A/N: This is an alternate-universe fanfiction inspired by lilyandtherose's excellent fanvideo of the same name on Youtube. If you haven't seen it already, look it up sometime, it's brilliant.
Anywho, she was nice enough to give me permission to write a story based on her video. Obviously, though, as this is a different medium, a written story verses a video, I did have to fill in some gaps and went with Human Nature/Family of Blood (book and show versions) as my "spackle" so to speak, because of it being a period piece and Joan Redfern being in the fanvideo.
Time After Time
A Doctor Who Fanfiction
Every morning, like clockwork, Rose puts down a saucer of milk for Joan Redfern's cat, Wolsey – a large tom with vivid tabby markings – before starting her other duties.
The greedy little thing lets out a non-committal noise that might be half a purr or might just as easily be a growl before padding over to lap it up. Wolsey is a beautiful cat with a good temperament, but he likes only Joan, has adamantly decided there can be no exception to this rule.
Unfortunately Rose is very fond of cats and, wishing to befriend this one eventually, she's forced to suffer through an entirely unrequited love. She always calls him "beautiful boy," and murmurs soft, sweet endearments to the distrustful feline but makes no progress.
Pitiless Wolsey remains wholly unmoved by her flattery and coddling. Cats, alas, are stubborn that way. Rose has about as much chance of gaining his love one day as she has of visiting the stars or going back in time and meeting Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria.
When she first came here – to Farringham School For Boys – she worked as a housemaid. She spent endless hours scrubbing the cold floor, on her hands and knees, with a bucket of lye and a rough-bristled brush, only for the older boys, who liked to make things difficult, to deliberately leave dirty footprints over all she'd cleaned.
She still feels more than a little cross when she remembers Hutchinson and Baines smirking at her as she retrieved the bucket and brush and – with a glare over her shoulder – set back to work.
One afternoon, however, Joan happened upon this far from irregular occurrence and heard Baines spewing double entendres about Rose always being on her knees. And, mortified, she took the matter up with the Headmaster.
Rocastle didn't wish to do anything about it apart from a half-hearted offer to have the boys punished Joan must have been aware he never meant to honour. Still, she persisted. The Tyler girl was rather young – only nineteen, and quite pretty – she pointed out; you couldn't expect the boys not to notice her, and some – a little less gentlemanly than the rest – were bound to keep harassing her by matter of course. Disruptive, that's what it was.
He'd politely told her it was nonsense, and admitted he was considering giving the girl notice, if she was going to make such trouble about the matter, only for Joan to shake her head and announce she was in need of an assistant.
Not that the two issues were connected, as such. She was only mentioning it while she was here.
By the end of the session, Rocastle seemed to think it had been his idea to give the school nurse an extra pair of hands. Jenny, an older housemaid, was scrubbing the floors and Rose was being told to fetch bandages and keep inventory of the supply closet.
Rose herself is torn as to how she feels about Joan. The woman is older, a no-nonsense widow, and she can be bossy and demanding – their personalities are hardly complimentary, making them far from ideal companions for one another – but she did get her off the floor and out of that ghastly black dress with the stiff white collar, and she keeps Baines and Huchinson from ogling her bum at every opportunity.
And she is the beloved owner of the beautiful, unrelenting Wolsey, who Rose is leaving in peace now to finish his milk.
More than anything in the world, Joan wants to be a Science teacher – she's done the work for it, is perfectly qualified; she's only a nurse here because there were no other openings when she first arrived and she's equality qualified in nursing. And now that the old teacher has retired (they realised he was ready to go, getting rather too senile to ignore, when they found him running naked down the main staircase), she'd seemed the most likely replacement, except that Rocastle has double-dealt her and hired a man, no doubt far less qualified, behind her back.
"The older boys won't respect a teacher they've known as their nurse for four years," he says, whenever she asks, by way of explanation, though everybody knows it's really because she's a woman.
Master John Smith, who is arriving today by railway, and then by a local farmer's wagon (there is no direct public transport to Farringham's front doors and nobody's sure yet if he's worth the expense of sending an automobile for), is – whatever else he may or may not be – almost definitely, they're all quite certain, a man.
And so he's Rocastle's choice. Simple.
Rose knows she will be expected, as Joan's assistant, to loathe the man on principal. No matter that Joan herself says that's all pure nonsense and of course Rose is free to make up her own mind, don't think otherwise; it is still expected, an unspoken rule of where her loyalties are meant to lie if she is not to seem like a very ungrateful girl indeed.
She is hoping, almost feverishly, for a balding man of near sixty with a superior air who eats with his mouth open, smacking his fat lips together the whole time. A nose-picking habit wouldn't hurt, either. Particularly if he then proceeds to eat his bogies with his mouth open, too.
A handsome young man who is not one of these pipsqueak boys is going to be harder not to admire. She hasn't seen one for a while now, not since she left London to come and work here, and she can't help it if she's every bit as fond of good-looking men as she is of cats. More even, if she's being honest with herself.
Master Smith's niece – Miss Bernice 'call me Benny' Summerfield – was here last week, bringing up his things in battered trunks and organising the arrival and moving of a large wooden crate, seeing to it that his quarters were in order, but – while she decidedly liked her, possibly better than she does Joan – Rose hadn't brought herself to ask what her uncle was like.
Benny might have said he was young and handsome as easily as she might have said 'he's an old dear' or 'he's an ageing, fat tyrant whose farts smell like bad breath', and then where would Rose's fragile hopes be?
Her fingers are crossed behind her back as she stands beside the rest of the staff, a resigned yet resilient Joan, and Headmaster Rocastle waiting for the expected wagon to come bumping up the paved drive, making its way across the lawn.
Instead he arrives by bicycle.
Rose lets out a little sigh. And with that exhaled breath, one chilly white puff dissipating into the air, any hope of loathing him.
He's scholarly, suit and spectacles and unflattering elbow-patches, but he's a far, far cry from unattractive – and he isn't old. He's perhaps Joan's age, perhaps just a little younger. She is searching in her mind for some trace of resentment, thinking – forcing herself to think, more like – that he is taking the place of a friend. That he's unwelcome here. That she wishes he could go back to wherever he came from.
Then he nods, just slightly, in her direction, corner of his mouth quirked, before addressing the headmaster.
Bugger. No, she doesn't wish that at all. She wants him to stay.
"Headmaster! I'm not late, am I?" He draws out a gold pocket watch with long, slightly twitchy fingers and, squinting, examines its face for the hour.
"Not at all, Master Smith, though..." Wrinkling his nose, Rocastle motions at the bicycle.
"Oh, that – yes, the wagon threw a wheel and I had the bicycle with me." He reaches up and takes off his spectacles, breathing on them and wiping the lenses off with his thumb before replacing them. "And, well." He shrugs. "Seemed the easiest solution to solider on. The weather has been fantastic! Makes the little hairs on the back of my hand stick straight up." Lifting his right hand, he waggles his fingers pointedly. "Look at that."
Merrroooooooowwww... Joan's cat comes shooting out behind them, a far more insidious traitor than Rose – who immediately bends down to scoop Wolsey up – and heads straight for John Smith.
"Aren't you a beautiful boy," Rose coos.
"Thanks!" John Smith brightens like a newly-lit candle, turning to look at her, at the pretty yellow-haired cockney girl who he thinks has just complimented him. "I've been experimenting with–" He stops dead, all the enthusiasm draining from his disappointed expression as he stares at the cat struggling to get out of her arms. "Oh."
Wolsey mews pathetically and waves a paw, fighting to get closer to John, who is obviously uninterested his affection.
"What?" says Rose, almost snidely.
"I'm not really a cat person – once you've been hissed at by your great aunt's nasty Siamese in a wimple, it kind of takes the joy out of it."
"Was your great aunt a nurse?" asks Joan, curious for obvious reasons.
"Oh, no, no – the cat was the one wearing a wimple." John grimaces at the memory. "My aunt... She liked to dress up her animals, don't ask." Then, "My mother was a nurse, though, God rest her soul. My father loved that about her."
Joan's laugh is tinkly. "We make such good wives."
Rose lets Wolsey go, feeling deflated. Why should Joan be so friendly to this man – this man who Rose fancies despite the obvious reasons why she shouldn't – when he's her rival, snatching away her position as if it's nothing?
She'd have been a great deal happier with them sneering coldly at one another behind the headmaster's back.
"Right, well..." She doesn't know what comes over her, but – "Wolsey's her cat." She inclines her head – almost accusingly – in the nurse's direction.
Joan looks wounded, questioningly side-eyeing Rose as soon as John's gaze falls away.
Rose stares down at her feet, her inner morality at war – half ashamed, half quite pleased with herself. Sorry Joan, I just wanted him to look at me again.
Rose is passing by the open door of Master Smith's room when she sees that the mysterious wooden crate has been unpacked.
It's an orrery.
She hasn't seen one of these since leaving London, and the one she dimly remembers from the British Museum wasn't this elaborately detailed or grand.
For a humble school master like Smith, this must have cost a fortune, must have taken simply ages to save for.
Or perhaps the British Museum's orrery was every bit as fancy and she wasn't paying it real attention as she is now. Perhaps she'd been thinking, instead, of her sore feet and wondering when she could go home.
But certainly it wasn't this big – when she looks at it, she feels like it's larger than the room it's in, far more expansive. By all rights it shouldn't even fit in here, let alone have space for John Smith to stalk around it proudly, beaming like he's just saved the world and is feeling immeasurably clever as a result.
John sees her watching in the doorway and waves her in excitedly, motioning at the planets and moons on their whirling wire-and-brass mechanisms. "And this... Look here..."
When he speaks about the stars, about the vastness of space, she's enraptured, entirely riveted. His enthusiasm has none of the clinical bookishness of Joan's knowledgeable yet dry explanations she's gotten used to half-listening to. He isn't telling her this because he is trying to teach her something – he's telling her all this because it's bubbling up inside him, the sheer excitement of these things boiling under his skin like molten lava; it's all so wonderful he can't bear to keep it to himself.
Behind his spectacles, his eyes sparkle brighter than the stars he speaks of.
And Rose smiles, and occasionally manages to get in a question or two which he answers a little too thoroughly, getting lost in the jumble of endless words, grinning widely the whole time, and she knows she wouldn't have it any other way.
When she has to go, he shakes his head – as if he is coming out of a daze – and blurts, "Sorry. What was your name again?"
"Rose. Rose Tyler."
His bright smile is back. "Nice to meet you, Rose."
"Rose!" Joan is calling for her, and she doesn't sound happy. "Rose? Where are you? What are you thinking, running off? Rose!"
She curses under her breath. "I'm so dead. I'm meant to be working already."
"Run for your life," John teases.
Her cheeks burn up, but she can't stop looking at him and smiling. "D'you know what I think? I think you were talking just then."
"Oh, for pity's sake!" Laughing, he gestures wildly with his arms at the door. "Run!"
They happen upon one another again – this time at night, under a heavily shadowed half-moon.
He has his telescope out, scanning the sky, and turns to her in delight, tearing himself away from the eyepiece, squinting until he recognises her – the pretty cockney girl who admired his orrery and listened to his impromptu lecture earlier – then cheerfully rambling on about whatever he's been searching the heavens for.
She watches him not only with interest and amusement now but also with tenderness. This is only their third interaction and already he is more to her than the new Science teacher, more than just a friendly, handsome face.
The way he talks has somehow begun to become his face; he's the most beautiful man she's ever seen.
One evening, by the firelight of the school's kitchen hearth, John tells Rose a scary story. It's an old urban legend, clearly embellished by his own fancy, his own funny dreams and notions and moralities.
A possessed child, a wicked creature, though she looks innocent, like a little girl holding a single red balloon, does horrible things, and a higher power – in retaliation for her evil doings – punishes her by trapping her in, not merely a mirror, but every mirror.
"If ever," he recites softly, in his eeriest voice, "you look at your reflection and see something move behind you – just for a second – that's her." He reaches out and touches Rose's shoulder, tapping and pointing at the faint reflection in a silver pan partway across the kitchen. "That's always her."
Rose shivers. "Spooky."
He's gratified by this. "Scariest story I know."
"I heard it differently," says Rose, recalling a revisionist version she was told during her school days in London. "I heard the girl was released – that the higher power came for her in the guise of a woman, no longer an unforgiving man; she took mercy on her and set her free. And then the girl dies, peacefully, naturally, still as wicked as she ever was."
John wrinkles his nose. "That's... That's..." Staring off into the middle-distance, he struggles to find something nice to say, and fails entirely in the endeavour. He rubs a hand over his face. "That's stupid."
"Yeah, it really is, isn't it?"
"I don't know what it is, but I hate it – I hate every word of it."
"Me too," she laughs, tilting sideways on the stool she's seated on.
He reaches out to steady her and, being so close, he almost kisses her, nearly presses his lips to hers. But clearing his throat and pulling away, he mentions something about the late hour, and having to be up to teach the little monsters in the morning, and excuses himself.
Rose is left to wonder if she only imagined the man she fancies wanted to kiss her, came so very near to kissing her, concludes she can't have imagined the way he looked at her as he left, that it must have meant something, and stares into the dying embers of the fire wistfully.
"How comes you always sign your name with an x?" Rose muses, twirling a lock of her hair around her index finger.
They're sitting by the fire again. She's been watching him drag his scratchy pencil along a page in his journal, the orange-gold light flickering across his tired face, winking off his spectacles.
The boys must have been in fine form today; they've clearly run him ragged, poor man. They never do seem to enjoy hearing their Science teacher speak as much as Rose does.
He looks up. "Whatdd'you mean?"
"It's just..." She points. "After you write John Smith, you always put X."
"Oh," he laughs, "that's... That's an old family joke. My father came up with it."
"Yeah?"
"It's not an x, it's the Roman Numeral ten."
"Right." Her eyebrows are lowered; she purses her lips in confusion. "I don't get it."
"Well, John Smith's a really common name."
"Yeah, I guess."
"So, we – Father and I – joke that I'm the tenth one to have it in the family – John Smith the tenth – my father's a watchmaker, you see, and an orphan; he has no way of actually knowing if that's true."
Rose cracks a smile, still twisting her finger. "That's cute."
"You don't mean that."
"I do," she insists, chuckling amiably.
"Nah, come on, don't lie; you think it's pathetic."
"No, I really don't – as a matter of fact, I've decided I'm just going to call you Ten from now on."
He tilts his head and scowls without malice. "Oi. Don't you dare." Then, looking at her hair wrapped around her finger, chuckles, "You'll go bald."
She's outraged – and a little frightened he's right. "I won't!"
One of his eyes is twitching, something like a wink. "Science," he mouths.
She frowns and lets go of her hair. "What's that you're writing anyway?"
"Stories. Dreams. Strange dreams I can't always explain or ever fully understand, though I've had them all my life. I call it my journal of impossible things."
She reaches up and pushes her tangled blonde fringe away from her face and leans forward flirtatiously. "Am I in it?"
Instead of answering, he closes the journal and tucks it into his bag, which he slides under himself, sitting on it.
After a long day, most of which was spent trying to catch glimpses of John and avoid getting caught by Joan and forcibly dragged back to work, Rose is asleep on one of window-seats in the downstairs corridor.
When John – locking up the classroom behind him for the day, a low whistle dying on his pursed lips – turns and sees her there, his face softens with affection.
She looks so charming, like a fairy-tale princess, like Sleeping Beauty.
He watches her for a few moments, notices how she shivers in her sleep, then leaves her and returns – two or three minutes later – with a quilt he pinched from an empty dorm room.
Smiling down indulgently, he tosses the quilt over her and tucks it around her until she appears quite snug.
In parting, he smooths back one of her golden curls and all but tip-toes down the corridor in an effort not to wake her.
He's not as successful in this as he believes himself to be, because as soon as his back is turned, she's jolted awake by the scrape of a tree-branch against the window, just in time to see him vanish around the corner and wonder where on earth he snagged this odd quilt that smells of camphor and old soap and has a little embroidered teddy bear on one double-stitched edge.
"Oh, stop it." Joan bats the air near John's shoulder. "You're worse than some of the boys here."
"It hurts," whines John, and to be fair Joan is in the process of giving him stitches in the back of his head.
"What were you thinking, falling down the stairs this morning?"
"I was distracted," John says.
"Oh, that's a surprise – and may I ask what by?"
He regards Rose – who is sitting in the corner of Joan's office, trying not to laugh – from the corner of his eye without turning his sore head.
"A flower."
"A flower," repeats Joan, incredulously.
"Yeah. Just a flower." He bites onto his lower lip.
Rose has a friend, a little Welsh housemaid whose master, a fussy funeral director called Gabriel Sneed, lives a couple miles outside of the main village, and sometimes they order something from the local pub and – because of propriety and class rules – sit outside while they gossip the evening away.
Her name is Gwyneth.
They are each the closest thing the other has to a peer group. Which is not saying much.
Gwyneth is usually more reserved than Rose, some would even call her shy, but as they sit at the iron filigree table in the frosty night air, she warms to her friend's stories about John Smith immediately.
The drink she's consuming probably has something to do with her lowered inhibitions tonight, too, of course.
"Speakin' of handsome men," she whispers over her half-finished glass, "lightning seems to have struck twice for you, Rose."
"What'dya mean?" She picks at the plate of chips beside their glasses, which have already gone cold.
"There's a good-lookin' fellow in the doorway, watching you like a hungry wolf'as wants to gobble you up right now."
Licking icy salt-crystals off her thumb, she whirls around and sees a smirking, dark-haired stranger. "And what are you fine ladies doing out here? You'll freeze your asses off."
Gwyneth flushes. "I beg your pardon, sir! Asses, indeed. I dun't know about that."
Rose realises something, by his voice. She takes her thumb out of her mouth. "You're an American?"
"Yes, ma'am, I certainly am." He sashays over, winking like it's going out of style.
"And flirting with two proper Englishwomen–"
"I'm Welsh!" Gwyneth cuts in sharply, pounding her glass down like a gavel.
Clank, clank, clank!
"Right. Sorry." Rose shakes her head. "One Englishwomen and one Welsh lady."
"Thank you, miss," puts in Gwyneth, mollified.
"You really think," Rose presses on, "that's a good idea?"
"It's fun, but I don't have to," he teases, making a motion to go and leave them alone.
"No, no, he's so nice to look at – don't send him off!" protests Gwyneth, in an urgent whisper that is not so quiet in tone as she means for it to be.
"Was only a suggestion," Rose mumbles, batting her eyes, and he responds with a cheery laugh.
"Jack, I can't leave you alone for five blasted minutes, can I?" And John Smith is suddenly rushing out of the pub, straightening out his woolen scarf and trying fruitlessly to tuck it into his unbuttoned overcoat.
"What, I'm making friends," he insists, pouting.
"Rose, let me know if this troublemaker bothers you – he thinks he's charming, this one."
"Can't believe it, a handsome stranger and your John Smith in one night!" squeals Gwyneth, raising her glass for another sip and nearly finishing off her drink. "This is better than going to a play in the city."
"Oi, shut it." Rose leans over the table to pinch her. "You're drunk."
The stranger waggles his eyebrows and picks up a chip, slowly biting off the tip and then wetting his lips, his tongue lingering at the corners of his mouth. "I'm all right with that – alcohol only makes me look even more dashing."
"Stop it," warns John, a little petulantly.
"What?"
"How'd you two know each other?" Rose asks.
"Oh, well John and I," says the stranger – this mad non-Englishman, Jack – "we used to share a bed." He wiggles dramatically. "I was the one on top."
Gwyneth makes little choking noises.
Rose's eyes widen. "Hmm? Is that right?"
"Rose, don't you listen to a word he says, he just having you on – thinks he's being funny, only he's even more drunk than your poor friend here. And it makes him crass." John rolls his eyes and folds his arms across his chest. "We were in the same House as schoolboys, when his father and brother first moved him across the pond from America; he had the bunk above mine. Which, I might add, he used to wet not infrequently."
"Hey!"
"His name's Jack Harkness."
Gwyneth breaks into a hyena like fit of laughter.
"See? You see?" says Jack, triumph in his voice, pointing with emphasis. "She thinks I'm funny." He's been eating more chips off the plate, speaking through the corner of a full mouth, and suddenly he looks at what he's been putting down and adds, "Jesus. These aren't even good," before reaching for another one.
"Rose, it's freezing; they're daft to make you ladies eat out here," says John, next, sucking his teeth. "Can I, perhaps, escort you back to the school?"
She rises from her chair so fast she nearly topples it over behind herself. "If you like, but I'm... I'm meant to walk Gwyneth back toward Master Sneed's house. She'll never find it on her own in this state."
"Nooh," she slurs, squinting and planting her elbows on the table emphatically. "Gooo with him. He's so pretty. You're so pretty, John Smith, d'you know that?"
"Aw, thank you, sweetheart." John looks rather pleased.
"I'll take her home," Jack offers magnanimously.
"Will..." Rose likes Jack; she can't help it, he really is charming, but she's uncertain about his intentions. "Will she be all right with him?"
John gives Jack a look.
"How dare you, John!" He puts his hand to his heart, feigning offence. "I have no idea what you're implying."
"Well, clearly you do."
"I happen to be a perfect gentleman, Smith, and you know it."
"Yeah," he sighs, in a more honest tone, "your friend will be just fine – he's a decent chap when he stops flirting."
"And when does he do that?"
"Usually around the same time he stops breathing." John gives a little shrug, removes his overcoat, ignoring Rose's protest when she realises his intention, and puts it over her shoulders. "Come on. Let's get moving."
"I duuun't mind," Gwyneth insists through chattering teeth, allowing Jack to pull her chair out and help her to her feet. "Even if there are three of him, and they're all outta foh-cus fer some reason." She releases a belch. "Whoa. That came up wrong." She grips Jack's arms to keep from keeling over. "D'you know what? You and your two blurry amigos are very pretty, too, Jack."
"Thanks." He grins like someone's just told him he's somehow – despite being an American – third in line to be king of England.
Rose cocks her head.
"She'll be fine," John promises.
"Better off with me, anyway," Jack points out. "It's so damn dark tonight she'd break a leg without someone to see her home."
They've left the noise of the pub, and the collective giggles of Jack and Gwyneth, only a couple miles behind them when Rose sees a flash, a brilliant shooting star, smear itself across the sky.
"It looks so close," she marvels. "You'd think it was gonna hit us or something."
"Commonly known as a meteorite," says John, with a little pop on the last syllable, sounding like he's about to start giving a lecture. "Just rocks falling to the ground, that's all. They always look close, like you said, but actually they're meant to be miles and miles off. They'll be nothing left but a cinder."
"It's beautiful," murmurs Rose. "So beautiful."
And he stops thinking about rocks and Science and speeches and wondering about far-off things and whatever else is floating around his fathomless mind for long enough to really look at her in the starlight.
"Yes." His voice is gone melting soft. "Very beautiful."
"If..." she stammers out. "If you kissed me right now, I wouldn't mind."
He bends his head and, with the lightest of touches, lifts up her chin. "That's good."
John asks her to take a walk with him.
Giddily remembering their shared kiss on the way back from the pub, almost two nights ago, she abandons a dirty bedpan one of the boys was sick in she's meant to wash out and return to Joan. She forgets, too, the bandages she's supposed to count and stack in the cupboard and trots off at his side into the sunny afternoon without another thought.
It ends up being less than pleasant, though.
He talks, with an open frankness Rose decides she doesn't care for, about his home, and his past, and a young lady he jilted once, left standing at the altar when he realised a life with her was impossible, that he was the sort of person always running and dreaming while she was someone who would grow old a day sooner than everyone else, who liked settling and thought the whole world was one little English village and everything else was dead-land of no concern.
"Hard luck on her," mumbles Rose, her voice dripping with condemnation. "She couldn't have known you'd change your mind out of the blue – that you'd leave her. Have there been others? How many?"
He's tetchy, not having expected this reaction from her, having thought she'd understand; he lightly kicks a pebble on the path. "What's it matter?"
"It matters if you can't..." She swallows, hard; the sides of her throat feel like they're lined with broken glass. "It matters if you can't let yourself care about anyone." She clenches her fists, lets her nails dig into her palms until it hurts. "It matters if I'm just the latest in a long line."
"I didn't say that."
"You were close to her, once – you were going to marry her – and now... Now when you talk about her you sound like an encyclopedia." Rose inhales, drawing in a shaky breath. Then she lets it out. "Is that what you'd do to me?"
"No," he says, maybe too quickly, without even the decency to be surprised she's going there. "Not to you."
"But knowing you could just change your mind and move on like it's nothing..." she says softly, staring at her feet. "I mean... It... Doesn't feel real any more."
"How can you think what's happened between us isn't real?" He brushes the back of his hand against hers. "When I kissed you, was that a lie?"
Before she can answer, her name is shouted – Joan is looking for her, has found her work left unfinished.
Rose tears down the path, away from John, leaving him behind.
Meow.
Wolsey is rubbing against his legs.
"Oh, you again." He bends over and scratches the cat's ears. "How many times must I remind you, Mister Wolsey, I do not like cats."
A yowl.
"Saw what happened, did you?"
Wolsey swishes his raised tail, curls it into the vaguest estimation of a question mark, and stares at John unwaveringly. It's a bit unnerving.
"Get on, shoo – go play with a ball of string or something."
Joan, searching fruitlessly for Rose as she always seems to be doing these days, instead finds John Smith in the library, bent over his journal, scribbling away, making notes.
"Lesson plans?" she asks, and tries to keep any notable envy out of her voice, because she doesn't blame him for what he's taken from her.
He starts.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you."
"You didn't," he says, not entirely truthfully, brushing aside a stack of books and pulling the journal closer to himself. "And, no, it's not lesson plans. Just some stories I dreamed up."
"May I?"
Her arms are already outstretched to take the journal, and like a child with his hand caught in the sweets jar, he's too shamefaced to refuse. "Of course, Nurse Redfern; here you go. Not that it'll be of any interest."
"On the contrary, I'd be very interested." She flips a few pages. "Remarkable." Her fingertips trace a drawing of a bizarre being on an unfamiliar landscape. "And what's this one meant to be?"
So he begins his story, and in the way of most storytellers, once he begins, once he has an audience, he finds it hard to stop – he's sharing the details of everything that catches her eye, and then some. He leans over her shoulder to point out a number of things she's missing, hoping to pique her interest even further so he can keep on hearing himself talk.
That's when Rose – who's come here both to avoid Joan and to look for John, perhaps even to say she overreacted during their last conversation – sees them.
Joan, freely invited to peruse the pages of the journal coyly denied to her.
Well, John can do whatever he likes with his journal – they're his stories, after all.
Joan hears her breathing heavily and jerks her head up. "There you are!" She snags her arm and leads her away from the library. "It's come to my attention that we may need to have a talk, you and I."
Rose barely hears the scolding; she's thinking about John, back in the library, how he didn't even say hello before Joan dragged her off – John, who didn't let out a single syllable of protest when Joan walked off with his precious journal tucked under her arm as she hustled Rose out.
"As my assistant," she ploughs on sharply, "I expected you to behave more responsibly. If I can't rely on you, Rose, how can I convince Headmaster Rocastle not to demote you to being a housemaid again – or, worse, give you the sack? He's bound to notice you're never around helping me sooner or later. Did you ever think of that?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am."
"It pains me very much, how you seem to have suddenly become scatterbrained these last few days – not to mention the dreadful inconvenience, the workload you've left on my shoulders."
Rose murmurs another less than heartfelt apology.
Then, Joan says something that makes her feel cold all over. "John was rather agreeable today, I'm thinking of asking him to the village dance tomorrow evening."
Rose represses the childish urge to stuff her fingernails into her mouth and chew like the world depends upon it. "But... I mean, he's the Science teacher, en't he? He took your dream job. I didn't think you even liked him."
"Oh, he's all right – his worst failing is absent-mindedness, acting like he's left the kettle on and forgotten all about getting back to it. Snaking my job wasn't his doing, and you know I don't hold with petty resentments."
"Could've fooled me," she grumbles – despite not having paid close attention, she's retained enough of the scolding Nurse Redfern just doled out for there to still be some sting in it.
"What was that?"
"Nothing ma'am."
"Rose, dear, if you don't mind my saying so – I'd be careful."
"Dunno what you mean."
"You sometimes seem a little familiar with him."
Rose can't fathom why they should be anything else but familiar. She's come to know him so well so quickly that to be unfamiliar with him would feel lonely and rather a lot like play-acting.
"Best to remember your place."
"I–"
"You're a bit young for him, Rose."
"And what about you, then? You're old and all used up." She wishes she could take the words back as soon as they're out of her mouth – she knows Joan is actually very pretty, and not so very old, that she only acts matronly because it's proper and somebody has to be an adult in this bloody school and it's hardly going to be sulky Headmaster Rocastle, that she's lonely after losing her husband and childhood sweetheart, Oliver.
It's even worse, somehow, as the silence hangs on and Rose realises she won't – she'd never – return the insult, never pay tit for tat, not for the world.
"You may go," Joan chokes out, her voice low, trembling with hurt and anger. "Please shut the door on your way out." Eyes glittering with unshed tears, her hand goes to the corner of her right eye as she turns away.
And – with an almost imperceptible bob of the head – Rose leaves, ashamed.
She is trying her hardest – unsuccessfully – not to let her mind dwell on how Joan Redfern might be crying on the other side of the door.
Rose doesn't speak to Joan or John the following day.
Joan gives her a couple of tasks that need doing, without looking at her, and – her cheeks still hot with shame from their exchange yesterday – she chooses not to initiate further conversation.
With John, it's a waiting game.
Rose thinks, perhaps foolishly, it might all go away if only he refuses Joan's invitation.
A polite refusal could mean he wants to go with somebody else – namely her. It could mean a sort of reconciliation between the two of them. Everything else might be resolved later, if it can go back to the easy way things were.
But he doesn't refuse Joan's offer, and Rose watches Nurse Redfern take out her best dress and fix a fraying hem while she scrubs stains out of old bandages a few feet away.
She knows she is not some oppressed Cinderella-figure – indeed, Joan is the underdog here, the one brushed aside by Rose until this point, avoided and neglected and – at the last – spitefully insulted. Joan's the one who deserves to go to this dance at the Village Hall tonight. And – of the pair of them – she's the one who had the courage to actually ask John, the one who wasn't sulking in the corners of the school all day for reasons that all seem rather idiotic now.
Still, it's hard to feel glad about any of this.
Joan sighs like a martyr and sets her needle down. "If it troubles you so much, Rose, I'll tell him I've changed my mind. I won't have enmity and ill-will between us over something as silly as this."
"Don't. It's all right. I don't care if you go with him," Rose lies, thinking of his impossible dream journal she can still see on Joan's desk, the journal John has obviously not demanded she return. "You can do whatever you want."
"Then I'll ask you not to pout," she says, primly picking up the needle again. "Sulking is a very bad habit for a young lady."
Rose stands in the doorway to watch the dancing. There are any number of couples happily lost in themselves at this village dance, but she has eyes for only one – Joan and John. The rest might as well be translucent ghosts stepping in and out in front of them.
They laugh amiably, easily. It occurs to Rose that their interactions are smoother and more right somehow than her own and John's.
Rose can listen to what John has to say, can love that he loves what he's talking about and be starstruck by his enthusiasm, but she can't contribute to the conversation intelligently the way Joan can. Almost everything she knows about his passions, he'll have to take the time to teach her, whereas Joan – qualified for the same job as him – knows it all already.
And she's a nurse, like his mother, certainly that means something. Rose thinks back to the first day, Joan's pointed remark. We make such good wives.
And what sort of wife would she make? A silly girl from London so ripe for puppy love she'd probably – in all honesty – have fallen head over heels for any pretty face that turned up at Farringham.
She doesn't know.
She only knows, for a certainty, that she liked him on first sight and that she loves him now, really and truly loves him, not as some imagined romantic lost prince but for his own mad self, and that it's entirely possible none of it matters.
Because Joan's perfect for him, and he knows it. She's certain he does. He'd be stupid not to. And she wants to be so happy for him, because she wants him – her starry-eyed Master John Smith – to be so happy for himself.
Knowing, though, how far from happy she really is, she makes up her mind, then.
She'll go back to London. Back to her mother, Jacqueline. The jobs she'll be able to get at home won't be glamorous, she's twice as likely to get a job at the butcher's as she is in a posh shop, but the work will keep her from putting on airs and graces, and – more importantly – it will keep her too busy to think about missing John every second of every moment for the rest of her life.
When she arrives back at Farringham, the school feels deserted. The older boys are all still at the dance – some with partners, some sipping punch and daring each other to play pranks on the teachers – and the younger ones are asleep in their beds.
Rose packs her things in a satchel and checks that she has money for carriage fare and – later – the train. She slips into Joan's office and makes a last-second decision. John's journal of impossible things. She's going to take it with her, back to London.
It's stealing, true, but Joan gets everything else. She just wants some small piece of him to take with her.
Besides, it's not as if she'll be coming back to face their disappointment at her petty act of thievery.
She feels hypocritical, though, as – while her fingers curl around the spine and she lifts it into her open satchel – she guiltily recalls one time she caught young Timothy Latimer making off with John's gold pocket watch and gave him a severe telling off she thinks even Joan would have been proud of. She's doing something worse than that now. The watch may be valuable, possibly even made by his father, but it's a replaceable trinket – another gold watch on a chain can be bought for the right price – whereas the journal is priceless, John's own painstaking work and personal writings. It's the difference between stealing a random horse and pinching the Mona Lisa right out from under da Vinci's unsuspecting, trusting nose.
Wolsey opens one eye and regards her intrusive presence in the room coolly. Cats have no concept of stealing unless it's perceived to be from themselves.
"Oh, Wolsey," she rasps out brokenly. "I'd pet you goodbye if I thought you'd let me."
Joan isn't sure how to tell John that his journal is gone. She's had a bit of a nasty shock herself – Rose going home with no warning. She tells herself that perhaps there was some emergency, something with her mother, and she's had to rush out in haste – that these weren't simply the ill-mannered actions of a sullen girl taking off after a scolding and the disappointments of an unrequited crush – but she's not sure she believes that.
No more than she believes that the journal might have just fallen behind the desk she's moved twice to check – just in case.
Rose's notice – written out in such a way it looks like the sloppy work of a rushed final minute – said nothing about any emergency, nor did she leave a forwarding address for the rest of her wages. She's simply gone, cleared out with all her belongings, and with the journal which most certainly does not belong to her.
She wrings her hands as she stands outside of John's room. She disentangles her fingers and, thrice, lifts her right hand to knock, then brings it back down. He trusted her with his writing and she's let her assistant steal it; she will have to be very frank, very direct, simply bite the bullet and tell him, but she is dreading it.
Finally she raps her knuckles smartly on the wood of the door and waits.
It swings open. John looks rather dazed, quite distracted and vaguely disadvantaged, as though she's just sent his long train of thought tumbling off the side of the tracks to its demise, but Joan's gotten to the point where she regards this as fairly normal for him.
"Oh, Nurse Redfern." A friendly smile plays at the corners of his mouth before he registers her gloomy expression and adjusts his accordingly.
"I'm afraid, Master Smith," she confesses, "I have some bad news."
And as he waits with bated breath, she – so unwitting of the blow she's dealing out, so much more than telling him his journal is gone – shatters his whole world.
For lack of any better ideas, John takes his bicycle down to the station, pedalling as fast as humanly possible and then some. He goes largely downhill, speeding as much as he can manage, wishing he could go even more quickly.
When he finally gets there, finally arrives, it's to the train – the one Rose must be on – already noisily taking off, trailed by a cruel plume of black smoke.
He's in a panic, because he needs to catch her now or that's it.
London is a very big city. She's left no address. True, he's not unprepared to go up there and shamelessly knock on every door asking for a Rose Tyler, but – even with all the optimism he can muster – he knows the odds of actually finding her again aren't exactly in his favour.
'Rose Tyler' might not be as dismal as 'John Smith' as far as common names go, but there must be other Rose Tylers in the world, even in London, and he's bound to find them as surely as the one he's really looking for.
As for the journal, he's barely given it another thought. It only makes sense that when Rose leaves she takes his wildest dreams with him; so remarkable it is, when one thinks on it, that they're in a tangible form which can fit so easily into her hands and be carried off.
That's all as it should be, of course.
But he wants her back – wants her to have stayed – so badly it hurts.
Somewhere between the station and London, Rose is lazily brushing through the pages of the journal. John Smith is quite the artist as well as a writer and Science teacher, it turns out. According to some scribbles in the back of the book, he learned to draw at some place called the Gallifrey Institute of Art, which is apparently in Ireland. She wonders what he was doing there, since he's not Irish and neither were his parents. She'll never be able to ask.
She's nodding off, her head beginning to loll sleepily to one side, just as a page slips out from the binding and her fingers are almost not quick enough to catch it before it falls at her feet.
When she sees it, her heart stops.
It is a drawing of herself, detailed with an eye that goes beyond friendly – it's a lover's gaze that casts such an image into the mind before it's committed to paper. Any fool could see it. He's even included a little chip she had on her little fingernail a few weeks ago and forgotten about until this moment. She's wearing silver spiral flower-patterned earrings – one of the only good pieces of jewellery she owns, a birthday gift from her mother before she left London – he could only have seen once and must have paid a great deal of attention to. Her ears themselves are so exact in shape and proportion that she actually reaches up behind her hair to feel the shape of one, just to be sure she's not going mad and simply imagining more devotion went into this than really did, slightly unnerved.
"Oh my God," she whimpers, and decides to get off at the next stop and begin making her way back to Farringham.
John's spectacles are fogging up, not to mention soaked and salt-stained by his tears. There's also a faint hairline crack forming on the left lens. A little piece of gravel hit it while he was speeding downhill on his bicycle.
So he pulls them off before he slides to the ground, his back against a tree truck. The rough bark snags the fibres of his jacket, creates friction with the sweater underneath.
All his life, he's wanted to see the world, to explore every damn inch of it if possible, which was why he told himself this stint as a Science teacher was only one little pit-stop on the road, a way to save up some cash for his real future, and now he is certain that it will be a hollow, unhappy adventure, if he goes at all.
Because she won't be part of it.
And that's where she finds him, when she arrives back at Farringham – under the tree, still broken-hearted, still weeping.
She kneels on the grass in front of him, reaching for his wrists and drawing his hands away from his face.
He sniffs, blinking at her in disbelief. Without his glasses, through puffy eyes, she looks like a blurry angel with a smeared yellow halo all around her soft pink face. "You came back."
"Yeah... I did."
"I thought you'd gone away for good."
"I thought so, too, when I left." She holds out his journal to him. "But this belongs with you." A pause. A long one. And John takes the journal nonchalantly with shaking hands and places it on the ground beside himself without ever looking at it, without taking his eyes off Rose for even an instant. The pause goes on; longer still. Then, "And, besides, there was something I needed to tell you before I went anywhere."
"If it isn't that you love me," he whispers, "don't tell me – just stay here, within my reach, and let me pretend there's still one last chance to say it."
She tosses herself into his open arms. "But that's it."
"What is?" he murmurs into her hair, clutching her to him and stroking the small of her back.
"I love you," she croaks out.
"Rose Tyler–"
"Right. That's a good start – and how're you gonna end that sentence?"
And he puts his mouth to her ear, so close she can feel the words he says next as much as she can hear them.
John's eyes shoot open at the sound of his door creaking. He sits up in bed and feels about for his spectacles; without them, the figure in the doorway will remain an unidentifiable blur.
His eyes settle, focusing through the streaky lenses.
"Rose!"
And indeed it is Rose, carrying his breakfast tray – usually the job of the housemaid, but he's not complaining.
"Good morning."
"Don't tell me." He smirks. "I forgot my own birthday again."
"Little chance of that, Master Smith." She smiles back teasingly and comes further into the room, closing the door behind herself. "You, sir, head in the stars or not, have way too many vanity issues to forget your own birthday."
"I'm wounded," he laughs, standing and tying his dressing-gown around himself. "You see right through me. To what do I owe the pleasure, then?"
"Well, I resigned, so I don't actually have a job here any more." She blushes prettily. "Had to do something to keep out of sight."
"And the first thing you thought of was visiting me – I don't know what to say – I'm deeply moved."
Setting the tray down, she motions over to the orrery. "Gosh."
"Our first real conversation." He's beaming.
"You showed me the planets." John sits down on the couch and she joins him on the other end, grinning. "Better with two, yeah?"
But suddenly he's frowning.
"What?" She touches her face self-consciously.
"You're sitting too far away from me." His hands are cupped over his mouth. "Can you even hear me over there?"
She scoots closer, so close their thighs touch and their knees knock together.
The frown doesn't leave his sulky face.
"You're joking, right? How much closer d'you want me to be? I'd be sitting in your lap."
His eyebrows waggle and the corners of his mouth start to lift. "I won't tell if you won't."
Sighing exaggeratedly, she plops down into his lap and lets him put his arms around her. "Better? Is that what you wanted?"
"Oh, I want a lot more than this – but it's a damn good start."
And he kisses her – on the mouth, the ear, the neck – until he can hear bells and noise and some dim fuzzy sense in the back of his mind is telling him if he's not where he's supposed to be someone somewhere might make an ungodly fuss and come knocking. He thinks this is rather a dreadful time for his mind to begin being responsible, recalls – almost bitterly – all those times he's been late because his nose was in a book or his hand was covered in graphite as he rubbed the pencil too hard into his journal of impossible things and his silly, silly mind didn't make the slightest warning peep. Now, with a beautiful woman in his lap allowing him to kiss and caress her, when he'd like to forget the existence of everything else in the universe as readily as he has forgotten his stone-cold breakfast on its tray, his stupid brain finally sounds the bloody alarm – figures, doesn't it?
They go to the door together and he can't help himself. Right there, in the corridor, shamelessly, he takes her hand and bends down on one knee. Her mouth is agape, but she has no time to exclaim in surprise. Because he immediately starts spewing something or other about how he never meant to be a Science teacher forever, doesn't she see, and is going away sooner than she might suppose, but she must come with him, so if she wouldn't terribly mind marrying him to make the travelling more convenient he'll do or say anything she likes in exchange.
"Y-yes," the answer rips out of her sounding more like a musical note than a proper word. "Yes. Of course I'll marry you." Then, her eyes flittering upwards, "Oh."
John turns his head to see what's made his fiancée's face drain of colour so quickly, and realises Joan is standing there and has heard the entire exchange.
"Joan–" begins Rose, though she's already fled.
"What's she thinking, sneaking up on people like that?"
"John – go after her."
"Aw, do I have to? Why?"
"Because you need to talk to her – we've broken her heart."
"I don't follow."
"John, you idiot, she loves you – she deserves an explanation."
"But I don't feel that way about her," he says, sounding stunned. "I never loved her. Never once did I let her think–"
"You did, though, John Smith, don't try to deny it." Rose is reprimanding now. "You went to the dance with her. What'd you do, forget already?"
"Only because she asked me!" His voice warbles, rising in pitch.
"We've been so horrible to her," insists Rose. "Both of us."
"But we didn't mean to hurt her – that wasn't our intention."
"D'you know what the road to Hell is paved with?"
"Frozen door-to-door salesmen?"
"John!"
"Sorry. Right. Fine, I'll talk to her."
"I'd do it for you if I could, but after how I was to her I don't think she'll ever want to speak to me again."
"Guess I'd best just get on with it, then."
Rose winces. "You might want to get dressed first."
He glances down and discovers he is still in his slippers and dressing-gown.
"Nurse Redfern, a word?"
She barely glances over her shoulder. "Oh. It's you."
John stands very still – if he is uncomfortable, longing to fidget or to shift from foot to foot, he doesn't show it.
"You must forgive my rudeness," she says, turning to face him but still avoiding his eyes. "I find it difficult to look at you."
"I meant you no offence, Joan, truly – can we start again?"
"Could you change your mind, sensibly consider her youth and your position here, and decide not to marry her after all?"
"Yes." He says it so easily, so matter of fact.
"Will you?"
"No."
"I see. Well, then. I should be grateful to her, for showing me you're hardly the man I thought you to be, that I only loved a fiction. Perhaps a fiction of my own making entirely. But he was better, and braver, than you – my fiction, my imaginary you."
"Then I'm no real loss to you as I am, am I?" says John, frankly, but with a little bit of conscience in his expression now, more aware of how deeply he's wounded her. "But we're still friends, aren't we, Joan? I thought that's what we went to the dance as – good friends. I'd like to have you at my wedding, if you'd be willing to–"
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because, John Smith, I've let my mind dwell on you – or at least on someone who, in my mind, looks like you – with romantic notions that I know now were foolish–"
"Don't be embarrassed."
"I'm not embarrassed," she says flatly. "I'm angry, disillusioned. I've lost the man I thought I was falling in love with and an assistant I loved like a little sister, even if I could never say it before.
"I don't–"
"She ran away, and this morning I learn she came back. But she came back for you, not for me, do you know how that feels?"
Oblivious to the tension – or perhaps because of it – Wolsey springs up from the cushion he's napping on and begins leaning heavily on John's legs, rubbing against them.
"Would you," she blurts, "would you take Wolsey? He's fond of you, despite your aversion to cats, and I secretly expect he wants to see the world as much as Rose."
"So you can accuse me of taking him away from you, too?" sniffs John, a touch self-righteously.
"No. I..." She breaks off. "I will have kittens, lots of kittens, rear them up to find good homes, and they'll replace him in my heart."
"How can you let go so easily?" he marvels.
"Oh, John, can't you see my hands are tied? That I'm forced to be used to it?"
And he nods, wincing as he scoops up a traitorously eager Wolsey, and leaves her.
"Oh, God," mumbles Joan to herself, miserably. "I wonder what I was thinking, giving him up. I almost want to run after that damn fool and snatch Wolsey back."
But she doesn't.
Of course she doesn't.
They have their wedding reception on the school grounds – the boys are all given the day off. Hutchinson and little Timothy throw rice. Baines isn't present – he's done something or other to get himself expelled.
Rocastle tries to release a dove, with rather disastrous results.
Joan doesn't join in the merriment, doesn't think it proper as she didn't attend the wedding ceremony itself, but she watches from a distance and sees Rose in her splendid white dress, a wreath of her namesake fastened to her blonde curls. Beside her, John looks exactly the way Joan imagined he might as a groom, handsome and somewhat absent but so irrepressibly happy you can't help but be glad for him.
They cut into a generously sized white-and-pink cake while John's niece, brandishing a Brownie camera like a weapon, fusses over them, barking orders.
Before a wagon is meant to turn up to take them to the station so they can leave – John has handed in his resignation – Rose whispers something to her new husband and he nods.
She comes towards where Joan is standing, so she shrinks back into the building, hoping to avoid her.
But Rose won't permit it, won't let her get away. "We wanted you to know, John's insisted on you getting his position now he's leaving. He wouldn't take no for an answer. It'll be you, start of the next term, in his place."
"Thank you," she says icily.
"It could have been you." Rose motions down at her wedding dress. "So easily, Joan."
"I seriously doubt that." She hugs herself, rubbing her own elbows as if she's cold. "All used up was the term I believe you employed."
"Only because I was jealous – it could have been you – you made more sense together than we did. Joan and John. It even sounds better." She holds out, to Joan's surprise, John's journal of impossible things. "We want you to have it."
Joan takes it with trembling hands and steadies her palm against the soft leather.
"I still don't know why he chose me."
"I do," says Joan, gently, the ice melting from her stare. "Go. Be happy. See the world. You and him – maybe that's how it should be."
"Did you... Did you really mean to give us Wolsey?"
"Oh, yes." She pats the journal. "And you both really mean for me to keep this?"
Rose nods. She's smiling, but it's a wet smile.
"Good, then it's all settled, isn't it?"
Fin
A/N: Yes, the Good Omens reference was deliberate.
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