Double Feature Day!

[isilienelenihin]

On both of the polls (at fanfiction.net and here at livejournal) the clear winner is "Hello Stranger."  As a present (because you are all awesome) I come bearing gifts!  One chapter of "A Beautiful Disaster," and the first chapter of "Hello Stranger," which will be updated on Wednesdays after "A Beautiful Disaster" ends.  "Dream a Little Dream (of Me)" is also drawing to a close, but I think I'm going to leave Fridays blank, because school is starting to really crunch.  Hooray for reading!  Anyway, without further ado, your updates!

A Beautiful Disaster Chapter Eight
An AU look at Human Nature/Family of Blood with a season 1 twist. Inspired by "Catalyst," by Anna Nalick.

It features Rose/9, Jack Harkness

( Chapter One ) ( Chapter Two ) ( Chapter Three ) ( Chapter Four ) ( Chapter Five )

A/N: Nothing you recognize belongs to me!  Quotes taken from "World War Three" and "Dalek."


Rose had an idea of what would probably happen when she let John into the little flat she'd called home for the past three months. At first she was surprised that he'd come, but the Doctor didn't shy away from her presence, even after moments like I could save the world but lose you and what use are emotions when you will not save the woman you love. Physically he was always there, but mentally, emotionally, he was absent. He would tinker with the TARDIS or read and even though he was within touching distance his walls kept her at arm's length.

So when he showed up at her door looking like he'd rather be anywhere but where he was she expected a bit of brooding, or maybe a good argument. She did not expect to be snogged within an inch of her life. Because he was the Doctor, even if he didn't know it, and he didn't do that. Except that he was human now, so maybe he did. Or maybe the Doctor just didn't do that with her. He'd seemed interested enough in Jabe back on Platform One, but that had been when they first met, and she hadn't seen him flirt with anyone since, not even Jack. And everyone flirted with Jack, whether they wanted to or not. It was a knee-jerk reaction to the man's existence.

It occurred to her that she was doing entirely too much thinking, but she really hadn't expected him to push her up against the door and kiss her in a manner that couldn't be considered chaste on any planet. She was stiff and unresponsive for a moment, out of surprise versus any real objection to his actions, but he noticed the hesitation and pulled back slightly. His lips hovered centimeters from hers and his eyes searched her face. "Is this alright?" he asked gently.

"Yes," she replied, a tad breathlessly. "God, yes."

He grinned. "Fantastic." And then he went back to attempting to kiss her until she forgot her own name. The door was cool and solid against her back and he was solid and warm in front of her and she was melting into him, because what else can you do when the man you love more than anything in the world finally gets over his guilt complex and makes a move? The reservation and confusion that had plagued her since she started talking to John Smith vanished as she realized a fundamental truth: he was the Doctor. Really and properly, he was. He didn't just look like the mad alien-in all the ways that mattered they were the same man. John didn't have the weight of an entire species hanging around his neck, but he'd lost his family and to a human man that was his whole world. He was a soldier; he'd been in war and come out changed, broken. He was prickly and brilliant and jealous of anyone who took her time away from him. He knew the most random bits of information about apparently everything, and he possessed an affinity for machines that bordered on savant-like. And it stood to reason that his feelings for her, like everything about him, was an echo of the Doctor's feelings.

He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers. He was smiling, she noted. Her brain fixed on the details and shied away from the fact that she had just kissed the Doctor. Well, really he'd been the one doing most of the kissing. They stood like that for a moment, one of his hands cradling the back of her head, the other resting at her waist. Her own arms were at her sides. She'd been so shocked that she hadn't given in to her natural desire to touch him everywhere she could.

"Wanted to do that for ages," he confessed quietly. "Ever since I saw you standing on that stage, wearing that dress." His eyes were soft and open as he catalogued her slightly dazed expression. "Been a while since I've kissed anyone. Glad to see I haven't lost my touch." His eyes sparkled and she hit him on the shoulder. "Oi!" he exclaimed in mock pain. "Abuse, that is!"

"You're just lucky I didn't slap you," she retorted. "Makin' fun of me after you kiss me like that. S your own fault!"

He laughed and pulled her into a hug. She went gladly. "Rose Tyler." He said her name like it was a thing of wonder. "You're a little bit mad."

She grinned at him, her tongue caught between her teeth. "Yeah, an you love it."

He kissed the top of her head. "Don't I just."

Jack and Joan visited Rose the next day. John was there; he'd come straight over from work and although there were some significant looks passing between the two visitors, neither of them mentioned how close John and Rose were, nor that they were almost always touching. It was clear that something in their relationship had shifted profoundly.

Jack was her friend and thus didn't need a reason to stop by, but that night he had one. "I'm sorry," he told Rose. "Your backpack was destroyed, but we found this." He placed a plane Yale key in her hand. "The chain was melted."

She stared at her TARDIS key. It was warm to the touch, and honestly she hadn't even wondered if it could survive the fire, she'd just assumed it would. Her lip trembled and she took a breath, steadying herself. John put a comforting hand on her shoulder and she covered his fingers with her own. "Did you find anything else?" she asked, trying to sound casual. "I had a watch with the key."

Jack shook his head. "That was it, Rosie." His voice was quiet and he tried to break it to her as gently as possible. "We went over the place with a fine-toothed comb. Either it was destroyed in the fire, or someone else picked it up."

She looked at him then. "D'you think someone could have grabbed it?"

He knew the answer, the only one he could give. "It's always possible, Rosie." A little hope was better than no hope at all.

"We'll put up fliers," John said, taking control. "Offer a reward."

She bit her lip. "I don't have much," she admitted.

He squeezed her shoulder. "I'll take care of it."

She smiled at him then, wide and glowing. He smiled in response, and Jack couldn't help but notice how different he was from the sour man who spent his days hunched over a bottle.

Rose turned back to Jack and Joan with a horrified expression on her face. "Here I am worrying about a watch," she said, "when you've just lost the bar." She reached out and took Joan's hands in hers. "How are you holding up?"

The older woman sighed. "It can be difficult," she admitted. "Oliver and I poured our lives into that place and now we've nothing to show for it."

"Weren't you insured?" John asked.

Joan nodded. "Of course, but it takes time for the paperwork to process." She snorted. "There are layers and layers of red tape."

"We'll think of something," Rose assured her, and then Jack jumped into the conversation, and talk turned to more lighthearted matters.

Rose met Jack for lunch a few days later. Without a job to occupy her spare hours she felt utterly useless, and she ached to be out and about and into trouble again. It was the first time she'd been out of her flat since she got back from the hospital, and even though it was cloudy and cold Rose thought it was a beautiful day. She hadn't noticed before how much value she placed on her ability to move. Life with the Doctor was dangerous, and even though she and Jack joked about the running (how better to keep her girlish figure and eat all the chips she wanted?) there was a serious side. They were frequently in tight spots, and she needed to be able to trust that her body would obey her. She was young and she hadn't yet completely learned her limits, or how to cope with her body betraying her.

She was recovering, but far too slowly for her own liking. Walking from her flat to the Tai restaurant Jack loved left her tired and out of breath. Before the fire she could have run the same distance with little effort, but she wasn't going to think about that now. They were safe, the Doctor was hidden, and the watch would be found. She repeated the sentence like a mantra in her mind.

"Hey sweetheart!" Jack's usual exuberance cut through the gloomy cloud that seemed to hover around her. She smiled at him. He was trying so hard to be upbeat about the whole situation. At least they were in a time period that was relatively close to her own. He was thousands of years away from the world with which he was familiar. 'The past is another country,' the Doctor said, and Jack was stranded. At least they had each other.

"Hullo Jack." He led her to a table tucked into the corner of the busy restaurant and held her chair for her like a gentleman.

"How are you feeling?" he asked after he slid into the chair across from her.

She shrugged. "Been better."

"Any sign of the watch?"

She shook her head. "Not yet. We were putting up flyers all of yesterday, and he said that it will probably take a few days for them to circulate." She worried her bottom lip with her teeth and stared out the window. "What if we don't find it?" she asked, sounding very small and a little lost. Jack forgot, sometimes, how young she was. He knew that she'd been traveling with the Doctor for months before he met them and when they were on different planets or in different times she kept herself together. She was brave and flexible, but then again she always had the Doctor to lean on. This time they had to be the experts.

He reached across the table and covered her hand with his own. "We'll find it, Rose." His voice conveyed a certainty he wasn't sure he felt.

She took a breath and nodded. He could almost see her put herself back together. By the time she smiled at him anyone who didn't know her would swear that nothing was wrong. "Yeah," she replied, matching his confidence. "We will."

He leaned in close. "Now, tell me. What happened between you two? When we talked before you were all flustered and frustrated and now-" He raised an eyebrow and gestured at her. The fear was there, but buried, and she seemed-lighter. "You're glowing, Rosie." She blushed. His eyebrows climbed higher. "Come on, you can't leave me hanging like that!" He frowned. "That is what you say, right? 'Leave me hanging?'"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, Jack. Good job." She fidgeted a bit and a smile crept over her face, the kind that hinted at potentially naughty secrets. "He kissed me again."

"Who, John?" Jack couldn't stop a grin. "It's about time!" She laughed and the blush stole back across her cheeks. "I'm assuming that this is a good thing."

Rose nodded vigorously. "Last time-I was just so confused, Jack. This whole situation is mad and I, I didn't want him to hate me for taking advantage of him when he doesn't remember. Or worse, I didn't want to read into his actions. What if John Smith was an entirely different person, someone who loved me and wanted to kiss me and the Doctor came back and didn't?"

"What changed your mind?" Their food arrived, and Jack started in on his Pad Thai.

Rose picked at her curry. "He's so much himself, Jack. Really. The big things-being an alien an the last of his kind an all, they're different, but the little things are the same." A smile flitted across her face. "I bet he swears like a sailor when he cuts himself shaving."

"You'll just have to make up a reason for him to spend the night and find out," Jack replied with a healthy dose of innuendo. "Hang on, how do you know what he does when he shaves?"

She stared at him. "You've heard him yelling. I doubt the TARDIS could keep me from hearing if she tried!"

When they finished the admittedly excellent food and were ready to part ways, Jack moved to help Rose out of her seat but she waved him off. "I'm not an invalid, you know," she reminded him pointedly. "I walked here all on my own and everything."

"The doctor said to take it slow, Rose," he told her severely.

She sighed. "I know, I know." Her brows wrinkled in frustration. "I hate being like this, Jack. What if I don't get better? I can't run like this, even walking tires me out." Her hands curled into fists. "I'm no use to you and the Doctor if I can't run."

"Hey, that's not true." He tilted her chin up so that she was looking him in the eyes, instead of staring at the floor. "You are far more than a pair of gorgeous legs, Rose Tyler."

She met his gaze evenly. "If I can't run then I'm a danger to you both. I won't have you, either of you, getting killed trying to rescue me." She swallowed and pain flashed across her features. "If I can't run I have to go home."

He hugged her. "It won't come to that. The Doctor's got a med bay full of fancy equipment. If you still feel like this when he gets back I'm sure he'll be able to fix you up, right as rain."

She opened her mouth to reply, but was shoved roughly against Jack as a young man barreled past.

Tim was late. He promised his sister he would meet her at her favorite restaurant, a tiny little Thai place not too far from where the Big Bad Wolf had been. It was the fifth anniversary of the day she lost the baby, and it was always hard. He knew that she came to him because he didn't try to make her talk about her feelings or pretend that everything was fine. He let her sit across from him and they ate food that was spicy enough to set his tongue on fire and they talked about everything and nothing.

Two people were standing just in his way, a man and a woman, and they looked like they were in the middle of something important. They were-familiar. He tried to weave past them, but he wasn't quite flexible enough, and he brushed up against the woman rather roughly.

Rose. The watch spoke and the word burned in his mind. Feelings, so many feelings. Pain and loss and rage and hate and darkness-and then light. A hand, small and human-hot clasped in his. A quick thinking, sharp talking, chain swinging blur of pink and yellow. A force of nature, a second chance. She stood framed against a window three stories high, bathed in the red-orange light of a dying sun while chunks of her planet floated outside, suspended in space, and she cried for her home that was gone. But it wasn't gone, not like his, not locked away and burned to ash, not kicking and screaming. She almost died then and she almost died in a basement in Cardiff and she stayed. She leaned over the table, trapped in 10 Downing Street while the world winds its way toward nuclear holocaust and told him to do it. I could save the world but lose you-but that doesn't matter. She makes hard choices too and it's so good not to be alone any more. And then he thought she was dead and the rage was back but darker, deeper. For a little while he wasn't alone, for precious moments she made him laugh and smile and remember how it felt to be alive instead of to exist.

He staggered a little from the force of the emotions radiating from the watch. He knew her, knew her from just a touch of an alien consciousness. He saw her as an infant in her mother's arms and again as a young woman facing down bitchy skin trampolines and giant green baby-faced monsters and gas mask zombies. He knew how she liked her tea and what a million little gestures and sighs meant-and he knew without a doubt that whatever else was true about the Doctor, he loved this girl-Rose. The alien loved Rose, and he knew that Tim had saved her, had pulled her out of the fire when she was looking for the watch that currently rested in his pocket.

"Watch where you're going!" the man barked. Jack, that was his name. He was a bartender at the Big Bad Wolf.

"Sorry," Tim muttered.

Rose laid a hand on his shoulder. "S okay Tim." She smiled at him. "I never did get a chance to thank you. The doctor said you probably saved my life. Any longer and the carbon monoxide would have gotten the better of me. So, thanks."

He nodded. "Any time. Well, I hope not any time soon." He smiled, embarrassed. "You know what I mean." He'd never been good at talking to girls. They seemed to bring out the worst in him.

She hugged him, and Jack clasped his shoulder. "Thanks," the man said. "Rose is very important to me, and it means a great deal that you helped keep her safe."

Dancing and dancing and hands that know the feel of a gun, have taken someone's life. Smooth talker and smooth operator and something is missing, something important. Usurper and con-artist and eventually friend.

The watch was a bit more ambivalent with Jack than it had been with Rose, but there was still a fierce warmth of feeling. Still, it left Tim disturbed. He was dangerous, was Captain Jack. Not as dangerous as the Doctor, but then Tim would be hard pressed to find anyone who was. He offered the man a smile, and then went to join his sister at their customary table. He stroked the watch in his pocket as his eyes followed Rose and Jack out of the restaurant. It was coming for them. It was coming for the Doctor. He shivered.

Keep me hidden, the watch-that-wasn't instructed. Keep me safe.



Hello Stranger Chapter One:  Meet John Smith
When she was 19 years old Rose Tyler turned down the chance of a lifetime.  When she was twenty-one years old, she got a second chance.  The Doctor was on the run from the Family of Blood with his trusty companions Donna Noble and Martha Jones.  As professor John Smith he met a stranger in a diner and learned something new about the universe.  An AU story inspired by "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood."

10/Rose, Donna Noble, Martha Jones, other characters from Human Nature/Family of Blood.

"Quick, into the TARDIS!" He had to run; he had to leave. They were coming and he'd done far too much damage already. If they caught him he'd have to kill them and he'd killed enough to last him all of his remaining regenerations, not that there were many left. He seemed to be running through them rather fast. It was the meddling, Romana would say. Of course, she had no room to talk, as she regenerated for purely cosmetic reasons that first time, but then consistency is the defense of small minds, and let no one ever say that Time Lords had small minds. They were small minded, yes, but it was a metaphor, after all, and there! He was through the doors and so were his companions, he hoped. He wanted to look, knew that he should check them over but he couldn't spare the time. A Time Lord who ran out of time, how pathetic was that? Almost as pathetic as a Time Lord who ran away. Coward, him, but that wasn't a new revelation.

"Did they see you?" he barked as he took them into the Vortex. "Martha! Donna! Answer me! Did they see you?"

"No!" Donna snapped. "I was too busy running to look back!"

There was only silence from his other companion. "Martha! Did they see you?"

"N-no." She sounded far from certain and he shot her a blistering glare. "No, they didn't. You said not to look back, and I didn't."

The TARDIS's ever-present hum shifted, letting him know that they were in fact in the Vortex and following a course that he left up to her, save that he chose their planet to be Earth. His ship was marvelous and she would see that they arrived in a favorable time and locale. "There's no way around it," he murmured as he gripped the console, his knuckles white from the strain. "I'll have to hide."

"What?" Donna objected. "What are you talking about, Spaceman?"

"Doctor?" Martha's voice was much softer and filled with concern-for him. She was so devoted, was Martha, even though he'd been adamant that he didn't do that, not with companions, and generally not at all. It was such a human thing to do-to love the unlovable, but then her care wasn't exactly love, not a love of equals. She loved him because he was brilliant and showed her the universe. It was wrong to play on those feelings, but he needed to. He didn't want anyone else to die for him, and if he remained as he was there would be casualties.

"Do you trust me?" he asked them, deadly serious.

"Yes," Martha replied without hesitation.

"Yes," Donna echoed, although her voice carried a hint of apprehension.

"Good." He pulled a silver fob-watch out of a compartment on the TARDIS console. "Because I'm putting my life in your hands." He held the watch out for them to see. "This watch is me."

It was at that moment in the dream that the screech of his alarm clock pulled him back into the waking world. There was a momentary feeling of intense disorientation-the world was spinning beneath him and his hearts thudded painfully out of sync-and then he took a breath and the feeling vanished. He was John Smith; he possessed a Doctorate in both British history and British literature, and only one heart. It was always two in his dreams but he wasn't sure why. Was it symbolic, perhaps?

No matter. They were fantasies and nothing more, perhaps brought on by his fondness for jam before he turned in for the night. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and pulled back the curtains. Bright light flooded the room immediately. One whole wall of his room was taken up by a giant floor-to-ceiling window. Actually, two sides of the house were glass. An eccentric millionaire built the strange structure years ago. After he passed away his family started renting the house out to visiting professors. It was relatively close to the University, at least, close according to the standards of the Midwestern United States, but it was far enough away so that he could see the stars at night.

Natives of the town of Middleridge called it the Castle. John was from Europe, where, as Eddie Izzard said 'the history is from,' and so he had seen real castles. The house was impressive, but not that impressive. He had the feeling that he used to live somewhere fantastic, almost magical, a place with byzantine corridors and rooms that were functional works of art. They were vague memories, leftover from his childhood. He couldn't remember much, just his father (Sydney) and his mother (Verity) and a feeling of home that seemed to elude him no matter where he traveled.

A loud knock on the door pulled him out of his reverie. "Oi! Spaceman! Hurry up! Don't want to be late for your first day of class!"

"Coming Donna!" he called.

"Honestly," his assistant muttered from the other side of the door. "It's like I'm your mum and not your secretary!" She waited until she could hear him moving around the room, and then joined Martha at the table. The young black woman was reading a newspaper and drinking a cup of strong coffee. She smiled at her friend.

"Good morning. How's himself?"

Donna put the kettle on and popped a bagel into the toaster. "He's up, at least. It's just so-weird seeing him sleep. He never sleeps! He's always dragging me out of bed after a few hours." She sighed and slid into the chair next to Martha. "Honestly, he's rubbish as a human."

"Only a few more months," Martha said sympathetically. "Once the semester's over he can change back and we'll be traveling through time and space again."

The kettle whistled and Donna stood to get it. "Can't come soon enough," she murmured. Fear curled hard and cold in her stomach. She'd been traveling with the Doctor for almost two years and in all of that time she'd never seen him shy away from a fight. Oh, he tried his hardest to abstain from violence, but he never hid, never ran away. He was confident to the extreme, bordering on arrogant-except that he wasn't anymore. No, he'd crammed everything that made him a Time Lord into something that looked like a watch and in his place was a human named John Smith who looked like the man she trusted with her life, the man she loved like a (very annoying and slightly thick) brother.

After a cup of tea and toast (with jam of course) John and Donna were on their way to Middleridge proper and Blackhawk University. Martha apparently didn't start classes until the next day, but she ate breakfast with them and waved them off. She was a quiet, serious girl and John found that he enjoyed her company, although they lacked the same easy camaraderie he shared with Donna, but that, he supposed, came from a history of working together. Donna had been his secretary for the past two years and she did an admirable job. Not everyone was cut-out for his line of work. He traveled almost constantly and often to dangerous locations in pursuit of documents relevant to his research. On top of that he could be incredibly rude sometimes, and he was brilliant and a little distant and not the easiest person to work with. Objectively he and Donna, who was pushy and loud and never backed down, should have been at each other's throats, but they got along surprisingly well. There was a maternal streak just below the ginger woman's brash exterior and she seemed to believe that he needed her attention.

As they drew closer to the University his mind raced. He hadn't worked with students in ages! It was exciting, but so much different from his usual research. Dealing with government workers who were ordered to be as unhelpful as possible in order to obstruct (without appearing to obstruct) his research? Easy. Dealing with three classes of thirty eighteen to twenty-three year olds? Now that was difficult. He left Donna at his office. As his personal assistant she would organize his appointments and assist with the articles he was writing (usually her assistance included typing up his notes, which was good, because she was one of the few people he'd met who could accurately read his scrawl).

The morning passed in a blur of syllabi and faces, some more eager than others. He was standing just outside his office, contemplating the possibilities of lunch, when a familiar voice caught his attention.

"John, how are you settling in?" It was Dr. Connor Griffin, the assistant chair of the department and the man who had offered him the position of visiting professor.

He offered the man a smile. "Fine, fine thank you."

"I was just on my way to lunch," Connor continued. "Care to join me? I know the perfect place. There's a little diner not too far from here. It's more of a local hang-out, though, so you shouldn't run into too many of your students."

"That sounds brilliant," John replied gratefully. "Lead on!"

The persistent buzzing of her alarm pulled her from the rather pleasant dream she had been having. She slapped the snooze button and rolled on to her back, staring at the ceiling although she couldn't see it in the pre-dawn darkness. For a moment she thought she was back in bed, in her Mum's flat on the Powell estate, and then reality hit her like a bucket of cold water. She hadn't been back to London in almost a year. She'd been in her current flat, a tiny studio, for a little more than a month. She was working her way across the United States, but her money had run out and she was tied down until she could make enough to fund her next move.

Rose Tyler rolled out of bed and reluctantly began to get dressed for the day. Some things never changed. She was a world traveler now-she'd been all over Europe, spent a little less than a year catching trains and busses and occasionally walking through Spain and France and Germany and the Netherlands and Greece and Italy and more. She'd been to Ireland and Scotland and even Wales, but she needed more. So she hopped on a plane and made her first cross-Atlantic flight.

Briefly her thoughts turned to a man who had held out to her all of the universe on a silver platter-an offer she'd refused. If she could turn back time she would take that chance in a heartbeat. As it was, she was still traveling. She'd tried to go back to her life of work and telly and Mickey, but after two weeks she'd stopped pretending. Her and Mickey had something once. They'd been nice, but comfortable. She didn't want comfortable. She wanted someone who could feel the turn of the Earth, who made her every nerve tingle to the tips of her fingers, who made her feel alive.

When she was nineteen years old, Rose Tyler met an alien. He called himself the Doctor, just the Doctor. He waltzed in and saved her life and then she turned right back around and saved his. He was prickly and stubborn and entirely too confident in his own abilities. He asked her to come with him, to see the universe, to be something more than Rose Tyler, shop girl.

When she was nineteen years old, she made the worst choice of her life. She said no. That was part of the reason she traveled. It was a big universe, but she still hoped that if she looked hard enough, if she visited one more place, that he would be there, leaning up against his police-box that was actually a space ship. Maybe, if she asked nicely and gave him that smile, the one with the tongue, maybe he would let her come with him.

Forget me, Rose Tyler he'd said. Like that was ever going to happen. In fact, she was pretty sure that telling her to forget him only served to cement his memory further. And the way he'd acted when she said no-he'd looked at her, all expectations and eager enthusiasm, and then it had just died. He looked like someone kicked his puppy or ripped up his favorite book right in front of him.

So she didn't have a space ship that was blue and bigger on the inside, nor did she have its alien pilot. She had her memories and an urgent need to see what was on the other side of the next hill, and that could be enough. It would have to be enough.

The restaurant that Connor led John to was tucked away in an unobtrusive corner of a strip mall. It was a few streets back from the University campus and surrounded by older residences. "It's been here for years," the other man explained. "Even before Evelyn, my wife, and I moved here." He held the door for John to enter first. It was a diner in every sense of the word. John blinked. It looked like he'd been transported back to the nineteen-fifties, and for some reason that seemed to be a distinct possibility, until he noticed that everyone was wearing modern clothes. He frowned. Of course he couldn't be in the fifties. There was no such thing as time travel, not outside of science fiction novels and movies.

Connor directed him to a table against the wall. "I'm here almost every day during the week," he said with a grin. "I've got my own table and everything." They chatted for a few minutes, and then the sharp 'click' of heels on the tile floor signaled the approach of their server.

"G'morning professor," a woman said. "Brought a friend today?"

It was the accent that made him turn, he thought. He hadn't expected to hear the familiar flat London drawl outside of his own house. Their waitress was blonde, artificial-he noted the darker roots that were just beginning to show. She had dark brown eyes, a wide, generous mouth, and a strong jaw. He hadn't thought that it was possible for anyone to look good in an apron, but she was doing an admirable job. She smiled at his companion, who nodded at her.

"Hello Rose. I'd like you to meet Dr. John Smith. He's a visiting professor."

The girl turned her beaming smile on him. "Nice ta meet you professor."

"Doctor," he corrected automatically.

She cocked her head, puzzled. "What?"

"Just Doctor, please," he replied with a smile to soften the correction. "It's nice to meet you, Rose, and to hear a familiar voice. I haven't been back to London in a very long time."

Rose nodded. "Me neither. Mum's always after me to come home an visit, but plane tickets are expensive, and besides-" A mischievous twinkle surfaced in her soft eyes. "I haven't made it to California yet."

"Rose is working her way across the country," Connor informed him. "What am I supposed to do when you're gone?" he asked the girl. "No one else knows what I like."

She rolled her eyes. "Jenny does, professor. Now, what can I get you Doctor Smith?"

Lunch with Connor was pleasant, especially when Rose stopped by their table. She and Connor bantered back and forth and John thought that he would be welcome to join in, but he was content to watch them. She was young, twenty-three at the oldest, and she was far away from her home. She was brave, obviously. He didn't think that many young women would cross an ocean, and then later a country, alone. She was friendly and cheerful, but something about her seemed-sad. She smiled at everyone and kept up a stream of playful teasing with people he assumed to be regulars, but there were glimpses of something stirring beneath her chipper façade. In unguarded moments her eyes seemed to fix on a point only she could see, something far away and the smile drained from her face like milk from a glass. She looked vulnerable, longing and slightly discouraged, but then someone would say her name and the mask was back up. He wondered what would make a pretty young woman so sad.

She knew it was impossible, that she'd never seen Dr. John Smith before in her life. She would like to think that if she had, she would remember. So it was impossible, and yet there was somethinga bout him that seemed familiar. Something about his carriage, or the way he insisted on being called 'Doctor,' and just Doctor, made her pause. But he couldn't be that Doctor. That Doctor, the Doctor, was older, and had blue eyes and big ears, not big hair (and it was some really great hair, she had to admit) and brown eyes. And he was from the North! Of course, she didn't know what planet, but still, he looked and sounded nothing like the man who was having lunch with Professor Griffin. It was the accent, she decided as she pushed through the double doors to the kitchen. It was the shock of hearing a familiar tone and inflection so far away from her mum and Mickey. And she had been thinking about them more frequently. Doubts were beginning to set in. She'd been traveling for two years and she hadn't found him yet. She'd gone wherever there was trouble but he was nowhere.

Maybe that was it, she thought bitterly. Maybe she'd missed her chance. She sighed, and took a moment to compose herself before she went back out into the diner. She had a job to do, and when she had enough money saved up she could be on her way again. It was a bittersweet feeling, the knowledge that she would be leaving as soon as she could. Sweet, because the open road was calling to her. She hadn't known, before she met the Doctor, that wanderlust could get into the blood. She hadn't known that anyone could need to be moving. Most of her life seemed to be standing still, but not anymore. It was a compulsion, an attempt to recapture the electricity that his presence and their actions had sent crackling over her skin. But she had friends here, in this little town. Professor Griffin and Jenny would be sad when she left, but they understood. She had to keep moving. If she stopped then she would have to face the fact that she had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and she let it slip through her fingers.