Author's Nonsense: Hello and welcome. I'm doing something a little unusual for fanfic: I'm novelizing the NuWho series at the same time as I'm inserting new adventures. After all, the entire Series 1 takes place on some variation of Earth. Can't have that.
Anyway, I'm doing this because I enjoy character analysis and thought I'd share. The novelization bits are my opinions of the characters' thoughts, motivations, attachments, and personalities. Usually, I've also shuffled some scenes about and tacked on a few new scenes, since prose works differently than TV. (Intercutting especially.) Since I've got the novelization part, the new stories are placed in context within the narrative, casting the official episodes in different lights. New aliens, new problems, new planets, new character developments. Woot.
I have written drafts for the first twelve chapters, so updates should be regular. Haven't decided on a schedule yet, but I will soon. I've also got a blog for this fanfic, so I can avoid having three-mile-long author's notes, which are an issue for me otherwise. Updates and other nonsense will be on there too.
Disclaimer: I make no claims of ownership over Doctor Who or its characters, nor do I intend to make any form of material profit from it. Character interpretation is entirely my own opinion.
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Next Stop: Everywhere
Prologue
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Rose Marion Tyler was bored.
Oh, she was good at concealing it, even from herself. Excellent, actually.
Still, every so often she found herself wondering if there wasn't more to life. More than living with her mother in their unremarkable Council flat, more than a job at a shop selling clothes, more than a boyfriend who liked football and computers.
Not that there was anything wrong with those things: most of the time she was fine with all of this, with being nineteen, with her pedestrian life. She had friends and a bit of cash. She was well-cared-for and well-loved; her life was not without tension, but neither was it bad.
Ordinary was what it was.
Yet, slowly, she was forgetting. Rose was just a few years short of that cusp of adulthood, the age when the dreams of childhood fade into the overwhelming mundanity that leaches the very life from life. She was near accepting the lie perpetuated on the television and throughout Earth's culture: she had everything she needed to be happy.
As though happiness was to be found in things.
So, when her job was blown up on the Wednesday, the third of March, 2005, she didn't know quite what to think. She had this inexplicable feeling that she'd narrowly avoided a fate worse than death, but also that she'd missed out on something wonderful when she'd walked away.
She didn't know if she believed him, that man-- she probably didn't. It didn't really matter: that one night had blown loose her mind and rattled the shackles of her existence.
And with the chains percieved, she could no longer accept them.
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The Doctor, on the other hand, was not bored.
In fact, his life was overfull of action. With manic energy he passed from adventure to adventure, tied to nothing and accountable to no one. And that was the way he liked it.
Or so he thought.
On Wednesday, the third of March, 2005, he ran into something odd. It was in a minor skermish with a long-time foe, one he hadn't seen in decades. Tracking it across the stars led him to Earth, London: his old stomping grounds.
Time was, he'd come here every couple of months. Time was, he'd have an assistant trotting at his heels, getting captured, needing rescue, and making inane observations. Whenever he gave it passing thought, he would wonder how he'd put up with it, then dismiss it from his mind.
A lot of things had changed since the Time War, and this was only one of them.
He was content to be alone, to need neither to endanger nor rely on anyone else. He liked it that way. He really did.
Until that girl happened, and old memories emerged from vacant rooms, shaking off the dust and shedding the dust-covers he'd used to protect them from him, or him from them. Before he'd collected his wits enough to stop them, the ghosts had thrown open the doors and pried the boards off the windows, letting light and air into chambers long closed.
It hurt, like peeling a rough bandage off a deep wound, fearing to see that it had not healed at all. He had grown so used to the dull and dogged pain, so accustomed to living his life around it to protect it from further injury, that it was strange to see it in the sunlight, not quite as bad as he'd thought it was.
He did his best to rewrap it and move on, but things could not be the same. A Time Lord knew it better than anyone: things never remained static for long, and even if they did, it was always an illusion. The simple truth was, despite his best efforts, he was healing.
He started to remember the good things.
And with the gaps in his soul percieved, he could no longer ignore them.