Hello, guys, gals and non-binary pals! Okay, so, 2016 Valentine's stories didn't happen for two main reasons, I had no ideas, and Just didn't have internet for a few months, well, consistent internet.
This, being the first in the 2017 Valentine's stories collection, is based on a fanfic from over five years ago, A married man by lovable hate, which I expected to read like one chapter and then bolt, but the premise, Rose and the Doctor together, but Ten having Martha as a companion and then falling for her, was a unique one, that I read onwards. And the ending arc, it was something new, for me to see when it comes to Doctor and Rose couple fanfiction.
With that being said, and for those who have read the whole thing, yes, I've decided to do this because I wanted to explore a bit. Also, while the theme of the collection is love, doesn't mean it's all that healthy.
And, again, while this is based on the fanfic, it's not following it exactly.
Rose Tyler looked on from the roof of her flat on the Powell Estate, watching as a replica of the Titanic flew through the air. She wondered how much the world changed in three years that this was being referred to as, 'yet another weird Christmas', as she heard from a few shouting neighbors.
Rose Tyler was 22 years old. She kept having to repeat that to herself, because she still can't believe it, she still felt like she was 19. The last thing she remembered, before waking up in her old room, her mum having switched their rooms, was walking down the floor to head to Wilson's, to give him the money for the lottery. And the few pieces that she had were very few. There was one of her and Mickey being in Cardiff, then both of them separating because of an earthquake. She attended a wedding that consisted of a man and a woman that looked so much like cavemen. She couldn't remember the reception, or the person she danced with.
Her mum said it was because of a large amounts of horrific events that happened, the first being that Henriks, her old job, the whole building had a bomb explode inside. And it kept getting worse.
Mum took a long while in explaining what had happened. That, somehow, that was the start of a long chain of events of alien invasions, culminating in the Prime Minister's first and last day in office. The fact that there was a whole nother Prime Minister in the Time that Rose forgot, threw her a bit.
The next sentence her Mum said threw her off as well. Rose Tyler was working with the Prime Minister, not in any camera friendly capacity, but it was a very demanding job. Her mum said she had gone a bit nutters, by the time Harold Saxon had won. She wouldn't say in what way. Rose didn't think she wanted to know. When her mum said it, she took a different stance, trying to be strong, while still being scared. She remembered feeling exactly that when she returned home, after leaving school for Jimmy Stone, getting engaged with that prat.
It took Rose about a day afterwards to ask about Mickey. She took that time to take in how much things change; from 2005 to 2008. While some things stayed the same. The chippy she frequented was still open, same girl serving them. They were showing the final minutes of the live broadcast when the world had been introduced to those round flying aliens. It showed the President of the United States being shot and killed.
And she was there, her hair made up, wearing a black pantsuit, clapping. She never wore smoky eye make up, she never liked the way she looked afterwards. Two minutes later, after having aged a man to over century old, if she heard correctly, Rose talked to Harold Saxon, like she was his slave, that she trusted him over the man that was aged. Mr. Saxon said he wasn't going to harm the aged man. Of course, her face wasn't seen, it was tightly focused on the Prime Minister. So, for all the world to see, Rose Tyler in that clip, only appeared in that handful of seconds.
The news reporter mentioned that after being killed by his wife, there was to be an immediate successor, named Aubrey Fairchild.
Strange name for a man.
She left the chippy soon after, wanting to as far from people as she could. How could some thing like that happened to her? And that aged man. That must have been an alien, there was no other way he could have an extra hand. Like an alien starfish thing.
She asked about Mickey that night because she wanted to know what happened to her boyfriend. There was a new person at his apartment, a Robert Watson, he was nice, if a bit geeky, giving her his number. She asked around but she got nothing. Like he vanished into thin air.
She found out from her mum that Mickey was in Canary Wharf, a little over a year ago, when there was a battle there, between two alien races, either converting the humans into them, or just killing them. His name was on a list of the dead. She cried that night. She never really told Mickey that she loved him, just vaguely enough after sex, a couple of times. He really helped her after Jimmy Stone left her for that waitress.
She thought she was going to get the happily ever after with Jimmy Stone, not even minding changing her name to Rose Stone, because she thought she had found the one.
How did she ever get a job working for the Prime Minister? She was a shopgirl, then somehow ended up working for him? Calling him Master? Was the money that good? Had she gone mental on that day the battle happened?
She didn't get much in the way of answers as the days went by, she looked around her room, and her mum's, when she was out, no papers, no receipts, nothing showing how she lived in the past three years.
Was the man Rose was involved with really that horrible, that her mum had to clean away everything? Her room looked exactly the same despite it being a different room.
Rose wanted to have something more, she needed more than the bits and bobs of the last few years. She had one memory of her packing her sports bag with clothes, while her mother walked in on her. And another one where she jumped into the Thames, while hundreds of people watched.
She needed them to make sense. Rose asked her mum about the Doctor that checked her over. Her mum said that the memory loss was highly probable, given the method that she was healed with. And that it was permanent.
"What happened that I needed to get surgery?" Rose had asked.
"There was something wrong in your head, sweetheart. And you wanted to get rid of it. You knew what would happen and you agreed. The procedure was painless, and it left no scars."
Rose had hugged her mother right afterwards, calming her mother down as she started to cry.
The months after were a bit hard, trying to get used to 2008 and all that she had forgotten. She sidestepped any article about the former Prime Minister, moving on to see any good job advertised. She started working in the canteen, which was repetitive, but kept her hands busy. On some free days, she helped her mum in her hairdresser job at home. She reconnected with her old friends, Shereen and Trisha, which was a bit awkward, when they had first gone out, since she found out from them that she disappeared for a year. She considered trying to ask her mum about it, but she wouldn't know what she had gone through in the year she was gone. She couldn't ask Mickey either.
She tried getting together with a couple of blokes but, almost all of them disinterest her. It was like that man, who ruined her life, and whatever had cost her a chunk of her memories, ruined her for other men too.
Rose took out her new mobile and took several pictures of the ship. She might as well earn some extra pounds selling them to the tabloids, since she got fired from her last job. It'll be a while before the temping agency find her something. She rejoined her mother down for Christmas breakfast, a little funny tradition of her and mum's. This year, there's chocolate pancakes and hot chocolate.
She could feel herself salivating at the smell as she closed her door. Rose stopped at the Christmas tree; there was a sizable amount of presents from everyone around the estate. Apparently, a lot of them heard about the memory loss, and some of them have gotten it in their heads that something had happened when she was working with the Prime Minister.
It wasn't like she couldn't say nothing happened, she had no way of proving that.
Like how she managed to get fit. It was like she had been running marathon after marathon, losing her extra fat in the process. She hadn't minded that, she felt less winded, trying to reach the bus in time. She could have won the gold, if she decided to go back to gymnastics. Her muscles had been built up too. When once before, she had to ask Mickey to help carry another box of her mum's products, she could carry them herself, when the elevator was occupied, and she was impatient.
There was one present she didn't remembered seeing last night, a thin piece of laminated paper, and something else wrapped with a special type of blue wrapping paper Rose had swore she had seen before.
From Father Christmas
Curious, she started to open it, when she heard the noise coming from outside. A wheezing groaning noise.
The stove turned off, and her mother came barreling out of the kitchen, looking around worryingly, clutching Rose's shoulders.
"Mum, it's just a bit of noise!" Rose laughed incredulously.
"The nerve of that man!" Jackie Tyler let go of her daughter and went for the door. "Stay here, I'll sort this out!" She left their flat, leaving Rose alone.
Rose sat down on the couch and opened the letter.
Rose Tyler, you have come a long way.
At least, when we meet again in the future.
Anyway, Adipose industries has a great few job openings if you want to find a new job. Especially in the telecommunications department.
A little peace offering.
She sighed. Something else from the blank spaces of her mind. It must have been referring to the gift. Rose unwrapped it, looking at it in confusion. In her hand was her teddy bear, Mr. Tedopoulos, all cleaned up, his blue fur as soft as she remembered. She had been looking for that one for months.
When her mum returned, she left her gift in her bedroom, and she had the telly on, to the news. They enjoyed their breakfast in relative peace. When Rose had asked about the man with the noisy toy, her mum had said it was an old friend saying goodbye.
A job was a job, and Rose wasn't going to complain when it came to her selling diet pills over the phone, wearing a semi professional suit. She did get away with wearing dark jeans, which was a bit enjoyable, especially during her time of the month.
The strangest thing happened earlier this afternoon, she was helping this health and safety woman, Donna, and she asked her if they had met. Rose had decided to dye her hair jet black, just to get people off her back about her split second appearance on the final day of Harold Saxon. Robert had told her about a forum discussing her, he didn't wrote down who she was, but she was glad she decided to befriend the geek. She needed someone with a computer that she can use when the library closes.
She had first decided on brown hair, but her mum had suggested something a bit more vibrant, like a neon white or a hot pink. Rose didn't want to be to flashy, so she went for black.. Her mother had done the work, and Rose paid her, and had given her a tip.
After Donna left with a copy of names, complementing her on her hair before leaving, the rest of the day flew by for Rose. Shona mentioned something about some bloke from health and safely wanting a copy of names, which was odd to Rose. Wasn't there supposed to be just one inspector?
The idea was still in her mind, even after having dinner with her mum, who seemed to be more contemplative, ever since she awoken from her nap from hospital all those months ago. Rose could barely remembered being at the Royal Hope, being treated by that doctor. Her mum seemed to be acting her own age now, not having random men her age over, or her mum's age, having dinner lunches with some woman in central London. She knew that, because when she does have her lunches, mum usually dresses up more. And not in that way that would make Mrs. Robinson blush.
She couldn't tell her mum about what's going on. She doesn't really like all these aliens things that seemed to happen a lot in London. In fact, when she first heard about the titanic flying through London, she made a big fuss about it being special advertisement for a remake!
So Rose kept it to herself.
The next day, she found a puzzle piece she didn't know she had lost.
The morning had started off as normal, well, relatively, Shona mentioned something about Jack from I.T being a great choice for a date for Rose. She laughed it off because she knew it had to do with that old movie and the titanic flying through the sky. She half-jokingly prayed to God to have another alien thing happen already.
Then she saw Donna, the Health and safety Inspector, walking to the lavatories. And not coming out.
Rose made a few excuses to try and enter the toilets every hour, either for washing the hands, or actually using the toilets. There was one occupied stall, every time she was in the room. Her mind made up, Rose waited until she could escape into the ladies, hiding in the very last stall.
She heard a mobile ringing out. Rose checked to make sure it wasn't her own, but her ears perk up when she heard it was Donna, talking to her mum, about her car. Rose looked down, and saw that it was near 6:30. Whatever this inspector was planning, she needed to find it out soon, or her mum's gonna have a fit.
A door opened with a bang, with that Miss Foster woman saying something that she knew they were in the stalls. Of course, it wasn't them she found, it was a woman named Penny, who seemed to have caught onto something in the pills.
Hearing both of them leaving, Rose made the risk to leave the stall, right at the same time Donna was leaving. Both of them widen their eyes at each other.
"It's you! What are you doing here?" Donna whispered-shouted, which was quite an achievement, in Rose's book.
"I work here. What are you doing here, when there was another inspector here?"
Donna frowned. "What?"
"The bloke, he was here yesterday." Rose mimicked her expression. "I know they don't usually come in pairs."
Donna looked at her, there was something about her gaze that looked a bit wary of Rose. "Come on then."
Even more confused, Rose followed Donna, to Miss Foster's office. She didn't know what to expect from the older woman, but experienced was something she thought she be. It looked like to Rose, that she was just doing things on the fly.
They reached the Secretary station, Donna having her face exposed by looking through the circle window, Rose decided on pressing her ear through the door. Rose overheard about the pills being a bonding catalysis for infused fat. Alien babies made of human fat.
Then the conversation started to quieten. "Donna, what's happening?" She whispered, looking up at the woman.
"I found him, I finally found him!" The redhead said, with a bright smile.
"Your partner?"
"Oh, he will be!" Donna immediately stopped talking. "Run!"
Rose jumped to her feet and looked out the window. One look at the two guards with guns and she bolted out of the room. She stopped, barely winded, having lost track of Donna. She headed back to the call centre, to her cubicle to grab her things, just in case she was going to lose another job.
She read the papers, her old job as a shopgirl ended when her job blew up. She could have dismissed it as coincidence, but then the day after that, when she checked in the library, there was a detailed account of an invasion of the plastic mannequins.
She grabbed her satchel, her paperweight (a small wolf painted pink and yellow), a file she had for research, and a few office supplies from the other cubicles, just in case.
"Well, then. At last." That was Miss Foster! Rose crouched down further, not making a sound.
"Hello." Donna said, clearly tired.
"Nice to meet you, I'm the Doctor."
"And I'm Donna."
What kind of person nicknamed themselves after their profession? Rose kept listening in, she couldn't do much else. Apparently, the woman she met wasn't even a woman, probably, who knows if genders really apply to aliens? Who loses a whole planet?
Rose bit her lips bloody hearing a horrible noise this Doctor made with some sonic devices. She heard broken glass and the sound of two people running away. She heard some more footsteps leaving the call centre.
Rose Tyler was clearly over her head. Aliens fighting aliens over stopping fat babies being born from people. She moved to go, then went back to her desk. She had forgotten her dark purple leather jacket on her chair, she had decided on dressing a bit more casual today. Not one person minded, which was a bit of a relief. Now, it'll help her get to the front door faster.
Rose watched as the milky white alien babies floated upwards to the spaceship via a beam. She took the video as the first ones started to disappear into the ship. One of them even waved at her. Despite the dangers and the hell she must have gone through that made her lose her memories, she was enjoying seeing something as wonderful as that.
It wasn't as wonderful seeing Miss Foster falling down to her death, because of those beams.
A few minutes later, she saw Donna Noble appear in front of the building, along with a man with sticky uppy hair and a nice suit. Her eyes stayed on the man even as a woman tied up in a chair reprimanded them, at least that's what it looked like. She snorted as Donna practically dragged him away. That must have been her partner.
Rose wanted to leave, but some part of her heart wanted her to stay a bit longer. And besides, her bus doesn't show up for another 42 minutes, why not stick around?
"Glad I caught you!" Donna said to Rose, shocking her out of her musings. "Listen, there is this woman that's going to come along. A tall blond woman called Sylvia. Tell her that bin, all right? It'll all make sense. That bin there."
"So, you found your partner then?" Rose had to ask. She felt something of a connection to Donna Noble, even if it probably wasn't her real name. At least she picked a name, unlike the Doctor.
"I did. Thought it would be a bit crowded, but We're getting along great!"
"Fantastic!" Rose gave Donna one of her patented grins. "Good luck to you!"
"Thanks, you too. Maybe there's a new job opportunity down the line."
"Maybe, I've just started temping, didn't really have much in the way of experience before."
"Just keep at it, they'll be streaks of nothing happening, but life's a lot like that! Something good is going to happen eventually."
"See you around?"
"Of course! Sorry, I keep forgetting your name, what was it again?"
"Rose Tyler." Maybe even alien looking woman have to remember the human way.
A look of recognition appeared in Donna's eyes. "Like..."
Even aliens know what happened that day. "Yeah, I thought it would die down by now. I didn't list it in my CV, since I've forgotten everything about the job. Probably might have been a blessing in disguise."
"How is it, day by day?"
"It's day by day."
To Rose's surprise, Donna gave her a hug. "You're better. Just remember that." And with that, Donna left. Rose was tempted to follow her, but she waited until a blonde woman, called Sylvia, slightly older than Donna, appeared.
Unbeknownst to her, a dark skinned man, dressed in black, in wear fitted for combat, looked on from a distance. He walked away from Rose Tyler, disappearing into the night.
Donna, walking back to the TARDIS, a heavy subject weighting on her mind. Earlier tonight, when she talked to the Doctor in that cupboard, about Rose, he had said that she was in a better place. She had seemed much calmer from the deranged newlywed she had seen over a year ago. But then, he hadn't really said on why that was. Just that it was a complicated mess that ended on mutual terms.
But why would she remembered her? Why did she acted like she never saw aliens before? What had happened in that time she was transported on the TARDIS on her wedding day, to when Rose left?
She couldn't wait to meet this Martha Jones, though. Must have been a lifesaver, given how changed the Doctor was. From the man who let newborn babies die, because of that wife, to tonight, maybe it was for the best that the Doctor and Rose Tyler parted.