a/n: Chapter revised 6/15/18


Chapter Eight—London, 9 July 2007

Heart pounding, Rose watched as the Doctor—no, John, she reminded herself—went back into the garage to get to work. Once she was absolutely certain he was out of earshot, she let out the breath she hadn't consciously realized she'd been holding. She began to giggle, giddily, the sound bursting out of her of its own accord. When one of the customers in the waiting area looked at her curiously, she quickly slapped her hands over her mouth for a moment to stifle the sound.

It was him. He might not be himself, he might think he was someone else, but it was him.

And somehow, despite whatever had happened to him, on some level he still remembered her.

Her knees wobbled, and she sank down onto the chair behind the reception desk. She looked down at her hands. Despite her best efforts to hold them still, they were quivering.

"Look at me. I'm literally shaking," she said under her breath. "The Doctor'd probably say it's a reaction to adrenaline or something." She took a deep breath and held it for a moment before blowing it out slowly—one, two, three—in an effort to compose herself.

Before she'd gotten to the shop, she'd had a vague idea about telling him she didn't remember him, but the instant she had seen him looking at her she knew that that'd never work. She'd never be able hide the fact that they knew each other. Despite having been able to con her mother into believing all sorts of things growing up, she'd never fooled him, not for one instant, not about anything. She just wasn't that good an actress.

After seeing him up close, she could see why her mother didn't immediately recognize him, particularly if he hadn't shaved when she had seen him. He had at least a couple day's growth on his face, obscuring the mole on his cheek, not to mention the fact that he clearly hadn't had a haircut in months. It was easily several inches long. Between the hair and the almost-beard, both his nose and his ears looked less prominent. If you add that to the fact that he was wearing a short sleeved denim work shirt rather than a jumper and a leather jacket, he looked like someone else entirely.

But she would have known him anywhere. The shape of his shoulders. The steely blue of his eyes. And that grin. The grin that had always made her heart race.

And his voice. The light tenor, the Northern accent. Mr. Mudali called him "Manchester", evidently because of it. She snickered at the thought. If he only knew how far off he was.

"If you are an alien, then how come you sound like you're from the North?"

"Lots of planets have a North!"

She leaned across the desk to peek through the door. She could just see him on the far side of the garage. He had his head under the bonnet of the Infiniti. Despite how incongruous it was to see him working on a car, the sight was still incredibly familiar. How many times had she seen him just like that, working on the TARDIS?

As if he knew she was looking at him, he turned his head in her direction. She quickly sat back in her chair, out of his line of sight. School, she thought in amusement. It was just like being back in school. How often had she been almost caught staring at boys in class?

She needed to focus on something else, she reminded herself. She wasn't supposed to be here flirting with him. She was here to make sure he didn't get into trouble. She had a job to do.

A job! All of a sudden she remembered just where she was. She had a job now, a job she needed to keep if she was going to get close enough to him to watch him, and she was supposed to be working.

Over the next hour she tried her best to concentrate on the work at hand—on filing, on printing up invoices, on answering the phone—but her mind kept on returning to their conversation. Had she told him too much? Flirted too much? Not that she could have stopped herself if she had tried.

Periodically she'd peek into the garage again. She couldn't stop herself, even though there was a risk of getting caught. It was so odd to see him like this, the way he looked before he had changed but so different at the same time.

And knowing him so much better than him knowing her. Assuming the Doctor didn't get back right away, if she got to know him now, how on Earth would she manage not to let anything slip about his future? After all, she hadn't even been able to hide that they'd met, had even blurted out that they'd met the night Henrik's had blown up.

Maybe her mum wasn't as much a risk of giving out too much information as she was.

A tiny voice whispered inside her head that it was more than that, that it was more than the fact that he looked like the first him she'd known. She knew his brown-haired, brown-eyed, pinstriped self was the same man, she knew it down into her bones, but part of her had missed this him, big ears, blue eyes, Northern accent and all. She had told herself that things had changed between her and the Doctor after they had met Sarah Jane, and particularly after Reinette, but really it had begun before that. Things had been a little off between them ever since his regeneration. It was like they had had to learn how to be around each other all over again, and she missed the easy relationship they'd had before he'd regenerated.

She had missed him so much.

She instantly felt a wave of guilt. The thought felt like a betrayal of his current self. She knew how hurt he'd been when she'd asked him if he could change back after he'd regenerated. She shoved the thought away, locking it in a corner of her mind, and returned to the stack of invoices in front of her.

The bell on the front door jingled. Rose looked up as Abhirati burst back into the office.

"Rose, I'm so sorry it took so long for me to get back!" she apologized. "How did everything go?"

"Fine," she answered.

"Then why don't you go for the day," the older woman said. "After all, you didn't even get a lunch."

Rose glanced at the door leading to the garage. She'd hoped, even expected, to talk to the Doctor—no, John, she reminded herself again—again that day. If she left now, she'd be unlikely to see him again until tomorrow.

And tomorrow suddenly felt like an eternity away.

"But…" she protested. "Don't you still need me? I can stay as long as you want."

"No, that's fine," Abhirati replied. "You've already been a huge help today. Anything not done today can wait until tomorrow."

Rose wanted to protest again but knew it would look suspicious. Instead, she thanked her new boss and left.

"Now what?" she said once she was outside. It would be hours before the Doctor—John, she reminded herself irritably for the third time—got off work. Maybe she could hang out somewhere for a while and accidentally run into him after he got off work.

She looked up and down the street. There were a number of fast food restaurants and cafés with a clear view of the garage, and some of them wouldn't blink at her staying there for hours during the afternoon. Particularly the Chinese place directly across from it.

Perfect.

Rose headed across the street but stopped before she entered the restaurant. She reached for her wallet—and groaned. She didn't have it. No wallet, no money. She had only occasionally needed money since she had begun traveling with the Doctor, and what little she had left from her last job was in her room in the TARDIS. She had been traveling in the TARDIS so long she had forgotten to bring it.

Disappointed, she headed back to her mum's flat.

Her mother was in the lounge in her typical afternoon spot, on the sofa in front of the television. Some sort of talk show was on telly, and she was on the phone. Rose unsuccessfully tried to slip unnoticed into the kitchen to get something to eat. She winced when her mother waved at her to stop.

"I'll have to ring you back, Bev. Rose is here," Jackie said. She rang off and put the phone on the table before getting up to give her daughter a hug. "Hello, sweetheart. I was sure you'd all be off by now." She looked over Rose's shoulder. "So where's himself, then?"

"Back at the TARDIS."

Jackie's eyes narrowed. "All right, what's goin' on between you two?"

"What do you mean?"

"I hardly ever see one of you without the other. The two of you are usually like Siamese twins, you are. But now you've been here two days and he hasn't been here at all. So what's up?"

"Can't I just want to spend some time alone with my mum?"

Jackie crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "As much as I'd love to believe that was true, I don't buy it for a minute. So where is he?"

"In the TARDIS."

"And where's the TARDIS?"

Rose hesitated a moment. "It's complicated." With a sigh of inevitability, she gestured at the sofa. "You'd better sit down. This might take a while."

~oOo~

An hour and a fresh pot of tea later, Jackie was still puzzled.

It had taken a while for Rose to explain to her the intricacies of time travel: how the same person could accidentally be in the same place and time twice over. She had had that conversation with her mum before, in regards to being at her father's death both as a baby and as an adult, but the implications evidently hadn't sunk in because her mother was still confused.

"So the bloke that was here fixin' my tap was really the Doctor?" Jackie asked.

"Yes, Mum," Rose replied.

"Before he regenerated? Even though he regenerated six months ago?"

"Yes, Mum," Rose said again. "Before I even began traveling with him in fact."

"And he thinks he's human?"

"No. He is human. Really, properly human."

"Because of that cammy thing."

"Chameleon arch," Rose corrected. "It turned him human."

"And he thinks his name's John Smith?"

"Yeah."

"And he's workin' as a mechanic down at Mickey's old job?"

"Yep."

"And he doesn't remember anythin' about bein' the Doctor or bein' an alien or that blue box of his?"

"The TARDIS," Rose said. "Not 'that blue box', and he doesn't appear to."

Jackie shook her head slowly. "And he's the same person who fixed my tap?" She had a strange expression on her face, one that looked to be a combination of distaste, embarrassment, and dread.

"Yeah, Mum. Why?"

"No reason," she replied quickly. "No reason at all."

Rose rolled her eyes. That had been the third time her mum had asked about the Doctor—no, John—fixing her tap, and each time she had looked more and more uncomfortable. "All right, what happened?"

"Nothing."

Rose gave her a look.

"Nothing," Jackie insisted. "Honest!"

Rose sighed. Her mother had always been a terrible liar. If she said nothing happened, that meant something had definitely happened, something she didn't want to admit to, and Rose was fairly certain she didn't want to know what it was.

"The important thing is that if you see him, you don't say anything to him about any of this," Rose warned. "As the Doctor, he hasn't even properly met you yet."

"I know, I know," her mum replied.

"In fact, it might be best if you just avoid him entirely," Rose said.

Jackie's eyes lit up. "Yes!" she said quickly. "Yes, that's exactly what I'll do! I'll avoid him. 'S not like I'd want to go out of my way to spend time with him anyway, the bloody wanker." She nodded decisively. "I'll just avoid him."

After giving her mother another sharp look, Rose shook her head, trying not to think about what had happened between John and her mum. She really, really did not want to know.

"So if you're here watchin' over this him while the other one is off with Mickey figurin' out what happened, how long are you gonna be here?"

"I don't know," Rose answered. "It could take a while."

"Well, as much as I love havin' you here, sweetheart, I can't be supportin' you," Jackie told her. "If you're here more than a week or so, you're gonna have to get a job. Henrik's is hirin'."

"Henrik's rebuilt?" Rose asked in astonishment. "When did that happen?"

"They've been workin' on it a while now. In fact, their grand re-opening is in a couple of weeks. Of course, you'd know that if you were around more," Jackie said pointedly. "Anyway, since you used to work there, you could probably get your old job back. It's the least they could do considering you could have been killed when it blew up."

Rose didn't answer for a moment as she was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that Henrik's had rebuilt and she hadn't known about it.

"Rose. Rose!"

"No," she finally replied after she realized her mother was trying to get her attention. "I've already got a job. I'm working at the garage. I started this morning."

Jackie looked both surprised and pleased.

"Good," she said decisively. "That store was givin' you airs and graces anyway. If you'd just taken the job at the butcher's in the first place you'd probably never have run off with him."

Rose didn't bother to answer as her mother was right, but not for the reason she thought. If she hadn't worked at Henrik's, she'd never have met the Doctor. And instead of traveling through time and space with him, she'd have been stuck here on the Estate, possibly for the rest of her life.

And then she remembered Sarah Jane, who had waited almost her entire life for him to return. It could still happen. She could still be stuck here, living out the rest of her life on the Estate, her days filled with jobs and telly and beans on toast.

Inwardly she shuddered.

~oOo~

John set the remnants of his tea on the table and sat down at the computer. The little black cat, who was definitely not moving in, immediately jumped up into his lap.

When he had finished the repairs on the Infiniti, John had brought the paperwork on the car into the office only to find that Rose had left for the day. He'd had to work hard to hide his disappointment. He'd hoped to be able to talk to her again. He refused to consider that part of the reason he was so disappointed had nothing to do with the fact she might hold a key to his past.

But even in the short conversation he'd had with her, he'd gotten more information from her about his past than he'd been able to learn in the past six months. She'd told him a specific time and place he'd been in the time he couldn't remember. Outside Henrik's Department Store the night it had blown up.

He studied the article on the monitor in front of him. Henrik's had exploded early in 2005. Several terrorist groups had rushed to take credit, but the final conclusion was that the explosion had been as a result of a gas leak. There appeared to be only one fatality, an electrician named Wilson, something that was being heralded as a miracle since only a short while earlier the store had been filled with both shoppers and staff. Neither he nor Rose had been mentioned.

One interesting fact he had learned was that Rose had been wrong about one thing. Henrik's had been rebuilt. A simple search revealed that in fact their grand opening was in only a few weeks. For a moment he wondered why she didn't know, since it appeared to be big news locally.

He spent the next hour reading as many newspaper articles and official reports as he could on the night of the explosion, but they gave him no more information than he already had. He had, however, learned one thing, one very important, thing he hadn't known before. One crucial piece of the puzzle that was his past.

He had been in London in 2005. Almost two full years before he had woken up in the alley on New Year's.

It was a new place to concentrate his search for clues to his past. If he had been here, and according to Rose he had, there must be some evidence. Somewhere.

But before he began to search for himself again, he had something, or someone, else to research. His fingers flew across the keyboard, searching for a current resident of Peckham named Rose Tyler.

There were three: a twelve year old schoolgirl, a thirty-six year old married mother of three, and a sixty-nine year old Roman Catholic nun. Damn. This was clearly not going to be as easy as he had expected it would.

"Rose Tyler, who are you?" he said aloud, waking the cat enough that she began to purr. He absently petted her before returning to the computer.

To his surprise, there were thousands of Rose Tylers in the UK, twice as many if you counted variations of the name like Rosalyn or Rosemary. He immediately refined the search to exclude those as well as the ones from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

Down to 1145.

She looked to be about twenty, give or take a year, so he excluded all who were eighteen and younger or over twenty-five.

Down to 452.

Her accent was London, so he narrowed the search to the Greater London area.

135.

South London.

27.

A manageable number, but how to narrow it further? What else did he know about her? His brow furrowed in concentration.

South London accent, about twenty…

He suddenly remembered she had said she had worked at Henrik's.

"Yes!" he said, waking the cat again. After giving him a nip, she jumped down and stalked off. He hardly noticed as he began to hack into the employment records of the store.

"There you are. Rose Marion Tyler," he said slowly, listening to the way it sounded as it rolled off his tongue. "Based on this, currently twenty-one years old, 48 Bucknall House, Peckham." He glanced over at the window. "Huh, that's just across the courtyard. Employee ID number…"

There was scarcely any more information than that in Henrik's records, basically just her dates of employment and sorely inadequate pay, so he moved on to a Google search of her full name.

There were only two Rose Marion Tylers in the country. One was a sixty year old woman—in Manchester of all places, he thought in amusement given his nickname—whose son Sam had been a DCI in the Greater Manchester Police until an auto accident had put him in a coma the previous year.

The other was the one he was looking for.

Rose Marion Tyler. Daughter of Jacqueline Tyler, resident of Peckham, and Peter Tyler, deceased. Attended Jericho Street Junior School. Won the bronze in a gymnastics competition for under-7s. Left school aged sixteen with adequate scores on her GCSEs. More than adequate, actually, and he wondered why she hadn't sat for A-levels. Worked various jobs until she was hired by Henrik's Department Store, where she worked as a shop assistant.

Disappeared the day after Henrik's blew up.

John stared at the screen. "Well, she's certainly not missing now," he said aloud.

Another search revealed a series of stories on her disappearance in the local paper.

Local Girl Missing After Explosion

Shop Assistant Goes Missing Day After Explosion

Mother Distraught Over Missing Daughter

Local Man Questioned Over Disappearance of Girlfriend

He skimmed the articles. They were filled with speculation as to what may have happened to her, but they contained few actual facts, only a brief biography and the date of her disappearance.

Finally he found a single, very short article dated approximately a year later.

Missing Girl Turns Up With Older Man—Says She Was "Traveling"

After being missing a year, local girl Rose Tyler finally turned up at her mother's home in Peckham in the company of a man believed to be in his late thirties or early forties. The police have refused to comment officially, although unnamed sources in the department have said that the man stated he had hired Tyler as a companion. Although the two denied a sexual relationship, the police are reportedly skeptical of the claim. The case is now considered closed.

John chuckled. "Now that's a story I'd like to hear."