I've recently gotten into the Doctor Who fandom and let's just say, I'm kicking myself for not giving in and watching years ago. I absolutely love Rose and the Doctor. It doesn't matter which Doctor, but I do have to say that Ten is my favourite.

This is my first, but hopefully not my last Doctor Who fic.

I do not own Doctor Who.

Chapter 1

The Slow Path

Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf. It always came back to Bad Wolf. She had once said the words were a message to lead her back. Back to him. The Doctor. She had held all of time and space inside of her head once. Seen everything, everything that was, is and ever would be. Every possible maybe or could have been. So how had she still allowed herself to be seperated from him?

Shortly after being stuck in Pete's world, she began work on the dimension canon. She used the versions Touchwood had made before the breach closed as a base and built on it. It was hard work, long and tiring, but if she made it back to the Doctor it was all worth it. She loved him and even if his chance had been taken away from him, Rose was sure that he had been about to say it back. He burnt up a sun just to say goodbye to her, after all. As far as grand gestures go, that was right up there.

She didn't just want to return because of the Doctor though. This universe just didn't feel right to her, both Mickey and her mother said they felt fine, but to Rose something felt off. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that there had never been a Rose Tyler in this dimension to start with.

While building the canons, she studies and reads and researches and experiments. If she had the time, she probably could have gone to school and earned a degree or two with how much she learned. Physics and maths and mechanics and engineering and astronomy and any other number of things that would help with getting the dimension canons to work.

For years, whenever she had time, Rose worked on them, hoping and praying that each time they would work and pull her back to the correct universe, but for years, nothing. She threw herself into it, made it her life to get back. And not just to the Doctor, to the right universe.

Then the stars stared to go out and the canons started to work. It was always a fifty fifty shot as to whether she laned in the right place, but at least they were going somewhere. Eventually she found a way to use her TARDIS key to control which universe she landed in and the chances of ending in the wrong dimension dropped to only one shot in ten.

Most jumps lasted only a few minutes, usually about a half an hour, but sometimes, not often, but sometimes a jump could go anywhere between a few hours and up to a week. The longest Rose had been stuck somewhere was 22 days. She had to stay somewhere in the Elizabethan age and ending up being arrested and sent to the Tower of London by the Virgin Queen herself. She had called Rose the sixteenth century equivalent to an adulterous, home wreaking whore and mentioned the Doctor. Hopefully that meant that Rose would find the Doctor again, because as far as she could recall they had never had an adventure in this era together before.

Luckly the canon had pulled her back before she was sentenced to death.

After that, she began taking a small bag with her, holding things to help her if she was stranded. Food or money or things to sell or barter with. And always, she would take the psychic paper that she had on her when she fell and two photos, one of her and her first Doctor, taken by Jack shortly after he joined the crew and one of her and her second Doctor, from Christmas. Other than the photos on her phone, that was all she had.

A year into the jumps, and the night's sky had half the stars it had the year before and the project gained more leeway. More Scientists joined. Even though they had several canons made, Rose was still the only actual jumper. Mickey had started training to start making jumps too soon.

A jump went wrong once and Rose came back injured. She landed in the middle of what she assumed was the Time War and an explosion went off. There was Daleks and distruction everywhere. She was saved by a man in a green velvet waist coat and cravat, curly, brown hair and blue eyes. He had asked her if she was alright, but Rose kept her head down. Her hair acting as a shield for her face.

She'd seen a few pictures of the Doctors past faces when she had asked him after he regenerated. This man that saved her was the Doctor. Just not the Doctor she was looking for. She was too early.

As soon as she could, Rose escaped the Doctor's concerned questioning and ran for a clear space, the alarm on her watch warning her of a return, was going off. She dodged Daleks and rubble and bodies and civilians and Time Lords. She disappeared in a flash of light before the past Doctor's eyes, his concerned shouts following her retreat.

It wasn't until she was back at Touchwood in Pete's World that she noticed the blood, and a second longer to feel the pain. There was a metal rod, about six inches long, buried half way into her stomach. Not to mention, shrapnel was embedded in parts of her exposed skin. No wonder the Doctor had been concerned.

It had taken less than a week to completely heal and nothing could stop Rose from jumping again.

That hadn't been Rose's only run in with the wrong Doctor. There was never any way of knowing just when or where she would come out. The devices themselves had been set to land within an hour and ten miles of the TARDIS, using her key as a sort of homing device.

Once she had caught a glimpse of the Doctor in the incarceration that had obviously been colour blind or in the eighties. It had been on some quintessential English street with a brunette companion in bright pink.

Another time, in what she assumed had been the Stone Age, she had spotted the First Doctor and his companions get captured. That had been a rather short jump and she had only stayed for a few minutes.

She had even caught a glimpse of her past self with her first Doctor, Jack and past Mickey. The one that was all leather and ears. Her heart clenched at seeing him. They were in Cardiff, chasing Margaret the Slitheen.

The last time it happened, she landed in the 70's and the Doctor was again dressed in velvet, only this time he had ruffles and a cape too, driving a small yellow car, with who Rose could see was yonger Sarah Jane.

Seeing the younger Doctors, just made Rose long for her Doctor, the one in the pin stripes and converse, with the manic energy, wide smile and really, really, great hair.

After her first injury, Rose had had a few other harsh landings, mostly it was just her endjng up in bad situations upon arriving, but every injury she got healed in record time.

Her father got a doctor at Touchwood that he trusted to run some tests and found some confusing results. Mostly it was just that Rose's cells were healing at astronomical rates and her cellular degeneration was slowed to almost half of what regular human's was, perhaps even more. And the degeneration kept slowing with every trip Rose took through the void.

After that, she would study her face in the mirror every night, trying to look for signs of aging. She was 26, but she looked like she could barely pass for 21.

Despite the trust Pete had in his physician, it still leaked out that Rose Tyler was not entirely normal. Some factions within Torchwood rose up, thinking Rose was an alien imposter and one day, while Rose was preparing to do a jump, a group of them stormed the floor.

A shot rang out through the air and went straight through the button on the canon Rose had in her pocket. The coordinates had already been entered, and the jump already started. A second after the device was destroyed, Rose disappeared in a flash of light and landed on a street in what appeared to be Victorian London, just in time to hear the sound of a TARDIS taking off.

She should have known, that morning on the way to work, Rose had seen a number plate that read B4D-W0LF and last night on the telly, a new movie was showing a trailer, starring Hollywood's latest big name as the Big Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf always had a way of warning her of trouble.

Rose swore, the device in her hand sparking and smoking. She threw it aside and it exploded with a small bang. She took off into an alley, sure her blue leather jacket and black pants would attract the wrong attention in Victorian times. Just as she had been called naked that time by Queen Victoria for wearing the wrong era clothes.

She briefly spared a thought of her family, back in the other universe but knew that Mickey and her father would get it sorted, her mother and younger brother would be taken care of. Right now she needed a plan.

Without the canon, she had no way of getting back, her watch was also dead, having been linked to the relay on the canon device. And with the TARDIS having just left, she was grounded. Stuck on the slow path.

At least she was stuck on the right Earth (she could just tell by the way she felt) and in London, judging by Westminster Abbey and Big Ben that she could see across the Thames. The Doctor was bound to show up sooner or later, and with her weird aging, she should be able to wait it out, it was just that she had a mission to complete.

She found a newspaper in the alley, it was 1898.

She only had a hundred or so years until the stars would start to go out. That gave her time to plan.

Rose did the only thing she could then, she stashed her gun, to be picked up later and stole a dress off a line, promising herself that she'd pay them back when she could. Then she took stock of the jewelry she was wearing.

Two rings, both very pretty and with real precious stones in them, a pair of gold hoop earring and a tennis bracelet. If she sold them she should be all right for a bit. The only thing she would not part with was the chain around her neck that held her TARDIS key.

She also had a few things in her bag, perhaps she could sell them too. At least she had money taken care of, now she just had the problem of trying to blend in.

Several weeks later, Rose had settled in better than she thought she would. She had sold the jewelry and then gotten a job as a teacher at a small school a short way out of London by pretending to be a widow. She figured it was for the best to avoid the Queen as she was still banished, it would only be three years until the monarch died. And it was not like women had a whole lot of options at the turn of the last century.

At least she still had the psychic paper. She never jumped without it, she just never thought she'd have to use it though, for identification.

Mrs Rose Tyler nee Prentice was twenty-one years old and had only been married for a year and a half when her husband, James, had died in a carriage accident.

In 1902, Rose left her post by faking an engagement and a move to Scotland, when in actual fact she was starting to get paranoid her not aging would get someone noticing.

Really, Rose went back to London and started again, still pretending to be Rose Tyler nee Prentice. She was a governess for the young children of a wealthy family with a country estate. She stayed with them for five years.

Her next place was less lucky and she was only there for two years. And so it continued.

It had been so long since Rose had seen the Doctor. And now she was trapped on the slow path, doomed to wait out her life until she could catch up with a Doctor that would know her.

After almost fifteen years, Rose was fed up. She had been four different women, four widows. All the while looking out for the Doctor. She was nearly tempted to show up in Southampton for the launch of the Titanic, as she knew for fact that at least one Doctor was there, only not the doctor she was looking for.

Instead, in 1912, Rose again left London. She knew what was coming in just a few years. 1914, World War 1. The Great War. She didn't really want to see the devastation in such a populated area as the capital of Great Britain. Plus with it being such a monumental part of history there was bound to be a lot of fixed points, so Rose was staying as far away from any of the war as she could.

She took a postion as a librarian in an all boys school in the countryside several hours away from London.

Farringham School for Boys in Herefordshire was pretty out of the way. She chose it for a forrest it had close to the property Wolf Woods, it wasn't Bad Wolf but she'd take what she could. It was quiet and removed from London society. The other staff and teachers were nice and welcoming to a young widow.

The boys that attended though, some were right little snots and by 'snots' she meant something with similar letters just a 'hi' instead of 'no'. The type of boys Rose would have made fun of for being posh and prissy and stuck-up. If Rose's mother knew where she was working, well, she'd definitely say this place gave her 'airs and graces'.

Rose kept her nose down. She was starting younger this time around, claiming to be just twenty, she still looked like she was about twenty, even if she was closer to fourty-five or so. She needed to be able to keep up the facade for at least six years or so, until the end of the War.

Just before the start of her second year at Farringham's there was a stir in the gossip around the school and nearby town. A new history teacher had just arrived and would be starting, a teacher named John Smith.

Rose was preparing herself for disappointment, she knew the chances that it was the Doctor were low, but a tiny part held on to hope. At least until she met Mr Smith and found that despite the uncanny resemblance to the Doctor, the new History teacher was a regular human who did not know Rose Tyler and did not own a time machine/space ship.

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