raised his gun at John’s head, “Change back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” John insisted.
“Change back!”
“I literally do not know—” before he could finish, Jenny—or whatever possessed her—grabbed Martha and held a gun to her head.
“She’s your friend, isn’t she?” Jenny asked. “Doesn’t this scare you enough to change back?”
John repeated, “I don’t know what you mean!”
Something changed on Jenny’s face and she said, “Wait a minute. The maid told me about Smith and the librarian.” She gestured at Rose and before she could react, Clark had his arms around her torso, holding firm as she struggled. He pointed the gun at her head and she went still.
“Have you enjoyed it, Doctor? Being human? Has it taught you wonderful things? Are you better, richer, wiser?” Baines taunted him. “Then let’s see you answer this. Which one of them do you want us to kill? The maid or the librarian? Your friend or your love? Your choice.”
“Make your decision, Mister Smith,” Jenny said.
Baines continued, “Perhaps if that human heart breaks, the Time Lord will emerge.”
John looked helplessly between the two of them for a few moments before the family took another deep breath through their nostrils. Blimey—are they smelling her? Or rather, smelling for Time Lord?
“It’s him!” Baines shouted, and Martha used the distraction to disarm Jenny, pointing the weapon at Baines.
“Alright!” she said. “One more move and I shoot.”
“Oh, the maid is full of fire.”
“And you can shut up!” Martha raised the gun above her head and fired a warning shot.
Clark then said, “Careful, Son of Mine. This is all for you so that you can live forever.”
Rose looked at the people the family had taken. Jenny, Mister Clark, Baines, and Lucy. A facsimile of a family—a mother, father, son, and daughter, all chosen on purpose.
She tuned back in when Martha said, “Scared and holding a gun’s a good combination. Do you want to risk it?”
The arm around her loosened and Rose ran to John’s side.
“Rose, get everyone out of here; there’s a door at the side. Go!”
“Martha, are you sure?”
Martha nodded, not taking her eyes of Baines. Rose grabbed a protesting John by the wrist and ushered everyone out the side door.
Rose and John managed to get everyone outside and they all dispersed in every direction. John tried to direct a student, Timothy, back to the school, but Tim looked at him and shouted, “Get away from me! You’re just as bad as them!” before running off. John looked more confused than ever—one more strange thing to add to the camel’s back.
She tried to get John to go, but he just stood there, sputtering about. Martha ran outside to them and grabbed John’s hand with a, “Let’s go!” Rose took off after them.
Martha led them back to the school and, once inside, John furiously rang a loud bell attached to the wall.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked while Martha tried to gesture him forward.
“Maybe one man can’t fight them, but this school teaches us to stand together.” At the students and other faculty flooding the hall he said, “Take arms! Take arms!”
“You’re gonna send a bunch of children with muskets out there to fight them?” Rose asked, incredulous.
“Someone has to do something, Rose. I’m sure this is a lot, but we can take care of this, I promise.”
“You’re being a lot!” she told him, but another teacher had already stolen his attention.
“Doctor, they don’t stand a chance! They’re just boys. They can’t fight the Family—you saw their weapons!” Martha said.
“Miss Jones, they’re cadets. They are trained to defend the King and all his citizens and properties.”
“Yeah, and you’re an enemy of the crown there, mate,” Rose said, but no one heard her over the bustle.
Students and faculty continued to rush through the hall, an organized chaos, as they gathered weapons and supplies to stand against an assault on the school.
The headmaster joined them. “What in thunder’s name is this? Before I devise an excellent and endless series of punishments for each and every one of you, could someone explain very simply and immediately exactly what is going on?”
John answered him, stiff and at attention, “Headmaster, I have to report that the school is under attack.”
“Really? Is that so? Perhaps you and I should have a word in private.”
“No, I promise you, sir. I was in the village with Miss Tyler. It’s Baines, sir. Jeremy Baines and Mister Clark from Oakham Farm. They’ve gone mad, sir. They’ve got guns. They’ve already murdered people in the village. I saw it happen.”
The headmaster turned to Rose. “Is this true?”
“Yes, but—”
“On our own soil?”
“Yeah, just said. But, sir, these boys can’t win against them. You need to get them out of here.”
“For all you may be a learned woman, Miss Tyler,” the headmaster said, unyielding, “I will not tolerate your feeble attempts at strategy. Now, get yourself to safety.” The headmaster directed another teacher to call for the police and started directing the boys into a battle formation.
Martha grabbed Rose’s hand and said, “We’ve got to find the watch.”
------
Tearing apart John’s office led to nothing and by the time that they rejoined John, the Family and their army of demented scarecrows had overtaken the school, the headmaster murdered.
Rose and Martha grabbed John and ran out into the woods after getting as many of the boys out of the school as possible. They sought temporary refuse in some bushes when they heard Mister Clark’s voice ring out, calling for the Doctor.
“Come back, Doctor. Come home. Come home and claim your prize.” The rest of the family joined the father in taunting the Doctor. When they looked back to the school, the TARDIS gleamed bright in the dark.
“You recognize it, don’t you?” asked Martha.
“I’ve never seen it in my life.”
“Do you remember its name?” she continued to press.
He made a noise and Rose put a hand on his arm. “You wrote about it, John. In your journal. The blue box that moved like a magic carpet.” He stared at her in disbelief. “You drew a blue box, travelling in space in time. One that’s bigger on the inside.”
“No, no! I’m John Smith,” he said in a panic. “That’s all I want to be. John Smith, with his life, his job, his love. Why can’t I be John Smith? Isn’t he a good man?”
Rose moved her hand from his arm to the side of his face and gave him a sad smile.
“Why can’t I stay?”
“We need the Doctor,” Martha said. Rose could tell that Martha was getting impatient with John’s emotionality, but was very glad she was following Rose’s lead. They were asking John to believe in the impossible and to do the impossible.
“What am I, then?” He asked, miserable. “I’m nothing. I’m just a story.” He took off into the woods, leaving Rose and Martha to follow him.
They caught up to him and walked in silence down the road for a few minutes. Rose started to recognize the area and pointed down another road, branching from the one they were on. “This way. I think I have an idea where we can go.”
“We’ve got to keep going,” John said. He sounded defeated and grim.
She took his hand in hers and said, “Just trust me on this one, yeah?”
Rose led them to a cottage, well-kept but dark and quiet from the outside. “Who lives here?” Martha asked.
“Unfortunately, no one, if I’m right.” Rose knocked on the door and cracked it open. The table was set for tea, but the house was still. She touched the teapot and found it cold like the rest of the room. “The daughter took over Lucy Cartwright. She lived here with her family. Figured they wouldn’t last long if they tried to stop her.”
“I have to give myself up, before anyone else dies,” John said, distant.
“Like hell you will,” Rose said. “We’ll figure something else out.”
“What else can we do?” Martha asked. “They have the TARDIS, that was our worst-case scenario!”
A knock sounded at the door and Rose and Martha shared a look and a nod. “Scarecrows don’t knock,” Rose said.
Martha slowly cracked the door open, and then all the way. Timothy Latimer entered, holding out the fob watch. “I brought you this,” he said.
Martha took the watch from him and tried to give it to John. “Hold it,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“Please, just hold it.”
“It told me to find you. It wants to be held.”
“Wait, Tim,” Rose said. “Did you have this the whole time? What the hell were ya thinking?”
“It was waiting and it wasn’t ready to return. But also, because I was afraid of the Doctor.”
“Why?” John asked, desperate.
“Because I’ve seen him. He’s like fire and ice and rage. He’s like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun.”
“Stop it.”
“He’s ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe.”
The whole time Timothy spoke, John became more and more distressed. John’s eyes flashed to Rose’s. “And that’s who you want me to become?”
She took his hands in hers. “I’ve seen it, too. When I took the vortex into my mind, I saw all of time and space, everything that could be, would be, wouldn’t be. You wrote about it, in your journal. About the Bad Wolf.”
Timothy added one more thing, “But, the Doctor? He’s all those things, but he’s also wonderful.”
“No, no, no! They’re just stories. Nonsense dreams I wrote down.”
She shook her head. “I asked where you grew up and you said Gallifrey—that’s not in Ireland, John. That’s a planet. A lost planet that’s galaxies away with an orange sky at night and red grass that glows in the daylight.”
A loud bang crashed in the distance. Martha looked out the window and exclaimed, “They’re destroying the village!”
Defeated, John reached out for the watch. Timothy asked, “Can you hear it?”
John held the watch in his hands, looking at it intently. “I think he’s asleep. Waiting to awaken.”
“Why did he speak to me?”
John looked away from the watch and stood, bouncing lightly from foot to foot. “Oh, low level telepathic field. You were born with it. Just an extra synaptic engram casing.” John gasped, and nearly dropped the watch. “Is that how he talks?” John asked, gasping for breath and sitting back down.
Rose nodded and Martha said, “That’s him. All you have to do is open the watch and he’s back.”
John looked at Rose. “You knew? This whole time you knew that I would have to die while I fell in love with you?”
Rose’s heart broke a little. “This was the Doctor’s plan, your plan, all along.” She sat down next to him. “You told me that the me in your dreams disappeared, right? After a while?” He nodded. “I got stuck in a parallel universe—one where everything was exactly the same except a few differences. That’s why I disappeared in your dreams. I worked so hard for so long to get back to you.”
John looked sadder. “You don’t love me, then. You love the Doctor.”
“Can you guys give us a minute?” Rose asked Timothy and Martha, and they left the cottage. “I do. I do love the Doctor, and I know he loves me, too.” John started to cry a little and she leaned against him, tangling their fingers together. “You’re not the Doctor, but the Doctor is you. He might’ve shoved everything Time Lord into a watch, but he doesn’t change. Not all the way. Not even after a brand-new face. And he’ll remember being you, what living as you felt like.”
The explosions got louder, closer, and John gasped. “What if I gave them this?” he said, holding up the watch. “This is all they want!”
Rose covered the hand holding the watch with hers and shook her head. “Even with that, the family could have enough power to devour the universe, and everyone in it. We can’t.”
Them both touching the watch forced some sort of vision to come over them—Rose saw flashes of adventures they’ve already had, and some yet to come. Planets and species familiar and not, but always her hand in the Doctor’s—this Doctor, a young man with a bowtie, an old Scotsman, a woman in rainbows.
They came out of it together and she asked, “Did you see that?”
John sniffled and asked, “Why didn’t those dogs have noses?”
Rose giggled and said, “Barcelona!” as if that could be all the explanation needed.
John rubbed the case of the watch with his thumb. He looked less scared of the watch now. “You’ll be there? After?”
“I promised you forever, didn’t I?”
John moved to kiss her, and she let him this time, eyes sliding shut. It was a nice kiss, but she it just made her anxious and eager to see the Doctor, to have their long awaited reunion. He broke off their kiss and rested his forehead against hers.
“Thank you,” he said. “I think I have to do this next part alone.”
Rose hugged him, kissed him again, and left him standing in the middle of the Cartwright home. She went into the woods to see if she could track down some of the students that fled after the attack, keep them safe from the animated scarecrows.
------
The explosions stopped and she led a band of younger children back to the school. The TARDIS was missing from the courtyard when they arrived and she sighed in relief—the Doctor was back. They were safe.
She found Martha helping the matron patch up the injuries inflicted on the students and teachers. Rose tried to help the best she could, too, with the basic first aid she’d learned at Torchwood. She didn’t seem to be doing a bad job and she laughed when her eyes met Martha’s after Martha fixed some of the matron’s work.
Dawn broke and the school seemed to calm. The barricade at the front of the school was taken down and nearly every person was resting. Martha pulled her attention to a window overlooking the field in front of the school to where the TARDIS was reemerging on the tree line.
The two hugged each other and Martha started taking off some of the layers of her servant’s uniform. “Goodbye, apron!” she said. “So long, ridiculous hat! Oh, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I can’t wait to wear jeans again! I’m not putting a dress on for years, I swear.”
Rose laughed and agreed. She pushed lightly on Martha shoulder and said, “Go on ahead, I need to grab something before we go.”
“You sure?” she asked. “Not sure anything here is that important, or irreplaceable.”
“I need to grab John’s journal from my room. Probably shouldn’t let the people of 1913 learn about the existence of aliens just yet, even if they’ll just think they’re the ramblings of a mad man.”
“Want me to come with?”
“Nah, go ahead, just don’t leave without me, yeah?”
------
With the Journal of Impossible Things in hand, Rose headed towards the TARDIS. The beautiful blue box came into her line of vision and she felt herself walking a little faster.
She started moving faster, still, when she saw a brown spot coming towards her.
The Doctor, dressed in his brown pinstripe suit, was running towards her, arms and legs pumping as he moved. Rose picked up the hem of her party dress—she’d never had the chance to change out of it—so she could move faster.
“Doctor!” she called out while she ran, barely able to contain her excitement.
He laughed when they collided, loud and joyful. He picked her off the ground and used the momentum to spin her around once, and then twice before her feet touched the ground. They clutched at each other, faces in the other’s neck.
“Rose,” he whispered. She pulled back and grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled him into a kiss. She felt him move one had to the back of her head and his other arm moved around her waist. She threw her arms around his shoulders.
He broke away from her briefly, arms still around each other, and asked, “Oh, Rose, how are you here? What happened?”
“You’re not gonna like it, but it involved interdimensional travel through cracks in the universe.”
The Doctor stilled, eyes wide. “You’re right, I don’t like that. The ramifications of continuing to poke and prod at those fault lines in the barrier between universes could be disastrous if—no, not if, when—it causes the faults to grow. If, when, that were to happen, the universes could collapse on each other; not to mention the risk of travelling not just without a capsule, but across dimensions without a capsule. Blimey!”
This was the Doctor she missed; the man she loved. Mind working at light speed and his mouth working just as fast. Her face must have shown it, the tongue touched pleased smile must have given her away because the Doctor stopped the tangent then and there.
“Oh, and the worst part, Rose? I don’t even care, because you’re here.” He kissed her again, slow and sweet.
“I love you, you know?” Rose said when they parted next.
The Doctor grinned, big and cheesy. “Quite right, too.”
She pushed on his shoulder, “Oi, not again!”
He laughed. “Oh Rose Tyler, I love you, too.”
He seemed to sober, then, and said, “But, Rose—your family. What about them? You were about to have a sibling and—”
Rose kissed him quickly to cut him off—and oh was that something she was going to exploit—and said, “I made my choice a long time ago. It was never my choice to leave you and it will never be my choice to leave you.”
The Doctor’s grin returned, and he shifted his hold on her to one arm around her waist as he walked them back to the TARDIS. She moved her arm around his waist and matched her steps to his. “Ha!” he laughed. “We should enter a three-legged race somewhere; we’d be absolutely brilliant at a three-legged race.”
Timothy Latimer waited for them at the TARDIS doors.
“Ah, Tim Timothy Timber!” the Doctor said as they approached. Martha stuck her head out the door and smiled at the Doctor and Rose and joined them outside.
“I just wanted to say goodbye, and thank you. Because I’ve seen the future and I now know what must be done. It’s coming, isn’t it? The biggest war ever.”
“You don’t have to fight,” Martha said.
“I think we do,” Timothy replied.
“It’s dangerous,” Rose said.
“So is travelling with him. You know that as well as anyone, but it’s not going to stop you.”
The Doctor held out the fob watch to Timothy. “Tim, I’d be honoured if you’d take this.”
Timothy held it up to his ear and said, “I can’t hear anything.”
“No, it’s just a watch now, but keep it with you, for good luck.” The Doctor clapped Timothy on the shoulder before going through the doors. Martha hugged him before following and Rose did the same.
Rose entered the TARDIS and with all the lights on and the central column bubbling, she felt the most at home she’d ever been. The Doctor brushed passed her quickly, touching her lightly on the shoulder as he did. He stuck his head back out the door and said to Timothy, “You’ll like this bit.”
He closed the door again and ran to the console. Martha had already showered and changed back into normal clothes and Rose was looking forward to doing the same.
The Doctor starting flipping switches and pulling levers with gusto; she could tell he’d missed this down to a subconscious level. And, from the way the TARDIS didn’t make as much noise as it usually did at his bad driving, the TARDIS did, too, even if it was just to send them into the vortex.
After she had her shower and was back in jeans and a jumper, she rejoined the Doctor and Martha in the console room.
“So, Rose Tyler, Martha Jones,” he said as he smiled at the both of them, hand loosely gripping a lever. “Where to?”
The two of them smiled at him before turning their smiles to each other. “Anywhere,” Rose said.