Star Sailor.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor who or any related products. Please don't sue me!
I also have to acknowledge author Kates Master whose Story "The Life and Times" which is really good, gave me the idea for the plot of this.
Author's note: This fic is about the adventures Rose's sister has with another Doctor in the Alt.!World. Its still in very baby stages, and I'm about to go away so there won't be updates for a while, but I'd love feedback on this and any ideas for what should happen next!
Prologue: The Infant Astronomer.
Amelia Tyler's earliest memory was of a family holiday in North Wales. She could see clearly herself aged about four in the middle of a freezing cold field after dark, riding on her much older sister's shoulder's. She could remember years afterwards the biting wind, and the smell of damp earth and most of all the stars, uncountable millions of them, great whirling patterns of light. Living in London stars were new and strange and exotic to her. "Can you see them Mia?" Rose had said, "the stars? Aren't they beautiful?" And then Rose had said something that stuck with her for the rest of her life. "They all have names you know, every single one of them. They're all different, and so far away!"
With her child's mind she struggled to comprehend that infinity of places, of space, and failed. But what she remembered was the light and the huge cold dance she had seen, and from that day on she wanted to reach them, to see them all close up; to learn their names.
Amelia was seven years old when she first heard about the Doctor. Her mother and father had been away for the night and Rose was left to look after her little sister. As Amelia wriggled down in bed she asked for what she was used to, a bed time story. Rose frowned and protested "I'm not good at stories Mia, really honestly sweetheart."
But Mia insisted "please Rose, please please?"
Rose pushed a hand through her hair. "Oh alright then! What do want a story about?"
"Stars!"
"Oh ok." Rose said slowly. "Once upon a time there was a girl, an ordinary girl just like you…or me, and she had such a lonely life, on and on, always the same. Then one day she met a man."
"What was he called?"
"The Doctor."
"Doctor who?"
"Exactly. And he took this girl on the most amazing adventures; she saw the farthest reaches of the universe with him. Because he had a space ship that could go anywhere, even back or forward in time. Once they went to planet where the sea wasn't water but something else, something multicoloured, they floated on it for hours. Another time they visited a planet with four suns, imagine that! The most incredible sunsets you've ever seen!"
"wow!"
"yeah."
"And the girl, was she happy with Doctor, didn't she ever get homesick?"
"Sometimes, but you know, he took her back to visit and he was all she needed really. He saved her life lots of times, whenever there were aliens after them."
"There were aliens?"
"Oh yeah, all kinds of aliens, Great green things and things that looked like ghosts and worst of all these great metal dustbin things with disintegrator rays. But the Doctor kept her safe from all of them…"
"I think that's enough for one night," said a voice from the doorway. Amelia looked up to see her Mum frowning at the two of them. She was about to protest when to her surprise Rose did it for her.
"Mum." She said quietly, pleadingly.
"Rose, please," Jackie replied. There was a long pause before Rose sighed, turned and kissed Amelia on the cheek and said "Goodnight sweetheart." Then she left the room.
For the next few years nevertheless the Doctor was the hero of Amelia's bed time stories, every time Rose put her to bed. She heard how he had defeated the Daleks, blown up Downing Street, saved the world from the Sycorax using a Satsuma, and faced a real live Werewolf. But the girl who travelled with him remained nameless and mysterious; until she was about ten and heard the end of the story.
In the end it wasn't even Rose who told her. It was Mickey. It happened one evening when they were all sitting around on the living room sofa watching the news, the whole family; Mum, Dad, Rose and Mickey. The President was announcing the prospective invasion of the Middle Eastern block. Rose put her head in her hands and groaned. "God it's all so stupid!" she said "what's the point of all this fighting. Don't they get there's much bigger threats out there? Sometimes I bloody hate this universe!" and she got up and slammed out of the room, leaving everyone frozen in shock. Then Mum and Dad got up and followed her.
Amelia turned to Mickey. "Why did she say that?" she asked, a little scared. "She sounded so…angry."
"She's not angry really sweetheart," Mickey said, obviously absorbed in his own thoughts, not really paying attention to her. "she's just sad about the Doctor."
"The Doctor! But he's, he's a story, Rose made him up…"Amelia said confused and frightened. Mickey turned to her, his face comically horrified.
"Oh God! Mia, I'm sorry, I forgot, you're not supposed to know, oh bloody hell."
Amelia's mind began working over time, connecting the dots, it explained…everything, why Rose was the way she was.
"You mean, its real, everything she told me since I was seven years old… is real?"
"Well, yeah. I guess so."
"And the girl, the girl in the story…is Rose?" she said slowly, struggling to understand it. "But I don't understand, why is she sad about him? Why does that mean she hates this universe?" She was frowning stumbling over words, struggling with the information that her big sister, who she's known all her life, was so much more than she seemed.
"There was an accident." Mickey said slowly, trying to work out how to explain void rifts and parallel universes to a ten year old. "Rose wasn't supposed to come here, to this universe, she wasn't born here."
"There's more than one?" Amelia put in sharply.
"Yeah…Yeah there is. There are lots of them actually. And Rose, she sort of, fell, into this one, by mistake. And the Doctor, he got left behind."
"Can't he come and get her back?"
"No, no he can't."
Amelia sighed and sank back into the sofa. "So that's why she's sad," she whispered. "Because she lost him."
"That's about right yeah," said Rose, who had come back into the room without their seeing. She looked close to tears. Amelia acted on pure instinct then. She jumped up ran to her sister and threw her arms around her waist. Rose hugged her back tightly. And Amelia could feel that her big sister was trembling.
Amelia grew up, just like everyone else. She went to secondary school, she turned thirteen. She liked physics, but hated chemistry. She liked English, but hated maths. At fourteen she had her first boyfriend. Will Carmichael from year ten. Right tosser as it turned out. The day she caught him snogging Annie Feltham in the girls' loos was also the day she heard about the Doctor again. She stayed in the park for hours crying and when she finally arrived home she heard Mum and Rose talking.
"I saw him today." Rose said.
"Who love?"
"The Doctor. Not my Doctor, obviously…" she heard Rose add quickly. "He doesn't even have the same face, but a Timelord, with a TARDIS, and he calls himself the Doctor. He just showed up at work. Helped us identify that round blue sphere. Apparently it's from a planet called Dageothea, its some kind of communications device."
"Is he…" Jackie began carefully "is he…with anyone?"
"yeah, this girl Grace, she's, she's a doctor. You know the real kind- white coat stethoscope, everything."
Amelia could here a trace of bitterness in Rose's voice. Suddenly she couldn't help it she pushed open the door.
"Mia!" said Mum in surprise. But Amelia just stared at Rose. All thought of Will Carmichael was suddenly gone from her head. "Rose" she said "what exactly is it you do? I mean as a job?"
And from that day on aliens were a part of Amelia's life, indirectly at least. Rose told her all about life at Torchwood, even took her to visit once. She had had the most amazing time, running around like a child in a sweet shop, demanding that Rose explain everything to her, and Rose had stood back and watched, grinning affectionately.
And normal life progressed too. Amelia went to Spain on her first Holiday without the whole family. She took A-Levels in Physics, History, Spanish and English. She got very drunk and made out with a stranger at her eighteenth birthday party.
She got three As and a B in her A levels. She and her mate Gemma took off to the family house in Wales for the weekend to celebrate. It was the first time she'd ever driven so far alone. That night she slipped out of the house after Gemma was asleep. She sat on a stone wall shivering and staring at the stars, they were so bright; so much brighter than in London, and so far away. The childhood memory of being there with Rose came back with a force, but now the stars had an extra meaning for her- the homes of strange, wonderful and sometimes terrifying things. She did something she had been doing more and more recently. She looked up and she prayed. She prayed very hard for…adventure.
She had no idea that a very big adventure was coming her way at high speed.
END PROLOGUE.