It is a slow afternoon in late May, that time of year when the heat has arrived but not quite settled in, and instead hangs like a hazy blanket over the still green lawn of Christ's Pieces. On the far end of the park near Christ's College, a bandstand filled with musicians is playing songs Rose does not recognize or particularly enjoy, though they sound quite good to her untrained ear. She is seated at a finely wrought garden table, a sweating glass of water near her right hand where it is resting lightly on the fine linen of the tablecloth.
She scans the faces near her, watching the crowd for a certain long stride, a particular pair of shoulders swallowed up by the close cut of a fine summer suit. The letter in her pocket—the letter she has not yet written, the letter that tells her you have four months and nine days to find him before Torchwood does seems to weigh her down, pulling the skirt of her summer dress tight against her thigh.
In the distance a lone man with close cropped hair stands, waving a hand to quiet the crowd, smiles politely, and begins speaking of the great history of Christ's College, its centuries of history-altering graduates marching out into the world ready to make small changes and ones so large they will not been seen for what they are for generations.
Rose sighs, and takes a sip from her glass, throat working; the crowd around her claps politely, a sea of well-heeled men and women paying rapt attention to a small man with a vision.
It is 1913, and Rose Tyler has work to do.
-----
On her sixth day at the other Torchwood Pete hands her a small metal box that seems to buzz with energy against her grasping fingertips.
"We think it's keyed to open at a certain time," he says, shrugging his shoulders, bowing before the weight of his own ignorance when it comes to actual matters of time travel.
Rose blinks at him, looking at him across the expanse of his desk. "What is it for?"
He shrugs and pauses to take a sip from his mug of coffee. His eyes are tired in his pale face; she wonders, briefly, if this stranger who is her father truly wanted to be the head of the new Torchwood, if he understood precisely what he was giving into.
"As far as we can tell, it contains information pertaining to some trip you'll make in the future." He nods, pointing with his mug to the top of the box.
She looks down and notices for the first time the card slipped within the label on the box; R. Tyler, it reads, Torchwood agent #236.
It is her own handwriting, she realizes, and this thought is what convinces her there was a point to all of this, perhaps.
-----
A young man with pale eyes asks for a dance when she is halfway across the green, and she acquiesces with a smile and lets him twirl her about through the other dancing couples, while he chatters about the subject he read at Christ's and she looks over his shoulder for some sign of the abnormal.
At one of the tables on the fringe of the dance area she glimpses a brief flash of a brown-haired man in a gray suit folded into himself. It is the way his eyes glint in the afternoon light that makes her pause briefly, stopping her partner mid-sentence. "I'm so sorry," she says apologetically, making her smile contritely cheery, "but I feel quite dizzy suddenly."
Before he can start fawning over her Rose turns and grasps her skirt in sweating palms, uncaring that this will leave wrinkles in the fine muslin, to weave hurriedly through the dancers to the closest tables.
The man looks up at her when her shadow falls across his table. He has wide brown eyes and a thin mouth that is tight with confusion.
"He-hello," she stammers, and stares down at this man who is the Doctor and does not even know it.
-----
The box opens two minutes after the Dimension Cannon cools and she realizes this is not the present. In her universe the stars are disappearing while she tries to figure out some way to reach the right universe and the right man, heedless of the dangers of using a piece of alien tech that has not been properly vetted by Torchwood R here the stars shine dully, competing with the glow of ornate streetlamps dotted across the city.
She is halfway down her automatic time travel checklist--- clothes place her somewhere in the early 20th century, and so far there's been no signs of undue panic at her appearance, so it should be okay for her to move—when she hears a whirring click and the pack against her back buzzes with warmth. She shrugs out of the pack's straps quickly and digs through its contents, pulling the box free to stare at it.
With steady fingers she flips the lid open and pulls out a packet of letters tied with a frayed ribbon that looks like it once was blue. These she tucks in the space between her arm and side to keep safe for a few minutes, and then pulls out a small bag she discovers contains crumpled money and a handwritten card with her agent number and name written on it beside a black and white photograph that shows her grave face frowning up at her. At the bottom is a typed form that she scans quickly; a reference (forged, she thinks) from an agent with the initials J.H. from Torchwood Cardiff listing her faithful work in his majesty's service.
Quickly she unties the ribbon to the letters and unfolds the top one, scanning it quickly. Torchwood has intelligence that the Doctor is hiding in human form. The reason is unknown and not important; what is important is that you follow these instructions very carefully.
The letter continues for two pages, a list of instructions, tips, and finally at the end, a sprawling love, Rose, stretching across the page in her familiar looping scrawl.
"Shit," she hisses, and takes off running towards the site of the future Canary Wharf.
-----
He pulls her seat out for her, standing politely until she is seated across from him, even though she can tell by the shuttered look on his face he is utterly lost as to why this stranger wants to sit with him.
Her future-self had left very detailed instructions: under no circumstances mention Torchwood, the TARDIS, or the Doctor; Torchwood will be watching you and you don't want to have them get him and if anyone asks you read history at Girton but withdrew after your second year because of family issues; if he asks talk about ancient history.
For a moment she is blinded by the sunlight reflecting off of the tableware in front of her, dazzling her so that all she can see of him is a faint outline. In all her moments of dreaming she never thought this would be how they would meet again, both uncomfortable and stiff in their fine layers and perspective spheres.
"I don't mean to be rude, but do I know you?" He begins, leaning forward slightly, eyes darting back and forth as he takes her in. "You seem quite familiar."
Something within Rose's chest shifts, making her feel momentarily insignificant in the face of the knowledge she has about this man. "Oh, I think I just have a familiar sort of face. Nothing more." She gives him her best smile, the one she saved for those small moments when it was just him and her and some new wondrous place wide open for them to discover. "I'm Rose Tyler. I read history at Girton, and so when I heard about this social I thought I'd come to hear about the advancements in the field."
"John Smith," he replies, nodding to himself, as if he is still accepting this fact about himself. "Studied at Christ's, myself. Ancient history. I particularly enjoyed the rise of the Roman Empire."
Rose nods, hoping he does not begin discussing anything outside the limited reading she did hurriedly on ancient Rome and its world.
She lets him talk, nodding every now and again, slipping into the familiar slipstream of his voice; she imagines if she closed her eyes it would be like they were back on the TARDIS, he babbling away underneath the main console while she curled into the yellow jump seat and tried to follow along.
'The greatest thing about history is that people imagine it is linear, marching forward in a neat progression of cause and effect," he is saying when she returns to the current moment; his voice faraway and quiet with wonder, "but you think about all these small, careless moments created by the decisions of great and small men, singular moments that are meaningless without a context created by a future scholar." He looks at her suddenly, eyes focusing on her, and gives her a shy sort of grin, "That is the beauty of history."
In that moment Rose sees the Doctor in front of her, leaning against the table with his hands tucked neatly one on top of the other, and it is so beautiful her heart aches with it.
They give her a sheath of paperwork to fill out but accept her easily enough after some interrogation, happy to accept the reference from the agent in Cardiff.
On the second day she hears two of the older agents, women in plain blouses and sturdy wool skirts whispering to one another over tea, about the new girl, wondering if she knew the agent with the J.H. initials had died fourteen times in Torchwood's name, so they heard. Rose blinks and continues onwards, clutching her papers to her side.
He knew the Doctor one whispers, and other glances over at Rose as she passes, contemplative, and then leans down to whisper, think she did too?.
Rose thinks, suddenly, of Jack that first time she met him, in his RAF uniform, telling her he was at home in the past. She is quite sure the agents wanted her to hear their whispers, as some sort of warning—she is new, and an unknown, even if she has a proper Torchwood number, and she hasn't earned their confidence yet---and she wants very much to say she has earned her right here countless times over.
Traveling with the Doctor and now on her own she has learned that longevity is not exactly a gift, though at first it seems so; it is something that weighs you down, exhausts you, because eventually it'll just be you in some new place surrounded by new faces and the ghosts of long-gone loved ones.
She cannot help but pity that unknown agent in Cardiff.
-----
John tells her he is considering taking a post at a boarding school in the countryside outside of London, 80 kilometers to the north. It is that or continue onwards for his doctorate and years struggling for some sort of place in the sheltered world of scholars in Cambridge.
She thinks about this, the anonymity he will have if he moves far from here and far from London to some small town and a cluster of nameless boys waiting for a new professor. In the city, though, there is a kind of safety in familiarity, in knowing who to trust and who to avoid (though, she imagines, he is quite unaware of this and will blunder foolishly into the wrong sort of people, this naïve, artless version of himself).
Finally, she says, "Imagine the satisfaction you could find in teaching. I think you would enjoy it."
In the distance the band swings into a new song with a sigh of fading notes; John looks at her quietly, his thin mouth tremulous, while Rose waits for him to respond.
Finally, he asks, "Would you care to dance?"
She nods and lets him lead her to the crowd of dancers, his hands wrapping like home around hers, while he keeps a courteous distance between them and leads slightly offbeat.
-----
She remembers that last line from the letter, the one she will struggle over in the coming days, staring at the page worrying her bottom lip while her fountain pen slowly drips ink on the page.
He is not the Doctor, Rose.
And she knows this—she can see it in the way he holds himself tightly coiled, completely unlike the man that showed her the universe and knew nothing of personal space; his hair so proper and prim she wants to run her fingers through it and show him how nice it can be ruffled and unbrushed and loved—but at this particular moment she does not particularly care about the future she is creating or the past she last behind.
"Take the job," she tells him, stretching upwards to trail the words along his jaw, up to the pale whorl of his ear. He blinks in confusion at her, faltering slightly in the dance.
-----
It has been four months and three days since she arrived here; according to the letter in six days she will be pulled back to her correct universe, leaving behind Torchwood and the past she wore uneasily for those few months.
This is the only time she will see the man who will one day be the Doctor again, this social for the history scholars of Cambridge; somehow, she knows this is a sort of mirror of her choices, the small moments that led to that white room and the dizzying pull of the Dimension Cannon.
Two days from now John Smith will travel with his lone maidservant to some nameless village far from here, where he will meet another woman with pale hair (though Rose does not know this; will never know this), unknowingly stepping into the path of a confrontation that will leave behind nothing but his memory and a worn journal.
For now, Rose tells herself, she can imagine it is him and her and a new adventure spooling out before their grasping hands.
-----
Midway through the third song John looks down at her and smiles, the movement stretching his face into a familiar expression. Rose can feel her heart beating wildly beneath the cage of her corset, and she swallows and looks back up at him, titling her head up to give him a gift of a smile of teeth and tongue and hope.
Without warning she leans forward and presses her mouth to his, uncaring of how improper it is or the looks she will receive for it. It is amusing, she thinks, that this is the first time they have kissed, when they are both hiding behind some new identity, passing each other like strangers on a sidewalk with no idea of a shared history. His mouth against hers is warm and comfortingly alive; in his confusion he parts his lips slightly, as if to ask what she is doing, and she presses her advantage, clutching his hands and pressing all the things she wishes she could tell him into his waiting skin.
They break apart a few minutes later, his hands still clasping hers, while she gives him a smile that cannot hide the weight of sadness in her eyes, and he looks at her with slightly parted lips and wide eyes like he is seeing her for the very first time, seeing the person she is under the layers and words and actions she wraps around herself.
"I missed you," she tells him finally, because she is so tired of carrying these words deep within her chest where they burn and twist against her breast. And she manages to twist free from him and disappear into the crowd of swirling skirts and suits before he can realize what precisely has just happened.
-----
On what she knows will be her last day she places the box with her letters and ephemera on the desk of her superior officer, a note explaining everything placed neatly under it. And then she leaves, skirts rustling around her legs, heading towards the alleyway she first arrived in what felt like ages ago.
The dress she leaves folded neatly on the driest spot of ground she can find, a gift for some nameless person she will never meet. After so many months spent in corsets and petticoats the feel of her familiar jeans and leather jacket is like slipping into her old skin, her old self, free and unfettered.
The Dimension Cannon is gradually heating up, preparing for a new jump into some new place in space and time. She slides down, using her pack as a seat, to curl her legs under herself and wait for the jump.
Somewhere the stars are disappearing, while somewhere here a young girl with fine skin is stumbling in the borrowed identity of a unimportant chambermaid, doing the things, saying the words Rose will never say, never hear.
The Dimension Canon hisses, almost at full strength; she stands, pulling her pack on, taking the weapon in her hands, shoulders set and ready for the future awaiting her.
-----
It is 2007, and Rose Tyler has work to do.