At the Academy, there's a saying — a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing, one of those too-often-repeated bits of conventional wisdom that's long overstayed its welcome but never seems to go away. Senior students repeat it to incoming cadets constantly, during first-year orientation. Professors work it into their intro lectures and joke unsubtly about in their syllabi. The Academy uses it, completely seriously, in their official recruitment literature.
They say that your first duty shift, on your first assignment, sets the tone for the rest of your Starfleet career.
If that's true, Rose isn't sure she's going to survive long enough to have a career.
About four hours into her first duty shift, Rose is pulled away from the task of plotting a complex and frustrating astrogation chart with an order from the bridge — report to the hangar bay, Lieutenant Tyler. She's almost glad for an excuse to leave the tedious, if necessary, task behind, though she's also got no idea what the hangar staff could possibly need a brand-new ops lieutenant for.
Rose runs through half a dozen possibilities on the turbolift ride down to Deck Fifteen. None of them, however, account for the presence of the captain.
When she walks into the hangar bay he's standing next to one of the shuttles, hands shoved in his pockets as he rocks back and forth on his heels. There's a small group of ensigns milling around him, apparently prepping the shuttle for something, but the Doctor doesn't appear to be helping. He's just standing there, looking at the corridor she's just come out of and grinning like an absolute loon.
He greets Rose with a bright "Hello!" as she makes her way over, pulling a hand from his pocket to wave in her general direction. "Glad you could make it."
The Doctor says it with real enthusiasm, real excitement — as though Rose had a choice, like she's graciously accepted an invitation rather than simply followed an order. It's sort of charming.
"Cap—" She stops, already halfway through the reflexive acknowledgment of rank, when he frowns. "—er, Doctor. Commander Noble said I'd need to report to the hangar bay? Didn't say why."
"Ah!" Again, the Doctor frowns slightly, though Rose has a feeling that this time the expression isn't directed at her. "I might've known that she wouldn't. Well then, Rose Tyler, allow me to welcome you to the first away team of this mission."
Rose starts a little, surprised. She's got a feeling that's going to be a regular occurrence over the next few years. "Away team? Where to?" She shoots the captain a questioning look. "We're barely four hours out of dock. What's there to see?"
The Doctor waves her over to a nearby console, and brings up what seems to be basic telemetry for an M-class planet. "A fascinating little world, that's what. We've picked up traces of some very interesting and complex organic compounds on one of the northernmost continents. Metallurgical scans also reveal high concentrations of quite a few minerals that are exceedingly rare on Earth." He looks up from the console and glances over at her, eyes dancing with excitement. "Plus, I hear the sunsets are brilliant."
"And we're here to survey sunsets, are we?" Rose can't help the teasing lilt that creeps into her voice, or the way her lips quirk up at the edges. She's pleased to see the answering gleam in his eyes, the corresponding tug of amusement at the corner of his mouth. "Didn't think those rated very high on the Starfleet priority list."
"We-eeell, not strictly speaking, no. But those are the most important bits, I think. The things you aren't looking for." He turns another blinding grin towards her. "That's what I'm out here for, anyhow."
Rose can't help smiling back. His enthusiasm is contagious, and she's really all too happy to be infected with it. She imagines they must look ridiculous, standing there bent over a console, grinning dumbly at each other like absolute nutters. She doesn't give a toss.
The sound of a throat being cleared uncomfortably breaks the spell of the moment. Rose tears her eyes from the Doctor's and whips around. Standing behind them is a young, sandy-haired man in a blue science uniform, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and fiddling with the strap of the supply bag slung over his shoulder.
The Doctor makes a face — something like a scowl, but infinitely less harsh — when he sees the new arrival. "Oh, what are you doing here?" he asks petulantly. "I asked for Martha. Where's Martha?"
The young man shifts again and lets go of the shoulder strap to fiddle with his hands, as though he's not sure what to do with them. "She, er, wanted me to tell you that we're only four hours out of spacedock, and she's got a medbay to outfit and exams to conduct and she hasn't got time to enable you while you hop off to the first uncharted M-class planet you can find." He pauses, then adds, almost as an afterthought, "Sir."
The Doctor scowls — properly, this time — and Rose has to suppress a laugh. "Fine." he sniffs. "Right then. Rose, this is Rory. Rory, Rose. Let's get down to the planet now, eh?" He closes the telemetry report on the console, then turns and heads back towards the shuttle.
The man whose name is apparently Rory extends a hand for Rose to shake. "You're Lieutenant Tyler, right?" Rose nods, and accepts the firm handshake. "I'm Ensign Williams, from Medical. Or, you know, Rory. If you hadn't noticed, we're not much for ranks and titles on the TARDIS."
"I'd noticed, yeah." Rose says wryly. "I don't mind." She really doesn't. It's not what she expected, for sure, but the lack of formality on the TARDIS is mostly just…comfortable. She's only been on the ship a few hours, but from what she can tell nobody actually breaks protocol, or blatantly disregards the chain of command. It's not even that everyone skips over rank and proper address entirely, because not everyone does. There's just an easy sensibility to the whole ship — like seniority and station aren't things they really need in order to know who's the best at what, or who should go where and when, or who ought (or ought not) to be listened to.
Rory nods, and drops her hand. "Right. Just Rose, then?"
"That'll do fine, yeah."
"Oi!" Rose turns around to see the Doctor hanging out of the shuttle door, one hand clutching the frame, body half inside the ship and half out. "What're you lot waiting for? There's a planet to see!"
The planet they're surveying is, according to preliminary readings, home to a pre-spaceflight culture. Rose is fairly certain this means they ought to be using transporters to get to the surface — even with the shuttle cloaked, they still run the risk of someone catching a glimpse of them, either in the sky or on the ground — but the Doctor insists that wouldn't be nearly as much fun.
Rose has a sneaking suspicion that the Doctor uses this reasoning to justify a lot of things. She feels a pang of sympathy for Commander Noble.
They're en route to the planet's surface now, and the Doctor and Rory are bickering over something or other in the open area behind the pilot's console, but Rose isn't listening. She's much too busy flying.
It isn't the helmsman's seat on the bridge, but it'll do for now. The feel of the smooth console beneath her hands is as familiar as her own heartbeat, and just as steadying. It's not difficult, guiding the shuttle up and out of the hangar bay, down towards the planet and through the atmosphere, but Rose allows herself to take a little more time doing it than is strictly necessary — just enjoying herself, and the experience.
Once they've passed through the atmosphere, though, the task of piloting is increasingly mundane. Rose is setting course for the coordinates they're meant to explore when the Doctor settles into the co-pilot's seat next to her. Briefly, she looks up and away from the console to meet his eyes, and finds them studying her with interest.
"Some pretty nice flying there." The Doctor's voice is appreciative.
She shrugs, and goes back to adjusting their course to account for weather patterns and wind speed. "Just basic shuttle piloting. 'S not anything special."
"Oh, but you are something special."
Rose hazards another glance at him. From anyone else, she'd have sworn that was a come-on. Coming from the Doctor, it sounds sincere — and the open, good-natured look on his face matches the genuine tone of his voice.
The Doctor continues. "I've seen your Academy record. High honors all round, came first in astrophysics, A-grade interstellar navigation certificate." He tugs on one of his ears in an absent-minded sort of way. "At least on paper, you're really quite fantastic, Rose Tyler."
Rose nods, quietly accepting the odd half-compliment, before asking the question she's been wondering since the hangar bay. "That why I'm here, then? So you can see if I'm—" She smiles, tongue caught between her teeth. "—fantastic?"
"Um." The Doctor looks honestly tongue-tied for a moment, but he shakes himself out of it quickly. "Yes. Yes! Initiation, that's what this is. Break in the new crewmember, and all that. Nothing for it like an away mission."
"I've never been to another planet before." Rose says it quietly. It's almost a little embarrassing, that she made it through the Academy but she's never even left Earth, except for spacedock trips. "Never had the money, or the time really. Closest I've come to an away mission is that survival course they put you through at the Academy — you know, the one where they drop you off in the desert for a week?"
The Doctor nods sagely. "Ah, survival training." He taps on the co-pilot's console and brings up more planetary analysis readings. "Well, I doubt this'll be anything like that. Looks like our little planet here is very cold indeed. Plus, I'm not planning to make you eat snake meat, or drink your own sweat." He shudders. "Eugh."
Rose just laughs.
She brings the shuttle down at their assigned coordinates. It's a forest clearing of sorts, on the edge of a cliff overlooking a large valley. When Rory opens the shuttle door and brings out his tricorder, a burst of cold air rushes into the cabin, making the hairs on Rose's arms stand up. She grabs a jacket from the equipment locker before ducking out behind him and the Doctor.
The view outside the shuttle door is like nothing she's ever seen.
She'd known there was snow — or this planet's equivalent form of frozen precipitation, which may or may not actually be snow — falling. It'd made the last few minutes of piloting to their landing site a bit annoying. Looking at it here, though, from the ground, she can't summon up any emotion other than wonder. It's beautiful. It must've started recently, because there's only a light covering on the ground, and on the blue-tinged trees and plants surrounding them. Out in the valley beyond the cliff there's a a veritable ocean of trees with deep blue leaves, all dusted with snow, like sugar shaken over an oddly colored cake.
Rose is so lost in the view that she doesn't even notice the Doctor come up beside her.
"So? First time on an alien planet, yeah? What do you think?"
"It's—" She takes a deep breath — lets the thin, cold air fill her lungs, relishes the unfamiliar icy sting, watches as her next breath comes out as warm fog in the air. "—it's brilliant."
"Bit early for a proper sunset, mind. But yeah." He turns and beams at her. "Brilliant."
Rose smiles back, face almost aching from the sheer amount of smiling she's done in the last half-hour or so, and it's a perfect little crystallized moment — the softly falling snow, the muted hum of the shuttle idling behind them, the unfamiliar ground beneath her feet, the electronic whir of Rory's tricorder taking readings.
The smile on the Doctor's face, bright and blinding and directed at her.
Rose sort of wants to stay in it forever, wants to create a holoprogram that's just this moment on loop. It's lovely, this moment, and she can't travel in time, can't do this all over again, but she could re-create this moment after a fashion. She could revisit this memory, relive it somehow.
She tears her eyes from the Doctor's and looks out over the cliff, at the place where the purple sky bleeds into a frozen landscape dotted with blue vegetation. She sucks in another lungful of chilly air, and tells herself just another second. Then I'll get to work.
Of course, that's when the arrow whizzes out of the cluster of trees to the west, and buries itself in Rory's chest.
