"Everyone thinks that courage is facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die. True courage is facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, and the messiness, and the inconvenience."

-Robin Hobb

Two Months Earlier

Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, the Valiant Child, the girl who had faced a werewolf, battled and befriended scores of aliens, and conquered the devil itself sighed miserably as she looked up at the blackboard that took up the front wall of the stuffy, over-crowded classroom. Surely, surely, those equations her professor was going on about had to, in fact, be some alien language. Surely no human could extract meaning out of that jumble of shapes and numbers. And if it was alien…then she could call Pete back in London, and her old peers at Torchwood would swarm the campus as she fought along side them against the next alien invasion. Her heart sped up at the tantalizing thought.

An exaggerated yawn from a fellow student brought her out of the daze before it could develop into the full-on frenzied daydreaming she had taken to since she'd arrived in this universe. She realized she had been idly picking at the plastic lid of her coffee cup with one hand, her other resting on the black stretch capri pants she had rolled out of bed into this morning. The coffee cup barely fit along side her notebook on the sad excuse of a desk all the dozens of identical chairs were outfitted with. The early September heat of New England was no match for the outdated air cooling system of the university's math and science building. She could almost break a sweat just sitting there. Then again, maybe it was linear algebra that was having that effect on her. She once again cursed the fact that it was a support course for her physics degree. The first midterm was only a few weeks away and Rose was sure she was doomed. Forget bitchy trampolines and farting aliens, that test was going to be truly terrifying. No wonder she had avoided taking her A-levels and continuing on to University in that other life when she was just a shop girl from the Powell Estate - before an impossible man had whisked her away in an impossible police box and showed her what it was like to truly live.

Her insides turned cold as she realized how agonizingly ordinary her life had once again become. When a mad alien took her hand and said "Run" all those years ago she swore she would never again live an average life. But here she was, a student known to her professor only as a number on his grade sheet, surrounded by two hundred other bored kids who were sitting in two hundred identical seats that were probably older than they were.

Since when did Rose Tyler break out into a sweat at anything less than a near death experience? Since when did she fade into the crowd, carry a backpack, study at coffee shops, and help her roommate through boy issues? It may have been the life she had secretly wanted all those years ago, when the fear of success, of being someone and doing something with her life, had kept her from living a life of any consequence. But then again, that Rose Tyler would have thought studying abroad in America to be the greatest of adventures. She had lived what seemed like several lifetimes since then and now she doubted that a truly great adventure was possible stuck on this one planet out of millions, in this one time, instead of joyriding through infinity. (And now her hand was always so empty.) Even the alien invasion she had been fantasizing about just minutes ago would be peanuts to the things she had seen and done. Had her heart rate really just sped up at the thought? Was this "normal" life changing her? Taming her? Well, at least that would please mum. She thought smiling miserably to herself.

Her new life was difficult in all the wrong ways and ever so bloody dull. Why she made it worse by things like midterms and finals, and worst of all, linear algebra was beyond her at the moment.

But her doubt was brief. As the professor erased the proofs Rose had failed to copy down and started on a new batch, the painful reason she was "putting herself through this" flooded her thoughts. The reason, all stripes and freckles and gravity defying hair threatened to giver her a case of watery eyes right there in this classroom. She swallowed and pushed thoughts of him away. Well, not away. He was always there, even when she couldn't face the loss, or even thoughts of him, directly. He was the reason she had started working at Torchwood years ago, second being the convenience of her kind-of-father being the head of the organization and her extensive experience with aliens. He was the reason why she had hung around research and development pestering them about finding a way through dimensions. And when the scientists' condescending airs and dumbed down explanations that still went over her head became too much, he was the reason why she left what was as close to home as she could get in this universe to pursue a physics degree in America.

It had been many years since she was stranded in this universe. She had two semesters left until graduation and then she would return to London, no longer a heartbroken child, but an educated woman. She cringed at the thought of the antics and desperation that marked her first few months in this world - the time before she realized that she needed to take back control of her life. When she went back "home" in May, she would be a daughter her parents could live with and a reinstated Torchwood employee who would be able to look the research and development team in the eye, maybe not yet quite at their level, but at least a force to be reckoned with. Then, finally, she could begin the real work. And maybe, if the planets aligned and the stars were in her favor, she could find a way back to him.

But for now, the blackboard was once again full and she was in danger of missing another chunk of notes if she didn't get to copying it down. She sighed, the misery in the action toned down just a little in favor of hope, and went about copying the notes which she would make sense of later. She was two lines in when her pencil broke. Bloody hell!