Note: I apologize for the shortness of this chapter, but it seemed the best place to break it. The next one will be longer though I am fairly busy at the moment, so might not update frequently. Also, a warning for those of you who like quick stories, because this isn't going to be one. I'm a big fan of Farscape and I always thought that with the Doctor being the way he is it would take a while (like with John and Arynn) to get together and involve lots of awkward moments. I hope you enjoy!

Chapter 1

It had been three years since she died. Three years since her frail human heart had been broken. Two years since she had gathered it back together, not healed, but working, and gotten a job. Now she stood at the edge of her creation. A machine that she had built mostly in secret in a hidden room behind her office.

Rose Tyler, defender of the Earth, was about to go home.

Let's rewind the story a bit, start at the beginning of the end. He had dumped her on this alien world, possibly more alien than any she had ever visited. Sure, she had her mum and a dad and Mickey, but he was gone. Her Doctor. He said that they would never, ever be able to see each other again. Of course, he had been wrong before. For the first year of her new life, she wept. At night she would lay in bed, trying to imagine the happy thrum of the TARDIS or the clanging and buzzing of tinkering from down the hall. She couldn't go outside, because she would find herself always looking around every corner, straining her ears for that ethereal sound. Her parents and friends worried. The one thing that managed to make her look up, stand straight, and smile, was the first time she held her little brother. Jackie was overjoyed to see Rose smile again, as she gently coddled the delicate infant.

A year after the incident at Canary Wharf, Rose was sitting at the table having breakfast with her parents and brother.

"I think I'll get a job," She stated over her cereal.

Jackie and Pete looked up, Tony cooed.

"There's an opening at that shop down in the village, sweetheart, you can go there." Jackie spoke softly.

"You know," her dad piped up, "I could always find a spot for you at Torchwood. Your expertise would be greatly valued..."

"Pete!" Her mother hissed.

"No, no, it's o.k mum," Rose responded, "I... I think I can do some good there yah know. Keep going, like w-I used to." She had to catch herself from saying 'we' as it immediately brought up images of brown eyes and messy hair.

"You sure?" her mom asked, worry evident on her face. Rose hadn't been very good at hiding what she was originally going to say.

"Yes mum, I'm sure. I can start tomorrow."

"O.k..." her father said, and the room resumed a peaceful, if slightly sad, silence.

As soon as she walked into work on her first day, she was greeted enthusiastically by her new teammates. Mickey was in charge of field operations, Jake was second in command, Jennifer knew everything about computers, and Asia was the doctor. Pete was, of course, head of command, but that meant that they would hardly ever see him as he was nearly always busy thinking up cover stories and keeping the government happy.

Mickey had the strict rule to dress casually, but be ready for anything. So most of the group had on jeans and shoes that they could run in if they had to. Rose liked them immediately. She was appointed the expert on aliens, and had gained instant respect from her teammates. Maybe they saw the pain and strength in her gaze. Who knows. Either way she sort of became in charge of the team after a few months.

"Rose! Rose!" Jennifer rushed in through the open doors in Rose's office. Rose had been sitting at her desk, going over some files on the sycorax ship they had chased off last week. She set them down neatly and turned to face the kind woman in front of her.

"Yes Jennifer, what is it?"

"I found that book that you requested." She handed rose a package wrapped in brown paper.

Rose's face lit up and she beamed at her friend, "Thank you so much! I wonder what I would ever do without you."

As she took the book, Jennifer looked a little sheepish and asked, "If you don't mind, what exactly are you planning to do with it? I took the liberty of scanning through the first couple of pages, but it's way too complicated for me to understand. And no offence, but last time you tried to fix a computer you accidentally wiped half the memory."

Rose cringed inwardly at the memory of that little mishap, but remained outwardly calm and just gave her colleague a small smile. The one that meant that it had to do with her past and she didn't want to tell. Everyone was quite familiar with that particular look, especially recently when Rose started requesting for strange equipment and lots and lots of books on everything from basic mathematics to crazy transdimentional machine theories.

Jennifer sighed and left Rose to her books. Rose waited until Jennifer had walked down the hallway to her own office before getting up and closing the door. There was work to be done.

Ever since she was touched by that alien during her third day on the job, Rose had been able to remember everything that she heard or read. At first it was quite a shock. She had just finished reading a book that her mother had bought at a clearance sale at a bookstore, when her mother had asked about a certain scene. Rose was a little surprised at herself when she could remember the exact wording of the scene, and got a little freaked when she realized that she could also remember all the scenes before and after that one in complete detail, including a small typo on the 147th page. Of course the first thing she did was head over to the Torchwood med bay and have Asia do a full examination. Asia was confused at Rose's insistence of an exam, but went through with it and found nothing out of the ordinary, besides a small increase in brain activity. She brushed this off to the stress and worry of the job.

Everyone on the team had been trained in basic psychic protection to stop any thoughts floating free in front of telepathic aliens. Rose played around with the barriers she had put up and found that she could make them a lot stronger than ever before. Then she managed to recall something the alien had said to her. It had told her that she would be so much more. When the alien had first said it to her, she had brushed it off as meaning that she could be so much more, but now she wasn't so sure. The alien's touch had felt weird, and now that she thinks about it harder, maybe the beautiful creature had been inside her mind a little as well. It was an odd feeling.

Rose shook her head from the memory and opened the book. She had quite a bit of reading to do.

Standing outwardly relaxed and inwardly nervous, she surveyed the complex car-sized machine in front of her. The machine that would, supposedly, allow her to hop from this world to a parallel one, and not just any parallel world, but the one she grew up in. The one that her home was in. The one with her Doctor. A note in her handwriting sat outside the room on her desk. It didn't say much, but included goodbyes to her friends and family and a short explanation to where she hoped she would be. The machine whirred to life as the fit young woman shimmied into the harness that was connected to it by a thin electrical chord. It was biologically activated to her unique DNA signature to make sure no one else could happen upon it and use it, it was a one way trip after all.

Rose put on her backpack, filled with everything she would need for survival in a place where she was dead, took a deep breath, and hit the bright yellow button on the chest of the harness. She crackled with blue and gold energy, then everything went black.