She sits in her office with Pete as they share lunch and go over personal work. It's the office that used to be his, and it feels weird to be on the other side of the desk and have him sitting there, eating his chips, just like she used too. It's suppose to be a lunch date, a lunch date that gets them both away from their work and talking more about their personal life, but neither is willing to give up their drive. Pete's busy enough as it is, being the President, but Rose has enough on her plate trying to replace him as director. Still, neither are willing to cancel, and so they sit there, eating, talking, working. In some ways, she's closer to her father now than she ever was with her mother. At least now she knows where this side of her came from.
"Did you ever get questioned when you were Director?" she casually asks him, hoping for some reassurance.
"All the time, and usually by you…" he says pointedly looking up at her and smiling slyly. She returns the smile and they both put their heads back down.
"It's not always going to be easy Rose, some are going to call you names, make you question yourself, even compare you to people like Hitler, Stalin…"
"Bush…"
"Who?" he asks.
"No one, someone from…" but she doesn't want to say back home. This is her home now. "It's nothing…"
"My point is…You can't let it get to you… even if you end up being wrong, you have to do what you think is right, because if you try to please everyone else… well you'll end up killin' us all."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence dad." She says, rolling her eyes and going back to the papers.
"I wouldn't have said it if I thought you were like that, I'm proud you've got a good head on your shoulders, I'm proud you took over the job. I'm proud that you went back to school, then on to university, I'm proud…"
"I take it you're trying to tell me something… Something that you feel… towards me…" She says looking up at the sky with a pondering look and her index finger on her chin.
"Alright I get the point, the heart-to-heart has reached it's quota."
"Mmm… Thanks for the kind thoughts, dad, at least you have something nice to say." She says, though she mumbles the last few words to herself.
"Give your mother time Rose. You may have a Doctorate, be the Director of a highly elite secret government agency, and have a few 'I saved the world' medals under your belt, but you'll never get anywhere with her until you're last name is no longer Tyler."
"Well, at least I made maintenance happy, they didn't have to change the sign on the door an ev'rything."
Both laugh and fall into silence once more.
"Speaking of your mother, she and I want you to come over for dinner on Sunday," he says, popping a chip into his mouth and wincing at its soggy taste. Rose watches as he forces the thing down his throat and truthfully, is grateful that she decided against them today.
"Can't," she says, looking away, "I have plans."
"Oh, Mickey and Jake will be there too, didn't they tell you?" Pete says, not looking up from the papers in front of him.
"My plans are not with Mickey or Jake, as a matter of fact." Rose tells him, cautiously looking at him from above the paper in front of her, careful not to make eye-contact.
"Seriously?" he asks her astonished, finally looking up from his documents.
"Yes," she responds, not letting his gaze draw her away from the work in front of her.
"Do you want me to tell Jackie?"
Rose thinks about the conversation he'll have with her mother, and how he'll be reamed out for not sucking every last piece of information out of her. She looks up at his surprised face and smiles at him. He smiles back.
"No, that's okay, I'll tell her." She says, and looks back down at her papers.
"Rose?" and there's feeling in his voice, he has something he wants to say to her and she can hear it linger there.
"Yeah?" she asks, looking up.
Their eyes lock and he gets nervous and frowns at her, shaking himself out of it, and looking down at his papers.
"Nothin'." He says, clearing his throat, and they continue as though the conversation never took place.
Rose's plans are not really as charming as Pete may have thought. Instead, she is having dinner with a man, a man who knows a thing or two about alternate dimensions and traveling through them.
Just like this universe never had a Rose, it never had a Doctor. That much she was sure of, having access to all those files in Torchwood may have helped too.
However, just like Rose, both had been deposited here on this rock, without a way out.
They are walking together down a narrow street, one that has been turned into a market place, looking for trinkets and doodads when she asks him.
"Have you noticed lately things have been going relatively well as of late?"
"I thought it was because I was becoming more perspicuous." He says, his red Chucks kicking up the dusty road, anhd she finally puts her finger on what the place reminds her of. She feels like she's stumbled upon pictures of 19th century, early 20th century earth.
"Big words," she tells him, watching women in various clothing walk by. The fashions here resemble something from the 1930's and the only reason she knows that is because she loves Doris Day and all old fashion movies.
"More easy to understand, clear and decisive!" he tells her, squinting at her through the haze of the sun and the dust.
She laughs at him and shakes her head, "No, that's not quite what I was looking for."
"More precarious?" he offers.
"Now you're just using random big words, thinking I won't know what you're talking about. You can't think you're perspicuous than think you're precarious. They are two opposite things."
"I'm just keeping you on your toes Martha, you are a medical student and everyone knows the first rule of being a Doctor is sounding more sophisticated than everyone else." He tells her and she just shakes her head at him.
"This is a fun game! Let's keep going! Is it because of my tendency to be quixotic? Perspicacious, which is different from perspicuous all together!"
She's stopped paying attention now, because she can feel a strong sense of sadness here. People look like they are ill and tired, and she rarely sees a smile on anyone's face except for the rich who walk down the street in fashionable clothing.
"… less intrusive?" he asks.
"Perhaps," she answers, watching as a woman who is cloaked in a long black cloak and a little mask walks past her. Martha is sure she knows her eyes from somewhere, but she ends up shaking it off as just her psychic energy reaching out and touching people.
"By the by," she asks, after a comfortable amount of silence, "Do you have any clue where we are?"
"I can't believe… are you? No trust… you really are asking…"
"So, no then?" she says rhetorically.
"I think it's more a question as in when we are, because I don't remember ANY of this." He tells her honestly, as they stop and he looks back where they have walked to where they are going. He pulls his specs out of his long brown trench pocket and notices they're covered in thick brown grime. Sighing he pulls his red tie out and debates wiping them off, before he shakes his head and places the glasses back in his pocket and his tie back in his suit.
"At least with my brown suit you rarely noticed how dirty it gets." He mumbles grumpily before starting to walk again down the street.
"Remember as in, you have been here before?" she asks him, catching up and putting her arm through his because the wind is definitely starting to pick up and she can barely see through the clouds of grime.
"I don't know." He replies as they turn the corner of the street.
"You are SO helpful today." She tells him, frustrated.
But he's not listening anymore, she pulls away to stare into his face, and she sees it is tight and drawn. He is angry at what he sees, so she glances in the direction he is looking it in hopes of seeing what is upsetting him so.
"What is wrong?" she finally asks, noting all he's looking at is a dead-end alleyway.
"What do you see?" he asks her through a clenched jaw.
She squints hard against the dust, and tries harder. There are two garbage bins to the left hand side, and steps that lead to a door about a story up on the right hand side. The wall that causes it to be a dead end is a large wooden fence that fences off a large (most likely) building of flats. She can see the sun setting behind the building, and a cat sitting on the top of the wooden fence.
"Nothing, I see an empty alley." She tells him defeated.
"Precisely," he says, sticking his hands in the pockets of his billowing coat.
"Martha, things are no longer going relatively well."
They sit there, waiting for their food and it's extremely difficult for her not to stare. He looks like neither of them. No haunted eyes (though they are still that beautiful blue she remembers) or daft ears, no stylish hair and a mole between his shoulder blades, at least that she knows of. Both leather and brown trench had been replaced by a green smoking jacket.
"Thank you for meeting me here, I know it was quite a trip for you." Rose says, and nods to the waiter who brings her a Tom Collins. He is the one who is staring now and she realizes as she takes the first sip she has forgotten what it feels like to be under his watchful gaze.
"I couldn't resist. A companion from a different alternate universe trapped here as well? Not only did you know things that would definitely lure me here, your working for Torchwood sealed the proverbial deal."
"You know of Torchwood?" Rose says surprised. Sure, she knew it would eventually come up talking to him, but she had thought that her identity had been more secretive than that. After all, he did come all the way from San Francisco; she didn't realize that he had access to that knowledge.
"Miss Tyler,"
"Doctor…" she interjects.
"Yes?"
"No, it's Doctor Tyler."
"Rose… my TARDIS may be out of commission, but I still keep up with alien gossip. I have a few friends back in America who were relocated and given new identities by your NIFAL program." He explains to her, sipping water from his glass placed in front of him.
"How much do you know about Torchwood?" She says lifting a brow seriously at him. She trusts him, but she keeps reminding herself this isn't the man she once knew and that things could go wrong at any time.
"I know you are Torchwood."
"Enough then," She says, clearing her throat and sipping her drink once again. They sit there in silence and she's rather comfortable being in the presence of this well-known stranger. It doesn't matter if he's a previous regeneration or a latter one (not that she has the courage to ask), it only takes a few minutes to get back into the habit of him.
"So if you're still the know-it-all I remember, do you know why I asked you here?" She asks him as the food arrives in front of them. She picks up her utensils and begins to cut her steak into smaller pieces. There is silence in response to her question and she slowly smiles. At least he isn't as rude in this life.
"The reason why I asked you here, is my Doctor didn't tell me a lot about the Time War, when it happened, what had really happened, what Gallifrey was like, what makes up your genetics."
"So you what you are trying to tell me, is that you are looking for an education on Time Lords," he states, somewhat cautiously and she can tell he doesn't like the idea too much. She isn't sure; she doesn't know what he's gone through, what he's willing to give up.
"I want you as an ally. I want to, need to understand. I watched too many people think they knew better than 'im and it always resulted in death. He may have been an arrogant bastard but he always knew what he was doin' in the end. My job at Torchwood is to make sure the Earth is prepared for anything or everything when it comes to aliens. If he… you… can't deal with every threat that comes our way then I wan' to be prepared for that. I've seen Cybermen, Sycorax, Gelth, Reapers… I've been invited to have a cuppa with the Emperor Dalek. I figure, if I have to live on this bloody planet, I may as well do the best I can protectin' it." She finishes, sipping her Tom Collins nervously, it's been awhile since she felt the need to explain herself to anyone.
"Then, I shall help you," he tells her, resting his hand on top of hers that is lying on the table. She stares at the union, and she bathes in the warmth of it. It's comforting and if she closes her eyes, she's sure she'd be able to forget and pretend he was hers. She sighs.
"My wife, however, will not approve," he tells her, to which her head shoots up.
Two hours later she is sitting at the bar in a smoky lounge waiting for him while he's gone off to find out who impounded the TARDIS for illegal parking (though she's sure he's just misplaced it and is making a big scene). Boredly, she drums her fingers against the bar when the bartender comes by to see what she'd like to drink. Martha asks for anything that won't get her drunk (learning from her mistake once by asking for no alcohol), and the bartender nods. She swivels on her chair so she is facing the stage, occupied by a small piano which is being played. The pianist finishes his song and the audience claps.
"Here you are miss," the bartender says, placing a glass full of bluish goop in front of her, nodding in thanks, she slowly takes a sip to find it rather sugary and chalk tasting. Repulsed, she puts the drink down and tries not to make a face.
She sees the pianist take a drag of a cigarette which is being held by an ashtray on the top of the piano before he says; "Now we have a real treat for you tonight, a real treat… Coming out of retirement, and for one night only…"
"That's what she always says…" a random customer calls out. Some people laugh, some don't, the pianist chuckles slightly, and Martha can tell that some of these people are real regulars.
"For one night only, for now, the loveliest flower that ever existed… Earth and England's pride and joy, Rose…"
And like that, there she was, and Martha doesn't know whether to be annoyed or intrigued. She comes out, dressed in a red silk floor length dress that seems almost timeless itself and red elbow length gloves. The piano starts softly and she is framed in a halo of golden light, her dress clinging to her curves. Slowly she lifts her gloved hand to push a brunette strand of hair behind her ear, her hair barely touching her shoulders. She never introduces the song, but dives right into the words, painting a picture for Martha to see.
If you be my star but you can skyrocket away from me
I'll be your sky
you can hide underneath me and come out at night
when I turn jet black and you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine
and never come back if you find another galaxy
far from here with more room to fly
just leave me your stardust to remember you by
She takes a sip again of her bluish chalk drink, shaking slightly as she does so. So somehow they found Rose again. What she really wants to know is, where this leaves all of them. It's obvious to her that this Rose knows the Doctor, it's apparent from the words in her song.
if you be my boat
I'll be your sea
a depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity
ebbing and flowing and pushed by a breeze
I live to make you free
I live to make you free
Martha takes this opportunity to really watch her for the first time. She's only seen Rose in few pictures and the one time on Barcelona, and even then it was for a very brief period of time. She bites her lip at how she reacted to Rose's comments.
She thinks of how she would feel if she came back to him and someone she didn't know was all over him. She didn't own him, he owned himself, but there was something about the Doctor that made you feel that you shared a special joke that raged against the rest of the universe, a special joke that you never really wanted to share with anyone else, and if you did, either he got distant or you found yourself doing the same. He once told her that Rose had said it was a better life with two, and it always is. But she can't imagine it being better with more than that, she can't imagine anyone being willing to share.
but you can set sail to the west if you want to
and past the horizon till I can't even see you
far from here where the beaches are wide
just leave me your wake to remember you by
Martha feels the tears spring to her eyes at the emotion conveyed in the song, how Rose sounds at complete loss within the words. She realizes how she'd feel without him as well. She may not be in love with him, but she knows that without him her life could have ended up very different. Would it have been worse? She's not sure, but she does know that she doesn't know how she'd go back to it now. She's not ready to go, not ready to let go.
if you be my star but you can skyrocket away from me
I'll be your sky
you can hide underneath me and come out at night
when I turn jet black and you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine
and never come back if you find another galaxy
far from here with more room to fly
just leave me your stardust to remember you by
stardust to remember you by…
She is finished and Martha feels a tear trickle down her cheek.
"Isn't she something?" The bartender says.
"Yes, she is extremely talented. I had no idea." Martha murmurs as she watches Rose slightly tilt her head in a bow to the clapping in the audience.
"Well, part of it is talent, part of it is the raw emotion, it's hard to find singers these days with such an emotional investment in their words or their craft. She always says it's her last show, and she always comes back. Starvin' will do that to you."
Martha nods slowly and watches as Rose descends from the stage via the stairs and, it's when Rose begins to walk right towards her that she freezes up.
"Can I have some water Frank?" Rose asks, her gloved arms resting on the bar. Martha stares as best she can out of the corner of her eye. She so badly wants to turn and strike up a conversation but she is worried that she is only going to make things worse. It is then that fate steps in, in the form of a customer and bumps into Rose while she is talking a sip of her water, causing her to spill it everywhere.
"Bloody hell," she says, dripping in water. Martha instinctively picks up a napkin and begins to pat Rose down before she freezes, realizing what she is doing.
"Thanks, though now I'm going to look as though I've wet myself." Rose lightly chuckles peeling the soaked gloves off her arms.
"Aw, well, it could be worse, you're lucky water doesn't stain." Martha tells her, then frowns and adds "although, this is silk… so you never know, does silk stain with water?"
Rose shrugs, "I dunno, I don't doubt it."
"Does the toilet have one of those hand drying thingy's?" Martha asks her.
"Naw, this is a colonizing planet, just dust and booze here." Rose responds, tucking a lock back behind her head once more. Both woman smile at each other nervously, for completely separate reasons.
"Thank you," Rose says to her, even her speaking voice melancholy and sad.
"You must miss him so much."
Rose's eyes widen and she is obviously surprised by Martha's slip up.
"Pardon me?" she asks.
Martha tries to backtrack by starting "I'm sorry, I just… you look like you miss someone… your singing… I figured you… love him very much."
To which, Rose continues to look at her suspiciously.
"I didn't mean to intrude, I just know what it's like, to miss someone. I do apologize." Martha offers once last time.
Rose's narrowed eyes soften and she searches Martha eyes before finally accepting this excuse. Martha sighs and takes a large sip of her syrup-like concoction.
"He's away, but he promised he'd come back for me."
"Aren't you in for a surprise," Martha murmurs.
"Pardon?" Rose asks.
"I said, that would be a romantic surprise." Martha says, turning back to the confused Rose and lifting her drink to toast Rose. Rose once again eyes her suspiciously as she clinks her water to Martha's drink and then takes a sip. Once Rose is finished she tells Martha she has another song to perform and goes back towards the stage. Again, the song is not introduced, but Rose begins her song with painful emotion.
Time here, And I need just a little more silence
All but means nothing,
Just shadows that move across the wall,
They keep me company,
But they don't ask of me,
They don't say nothing at all…
And I need just a little more time
Martha listens to how every note drips with emotion. She can hear her pain and honor, her pride and desperation. Her love and loss, over and over again, it's like Rose is the sea and her emotions come crashing wave after wave, hitting her psyche with barrage after barrage of muddled feelings.
You send your thieves to me But leave me be
Silently stalking me
Dragging me into your war
Would you give me no choice in this?
I know you can't resist
Trying to reopen a sore
I don't want to argue
I just get confused
And I come all undone
And if I agree
Well it's just to appease you
Cause I don't remember
What we're fighting for
It takes everything in her power to shut the door to her mind, and force Rose out, and once she has she feels empty, numb even. Shaking her head, she knows what she has to do, the same thing she knows Rose would in her situation. She has to find a way to fix this, find a way to make the pain cease to be, to ease it for both parties. She holds no resentment anymore, no dislike or worry, all she knows is that she is apart of something special, and that she needs to make it work.
You see love
The tight, thorny thread
That's just spin in a circle of gold
To have me, to hold me
A token for all to see
Captured to be yours alone
It's then that Martha can feel his presence. He always does that to her, it's like just a little extra weight on her mind. When he's around, she never really notices it, it's only when they've been apart for awhile and he returns that she can feel its pressure. She turns to look at him, and he is staring at the stage. She can see his carefully guarded pain, and she knows he is hiding behind it.
Slowly she tiptoes towards him, he never turning to look at her and she watches as his jaw clenches underneath his skin. She knows the song is for him, maybe not him in particular, but it's obvious now that this Rose is in love with a Doctor.
So I need just a little more silence Courage to pull away But leave me be
And I need just a little more time
There will be hell to pay
The deeper you cut to the bone…
I don't want to argue
I just get confused
And I come all undone
And if I agree
Well it's just to appease you
Cause I don't remember
What we're fighting for…
The song is over and Martha clears her throat, just incase he was too enthralled by the song to notice her presence. He doesn't turn to her, which she is sure means that he knew all along that she was right there beside him.
"Why don't you go say hi?" she asks him quietly.
"Because," he says, "That is not my Rose."