Doctor Who/Single Father crossover - pg13 - by any other name
By any other name Dave Tiler/Rose Tyler, PG13
Rose is on a Torchwood mission when she accidentally stumbles across professional photographer and family man Dave Tiler. An almost perfect doppelganger for her Doctor, Rose is irresistibly drawn to him. But Dave’s got his own life and loves. When his partner dies Rose makes a string of excuses to come back to Glasgow but can’t help but wonder whether she’s ultimately trying to assuage his grief or her own.
It starts when Rose is sent up to Glasgow for the first time. She’s part of a team sent to check out some strange readings that have been cropping up on recent infrared satellite images. As a junior officer she’s one of three agents assigned to do interviews with the residents in the affected area. It’s one of those jobs that most agents hate - taking readings, talking to civilians...but Rose enjoys these sorts of jaunts. She likes to pretend that she’s investigating something under her own steam and later she’ll be able to meet up with the Doctor so they can put their intel together and fix things up like they always do...
Fanciful maybe, but it helps gets her through the day and anything that can do that after Norway...
She isn’t expecting Dave.
His is the first house she visits and it’s certainly the loudest - full of voices overlapping each other in that comfortable way families have. Rose recognises the familiar roar as she waits impatiently to be seen, but finally she hears footsteps and a loud, male voice approaching. When the door swings open she already has her Torchwood identification up and ready for inspection.
She nearly drops it when she sees who is standing beyond the entrance.
Brown eyes peer mildly out from beneath a cloud of dark hair - longer than she’s used to. Floppier too. And the freckles. The hooked nose, just slightly crooked at the bridge. The weak chin and thin upper lip. Features she’s dreamed about incessantly, daydreamed about since...since...
“Y-...” she exhales weakly, her fingers limp around the leather wallet in her hand. “You’re...”
She is dumbfounded - utterly - and on the verge of just throwing herself at him...but then he speaks and all of her hopes and her heart seem to scatter into pieces, like a string of pearls that’s been broken and strewn at her feet.
“Can I help you?” he’s obviously a little frazzled by the uproar going on behind him inside the house. He’s also terribly Scottish and for a long moment Rose is too busy flashing back to 1879 and Queen Victoria to answer him. By the time she finally focuses back on the impossible man before her his patience is obviously beginning to wane as he waits for this strange woman on his doorstep to tell him why she’s there.
Because it’s obvious now, she realises - he doesn’t know her. He’s an almost perfect doppelganger for her second Doctor but it’s not him.
“Rose Tyler,” she manages faintly, quietly deflating. “Torchwood. Investigating...” she trails off, mesmerised by the look of earnest concentration on his face. Shakes herself mentally and tries to carry on like she doesn’t have an absolutely gigantic lump rising in her throat. “...amon-anomalies. In the area. Can I ask you some questions?”
His brow creases and he throws a look over his shoulder. Rose, focusing properly now, recognises the noisy crashing of children who are tucking heartily into breakfast. Their voices rise and fall over each other, at least three, maybe more. Her heart aches, the lump grows.
I used to be a dad.
“Look,” he says, turning back to her with a quiet sort of desperation. “I’ve got to get this lot off to school but maybe you could come past later? Only my wife’s not well...”
“Wife?” Rose chokes.
“Well, partner.” He corrects himself vaguely. “But I’ve still got four kids to get to school and we’re already late...”
“Yep.” Rose nods fervently. “No problems. No problems.”
He’s already thanked her and begun to duck back behind the safety of his door when he notices that the invader on his doorstep is looking more and more like she’s about to pass out at his feet.
“You alright?” he peers at her worriedly through the gap between frame and door. “You look a bit...”
“Fine.” Rose says, as firmly as she can muster when she feels like she’s about to collapse into a heap of flailing, sobbing limbs. “M’fine. Thank you. Thanks.”
She goes back to her hotel room feigning a migraine and is given leave of any more interviews for that day. Instead she lies on her bed, curtains drawn and the noise of traffic bleating softly below. She doesn’t cry, just lies there and shudders until her body convulses into a knot and she sleeps, dreaming of miles of empty highlands with no hand to hold and a disembodied voice teasing along the wind.
Before the project is wrapped up and the team heads back to London, Rose is asked to follow up on the houses she was supposed to interview. She almost skips his altogether. In the end it is only sheer determination that marches her up the drive and it fails her dismally when she tries the doorbell. She misses the button three times before giving up and knocking instead, her hands shaking so hard that she’s surprised she even manages a sound.
His name is David, though everyone calls him Dave and isn’t it funny that she has the same surname as him only spelt differently?
“A rose by any other name eh?” he offers with a weak chuckle, and when Rose tries to return his laughter she almost feels physically sick.
It’s all she can do to not stop the interview questions and run out of the house so that she can collapse into a hysterical mess. It’s too much. It’s all too much for her.
Obviously she’s bumped into the occasional feature - an expressive pair of eyebrows, a slender frame wearing pinstripes or someone who has freckles. She’s seen his hair everywhere. All little things that make her heart leap with hope for one shining instant...but never anything as painful as this.
Midway through her stilted interview, a beautiful, dark haired woman interrupts them, fuddled from sleep and the lingering remnants of a cold, but beautiful nonetheless. Rose eyes the woman’s fine hands with quiet jealousy. Her clear skin and smooth, dark bob. When Dave jumps up to attend to his Rita she abruptly leaves the interview there. God - he’s not even the Doctor and she’s still anguished at the thought of anyone else having him when she’s...
She’s glad to leave Glasgow behind. Relieved really.
It doesn’t take much prompting though, to get her back up there again.
“A mother of four has been killed after she was hit by a car whilst riding her bike across a busy intersection in Glasgow. Rita...”
“That’s tragic innit?” Jackie shakes her head. “Someone like that gone and four mouths to feed...”
“Oi, shut up!” Rose snaps, pushing herself up from where she had previously been sprawled on the couch. “I can’t hear with you gabbing on...”
“Oh that’s rich, coming from you! Miss-talked-all-the-way-through-Pride-and-Prejudice the other night...”
“Pride and Prejudice is rubbish in this universe.” Rose says dismissively, only half concentrating on the argument with her mother as she scrutinises the grainy photograph up on the telly with growing horror.
Dave’s Rita. It couldn’t be anybody else. And now she was dead, leaving him along with four kids to his name. Rose felt a swell of pity for him, almost immediately overshadowed by a frightening, giddying thought. She imagines seeing him again, not just as Dave Tiler but as a man in mourning for his partner. In mourning. In mourning for the woman he loved and has now lost.
She can only imagine how the Doctor is coping without her - has spent far too many hours imagining it to be honest. But seeing Dave would be better than imagining. Absurdly, perversely, she wants to see him again. Wants to see how he wears his grief. And god, what sort of a person does that make her? She stamps down the thought immediately, horrified with herself for even thinking it.
Rose knows what it is to lose a loved one - someone dear and cherished. She can’t intrude on him when he’s in the throes of something so private, so all consuming. She doesn’t even know him - it would be wrong. It’d be so, so wrong.
She manages to hold off for five weeks.
It’s the shame that keeps her most at bay, the shame of being excited to see someone’s grief instead of being saddened by it. But then, she’s been changed hasn’t she? In the past six months she’s lost so much, had to cope with so much change.
She’s different.
She doesn’t tell anyone the real reason she’s going up to Glasgow again. She lies, makes up excuses about needing a bit of time off after a few tough cases and waxes poetical on how much she enjoyed Glasgow last time (despite her faux migraine) and how much she’s been wanting to go back and do a bit of exploring on her own time.
Her real motivation for going back though? She’s not sure she even understands it. She spent close to two months pretending that she’d never met Dave Tiler and then from the moment she discovered that his wife...partner...whatever. As soon as she saw Rita’s picture on the news she’s had this overwhelming urge to see him. To comfort him maybe? Or just share in mutual grief with someone who understands.
In any case, she can’t do it as Rose Tyler the civilian/Vitex heiress. But she’s living in her own flat now, away from her parent’s mansion so there’s nobody to watch her pack her Torchwood uniform and ID.
Dave is remarkably well put together, considering. The house is still bustling intermittently with relatives and he seems glad to get away from them all and shut the door on their well meaning nosiness.
“Thank god,” he sighs, sinking into a chair and running an exhausted hand over his face. “I’ve been trying to get a moment to myself for weeks...”
“I’m so sorry about Rita,” Rose says softly and he looks up, obviously struck by the earnestness in her tone. “I saw it on the news when it...happened.”
Dave nods. Grimaces. His hands twist together and then fall limply into his lap. “Yeah.” He says distractedly. “Thank you. So...erm, what’s news on those energy thingo-whatsits you’ve been looking into?”
Rose plasters a smile onto her face with grim determination but after the interview when he’s walking her to the door she catches him lingering on a photograph of Rita and the kids in the hall and she puts a hand on his arm unthinkingly. He’ wearing a dark woollen jumper - so much like her first Doctor it aches.
And then Dave turns to her in surprise and for a moment she is lost in the weight of his grief. She wonders if this is how the Doctor looked after he said goodbye to her, after the breach closed and he realised that she was trapped on the other side. After Norway when he started to tell her...only he ran out of time first...
Some small, broken part of her hopes that yes, this is how he looked. Because Dave looks as heartbroken and bereft as she felt on that beach, in that horrid room at Torchwood. It’s a powerful thing, to see an emotion like that on a face that she is so used to seeing closed up and hidden away.
“I know what its like,” she blurts, squeezing his arm gently. “Losing somebody. I bet loads of people told you it gets better?”
He nods and then, to her surprise, covers her hand with his and grips on tight. His lip trembles once and then he returns his attention to the photo. Rose takes the opportunity to step a little closer to him.
“I think they’re wrong. It doesn’t. Not really. You just learn to live ‘round it.”
Dave laughs once, somewhat harshly and takes his hand from hers. “Are you trying to make me feel better?” he asks. “Cause I gotta say you’re doing a rubbish job.”
Rose offers a grimace that might be a smile. “Just...bein’ honest.” She squeezes his arm once more before letting her hand drop. “Take care of yourself yeah? Your family’ll need you.”
He nods minutely. Says “I know” softly. And then he walks her to the door and goes back into the fray with such a world weary breed of stoicism that she wants nothing more than to sweep him up into her arms and tell him stubbornly that he isn’t alone, he’s got her - whether he knows it or not.
Instead he shuts the door on her with a weak smile and Rose puts her back to it and crumbles slowly, her head dropping forward onto her knees and tears sliding down her face for a long time before she feels able to move.
Who’s gonna hold his hand now?
“Wasn’t a very long trip,” Jackie comments when she comes to pick her up from the airfield.
Rose studiously avoids her mother’s eye by pandering to Tony and lying through her teeth. “Had stuff to do back here. I’ll do more sightseeing next time.”
The third time Rose goes to Glasgow Dave invites her in and after the invariable questions he offers her a cup of tea. They sit in surprisingly companionable silence until he has to go and pick up his kids from school and Rose stays an extra three days, pretending to sightsee but mainly just watching him from afar.
It’s not stalking if you don’t really try to tail them - is it?
He’s a good dad she discovers, even if he seems a little overwhelmed at times by the enormity of the task of looking after so many kids. She likes seeing him with them - especially the littlest one, the girl with the glasses. She wanders into his photography studio when he’s out on an errand one day and is greeted by a petite, blonde girl - another daughter, she discovers, from a previous marriage.
“D’you want me to tell him you called in Miss...?”
Rose shakes her head. Smiles. The girls hand slides off the pad and paper she was reaching for.
“Thanks. I’ll...I’ll catch up with him later.”
Instead she goes back to London and sets his photography website as her home page. She doesn’t know anything much about photography but she likes his pictures. She smiles a little whenever she sees something in them that reminds her of her travels with him.
It’s certainly a departure from the bitter tears that she usually cries over the selfsame memories.
It isn’t until the sixth time she comes up within a three month period that Dave seems to suspect that anything is amiss. Rose has taken to bringing various portable probes and machines with her so that she can poke around in the backyard and look like she’s actually doing something. It also makes her visits longer.
“You’ve been up here a lot recently,” Dave notes as he hands her a chipped mug of coffee. Heavy on the milk and two sugars - just the way she likes it. “Are the readings changing a lot or...?”
“Yeah,” Rose lies thickly through a throat lined with milky coffee. “We’re just trying to keep a close watch on it. You know, just in case.”
His phone bleeps then, and Dave pulls it out and checks the message automatically. Rose pretends not to notice but when he grins shyly before texting back she can’t help but tease him a little.
“What’s all that about then?” she asks, grinning. Dave’s eyes are bright when he meets hers and for a moment he’s her Doctor and it’s just like old times...
And then he drops the bombshell. “I’ve sort of been...seeing someone.”
Rose’s heart drops out of her chest so fast that it crystallises before it even hits the ground - shattering like a delicate glass ornament.
“What,” she says. “Like, seeing someone? Like a woman someone?”
“Her name’s Sarah,” he admits, blushing right up to the tips of his ears. “She was a friend of Rita’s and mine and...”
Rose sucks in a breath, suddenly too infuriated to even speak. She waits until Dave has finished absolving himself of the news and then gives him a tight, cold smile. “Bit soon isn’t it?” she asks acidly. “Considering your wife only died a few months back? Partner, whatever.”
Dave looks at her strangely then, as if he’s wondering why he even admitted it to her in the first place. “It’s not like that...” he begins and Rose fires up immediately.
“Really? What’s it like then?”
He opens his mouth to retort, anger twisting his face and Rose feels a perverse sort of thrill. Dave is so much quieter and reserved than the Doctor, so much milder - well, almost bland really. This is the first time she’s seen him really passionate about something and she’s excited to see what his reaction will be.
“I really don’t think that it’s any if your business,” he tells her icily. “Don’t know why I even told you in the first place - you’re just some Torchwood drone anyway...”
It’s almost like a physical blow, the disdain. Rose burns and replaces her mug on the kitchen table with a loud clatter.
“Well I’m sorry for wasting your valuable time!” she says hotly and stalks out, accidentally leaving her kit inside. She retrieves it, flushing. Dave hands it to her silently, resigned but fuming just enough to let her know that she’s pushed it too far.
Therein follows a period time almost a month long during which Rose studiously stays away from Glasgow. But then - how’s her luck? - there is a sudden and dramatic change in the readings on the satellite images up there and the whole original team is sent back up there again. Dave seems surprised to see her, and just the tiniest bit apologetic for yelling at her the last time.
“No, you were right.” She admits curtly, honestly concentrating more on the readings than him for once. “None of my business.”
Dave watches her for a while, picking her way gingerly over toys and garden furniture. Finally he speaks.
“Did your bloke leave you?”
Rose stumbles a little on a toy car and pretends not to have heard.
“Sorry?”
“The one you lost. He left you for someone else?”
Rose pauses to nudge a toy truck out of the way with her foot. “S’pose he did yeah.” She straightens up suddenly and he’s watching her, arms crossed over his chest and leaning against the wall. “How’d you figure that?”
“Well you getting all up about me and Sarah might’ve given me a wee clue,” he admits wryly.
“Yeah well you looking like a dead ringer for him doesn’t really -” Rose blurts and then abruptly puts a hand to her mouth. “Oh my god...did I really just say that?”
He looks just as shocked as she does, but surprises her when she leaves and he forgoes their traditional handshake for an awkward half-hug and cheek-kiss.
“See you next time then eh?” he smiles.
For a long time after that though, Rose can’t quite bring herself to come back to Glasgow to see him.
As it turns out, the next time she’s up there is for a routine check of the readings. The first thing she discovers is that a woman has moved into the Tiler house. It doesn’t take much research to ascertain that the woman is his flame Sarah. Who is blonde.
Figures, Rose thinks bitterly. Of course he’d fall in love with another bloody blonde. She’s loathe to intrude where she’s so obviously not wanted but despite herself she starts making regular visits up there again. Not to interfere, just to watch.
She finds herself heartbroken all over again when she realises that Sarah is pregnant.
She’s nursing a coffee around the corner from Dave’s studio and Sarah is about six months gone when she finds herself confronted with a pair of slender legs encased in jeans and worn motorcycle boots.
“Hello.”
It’s him. Of course it’s him. He joins her, ordering himself a coffee without being invited and they sit in silence until it comes.
“You seem to have been around a bit lately.” He comments as he stirs in sugar. Rose shrugs. “Any particular reason why?”
“Just keeping an eye out.” Rose mumbles. Her coffee has gone cold but she doesn’t want to leave just yet. Dave sits in silence for a while and after he’s taken the first tentative sip of his drink he speaks.
“I was talking to Sarah,” he says, carefully replacing his cup on the saucer. “The other day. I suppose you know that she teaches down at the school...”
“Yeah-” Rose says quickly. “I know. She’s living with you now isn’t she?”
Dave regards her from underneath his shock of dark hair. “Yeah she is.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence and Dave sighs. “Rose...she was talking to one of the parents about Torchwood coming and doing all those readings. They told her that the Institute finished up all their testing a few months back now.”
Rose says nothing and Dave leans forward, very seriously.
“Which begs the question why you’re still coming up here. Alone. All the time.”
“I’m just keeping an eye on...”
“On what? On me?”
Rose opens her mouth to say something - anything - but finds herself incapable of speech. Sobs well up in her body, choking her and threatening to explode from her chest if she doesn’t keep them in check.
Dave’s expression, which has sharpened with his accusation, now softens into one of pity.
“You said I reminded you of your friend once,” he says gently. “The one who left you?”
“He didn’t leave me,” Rose, properly fighting back her tears by now, suppresses her sobs into a collection of hiccups. “He-he didn’t want to leave...it just...happened. We couldn’t...”
Dave looks down at his coffee and when he speaks she breaks off her stuttering excuses immediately. “Rose...” he begins. When he meets her eyes she has to press her lips together to keep from bursting out into sobs all over again. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself. I can’t help you. I’ve got my own life to be getting on with. And so do you. I mean, you’re a charming, beautiful young woman. And it’s been nice chatting with you during your visits. But I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to come up here anymore. I don’t feel comfortable having you hanging about.”
Rose nods, unable to meet his gaze. She feels like she’s just been punched in the side of the face. Like all of her insides have shrivelled up and died and are now being removed surgically, one by one. She blinks rapidly and a tear escapes and races down her cheek, unchecked. Dave stands, leaving his coffee unfinished, but instead of just walking away he comes around the table and kneels down to offer her a tissue. Touched, Rose gladly takes it and dabs at her face.
“I hope you find him again,” he tells her, so sincerely that it makes her heart ache. “And if you don’t, I hope you can find happiness somewhere else.”
Rose just shakes her head, crying in earnest once more. “He’s the only one...ever...made me feel-” she chokes, ducking her head to wipe at her tears but Dave just regards her with a sad, terrible understanding.
“I hope you find him again then.” He says gently and when she gives another sob he pulls her into a brief hug. “Eh c’mere...”
“M’sorry I stalked you.” Rose whispers, clinging to him. He hugs just like the Doctor did - all hard angles and whippet strong arms against your back. He even laughs a little at her stab at a joke, then rubs a hand across her back in a gesture that is very un-Doctorish.
“Can’t really say I blame you,” he says blithely as he stands up. “If I’d found someone who looked like Rita after she...”
He leaves it hanging and then clears his throat.
“Anyway. Good luck,” he says this with a small smile and a nod. “Rose Tyler.”
Rose wipes her final tears away, touched by his forgiveness. As he lopes off, motorcycle helmet dangling from one long arm, Rose can’t help but stand up and watch him go. Aching, but glad that he was the one to finish this - whatever this was.
“Good luck Dave.”
When she gets back to London Rose takes a week off work to collect herself. Pete has the sense to leave her be, but Jackie demands to know what’s wrong and badgers her endlessly until Rose snaps and actually tells her to back off. The row they have then is spectacular to say the least, but it actually makes Rose feel better to let out some long pent up emotion. She’s back at work by Monday and the first thing Pete does is call her into his office.
“Got an assignment for me?” she asks hopefully but Pete shakes his head.
“Nope. Got an email though,” he says, mildly. “From a civilian up in Glasgow. Says you’ve been stalking him.”
Rose gapes. “What?”
“Well. He didn’t say ‘stalking’,” Pete amends. “At least not in so many words...”
He lets her read the email. Dave, as always, is polite and fair but very firm. It’s clear that he sympathises with Rose in the wake of his own plight but still.
Pete raises his eyebrows at her once she is finished and Rose curls miserably into her chair.
“Don’t worry,” she tells him. “It’s finished. We worked things out, me and him.”
Pete just raises his eyebrows even higher. He’s clearly not impressed and she almost smiles at the would-be could-be dad she’s adopted as her own. “Can I ask why it started in the first place?”
It doesn’t take long to pull up Dave Tiler’s photography website, and from there to a picture of him on a social networking site is even quicker. Pete surveys the picture quietly for a moment before turning his gaze to Rose.
“It’s not him then?”
“No. He’s human,” Rose says flatly before laughing. “And Scottish! He had no clue who I was. Whole load of kids. Picket fence an’ everything. The Doctor’d be horrified.”
Pete nods, thoughtful for a moment, before turning his attention to his desk.
“I do have an assignment for you as well.” He says, rummaging through a stack of files. “Or sort of an...ongoing project. Hopefully it’ll be enough to keep you out of trouble.”
Interest piqued, Rose sits up and tries to take the file he offers. But he holds onto it a second longer and meets her gaze.
“For god’s sake don’t tell your mother I’m letting you do this,” Pete implores. “She’d kill me.”
Rose just nods eagerly, tugging the file from his hands. It’s slender, stamped with the Torchwood insignia and when she opens it the cover page is blank except for two words.
Mouth suddenly dry, Rose looks up at Pete. “Dad, what the hell is a dimension cannon?”