It was strange, she decided, to be marking time like this in a TARDIS. She could theoretically go anywhere. Any when. Instead, she was drifting, not sure where to go and terrified that wherever or whenever she was would be the wrong place. That he would be lost and confused and a million light years away from her and his beloved time machine, with no way of getting back to them.
Where should she go? The TARDIS was temperamental at the best of times and, strange as it sounded, it seemed to be missing the Doctor. Sometimes its screen would reset from the English it had adopted once she had assumed command and switch back to a strange swirling script which danced before her eyes; the letters would resolve and then morph into a new shape almost instantly.
She'd tentatively fixed a broken console with the sonic screwdriver, feeling at once both immensely proud of herself and terribly sad that the Doctor had not been present to witness her triumph. The TARDIS has spent the rest of the day groaning ominously, the mechanical equivalent of a dog whining. Rose could follow the instructions the TARDIS produced to fix its key systems but she suspected the machine was missing the constant ministrations the Doctor had lavished on it.
She'd been tempted to visit her mother, reassure Jackie that she was still alive... but she couldn't face her world, her time, as the sole keeper of the TARDIS. Drifting from alien colony to trading outpost, frequenting the times she had visited with him, somehow it was easier to believe that he might be coming back.
She was spending a lot of time in the library (if only her GCSE English teacher, with whom she'd fought tooth and nail over reading her set texts, could see her now!). She couldn't really admit it, even to herself, but she was preparing herself just in case he never returned. The decision to carry on this roaming existence in his stead had been made, she just wasn't aware of it yet on any conscious level.
She focussed on science, history and guides to TARDIS self-repair, studying in a way she'd never quite been capable of before. The problem with school, she decided, was that it hadn't really taught her anything she needed to know. Now the books in the library could mean life or death, and she found it far easier to pay attention to their words.
As time (for her) passed, the days bleeding into weeks, she began to move further afield— visiting places she would research in the library. It wasn't as chaotic or adrenaline fuelled as her travels with the Doctor had been, but there was a unique joy to it.
Rose Tyler, nineteen, explorer of the universe...
... all on her own.
She was beginning to understand why the Doctor travelled with a companion when he could. Sometimes she spent hours wandering around alien market places, or the past, looking for... she wasn't sure what, only that she'd know when she found it. Other times she felt the fundamental wrongness of her choosing a companion; it would force her to acknowledge something she already knew, but was too afraid to face.
Maybe he wasn't coming back.
Two months had passed for Rose since her last contact with the Doctor. Having spent a few days exploring distant corners of the galaxy she had felt the need to return to somewhere she knew a little better.
It was the Doctor's favourite place in the universe, or so he'd said. He'd called it galactic central point, the place where all the interesting forces that moved through time and space eventually gravitated to. Anything you wanted, any news you needed to hear, this was the place to get it.
Rose had thought it was the scummiest dive she'd ever had the misfortune to drink in, but since he'd been gone she'd begun to appreciate his like of the place.
The Watering Hole was, quite possibly, the only building on the entire planet. Slap bang in the middle of a desert, from the outside it looked a mess, fabricated from a variety of building materials from all over the galaxy. Originally, the Doctor said, it had been a wooden shack, but trade with travellers from every conceivable place in the universe had meant extensions to the original premise had been constructed haphazardly from whatever material was available.
Inside wasn't much better. The bar ran along one wall, at times sticky wood, at others sheets of roughly welded metal. There were random sticks of furniture designed for all manner of aliens dotted around the place. It was dimly light by a series of long strip lights that occasionally flickered and spluttered.
Rose cast a by-now-experienced eye over the current clientele as she made her way to the bar. A variety of attractive alien women served as barmaids, but Rose's pints were always pulled by the landlord, Jim. He was human, or at least, human looking and on their first visit here had greeted the Doctor like an old friend.
She slipped into a stool at the bar itself and waited for Jim to finish serving what looked like a Tragelothian mud-beast. The Watering Hole was quiet for once, and she was grateful.
Jim came over to her, baring his yellowed teeth in the grimace which served as his smile. His one blue eye glittered, Rose studiously ignored the empty socket that had once contained its companion. Jim refused to wear a patch, declaring it far too much of a cliche.
"The usual?" he asked quietly.
"Thanks," she nodded and he busied himself preparing her Bacardi and Coke. Another of the reasons the Doctor loved this place was Jim's ability to rustle up anything that a customer wanted to drink.
He handed her the drink and she took a sip.
Jim retrieved a glass from the bar and began to clean it as she stared into her drink. "Bin anywhere interesting?" he said, and she smiled. His broad Black Country accent never ceased to amuse her.
"Not really. 'Ave you 'eard—?"
"Nothing about the Doctor, chick. Sorry."
She shrugged. "I didn't expect... I mean, I guess it's stupid to expect anyone 'ere to know anything."
"Yow'd be amazed at what turns up here," Jim answered honestly.
She smiled, and swirled the ice around in her glass. "'Ow'd you end up running this place, anyway, Jim? The Doctor wouldn't tell me when I asked."
Jim put down the glass he was cleaning and looked thoughtful. "A friend of mine asked if I'd be interested in runnin' a new pub. I was landlord of the Nags Head in Wolverhampton. I said I was, next thing I knew, I was stuck on an alien planet in the middle of nowhere, trying to run a bar with no brewery."
"Was it the Doctor?"
Jim appeared to look mildly offended. "He's not the only alien out there that visits Earth yow know! Where d'yow think I get all me Coke from? No, it weren't the Doctor. But the Doctor did help me out at the start, and I haven't forgotten that. Yow're always welcome here, whilst yow're still looking for him."
"Thanks Jim."
"Yow're welcome, chick." He moved off to serve another customer, leaving her alone again.
