A/N: I got a prompt from sunraye36 yesterday, and it was something I'd considered before, but hadn't written. But after that prompt, this whole thing just flowed out, with two different endings. Hope you like it! R&R!
AU of The Big Bang.
'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'
She wakes up because her bed doesn't feel right, which in itself is strange, as it is the bed she has had since her teenage years. Her husband snores on her side, in a pattern that sounds strange and his mocha skin doesn't look right in the early morning light.
But that is stupid, she's been together with Mickey since she was eighteen, and they've been married for two years. He's a mechanic, but for some reason she was expecting a doctor...
The morning goes by in a haze and Rose moves on autopilot as she showers, dresses, puts on her make-up and starts breakfast. Mickey follows in her footsteps a little later, and she has the tea ready. It's a new flavor, Bad Wolf Path, and it's good enough, but Rose still prefers her Earl Grey. She doesn't let Mickey fry them some bacon and eggs (it's a toss-up between if she wants to eat eggs and bacon or chips, and she'd choose chips any day), and instead hands him the yogurt and granola they'd bought a couple days back. He grumbles of course, but eats it like he's told.
In the back of her mind a voice complains about the lack of bananas in the kitchen, and she decides to buy a banana for lunch. (It's a good source of potassium, the voice informs her happily.)
She kisses Mickey absentmindedly on her way out, her shift begins in less than an hour and it takes at least forty-five minutes to get to Henrik's from their flat.
On her way to down town London, she jumps when she hears an airplane fly too low. She stares after it for a good minute, like she hasn't seen one in years, which is absurd, because she was on a business trip in New York just last week... She shakes her head. Of course she hadn't been in New York last week, it had been her mum's birthday on Wednesday. Also, she didn't have business trips, what sales clerk did?
The first part of the day is over and it's time for lunch before Rose even properly realizes it, and she's sitting down for a lunch of chips and a banana. She has a text from Mickey, saying he's going to the pub after work with his mates to watch the match. She feels discontent when she replies an affirmative to it. She had expected at least an invitation to join them if nothing else from her husband. But Mickey had stopped inviting her to the pub to watch the matches six months into their marriage. She just... thought that getting married would mean spending more time together than just sleeping in the same bed five nights out of the week. Maybe popping to 1940s London for period appropriate Halloween costumes or negotiating a solar system wide peace treaty after toppling an oligarchy.
She shakes her head again. Those were dreams, she tells herself sternly. Time travel isn't real and neither are aliens.
(The voice in the back of her mind disagrees loudly, changing from the familiar London accent to a deep northern burr, calling her a stupid ape before going to a detailed explanation of temporal physics that Rose has no chance of understanding. She hadn't even known temporal physics was a thing.)
When the clock strikes five, she is tired and confused because of all those strange thoughts and she thanks God it's Friday and that she doesn't have the evening shift, so the starts the journey back to the flat.
There is a new grocery store just behind the corner from the flat, the Bad Wolf's Pantry, and she pops in to buy some bananas (the voice purrs in pleasure, "Always take a banana to a party!") and raspberry jam (she feels like telling her husband to remember to use a spoon instead of his fingers, but Mickey would never eat jam straight from the jar).
The telly doesn't engage her attention that evening, just blaring in the background as she sits in front of it, her mind wandering down the strange paths of zeppelins and aliens and time travel and a man that could change his face.
She is asleep by the time Mickey gets to bed beside her.
And she wakes up long before him. She sneaks out of the bedroom, being careful with the creaking door, and packs a quick breakfast of bananas and a thermos of tea to go. She fishes Mickey's car keys from his jacket pocket and writes a note for him. She'll be back by evening, she writes, but she feels the need to get out of the city. Too stifling.
Driving in London took all her concentration, but as soon as she got to the motor way, everything seemed to fall away and she was alone with her thoughts. It was like something had taken over her body, letting her sink into herself while it drove her car, first to Oxford, but then continuing on until the small village of Leadworth.
There are wedding bells ringing from the village church and Rose smiles, making her way to a park bench after parking the car.
There are two different weddings warring for the front spot of her attention. One of her wedding to Mickey, her mum cried, Shareen had been her Maid of honor, Mickey's dad had been blessedly absent from the ceremony. The other was also her wedding, but to a tall, lanky man with really great hair and a tight blue pinstriped suit. Her mum had still cried, but her dad had been there with an arm around Jackie's shoulders. Her little brother Tony had been the ring bearer. Jake Simmonds had been the best man and Toshiko Sato, a woman Rose worked with, had been the maid of honor. The wedding had been crashed by tripedal aliens that had wanted to congratulate the mother of the bride by eating her, as was the custom in their culture.
Both times she'd worn the same old thing, her grandmother's pearls. In her wedding to Mickey, she'd had new earrings, while in her marriage to the tall, lanky bloke, she'd had a new, diamond and pearl encrusted tiara. In her wedding to Mickey, she'd borrowed Shareen's stilettos (and suffered a twisted ankle later), while in her other wedding, she'd borrowed her mum's white gold and pearl earrings. In her wedding to Mickey, she'd worn a blue grater under her dress. In her other wedding, her whole wedding dress had been a magnificent shade of blue that the tall, lanky bloke had called tardis blue, whatever that actually was. (" S, stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.")
Her head hurt as she tried to concentrate on the groom in the other wedding, the tall, lanky one. ("That's me!" chirped the London accented voice excitedly.)
How had she met him? What was his name? Where did these memories come from?
Those memories were all odd (Well isn't that ood?) and seemed to change when she turned nineteen. In one set, she'd managed to shrink her duty of taking the lottery money to Wilson when Henrik's had blown up, while in the other she hadn't managed that and had instead met a man with hawk like features, leather jacket and a northern burr that she could have listened to forever. He'd called himself the Doctor.
Now that she's gotten that first memory, it is like a whole gate has opened and a flood of memories fill her mind.
They all have something or other to do with the Doctor, the Time Lord who had taken her away from her normal beans-on-toast life. The man she loves, the man she chose over her family.
Quietly she gasps out the name the Doctor had whispered to her during the wedding, before covering her mouth with her hands, stealing a guilty glance around. She was supposed to keep it secret, keep it safe, and she's so carelessly revealed it to... a few flowers and a squirrel.
Suddenly the most beautiful sound fills the park and a blue box starts fading in and out of focus just on the other side of the park path.
Rose rises quickly, one hand searching her neck for the key necklace she always wears and finds it, the key warm to her touch. She takes a few unsteady steps towards the doors when they are thrown open inwards, a young man standing there in a frock and a top hat, a big smile on his face that freezes when he sees her.
"Doctor?" she manages to ask, her voice unsteady.
"Rose," he answers just as unsteadily, his arms falling to his sides uselessly.
She blinks away the few tears that have managed to form. "You've regenerated."
"And you've managed the impossible, again."
"Why couldn't I remember you?"
He shrugs his shoulders without concern without taking his eyes off her. "I got erased from all of time and space." He takes a step closer. "Amelia was supposed to remember. River was supposed to give the diary to Amelia so that she'd remember, but you got there first. I suppose having had all of time and space in your head is a better guarantee of remembering than having had a rip in the universe in your bedroom wall, filling your head with the universe."
Rose feels lighter than she should and glances down. She's slightly transparent. She looks up in alarm and locks eyes with the Doctor who's eyes are filling with tears.
"You're going back to your world again," he says, cupping her face tenderly. "Now that I'm back, the universes are rightening themselves and because of me, you are in Pete's world."
"Married to you," she confesses with a smile as her tears escape. "Here I would be married to Mickey if you didn't exist." She laughs wetly. "I think he was cheating on me, Mickey I mean. The other you doesn't have the time away from me to cheat, by his own choice."
His laugh is just as painful as hers and he lowers his forehead to hers. "Quite right too."
His eyes hold the same emotion as her husband's, her Doctor's eyes. "Is that all you're going to say?"
He closes his eyes and presses his forehead against hers harder. "I love you," he whispers, and repeats it in his own language using the tense that means loves, has loved, will always love.
Rose closes her eyes, enjoying the knowledge that he does love her, even though she's known it for so long. But hearing him say it means the world to her.
"I love you too," she tells him and whispers his name, wrapping her arms around his waist. "So much."
They stay like that, just holding each other until their arms go through the other. Then they stand back and simply watch the other as Rose slowly fades away.
"Rose Tyler, I love you," he whispers one last time, just before she fades away completely.
'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'
She wakes up in her bed, her husband beside her snoring in the pattern that has become familiar during the last six months that they've been married. Rose rolls over to lay on her side and watches his face, slack in sleep, and smiles. The dream she'd had, had been good. Strange, but good. The Doctor had said he loved her.
She commits the dream to memory as she runs a finger down her husband's cheek.
Maybe it might be time to share the good news of the new life inside her with the Time Lord. He was no longer the last Gallifreyan.
What she doesn't know, is that in her original universe the Doctor is in the console room crying bitterly over his lost Rose.
And now for the alternate ending, with less angst:
Rose closes her eyes, enjoying the knowledge that he does love her, even though she's known it for so long. But hearing him say it means the world to her.
"I love you too," she tells him and whispers his name, wrapping her arms around his waist. "So much."
Her mind is starting to grasp for the matrimonial bond with her husband, but the only mind it finds is the Doctor's. His eyes shoot open and he gasps at the telepathic contact, jerking and accidentally butting heads with Rose. This starts a mental connection that Rose's mind latches onto and solidifies the bond between them.
And suddenly Rose feels heavier, more solid again. Her eyes meet the Doctor's, which are wide and searching her form for that transparency that it had shown just seconds earlier.
"You're solid," he says, letting go of her face and reaching to poke her shoulder.
"I feel solid," she admits. "I... is it the bond? Did it make me stay?"
"I don't know," he says sourly and takes a step back as he scans her with his sonic. "Well... it could be. Or it could be that there had been a small change in the multiverse and Pete's world doesn't exist anymore. Or that since you're originally from this universe, you stayed here. Or there already is a Rose Tyler in Pete's world, continuing without the knowledge that you now possess of me being erased from time and space and you are simply a Rose Tyler that would have been had I never existed, with the memories of the Rose Tyler in Pete's world. What ever the reason is, I don't care, because you are actually here," he says, throws his sonic over his shoulder and sweeps her into his arms. "And I am never letting you go again."
She laughs as her feet dangle in the air, her arms around his neck. "You better not! Or you're sleeping on the couch, mister!"
He lets her go suddenly and stares at her intently. "Oh, yes, the matrimonial bond. You know my name. We are married. That means I can do this!" he declares and pulls her in for a kiss.
She returns the kiss whole heartedly, basking in the feelings of love and joy that flow through the bond, sending her own right back at him.
He's the one to break the kiss a minute later. "Rose Tyler, are you ready to be my plus one again? Because I've got a wedding to crash."
She giggles, delighted. She brings out the banana from her purse and waves it at him meaningfully. "Born ready."
His grin is brighter than the sun. "Always bring a banana to a party!"