Standard Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all characters in this story are owned by the BBC.

Man Meets Ape

There was nothing special about that day to indicate that it was to be the most important day in her life. The sun rose as usual, and the alarm sounded with shrill, bleeping inevitability.

She still dragged herself from bed and out the door to work, no clue that her already tiny, insignificant world was about to become even smaller.

What would she have done, if someone had stopped her on the way to the bus? If they had told her what was about to happen to her?

If they had taken her for a cup of tea in the café near the bus stop and over that drink, told her what the next two years of her life were going to be like.

That she would, sometime in this eventful day, take the hand of a stranger from another planet, step foot inside his time machine and that life would never be the same.

And if they told her that she would see the most amazing things, fly through time and space, save the lives of people she never imagined could exist, meet her long-dead father, gain good friends and lose them again, leave her footprints in the dust on an alien world, say goodbye to her faithful boyfriend Mickey, rarely see her mother … would she be scared? Would she say no, go home, call in sick, crawl back in to bed, stay hidden until this potentially life-changing day was over?

How about if this all-knowing person called her back, told her that it might be dangerous, life might never be the same, but she would share all this with this strange man. A man who had seen the beginning and end of time, and could take her there. A man she would admire, believe in – love? A man, who would hold her dearer than anyone he had ever met before, in all his 900 plus years.

Would she change her mind, go to work, wonder each minute how long it was until she was going to meet him, make her choice, change her life forever?

Of course she would, she was Rose Tyler.

So even though the idea flitted briefly through this Time Lord's mind, that she wouldn't be trapped if I just went back and told her that she had a choice – quite apart from the fact that my actions would likely cause the biggest paradox the universe had ever seen – I knew it wouldn't work.

She'd always choose to take my hand.

And, despite the way it ended, I'd never wish she hadn't.