Alternatively (2/4)
Title: Alternatively
Rated: R
Features: Rose Tyler, the 9th Doctor, Jimmy Stone, Mickey Smith, and others.
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
A/N: Rated R for eventual sexytimes, but none this chapter!
Summary: How would their relationship have been different if Rose and the Doctor hadn't met when he was blowing up her job?
Part One
The rough bricks of the wall cut into her hands as she catches herself against them. Her lips throbs and blood drips down her chin and her cheek, courtesy of Jimmy's rings. She can see Doctor Smith move to stand between her and Jimmy out of her peripheral vision. He is as solid as the buildings surrounding them and she knows that she is safe. A quiet voice in the back of her head whispers that she will always be safe, as long as he is there.
Jimmy turns tail like she knew he would. He's brave as a lion when his prey can't fight back, but she is Jackie Tyler's daughter, and she sends him off with one final salvo. "Fuckin' wanker!" she shouts after him. "And stay away!" Talking hurts and she wonders what her mum will say. Jackie knew about the drinking and the other women, but Rose hadn't had the courage to tell her mum where she'd gotten the crescent-shaped scar over her heart or the burn on her arm, or the thin scar hidden in her hairline.
"Rose Tyler," he says, in that way he has. It makes her shiver every time, the way Dr. Smith says her name. It is low and-intimate. No one says her name like he does. In the classroom it's always 'Miss Tyler,' but when he's helping her study or explaining something in the privacy of his office her name rolls off of his tongue like he's tasting the syllables. He is leaning against the wall in front of her, his arms crossed over his chest. "It would be you." His eyes are chips of ice in his craggy face but she doesn't think she imagines the way they soften when he looks at her.
She tries to crack a smile and almost manages. "Jeopardy friendly, mum always says." Rose doesn't see him move, but suddenly cool fingers are ghosting across her cheek, tracing the outline of Jimmy's handiwork.
"He hurt you," Dr. Smith murmurs. A muscle in his jaw twitches and his eyes blaze like blue fire. It is terrifying and exhilarating, having his complete attention like this. He's been carefully controlled before, meticulous in his observation of the divide between teacher and student, and Rose cannot help but feel that something is changing between them. Her heart is pounding and she feels like she did so long ago, when she was a child and she'd race to the roof when a storm hit. The thunder would roar and the lightening would flash and the wind would buffet her back and forth, but she knew down to her bones that she was safe, that the storm would not hurt her.
The rough skin of his fingers (rougher than she would expect from a teacher) catches on the edge of her injured cheek and she flinches away. It breaks the fragile mood and he straightens, pulls himself back within the parameters of their positions. "Let's get you cleaned up," he tells her. "Your mum would murder me if I brought you home in that state."
"Oh," she says, clearly taken aback. "You don't have to walk me home or anything. I can make my own way."
He dismisses her words with a wave of his hand. "I don't trust that stupid ape as far as I could throw 'im."
"Jimmy's a tosser," she agrees, "but he's a coward."
"So he'll be back with friends," Dr. Smith points out. He sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, which he offers her. Rose takes it and wipes at her face. "My flat's just around the corner. We'll clean you up good as new, and then you can show me where you an' your mum live."
He leads her to a squat building a few blocks away. It's ugly, but most of them are in this part of London. God knows the Powell Estate is no beauty. Its concrete and steel construction always calls to mind a prison more readily than a home, and that association sticks with her. His place, though, his is different. It's sparsely furnished and sort of empty, but she can see the sky from his windows. The breeze brings a faint melody to her, something haunting and lovely that she can't place. She doesn't recognize the instrument and a quick glance reveals nothing about the source of the song, but she shrugs it off. A musician must live in the flat below his. Dr. Smith disappears for a moment, but he returns with a strange looking canister (antiseptic, maybe?) and a plaster. Rose holds out her hand to take them from him, but he shakes his head.
"Let me," he says.
"You a real doctor, now?" she asks, skeptical.
"Oi!" he replies, his voice heavy with feigned offense. "I'll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I have a great many impressive skills."
She laughs. "You're full of it!"
He rewards her with a smile. It's softer than his usual manic grin, a curving of the lips she fancies is just for her. "Sort of." The spray from the canister is cold but it dulls the throb of her lip and cheek. "So," he begins, as he spreads the plaster over her cheek. "Who's this 'Jimmy,' bloke?"
Rose tests the plaster and is pleased when it holds. "Boyfriend, first. Ex-boyfriend, now."
"That wasn't the first time he's hit you." Dr. Smith's voice is soft but she can feel the anger in him like a banked fire: given half a chance it will flare into full blaze.
"Why d'you think I left him?" she asks.
"Why be with him in the first place?" Dr. Smith counters.
Rose hugs her herself. She isn't proud of what she did when she was with Jimmy. "He wasn't always like that." It's a weak protest, a fact she knows all too well. "They never are, I guess. He was older and he was in a band and he was sweet, at first. He kept telling me not to worry about school, that when his band got their music out we'd be able to go anywhere, do anything. My mum, she's spent most of her life on the Estate doing hair an' scraping by. I want to go places, see things. There's a whole world out there an' I thought-I thought Jimmy'd be a way out." A bitter smile tugs one corner of her mouth up. "Stupid, stupid me. He'd stay out late after gigs, drinking with the band. They had groupies, but I figured it was just part of the lifestyle, an' I was the one he was coming home to-when he came home. But he never made it big an' he started drinking bad, and when he drinks he's mean."
"Did you go to the police?"
She looks at him incredulously. "Where've you been livin' Dr. Smith? I'm from the Estate. The cops don't care about one girl gettin' beat up. They're too busy tryin' to round up the dealers an' the gangbangers to stop for some stupid bint who was dumb enough to shack up with the first man to show any interest in her."
"Rose Tyler," he says firmly and the anger is back; it licks up him like fire on dry logs and she can feel the heat on her face. "You are not stupid and whatever he did is not your fault. You're brave and clever and he is a sorry, worthless sod."
She says nothing (what do you say to a declaration like that?) but something loosens and tightens in her chest and it's like the whole of the world stretches out in front of her, open.
They are silent on the walk home. He appears lost in thought and she is too busy trying to calm her racing mind to engage in conversation. Bev calls out to her from the window of her flat and Rose waves at her half-heartedly. She hopes her mum isn't home, but even if she's out Jackie'll hear about this, hear from half-a-dozen loungers and idlers that an older man in a suit walked her daughter home.
"Well," Rose says with a forced smile as they stop in front of her door. "This is it."
Luck is not with her. The door jerks open and an irate Jackie Tyler fills the space it occupied. "Rose Marion Tyler!" she shouts. "Where the 'ell have you been? Not a word of warning, not a phone call! I've been worried sick!" She pauses long enough to breathe and to notice that her daughter isn't alone. She takes in the state of her daughter's face and the Doctor's clothing in less than a second and rounds on him. "An' who are you, then?" she demands.
"This is Dr. Smith, mum," Rose tries to explain. "He teaches Lit. at school, an' he walked me home."
Jackie glares at him. "Are you tryin' to seduce my Rose?" Her voice is sharp and shrill.
The Doctor blinks like a deer in the headlights. "No!" he replies emphatically and holds up his hands like he's expecting a slap.
"Mum!" Rose exclaims at the same time.
"Don't you 'mum' me, missy!" Jackie snaps back. "What am I supposed to think, you bringing a man home hours after you were supposed to be back?"
"I'm not bringin' him home!" Rose struggles to keep her voice low. They are, after all, in public and the last thing she needs is someone to talk at school. "Jimmy showed up an' Dr. Smith was nice enough to walk me home an' make sure he didn't come back." She rolls her eyes and turns to face the Doctor, who looks rather like he wants to bolt. "Sorry about Mum. No good deed goes unpunished."
He straightens his jacket. "Ta. I'll see you in class tomorrow, then. An' Rose, remember what I said."
She is sure she's blushing as she waves him off. Her mum lets her into the flat but the barrage of questions begins as soon as Rose steps through the doorway. "What was he talkin' about, then?"
Rose shakes her head. "S'nothing, Mum, really."
Jackie folds her arms across her chest. "Didn't look like nothing to me, Rose Marion Tyler. There's only one thing men like him want, and it's not what's in your head, it's what's in your knickers!"
"Well you'd know!" Rose shouts back, unable to stop herself.
"That class is giving you airs and graces! Don't you be forgetting who you are, Rose Tyler. You're a chav from a council estate, an' that's never gonna change!" Jackie is furious and words fly like bullets from her lips. "You think a man like that'd want you because he cares about you? Because he loves you? What've you got to offer besides a decent pair of tits and a quick shag? You mark my words, girl, he'll leave you rode hard an' put up wet, an' don't think I'll take you in when you're knocking on that door with a baby in tow! "
It's childish, she knows, but Rose has no other answer. She runs from her mother's hateful words, runs to her room (a room that hasn't changed since she was eight years old) and slams the door behind her. She doesn't understand, not yet. She's too young and all she hears is her mother telling her that her dreams are futile. Much later, when she's standing on a spaceship in the fifty-first century for five and a half hours after she's watched the man she loves crash through a window in a one-way trip to the past to save a beautiful, rich, well-educated woman (who fancies him)-then she will understand. She will wait, of course, because she loves him, but when he returns she will wear the Powell Estate like plate mail, will arm herself with the knowledge that she is fantastic and brilliant and that class and status do not dictate her place in the universe (and her place is at his side). She will remind him that she is Rose Tyler, former shopgirl, savior of the universe and his equal. She will remember where she came from, because the universe will not forget, and if she wears it proudly, if she holds it up for all to see no one can use it against her. It is only when she pushes it aside, hides it away, that it becomes shameful. Reinette may be lovely and talented and the uncrowned Queen of France-but she is the Bad Wolf, and she walks in eternity and she will be damned if she lets him forget it. But now, now she is nineteen years old and her mother just called her a whore in front of a man she might be in love with. She curls into a ball beneath her heavy pink comforter and cries herself to sleep.
When Rose was small she thought that working at a fancy boutique like Henrik's was glamorous. After all, those girls got paid to play with beautiful clothes all day! It sounded like heaven. She is finding out that, like most things, the childhood fantasy far outstrips the reality of the situation. Folding clothes is monotonous at best, and the condescending attitudes of many customers make her want to scream. How could her mum think she'd ever be happy with a job like this one? She makes it bearable by tuning out the repetitive clubbing music designed to subliminally increase one's desire to shop, and going inside her own head.
What does she want? Once upon a time, she thought she wanted Jimmy. Life with him hadn't been all bad, not at first, anyway. He'd seemed like he was going places and he didn't laugh when she told him about getting off of the Estate, about seeing the world. He didn't tell her that she was getting above herself; he agreed with her. He'd take her for rides on his motorcycle and she could almost imagine that if they went fast enough and far enough they could leave London and its steel and concrete behind and find somewhere that her background wouldn't matter, where people wouldn't look down their nose at her because she didn't have the right accent or the right clothes.
It hadn't lasted, though. For all of his pretty words he was just a thug who took his frustration out on others-namely, her, when life didn't go his way. He is one arrest away from a prison sentence, she knows, and that is not the life she wants for herself.
There's always Mickey, her mum's voice echoes through her head. Mickey Smith is her best friend, has been since they were both little. He's sweet and kind and decent, and he's got a good job fixing up cars at the garage. He got his A levels but never went to school-his gran needed someone to bring home a paycheck, as she was blind, and after she died he hung around, stayed on the Estate. Rose knows he fancies her, that he always has, but he's always been like a brother to her. And-he's content where he is. When she told Mickey she was going to drop out of school, to leave London with Jimmy, he'd looked at her like she'd grown a second head. He doesn't understand how much she wants to see the world beyond her home. No, she doesn't want Mickey, and it wouldn't be fair to lead him on by pretending that she does.
And then-then there's Dr. Smith. He's older than she is, probably as old as her mum, and he's her teacher and she doesn't know if he even thinks about her as anything but a promising student and all of these things should give her pause-but she can't help but remember the way he looked at her in that alley. Even in class his eyes search her out. Shireen's noticed. Rose denied it, of course, when her friend asked if something was going on between the two of them, but now, now she thinks she may have been wrong. He's seen the world (more of it than she has, anyway). He's called her clever and brave and no one has ever called her clever. When he looks at her with those blue, blue eyes she feels like he actually sees her, not just the bleach blonde hair and second-hand clothes, and lower-class accent, but Rose Tyler. If she's honest with herself, then she wants Dr. Smith. There's something in his eyes, something wounded and broken and it makes her want to hold him close. There's a world of hurt in him, beneath the scathing sarcasm and manic enthusiasm that he wears like a mask, and she aches for him.
They're studying the Imagists before Rose works up enough courage to attempt anything. He's taken to walking her home when she stays after class for help, and though her mother continues to glare at him Jackie says nothing. He's worried about Jimmy, and Rose thinks it's sweet, if a bit unnecessary. She hasn't seen hide nor hair of the bastard, not in the three weeks it's been since Dr. Smith chased him away. She hasn't been back to his flat since that day, but he seems more at ease around her. He hasn't called her 'Miss Tyler' in ages and there's a light in his eyes that goes beyond pride when she aces an exam or points out an interpretation he's missed. He hugs her when she does especially well, and she relishes the feel of his arms around her, holding her close.
A slight adjustment brings her head around and her lips against his. They're dry and cool and much softer than she thought they'd be. They also fail to move against hers. Time passes, enough so that it isn't just hesitation that keeps him from responding, and let it never be said that Rose Tyler can't take a hint. She pulls back, takes a deep breath, and opens her eyes.
He is watching her rather like she imagines one would watch a particularly dangerous predator. Tension is writ large in the set of his shoulders and lines around his eyes. His face is carefully blank. Something in her throat tightens and an ache springs up in her chest, a dull pain that echoes the burning of her cheeks. Embarrassment, grief, fear-they all war for expression, but she is no school-girl, not anymore (despite her location in a school). She knows how to deal with rejection.
"Sorry," she says when she can speak. "Sorry. I thought-you and I-but I got it wrong. I'm always doing that, getting it wrong. I'll just-I'll just go."
He stops her with two words: "Rose Tyler," and it's really, really not fair for him to say her name like that, not when he doesn't mean anything by it. Her heart jumps, like it always does, traitor that it is. A rough palm slides across her cheek and lifts her face gently until she's looking him in the eye. He's smiling and she doesn't understand why. It isn't the manic grin he gives her in class when she gets a question right or shows him up. It's soft and radiates warmth. "Precious girl," he murmurs, and then he slides an arm around her waist and bends his face down and he's kissing her like she's something precious. He's gentle at first, questioning, and it takes a moment for her brain to process what just happened. She responds, of course she does. She's been dreaming about this and the ache in her chest fades away. He is solid against her and he tastes like coffee and those biscuits that he loves. She brings a package every so often, after he proclaimed them to be fantastic one day. It always surprises her, how grateful he seems for them, like no one has bothered to give him anything in a very long time.
She wonders why she is thinking about biscuits when he's busy snogging her breathless. The brain, it seems, deals with surreal situations by fixating on something normal. When he lifts his lips she holds onto the lapels of his jacket for support. He is, she decides, quite impressive, although she'll never tell. His ego is quite big enough already.
"You haven't got it wrong," he tells her quietly. "Not at all. I just couldn't believe that someone like you would ever want someone like me." The sadness is back in his eyes and the curve of his lips as he gives her a crooked smile. "I can't give you a normal life-a house and a job and two and a half children, all of those things that humans want."
"Some humans," she corrects him.
"Most humans," he replies.
She shrugs. "Never been interested in all that, myself."
"You're young." It's the last thing she wants to hear and he knows it. She opens her mouth to protest but he lays a finger against her lips. "Hear me out." Some of the tension returns. A muscle in his jaw twitches and she can feel him prepare himself for something, steel himself against-what, exactly? "I'm not human," he says after a long moment.
She raises an eyebrow. "You look awfully human to me."
He shakes his head. "You look Time Lord. We came first."
"Right," she drawls. A bit of anger seeps back in, because he isn't allowed to kiss her like that and then try and push her away. "Look, is this your attempt to scare me, make up some outlandish story and convince me that you're nuts? Because if you don't want me, have the decency to just tell me and I'll shove off."
He grabs her wrists. She struggles for a moment, but he's strong, far stronger than he looks (and he looks pretty damned strong). Fear climbs up her spine like ice water. "What are you doing?" she demands.
He places one of her hands on the left side of his chest and the other on the right side of his chest. She's familiar with the feel of a heartbeat. She can find her own pulse, and she felt it plenty of times, lying on top of Jimmy after sex. His heart pulses beneath her left hand-and also beneath her right. She looks up at him, eyes wide. "I have two hearts," he says simply. "Can't fake that, not with the state of medical technology in this time, anyway. Give it about three hundred years and then you lot will have a passable artificial heart." She says nothing. His hearts beat faster than her single one does, or maybe he's excited. She's trying to process what has just happened, trying to make sense of it in her mind.
"An alien," she says slowly, "who teaches Lit? In London?"
He laughs. "S more plausible than you'd think."
She frowns. "What's a Time Lord?"
"Me." His voice is hard and broken. "Just me."
The ache is back in her chest, the desire to soothe away whatever has pained him and it overwhelms her trepidation. She reaches a hand up to cup his cheek. He covers her small hand with his own and looks down at her. His face is unreadable, but there is something like desperation in his eyes.
"I want you, Rose Tyler," he murmurs. "I want you like precious little else-but I'm not human. And sometimes the people around me get hurt. Sometimes they die."
"I won't," she says with all the arrogance of youth.
He gives her a smile like broken glass and kisses her again.
Part Three
Rated: R
Features: Rose Tyler, the 9th Doctor, Jimmy Stone, Mickey Smith, and others.
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
A/N: Rated R for eventual sexytimes, but none this chapter!
Summary: How would their relationship have been different if Rose and the Doctor hadn't met when he was blowing up her job?
Part One
The rough bricks of the wall cut into her hands as she catches herself against them. Her lips throbs and blood drips down her chin and her cheek, courtesy of Jimmy's rings. She can see Doctor Smith move to stand between her and Jimmy out of her peripheral vision. He is as solid as the buildings surrounding them and she knows that she is safe. A quiet voice in the back of her head whispers that she will always be safe, as long as he is there.
Jimmy turns tail like she knew he would. He's brave as a lion when his prey can't fight back, but she is Jackie Tyler's daughter, and she sends him off with one final salvo. "Fuckin' wanker!" she shouts after him. "And stay away!" Talking hurts and she wonders what her mum will say. Jackie knew about the drinking and the other women, but Rose hadn't had the courage to tell her mum where she'd gotten the crescent-shaped scar over her heart or the burn on her arm, or the thin scar hidden in her hairline.
"Rose Tyler," he says, in that way he has. It makes her shiver every time, the way Dr. Smith says her name. It is low and-intimate. No one says her name like he does. In the classroom it's always 'Miss Tyler,' but when he's helping her study or explaining something in the privacy of his office her name rolls off of his tongue like he's tasting the syllables. He is leaning against the wall in front of her, his arms crossed over his chest. "It would be you." His eyes are chips of ice in his craggy face but she doesn't think she imagines the way they soften when he looks at her.
She tries to crack a smile and almost manages. "Jeopardy friendly, mum always says." Rose doesn't see him move, but suddenly cool fingers are ghosting across her cheek, tracing the outline of Jimmy's handiwork.
"He hurt you," Dr. Smith murmurs. A muscle in his jaw twitches and his eyes blaze like blue fire. It is terrifying and exhilarating, having his complete attention like this. He's been carefully controlled before, meticulous in his observation of the divide between teacher and student, and Rose cannot help but feel that something is changing between them. Her heart is pounding and she feels like she did so long ago, when she was a child and she'd race to the roof when a storm hit. The thunder would roar and the lightening would flash and the wind would buffet her back and forth, but she knew down to her bones that she was safe, that the storm would not hurt her.
The rough skin of his fingers (rougher than she would expect from a teacher) catches on the edge of her injured cheek and she flinches away. It breaks the fragile mood and he straightens, pulls himself back within the parameters of their positions. "Let's get you cleaned up," he tells her. "Your mum would murder me if I brought you home in that state."
"Oh," she says, clearly taken aback. "You don't have to walk me home or anything. I can make my own way."
He dismisses her words with a wave of his hand. "I don't trust that stupid ape as far as I could throw 'im."
"Jimmy's a tosser," she agrees, "but he's a coward."
"So he'll be back with friends," Dr. Smith points out. He sticks his hand in his pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, which he offers her. Rose takes it and wipes at her face. "My flat's just around the corner. We'll clean you up good as new, and then you can show me where you an' your mum live."
He leads her to a squat building a few blocks away. It's ugly, but most of them are in this part of London. God knows the Powell Estate is no beauty. Its concrete and steel construction always calls to mind a prison more readily than a home, and that association sticks with her. His place, though, his is different. It's sparsely furnished and sort of empty, but she can see the sky from his windows. The breeze brings a faint melody to her, something haunting and lovely that she can't place. She doesn't recognize the instrument and a quick glance reveals nothing about the source of the song, but she shrugs it off. A musician must live in the flat below his. Dr. Smith disappears for a moment, but he returns with a strange looking canister (antiseptic, maybe?) and a plaster. Rose holds out her hand to take them from him, but he shakes his head.
"Let me," he says.
"You a real doctor, now?" she asks, skeptical.
"Oi!" he replies, his voice heavy with feigned offense. "I'll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I have a great many impressive skills."
She laughs. "You're full of it!"
He rewards her with a smile. It's softer than his usual manic grin, a curving of the lips she fancies is just for her. "Sort of." The spray from the canister is cold but it dulls the throb of her lip and cheek. "So," he begins, as he spreads the plaster over her cheek. "Who's this 'Jimmy,' bloke?"
Rose tests the plaster and is pleased when it holds. "Boyfriend, first. Ex-boyfriend, now."
"That wasn't the first time he's hit you." Dr. Smith's voice is soft but she can feel the anger in him like a banked fire: given half a chance it will flare into full blaze.
"Why d'you think I left him?" she asks.
"Why be with him in the first place?" Dr. Smith counters.
Rose hugs her herself. She isn't proud of what she did when she was with Jimmy. "He wasn't always like that." It's a weak protest, a fact she knows all too well. "They never are, I guess. He was older and he was in a band and he was sweet, at first. He kept telling me not to worry about school, that when his band got their music out we'd be able to go anywhere, do anything. My mum, she's spent most of her life on the Estate doing hair an' scraping by. I want to go places, see things. There's a whole world out there an' I thought-I thought Jimmy'd be a way out." A bitter smile tugs one corner of her mouth up. "Stupid, stupid me. He'd stay out late after gigs, drinking with the band. They had groupies, but I figured it was just part of the lifestyle, an' I was the one he was coming home to-when he came home. But he never made it big an' he started drinking bad, and when he drinks he's mean."
"Did you go to the police?"
She looks at him incredulously. "Where've you been livin' Dr. Smith? I'm from the Estate. The cops don't care about one girl gettin' beat up. They're too busy tryin' to round up the dealers an' the gangbangers to stop for some stupid bint who was dumb enough to shack up with the first man to show any interest in her."
"Rose Tyler," he says firmly and the anger is back; it licks up him like fire on dry logs and she can feel the heat on her face. "You are not stupid and whatever he did is not your fault. You're brave and clever and he is a sorry, worthless sod."
She says nothing (what do you say to a declaration like that?) but something loosens and tightens in her chest and it's like the whole of the world stretches out in front of her, open.
They are silent on the walk home. He appears lost in thought and she is too busy trying to calm her racing mind to engage in conversation. Bev calls out to her from the window of her flat and Rose waves at her half-heartedly. She hopes her mum isn't home, but even if she's out Jackie'll hear about this, hear from half-a-dozen loungers and idlers that an older man in a suit walked her daughter home.
"Well," Rose says with a forced smile as they stop in front of her door. "This is it."
Luck is not with her. The door jerks open and an irate Jackie Tyler fills the space it occupied. "Rose Marion Tyler!" she shouts. "Where the 'ell have you been? Not a word of warning, not a phone call! I've been worried sick!" She pauses long enough to breathe and to notice that her daughter isn't alone. She takes in the state of her daughter's face and the Doctor's clothing in less than a second and rounds on him. "An' who are you, then?" she demands.
"This is Dr. Smith, mum," Rose tries to explain. "He teaches Lit. at school, an' he walked me home."
Jackie glares at him. "Are you tryin' to seduce my Rose?" Her voice is sharp and shrill.
The Doctor blinks like a deer in the headlights. "No!" he replies emphatically and holds up his hands like he's expecting a slap.
"Mum!" Rose exclaims at the same time.
"Don't you 'mum' me, missy!" Jackie snaps back. "What am I supposed to think, you bringing a man home hours after you were supposed to be back?"
"I'm not bringin' him home!" Rose struggles to keep her voice low. They are, after all, in public and the last thing she needs is someone to talk at school. "Jimmy showed up an' Dr. Smith was nice enough to walk me home an' make sure he didn't come back." She rolls her eyes and turns to face the Doctor, who looks rather like he wants to bolt. "Sorry about Mum. No good deed goes unpunished."
He straightens his jacket. "Ta. I'll see you in class tomorrow, then. An' Rose, remember what I said."
She is sure she's blushing as she waves him off. Her mum lets her into the flat but the barrage of questions begins as soon as Rose steps through the doorway. "What was he talkin' about, then?"
Rose shakes her head. "S'nothing, Mum, really."
Jackie folds her arms across her chest. "Didn't look like nothing to me, Rose Marion Tyler. There's only one thing men like him want, and it's not what's in your head, it's what's in your knickers!"
"Well you'd know!" Rose shouts back, unable to stop herself.
"That class is giving you airs and graces! Don't you be forgetting who you are, Rose Tyler. You're a chav from a council estate, an' that's never gonna change!" Jackie is furious and words fly like bullets from her lips. "You think a man like that'd want you because he cares about you? Because he loves you? What've you got to offer besides a decent pair of tits and a quick shag? You mark my words, girl, he'll leave you rode hard an' put up wet, an' don't think I'll take you in when you're knocking on that door with a baby in tow! "
It's childish, she knows, but Rose has no other answer. She runs from her mother's hateful words, runs to her room (a room that hasn't changed since she was eight years old) and slams the door behind her. She doesn't understand, not yet. She's too young and all she hears is her mother telling her that her dreams are futile. Much later, when she's standing on a spaceship in the fifty-first century for five and a half hours after she's watched the man she loves crash through a window in a one-way trip to the past to save a beautiful, rich, well-educated woman (who fancies him)-then she will understand. She will wait, of course, because she loves him, but when he returns she will wear the Powell Estate like plate mail, will arm herself with the knowledge that she is fantastic and brilliant and that class and status do not dictate her place in the universe (and her place is at his side). She will remind him that she is Rose Tyler, former shopgirl, savior of the universe and his equal. She will remember where she came from, because the universe will not forget, and if she wears it proudly, if she holds it up for all to see no one can use it against her. It is only when she pushes it aside, hides it away, that it becomes shameful. Reinette may be lovely and talented and the uncrowned Queen of France-but she is the Bad Wolf, and she walks in eternity and she will be damned if she lets him forget it. But now, now she is nineteen years old and her mother just called her a whore in front of a man she might be in love with. She curls into a ball beneath her heavy pink comforter and cries herself to sleep.
When Rose was small she thought that working at a fancy boutique like Henrik's was glamorous. After all, those girls got paid to play with beautiful clothes all day! It sounded like heaven. She is finding out that, like most things, the childhood fantasy far outstrips the reality of the situation. Folding clothes is monotonous at best, and the condescending attitudes of many customers make her want to scream. How could her mum think she'd ever be happy with a job like this one? She makes it bearable by tuning out the repetitive clubbing music designed to subliminally increase one's desire to shop, and going inside her own head.
What does she want? Once upon a time, she thought she wanted Jimmy. Life with him hadn't been all bad, not at first, anyway. He'd seemed like he was going places and he didn't laugh when she told him about getting off of the Estate, about seeing the world. He didn't tell her that she was getting above herself; he agreed with her. He'd take her for rides on his motorcycle and she could almost imagine that if they went fast enough and far enough they could leave London and its steel and concrete behind and find somewhere that her background wouldn't matter, where people wouldn't look down their nose at her because she didn't have the right accent or the right clothes.
It hadn't lasted, though. For all of his pretty words he was just a thug who took his frustration out on others-namely, her, when life didn't go his way. He is one arrest away from a prison sentence, she knows, and that is not the life she wants for herself.
There's always Mickey, her mum's voice echoes through her head. Mickey Smith is her best friend, has been since they were both little. He's sweet and kind and decent, and he's got a good job fixing up cars at the garage. He got his A levels but never went to school-his gran needed someone to bring home a paycheck, as she was blind, and after she died he hung around, stayed on the Estate. Rose knows he fancies her, that he always has, but he's always been like a brother to her. And-he's content where he is. When she told Mickey she was going to drop out of school, to leave London with Jimmy, he'd looked at her like she'd grown a second head. He doesn't understand how much she wants to see the world beyond her home. No, she doesn't want Mickey, and it wouldn't be fair to lead him on by pretending that she does.
And then-then there's Dr. Smith. He's older than she is, probably as old as her mum, and he's her teacher and she doesn't know if he even thinks about her as anything but a promising student and all of these things should give her pause-but she can't help but remember the way he looked at her in that alley. Even in class his eyes search her out. Shireen's noticed. Rose denied it, of course, when her friend asked if something was going on between the two of them, but now, now she thinks she may have been wrong. He's seen the world (more of it than she has, anyway). He's called her clever and brave and no one has ever called her clever. When he looks at her with those blue, blue eyes she feels like he actually sees her, not just the bleach blonde hair and second-hand clothes, and lower-class accent, but Rose Tyler. If she's honest with herself, then she wants Dr. Smith. There's something in his eyes, something wounded and broken and it makes her want to hold him close. There's a world of hurt in him, beneath the scathing sarcasm and manic enthusiasm that he wears like a mask, and she aches for him.
They're studying the Imagists before Rose works up enough courage to attempt anything. He's taken to walking her home when she stays after class for help, and though her mother continues to glare at him Jackie says nothing. He's worried about Jimmy, and Rose thinks it's sweet, if a bit unnecessary. She hasn't seen hide nor hair of the bastard, not in the three weeks it's been since Dr. Smith chased him away. She hasn't been back to his flat since that day, but he seems more at ease around her. He hasn't called her 'Miss Tyler' in ages and there's a light in his eyes that goes beyond pride when she aces an exam or points out an interpretation he's missed. He hugs her when she does especially well, and she relishes the feel of his arms around her, holding her close.
A slight adjustment brings her head around and her lips against his. They're dry and cool and much softer than she thought they'd be. They also fail to move against hers. Time passes, enough so that it isn't just hesitation that keeps him from responding, and let it never be said that Rose Tyler can't take a hint. She pulls back, takes a deep breath, and opens her eyes.
He is watching her rather like she imagines one would watch a particularly dangerous predator. Tension is writ large in the set of his shoulders and lines around his eyes. His face is carefully blank. Something in her throat tightens and an ache springs up in her chest, a dull pain that echoes the burning of her cheeks. Embarrassment, grief, fear-they all war for expression, but she is no school-girl, not anymore (despite her location in a school). She knows how to deal with rejection.
"Sorry," she says when she can speak. "Sorry. I thought-you and I-but I got it wrong. I'm always doing that, getting it wrong. I'll just-I'll just go."
He stops her with two words: "Rose Tyler," and it's really, really not fair for him to say her name like that, not when he doesn't mean anything by it. Her heart jumps, like it always does, traitor that it is. A rough palm slides across her cheek and lifts her face gently until she's looking him in the eye. He's smiling and she doesn't understand why. It isn't the manic grin he gives her in class when she gets a question right or shows him up. It's soft and radiates warmth. "Precious girl," he murmurs, and then he slides an arm around her waist and bends his face down and he's kissing her like she's something precious. He's gentle at first, questioning, and it takes a moment for her brain to process what just happened. She responds, of course she does. She's been dreaming about this and the ache in her chest fades away. He is solid against her and he tastes like coffee and those biscuits that he loves. She brings a package every so often, after he proclaimed them to be fantastic one day. It always surprises her, how grateful he seems for them, like no one has bothered to give him anything in a very long time.
She wonders why she is thinking about biscuits when he's busy snogging her breathless. The brain, it seems, deals with surreal situations by fixating on something normal. When he lifts his lips she holds onto the lapels of his jacket for support. He is, she decides, quite impressive, although she'll never tell. His ego is quite big enough already.
"You haven't got it wrong," he tells her quietly. "Not at all. I just couldn't believe that someone like you would ever want someone like me." The sadness is back in his eyes and the curve of his lips as he gives her a crooked smile. "I can't give you a normal life-a house and a job and two and a half children, all of those things that humans want."
"Some humans," she corrects him.
"Most humans," he replies.
She shrugs. "Never been interested in all that, myself."
"You're young." It's the last thing she wants to hear and he knows it. She opens her mouth to protest but he lays a finger against her lips. "Hear me out." Some of the tension returns. A muscle in his jaw twitches and she can feel him prepare himself for something, steel himself against-what, exactly? "I'm not human," he says after a long moment.
She raises an eyebrow. "You look awfully human to me."
He shakes his head. "You look Time Lord. We came first."
"Right," she drawls. A bit of anger seeps back in, because he isn't allowed to kiss her like that and then try and push her away. "Look, is this your attempt to scare me, make up some outlandish story and convince me that you're nuts? Because if you don't want me, have the decency to just tell me and I'll shove off."
He grabs her wrists. She struggles for a moment, but he's strong, far stronger than he looks (and he looks pretty damned strong). Fear climbs up her spine like ice water. "What are you doing?" she demands.
He places one of her hands on the left side of his chest and the other on the right side of his chest. She's familiar with the feel of a heartbeat. She can find her own pulse, and she felt it plenty of times, lying on top of Jimmy after sex. His heart pulses beneath her left hand-and also beneath her right. She looks up at him, eyes wide. "I have two hearts," he says simply. "Can't fake that, not with the state of medical technology in this time, anyway. Give it about three hundred years and then you lot will have a passable artificial heart." She says nothing. His hearts beat faster than her single one does, or maybe he's excited. She's trying to process what has just happened, trying to make sense of it in her mind.
"An alien," she says slowly, "who teaches Lit? In London?"
He laughs. "S more plausible than you'd think."
She frowns. "What's a Time Lord?"
"Me." His voice is hard and broken. "Just me."
The ache is back in her chest, the desire to soothe away whatever has pained him and it overwhelms her trepidation. She reaches a hand up to cup his cheek. He covers her small hand with his own and looks down at her. His face is unreadable, but there is something like desperation in his eyes.
"I want you, Rose Tyler," he murmurs. "I want you like precious little else-but I'm not human. And sometimes the people around me get hurt. Sometimes they die."
"I won't," she says with all the arrogance of youth.
He gives her a smile like broken glass and kisses her again.
Part Three