(( This is just an idea I've been batting around in my head, semi-AU-ish in nature but as close to canon as I can possibly make it - just for fun. Cheers. :) ))

London, Great Britain:

She wasn't entirely sure when she first noticed the information booth sitting in front of Torchwood Tower. Perhaps she'd been aware of it from the first time she'd stumbled out of the building in a haze of tearful disbelief, numb to anything except the cold reality of the hard walls dividing the world she was in from the only one she wanted to be in. Surely she'd glanced at it at least a couple of times in the following weeks as she trudged in and out, despite how she'd barely been able to remember when she'd last ate, nevermind whether or not there was a strangely out-of-place information booth sitting on a lonely street corner.

In all likelihood, the first time she became truly aware of it was several weeks after she'd returned from a windy, bleak beach in Norway and looked, finally looked, at where she was. Perhaps he'd meant to give her some sort of closure. Perhaps he'd intended for her to finally be able to let him go. In his own way, he was always trying to save her, no matter what she wished or wanted.

The daft man. All it'd done was remind her of her promise. She'd said forever. Dimensional walls be damned, she was going to keep that promise.

So she'd entered Torchwood Tower with renewed purpose, a determined set to her lips, and walked past the strange red information booth twice a day. If she couldn't put a finger on how she'd become aware of it, she remembered exactly the first time she'd stopped and looked at it - and realized just how strange it was.

She'd been late that morning, and in a rush. Despite that, despite her mother shrieking in her ear and the wails of Tony in the background as Jackie forbade her to go on any more of her crazy, dangerous missions chasing after "that man", she had made a mental note - filed away a sliver of surprise - when the information booth was not in her periphery as she shoved her way through the revolving glass doors in the front.

The sun was setting when she finally gave up for the day and resigned herself to heading home, back to the ridiculously big flat her father insisted on renting for her despite her protests that she was perfectly capable of providing for herself. She remembered the way it'd turned all of the windows of Torchwood Tower into myraid swirls of red-gold and ember-orange, draping the tall building in an ethereal coat of sunset. It wasn't the brilliant hues that had stopped her in her tracks. It was the information booth, sitting on the corner, as certainly as it'd never left.

She'd walked around it, then. It was a square booth no bigger than a telephone booth, with the funny circle on top complete with a black question mark on a white field. There was a map of the city on one side, with the obligatory "you are here" sticker responsibly in place. Another was an advert for her father's energy drinks. The third repeated the map. And the last side was a door. Just a door, with a single handle, presumably to store fliers and other such items on the inside, despite the fact that there were no fliers, paper maps, or informational brochures to be found.

Slowly, she'd reached towards the handle. No part of her was surprised when the door didn't even budge, but every part was disappointed.

She'd laughed at herself, then. What was she expecting? It was just a silly info booth, and she was a silly girl for seeing alien when there was no reason for it to be.

Yet, she couldn't help herself. She visited the strange red box and thought of the blue box she'd lost. She talked to it like she'd talked to his TARDIS and pointed out the false advertising of an information booth with a definitive lack of brochures. Sometimes she touched the handle, though she never tried to open it again after the first day. It didn't seem right.

The day came when everything seemed utterly hopeless, and that was the day it all changed.

They'd been making steady progress in getting the dimensional cannon working when the first of the stars went out. She hadn't been the one to notice it; in fact, no one in her entire team had noticed it. It was one of the spectacles in the monitoring lab that'd noticed - and noted - the lack of one particular star with no known cause. It seemed an omen, for that day their previously-hopeful prototype had suffered a complete meltdown and exploded, nearly taking Rose and half of the lab with it.

Her father was furious, of course, and even an particularly heated screaming match across three offices would not deter his final edict:

No more.

No more dimensional cannon, no more talk of returning to Rose's original world, no more testing - no more. Torchwood had other fish to fry - such as the remaining contingent of Cybermen in scattered places around the globe, not to mention a report of a reptilian humanoid running around downtown Boston in broad daylight. He would allow her to stay on the field team, but he was done letting her pine after a man he couldn't even honestly say she had any chance of ever even seeing again.

She'd stormed out, of course, and before she knew it, she was at the booth, standing with her hand on the smooth wood and fresh tears on her cheeks.

"Blimey, I turn the perception filter up to eleven, and you just walk right through it!"

Rose snapped around to find a tall woman standing behind her. She had black hair caught back in an elegant twist at the back of her head, strands escaping to frame blue eyes that danced with amusement. She wore a strangely Victorian garb, complete with overcoat, knee-length skirts, and high leather boots. Strangest of all, she was regarding Rose with an expression that was somewhere between exasperated and amused - an expression that hit Rose right in the aching hollow in her chest.

"Beg pardon?"

The woman nodded at the red booth behind the blonde. "You're going to break it, then she'll be stuck like... like that. C'n you imagine how embarassing that'd be? Fat lot of good it'd do me, too. Imagine being in a swamp like Laguna IV with a bloody information booth disguise."

Rose swallowed around the lump in her throat, her heart thudding so hard in her chest she thought it'd shatter a few ribs. "It's a ... a ship, then? A TARDIS?"

The woman's smile faded slightly. "It is. But not the one you're hopin' for, Rose Tyler."

Rose turned to face the woman fully now, forcing her voice to be strong. "Who are you?"

"I was tryin' to avoid this, you know," the woman said in a low voice. "I knew it'd be messy. Complicated. But your bond to him... You knew her, my TARDIS, from the very first day, no matter how hard I cranked the chameleon defenses. I guess it was inevitable, then, unless I'd left, and I can't afford that, not with her sick an' all."

Rose took a step forward. "Who. Are. You?"

She straightened up, meeting Rose's dark eyes with pale blue ones, a ghost of a smile hovering over her lips. "It's a pleasure t' meet you too, Rose Tyler. I'm the Professor."