Work Text:
Time and space had been kind and cruel, respectively to one Rose Tyler, age twenty-three.
At the tender age of nineteen, she had met a curious man who offered to show her the wonders of the world.
There had only been one niggling problem in the tenuous relationship they shared travelling hand-in-hand, and that had been that in two short years she had fallen head over heels in love with him.
In her mind, when she reflected on him, he was always just ‘Her-First’. To Rose, Her-First had been a moody, broody ball of joy that plucked her out of her mundane existence right when it mattered. She always had argued it was only one year, but Jackie never failed to remind her of all the nights she sat alone at home with no call or postcard, left all alone to wonder where her daughter had run off to or if she was ever alive.
After a while Rose just stopped trying to say it had only been a year.
They usually got along a lot better when they did.
Just when she thought she was finally starting to understand the complexities of a relationship with someone you love in extenuating circumstances he changed.
Everything changed.
After that she met another man known as Her-Second who was several (yet still less than the first) years her senior. He was full of joy and erratic energy that could transform into dangerous which only fueled her desire more.
She didn’t fear his dark side. She felt safe there.
Accustomed to the lifestyle, they travelled as well. It was in his arms that she experienced another two years filled with adventure and falling in love all over again.
It was Her-Second she lost to the war.
At least, this was the story Rose would tell when people pried.
~
If you were to ask her, Rose Tyler would have to admit that the first two years without him where the worst. Her stomach would knash at any reminder. Tears would fall unwillingly down already raw cheeks, her mascara tracks almost a permanent fixture on his once lovely face.
One time, she barely made it to the toilettes when she had seen a Police Box on display in a county museum.
She dyed her hair black to match the color of her heart.
Her mother had the audacity to roll her eyes at the choice.
“Come on love, he said he wanted you to have a good life. He would feel bloody awful knowing that you’re going on like this.” Jackie would tell her over and over.
“Good! Then at least I know someone else out there understands how awful this feels!” She would yell, slamming her bedroom door and falling to the soft welcoming bed.
If you were to ask her now, Rose Tyler would admit that she was the worst in those first two years.
~
It took awhile, but tear tracks were replaced by rouged cheeks, frowns to simple smiles, and greasy black hair to well-kept soft brown ponytails.
“What are your plans today?” Jackie would ask as she fed Rose’s little brother Tony.
“Maybe a bit of shopping, a trip to the gym and a walk in the park.” Rose would reply.
“Don’t be home too late, it’s yer dad’s big party.” Jackie had a tendency of calling after her.
After all, for Rose Tyler, every night was one big party.
And she hated it.
~
“How to reinvent yourself to be a brighter happier you. I can tell you how this one ends, and it’s with a 50p sticker at the charity shop.”
Rose looked up, confused and annoyed by the voice reading over her shoulder, a hint of a Scottish accent. Her eyes lifted to hit brown ones, a hint of amusement tracing around them. They were so familiar to her that she was a little taken back.
“No need to look so aghast I merely was teasing.” His voice was a bit tenderer and less severe the next time, added by a casual tilt of his head and tug of his left ear.
She looked him up and down not completely surprised that he wore a suit and tie, spectacles and a slightly messy approach to his hair.
“Do you often choose to insult strangers by mocking their literary choices?” Escaped her lips, venom outlining each word with a promise.
Beware. Here there be dragons.
“I’m Dr. Smith, I’m the director of the Institute of Historical Research at University College London.” He said, holding out his hand to her as if he had wished to shake hers.
Her hand stayed wrapped tightly around the book she was looking at.
“Well, I guess asking you to coffee is out of the question then.” He said, putting his hand down and beginning to walk away.
“How about dinner instead?” She called out.
Later she would hope this meet-cute would have imprinted on her in a way that would at least be memorable.
But nothing would ever beat bigger-on-the-inside.
~
“I don’t like this luv, not one bit.” Jackie said to Rose that night.
In many ways that night was not unlike any other night, a black-tie affair that posed as a party where politics and business went down behind closed doors and on dance floors. On most occasions, she would plaster a smile on considered appropriate for a daughter of a celebrated head of state.
Except tonight she brought more than an insincere grin and a lack of patience. Tonight, she happened to bring a date.
And that date was a doctor.
“He even looks like the second one, are you sure you’re—”
“Mum, I don’t want to talk about it here.” Rose huffed as she took a sip of her champagne. Jackie had continued to stare as he made his way across the room in a fitted tuxedo.
The closer he came; the louder Jackie’s bemoans of displeasure sounded. Glaring, she had detached her arm from her mother's vice-like grip and meet the intriguing man from the bookstore in the middle.
“There seems to be a lot of influential people here.” Her date Dr. Smith commented.
“Really? I don’t really pay attention to these things.” She remarked, taking a deep sip of the glass in her hand.
“You don’t seem like you pay attention to much.” He retorts.
And that is how her first date with The-One-Who-Acted-Like-Her-First-But-Looked-Like-Her-Second begun.
~
“I believe that Jesus existed, and God is real, man created Him to use as an excuse for all the wretched evils that are inherent to our species.”
Rose had sighed rather audibly at this and checked her watch. Having dinner with this insufferable man had only been the tip of the iceberg. He had already made three puns about the food and negged her about her choice in shoes.
Chucks.
It didn’t help even more that despite his wretched manners, his penchant for mocking her, and hostile conversations that she found herself enjoying him.
“What then, do you believe in, Rose Tyler?”
She chuckled bitterly, and his face did not flinch. He didn’t seem to back down from her darkness.
“I don’t know. I think the closest thing I can equate it to is Panentheism, there is more than the total sum of all of us, tiny atoms and molecules floating through space and time.”
He smiled at her genuinely then, a moment that she could claim was truly theirs.
“Why astronomy?”
That was the first time she had ever been asked that question and answers had raced through her mind like a video montage of their best hits. What could she tell him?
I grew tired of travelling... through space and time. I found myself missing my family... spiraling between accepting an undead father and deeply longing for the person I loved more than life itself.
She shrugged and tried to make eye contact with their waiter.
“I like stars,” she settled upon, “They’re consistent.”
“Afraid of change, are we?”
“I think I’m going to go now.”
“Why do you think I chose history?” He ignored her.
“What?”
“You’re no different from the entire human race. Why do you think I study history? The only problem is I get to see the mistakes repeated.”
She nodded at the stark truth of it.
“And how would we stop that from happening?”
“Subvert expectations, become less predictable. You’re not even focused on the right question.”
“What question is that?” She allowed herself to be baited, if it meant he was buying this meal.
“Are you the boat or the sea?”
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t stop but continued to carve the bloodied steak in front of him before popping a bite sized piece in his mouth.
“Are you the boat or are you the sea?”
“In what context?”
“Well, if you’re a boat, you exist to explore uncharted waters to your heart's desires. Pushed by a breeze, you have no roots as you slice through the ebb and flow. If you’re the sea, then you exist to be probed by curiosity. To nurture the animals that not only live inside you but the others that feed off what you can provide. Some of your depths never to be explored.”
“…What about the iceberg?”
He looked up from his plate and smiled.
When she took him home that night, he did more than smile.
That foul little mouth of his knew how to make her pay attention. After she had reached completion he held her, staring deeply into her eyes.
It moved her how seen she felt.
And that was how her second date ended with The-One-Who-Looked-Kinda-Like-Her-Second-But-Still-Acted-Like-Her-First.
~
“I don’t want to be your Iceberg.” She sighed while she pinched the bridge of her nose one night three months later.
“What the fuck are you talking about? You mean the boat-sea analogy?” The-One-That-She-Had-First-Thought-Acted-Like-Her-First-But-Still-Sorta-Looked-Like-Her-Second said.
“Goodbye Doctor.” She stated, before she hung up the phone.
~
She met The-One-Who-Looked-Like-Her-First-And-Seemed-A lot-Like-Her-Second at therapy.
“Excuse me for interrupting Doctor Taylors, but I was wondering if I could have a word with you after your session.”
“Sure.” The psychiatrist replied before the other closed the door and left them to her session.
“Who was that?” she blurted out, forgetting all about her revelation that she pushed the people in her life that she loved away because she was afraid of commitment.
“That was my colleague Doctor Christopherson. He’s the other psychiatrist in the office.”
Rose left for the first time before her session was over.
~
“I admit I was rather intrigued when you asked me out Ms Tyler. Technically it’s unethical for me to be dating patients—”
“Well it’s a good thing I’m not your patient, more wine?”
“Not to mention, women 20 years younger then myself.” He finished, holding out his wineglass.
“Here’s to unethical moments, and how fun they can be.” She toasted.
~
“Rose come and see this!” he called to her as the first airplane of this universe took off that September afternoon.
She found that over time, no matter how much she tried she began to really like The-One-Who-Looked-Like-Her-First-And-Seemed-A-Lot-Like-Her-Second. In fact, there were times that she forgot to call him The-One-Who-Looked-Like-Her-First-And-Seemed-A-Lot-Like-Her-Second and he was just Tom.
Rose refused to admit she was beginning to forget what Her-First and Her-Second looked like.
She was beginning to learn that Time and Space no longer cared for her feelings, even if they still were with her. Time began to heal some of her older wounds, and dress some of her newer ones.
Over that period, Time also took her hate away from her too, leaving her nothing to hold onto but the slivers of memory’s that she had learned not to grasp onto so tightly anymore.
“They’ll never take the place of dirigibles; you just wait this is just a fad.” Tom told her, walking away while she continued to watch the airplane circle above her.
She hoped he was right.
She stopped seeing Doctor Taylor.
~
He proposed to her the second of May, at the park that she had took him to on their second date.
“I want to spend forever with you.” He whispered in her ear, bushing a lock of brown hair out of her face.
“Let's just make the most of now.” She murmured into the collar of his leather jacket, taking deep breaths of the scent of sandalwood that surrounded him.
When he wrapped his arms around her it felt like home.
~
They wanted a small wedding, though Jackie had begged Rose to make it a weekend-long extravaganza her father and she would host.
“Mum, I’m not interested in parties, I’m interested in just getting it over with.”
“Well, you sound very keen on marrying this chap. Are you sure this is what you—”
“YES.” She interrupted walking away.
~
“It’s not you it’s me.” He told her, his bag beside him and their crying daughter in her arms.
“I wasn’t ready for this kind of lifestyle when I was young man, and I thought I was ready to settle down when we did, but it all moved too fast and I feel like I’m drowning, Jesus Christ Rose, don’t you ever feel like you’re drowning?”
“You couldn’t have told me this before we had Lucy?” She asked him, hurt and confused by his recent plans to leave her.
“I didn’t know. I don’t want you to think I don’t love you; I do. I love her. I just need a little more time, I need a little space.”
“You have no idea how fucked up that sounds, especially coming from you.”
As The-One-Who-Was-Nothing-Like-Her-First-But-Reminded-Her-Of-How-Often-Her-Second-Abandoned-Her walked away, she realized that he probably thought she meant because he was a psychiatrist.
~
She sat in the sun, her auburn hair spilling out from underneath her sun hat as she watched her daughter play at the park. She was too big to be held now, but still small enough to demand kisses and receive them with full adoration. Lucy had seen her father twice since he left, and rarely asked for him, which made it easier for Rose to forget.
As she sat there, the wind whipping round her, she heard a noise off in the distance that sounded familiar to her, a familiar that made her strain her hearing. It was a sound that she had thought she had heard many times before but had always been daydreaming, which is why this time she didn’t allow her heart to skip a beat.
She heard the crunching sound of someone approaching and turned towards it.
“Hello.” A woman called out to her, and she lifted her hat to peek at a freckled nose and green eyes that stared back at her. She lifted her gaze higher to take in her frizzy ginger hair and Hawaiian-style shirt.
“Excuse me miss you haven’t seen a robot dog around here, ranting on about errors and her existential existence? She goes by the name of K9?”
“Sure she’s a robot-dog?” Rose bemused, still gazing at her freckled face.
“Yes, right. Well, I suppose you wouldn’t be calling out for her. Still, if you see anyone like that, could you please tell her the Doctor is looking for her?”
“The Doctor?”
“That’s right.” She answered, rolling backwards onto her heels, her hands in her trouser pockets.
“That’s it? Just the Doctor?” She asked her, not a trace of surprise or excitement etched into Rose’s voice. The conversation seemed so unreal to her, so detached, she hardly felt anything but amusement as she watched this stranger that she had once known so well.
“Just the Doctor.” She answered and begun to walk away.
She sighed a sigh of relieve and some disappointment, and she briefly looked to the sky, watching the jet stream overhead, a vastly commonplace sight since dirigibles had gone out of style the year Lucy was born.
Rose watched the eccentric woman as they turned on their heel and began their trek back to her, something that made her panic for a few seconds at the thought of confrontation.
“Yes?” Rose had asked when she approached her.
“You seem awfully familiar.” The Doctor replied, as she tried to get a better peak underneath Rose’s sun hat.
“You don’t,” was her calm reply as Lucy came running up to meet them.
“Mummy, there was a bee and it scared me! It kept chasing me around the park!” squealed the little girl, as she climbed up into her mother's lap.
“It’s alright sweetheart, I’m sure it was more afraid of you then you were of it.” She tells her daughter, the cliché falling from her lips with ease. She remembers a time when her mother used to say it to her. A time when she believed in the words.
“I’m sorry to bother you, I’ll leave you and your daughter alone now.”
Ginger and not rude. She thought to herself as she rocked Lucy back and forth on the park bench.
“I love you mummy.” Lucy murmured and Rose looked down at her daughters multi-colored eyes.
“I love you too hunnie.” Rose told her, and she smiled.
Time and Space had always been cruel and kind to Rose Tyler, but in the time, she had taken to find herself, she realized that she was all of it, the iceberg, the boat and the sea.