2.
"in your eyes i see the eyes of somebody i knew before long long long ago. but i'm still trying to make my mind up, am i free or am i tied up?" animal by sky ferreira
Rose has a necklace that her dad bought for her before he died. The chain is light and gold, each link as delicate as lace, the pendant settling softly just below the hallow of her throat. Rose doesn't know when he got it, only that it was in his jacket pocket at the scene of the crash, untouched by the blood that stained his white skin. Rose was only a baby then, gurgling in a high chair as her mother's life came crashing down around her ears. The necklace is simple, only just a little round locket with a picture of a rose in the frame next to the engraved words, "For my dear Rose. Much love." Jackie insisted on waiting until Rose's thirteenth birthday before granting her the present and telling her the story of Pete's death. Three years later, when she ran off with Jimmy, she could still see the necklace on the bedside table as he took everything she had.
Every day Rose drapes the necklace carefully over her collarbone, remembering her father as best she can. The gravel of his voice, the crinkles near his eyes, the callouses on his hands. The little things she can remember, though, are as blurred as the sky when it snows, the cold as biting as knives.
The morning after Rose meets the Doctor, she wakes up, goes to work, folds shirts that she can never have enough money to buy, and goes home. Jackie wants to make ravioli for dinner (never a good idea, but sometimes Rose must humour her mother), so she sends Rose to the supermarket with a stack of coupons and a tenner.
As she waits for the chip and PIN machine to process a box of ravioli and a jar of marinara, she idly twirls her necklace around her fingers until suddenly, she feels something give. Pulling her hand away from her throat, Rose can see that the chain snapped, right near the clasp. When she takes one end of the metal strand in her hands, the locket slips easily off the edge and clatters to the ground. Broken. Her father's last gift, and she has managed to fuck it up.
Rose can feel her eyes filling with tears as she quickly scoops the jewelry off the ground, and she finishes checking out, hands shaking. What will she tell her mum? Sorry, remember that last thing that dad ever gave us? Yeah, I ruined it, jus' like I ruin everything else. Before she can reach the front exit of the store though, a tall man with dark brown hair who was standing behind her in line stops her.
"Woah there, miss, you dropped something," he says with an American accent. The man smiles, charming and sweet, before handing her a one pound note she dropped in her haste to get home.
"Um, yeah, thanks." She hears her voice tremble and quickly maneuvers around him in her haste to get away.
"Hey, sweetheart, why are you crying? Did you break your necklace there?" Rose nods her answer as more tears well in her eyes. She is crying in the middle of a supermarket holding a box of dry pasta and isn't that just grand? "Look, hold on, stay right here."
Rose waits as the man half-runs back over to one of the grocery store aisles, pausing to look back at her and hold up one hand in a "wait right there" gesture. She wonders what exactly this very handsome American is planning on doing to help her. She suspects his motivations may have to do more with her looks than any real desire to assist a crying girl. When he emerges from the aisle pulling along his very disgruntled looking friend, Rose can hardly believe it. They have been living in the same neighborhood for years and never met, yet Rose has now seen John Smith two times in as many days. Apparently the Doctor is just as surprised because when his American friend brings him over all he can do is stare stupidly at her face.
"Doctor, this lovely young lady accidentally snapped the chain on her necklace, and I wanted to help her out. I don't know my way around this area, but I'm sure you can find us a jewelry store." The man looks expectantly at the Doctor, before noticing the obvious. "Oh, you two know each other, don't you?"
The Doctor nods and grins, a wide, manic smile unlike anything that Rose has ever seen. "We met once recently. Nice to see you again, Rose Tyler. This here is one of my old friends, Captain Jack Harkness."
Jack preens as Rose looks suitably impressed. "Captain?"
He shrugs, one hand circling the air lazily. "It's an old nickname."
"From university," the Doctor supplies, "we met when he tried to hit on one of my friends."
"Really? What was her name?"
"His name was Adam," Jack says dreamily, "and he was gorgeous."
"Jack here tends to want anyone, as long as they're breathing." Rose laughs, perhaps a little shakily, but she feels lighter somehow. When she clenches her fist, though, and traces the cool metal with her forefinger, she remembers the reason that she is even speaking to the Doctor and the Captain (what odd nicknames, she thinks).
The Doctor notices her change in expression and remembers too. "Here, let me have a look at the damage." He gently takes the chain and locket in his big hands and carefully inspects the break. "I know a man who can fix this, he works jus' a bit away. We can walk over there now and he can fix the link an' have it ready for you good as new in a few minutes."
"Great. How does that sound, Miss Tyler?"
Rose glances back and forth between the two men. "Good, yeah."
"Why does everyone call you the Doctor?" He stops his inspection of the diamond necklace beneath the glass and turns to face Rose. The shop he had taken her and Jack to is one of those one man shows where everything is hand-made and the room seems like a little labyrinth in itself. Despite being a jeweler's, the walls are covered in old books and original paintings, ones that are splattered and dashed with acrylics to the point that Rose can feel the energy of the movement vibrating off the canvas.
The Doctor laughs, glancing at her sideways with a glint of something (Rose can't quite place what) in his eyes. "Like Jack said, it was an old nickname that just stuck."
"Yeah, why did Jack go to uni in England?"
"His family has a history of attending Oxford, they're one of those prestigious, old money types of people. We've been mates for years, even though he moved back to the states. He's visiting for two weeks on business."
"What business?"
"I'm an attorney," Jack explains, coming up to them from where he was standing near the register, "I'm working with our international partners here in England. Couldn't you just tell I was a lawyer, with my amazing charm and wit?"
"No, she could tell by your slime."
"Bugger off, mate," Jack replies in his best Doctor imitation. "The necklace is fixed, my dear, good as new."
"Thank you so much, Doctor. And Captain." Rose turns to leave them to their own devices before having a thought. She weighs it in her mind, trying to determine whether or not Jackie would explode with anger before realizing that she doesn't really care. "Would you two like to join us for dinner?"
The Doctor sends Jack a meaningful look even as Jack says, "No, I can't, got a date with an old girlfriend. But the Doc here is free."
The Doctor looks a little uncomfortable, and Rose can practically see the cogs turning over in his head. But suddenly he doesn't look nervous at all, and gives her another one of his wide smiles. "That'll be fantastic, Rose. Absolutely fantastic."
As Jack pays the jeweler ("No, really, I insist") and walks in the opposite direction ("I'll see you in the morning, Doc, and hopefully I will see you again very soon, Miss Rose Tyler"), Rose and the Doctor are left alone, walking back to Rose's flat. The sky is an abnormal shade of blue-grey and Rose decides that it perfectly matches his eyes.
"So you never told me how you got that nickname." Rose watches the Doctor's face expectantly as she waits for an answer. For a split second, so quick that Rose doesn't quite believe it happened at all, his features contort into a vision of something akin to heartbreaking grief before smoothing over into careful neutrality.
"Jack was pre-law while I was pre-med. We were both pretty idealistic in those days, we had this grand vision of how we could save the world. People started calling me the Doctor, the one who would save mankind, cure cancer, all that bullocks, and Jack was Captain America, which was later just shortened to Captain. Jack never stopped calling me the Doctor, and eventually everyone started calling me that. Plus, I never liked the name John Smith."
Rose laughs, the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth, an odd quirk that Mickey always teases her for. Rose thinks she sees the Doctor's eyes dart toward her mouth before deciding that he can't have been doing that. "'S better than a number."
"Might as well be, it's got no panache, no style. I might as well be Number Forty-Two or Number Nine. Rose Tyler, now there's a name."
"Oh, you're so full of it! You just like the nickname, you just think you're so impressive."
"I am so impressive!"
"Right, Doctor, now that there explains your tendency to rescue the damsel in distress."
"Oh, I would hardly call you a damsel in distress. You fight pretty well for such a little thing."
"Only 'cause you're tall. I am perfectly average, thank you very much." Rose continues to kick her feet along the sidewalk, her white trainers catching in a few cracks before Rose rights herself. "Do you have another pair of shoes?"
"What do you mean?" the Doctor questions worriedly. "What's wrong with these?"
"Nothing. They're just the same ones I threw up on. Don't you have another set?"
"Miss Tyler, I'll have you know that I have gotten all sorts of things on these shoes. They're my favorites, an' I'm not getting rid of them just because you can't hold your liquor."
"I'm not saying you should get rid of them, I'm just saying you could get another pair. Shoes are very important, I'll have you know."
"How are shoes important?"
"Shoes make you feel different. I wear these to work, an' I don't feel anything. I look just like everyone else. But if I could wear those," Rose points to a pair of glittery gold stilettos in a shop window, the expensive kind that Jackie always looks at wistfully whenever she takes Rose shopping, "I'd feel special. Look at them, all shiny and new. What you wear is who you are, an' don't you think you're better than a ratty old pair of black boots?"
The Doctor blinks at her for a second before smiling once again. "Rose Tyler. You are clever. I dunno why I didn't see it right away."
"I don't know either," Rose replies, returning his smile with one of her own. She leads him up the front steps of her building to the door, which is an odd shade of blue that she has never seen anywhere else and which will always remind her of home.
"Just one question." Rose looks up at the Doctor, who is staring down at her like she is a riddle that he can't quite solve yet. "Don't you think you're better than an old pair of white trainers?"
Jackie does not explode, although she comes pretty close. After brandishing a wooden spoon dangerously close to the Doctor's head, Jackie agrees that perhaps he is a decent enough person to be invited to dinner. The meal is slightly awkward, but Rose somehow manages to keep her mother in line (although she has no idea how she does that). The Doctor comments on Rose's preference for the color pink coming from her mother, who is wearing pink sweatpants and chipping pink nail polish. Rose grins. Jackie glares.
"So," Jackie says after everyone has finished eating (far too casually, in Rose's opinion), "how old are you then, John?"
Rose narrowly avoiding choking on her own breath, while the Doctor only looks mildly put out at the turn the conversation has taken. Rose could tell that he had been hoping to avoid Jackie's inquisition about what exactly his intentions are with her daughter anyway? and somehow he has been sucked into it anyway.
"Mum, he's not-"
"I'm thirty-eight. From Manchester, originally. Went to uni at Oxford and became a surgeon, as I've told you a few times. I moved here about five years ago. I'm not planning on seducing and ruining your daughter for all the eligible young bachelors in London. When Rose was showing me back to her flat the other night, she told me all about her almost-boyfriend Rickey-"
"Mickey-"
"An' I know she's just being polite to a tired old man who doesn't have anyone to eat dinner with, so don't fret. We'll be grand friends once you get to know me, I'm sure, Mrs. Tyler. What do you say? Truce?"
Rose glances nervously from the Doctor's expression of total confidence to her mother's face, which is somewhere between angry and impressed. Jackie eventually seems to decide on impressed, and Rose breathes a sigh of relief while the Doctor just looks smug. He winks at her when Jackie turns her head in the other direction, and Rose suddenly knows that he will be the death of her. The noise that made Jackie face the window repeats, and Rose looks toward the sound. A blackbird, small and thin, settles on the concrete outside the glass, ruffling it's feathers and spreading its wings as it opens its throat to sing.
When the Doctor has thoroughly charmed her mother and stands at the door to leave, pulling his leather coat on over his jumper once again (he looks almost naked without it, Rose thinks to herself), Rose realizes that she can barely recall the livid expression on his face when he pulled Jimmy off of her. How could this man, with his wide, happy smiles, be the same as the one that had such fire, or the one that sat in her flat, his eyes so pale and blank, his mouth a thin, heavy line?
"Rose?"
"Yeah?"
"Before I go, I wanted to know if you wanted to come out with me an' Jack? He's looking to do all the crap tourist attractions all over again before he leaves London, and he needs a real local to show him around, 'f you're interested."
"Really?" Rose responds cheekily. She likes watching the Doctor squirm. "Where would I be taking him?"
"Anywhere you want. I don't really mind where. It's your choice, really."
"Hmm. Sounds good, yeah."
"Fantastic! I'll be seeing you, Rose. Have a good night."
"G'night." Rose carefully locks the door behind the Doctor as he skips cheerfully away from her flat before panicking just the teeniest bit. What exactly has she gotten herself into?
In her room, after she has changed into her purple pajamas, she looks wistfully at the stars on her ceiling. If only she could live on a star, in a box the color of her door so she never misses home, and with someone there to take her to see the universe.
Her bedside table groans under the weight of too many books and movies and knick knacks from different places her friends have traveled to. A miniature Eiffel tower from Shireen, a Statue of Liberty from Angie, a little kilted figurine from when Mickey went visiting family in Glasgow. A book about the ocean from when she was five, an astronomy book from her grandad. Her favorite, Daddy-Long-Legs, sits on top of the pile, its spine faded and bent from overuse. Rose takes off her necklace and runs her nails along where the chain broke. She falls asleep and can remember her father's hands, all rough and worn.
A/N: I know I made the Doctor younger than Eccleston actually was at the time, and Rose is older than she should be but age differences of 20+ years are a bit difficult to work around when neither party is an alien. I figured an 18 year difference was appropriately taboo so forgive me pretty please. Know that more character development is coming soon (as well as dramatic backstories, dun dun dun). As you may have guessed, read and review, and I will be working on another chapter for you party people for the coming week. I'll be trying to get one out every week, although I'm sure all you lovely readers know that sometimes that's not possible. So thank you to all who reviewed and stuck with this story until chapter 2. You are all absolutely fabu (ha haha you thought I was gonna say fantastic).
Also bonus points to everyone who has read Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster and knows why I used it as Rose's favorite book. For those who don't, go read it, it's super quick and sweet and happy.
Also bonus bonus points to everyone who saw the Maya Angelou reference. Poetry readers unite.
