Stars
Title: Stars
Characters: Rose and Jackie Tyler
Pairing: Nine/Rose-ish
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG
Author’s Note: I was planning to sort of do NaNoWriMo in that I'd write a chapter of this every day but school is making that rather difficult. I'll try to catch up soon though. I wrote this a few days ago but kept forgetting to post it here.
Chapter One: Paris
She doesn’t remember when exactly the tradition started but at least once a week her mother drags her out for mother daughter bonding time. Rose never complains. She loves her mum and though she doesn’t for one second feel guilty for the time she spent with the Doctor (except that time they were really only gone a day or two but showed up a year late) she supposes she owes her quite a bit of mother daughter time for having left her alone so often. Before she found out she was trapped in this universe forever she agreed to it so she’d have these memories of her mum once she went back to the Doctor. Now she keeps it up so her family and friends don’t worry about her so much.
One day her mum takes her shopping for decorations for the nursery and dresses for an upcoming Vitex function. She tries to throw herself into the normal activities with the same enthusiasm she’s using for work and her education. It almost works. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t really care whether Jackie buys periwinkle or cornflower blue curtains because Jackie knows it isn’t really that essential either. She isn’t like Pete’s old Jackie. It’s just the thought that she can do everything right and give her son everything he deserves after she had to struggle so hard for Rose that makes her happy. Rose slips off into another aisle as two saleswomen enthusiastically take up the debate, no doubt recognizing them as the Tylers and wanting a good commission. Rose hates the attention that comes with being Pete Tyler’s previously unknown daughter. The papers invent all sorts of ridiculous stories despite the fact that they can’t prove anything. Torchwood set up careful records for her when she first arrived and she never does anything tabloid worthy (except of course for the whole saving the world one alien threat at a time but Torchwood keeps all of that out of the press).
She still gets shit from the bitter veterans and the ignorant new recruits at Torchwood about nepotism. Her work consumes her though and she barely notices what they say anymore anyways. Pete hired a private tutor for her once she was certain she was trapped in this world so she could earn her A-Levels. She gave up quickly on history because things were too different and she secretly didn’t want to forget what she considered the real history but she’d developed an aptitude for the sciences thanks to the countless hours spent listening to the Doctor ramble on and on about anything and everything. She thinks he would be proud of her and that gets her through the bad days.
It’s when her mum has finally decided on the cornflower curtains that she spots them. She buys three packs. Jackie chooses not to comment and Rose is grateful. She wants to go back to her flat but they still haven’t found anything to wear for the fundraiser. Dress shopping with a five month pregnant Jackie is a truly alarming prospect. She misses having the TARDIS’ wardrobe room at her disposal. It always found the perfect dresses for her. While an attendant is helping her mum she slips away from the woman who is supposed to be helping her to look on her own.
Her breath catches in her throat when she sees the dress and she knows it’s the only one she’ll like. The attendant seems put out when she clutches the hanger tightly and refuses to look at anything else.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Jackie sighs heavily when Rose emerges from the dressing room in the simple but elegant TARDIS blue dress. “…You look lovely,” she adds after a pause, clearly fighting down a complaint about the fact that Rose has taken to wearing that color much too often. Her first purchase when they’d returned from Bad Wolf Bay was a leather coat in the same shade. She wore it like it was her armor, much like her first Doctor had been with his coat. It reminded her of him and she couldn’t help that her mind associated the smell of leather or the brilliant shade of blue with happiness and comfort.
It takes another hour before her mum has found a dress she likes that fits her. Rose tells her honestly that she looks radiant. This new world suits Jackie and Rose is happy for her, really she is.
Rose turns down the offer to have dinner at Pete and Jackie’s home and instead heads straight back to her flat. She’s had the place for months now but she’s never really bothered to make it feel like home. The office is the only room that looks lived in, filled with textbooks and papers and artifacts from work. She hangs up the dress in the closet before opening the first package of glow in the dark stars. She closes her eyes tight and tries to remember exactly where they should go. She isn’t sure if it’s her imagination or not but it seems like there are less stars here and she wants them lined up the way they’re supposed to be in her real universe. Rose knows she shouldn’t still think of it that way but she’s certain she always will.
She realizes with a star that really, she can’t remember where the stars would be overhead when standing in Council Estate. She can remember the cluster of stars the Doctor pointed to just after the invasion at Christmas when he’d just become her New New Doctor, the constellations her first Doctor and Jack had taught her while the three of them lay side by side under a frozen wave on Woman Wept, the way they’d looked from the viewing deck of Platform One as the world ended and when she’d waited for him for five and a half hours on the space station but that isn’t a cohesive picture. It’s all a blur. A mess she can’t sort out without the help of that fantastic blue box.
It’s all a jumbled mess but she puts up all the constellations she can think of in what she thinks might be almost the right order and somehow it seems right that it is so chaotic. She falls asleep that night as she tries to remember the names of all of them. In her dreams the names continue in a rumbled Northern accent and smooth American one.
On the nights when Pete forces her and the rest of the team to go home after the stars have definitely started to go out, Rose lies in her bed and stares up at them to remind her of what she’s fighting for.
After she runs into her first Doctor in Paris she rearranges those she’d just put up haphazardly to match the night sky she’d seen when pressed between him and the cold brick wall and gasping for breath. She isn’t sure she remembers those pinpricks of light so exactly when so much of that night is still just a blur in her mind but she is immensely grateful once again to the lonely man in the leather coat who gave her the stars, twice now, when she’d had nothing else.