AN: For the Eight x Rose August prompt: Rose meets Eight first. Also for perfectlyrose 's prompts of going out for a drink (okay so it's tea), and "welcome home."

The Doctor's green velvet coat flapped in the wind as he raced down Oxford Street, weaving in and out of the crowds of shoppers. There was a temporal anomaly here… somewhere. The TARDIS had brought him to London to track it down and put things to right again.

He glanced down at the sonic screwdriver in his hand. He was closing in on it. Without looking up, he whipped around the corner onto Argyll Street, and directly into another person.

"Oh! I'm terribly sorry!" he said, extending his hand to the young blonde woman he'd knocked to the ground. "Please forgive my clumsiness."

She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet, then brushed herself off and shot him a teasing smile, with a hint of her tongue peeking through her teeth. "S'all right, no permanent damage," she told him.

"Still, I feel like I need to make it up to you somehow. After all, you didn't expect to be bowled over by a careless idiot while you were out shopping this afternoon."

She wrinkled her nose. "Not exactly shopping," she told him. Then, before he could ask any questions, she added, "But if you want to make it up to me, we could maybe get a cuppa? I've been out here for hours, and I could use a break."

The Doctor nodded. "Lead the way… I'm sorry, I haven't asked your name."

Humour sparkled in her warm brown eyes. "I would've expected better manners from someone who looks like he stepped out of a Jane Austen novel," she teased. "I'm Rose Tyler. An' who are you, then?"

"The Doctor."

Rose blinked at him. "The Doctor? Doctor who?"

He grinned at her—he did love it when people asked that. "Just the Doctor," he answered merrily. "Now, I think we were going to get tea." He gestured to a small shop behind them. "After you, Rose Tyler."

Rose tilted her head and stared at him for a moment, then shrugged and turned around to walk to the tea shop. The Doctor glanced down at the sonic screwdriver as he followed her, and blinked when he realised he was standing practically on top of the temporal anomaly he'd been chasing.

He raised the sonic surreptitiously and scanned the surroundings. When it passed over Rose, the diode blinked rapidly.

He looked at the woman, then back at his sonic screwdriver. Well well, Rose Tyler. There's more to you than meets the eye. He sighed and crossed his fingers that Rose was simply out of her own time, somehow. He liked her already, and he really didn't want her to be a villain he needed to defeat.

He changed the settings quickly and did another scan, but instead of clearing things up, he only became more confused. As far as he could tell, Rose Tyler was 100% 21st century human, so why did his ship think she didn't belong on Earth in April of 2005?

Rose was already sitting at a table when he entered the tea shop, and the Doctor took the chair opposite her. "So what were you doing on Oxford Street, if you weren't shopping?" he asked.

She sighed and set the menu down. "I'm trying to find a new job. I used to work at Henrik's, only… well." She shrugged.

The Doctor leaned back in his chair. "Why did you leave?"

Rose chuckled wryly. "You're not from around here, are you? Henrik's blew up, mate, about seven weeks ago. That was me, out of a job."

The Doctor's gaze sharpened. He considered the facts while Rose ordered, nodding absently when she asked if English breakfast was fine with him. An entire store blowing up would be a significant event—one that would impact the timelines of everyone connected to the business.

"Still, guess I should be glad I'm only unemployed," Rose continued. "I was supposed to be working that night, but I was home sick."

The hair on the back of the Doctor's neck stood on end. "That's certainly lucky," he said mildly.

"Didn't seem like it at the time. Lupine flu is nasty stuff, let me tell ya."

The Doctor blinked. "I don't think I've ever heard of the wolf flu before."

"Well, that's what the doctors told me. Couldn't stop throwing up, an' I was dizzy for two days straight. Had to go in and get an IV because I couldn't keep anything down."

Every one of the Doctor's time senses were tingling. What Rose had just described was the reaction a time sensitive being would have to their own personal timeline being shifted.

The tea came then, giving him time to organise his thoughts while Rose poured for both of them.

You were supposed to be at the store that night, Rose Tyler, he realised. And now the Web of Time is trying to compensate for your continued presence here in London.

His mind whirled as he added milk to his own cup. If Rose didn't belong here, Time would eventually find a way to force her out of existence. It would have to.

He managed to smile charmingly and hold a normal conversation with Rose, despite the sick feeling in his gut. There was no point in getting worked up when he didn't know the details of that night yet. Maybe there was a reason she couldn't be there.

They finished the tea, and the Doctor set his cup down gently in the saucer. "Well, Rose, I'm glad you weren't there that night. As you said, looking for a new job is certainly better than the alternative."

Rose sighed as she stood up. "Try telling that to my mum. I mean, to hear her going on about it, you'd think I blew up the shop myself so I wouldn't have to go back there. That's if she's not reminding me that working there was giving me 'airs and graces.'"

Rose's words sent a shiver along the Doctor's prescience, but he couldn't pinpoint what exactly had caused that reaction. If she'd been the one to blow up the shop, she would remember.

He shook his head and walked to the counter, pulling out his wallet along the way. When he opened it, he belatedly remembered a very important fact: he didn't have any British money with him.

"Oh dear," he murmured. "This is embarrassing."

Rose peered up at him. "Don't have any money?"

"Oh, I do," he said, showing her his wallet. "But I've been travelling and it's all foreign."

She sighed, but when she gave him the same smile from before, with her tongue peeking out between her teeth, he knew she wasn't really upset. "Cheapskate, you are," she said as she pulled her own wallet out of her bag. "Fine, the tea's on me, but you owe me, Doctor."

The Doctor brightened. He'd been looking for an excuse to see Rose again, after he went back to the TARDIS and tried to figure out why the timelines were circling around her.

"Can I take you to dinner?" he suggested. "I promise to get local money between now and then."

Rose put her card back in her wallet and led the way to the door. "Maybe not an actual sit-down dinner—we just met, after all. But, we could get chips and take a walk."

The Doctor grinned at her. He'd been ready to protest when she said dinner was moving too fast, but as long as he could see her again, he didn't care what they ate. "Absolutely."

"Here, then." Rose pulled a piece of paper out of her bag and jotted down an address. "That's my favourite chippy. Meet me there at seven o'clock tonight." She folded the note up and slid it into his jacket pocket. "Now, I've got to get back to work—or looking for it, at least." She waved quickly, then turned around and walked into the crowd.

As soon as she was out of sight, the Doctor remembered why exactly he needed to see Rose Tyler again, and the silly smile on his face disappeared. Time was not happy with her presence in 21st century London, and it was his duty as a Time Lord to ascertain why, and fix the situation if possible.

When he returned to the TARDIS, he crossed his arms and glared at the console. "Well that wasn't very nice of you. Sending me to track down a temporal anomaly who happens to be a lovely young woman. What am I supposed to do if it turns out Time can't compensate for her continued presence?"

The TARDIS as good as rolled her eyes at him and pushed him to sit down while she turned the monitor on. The Doctor frowned, but pulled his arm chair around so he had a better view of the screen.

A black and white security tape started playing. When he glanced at the timestamp, the Doctor quickly did the maths and guessed this was taken by a CCTV camera the night Henrik's blew up. He stared at the empty alley for a moment, then sucked in a breath when he watched his own ship materialise in the narrow space.

A moment later, the doors opened and a tall man stepped outside, still shrugging into his weathered black leather coat. The base of the Doctor's skull tightened as he took in his future self, from the lithe runner's body to the crew cut.

All thoughts of his own regeneration vanished when someone else joined him—someone he recognised.

This Rose Tyler was clearly several years older than the young woman he'd met that afternoon, but there was no mistaking the smile and blonde hair. His eyebrows rose when she took his future self's hand with an ease that suggested a long-established habit.

The future Doctor and Rose Tyler walked towards Henrik's, but just before they stepped out of the frame, the Doctor looked directly at the camera, then at Rose, leaving little doubt of what he thought his past self should do—no, what he remembered doing.

Then they were gone, leaving the present Doctor staring at a video image of his own ship and trying to figure out what exactly had just happened. How could his future self be traveling with a future Rose in her past?

Fifteen minutes later, he was still pondering the unique situation when a light flared onscreen, and then the camera cut out completely. The Doctor blinked, then remembered what Rose had said—Henrik's had blown up. Clearly, his future self was responsible for that.

The Doctor straightened up. His future self and Rose.

That was why she'd been too sick to work—because if she'd gone in that day, she would have met a future version of herself. Even worse, she might have died in the explosion, which obviously would have caused a massive paradox. How could she be at the store in her future to blow it up, if she'd been there in her past and died?

"But how does she start travelling with me in the first place?" he wondered.

The TARDIS buzzed in exasperation, and the Doctor's jaw dropped open slightly. "Oh. Oh! Of course! That's why you sent me here to find the temporal anomaly, so I could ask Rose to travel with me now, so she'll still be travelling with me in the future."

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his jaw. How long is Rose Tyler going to stay with me? She was at least five years older in that video—companions don't typically stay that long.

After a moment, he shrugged. Rose staying longer with him than most wasn't really a problem, and judging by the comfortable way he'd taken her hand, his future self didn't think so either.

The Doctor jumped to his feet and pulled Rose's note out of his pocket. There was no reason to wait all afternoon for their date when he could just jump ahead. "All right, old girl," he murmured to his ship as he set the coordinates. "Take me to Rose."