CHAPTER FIVE: REMUS, ALONE
Remus flew around Earth for years, drifting from continent to continent, and taking long breaks in a cheap cottage in Yorkshire he'd bought with James's money from the will, before setting off again, by plane or Portkey or even broom, once, to somewhere new. Somewhere exotic.
Once he knew what to look for, he found traces of the Doctor everywhere.
He stopped off to see some ancient carvings in a Tunisian cave. Amongst the swirls and outlines of animals, there was the striking shape of a box, with lines extending from the point at the top like rays of light.
In the background of a news report on the telly, he could see a flash of wild brown hair and a wide grin running towards who-knows-where. Remus only felt a hint of jealousy as he saw the young woman sprinting beside him. (Except maybe this wasn't a replacement for him. Maybe he was a replacement for her, or she a replacement for his replacement, or he for hers … it took him a while to consider the time travel aspect of it all, and once it was done he was sufficiently confused enough that the jealousy had faded. All he could think was: maybe that Doctor on the screen hadn't met Remus yet. Maybe that Doctor was happy. Somehow, in a roundabout way, the thought cheered him up.)
He looked up to the stars one night and saw a spark of blue. It was unlikely, but he liked to think he'd caught a glimpse of the TARDIS in orbit.
And beyond all of that, when he'd reached twenty-six and declared himself no longer young, he found Rose.
He couldn't resist. He was in one of those moods.
His fingers were itching, mind rolling in circles around subjects until all he could think about was the Doctor. Remus sighed; he was too old for this. He was too old to be dreaming his life away (what life? something inside scoffed). But he couldn't stop.
It grew to the point that he wished the Doctor would be in some records, or something—mostly just for proof, proof that Remus hadn't gone mad in those years after James, Lily and Peter's deaths. And then, after a while wallowing, he thought—
"Shit." Because though the Doctor himself might not be easy to track, he'd always travelled with humans. And humans—Remus himself included—live lives on paper. He only needed a name: Rose Tyler.
Guilt gnawed at his chest, but he pushed past it and fished out a phone book.
At this point, he was renting a crappy London apartment. He had a job down the road at a grocer's, which earned him barely anything, but was enough (mostly) to keep him occupied. And, in this case, it meant he had a London phone book.
Tyler, Tyler, Tyler. Was this the right time, even? He knew she was a Londoner, but it wasn't always a question of where, but when. He wished he could skip down to the Ministry and access the files there (which were meticulously nosy and startlingly complete), but he hated the stares he received amongst wizards once they realised what he was.
There were fourteen Tylers on the list. Without hesitation, he picked the first one and dialled.
"Hello?" a man's voice replied.
"Hi," he said. "This isn't Rose Tyler's number is it?"
"Wrong number, mate." And the man hanged up.
The next turned out similar results.
The third number contained a rather more violent reaction from a woman who was quite clearly pissed out of her mind.
The fourth-through-ninth yielded nothing.
"Hello, this is Jackie," answered the fifth person.
"Hi," Remus replied. "You wouldn't happen to know Rose Tyler, would you?"
A pause, and then, "I don't know how you know my baby's name, but it's just not right to go 'round like that. She's only five months and you've already got her whole bloody name and everything! Where's my privacy? You know, a friend of mine told me someone phoned her like this, knowing her name and everything, and that ended in—"
"Sorry," Remus spluttered, "Wrong number."
But it wasn't, of course. He sat next to the phone for a minute, breathing heavily. Rose Tyler. She was five months old. Shit. His chest felt tight.
Remus threw the phone book into the back of his cupboard and drank six cups of tea before he let himself leave the house. He asked his boss at the greengrocer's if he could pick up another shift this afternoon, and then filled his day with vegetables rather than confront the fruitlessness of his only tie to the Doctor.
This was quite short, but I promise we'll be seeing some familiar faces soon...