Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, I'm simply playing around with an idea that may or may not be more. We'll see.
It took them two years to realize that she wouldn't be dying of any violent means like a bullet through the heart or drowning. That had been accidental in their part, not so much by the man that had shot her and thrown her body in the river.
She'd been hysterical when she woke up right there, right there in the river, just barely floating. So hysterical that when she sunk down, she didn't manage to fight it. And she drowned. It was an experience she woke screaming from, on a table in the morgue, just minutes from being opened up. She still had nightmares about that.
And then it took them another five years to realize she isn't aging. By then, the other Doctor, the one she'd married and had promised her a human life, revealed to them that he'd already realized. Had figured it out years ago. And he was working on a way to help her.
He wouldn't say what, told them it didn't matter yet, that they'd find out in time. She'd figure it out in time. She was clever, he believed in her. And she would have nothing but time to figure it out, either way.
Rose Tyler was no longer allowed out in public, not after the newspaper had declared her dead those five years ago. At least not looking like Rose Tyler. Her family had been forced to have a burial. a mourning process - her husband no longer went out in public unless it was absolutely necessary and her parents could only visit her sometimes so none would find out that she was alive, that she'd died and returned to life. That she wasn't a normal human. And not one of their family, blood-tied or otherwise, wanted that to happen to her.
So the only places Rose went was Torchwood or the family estates. Of course, both were in disguise, but when she arrived, it was fine to be herself again. Those two and her own, new, apartment were the only places she could be.
It had taken a while for her and her Doctor, her John, to live together again, and it had only been with the help of Mickey. Because they'd needed to be careful, had to make sure everyone believed she was truly dead - not that that had been hard, she'd been found dead by a college student after all. But there were still people out there who believed in aliens and remembered the cybermen and their attachment to the Tyler family and it didn't hurt to be wary.
The worst part was that even in her age, she didn't look to have gotten older at all. Not like her husband. Not like Mickey. Not like her family. And especially not like her new little brother. That was the worst. Because of him, her parents could only visit perhaps once a month if they were lucky, no one could be sure that he wouldn't accidentally say something about Rose.
They had to be careful, so her little brother thought her to be dead. Didn't actually know her. Didn't know much about who she was and the little he had been told they had been even more careful about. Had needed to speak as if she was actually gone. And as a year or two passed, neither Pete or Jackie visited anymore. Only Mickey.
Unless she was at Torchwood. Because by then, she had also stopped visiting her parents, knew they couldn't bare to look at her anymore without seeing her dead. It would make things easier for them, the less they had to see her, so Rose did what she thought was best. She let them go.
Twenty years passed like this and Rose was forced to sit in the back at not just one funeral, but three. One for Mickey, and that had been so hard, so terribly hard - but it had been nothing compared to the one for her mum. The one for Jackie Tyler.
She'd barely been able to be there, had been forced to watch her little brother, the boy who was no longer a boy, speak about her, talk of their mother, tell everyone how strong she had been - and Rose had been forced to keep quiet, to not be allowed to tell everyone what a great woman she had been. She had lost the two others that had came to this world with her, the only two who knew her entirely. All of her life. They were just… Gone.
But the absolute worst one, that was hands down the one for John. John Tyler. He'd started out with the name Smith but had quickly decided to take her last name when they married, decided that he wanted to be a part of her family. All of it. Not one of them had argued so John Tyler it was. And what a magnificent man he had been, known throughout the world for his talents, for the science he thought up. He got awards for a few things but he'd downplayed his abilities quite a lot, so he would've gotten many more if he had been the him he had been born as. But he knew well what would happen should he do so, so for the sake of Rose, he kept quiet. At least enough to not get too noticed, not enough to get bored.
The death of the cloned Doctor, the human Doctor, had not been a surprise. Not at all. It had come slowly, oh so slowly, but three years earlier, seventeen years since they'd noticed she hadn't been aging, they had noticed that something had been wrong, he'd seemed ill. While he'd waved off the possibility completely, because of who he was and where he came from, Rose wouldn't have it. She forced him to go to the hospital and have a check up and that was when they found out that he had cancer, that he was dying and that there was nothing they could do about it.
The human Doctor had refused to believe it at first, had told them there was simply no way, but after a year of denial, a wasted year, he was forced to concede. That was when he told Rose about it. About how there was another way.