This is where things get very wibbly and very wobbly, so pay attention.
Part Seven — The Rose Circuit, part I: White Roses
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I couldn't believe I was doing this. Why was I mucking up the perfectly comfortable and fun existence I had with the Doctor so that he'd be happy with some long lost blonde?
I decided not to answer that.
Sucking on my teeth, I gently lifted the lid of the large jewelry box on my dresser.
Anything for the Doctor.
Inside was a rather cluttered pile of rings, necklaces, and other feminine ornaments from throughout time and space. My fingers skimmed over an antique silver necklace with a large, heart shaped sapphire on the end before trailing them over a pair of crystalized radish earrings, a worn jaspar pendant, a simple golden ring, a pair of amulets (one was golden with a large ruby in the center with several smaller gems surrounding it; the other had the appearance of a weird face), and countless other, even more bizarre, pieces. After sifting through my little pirate's hoard, I plunged my hand into the pile, and a moment later my fingers wrapped around the leather and metal of Captain Jack Harkness' vortex manipulator. With a grimace, I pulled it carefully out and into the light.
My breath hitched as I took in the futuristic armband.
Anything for the Doctor.
I had managed to fasten it to my wrist and gather the instructions up from my bed before I realized a flaw in my plan: could I even use the vortex manipulator inside the TARDIS? If I didn't do this now, I'd never muster up the courage to try so again, but I'd also never be able to sneak this passed the Doctor, through the console room, and out...into the blasted time vortex!
I cursed under my breath before looking around at the walls of my bedroom.
"Hey, TARDIS," I whispered, voice quivering. "The Doctor says you're sentient - and I don't doubt that! - but I was wondering if, ya know, you could do me a favor?" I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot before continuing. "I, um, you know I'm trying to get Rose Tyler back, yeah? Well, only way to do that is with this vortex manipulator and I have no idea whether or not it even works inside...you." My gosh, that sounded weird. "If it does, just, you know, let me go, but if not, can you please, er, please let me go anyway?" Silence. "It's...I want him to be happy, TARDIS..."
Beneath the floorboards, I could feel the TARDIS' engines stirring, as if in flight. I grinned timidly in thanks before I began to enter the coordinates for Belle Vue Park, London, England, May 2nd, 2007.
In the distance, I could hear the Doctor yelling in confusion and frustration at the time machine.
"(f/n)!" His voiced cracked, having gone rather high-pitched. "(f/n)! The TARDIS is kidnapping me - us - again!"
I pursed my lips in an attempt to keep a giggle at bay. The Doctor's footfalls could be heard stampeding toward my bedroom door and my heart rate went up. If he found me, he'd stop me.
The door to my room sprung open with a bang and the Doctor flew through, just as I pressed the final button on the rudimentary time machine. A strangled "(f/n)!" rang throughout the room just as I disappeared in a burst of light.
The trip through the vortex without the protective walls of the TARDIS was horrible; I felt sick as the blaring lights and the sounds of a thousand different clocks tick tocking whooshed passed me in a blur.
As soon as it had started, it was over, and I found myself appearing on a street corner. It must have been early, because not many people were out and about yet. Once I was steady, I checked the screen of the wristband for the time: it was half passed five in the morning on a Wednesday. If I were in the countryside, English, Welsh, or any other, it would have been beautiful, but I was in London, and even May mornings in London could be awfully dreary sometimes. With a silent plea that the fog would clear and the weather take a better turn, I set off along the street, looking for the TARDIS.
It took me a while to find her, and honestly, I'm surprised that I actually managed it. It had to have been closer to six when I found her sitting on the street just outside the park. The blue wood was darker and worn and the St. John's sticker was absent; otherwise, she still looked the same. Smiling, I rushed forward and threw my arms around the blue box, surprising myself.
"It worked," I mumbled against the wood, before pulling back and withdrawing the chain with my Yale key from beneath my shirt and inserting it into the smooth lock face. My smile widened when I heard it click before the narrow door swung inward. "Brilliant," my whisper echoed through the console room. I stepped inside and the dim lights flickered into day mode and the door shut behind me. Just like the outside of the TARDIS, the interior was different too, it was...
"Coral, my god, it's everywhere!" I exclaimed, barely managing to keep my voice low enough incase the past incarnation of the Doctor was about. I hesitated when I realized that I didn't know which incarnation it would be. The various faces of the Time Lord circled about in front of my mind's eye. Shaking my head (because, did it matter?), I ventured deeper into the depths of the TARDIS.
Lights turned on as I crept onward and lowered back into night mode once I had left them behind. The single corridor ended at a simple, mahogany colored door with my first and last name scrawled across it in a golden script.
My room.
I looked back over my shoulder, giving the sentient machine a look that clearly read, "are you kidding me?"
Opening the door, however, showed not my bedroom, but a sparsely furnished sitting area with a leather couch, a stack of blankets, a mini fridge, small stove top, and a large television that showed the coral themed console room. A door in the far corner led to what was, no doubt, the loo. It was basically a very cheep, tiny flat, though it wasn't, thankfully, as dingy as tint, cheep flats tended to be.
I plopped down on the sofa with a grunt, staring at the screen with a bit of disgruntlement. This was going to take a while.
And it did.
After watching the Doctor (the foxy one, thank goodness), a slightly younger Rose Tyler, and (I could only guess) two other companions filter in and out of the console room, I dozed off.
Thankfully, I didn't dream.
Time isn't a strict progression, according to the Doctor, but the weeks I spent in that room, watching but not being seen, were the most maddening and, well, linear that I'd ever had to endure. The papers from the envelope said that I had to wait for "the time vortex to be gone" and advised that I held tightly to something. When I had read that, my stomach flipped. What could take away the time vortex? An ancient entity? A high-tech alien society from ten billion years in my future?
Apparently, the Void.
Honestly, I don't know much about anything concerning parallel universes and alternate dimensions, or the places in-between, but the Void was utter nothingness. Empty, dark, cold, and silent. Rather like the basement at home after Mum sold everything in a yard sale.
I was munching on a bag of chips, perusing the latest stack of magazines that had appeared in the corner, when a horrible sound echoed from the monitor. Absently, I looked up from a copy of the Times to see that the console room was in chaos.
The Doctor was running around the control panel like a rooster without a head, trying to stabilize the TARDIS.
"The time vortex is gone!" Cried the Tenth Doctor from the monitor.
I tossed aside the Times and darted for the couch and my envelope, scattering the bag of chips.
"Brace yourself! We're going to crash!"
"Yeah, yeah," I grumbled, tumbling to the floor and landing on my back just as the lights flickered and the entire TARDIS shook. Seconds later, the emergency lights switched on, before they, too, winked out, and I was engulfed in near utter darkness.
"Bloody..."
I stumbled to my feet, clutching my envelope, and peered around in the darkness. It was the darkest darkness I'd ever seen, er...not seen. Witnessed? Slowly, I edged my way toward the door, only stubbing my toes twice (thankfully, I still had my trainers on, so it wasn't that bad) on what I assumed was the couch before I finally reached my destination.
I fumbled for the knob blindly before finally gaining entry into the hallway. The lighting wasn't any better, but I could only trust that the TARDIS hadn't left me lost within her depths in the moments before the crash. I reached out and stumbled forward until I felt the slight grooves of the organic, coral walls under my fingertips.
"I'm so sorry, Old Girl," I whispered hoarsely.
I felt my way down the corridor, sticking to the right as much as possible, just like it's meant to be done inside a maze or labyrinth. After what felt like ages, I finally emerged into the very dark, very vacant console room.
Beyond the doors of the police box was a parallel world, a world where I'm still in school, still dating my old boyfriend, probably making potato salad. Part of me wanted to run out into that world, find the other (f/n) (l/n) and her family, see what was different. One of the theaters in Cardiff had burned down in 2012 and I'd been there, but was it even built here? Did we even live in Cardiff? Or did my family still live in Liverpool? Were my parents even married? Did I even exist?
Did the Beatles exist?
No, no, it would be better if I stayed within the confines of the TARDIS. I could do my job just as easily inside as I could outside, well, except for reading the coordinates for...the Tyler Mansion, November 28th 2013. It took five minutes of squinting by the light filtering in through the glass panes of the windows in the doors to make sure that I had the coordinates, as well as my papers, properly prepared.
The time travel wasn't as terribly bad as it had been during the journey from the vortex to London, maybe because it was a much shorter distance by both time and space standards, but it was still very overwhelming and once I was safely on the other side, I fell to my knees, breathing hard. It didn't take me long to recover, though, and I began to take in my surroundings.
I was in what appeared to be the back garden of a very large house - a mansion, really, the Tyler Mansion.
Inside that building was Rose Tyler, the girl the Doctor loved. Bringing her back would change everything; the entire dynamic between the Doctor and I would never be the same again with her in the TARDIS. Somewhere deep inside it occurred to me that maybe, in the course of a year, I had fallen in love with the Time Lord myself, but I quickly brushed that thought aside. It wouldn't do me any good to think about it.
Presently, I found myself at the kitchen door of the mansion with my fist poised in the air to knock. I hesitated only a moment longer before rapping my knuckles against the frame of the screen door.
There was a noise on the other side before the door was flung open. An older woman with bottle blonde hair and makeup stood there, giving me the Stare Down of Suspicion.
"Who're you, then?" She asked rather brisquly in a Cockney accent.
"I'm, uh...(f/n) (l/n). I'm here to speak to Rose Tyler. You see, I'm a...an associate of the Doctor-"
The sound of a hand striking skin rang in my ears and it took me several seconds to realize that the hand had been the woman's and the skin my face. My cheek throbbed as I gingerly felt the stinging area with my own hand.
"What-"
"How dare you!" The woman ranted. "He said he couldn't come through to her without the universe breaking down! And it did anyways and she found him and he still left her here! Left her with a faulty clone, he did! And now he sends another one of his assistants!"
"I, I..."
"Mum? Who're you talking to?" A quiet voice asked, and both the woman and I looked into the kitchen to see a younger woman enter. Clad in jeans and a black sweater with her blonde locks tied back, it could be none other than Rose Tyler.
The Other Woman.
Rose Tyler looked from her mother to me, before zeroing in on the red mark on my left cheek. With a frown, she glared back at Mrs. Tyler. "Mum, you promised not to slap strangers anymore!" She groaned as she took a pack of peas from the icebox and made to hand it to me before deciding to hold it to me face herself when I made no move to take it from her. "Don't mind her, mate, she's just a bit tired."
Mrs. Tyler huffed. "Pardon me for defending my own daughter!" She jabbed a finger in my direction. "She's from him!"
"Him?" Rose raised an eyebrow in confusion, pressing the cold bag against my face while her own screwed up in confusion.
"The Doctor," I mumbled.
Rose Tyler stumbled back, dropping the bag of frozen peas, and looked at me in shock. "But...he, he said, and then...you're kidding me, yeah?" She forced out a laugh, but when I didn't reply, she closed her mouth, pressing it into a hard line. She shook her head. "That's not possible. The walls are closed."
"Yeah, I know," I nodded, holding up my wrist to show off the vortex manipulator. "Look, Miss Tyler, I'm here to offer you the opportunity to return to your home universe and the Doctor. I understand that there's a, uh, human clone involved, but-"
"You mean David?" Rose interrupted. "He..." She choked out a sob.
Mrs. Tyler hugged her daughter to her chest and looked over her head toward me. "He was fine all the way from Norway, but not long after we got himself back here, he started having the worst headaches. He-"
"Disintegrated," Rose cut in forcibly.
"He...disintegrated?" I stared at the two Tylers, unable to grasp what they had just told me.
Mrs. Tyler nodded and Rose elaborated, "He had a human body, one heart and all, and the mind of a Time Lord. It was too much and he just began fading away until there was nothing left but golden dust in the wind." She sniffed, "And I, I just hope the Metacrisis didn't do Donna the same way."
I didn't know who Donna was, but I understood what she meant.
"Look," I ventured slowly when the silence started to become too much. "I know...I know the Doctor thought that the Metacrisis clone - David - would, well, last."
"But it bloody well didn't!" Snapped Mrs. Tyler.
"Mum," Rose said softly, silencing her mother.
I stared at them both before continuing. "He, the Doctor, he's shown me the universe and so many wonderful things, but all the while he's been missing you. I just want him to be happy." I hoped to goodness that I didn't come off as sappy and as in love with the Doctor as I felt at times.
Rose Tyler stared at me, dumbstruck, and I wondered if she saw right through me.
"He loves me?"
"Well, yes." Did she not know?
She glanced at her mother, looking almost giddy. "So, he actually said the words, then?"
"Well, no...but I asked him if he did and he nodded, so..."
Rose wilted for only a moment before springing back instantly. She looked almost ready to grab the vortex manipulator on my wrist and send us back.
When I returned to my Doctor, we were going to have a serious talk about emotional communication. It was almost like watching reruns of Sherlock but without background music.
She opened her mouth before looking at her mother again. "If I go, I can't come back." Her eyes were on Mrs. Tyler, but I knew the question was for me.
"No, you can't," I confirmed.
"Give me a minute, yeah?"
"I'll give you the day, if you like," I shrugged. Leaving your family for an indefinite amount of time is hard, I know, but leaving them for forever sounds so much worse.
I didn't look for Rose's reply as I ducked back out into the back gardens. I trudged several yards before finding a tree with a decent amount of shade to sit under. The scenery was surprisingly comfortable, and soon I started feeling drowsy.
"(f/n)."
"I know Doctor, I'll be there to help with the tea in a moment."
"(f/n), let's go traveling. You and me."
"Silly Time Lord, we are traveling, you and me."
"C'mon, (f/n), we could go to Rome, New York in the past or future, meet the queen..."
"Which one?"
"Any one."
"You're ridiculous, Doctor."
"Pick a star, (f/n)."
"Why don't you? You're the clever one."
"You would be, too, but I'm in the room."
"Shut up."
"(f/n)?"
I started, and was suddenly overwhelmed with a killer headache. I blinked blearaly, and the face of Rose Tyler swam into view. Her brow was creased in worry, and I realized that I must have fallen asleep in the garden.
"You all right, mate?" She asked.
"Yeah, yeah, travel with the vortex manipulator is a bit draining, really."
"I imagine it must be similar to the Dimension Cannon I used to use then, it was tiring," she told my sympathetically.
"Er, yeah, I guess," I shrugged as I stumbled to my feet. Once I was steady, I turned back to face Rose.
She was watching me, looking rather thoughtful as she did so.
"Is something wrong?"
She ignored my question in favor of turning her head at a different angle. After a few minutes of that, she spoke, "I once met a former companion of the Doctor, and after that I came to realize that sometimes the girls who travel with him fall in love with him."
I blinked, not expecting her to be so blunt.
"Rose-"
"And I know that it's not hard to, really. He's absolutely fantastic! And I do love him, really, but I want to make sure before I come back, (f/n), do you..." She trailed off.
"Me? In love with the Doctor?" I laughed and wondered if it sounded as fake to her as it did to me. "No, he's my best friend, but no, I don't...no."
Rose looked at me skeptically, before shaking her head. "I talked to my mum and Pete - Dad. Would it be all right with you if we left in the morning?"
"Yeah, sure," I agreed, though I was in no position to argue.
She gave me a tongue in teeth smile, reminiscent of the one in her picture that was still in the envelope in my pocket. "Come with me, then. Mum said she'll put you up in a guest room for the night."
"Thank you," I replied meekly as I followed Rose Tyler into the mansion and the life of luxury that she was about to give up. All for the Doctor.
And as much as I wanted to, I couldn't hate her. It was really worth making this circuit if it only meant I met Rose Tyler.