Occam's Razor- Part 2
I'm so sorry for the delay. I had wanted to go back and rework the opening of the story but life became hectic so it will remain the way it is for the time being. I want to get this up before the show returns so you should expect the next part this week.
Occam’s Razor-2/?
Author: The Laughing Duchess
Pairing: Rose/Ten
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through the Runaway Bride, heavy spoilers for Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel.
Disclaimer: They belong to the BBC and Russell T. Davies, not to me.
Summary: The easiest way back is the hardest to find.
Special thanks to darksylvia for the beta job. She did a ton of work on this a long time ago and never really got a big enough thank you.
Any and all feedback is much appreciated.
This bit is for Roquentine.
She didn’t know how she had survived. She came to with smoke and flames swirling around her. In a blind panic she crawled her way across the floor towards a beam of light that was pouring in from outside. When she reached it she tore at the skin of the Eternity until it gave way. She fell about six feet and hit the ground with a heavy thud. She checked herself over for injuries and stood up as she adjusted the messenger bag that had helped to cushion her fall. Looking around the park she marveled that no one in the small park had noticed a girl falling out of what looked like thin air. People did notice the fireball that appeared in the sky minutes later, though. Rose ran a few feet from the gathering crowd, her whole body shaking with fear as she watched pieces of ash and metal fall to the ground.
It was over before anyone could even call the fire brigade. Standing a few feet from where her ship had been she realized that she had no idea where she was. Worse than that, she was trapped there.
Again.
She walked away from the scene, taking deep breaths and scanning the area as she crossed the street. It was more than familiar. There was a church on one side of her and a river just ahead. When she reached the stone walkway she finally looked up. Her stomach dropped as she saw the first zeppelin. Had the recall worked? Torchwood’s offices would be about a mile from where she stood; maybe they’d just gotten the landing coordinates wrong.
Still, it didn’t feel exactly right. She was pretty sure the restaurant she was passing had gone out of business and the weather felt a bit off for spring.
“What day is it?” she said to herself, trying to stay calm as she eyed a newsstand that was a few feet away. She began to head in its direction when she heard a familiar voice answer her.
“First of February this year. Not exactly far flung is it?”
Her first thought was that Mickey had come to arrest her. Her second was that she hadn’t started her day off in February. Her pulse pounded and time seemed to stop as she slowly turned around.
A younger version of Mickey and herself stood a few feet ahead of her along with the Doctor and the TARDIS. She almost laughed as she realized she had walked past the blue box without even noticing. When the Doctor began scanning the area time seemed to go into hyperdrive and she instinctively darted behind the closest thing to her, a large sign. She pressed herself against it, quickly checked to make sure her bag wasn’t sticking out, and hoped that they hadn’t noticed her.
“So this is London?” the Doctor began.
As his voice filled her ears she took in a jagged breath. He was there, so incredibly close and she couldn’t go to him. How in the world had she thought she could do this?
She slowly turned so she could peer around the edge of the billboard. She let her eyes run over his shape as her heart hammered heavily in her chest. In her fantasies, when she had imagined his coming back to get her, she had been nervous about seeing him again. Over time, her memory of the way he looked had begun to dull and she wondered if her imagination would have made him a little bit more than he actually was. She wasn’t surprised to realize that she had done that a little. In her mind he had become physically larger, more imposing, and a little more polished. But looking at him now, she couldn’t imagine why she had done that. He was perfect the way he was, rumpled and slightly off kilter.
The Doctor spoke again and wave after wave of emotion rolled through her. She felt her eyes grow wet as Mickey and her past self looked up to see the zeppelins for the first time.
“What the hell?”
“It’s beautiful!”
Rose’s throat went dry as Mickey started to sort it all out and the Doctor began walking in her direction. She jumped back behind the sign when she saw the younger Rose’s eyes focusing in on her. She knelt down and found herself shaking. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she began scrolling through her memory trying desperately to remember what had happened next. She heard the Doctor raise his voice and then suddenly the sign she was hiding behind started to speak.
“Trust me on this.”
She froze at the sound of Pete’s voice. Relief washed over her, the other Rose had noticed Pete, not her. But still, this was bad. This was very bad. This couldn’t happen. If the Doctor took one step in the wrong direction he would see her.
She held her breath and listened as the Doctor and her former self started arguing about her seeing her father. When the Doctor finally realized he wasn’t getting though to her he told Mickey to try and talk some sense into her and walked angrily back to the TARDIS. Mickey was silent for a moment before he spoke, his voice soft and full of concern for her.
“He’s right, Rose. That’s not your dad.”
“So, you’re on his side now?”
“No! No way! But Rose, your dad’s gone. This guy…he’s nothing to you.”
The younger Rose started to walk off.
“Oi! Oi, Rose!” Mickey ran after her and grabbed her arm, forcing her to face him again. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Trying to make him angry. Are you still upset about that woman, that Madame du-whatshername?”
“Piss off, Mickey.”
Rose listened as her former self stomped off, leaving the boy behind.
“Great, just great,” he muttered.
As Rose stood there, she felt a burst of warmth towards the boy. He had still been in love with her then, but she had been so wrapped up in the Doctor that Mickey had barely been a blip on her radar. Not for the first time in her life, she thought that he had deserved someone better than herself.
When Mickey shuffled off, Rose stood and peered around the edge again, watching as he headed back towards the TARDIS. She felt a flash of anger towards her former self, he looked defeated, his shoulders hunched and his feet dragging, like a boy that was fully aware he had lost his best friend. The next time she saw him, she was going to apologize for everything she had put him through.
When the door of the TARDIS closed behind him, she turned to watch her past self crossing over a bridge. The anger faded as she realized how young she had been then. She was little more than a child at the time, all mascara and attitude, full of determination, totally confident that they could deal with anything the universe threw at them. Rose felt an overwhelming sense of loss for who she had once been and a pang of sympathy for the girl who had just dejectedly slumped down on a bench across the way.
That girl’s doom had just been sealed. She just didn’t know it.
She was shaken from her thoughts when the Doctor and Mickey burst back out of the TARDIS and started walking towards the water. She was lucky that neither of them even glanced in her direction. She racked her memory. What had happened next? The images came rushing in as she remembered how insistent she had been about seeing Pete.
“I’ve got to see him.”
“You can’t.”
“I just want to see him.”
“I can’t let you.”
“You just said twenty-four hours!”
“You can’t become their daughter. That’s not the way it works. Mickey tell her.”
She had run off like a child after that and Mickey had taken a cue from her and purposely run off the other way. The Doctor would be alone for a minute as he ran after her former self. Should she try to catch him then and ask for his help? But what would be the point? What would she say to him?
“Hello, Doctor. We got separated and I helped build a new time machine, which I just accidentally destroyed. I don’t much fancy spending the next six years waiting to catch up to my timeline. Also, I’m relatively sure that I’m going to prison once I do. Think you could help me out one last time?”
She could imagine how well that would go over.
She looked up and realized she had lost sight of them. It was entirely possible that Mickey might head back this way, so she ran over the bridge and around the back of some buildings, before ducking into an alleyway. She looked up and saw her past self rush by and then moments later a blur of a brown trench coat swept into view. She found herself involuntarily reaching out to him but caught herself before she could catch his attention.
She shouldn’t do this. No, she wouldn’t do this. The Doctor would be furious with her for even thinking about it.
She hadn’t been planning on actually talking to him. If she was going to attempt that she had to think. She couldn’t affect the timeline. Things had to go exactly as they had before. If they didn’t she could blink out of existence and take everyone else with her. She thought of her little sister and how happy her mother was and realized she wasn’t willing to risk their lives. She and the Doctor had to battle the Cybermen that night and then return to the other side without Mickey. They had to be separated and then they had to meet up on a beach in Norway to say goodbye. There was no way around it. She couldn’t erase her past without causing major damage.
Although she didn’t want to hide there for the next few years and then end up in prison, there really wasn’t another option. She would have to live through another six years with no hope of finding him and this time around she’d have no help to get her through it.
Rose felt a sudden and irrational wave of panic. It was as if she’d just added another six years to their separation. Well, another six years for her, she had no way of knowing what that translated to in his timeline. It could have been three hundred years, he could be with someone else now, he could have regenerated, he could be so far into the future that he’d forgotten her name…there was just no way of knowing. The only thing she knew for sure about his life after her was that he would eventually contact her in Norway. If she could figure out a way to get to him right after that, well, then they could be together again with no fear of disturbing the universe.
But there was no way to get to him. He’d burned up a sun and couldn’t even physically be there. The only way was to breach the void and that was never going to be anything less than impossible. Rose’s breath caught in her throat and for the first time she understood that her hopes had all been in vain.
“I’ll never see him again,” she whispered as she wiped at the tears that fell from her eyes.
Inhaling shakily, she turned back in the direction she’d come from. She had only come back here to try and find closure for both of them.
Maybe she could still get it.
***
Rose knew that she had twenty-four hours before they would return to the TARDIS and she planned to use them well. She pulled the key from around her neck and approached the battered front door.
“Hello,” she whispered as she ran her hand over it, the wood achingly familiar under her fingers. She took a deep breath as she pushed the key in the lock and turned, only exhaling when she heard the tumbler click. She pushed gently and felt the door give way.
The TARDIS was smoky, dark and eerily still when she entered. When it had happened the first time around she hadn’t really taken in the extent of the damage, but now all she could see was devastation. A wave of guilt rolled over her as she remembered that the Doctor had never figured out the reason behind their crash. She wondered if Torchwood’s attempt to bring her back had inadvertently ripped the TARDIS out of the vortex.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, tears welling in her eyes as her hand ran over the console, “Will you forgive me?”
She was met with deathly silence.
Rose maneuvered her way around the console, running her fingers over railings and knobs before finally arriving at the hallway that would eventually take her to her old bedroom. In the earliest days of her existence on this side of the void, one of the hardest things to deal with was that she hadn’t gotten to take anything with her. There was a photo album that she knew she hadn’t looked at in her last few months of traveling with the Doctor. She could take it now without causing a lick of trouble.
She carefully made her way down the increasingly dark hallway, her arms extended, her fingers feeling out the space in front of her. As she walked she idly wondered if the Doctor’s old leather jacket or a pair of his Chucks would fit in her bag. She was fairly certain he would never notice that either had gone but she told herself not to be greedy. She’d get the album and then do what she’d really come there to do, leave him the letter. Her hand crept into her bag and felt for the envelope she had traveled so far to bring him. Reassured that she still had it she continued feeling out her way. Inside that envelope was the last message she would ever be able to give him. The last time he’d seen her she’d been a mess, she didn’t want him to think she was dying without him. She’d made a life for herself and she was okay, sometimes she was even more than okay. She had written about her job and her family, even her broken engagement and she had written to him that she wanted him to take his own advice and have a fantastic life. She had written to him about how much he had meant to her and how she wanted him to find new people to travel and have adventures with. The only flaw in the plan was that she hadn’t been able to figure out how she could ensure that he wouldn’t open the letter until the right time. She was busy thinking about it when her hands encountered a wall that shouldn’t have been there.
In the darkness, she ran her hands along it and then turned so she could backtrack her way up the hallway. This time she put her arms out at her sides, her fingertips running over the walls so she could feel for a doorway or another corridor. By the time she was standing back at the mouth of the hallway again she had realized that the TARDIS had been reduced to the bridge and the corridor. There was nothing more, no kitchen, no living quarters, no pictures. Everything was gone.
She stumbled back to the console, grabbing onto the edge of it as her head began to swim. To have come so close only to come away empty-handed was unbearable. She had to get that album and leave her message. Why was that so impossible?
She took a deep breath and thought about her options. Her hand flew to her bag and she smiled when she felt her wallet.
She could still walk away with something.
***
Two hours later she found that it still amazed her how powerful Pete Tyler was in this universe. She had walked into a posh little boutique that both incarnations of Jackie Tyler enjoyed shopping at, picked out a little black dress and when her card was declined pitched a fit until the clerk said she was sure that they could simply bill Mr. Tyler for his niece’s dress. No one wanted to do anything that would upset the Tyler family on such a big day.
She walked out of the shop feeling only moderately guilty.
She found a pawn shop and purchased a used camera with the cash she had on hand and then proceeded to make her way to the Tyler estate.
***
Standing at the gate of the driveway, Rose was surprised to realize how intensely she still hated this house.
She’d lived there when they’d first arrived on this side of the void and she had had nightmares each night that she’d spent under its roof. When her sister Sadie was born she had moved into her own flat but she’d had to go back each Sunday for dinner. She was never able to put her back to a window without feeling anxious. Lucky for her, Jackie had thought it was creepy to live in another woman’s house and had persuaded Pete to sell just after Sadie’s first birthday.
Rose had never thought she’d have to come back here.
She shook off the memories as she approached the security guard. She held a single thought in her mind as she reached into her wallet and fished out the little slip of psychic paper that the Doctor had once given her.
“I’m here from Ok!” She said as she held it up to him.
He gave it a cursory glance. “Press goes in the back.”
“Thanks.”
She walked up the pathway wondering if that man was about to die.
***
Occam’s Razor-2/?
Author: The Laughing Duchess
Pairing: Rose/Ten
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through the Runaway Bride, heavy spoilers for Rise of the Cybermen and The Age of Steel.
Disclaimer: They belong to the BBC and Russell T. Davies, not to me.
Summary: The easiest way back is the hardest to find.
Special thanks to darksylvia for the beta job. She did a ton of work on this a long time ago and never really got a big enough thank you.
Any and all feedback is much appreciated.
This bit is for Roquentine.
She didn’t know how she had survived. She came to with smoke and flames swirling around her. In a blind panic she crawled her way across the floor towards a beam of light that was pouring in from outside. When she reached it she tore at the skin of the Eternity until it gave way. She fell about six feet and hit the ground with a heavy thud. She checked herself over for injuries and stood up as she adjusted the messenger bag that had helped to cushion her fall. Looking around the park she marveled that no one in the small park had noticed a girl falling out of what looked like thin air. People did notice the fireball that appeared in the sky minutes later, though. Rose ran a few feet from the gathering crowd, her whole body shaking with fear as she watched pieces of ash and metal fall to the ground.
It was over before anyone could even call the fire brigade. Standing a few feet from where her ship had been she realized that she had no idea where she was. Worse than that, she was trapped there.
Again.
She walked away from the scene, taking deep breaths and scanning the area as she crossed the street. It was more than familiar. There was a church on one side of her and a river just ahead. When she reached the stone walkway she finally looked up. Her stomach dropped as she saw the first zeppelin. Had the recall worked? Torchwood’s offices would be about a mile from where she stood; maybe they’d just gotten the landing coordinates wrong.
Still, it didn’t feel exactly right. She was pretty sure the restaurant she was passing had gone out of business and the weather felt a bit off for spring.
“What day is it?” she said to herself, trying to stay calm as she eyed a newsstand that was a few feet away. She began to head in its direction when she heard a familiar voice answer her.
“First of February this year. Not exactly far flung is it?”
Her first thought was that Mickey had come to arrest her. Her second was that she hadn’t started her day off in February. Her pulse pounded and time seemed to stop as she slowly turned around.
A younger version of Mickey and herself stood a few feet ahead of her along with the Doctor and the TARDIS. She almost laughed as she realized she had walked past the blue box without even noticing. When the Doctor began scanning the area time seemed to go into hyperdrive and she instinctively darted behind the closest thing to her, a large sign. She pressed herself against it, quickly checked to make sure her bag wasn’t sticking out, and hoped that they hadn’t noticed her.
“So this is London?” the Doctor began.
As his voice filled her ears she took in a jagged breath. He was there, so incredibly close and she couldn’t go to him. How in the world had she thought she could do this?
She slowly turned so she could peer around the edge of the billboard. She let her eyes run over his shape as her heart hammered heavily in her chest. In her fantasies, when she had imagined his coming back to get her, she had been nervous about seeing him again. Over time, her memory of the way he looked had begun to dull and she wondered if her imagination would have made him a little bit more than he actually was. She wasn’t surprised to realize that she had done that a little. In her mind he had become physically larger, more imposing, and a little more polished. But looking at him now, she couldn’t imagine why she had done that. He was perfect the way he was, rumpled and slightly off kilter.
The Doctor spoke again and wave after wave of emotion rolled through her. She felt her eyes grow wet as Mickey and her past self looked up to see the zeppelins for the first time.
“What the hell?”
“It’s beautiful!”
Rose’s throat went dry as Mickey started to sort it all out and the Doctor began walking in her direction. She jumped back behind the sign when she saw the younger Rose’s eyes focusing in on her. She knelt down and found herself shaking. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she began scrolling through her memory trying desperately to remember what had happened next. She heard the Doctor raise his voice and then suddenly the sign she was hiding behind started to speak.
“Trust me on this.”
She froze at the sound of Pete’s voice. Relief washed over her, the other Rose had noticed Pete, not her. But still, this was bad. This was very bad. This couldn’t happen. If the Doctor took one step in the wrong direction he would see her.
She held her breath and listened as the Doctor and her former self started arguing about her seeing her father. When the Doctor finally realized he wasn’t getting though to her he told Mickey to try and talk some sense into her and walked angrily back to the TARDIS. Mickey was silent for a moment before he spoke, his voice soft and full of concern for her.
“He’s right, Rose. That’s not your dad.”
“So, you’re on his side now?”
“No! No way! But Rose, your dad’s gone. This guy…he’s nothing to you.”
The younger Rose started to walk off.
“Oi! Oi, Rose!” Mickey ran after her and grabbed her arm, forcing her to face him again. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Trying to make him angry. Are you still upset about that woman, that Madame du-whatshername?”
“Piss off, Mickey.”
Rose listened as her former self stomped off, leaving the boy behind.
“Great, just great,” he muttered.
As Rose stood there, she felt a burst of warmth towards the boy. He had still been in love with her then, but she had been so wrapped up in the Doctor that Mickey had barely been a blip on her radar. Not for the first time in her life, she thought that he had deserved someone better than herself.
When Mickey shuffled off, Rose stood and peered around the edge again, watching as he headed back towards the TARDIS. She felt a flash of anger towards her former self, he looked defeated, his shoulders hunched and his feet dragging, like a boy that was fully aware he had lost his best friend. The next time she saw him, she was going to apologize for everything she had put him through.
When the door of the TARDIS closed behind him, she turned to watch her past self crossing over a bridge. The anger faded as she realized how young she had been then. She was little more than a child at the time, all mascara and attitude, full of determination, totally confident that they could deal with anything the universe threw at them. Rose felt an overwhelming sense of loss for who she had once been and a pang of sympathy for the girl who had just dejectedly slumped down on a bench across the way.
That girl’s doom had just been sealed. She just didn’t know it.
She was shaken from her thoughts when the Doctor and Mickey burst back out of the TARDIS and started walking towards the water. She was lucky that neither of them even glanced in her direction. She racked her memory. What had happened next? The images came rushing in as she remembered how insistent she had been about seeing Pete.
“I’ve got to see him.”
“You can’t.”
“I just want to see him.”
“I can’t let you.”
“You just said twenty-four hours!”
“You can’t become their daughter. That’s not the way it works. Mickey tell her.”
She had run off like a child after that and Mickey had taken a cue from her and purposely run off the other way. The Doctor would be alone for a minute as he ran after her former self. Should she try to catch him then and ask for his help? But what would be the point? What would she say to him?
“Hello, Doctor. We got separated and I helped build a new time machine, which I just accidentally destroyed. I don’t much fancy spending the next six years waiting to catch up to my timeline. Also, I’m relatively sure that I’m going to prison once I do. Think you could help me out one last time?”
She could imagine how well that would go over.
She looked up and realized she had lost sight of them. It was entirely possible that Mickey might head back this way, so she ran over the bridge and around the back of some buildings, before ducking into an alleyway. She looked up and saw her past self rush by and then moments later a blur of a brown trench coat swept into view. She found herself involuntarily reaching out to him but caught herself before she could catch his attention.
She shouldn’t do this. No, she wouldn’t do this. The Doctor would be furious with her for even thinking about it.
She hadn’t been planning on actually talking to him. If she was going to attempt that she had to think. She couldn’t affect the timeline. Things had to go exactly as they had before. If they didn’t she could blink out of existence and take everyone else with her. She thought of her little sister and how happy her mother was and realized she wasn’t willing to risk their lives. She and the Doctor had to battle the Cybermen that night and then return to the other side without Mickey. They had to be separated and then they had to meet up on a beach in Norway to say goodbye. There was no way around it. She couldn’t erase her past without causing major damage.
Although she didn’t want to hide there for the next few years and then end up in prison, there really wasn’t another option. She would have to live through another six years with no hope of finding him and this time around she’d have no help to get her through it.
Rose felt a sudden and irrational wave of panic. It was as if she’d just added another six years to their separation. Well, another six years for her, she had no way of knowing what that translated to in his timeline. It could have been three hundred years, he could be with someone else now, he could have regenerated, he could be so far into the future that he’d forgotten her name…there was just no way of knowing. The only thing she knew for sure about his life after her was that he would eventually contact her in Norway. If she could figure out a way to get to him right after that, well, then they could be together again with no fear of disturbing the universe.
But there was no way to get to him. He’d burned up a sun and couldn’t even physically be there. The only way was to breach the void and that was never going to be anything less than impossible. Rose’s breath caught in her throat and for the first time she understood that her hopes had all been in vain.
“I’ll never see him again,” she whispered as she wiped at the tears that fell from her eyes.
Inhaling shakily, she turned back in the direction she’d come from. She had only come back here to try and find closure for both of them.
Maybe she could still get it.
***
Rose knew that she had twenty-four hours before they would return to the TARDIS and she planned to use them well. She pulled the key from around her neck and approached the battered front door.
“Hello,” she whispered as she ran her hand over it, the wood achingly familiar under her fingers. She took a deep breath as she pushed the key in the lock and turned, only exhaling when she heard the tumbler click. She pushed gently and felt the door give way.
The TARDIS was smoky, dark and eerily still when she entered. When it had happened the first time around she hadn’t really taken in the extent of the damage, but now all she could see was devastation. A wave of guilt rolled over her as she remembered that the Doctor had never figured out the reason behind their crash. She wondered if Torchwood’s attempt to bring her back had inadvertently ripped the TARDIS out of the vortex.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, tears welling in her eyes as her hand ran over the console, “Will you forgive me?”
She was met with deathly silence.
Rose maneuvered her way around the console, running her fingers over railings and knobs before finally arriving at the hallway that would eventually take her to her old bedroom. In the earliest days of her existence on this side of the void, one of the hardest things to deal with was that she hadn’t gotten to take anything with her. There was a photo album that she knew she hadn’t looked at in her last few months of traveling with the Doctor. She could take it now without causing a lick of trouble.
She carefully made her way down the increasingly dark hallway, her arms extended, her fingers feeling out the space in front of her. As she walked she idly wondered if the Doctor’s old leather jacket or a pair of his Chucks would fit in her bag. She was fairly certain he would never notice that either had gone but she told herself not to be greedy. She’d get the album and then do what she’d really come there to do, leave him the letter. Her hand crept into her bag and felt for the envelope she had traveled so far to bring him. Reassured that she still had it she continued feeling out her way. Inside that envelope was the last message she would ever be able to give him. The last time he’d seen her she’d been a mess, she didn’t want him to think she was dying without him. She’d made a life for herself and she was okay, sometimes she was even more than okay. She had written about her job and her family, even her broken engagement and she had written to him that she wanted him to take his own advice and have a fantastic life. She had written to him about how much he had meant to her and how she wanted him to find new people to travel and have adventures with. The only flaw in the plan was that she hadn’t been able to figure out how she could ensure that he wouldn’t open the letter until the right time. She was busy thinking about it when her hands encountered a wall that shouldn’t have been there.
In the darkness, she ran her hands along it and then turned so she could backtrack her way up the hallway. This time she put her arms out at her sides, her fingertips running over the walls so she could feel for a doorway or another corridor. By the time she was standing back at the mouth of the hallway again she had realized that the TARDIS had been reduced to the bridge and the corridor. There was nothing more, no kitchen, no living quarters, no pictures. Everything was gone.
She stumbled back to the console, grabbing onto the edge of it as her head began to swim. To have come so close only to come away empty-handed was unbearable. She had to get that album and leave her message. Why was that so impossible?
She took a deep breath and thought about her options. Her hand flew to her bag and she smiled when she felt her wallet.
She could still walk away with something.
***
Two hours later she found that it still amazed her how powerful Pete Tyler was in this universe. She had walked into a posh little boutique that both incarnations of Jackie Tyler enjoyed shopping at, picked out a little black dress and when her card was declined pitched a fit until the clerk said she was sure that they could simply bill Mr. Tyler for his niece’s dress. No one wanted to do anything that would upset the Tyler family on such a big day.
She walked out of the shop feeling only moderately guilty.
She found a pawn shop and purchased a used camera with the cash she had on hand and then proceeded to make her way to the Tyler estate.
***
Standing at the gate of the driveway, Rose was surprised to realize how intensely she still hated this house.
She’d lived there when they’d first arrived on this side of the void and she had had nightmares each night that she’d spent under its roof. When her sister Sadie was born she had moved into her own flat but she’d had to go back each Sunday for dinner. She was never able to put her back to a window without feeling anxious. Lucky for her, Jackie had thought it was creepy to live in another woman’s house and had persuaded Pete to sell just after Sadie’s first birthday.
Rose had never thought she’d have to come back here.
She shook off the memories as she approached the security guard. She held a single thought in her mind as she reached into her wallet and fished out the little slip of psychic paper that the Doctor had once given her.
“I’m here from Ok!” She said as she held it up to him.
He gave it a cursory glance. “Press goes in the back.”
“Thanks.”
She walked up the pathway wondering if that man was about to die.
***