One Thursday afternoon, Rose walked down to the Powell Estates. Obviously she nor anyone she knew had ever lived there in this universe, but it was still a little semblance of where she'd grown up. So she wandered around the playground and chatted a little bit with this world's Shireen, older with a toddler and no idea who she was, but they had a nice little casual conversation nonetheless. And Rose just strolled about in the place she one lived... in an alternate universe.
And as she was strolling, she caught sight of an unobtrusive blue police box parked off the sidewalk. She stopped short. But... it couldn't be. Maybe on this world they just still had police boxes. But wouldn't Mickey have warned her? And she'd been in this world for months now, wouldn't she have already seen one?
But if it wasn't a real police box, that really only left one alternative.
She stepped closer. It wasn't her TARDIS, it couldn't be. Besides it'd clearly been stationed here for a while. Grass had grown up around the bottom and a vine had begun to make it's way up one side. Moving closer, Rose could see a thin layer of dust on the door.
From all accounts, the Doctor didn't exist in this universe. She'd checked and checked again. She knew in her world he'd spent a couple of solid years in the seventies and worked with UNIT, but she'd read over their records no less than a half dozen times and even made a call to the man who'd been in charge at the time, one now-retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, politely asking if he'd ever met a man called the Doctor or even a Dr. John Smith, with no luck.
However, Rose mused, just because the Doctor didn't exist in this universe, that didn't necessarily mean the TARDIS didn't either.
Well, she thought, there's only one was to test this theory, and she pulled on the chain around her neck, her TARDIS key dangling from the bottom. Looping the chain over her head, she slid the key easily into the lock, turned it and stepped inside.
"Bigger on the inside," she whispered with a small smile. It looked the exactly the same, like she'd never left. Which didn't make sense since she'd never been in this TARDIS before, but there it was. "I don't understand," she muttered, walking over to the console and putting her hand on it lovingly.
Suddenly a flash of images hit her. She saw what almost looked like a junkyard on a planet with an orange sky. In the middle of the scene was what looked like an old refrigerator, large with rounded edges and painted light blue. And as Rose watched, a girl with brown curly hair and large blue eyes approached the TARDIS. And just like that Rose knew that the fridge was the TARDIS, the same one she stood in now, and she knew that the chameleon circuit had always been a little sticky. In the next moment she knew the scene took place on Gallifrey and the young woman was actually a Time Lord named Romanadvoratrelundar, who happened to be in the market for a TARDIS. Rose watched as she opened the large blue door and stepped into the fridge.
From there a quick series of images flashed through Rose's mind of Romana in different times and planets. Eventually the haughty brunette became a friendlier blonde in a straw hat, but the images continued until one short frame: Romana surrounded by Daleks, then a blast, her body wracked with electricity, her skeleton visible for a split second, and then she crumpled to the floor. Dead.
Rose saw the TARDIS, now in it's familiar police box form, on a street corner of an unfamiliar alien world, waiting for the Time Lord who would never return.
And there it remained for years, with nowhere else to go. With the years came the Time War, annihilating the Daleks, the Time Lords and the TARDISes in one fell swoop.
The last TARDIS and no one to pilot it.
Until one day a message came. Across the Void came the knowledge of the Bad Wolf. Apparently Rose had not only made her mark on space and time, but dimensions as well. So the TARDIS was gifted with knowing that she would come and went to wait for her in the only place it knew to: the Powell Estates, London, England, Earth.
With that the images finished and Rose stared at the console in awe.
"You've been waiting all this time for me?" she whispered, stunned. Thoughtfully she added, "I guess there really is no Doctor in this universe."
The TARDIS hummed slightly in sad agreement.
"But why me?" Rose asked. "I'm no Time Lord."
However, with her connection to the Time Vortex, which she now learned would never be completely gone, she was as close as it came in this universe.
"But I don't know how to fly you," she countered. "The Doctor never taught me."
The TARDIS assured her that it could teach her and Rose began to feel some hope for the first time since Canary Wharf. She wasn't alone anymore.
She grinned. "You and me, then?" And the TARDIS thrummed happily. Pulling her cellphone out of her pocket, Rose dialled Mickey.
"Hey, what're you doing this weekend?" she asked, wide smile on her face. "I found my own place, think you and Jake could help me move in?"