A/N: I'm going to try to update this weekly. I'll do my best!

And the usual disclaimer where I say that the characters do not belong to me!

Rose Tyler was thankful for her position. She ought to be, as most of those who came into her acquaintance were quick to tell her, and if those in her acquaintance gained any more information, they were likely to say that she should be especially thankful given her mysterious origins and kaleidoscopic upbringing.

Rose Tyler was thankful for her position. She was happy to work, she was glad to have a stable place of residence, people she might call family, even if she must call them the family instead of her own. For all intents and purposes, Rose Tyler was completely content; it was expected of her, and she had absolutely no reason not to be, so it served her purposes well to remain complacent.

She finished rolling her hair onto the top of her head and secured the final pins firmly within the delicately arranged chignon on the top of her head. It was not yet six in the morning and much of the house still slept.

"Rosie!" she heard from the corridor, followed by a stampede of tiny feet. The door to her room was promptly flung open to the view of two small children, clothing rumpled and hair awry.

Rose turned with her hands on her hips giving the children a distinct frown.

"What have I said," she began, "about coming into this room without my permission?"

The children looked steadfastly at the floor.

"Well?" she asked again, crouching to their level.

"We aren't to come into Miss Rose's room without her consent and company," the oldest, Ava, replied quickly through barred teeth. "But Miss Rose—"

"And you must call me Miss Tyler, my dears, I don't suppose your papa would be very happy to know I've let you start calling me 'Rosie'."

"But 'Rose' is a pretty name," the youngest, Fredrik, said quietly. He looked up cautiously as if to gauge whether or not he was still in trouble, and seeing that he was not, hazarded a smile.

Rose smiled in return. "Well, there's nothing more to be said for it," she said, standing back up and shaking her head. "By the look of things, you've been playing in the upstairs rooms again. Between the two of you there must be enough cobwebs to grace every mummy in Egypt, and you haven't even eaten breakfast. I suppose you know what this means?" She raised an eyebrow at the two small blond children standing in front of her, their faces full of a knowing sort of terror.

"No, please, Miss Rose—Miss Tyler—" Ava stammered, but to no avail.

"I have no choice but to draw the two of you a bath."

While Ava looked at Rose with all the disdain her six-year-old countenance could muster, Fredrik began to cry in earnest.

"We're sorry! We'll never come into your room without asking again!"

"I'm not bathing you because you've come and barged into my room, but that was very bad of you indeed. I am bathing you because you are the children of Swedish Ambassador, and the children of ambassadors do not kiss their fathers good morning with faces full of dust and hair full of cobwebs."

Rose smoothed out the front of her skirt and adjusted the bustle before turning to the mirror once more to check on her collar and cuffs.

"Come, you two," she said, pushing them out the door. "No breakfast until you've all the dirt off your faces."

Ava and Fredrik walked sullenly down the hallway and Rose called for hot water to be brought up to the children's copper bathtub. She helped them off with their nightclothes and ushered them into the water. They really were good children, she thought to herself, handing Fredrik the soap as Ava stepped into a fluffy towel, careful not to let the water drip onto her blouse.

"This is how an ambassador's daughter ought to be," Rose proclaimed. "Smelling of flowers and clean as snow." Ava smiled at her governess and Fredrik giggled when the soap slipped through his tiny fingers.

"And me?" he asked.

"And you are just as an ambassador's son ought to be: clean." The small boy erupted in a fit of laughter and Rose left Ava to picking out her frock while she concentrated on the rather stubborn smudge of dirt on Fredrik's cheek. Within the next half hour, she had two squeaky-clean children ready to have breakfast with their father.

The Swedish Ambassador was a large and sculpted man, what Rose imagined an ancient Viking might have looked like. He sat imperiously at the breakfast table and stirred his cup of tea.

"My dears!" he exclaimed-his accent thick-when he caught sight of his two young children entering the room. She could not accuse the man of a lack of parental enthusiasm, at least on an outward level.

"And Miss Tyler! I trust they haven't given you too much trouble this early in the morning?"

"Oh, no, Minister Henriksen, not too much at all."

The ambassador nodded and turned again to his children. Rose made a quiet exit to leave the ambassador and his wife to their hour of haphazard parenting, which included trying and failing to get their children to eat their breakfast, after which Rose would let Fredrik play while she taught Ava French and drawing.

Rose went to sit on a settee in the parlor and drank the tea brought to her by one of the maids while she waited for Ava and Fredrik to finish their breakfast. It was one of the few quiet moments she had to herself before a day filled with the demands of her two very energetic charges.

It was a mild day at the Ambassador's home in Marylebone, a day not particularly nicer than others, but perhaps more still. The sound of carriages passed with its usual regularity and the ticking of the clock bounced off the walls of the room creating a syncopated sort of rhythm that was simultaneously lulling and maddening.

Feeling restive, Rose looked out the window to the London street and made an effort to think about nothing. She was thankful, she repeated to herself. She was glad to have such a place, to work for a gentleman who knew the Queen. Somehow saying it might make it more true—perhaps it was something about the morning, not anything she could name, that made her feel restless. Thankful, still, always thankful, even if only in name, but that would have to be good enough. If a name weren't good enough, then she would have nothing.

She lifted herself off the settee and crossed the room to the window and peered down to the street. The grating rhythm from the clock was less intense from this particular part of the room; the acoustics seems to cooperate in this area. Below was a sea of grey and black and brown. She could not ever remember having a garden to play in when she was young (though she could not remember much of her young life), but she wished for the sake of the Henriksen children that there might have been a patch of green for them to run in, for it always did children good to run around.

Something caught her eye as she looked out onto New Cavendish. It was a spot of blue amongst mud and grey just within her peripheral vision, but as she moved closer to the window to take a closer look, the children came rushing into the parlor.

"Fredrik, you've jam all over your hands," she said disapprovingly, pulling him out of the folds of her skirts. The time after breakfast was an anxious time for Fredrik, who found his parents austere and frightening.

Rose cut her eyes over to the window again. Whatever it was that was out there was gone now. She put it out of her mind as much as she could, which was not very much at all, and turned to the children with a warm smile.

"S'il vous plait, Ava, cherchez votre livre et lisez l'histoire de Cendrillon."

She wasn't sure what she had seen earlier, Rose thought as Ava began reading in clumsy, broken French, but if she had seen it correctly—and she wasn't entirely convinced that she had—a large blue box had all but materialized in the middle of the pavement on New Cavendish Street.

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