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Rose Tyler has lived many lives.
There were the first nineteen years of her life, a boring mundane life that wouldn't have amounted to much and would have always left her dreaming of more. There was the life she'd had with the Doctor which had been unfairly cut short by Torchwood and the Battle of Canary Wharf. Then there'd been her life between the two Doctor's.
A life that had actually been more than one life.
There'd been the Torchwood life, with the Dimension Canon, and her mum, and Pete, and Tony, and fish and chips that weren't as good as the chips from back home.
There'd been the life in the void. On one jump she'd gotten trapped. Something had gone wrong. No one else would have survived. There was no knowing how long she had been in the void, the void was nothing. No time, no space, no air, no anything. It was simply nothingness, and she'd survived it.
There'd been her life in a different universe's United States, she'd been a teacher. She'd liked teaching, though some of her students had been on the stranger side. It had been a nice life, for the fifteen years she'd been there. It had happened because the canon had malfunctioned, for her family it had only been fifteen hours.
Fifteen very stressful hours, Rose was sure, but only fifteen hours instead of the fifteen years she'd been stuck with no hope and no way home. And not a single day of those fifteen years showed on her skin.
Then there'd been the life with the new Doctor. With the 'clone' Doctor. With the metacrises Doctor.
That had been a good life. A long life, a life that balanced domestics with the running and the alien. It had been one of Rose's favourites, because the Doctor had been there. But that had been the life when she'd finally had to address the Wolf that haunted her.
She didn't age. She couldn't die. She didn't change. She just kept going.
Bad Wolf had frozen her in time, at least the outside of her body had been frozen. And Bad Wolf kept her alive, kept her moving, kept her existing far beyond human means.
Then there'd been the lives between her Doctor, and getting to her home universe. She didn't keep good track of them, but she'd been an actor, and a singer, and a nurse (but never a doctor), and an archaeologist, and a historian, and a professor at a university, and an Earth Historian on an alien space-ship cruise line. She'd done a lot of things, been a lot of things, been a lot of people.
She hadn't been Rose since the Doctor.
Then there were the lives since getting home. She'd had several in her original universe too, though she was only on her fifth.
Rose, though that wasn't what people knew her as, had settled on a planet with a species that on the surface looked human. They aged a lot slower than humans, the perfect place for Rose to blend in for a decent amount of time before she had to skip town.
She'd opened a coffee shop for this life. Something mundane, and simple. But she'd opened it in the heart of the market town that attracted alien tourists.
She was meant to be looking for the Doctor, but in a universe so large and so vast there were far too many places to search for a time travelling mad-man in a box. So instead, she'd taken to settling in alien traveller hot-spots, and leaving clues in hopes of the TARDIS picking up on them.
She'd not run a coffee shop before, but she rather liked the routine. Rose had built a talent at the coffee machines, and tea brewing stations. She liked working up front, a benefit to the necessity of working there.
After all, she had named her coffee shop The Bad Wolf. That was sure to catch the Doctor's eye. Or at least catch the attention of the TARDIS. One day, Rose hoped, the Doctor would come by. Just to investigate.
The coffee shop was much quieter than usual. An incident at the space ports had them shut down for the week, and the flow of tourists that actually sat in the shop was practically non-existent. A few locals had taken the chance to sit in the Bad Wolf, but most had stuck to the routine of ordering to go, even without the tourists to dissuade them from staying.
"Daph," Rose's co-worker at the counter for the day, Rosemary, complained. She'd settled on the name Daphne, the names in her chosen new home seemed to focus on Earth plants.
"Yeah?" she asked.
"I'm so bored," Rosemary complained. Rose snorted.
"I thought you liked the shop without the tourists?" she asked. Rosemary huffed. The bell over the door jingled, and Rose spared a glance to the pair walking in. Two humanoids, a woman and a man by the looks of things. Blonde, short white woman, dark haired, black, tall-ish man with impeccable (and peculiar) dress sense. "They'll be back soon, if you miss them so much," she teased, turning back to Rosemary.
"Daphne," Rosemary whined. She was young, prone to boredom, and a fan of complaining. Rose liked her though, she was happy to work under pressure and only complained when there weren't many customers in ear shot. "I want a middle ground, between the tourist cramped shop, and this."
"Hello," the man said, he'd approached the counter near silently. Rose turned to him, and his companion, with her best customer service smile.
"What can I get you?" she asked, her tongue peeking it's way through the very real grin spreading on her face, though she wasn't sure why.
The man stopped, frozen still like he'd seen a ghost. He didn't breath. Rose looked him up and and down, she'd not met him before, she was sure of it.
Then her eyes met his, and she too had the air stolen from her lungs.
His eyes, they held thousands of stories. The deep brown sheltering years that did not show on his skin, on his face.
"Doctor?" she managed to ask. It came out strangled, and desperate.
"Rose," he said, his voice as broken and desperate as hers.
"Doctor," she repeated, a laugh bubbling up as she grinned at him.
"Rose Tyler," the Doctor said, as if testing her name out on his new tongue. "Rose Marion Tyler," he said, grinning around her name.
"Hi," his companion said, "what?" she asked, gesturing between them.
"Her name's Daphne?" Rosemary said like a question. Rose laughed then, and shook her head.
"Well, couldn't be leaving a trail of Rose Tyler's everywhere I went," Rose said, with a shrug. Which she was sure did nothing to explain the situation to Rosemary, but plenty for the Doctor to understand.
"You haven't changed," the Doctor murmured. Rose laughed again, this time weak and shaky.
"You have," she pointed out. He stepped back from the counter and Rose's heart clenched in her chest for a moment. The Doctor spun around, showing himself and his outfit of.
"What do you think?" he asked with a grin, though she knew him well enough to spot the nerves in the question. She'd learn this body well enough to see his emotions in how held himself soon enough, she was sure of it.
"Still the Doctor," she said, because it really was that simple. "Rosemary, can you close shop up early? I've got an emergency."
"Sure Daph- Rose," Rosemary said. Rose shot her a smile. She'd get the Doctor to bring them back, so she could properly sort the shop out.
Rose had waited so long for the Doctor. She'd waited, and she'd lived so many lives. She'd come back to sort her coffee shop out, but first? First she was running off with her Doctor.
It had been a while since she'd done anything even remotely reckless, she decided as she considered her options. Sure, she could just take her apron off, and walk around the counter. Or,
She could just…
Rose braced a hand on the counter, and vaulted herself over to the side. The Doctor had stepped back just in time for her to land neatly in front of him, instead of sending them both crashing to the floor.
The Doctor stepped back, and offered his hand. Rose took it and grinned.
"Run," she said, a laugh bubbling up as he grinned right back. The Doctor turned to the cafe doors and ran for them.
"What's going on?" the Doctor's companion asked, following behind them.
"Ruby, babes, this is Rose," the Doctor shouted over his shoulder. "She's, well a lot of things, and she'll be joining us on the TARDIS," he said.
"The Doctor and Rose, in the TARDIS," Rose said, only slightly breathless as they ran through the town.
"As it should be," he finished.
"I didn't sign up to be a third wheel!" Ruby complained. Rose and the Doctor laughed together.
"We'll explain everything," the Doctor promised.
"Once we're in the TARDIS," Rose confirmed, looking over her shoulder to smile at Ruby. Ruby rolled her eyes, but she grinned back.
Oh, Rose would have to tell the Doctor about all her lives, about everything that had happened since they'd last seen each other. And they'd have to tell Ruby about their history. There'd be a lot to talk about. But it could wait until the TARDIS. Rose was home, that was what mattered.