A/N: The Series 12 finale made me want to start rewatching Classic Who again, and then I had a few scenes dropped into my head, and this fic was officially born.

Some things you should know before we get into this:

1) Doctor Who "canon" is basically just 50+ years of insanity. Much of this fic is generally in line with the established universe, but some facts are stretched, and some added details are my own. Keeping that in mind, here are the building blocks that this fic will be working off of:

- The Doctor is somewhere around 100-years-old and about to graduate from the Time Lord Academy

- He's never been married and has no children yet

- The majority of this story takes place in the Gallifreyan drylands featured in episodes like "Hell Bent", if you would like a visual reference

- Humans (and any unapproved alien species) are not allowed on Gallifrey

- The Doctor has been off of Gallifrey before, but he hasn't visited Earth yet, and he's never time traveled

2) This story is told from Rose's POV, but because I've recently rediscovered my love for drabbles, each chapter has a short 100-word addition at the end that is told from a first-person Doctor POV. Think of it as diary excerpts that show his opinion on the events of the chapter.

3) The Doctor in this fic is based off of the First Doctor - if you would like visual references, Google images of a young William Hartnell.

4) No one can seem to agree on Hartnell's eye color (?), so I'm operating off of the opinion that they're blue, but feel free to imagine it however you like, it's left relatively open-ended.

Rose let out a grunt when the dimension cannon spat her out and reality slammed into her like a brick wall. Her knees collided roughly with the ground before she was able to tuck her limbs closer to her core and maneuver herself into a roll. She was immensely grateful for the fact that she had hit dirt and grass rather than pavement and rubble, this time. Bandaging up the scrapes and bruises that she collected on these sorts of outings was always a bit of a hassle, but she supposed it was a small price to pay in the face of the great mission that loomed before her.

She came to a halt on her back, her eyes gazing up at the wide expanse of sky above her, the view completely uninterrupted by buildings or trees. The absence of any floating zeppelins immediately flooded Rose with hope, but the sensation soon withered and crumpled within her chest as she realized that it wasn't even an Earth sky at all. It was a hazy blue color with two suns shining side-by-side with one another, and even though there were no floating vessels trailing through the airway above, there was a pale, ghostly line of planetary rings glowing just outside of the atmosphere far above her head.

Rose sighed wearily as she let her eyelids slip shut and she pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead in frustration. The dimension cannon had sent her to foreign planets before, of course, but it had been a while since she had arrived on any place other than Earth.

She had been so certain that they were closing in on the Doctor's presence - finally in the right timeline, and in the right universe. When she had bent down and whispered her two-word alias into Donna Noble's ear, she had been so hopeful that this whole misadventure would finally be coming to an end, and she would be reunited with the Doctor once more, as she should be.

However, it seemed that her brash determination and over-hopeful attitude had only set her up for disappointment, and the dimension cannon hadn't been as honed in on the Doctor's presence as she thought it was.

She could feel frustrated tears stinging at the backs of her eyes as she forced herself to take deep, measured breaths and fought against the wave of helplessness and anger building within her.

Her brief moment of self-pity came to an abrupt end when she was suddenly interrupted by a soft, muted noise that sounded vaguely like a throat clearing.

Rose's eyes immediately popped open and she drew her hands away from her face as she sat bolt-upright and began to survey her surroundings. "Hello?" she called out hesitantly as she slowly scanned the immediate area around her. "Who's there?"

The grass that she had landed in was a bright, alien red, and seemed to be part of some lush, rolling plain with not much to decorate the landscape other than a few clumps of distant trees and an indistinct line on the horizon that was probably indicative of a city or civilization of some sort. There wasn't a living thing in sight for miles, and there wasn't a single movement besides the grass, which danced lazily in the light breeze.

When the throat-clearing noise came again, Rose's head immediately snapped to the right and she gasped in surprise as her gaze settled on a lone figure, standing just outside of her peripheral vision and watching her intently. The stranger appeared to be a man of average height and build (if a bit skinny) with plain, unassuming clothes, and light brown hair that he kept swept back away from his face. He had a thin, severe mouth, a slightly hooked nose, and wildly expressive brows that shadowed over pale, changeable eyes.

Everything about him was completely traditional and not at all interesting or unique, but Rose couldn't help but cower slightly in fear of him. He had a harsh, intimidating look about him as he stood as still as a statue in the midst of the dancing red grass. The sharp, imperious glare that darkened his features did nothing to soften his strict stance.

As soon as Rose turned to look at him, he growled something at her in a lilting, alien language that she couldn't understand. It had been a long time since Rose had been troubled by any sort of language barrier, and the sudden, unintelligible words took her by surprise. Ever since she had taken up traveling with the Doctor in the TARDIS, nearly every written and spoken language was automatically telepathically translated for her. Even when she was trapped in her parallel world, she was able to translate and speak nearly any foreign language - including those that were not from Earth.

As Rose quietly pondered this new, strange anomaly, the stranger took another step forward and muttered something to her again. She shook her head slightly as she raised her blank gaze to his to indicate that she couldn't understand, and she watched as his eyebrows knit together into a considering scowl in response.

"Sorry, mate," she murmured quietly. "Translation system isn't working for some reason ..."

"Ah. Earth English," the man replied succinctly, his expression clearing slightly as he slipped easily into a dialect that Rose could understand. "A strange choice, if I may say so. Very ... rustic."

Rose felt her own brows slowly drawing together as she gazed up at the stranger in confusion. He spoke her native language as easily as if he had been doing it all his life - even his accent was perfectly rounded to fit her home country, though it was quite a bit posher than her own.

"Well?" the man snapped irritably, interrupting Rose's cautious perusal of him with a harsh, commanding tone. "What are you doing there? Who are you?"

"Oh, don't mind me," Rose muttered as she rose stiffly to her feet and began dusting herself off. "I think I got a bit lost, is all. I'm not supposed to be here ..."

"Well, that's evident," the stranger replied haughtily. "How did you end up out here in the first place, hmm?"

"I just ... sort of fell off the track, I think," Rose hedged. "I was on my way to find this friend of mine, and I just got a bit sidetracked."

"Your friend?" the man repeated, narrowing his gaze at her suspiciously. He seemed to take another moment to silently appraise her before he demanded, "Well, who are you? What's your name?"

"Oh, I'm no one special, really," Rose replied with a small, dismissive shrug. Then, peering curiously at her surroundings once more, she added, "Sorry, but could you tell me where I am?"

"How could you not be aware of that?" the man asked dubiously.

"Told you - just got a bit lost." Rose hated lying to other people, but she had learned from her years of traveling with the Doctor how to give people just enough information to pass for the truth without actually letting on to the dangerous information that she concealed. "Just passing through, never quite know where I'm going to end up."

"Tell me, young lady, do you often make a habit of getting yourself lost like this?" the man asked.

"'Young lady'?" Rose repeated, turning and letting her eyes rake over him with a dubious expression. The man standing before her couldn't have been more than two or three years older than herself if they were going off of appearances and Earth years.

"Yes. That's what you are, isn't it?" the man sighed wearily, raising an imperious brow in her direction as he, too, let his gaze track pointedly from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet and back again. "I'll assume that your refusal to answer my question means that you are, in fact, quite in the habit of getting yourself lost. You know, you seem to be very bad at answering direct questions, my dear. It's enough to make one suspicious."

"No need to worry," Rose assured him lightly. "Like I said - I'm no one special."

However, her words didn't seem to reassure him. In fact, as Rose watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye, she could see that his gaze was narrowed again as he stared hard at something in the empty space surrounding her head, as though he were examining something that she couldn't see.

Before she could ask him what he was looking at, something like realization dawned on his features and his eyes suddenly expanded to twice their size as he stared at her in shock. "You're a time traveler," he stated in awe.

Rose was about to open her mouth and attempt to formulate some sort of explanation or excuse to distract him from that fact, when the young man continued quietly, "Your timelines ... I've never seen anything like them before in my life. They're ..." The words seemed to stick on his tongue and Rose watched as his brow furrowed before he shook his head as though to clear his thoughts and focused back on her again.

Suddenly, he stepped forward and rudely invaded her personal space to take in a deep lungful of air. "And you're ... human," he declared, his nose turning up slightly with this realization as he stared down at her in dubious disbelief. "How is this possible? How can you be here? There are no humans allowed on Gallifrey."

The sudden, unexpected name sent something like ice sliding through Rose's veins and she could feel her breath catch on something sharp in her chest as she gazed up at the stranger with wide, shocked eyes.

"Gallifrey?" she repeated numbly.

"Yes," the man replied, his brow furrowing further as he gazed down at her bewildered expression. "Where did you think you were?"

Rose opened her mouth, but the only sound that escaped her lips was a small, shocked squeak as she blinked hard and then turned to take in her surroundings once more. She supposed that it was good news that the dimension cannon had gotten the right universe, at least - it seemed that her calculations hadn't been so far off, after all. But the device was set to zero-in on the Doctor's location. Did that mean ...?

"Please," Rose muttered, her voice coming out as a choked whisper as she felt a million different emotions rising within her and lodging firmly in her throat. She reached out and fumbled awkwardly at the lapels of the man's brown jacket as she stepped closer to him and forced him to look her straight in the eye. "Please," she tried again, "you have to help me - do you know of anyone here who calls themselves 'the Doctor'?"

"'The Doctor'?" the man repeated, his scowl turning from hesitantly confused to darkly suspicious in the span of just a few moments. "How do you know that name?" he asked, his voice low and dangerous as he met her intense gaze with his own.

It was obviously a name that the stranger recognized, and Rose could feel the hope rising in her chest threatening to strangle her as her grip on the stranger's lapels tightened into fists and she forced him even closer to her. "Please," she begged, "just tell me - is he here? Is he here on Gallifrey?"

The man eyed her grip on his clothes with a look of intense distaste as he shook his head and muttered, "There is no one on Gallifrey by that name."

The bubbling anxiety in Rose's chest immediately fizzled out and fell flat as she stared up at the stranger in numb defeat and let his declaration sink in. If the Doctor had been here, she might have been able to intercept him and enlist his help in her fight against the approaching darkness. Not only that, but she might have at last been able to fill the void in her life that had been left raw and aching ever since they had parted as well. She had been so close ...

"There's never been anyone on Gallifrey by that name," the young man continued as he seized the moment of Rose's hesitation and reached up to forcibly brush her hands off of him. He folded his own hands over the plain, brown jacket that Rose had been grasping and raised his chin in the air in a dignified stance as he gazed down his nose at her and added, "However, it is strange that you should mention it - though I suppose it probably has something to do with your time traveling capabilities."

"What does?" Rose asked warily as she struggled to focus on his words and not the sharp, bitter heartache that she could feel settling like a weight in her gut.

"Well, that name you just brought up ..." the man continued slowly, his brow furrowing as he gazed into the distance with a look of intense contemplation. "It's strange, because I was thinking, just today, that it might make a good title. I plan to graduate from the Academy within the next few years, you know, and they make you choose a name - a sign of who you'd like to be - before you get sent out into the universe. It's an ancient Time Lord tradition. And I was thinking, just recently, that 'the Doctor' might be a good fit."

Rose's eyes were slowly widening again as understanding settled over her and she cautiously raised her gaze back to his. He was watching her intently, and when she finally met his searching eyes, he raised an eyebrow at her and muttered wryly, "It seems that I was correct in my assumptions."

"You're ..." Rose breathed in disbelief.

"It appears so," the man stated. "The fact that your timelines are more tangled than the vortex itself, and the way that you seem to know the name that I've never spoken out loud to any other living creature before proves it. You, my dear, are from my future."

Rose watched as he raised his chin and struck another very brash, dramatic pose as he declared, "Hello. I'm the Doctor."

I first found her sitting amongst the grass like a wild arkytior bloom ripe for the picking. She didn't recognize my face, but she knew my name, even before I spoke it.

It's strange to admit, but it was a name that I had a hard time claiming as my own. It felt so weighty, so important, so significant - it was not a name for a nobody like me. But the way she spoke it - the hope and desperation and reverence that colored her tone - made me long to be the sort of man who could live up to it.