Chapter Text
Rose Tyler was a hero.
A fact which she found rather funny. Her, the girl off the estate, a shop girl with no A-Levels ended up saving people at her job.
It had been an accident really. She’d gone to take the lottery money to Wilson, Chief Electrician for Henriks.
Instead, she’d found him under attack by students dressed as mannequins. Weird but it wasn’t like she’d not faced drunks, muggers or worse on the Estate. One shove of a metal rack and a drop kick at one cheeky attacker and she’d hauled Wilson back to the lift. But not before she saw what looked to be a bomb with wires and the classic ticking sound. Retro but she wasn’t going to question it.
She’d rang security on their way to evacuate the building. Everyone barely made it out, with a few singed in the blast. The authorities had been all over her, interrogating her with barely veiled disbelief at her odd story about what happened in the basement. Poor Wilson ended up in the hospital barely coherent suffering from a mental breakdown and possible heart attack.
Over the repetitive questions and pointed glares as if they wanted to blame her, Rose told them she was done and needed to get home to her mum. Job blown up and tired, she’d practically ran into Sarah Jane Smith outside her mum’s flat.
At least she acted like she believed Rose and wanted her story. Her mother, of course, demanded compensation as Rose invited Sarah Jane in. Calm and open minded, Sarah Jane agreed. Rose Tyler soon found herself more compensated than she ever imagined with a settlement from Henrik’s and an offer of a full scholarship from a small Uni courtesy of Sarah Jane and her connections. UNIT, which Rose had never heard of before, had even more questions and they believed Rose, which was a hell of a change to finally have someone listen to her.
Despite her head killing her over the repetitive and detailed questions about some bloke in a black leather coat she had not seen, they said her country needed more people like her and offered a full scholarship. Her boyfriend Mickey was suspicious of the whole thing.
“You can’t trust them, Rose. I mean why’s the military helping you? No offense, Babe, but people save each other all the time. Why’re they after you? Something’s off.”
“Mickey,” she sighed in a way that was now becoming a habit. She loved him, appreciated everything he was to her, but she’d always had an itch to do more than go to the local, get pissed, and moan about life. “This is my chance to make a change. Get prospects so I can help out mum.”
“You mean leave.” He spit the words out like she was suggesting murder.
“No! I’m living with mum and going to school. I can get a job on campus part time to help out.”
“And what about me? How do I fit into all this? When am I gonna see you while you’re off at school all the time?”
“God, are you really saying that? I live here. Course I’m gonna see ya. But I’ve got to work hard at this. It’s my chance. I still have to get my A-levels which means cramming everything into my brain. I’m sorry I haven’t been around much but once I--”
He didn’t let her finish.
“You’re leaving us behind.” He paced around her mum’s living room, peering out the window before turning to her, arms crossed and glaring. “You think you’re so much better ‘cos you saved people and got attention. You’re still Rose Tyler living on the estate. You don’t turn your back on us who’ve been here for you through everything.”
Rose shot off the couch.
“That’s not what’s happening and you know it. And I get it, you want me at the pub with you but I’ve got to study. Why can’t you understand that?”
“Because you’re leaving me!”
“I’m not! I’m working to make things better. How many times do I have to say that? It’s not like we haven’t talked about this, what we’d do with our lives if we got the chance. You have dreams too, Mickey. And it wasn’t just hanging around here. What if I can make something of myself and help?”
“The only thing I see happening is you doing what you did the last time with Jimmy. Rose leaving with stars in her eyes and not thinking about anyone else. And this time, it’s not going to be me picking up the pieces.”
Her stomach knotted and tears burned the back of her eyes. He was being a complete prat about this over fear and hurt ego.
“Everyone assumes I’ll fail. That’s all you think of me, isn’t it? Rose Tyler can’t do anything right, isn’t smart enough and needs to settle down with a job at the butcher’s and just be happy scraping by.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s safe and dependable. I’m in good at my job and moving up. We was going to be a team and make a life together. I’d never hurt you or Jackie. It’s nice what we have. You’re throwing that away and for what? School’s nice and all but it doesn’t mean you’ll get a job. How many people there are gonna look at you and give you a chance? How many Jimmys are there gonna be looking down on you, on where you came from? What then? ‘Cos I won’t be waiting on you.”
“Then don’t wait.” The words spilled out before she could think. Immediately, she regretted it. Every muscle turned to stone and her head throbbed as she’d crossed a line. Maybe she was always going to cross it with him but not this viciously.
“Fine. You go. It’s not like I don’t have prospects, girls happy to have someone steady and loyal.” He stormed toward the door pausing once. “Don’t come begging after me.” The door slammed and Rose’s life took an abrupt turn.
She curled up on the sofa and let the tears and wracking sobs consume her, almost like a cleansing of her emotions and her life.
“What’s this?”
Rose heard Jackie come in and bags drop. She inhaled a shaky breath.
“Mick’s gone. He wanted me to choose Uni or him and I did.”
Jackie sighed and dropped by Rose.
“Sweetheart, Mickey’s always been there for you. Do you really think this school is better than him?”
“Not you too,” Rose groaned and covered her face.
“Well, if you ask me, you’re acting selfish and thinking only of yourself. Did you spare one thought for Mickey or me?”
She dropped her hands and straightened her spine. For the first time in quite a while, Rose felt a certainty, like she had a path to follow that was set and not just a dream.
“I was thinking mainly of you, Mum. Of getting a chance at a job to take care of you. You raised me on my own, struggling to make ends meet and I’m not gonna sit her and not do everything I can to make things better for us.”
“Don’t put this on me. Things are fine. There’s food on the table and a roof over our heads. We’ve got friends and family here. You’re the one who wants to leave. Getting that job at the shop has filled your head with ideas.”
“No, it didn’t,” Rose countered, suddenly calm and filled with compulsion to make her mum understand. “It proved how people would treat me ‘cos I was off the estate. And I’m not ashamed of where I come from or you. It’s just—”
She tugged at her earring searching for the right words. “It’s made me want to prove them wrong. That people like us are stronger than them that got it all so easy. And yeah, we do all right here and I’m not complaining but one day something could happen and I need to have a way to take care of us. Then I got this chance.”
Her mother leveled blue eyes at her that had often cut through any Rose Tyler schemes to duck out to the pub with her friends or date boys her mother hated.
“You’re determined to do this.”
“I am. But I’d like to do it with you.”
“I’m not paying your way. You still have to get a job.”
“Already working on that.” She clasped her hand with her mum’s and they laced their fingers together in a mother-daughter bond that was far stronger than any feelings she had for Mickey. If Jimmy Stones had proven anything to her, it’s that no bloke was worth losing her mum.
“All right then, let’s get you studying. And until you get that job, you can help me with my clients, washing hair, sweeping up and running to the shops for me.”
“Fair enough.” Rose wrapped her arms around her mum and everything clicked into place in her mind. Risky as it was, filled with difficulty and harder work than she’d ever done, she was doing this. “Thanks, Mum.”
Rose passed her A-Levels to much celebration with her mum. Mickey avoided her except when he was making sure she saw him with Trisha Delaney. Funny thing, Rose was only mildly hurt. She really wanted him to be happy.
Uni devoured her time. She got a clerical job at the school library. And it was just as tough as everyone said. There was snippy commentary about how she talked, her clothes and how much she didn’t know. Rose refused to let them get her down. Instead, she studied harder and broke a few grading curves which made a few of them cry into their parent’s checkbooks.
Not that it was a victory, but it was justice.
Aside from studying, odd things happened to her at school that had nothing to do with schoolwork. She caught a group of students at the computer lab staring like zombies at symbols flashing across the screen like they were playing some sort of game. It took up the entire lab which annoyed her.
Rose tapped one on the shoulder and he ignored her. So did the others. A posh looking professor ordered her out. He had a weird stillness about him and cocked his head at a weird angle like he was examining her as a specimen.
Rose left with one thought – they were up to something. After a quick survey of other students and staff, there was no all-night projects going on. No one recognized the symbols she’d sketched from what he’d seen. Gut instinct kicked in and she called Sarah Jane and UNIT.
Once again, Rose had found herself in the middle of another weird happening. UNIT again questioned her while Sarah Jane took her to tea and gave her a whole different view of the world. The one where not everything was as it seemed and the world was a lot stranger than most people realized. Rose nodded her head but didn’t quite believe all of it.
She didn’t make the news. In fact, UNIT made her sign a non-disclosure agreement. Which added a layer of truth to the wild stories Sarah Jane told her. Rose did her best to move on, focus on school, her job and keeping her mum out of the whole weirdness of her life.
There was more. Yellow slime at a park she passed where a few homeless people had disappeared turned into another UNIT matter when she staked out the park one night. Plant people rising up at night, one of which she torched with a can of her mum’s hairspray and a lighter she happened to have in the groceries she was carrying.
UNIT ended up assigning her, what Rose called, her keeper who seemed obsessed with asking her if she’d seen a blue box or know any doctors. Rose found these meetings barmy. She never told her mum.
It wasn’t until she was taken to UNIT’s London headquarters it all became less mad and more real. She was shown a three-dimensional puzzle that was a bunch of interconnected wire globes. She assumed it was some psychological test. She solved it in two hours. They never told her what it meant.
She assumed it was some intelligence test. Or maybe they thought she was a nutter and only the barmy passed it.
After discovering a bloke in her physics study group who thought he was talking to aliens and helping to plan a takeover of the Earth, maybe she did lose it. She’d had about enough of his egotistical ranting and took his laptop, firmly telling said aliens to bugger off, they were too busy for any invasion. They had exams and Rose would eviscerate them if they invaded. (she’d just learned that word eviscerate and loved it).
The study group cheered. Idiot Luke Rattigan not so much. She mentioned it to her UNIT keeper Kate. Luke disappeared on a mental health leave.
Thus was her life and why she shouldn’t have been surprised when on the night shift at the library, another odd thing happened.
Between semesters, Rose took as many shifts at the library as she could. No breaks for her. Night shift at the library could be quiet or filled with desperate students pulling an all-nighter. It was never what she’d call dangerous but that was about to change.