Author's Note:

See the end of this chapter for the author's notes of the overarching themes of this work. It's a bit long. You came here to read fic, not meta. It isn't necessary, but it will provide some helpful context.

And here is the tie-in to the novel, Ghosts of India, by Mark Morris. I took the passage, found on pp 18-19, that inspired this monstrosity and made it a Ten introspective.

Prologue

1937, the streets of Calcutta. The Doctor speaks to a man who informs him that his friends, Kamalnayan Bajaj, his wife Priya, and his young daughter, Alisha, were no longer at their family-owned restaurant, which was burnt and clearly looted. Dread flooded him.

They can't be dead. Please don't let them be dead.

He was hit by a wave of shock at what that might mean for his past's future.

The timeline. Oh, Rassilon, the timeline.

No, the man informed him, they weren't dead. They had merely fled the city.

That still—that still doesn't fix the timeline. Kam and his family need to be here in 1941.

He had been there for Navratri. He brought fireworks.

Donna wondered aloud about Navratri.

A festival for their goddess, Durga. Dancing. Romancing, he added, silently.

Perhaps the timeline was out of sync. Perhaps someone was fooling with time. In that case…

Those are my memories. I will not let anyone compromise them.

Deities help the beings that decided to mess with time.

Rose, in her chaniya choli, her laughter more grand than the music in the square, her smile, her sparkling eyes, his arms surrounding her…

Rose was gone, but the memories remained. If the timeline couldn't be repaired, there'd be a massive paradox to fix.

And he was ready to tear the stars from the sky to do it. Jackie had been right about that.

He asked for the current year, and relief soothed him.

1947, Donna scoffed.

He didn't mind. His memories were protected. All was free to proceed as time would have it.

Author's Note:

Welcome to this labor of love. Pour yourself a nice cuppa.

I love the Doctor Who novels. Most of them are good, and some of them contain the juiciest anecdotes that are begging to be explored. Hence, this 7-chapter story with a prologue.

The following is my interpretation. Someone may not agree with what I have to say, and that's fine, but this is my take on things. Please note that the comments section will not be a place to discuss the following episodes. I merely want to provide some meta context so you'll understand where I'm coming from.

This fic, though not originally intended (it was supposed to be a fluffy ficlet), explores that rocky part of Series 2 that I don't usually care for. The easy solution is for me to ignore that it ever happened and replace that wretched episode with The Stone Rose, but the DVD Box Set for Series 2 won't let me do that. I wanted to challege myself once I started getting into the nitty gritty of this fic.

I've been wrestling with, "How does Girl in the Fireplace fit into the narrative of Series 2?" ever since I first saw the episode. How can you have a beautiful moment in School Reunion and then the Doctor is distracted in the next episode? What was he really going to do with Rose if Reinette had joined Team TARDIS, even for one adventure? None of it makes any sense to me whatsoever. What's more, why does the next pair of episodes pretend nothing ever happened? Why was the Doctor's out-of-character-ness never addressed? I'm all for angst, but only if it contributes meaningfully to the development of the characters. GiTF adds absolutely to the narrative of the series. You could skip over it entirely and not miss a thing. RTD, I love you, but how could you let this happen on your watch?

I initially conceived this as a canon supplement set between the Age of Steel and The Idiot's Lantern. Something happens between those two episodes to change the Doctor and Rose's relationship that propels them into more of an overtly romantic relationship. Since I wanted to address that with a fun trip to India, I realized that I needed to address the elephant (pun intended) in the room, if I was going by the canon of the show: School Reunion and Girl in the Fireplace. Challenge accepted.

Once I started digging into the episodes, specifically, Ten and Rose's conversation outside the chippy in SR, the ending of SR between Sarah Jane and Rose, and the beginning of GitF, I was able to make some sense of it (it's still stupid and never should have happened, but at least I have somewhat of an explanation for it). Hopefully it comes across well in the fic.

Therefore, this fic gets pretty angsty in the middle as our two favorite idiots in love explore the aftermath of those episodes in a way that wasn't touched in the show, and then the fluffy sunshine comes to dispel the dark angsty clouds.

I also wanted to touch on the Bad Wolf. At the end of Series 1, Rose remembers being in the TARDIS, and there was light and singing. In Tooth and Claw, the werewolf says to her, "There is something of the wolf about you," and "You burn like the sun," but she had no idea what he was talking about. Of course, it may have been that she was trying to protect herself if she did understand at least part of what happened. At the end of Series 2, however, she remembers that she destroyed the Daleks. And even then, she doesn't remember bringing Jack back to life. She either remembers events, or the Doctor explains it. If the Doctor simply explained it to her, he must not have explained about Jack, for whatever reason. At any rate, somehow, sometime, she had to have learned about the events that transpired on the Game Station such that the symbolism of the name Bad Wolf Bay held significance for her. Maybe her understanding of the Bad Wolf allowed the Doctor and Rose's relationship to shift to a more overtly romantic one after their initial visit to Pete's World.

And now, without further ado, we go to that fated trip in 1941.