You know what it's like when ideas just come to you and won't leave you alone? That's this story, right here.
Tobin had never seen that blonde woman in the road before, nor the wild-haired man she cradled in her arms, but he knew that the both of them were important.
Some things he knew as instinct. Don't go into that alley, turn down this street, say hello in the next five seconds, remember that person's name. It was a sort of talent, if one could call his strange little feelings a talent. Tobin recalled nervously stumbling into his first class at uni, getting a feeling, and then immediately calming down and sitting next to the tall man who'd become his drinking buddy. Nothing he'd experienced could be considered coincidence.
Like right now, looking at the two people sitting in the road.
She was crying, her voice all fuzzy and scratched. He could barely speak. While she murmured and muttered and spoke quickly, he had to struggle to let words leave his lips. He seemed to be saying he was sorry, over and over and over again. She seemed to be trying to figure out ways to fix him. Both of them knew the truth: the man was dying, and he wasn't going to leave that asphalt to do it.
Another person, a little boy on the street corner, kept saying, "Mummy, he's been hit. Mummy, he's been hit by that car. Mummy, we have to help him. Mummy, is he going to die?"
His mother didn't answer him. Tobin didn't want to answer him either.
"Rose!" the man said suddenly, the strength he mustered already leaving his body. "I love you very much. Don't ever forget that, not ever. Got it?"
Rose kept saying, "Doctor, doctor." Tobin couldn't think of any doctors nearby; maybe an ambulance had been called, but he doubted that. Everyone was too shocked to move, least of all anyone who could actually help. It was like these two had cast a spell over people, entrancing them, rather like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. People couldn't resist tragedies.
The life left the man's body in a flash of golden light. Now that, that was really strange.
The light traveled the short distance to Rose's eyes and entered them, making her whole form shine. For a brief moment, Tobin thought he could hear a disembodied heartbeat thumping through the street. Everything was turning out contrary today.
As soon as the light was gone, the spell broke. People could move again, and so Tobin strode forward to the couple in the road. He knew when he saw the man that he was dead for good. There was no chance of restarting his heart, because anyone could see where it had gone. It was hers now, hers to keep instead of to share. "Rose? Is that your name?" Tobin asked.
She didn't answer him.
"Let me help you get him off the road," he pleaded, putting a hand on her shoulder. Only then did she look up. Rose's eyes shone gold, the saltwater that she'd been crying already drying on her face. The light resembled the sun, burning away all evidence that she'd been in pain at all. Even the lines on her forehead began to smooth over.
"Let me help you." Tobin repeated himself in a harder tone. She might have lost that man, but he doubted that man would've wanted to lose her that soon after.
"Help me with what?" Rose cocked her head at him. This was the point she actually began to pay attention to her surroundings.
"I want to help you carry him off of the road. He can't stay there, because then more cars might hit him, or you." He spoke firmly, as if to a child. "I can carry him myself if you don't want to."
Rose nodded and held her hands out to him. Tobin helped her up quickly, and then bent down to wrap his arms around the man's torso, lifting him up in a fireman's hold. He wouldn't have done it this way, except for the fact that the man's injuries couldn't get any worse. There was no saving to be done.
He finally set the man down on a bench nearby, arranging him like he was sleeping. Tobin didn't need to close the man's eyes, which he was strangely grateful for. He imagined he wouldn't be so calm if he had to look into the face of someone who should have been looking back. Rose stood next to Tobin, taking the prostrate man's hand for the last time.
"This is so mundane," she remarked, running her thumb over the as-yet-unnamed man's knuckles.
"Yeah."
"I mean, he ran around the galaxies saving planets. He should have jumped in front of some children, gotten hit by a blaster, got poisoned by radiation or something. Getting hit by a car is so ordinary."
"Yeah."
"He promised me we'd grow old together. We'd live out our human lives and I'd never have to live without him. He told me. He promised."
"He promised you all the forever he could. It may not seem like enough to you, but it was all he had to give."
Rose looked up at him. "What's your name, anyway?"
"I'm Tobin. Tobin Lancaster."
She pressed a kiss to her lover's forehead and let go of his hand. "Come on, Tobin. We've got to go to Cardiff."
Tobin made up his mind to never let Rose drive anywhere ever again. She repeatedly jerked the steering wheel to overcorrect herself when she started drifting, and her impulses often meant accelerating forward quickly, and stopping even faster. Rose drove like she was part of a car chase, except they were in the middle of a field in Wales.
"Are you holding the supplies?" she asked, motioning to the multiple metal contraptions cluttering the passenger seat and making it very hard for him to see.
"Yes, I am." He paused. "Question."
"Yeah?"
"Where on earth did you learn to drive?"
"Nowhere on Earth." Rose glanced over at him, probably to see how he reacted. "The Doctor and I drove the same vehicle for a while. She was called the TARDIS, Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Basically, he and I traveled through time and space, sightseeing and finding trouble. Four years ago, when I came here, to this dimension, I thought I'd never see him again. I should have known I'd never be rid of him." She smiled softly. "Two years later, he ended up in this dimension with me."
"So, the Doctor taught you your terrible driving habits."
And Rose laughed. It was the first time Tobin had ever heard her laugh, and he knew that if she had been happier, her laugh would have lit up a room like a chandelier. "I guess so."
When the car finally stopped, the two of them were still in the middle of a field in Wales. He couldn't even tell if they had moved. Rose practically jumped out of the car, grabbing as many of the metal contraptions as she could carry, telling him to grab the rest. Between them both, Tobin's arms were a little tired, but they managed to retrieve every last bolt and screw.
"Alright, I have the directions to make another TARDIS in my head. This shouldn't take very long."
Oddly enough, well, not odd for him, he didn't even question her. He tended not to question people's motives, or what they were doing, because everything that was supposed to happen would happen. Tobin didn't need to try and interfere with something that was going to occur no matter what he did to stop it. If Rose had the knowledge to go and travel time and space again, she was going to use it whether Tobin wanted her to or not.
Which he did. She needed to get out of this place, she couldn't stay here. At least for a little while, she needed to get away. And Tobin liked helping people, so he helped her.
Rose began lacing all the pieces of metal together with wires, connecting the elements like Legos. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing, and so Tobin just stayed back and waited for her to finish. He knew very little about machinery, but judging by the lights and sound, she was doing well.
The product finally complete, Rose stepped back. The main portion of the TARDIS was a cylindrical core, surrounded by a control panel covered in levers and buttons and screens. Tobin suddenly understood how trying to fly that very complicated device could create some bad habits. It only had what looked like a floor, no walls or roof to speak of, and Rose was smiling at it like it held the key to all her troubles. And maybe it did.
"Tobin," she said. "Come with me."
"Are you sure?"
Rose stepped onto the new TARDIS' platform and held out her hand. "Yeah."
And Tobin saw the man, the Doctor, as he must have looked to Rose: an Aladdin, a Peter Pan, a Pied Piper, a fairy, a spirit. Come with me.
So he did.
The first maneuver Rose performed was a risky one. She told him the TARDIS couldn't travel between different dimensions unless there was something cosmically wrong with the universe, something that sent a shock wave through the walls between worlds. "The Doctor was an anomaly, part human and part Time Lord. His very existence was against the laws of the universe. Now that he's gone, this universe is trying to right itself. There will be some over-adjustments, so we can slip through one of those little holes. But it won't be open for very long."
She kicked a hatch on the ground and pulled a tiny lever. "This is going to be bumpy."
The machine began whining and groaning like an aching old man as they lifted off from Wales. Tobin couldn't see the sky anymore, as it was replaced with a colorful, whirling cloud of something all around them.
Tobin learned only later that this was the Time Vortex. At this moment, he saw everything. Every event in history laid out before him, every planet in the universe, every man, woman, and child, their lives, and pain and love and war and heartbreak. His whole body hurt, but his eyes couldn't stop looking. There was so much to see, so much to lose, and Tobin lost. He wasn't Tobin for the few seconds he stared up at the mess that was his universe.
He was small, insignificant. An atom or a neutron or an electron in the grand latticework of time and space.
And it scared him.
"How long until we reach your universe?" he shouted over the machine's noise.
"We're almost to the hole, and then we'll be there." Rose's voice was calm in the face of the mess outside. She didn't even look up. But Tobin remembered she didn't need to. Through the Doctor, she'd already seen everything. And she resigned herself to it.
As Rose promised, a bright light shone as if at the end of the tunnel, and they flew directly into it. Tobin felt his entire being tear into miniscule pieces, and then get put back together before he could blink. Rose looked unfazed, but then, she'd experienced travel like this. A few more buttons pressed, and they were no longer in the dangerous clouds.
They'd landed on Earth. At least, it looked like Earth.
Tobin disembarked from the TARDIS feeling very lightheaded. He didn't really think normal humans were supposed to see that. Even stable people would go mad.
"Where, and when, are we?" he asked, trying to distract himself from his head.
Rose looked around them. "Well, we're back in my universe. But I don't recognize this place."
"Hm." Tobin started walking away from the TARDIS.
Rose followed him without another word.
That first journey turned out to have a reason that Rose remembered. A Tree Queen from the year 5,000,000,000 had died being burned up on a ship that was meant to view the death of Earth. Rose was there. She told Tobin how beautiful the Queen was, and how she'd sacrificed her life to save the Doctor's.
"I always wondered if her planet would be alright without her. And now, we can see."
In actuality, the planet was in turmoil, shattered with grief and fighting over who would be the next ruler. The two of them spent weeks helping draw up treaties, placate nobles, and have peace talks. When the planet was finally stable again, Rose and Tobin stepped back onto the TARDIS' platform and left the little world behind.
The actions on that one planet started them on a long path. Every time the Doctor had left something unfinished, from the moment Rose had met him, her and Tobin tried to fix it. There were revolutions to avert and cause, families to put back together, even timelines to straighten out. Tobin had taken a lot of Government classes in school, and now used everything he'd been taught to help countries and planets back into a good position. Rose could often be found comforting the grieving, bandaging and healing the wounded, building people into the strong ones they once were. She may have had the Time Vortex in her head, but Tobin was equally capable of looking at the big picture, how their actions would affect the area from then on.
Rose never used her original name after the first few places. She said it would disrupt the timelines, because she wasn't meant to come back from Tobin's home dimension. Her new name was Lupa, like a wolf. It became a sort of joke to her, one that Tobin didn't understand, but didn't need to. Rose had had a life before this one, a life with the Doctor, and her memories of that were the only things she had left. He couldn't take the Doctor from her, not like before.
They traveled through time and space, Lupa and Tobin, a woman who'd become someone else after losing the one she loved, and a man who'd lost himself in the Vortex. His old life was another thread in the fabric of Time to him, another event that he'd taken control of. Her old life wasn't talked about, but a shadow in the background, a glimmer on the ring Rose had never taken off.
She was a Time Lady, and he was her mad companion.
But sometimes, they were just Rose and Tobin, two very lost people who'd never managed to find that last piece of themselves.
The first time Rose saw the Doctor of this universe, she ran away from him.
Tobin couldn't remember where they were, only that there were no political revolutions nor wars nor little problems to solve yet. This place wasn't an aftermath or even a happening, it was a yet-to-come. He could sense the tension in the air, and that it had yet to break. Rose, no matter how wise and beyond her 24 (25? 26? She still looked the same) years, sometimes had trouble with sensing all the Time Streams at once. When the TARDIS didn't have a roof, she hadn't looked up. She hadn't needed to, with her residual Time Lady-ness. But Tobin did, and so he knew. That knowing, it cluttered his brain like the trinkets of an old woman cluttered her house.
Lupa may have lost her heart that day on the road, but Tobin had lost his mind. Just a little.
In this yet-to-come place, him and Rose tiptoed around their correctly camouflaged TARDIS, currently a wooden hut, to look where they'd landed. After checking for potential bandits, mercenaries, or McDonald's employees (you never knew where you'd find them), they walked out into the open, just as a couple of people could be heard coming from behind.
"No, I'm not going to let you bring back a Frutengebber. Rory doesn't like them."
"He may be my husband, but I wear the pants in this family. You, Raggedy Man, can't stop me."
"Amelia," the man pleaded.
"Doctor," Amelia mockingly replied.
Rose stiffened, and then she ran. Tobin heard the door shut on the TARDIS before he even said a word. She hadn't even seen what he looked like, and already, she was leaving. This, the leaving before she could start something, was a trait Tobin knew she'd learned because of the Doctor, because she'd said once that the man loved too much, so much that he went blind to things like fixed points and interfering. She wanted to interfere, but she knew better, better than his leftover instincts.
So Tobin let her.
Just in time too; this Doctor and his new companion had found him. "Hello! I'm the Doctor and this is Amy. Who are you?"
"My name is Tobin," he said formally. "Nice to meet you."
"Wow. I haven't met a Tobin in a while." The Doctor smiled widely. "Nice to meet you, too."
"What're you doing here?" Amy asked. "You don't look alien at all."
Tobin's lips curled up slightly. "What were you expecting, exactly? I look fairly normal for my species."
Amy rolled her eyes. "You look fairly human, actually. Why here? This isn't Earth."
"I could ask you the same question." Tobin was consciously steering the conversation away from him. Somewhere inside him wanted to protect Rose. He knew it was irrational, but if the Doctor knew him and why and how he was here, then he would find Rose, and all this would have been for nothing.
"Now, now, children." The Doctor raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Tobin has his own business just like you and I, Amy. As long as he goes on his way, we'll go on ours. Nothing to worry about."
Tobin nodded his head. "Agreed. I am here for no reason in particular anyway."
"Then how did you end up here?" Amy quirked a red brow.
"Lupa plugged in some coordinates, I don't know," Tobin said, getting a bit frustrated.
Amy latched onto this. "Who's Lupa? Is she your girlfriend?"
"She's married." Tobin glared at her fiercely. "We're friends, nothing more."
"She must be smart, to get you all the way out here," the Doctor remarked. "This is rather a tricky spot to park a ship in."
Tobin shrugged. It was true; jungle surrounded them on all sides. Dense foliage and multiple trees crossed Tobin's field of vision as he glanced around. "Our ship isn't that large."
"I want to meet this woman," Amy said, folding her arms. "You're suspicious, and she's not here."
The Doctor gave Tobin a sheepish look. "Could we meet her? I just want to say hello."
And of course, despite Tobin's best effort, Rose and the Doctor would be seeing each other again. "Sure. I'll go get her."
He walked away as calmly as he could before darting into the TARDIS, saying, "Lupa, they won't take no for an answer. The Doctor and Amy kept pestering me to introduce you. I'm sorry, I tried my best to get them to leave us alone."
Rose stood up from her chair, steadily putting on the healer-and-mediator visage she used in parliaments and battlefields. Her white dress elegantly hugged her body, giving her a gentle and yet untouchable air. Her blonde hair had been coiled into a intricate bun at the back of her head. She wasn't Rose anymore, she was Lupa, and she made Tobin sad. "Alright."
The two of them left the TARDIS as partners, a unified front. Lupa folded her hands together in front of her, and Tobin held his hands behind his back. She looked every bit the noble, and he looked every bit her companion.
When they emerged from the trees and into the clearing where the Doctor and Amy waited, the Doctor took one look at Lupa and put a hand over his mouth in shock. Amy looked skeptical, but then, Tobin hadn't seen another side of her. "You're Lupa, then?"
"Yes, I'm Lupa," she replied, bowing her head softly. "And you are?"
"I'm Amy, and that man's the Doctor." Amy jabbed him in the gut with her elbow, and the man was shaken out of his stupor. "Yes, I'm the Doctor."
Tobin took this awkward chance to catalogue the differences between this man and the one Rose had fallen in love with. He wore much the same, except the suit was a different color, and he had a bowtie. He had the youngest face, barely old enough for laugh lines, and hair that didn't spike up everywhere.
In other words, Tobin could barely associate the two.
But there was something in his eyes, something Rose had in hers, something unimaginably old and sad, something that had seen too much and knew too much. And Tobin knew just a little about that.
Lupa coolly stared at Amy and the Doctor, as if silently challenging them. "And what are your intentions here?"
The Doctor laughed nervously. "Sightseeing?" He said it like a question.
"Really." Lupa quirked an eyebrow. Tobin thought to himself that she could pull it off better than Amy. "Are you sure?"
"Yep. Yes, I'm definitely sure," the Doctor stuttered. Apparently, Rose still had the power to make him speechless. Tobin felt a wave of affection for her. Even after all this time, she could still make her husband lose his words when he looked at her.
Lupa must have been thinking along the same lines, because her sharp gaze softened around the edges. "Welcome."
"You're new here, too. Shouldn't we be saying welcome as well?" The Doctor stared at his shoes.
She laughed, the chandelier laugh. "I suppose so." Turning to Amy, Lupa said, "Shall we explore?"
Amy, a bit surprised at the polite query, went off with her, the two women talking about the foliage. Tobin sighed. Something only women can do.
Tobin once more focused on the Doctor. The man had been running a hand through his hair, causing it to stand up in strange places. "How long have you known Lupa?" he asked.
He thought about that. Projects per planet generally took weeks, and they'd been so many places. "I actually don't know. The days kind of blur together. She doesn't look any older; I'm sure I do, though." He paused. "How long have you known Amy?"
"Well, technically, we've been traveling for around a year or two, but she's had me for around twelve years."
"Ah, time travel." Tobin nodded. "That makes sense."
The Doctor didn't bother questioning him on that. "Who is she? Lupa?" But the questions kept coming about other things.
Tobin shrugged noncommittally. "I saw her on the road, and she told me to come traveling with her. So I did. I trusted her immediately."
"No secrets between you two?"
"I don't see how that's your business. While I don't have any secrets, Lupa can keep hers. She deserves a fresh start after what happened."
"And what did happen?"
Tobin sighed. He could just let it go. Or not. "Her husband died, she needed a friend, so I came traveling with her. I'd appreciate if you leave Lupa alone."
The Doctor frowned. "I have seen her before. But where?" he muttered, and Tobin wanted to scream. This man had put Rose through more than anyone should have to go through, and he couldn't even bother to remember her. He understood that this Doctor wasn't the same man as Rose's Doctor, but they were the same person in the end.
"Lupa and I have errands to be running," Tobin said abruptly, seeing Lupa and Amy emerge from the trees. "Planets to save, messes to clean up. Nice meeting you, Doctor."
He hoped the Doctor would remember them now, and remember that what he left behind was sometimes the same caliber of what he tried to fix. But he knew better than to think that would ever happen.
Tobin only flew the TARDIS once.
They'd gotten caught in the middle of a Sontaran battle, brutal and hopeless. Civilians were being trampled and their homes destroyed, and Rose and Tobin were running, getting as many people out as they could. But she got hit by a blaster. Just a stray blast that didn't hit its target.
Tobin had to carry her back to the TARDIS, princess-style, cradling her head in the crook of his arm. It wasn't like one or both of them hadn't gotten injured, but never this bad. Once inside, he laid her on the floor as gently as he could. He turned to the entirely complicated machine in front of him and tried to recall any specific details about flying it.
Well, Rose normally started with coordinates. Tobin didn't know any coordinates, but he did know that healing technology was very advanced in the year 5000. Alright, he knew the coordinates for the year, but the place? Not so much.
When he tried to punch in random coordinates, however, the machine lurched under him. It began to fade out. The TARDIS knew where it was going, apparently. Now, he just had to keep it on track. He pushed buttons, pulled levers, twisted twisty-things, stepped on a few other things, and somehow, they landed without dying.
Tobin kicked the door of the TARDIS open, carrying Rose through as well. This...wasn't what he expected.
They seemed to be in a sort of prison, inside a cell, no less. A female prisoner with wildly curly hair slept on the cot pushed up against the wall. Tobin hoped she wasn't that dangerous; Rose needed a hospital, real care, and he really didn't want to make the situation worse.
"Hello?" he whispered. "Are you awake?" When he received no response, he tried again, louder, "Hello? My friend needs help."
He then got a gun to the throat. "Hello, sweetie," the now-awake woman replied, a smile gracing her face. "What are you doing in my cell? You know I'm a criminal, don't you?"
"My friend needs help," Tobin croaked out. "She was hit by a blaster and she's really hurt."
The woman glanced down at Rose, who'd started whimpering. Her eyes lost their hard quality and she said, "Okay. I can fix her."
Tobin breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright. Good. Really good." He may or may not have collapsed on the floor, asleep, as soon as the last sentence came out of his mouth.
...
A few hours of fuzzy dreams later, he woke up, a bright light searing his eyes.
"Rose?" he asked, blindly fumbling for something to grab on to. "Where are you?"
"Your friend is fine, love," an unfamiliar woman's voice replied, accompanied by a warm hand feeling his forehead. "Nope, no fever on you. I checked earlier, you don't have any broken bones, just some bruises. You'll be good to go in a little while."
"Who are you, exactly?" Tobin wondered blearily, his vision only just coming into focus. The woman standing over him had curly, brown and blonde hair and full lips. She seemed to wear her prison uniform like a thousand-quid dress, and a smile like the sun.
"Professor River Song. Nice to meet you." She held out her hand for him to shake, and once he had, she pulled him up off the floor. "I should probably know your name too, since your friend already has one."
"Tobin Lancaster." He ran a hand through his incredibly, almost impossibly messy hair. Tobin couldn't remember the last time he had a haircut, but he did know that he could probably do without one for a while longer. His hair didn't grow very fast.
Of course, that lent credibility to the fact that he probably was still in shock: caring about his hair for once.
"How did you end up here?" River Song asked, folding her arms. "This is the StormCage Containment Facility, no one is supposed to get in or out."
"I just pressed a few buttons and pulled a few levers, I don't know." Tobin wildly gestured to the machine behind him. "I don't ever fly that thing, I barely know how it works."
Her brow furrowed in confusion. "She flies it normally, then. Rose."
"Yes. She built it, from someone else's instructions, and she's the only person I know who can fly it. Well, maybe he does."
"He?"
Tobin snapped his jaw shut. "Er...damn, Rose will be so angry if I tell you. Can we just avoid that for a while?"
River Song, and wasn't that an interesting name, nodded, but walked carefully over to the door to the TARDIS. "I just want to see the inside of it. I've never seen a ship that looks like a tiny prison cell before."
And there was the catch to the camouflage: it managed to make itself look like the most conspicuous thing it could.
Tobin tried to warn River Song away from the TARDIS, but she opened the door, looked inside, and shut the door abruptly. Again, she opened the door, looked inside, and shut the door. "That...shouldn't be possible."
"What, the bigger in the interior? That's fully possible. It's like fitting a whole dimension inside of a space. Rose explained it to me once, but I got a little lost," Tobin said sheepishly. "I took politics, not really any strange physics courses."
"Not that. I've seen that before, in a different place." River Song also looked like she'd seen a ghost, but Tobin didn't want to point that out.
"You might have, but it's more likely your brain was trying to trick you. This is one of the last TARDISes in existence." Just then, Tobin realized. "Oh."
River Song turned to face him. "The Doctor said that his was the only TARDIS he'd managed to save."
"He was telling the truth," Tobin placated. "Rose built this one herself."
"There aren't any means to do so, much less Time Lords."
"He'd hidden supplies away in Cardiff just in case his TARDIS broke down again. And the other part..." he trailed off. How did one explain how Time Lord knowledge ended up in the hands of two humans?
"Rose can't be...the species died out."
"Well, she kind of absorbed the Time Lord essence from one of the last Time Lords, the half-human Doctor. Actually, not kind of, she did."
River Song stared at Tobin for a moment, and stared at Rose, asleep on the cot, another moment in silence. "She must have been so sad."
This caught him off guard. "Why?"
And the woman smiled, a soft, melancholy smile. "Because, Tobin, her whole world came crashing down in order to build that TARDIS and have that knowledge. I'm starting to believe there is no way around a tragic ending for those who see what we've seen. It may be beautiful and amazing, but she, and you, and me, and countless other people, are headed for sadness. I wouldn't trade the life I live for a different life, but that's my decision. Hers was made by someone else, and that's not fair."
Tobin's lips quirked up. "Whoever said that life would be fair deserves a beating for saying it, but a trophy for getting everyone to believe it."
"That's awfully cynical."
"You've seen the worlds out there. So have I. So has she. If I escaped with only cynicism, then there's been quite the victory."
...
When Rose finally woke up, she saw River Song standing over her. A gasp left her lips, and she immediately sat up, only to lay back down, dizzy and aching. "Sweetheart, you got hit by a blaster. You'll be alright soon."
Rose didn't ask where she was, because Tobin assumed she already knew. She tended to know things like that. "Who are you?"
"River Song." She ran a hand over Rose's forehead, in a gesture that was supposed to be checking for fever, but Tobin just thought was for comfort. It seemed to work; Rose relaxed a little into the cot. "How do you feel?"
"Like I've been recently hit by a blaster," Rose quipped, and Tobin breathed a sigh of relief. She was making jokes, she'd be fine.
River smiled. "That makes sense. Can I scan you with the medscanner?"
Suddenly, Rose's body language shut down. Tobin knew why: she didn't want people to know what she was and try to take advantage of her. A Time Lady, alive or dead, could change the world, and Rose wanted to have a say in what parts of the world got changed. Tobin nudged her, and nodded when Rose turned her head to look at him. She relaxed, and River scanned her.
When River stood back up, she read all that the medscanner had found and pressed 'Erase' on the information. Before Rose could say anything, River interjected, "You appear to be in good health. The treatment worked like a charm, and you and Tobin are free to go." She winked.
Rose blushed a little. "Thank you, River."
"Any time, darling." River kissed Rose on the top of her head. "If you ever need anything, give me a call or drop by, alright?"
"Okay." Rose threw her arms around the other woman and squeezed. In that moment, she looked like a little girl. Tobin had seen her that way before, like she hadn't gotten the chance to grow up before becoming an adult. River pulled her into her lap, and Tobin smiled softly. Rose would be okay.
He went back inside the TARDIS and waited for Rose to come back. They had more places to go yet.
The first time Tobin took care of a child, he and Rose had landed in Verona, Italy. It was early, perhaps 1300, and people kept calling her Rosaline. There was a boy, hardly seventeen years old, who wouldn't leave her alone, always asking her to marry him.
Of course, Rose was already married, but this boy was either too blind to see the ring, or too infatuated to care. She finally had to tell him she was never going to get married, maybe by saying, 'I'm going to join a nunnery', but whatever she had said, the boy was very distraught. Tobin noticed him walking around the city at four in the morning, sighing and lamenting as he went. His friends tried to get him to go to a party, where they said he could meet many women more beautiful than Rosaline, but the boy insisted he would find no one to replace her.
And then, someone did, a girl that looked about fourteen called Juliet.
The story made sense right about then. Somehow, they'd landed in Romeo and Juliet as it was happening. But the playwright had missed something, namely, that the apothecary was wanted for several counts of intergalactic murder. When everything was said and done, Romeo and Juliet still ended up dead, but the apothecary was turned over to the proper authorities.
They stayed for a while longer, hoping that Lords Montague and Capulet would manage to keep their peace. Tobin went to the TARDIS records to assure that no negative events happened before they needed to.
Just before they left, Lady Capulet asked him and Rose to preside over the birthing of her next child. In court, the two of them had become very influential, and Lady Capulet wanted to take advantage of the gossip. To appease her, they both went.
The delivery lasted hours, hours of screaming and pain, and at least Tobin was a man, so he wasn't allowed in the room until the child was born. He couldn't handle blood very well. Rose was the healer, not him. He dealt with politics for a reason. When he finally heard a baby crying, he rushed inside the room. "Is the child alright?" he asked.
Lady Capulet took one look at the newborn and screeched. "I did not want another girl! A female cannot inherit any land or titles, and we can't have another fiasco like the one with that brat, Romeo. Lord Capulet would agree with me, there is no place for that thing here!" And Tobin's heart broke for that little girl, who had barely been alive for a minute and was being rejected.
"You may not want her, but I do," Tobin said dangerously, his voice dropping to nearly a whisper. "If you won't take care of her, and love her like she is supposed to be loved, then I will."
Rose's gaze hardened, and she nodded. "I agree. We can take your child with us if you don't want her, but you have to tell us."
Lady Capulet looked scornfully at the bundle in blankets. "I would have killed her myself, you people are removing the blood from my hands."
Tobin reached down and carefully took the little girl in his arms. She was so small, her body neatly fitting against his chest, her tiny eyes still closed. He couldn't understand why someone would let their child go, especially one as beautiful as her.
He fell in love with her as soon as her eyes opened: big blue eyes that were almost too big for her face.
...
Back on the TARDIS, he named her in the middle of a trip. "Dorabella. That's what we'll call you. There was someone special named Dorabella once, someone whose name saved the world. You're that special."
Rose smiled; he'd taken to talking to the baby constantly, and she'd told him she thought it was sweet. She helped take care of her sometimes, but Dorabella had taken an instant liking to Tobin, which meant she spent a lot of time in his arms. He loved holding her, even when she was squirmy or dead-weight-asleep.
Somehow, Dorabella had become his world. He took shorter missions now, as taking care of her became priority. Rose spent more and more time outside the TARDIS, fixing what could be fixed, and she didn't mind her job so much anymore. It had started as a sad, dutiful thing, but now, she loved it. Tobin was so proud of Rose, and what they had both accomplished. He wouldn't have Dorabella without her.
Every night, he woke up to Dora crying, and he would sing off-key songs to her until she fell back asleep. Some nights, he wouldn't even leave Dora's side, sleeping on the floor next to her crib. With every day that went by, Tobin promised her to always be there for her, no matter what. He knew she couldn't understand him, but that didn't make any difference.
Tobin was going to keep Dorabella safe.
Rose Tyler Smith was tired.
Tobin counted her birthdays, better than he counted his own, and Rose had turned 27 years old, but already he could see the age in her eyes, her once-golden eyes. Twenty-seven wasn't that old, Tobin thought he was about twenty-nine himself, but they carried the weight of eons on their shoulders. He was tired too; Rose just looked a little more.
He noticed once on a planet called Midnight, with the ground made of diamonds, and in the middle of the Pandorica mess, and so many other times, but there hadn't been a proper time to mention it until a few months after he adopted Dora.
This was an instinct. He had to say something, now.
"Rose?" he asked gently.
She looked at him, with the gaze he was giving her, and Dora in his arms, and a few tears slipped down her cheeks. "I want to go home."
"Come on then. Dorabella and I want to see where you grew up, in this dimension."
Rose nodded. Pulling a few levers and pressing a few buttons, along with entering some coordinates that Tobin still didn't understand, she flew their TARDIS away.
They walked out of the machine onto green grass and breathing fresh air. Tobin knew that he was on Earth again, familiar Earth, with its joggers and sidewalks and stupid ringtones. He smiled brilliantly; so did Rose. She ran through Hyde Park, laughing, practically making grass-angels. Even Dora felt happy here, in this place they'd all been born in, this beautiful planet.
Tobin ran with Dora in his baby carrier, songs getting caught and tossed away by the wind. It was summer, summer in London, and the sky had decided to avoid the clouds, at least for today. Maybe it was the feeling all the residents of the TARDIS had, the happiness that tangled through their every movement, or maybe the day was pretty all by itself, but everything felt so amazingly special. This day, right now, felt like falling in love, and sunshine, and music, and hope.
He wondered why they hadn't come back to Earth sooner. But he didn't say so.
Their time on Earth, all together, lasted six months, eighteen days. On the nineteenth day, Rose woke up that morning completely restless, like she'd drank too much coffee, or sat in a cubicle for hours.
The three of them had rented Rose's mum's old flat, a building with friendly neighbours and too many stairs. Tobin had gotten used to carrying Dora up a few flights of steps now, but in the beginning, it was absolute hell on his back. And calves. And thighs. He only felt old on those stairs, so that was definite progress.
Since Tobin was generally at home with Dora, Rose got a job in nursing at St Bart's Hospital. She was the brightest face most of the patients ever saw. In addition to that, she ended up part of a government scheme through people who recognized her, which included a cover-up for a faked suicide. After that one job, however, she stayed out of government business, because there was a man at the funeral, John was his name, who made her sad.
Tobin thought Rose was in a good place here, back in familiar territory, still helping people, still loving life with him and Dora. She missed the Doctor, but that was normal. Sometimes, he'd see her staring at the ring on her finger with a pained expression. Tobin was supposed to be her friend, he did ask her if she was alright, but she brushed him off once or twice. It wasn't his business, so he let it go.
He couldn't let everything go, though. He had to learn that.
The day Rose woke up restless, Tobin saw her and sighed. "You can't be here anymore."
"It's not you," she said quickly. "You're my best friend, and Dora is beyond amazing. It's just..."
Tobin gave her the look, the look he'd used from the beginning, the I-can-see-when-you're-shitting-me-and-it's-not-going-to-work. "Rose Tyler Smith, if you need to go, then you need to go. No one can tell you what will make you happy but yourself, not me, not Dora, not the bloody Doctor. I'll always be here for you if you need to come back."
Rose smiled, relieved. "How have you always known what to say?"
"I don't know. I guess I just...know."
And she laughed, and this was worth it. "Isn't that a bit contradictory?"
Tobin laughed too. "Miss Time Lady?"
"Touché."
...
Dora's first word had been 'Bye'. Tobin had wondered about that, but now he didn't have to.
Rose packed her suitcase, fitting as many clothes in that tiny bag as humanly, well, inhumanly possible. As she rolled the case behind her, she looked back at Tobin and Dora and waved. Dora waved back and said, "Bye-bye!"
She nearly turned back. Rose nearly came back when Dora said that, but she didn't. She went into the TARDIS and closed the door.
Tobin watched the machine fade away, in the doorway to the flat that had once been Jackie Tyler's, in a different dimension, with an adopted daughter on his hip, remembering a woman in the road, in his own dimension, with a dying man in her arms. He remembered his instinct that she was important. He wondered what he might have been had he not ran to her that day, years ago now.
Tobin wondered, but he didn't say so.
And done. Reviews are my sunshine! I love sunshine!