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Rose had just about gotten used to the impossibility, and occasionally contradictory nature of the TARDIS. Sometimes her room wouldn't get the turbulence and shakes the console room did, and sometimes it would. Sometimes her ceiling would show the sky outside the infinite ship, and other times it would be a perfect replica of her ceiling back home, complete with the chipping paint in the corner. There was a lot to get used to, and Rose thought she'd adjusted to it.
And then an alarm had woken her up. They were in flight, Rose could tell from the way her room was shaking around her. The alarm was new. She'd never heard that before. It wasn't exactly loud, or annoying, just served to wake her up and send her a warning.
Before Rose had gone to bed, the Doctor had said he was going to go to a market while she slept and pick up a bunch of things for the TARDIS. He'd said he wouldn't be back until breakfast.
The ship rocked around her, a lot smoother of a flight than Rose was used too, but still alarming. She shoved her duvet off of her, and carefully got to her feet in the moving room. She grabbed her dressing gown from the back of her door, and looked around for anything she could grab.
Rose wasn't in the habit of keeping weapons in her room. Or anything that could reasonably be considered a weapon. Still, she ventured out into the hallway, using one hand to support herself against the wall as she went. Around her the TARDIS shook, and swayed, not as harshly as it usually did, but there was no denying the familiarity of flight.
Eventually, on barely steady feet in the still swaying ship, Rose made it to the console room. It wasn't the Doctor rushing around the console, piloting them to who knew where. The sight of an unfamiliar figure almost dancing around the console room stopped her in her tracks.
"Oh, hello," the woman at the console said, looking up at her. "Sorry, I didn't think any one was on board."
"Who are you?" Rose asked, shuffling back just slightly.
"Who are you?" she shot back, raising an eyebrow.
"Given you've just kidnapped me, I think I've got a right to ask first," Rose said, taking another tiny step back. Across from her, the woman let out a chuckle, tilting her head back. In her chest, Rose's heart sped up slightly.
"Oh sweetheart," she said, grinning. "I didn't kidnap you! I've merely borrowed this wonderful TARDIS, and it'll be back before the Doctor can notice."
"And what if I tell him some strange woman came into the TARDIS while I was sleeping, and, and abducted the ship?" Rose asked. River laughed again.
"Sorry, I didn't catch your name," she said instead of answering.
"I asked you a question, you're the one that shouldn't be here, why are you asking me anything?" she shot back, straightening out. If she could face living plastic, and ghosts that were aliens with Charles Dickens, and the end of her planet as she nearly died, and an abundance of other bizarre alien things, then she could face one attractive intruder with a nice laugh.
"It's all a little complicate, what's your name?" she asked again, almost pleading with her. Rose sighed. There was something in how her voice had lost the sultry tone, and dropped more serious, almost aching that convinced her.
"I'm Rose," she said.
"Rose Tyler, oh I am so sorry," she said, her voice broke slightly. "I am so, so sorry Rose. I should've known."
"I'm sorry, have we met?" Rose asked. From her place in the corridor just outside of the console room, Rose couldn't see the tears forming in the intruder's eyes. She could hear though how her voice broke, and see how she looked away from her.
"No, but I've heard so much about you. Rose Tyler, greatest woman in the universes," she said. "I'm River, but you can't mention me to the Doctor."
"River," Rose said, rolling the name over. It suited her. "Why can't I tell him about you?"
"Because one day, in his future, we'll meet and I'll know so much about him, and he'll know so little but he'll recognise me. You can't tell him Rose, the timelines are too delicate," River told her, her voice breaking slightly again. "You can't tell him, I'm sorry."
"You know me," Rose said. From her distance she couldn't see how River gulped, and how her grip tightened on the console.
"I'm longer than a human life-span away from you, in the Doctor's timeline," she said, looking up from the console to meet her eye. "But I've heard so much about you Rose, he talks about you a lot."
"Yeah?" Rose asked.
"Yes," River said.
— — —
River hadn't meant to steal this Doctor's TARDIS. She hadn't meant to steal a TARDIS with Rose. Really, she hadn't. While she was so willing to ignore the Doctor's rules, she wasn't stupid. She wasn't going to do that to either of them.
The Doctor had told her so much about Rose. It was Rose Tyler this, and Rose Tyler that. It was tears in the dead of night, and whispered memories in the early morning. It was references in broad daylight, and broken movements when something so mundane reminded him of the Earth Girl from so long ago.
You couldn't raise a woman meant to kill the Doctor and then put him in front of her, and expect her not to fall in love. But likewise, you couldn't expect her not to fall in love with the memory of a woman she could never meet.
Rose Tyler was the Doctor's saviour, and River would love her for that always. She'd love her for so much, so much that she could witness herself. She hadn't thought it was capable to love someone you'd only ever heard of, but the Doctor had always said Rose did the impossible.
"Yes," River said, a little sterner than strictly necessary. She shouldn't have been there. Rose couldn't know her, and she couldn't know Rose. The Doctor had barely restrained from ripping two universes apart for Rose, and River wasn't sure she could do the same if she spent even a few minuets with the woman she'd heard so much about from her husband.
"Right, well. Let's say I'll believe that, why are you here?" Rose asked, taking the smallest of steps closer to her. River's hearts sped up slightly, simultaneously reaching out for Rose and trying to break free so they could run.
"Can't a woman steal a magnificent time-ship for a heist every once in a while?" she asked, falling into her usual act as she flipped a lever. The act protected her, it kept her heart in a box away from everything. Or at least, that's what it had been meant to do, not that it had worked with the Doctor.
"A heist?" Rose asked, raising both eyebrows at her. "You woke me up so you could do a heist?" Ah. River had heard plenty about Rose. She knew how she took her tea, she knew how she'd looked into the heart of the TARDIS and become a goddess of time to save the Doctor and Earth, and the universe. She knew how everywhere she went Rose would ask the workers if they were treated right. She knew that sometimes Rose would smile and her tongue would peek out between her teeth.
Most importantly, she knew Rose was not a morning person. She'd heard the horror stories from the Doctor about Rose first thing, and that was one side of Rose that she didn't want to meet. The one side that scared her most. She'd take time imbued bad wolf Rose Tyler ready to atomise her if she so much as looked at the Doctor wrong to rudely awoken Rose Tyler any day. It seemed she didn't have a choice though.
"You can go back to bed," River said. "You know, now that I think about it, the heist can wait! Yup, it can wait till you get your much deserved rest."
"Are you always this all over the place?" Rose asked. River laughed then. She didn't want to admit it was just Rose's presence that had gotten her all worked up. How could she? She couldn't exactly explain that in several hundred years, for the Doctor, they'd know each other and he'd talk about Rose so much that the TARDIS herself would 'talk' about Rose too. She couldn't tell her that just hearing stories about her and her twin hearts racing. She couldn't tell her anything.
"Sorry Rose, not everything can be answered," she said.
"Right," she said, yawning then. River smiled. She could see how her husband would still love this woman after so long without her. Her bed hair was messy in a sort of way that looked almost like a golden halo light up with the yellow light from the TARDIS corridor. The way she clung to her dressing gown tightly, keeping any sense of modesty in her pyjamas in front of a stranger, the way her nose crinkled as she yawned. It was all too adorable and stunning to simply let go.
"I'll return you to where I found you, and then I'll go steal a different TARDIS for my needs," River said. "You can go back to sleep, I know how much you need it."
"Are you sure we don't know each other in the future?" Rose asked, stepping closer. River forced herself to smile. She'd love to know Rose sometime in the future, but she couldn't. The laws of time were not to be played with. They certainly weren't hers to play with. If she dared, too much would be at risk of change. She wouldn't do that to the Doctor, she wasn't selfish.
"I'm sure," she said tightly. Rose nodded, and shuffled into the console room. She dropped onto the jump-seats and sighed. River tried to keep her eyes on the console as she piloted them back.
Rose was just sat there. She was just sat there, just existing. She wasn't doing anything special, she wasn't drawing attention to herself. And yet River found it hard to keep her eyes on the console. Her gaze kept drifting to her. There was so much she wanted to tell her. None of it she could.
She dropped the TARDIS back in the exact moment she'd taken it from, and just stood there. She looked at Rose from across the console, a sight she was sure the Doctor had had the joy of witnessing a thousand times over, and just stood there.
River knew the right thing to do was go to the door, and leave. Walk away, forget it ever happened. Put it out of her mind, and refuse to hold on to a moment that should have meant nothing. But she stayed un-moving by the console, hands still poised over the controls.
"I won't tell the Doctor about this," Rose said, attempting to reassure her. "Whoever you are, I won't do that. I don't know you River, but the TARDIS seems to trust you so I will too."
"Thank you," River said, her voice breaking. She gulped slightly and closed her eyes. This was a woman she couldn't know. She wasn't meant to meet Rose Tyler. She wasn't meant to ever see her face, not in person. Only in photos. And yet there she was, across the console room from her, and she could do nothing about it.
"Are you alright?" Rose asked softly. River closed her eyes and nodded. Rule one, the Doctor lies. Rule two, River lies. It's for the best of the timelines.
"Yeah," she said, voice tight. "Yeah," she repeated. Rose hummed, slightly. River opened her eyes in time to see Rose turn away and head back down the corridor for he bedroom.