Futuristic: The Perfect Moment
Rating: General Audiences
Pairing: Nine/Rose
Other tags: Futuristic AU, Human AU, First Meeting, Implied/Referenced Abuse
Warnings: None
Summary: At birth, everyone is tattooed with a timer, counting down to the most important moment of their life. Jason Smith's appears to be happening today at work.
Hi everyone, welcome to Day 22!
Inspiration for this fic comes from this prompt: bit. ly/ 310nXxM
Also, the amazing TimeLadyHope made fanart of the vampire fic about a week ago. See it here: bit .ly/ 3aLQZol
Word Count: 1,011
When he woke up that morning, Jason's arm read: 0 Days, 6 Hours, 17 Minutes. Like everyone else in the world, he'd had the countdown to the most important Moment of his life tattooed on his arm at birth. Everyone's Moment was different. Some it was the birth of a child, some when they got their dream job. There was no way of knowing for certain what your Moment would be, just when. And apparently, Jason's would be during work, since he had a 12-hour shift at the Royal Hope Hospital A&E starting in an hour.
Over the duration of Jason's shift, he slowly forgot about the Timer on his arm. Between his long sleeves, checking on patients who's been held for observation, and new patients, Jason didn't actually see his Timer until the end of his dinner break. 58 minutes left. Jason suddenly understood what Sarah June had meant when she said the last hour before her Moment had been the most stressful of her life.
Out of the entirety of his life, from when he was born to when he will die, Jason's Moment one will be in 58 minutes. And while for most people their Moment was a happy one, for some it wasn't. Graham, one of his patients, had confided to Jason that his Moment was when he had received his cancer diagnosis. For his friend Donna, it was when that arsehole Lance left her at the altar. Given that he would be at a hospital during her Moment, Jason desperately hoped his Moment would be a happy one.
Contrary to the first portion of his shift, Jason kept glancing at his arm. Martha even asked him if something was wrong. When he showed her, the woman simply nodded in understanding. Martha knew how stressful a Moment could be. Her own had been when she sat for her exams to graduate from medical school. Jason glanced at his arm again. It was down to only 13 minutes now.
The next 12 minutes were a flurry of activity as Dr. Stoker handed Jason a pile of papers he needed to fill out. The paperwork took up enough brainpower to make him again forgot about his Timer after a few minutes. Then he heard his name being called, and looked up to see Nurse Williams standing by him. There was a new patient, and Jason was the only one not currently with someone. He nodded, set the papers aside, and went to the room Rory indicated.
Inside, he found a young blonde woman in her mid-twenties. Jason was about to ask her what she'd come in for when he noticed the bruises on the woman's arms. The distinctly finger-shaped bruises. Domestic abuse cases were few and far between now, especially after the recent Equal Rights Act of 2178, which updated the one made a century and a half before. Jason couldn't help but notice how beautiful the woman was and how kind she looked. How anyone could hurt her was beyond his comprehension.
Jason gently questioned the woman, whose name she learned to be Rose Tyler. He took down her information, as well as the information of her now-ex boyfriend for the police. Jason then used the dermal regenerators to heal Rose's bruises. As he did so, Jason talked with Rose and learned that she was a nice woman who had made a bad decision when it came to boyfriends. As he worked, Jason internally cursed the man who dared touch such a nice person. When he was finished, Jason turned to leave the room only to spin back around when Rose gave out a loud gasp.
Jason hadn't realized before, but the bruises on her arms had covered Rose's Timer. Now that they were gone, both women could see that her Timer had gone to zero. It was colored a deep blue, meaning the Moment had happened within the last fifteen minutes. Jason had been with her for at least twenty. Rose's Moment had happened at some point while they were talking.
Seeing Rose's Timer made Jason remember his own. Sure enough, on his arm read the deep blue words: 0 Days, 0 Hours, 0 Minutes. He looked up and saw Rose gaping at his arm. Neither one said anything, but they didn't need to. You only had your Moment with people who are (or will be) important to you. While they were strangers now, they clearly were meant to know one another. Before either one could say anything, however, Jason was called out of the room to help with an emergency surgery. He dashed out, only to later realize that he didn't say goodbye. No matter. He was sure that he and Rose would find each other again. That's just how it worked when you met someone during your Moment.
Jason was not surprised at all when Rose came to the hospital the next week. And he was only a little surprised when Rose accepted his offer for fish and chips that Friday on his day off. They hit it off right away, and Jason helped Rose heal from what he was horrified to learn years of abuse at the hand of Jimmy Stone. Rose helped Jason heal from the death of his family, which had haunted him for almost a decade. Eventually, their friendship blossomed into something more, more happiness than either of them thought they could ever have.
Years later, at their wedding, both of them confirmed that that was the most important Moment of their lives. They had no way of knowing for certain, but they liked to think that their Moments were the same. Maybe it was the moment they first made eye contact. Maybe it was the moment that Rose decided Jason was trustworthy enough to confide in. Maybe it was the moment that he had to go and neither of them wanted to part. They would never know for sure. But Jason sort of liked that way. Everyone got their Moment. But he and Rose had several to choose from.