(Author's Note: In the year of our Lord 2023, she's posting one of her lengthy Doctor Who fics about Rose Tyler. Enjoy! -Doverstar)

It was nighttime.

And the stars were different.

And Rose was getting tea.

Cars rushed past, catching her hair as she waited for the right moment to cross the street. The people on the other side had definitely already pressed the button, watching the sign somewhere above her. Willing it to turn from a little red man into a little green one. A lady in a dotty scarf looked particularly engaged; leaning so far forward she almost trampled the toddler in front of her.

Rose wasn't having any green-man-red-man unnecessaries. It was too slow. Everything was too slow. She'd get back a few seconds faster if she didn't play by the pedestrian rules. She kept her eyes on the road, not the lights, and watched for an opening. Her tongue went lolling against the inside of her cheek. A plastic bag full of cheap boxes of black tea dangled at her side, whiffling with every motorist that drove by.

"What d'you want to go out for? Janie can do it," Jackie had reminded her when Rose had tugged on her jacket and headed for the door.

Jackie was always sending Janie, the nanny, out to do extra work now that Tony was near teething time. The Tyler household had finally run out of tea. One of the cleaning ladies—or landladies, or numerous people in muted clothing that kept the large mansion running—had forgotten to restock. Having actual, live servants around suited Mum. To an embarrassing degree. But rich or poor, Jackie Tyler had never passed a single evening in Rose's life without drinking either tea or alcohol of some kind before bed. To help her sleep, she always said. A nice drink, warm or cold. Strong whichever. It was one of the only things that stopped her talking long enough to reach REM.

Rose had needed air. "Won't be long," she promised.

Jackie had given her that tight-lipped glance that said she knew what Rose was doing and how Rose was feeling and that she wasn't so mysterious. That she was no good at hiding it. Crying had turned into sulking, which had turned into hiding. No, Jackie called it hiding. Rose called it carrying on. She couldn't just keep crying her whole life. She needed to be doing things, and she needed not to be in that huge house every time life got too quiet.

A walk was supposed to do her good. It had always gotten her out of a state like this before. She'd take the steps down out of the Powell Estate three at a time and meet Mickey at the nearest pub. Or she'd get on the bus and get chips. Or walk around the building once or twice if the sun was still up. She wouldn't just sit.

This walk, so far, wasn't working. She wasn't surprised.

Maybe it was the zeppelins.

There, her chest said suddenly, and Rose saw her moment at last. A wide enough gap to run through, get to the other side of the road, and make a beeline for the bus stop. One silver car speeding away, one big blue truck on the opposite horizon.

She dove into the street, plastic bag whacking against her hip as she ran. Oh, and running felt so nice.

Rose was halfway there when the scarf lady let out a cry somewhere far forward and to her left, a sharp order of some kind. Rose recognized fear and frustration in the tone and instinctively turned to see.

"Ronald, I've told you—"

It was fine; the woman was pulling her toddler—Ronald—back onto the sidewalk with a jerk, speaking sharply. All fine.

A sudden flash of light in her peripherals said not fine.

There was a lot of noise for a second as a very big, swervy black vehicle came seemingly out of nowhere, right at her. At top speed. Dizzying. The people nearby made even more noise than the car, seeing it at the same time she did.

She was about six steps too far from safety.

And then the rush of noise was gone because there was another rush; somebody was pushing her. Actually, somebody was tackling her, it was very clumsy. But it got the job done.

A tangle of legs and spread-out palms hit the sidewalk. Safe. A spatter of clapping happened somewhere in the direction of the pedestrian button. The sidewalk was wet and there was old chewing gum right next to her nose.

Rose pushed herself up slightly on her hands. The person who had tackled her was inches away, a weight near the crook of each of her arms. Warm. It was a man about her age, pale eyes, a swoop of dark hair. He wore a knit, scratchy sort of hooded coat on top of an over-large milky tee shirt. There was mud on his trousers and he was looking back at her with a stunned, glassy expression.

"Blimey," Rose gasped out. Just from the sheer surprise of the car and the tackling.

"Sorry." That was the first thing he said. "Didn't know if you could see it, so I just sort of—"

"It's all right," she assured him, still trying to catch her breath. Rose twisted, getting into some kind of a sitting position. Away from the gum. "I didn't."

Around this time, she noticed his hands weren't on the sidewalk the way hers had been. They were at her elbows; that had been the weight she'd felt helping her get steady these last few seconds. Now the two of them were just looking at each other, breathing. Taking a moment. As he drew her up by said elbows, she saw his trousers didn't quite reach his ankles, and his trainers didn't match. One was white and the other had some green or maybe blue along the sides. Like he'd gotten dressed in the dark.

"Thanks," Rose puffed out, half laughing because she hadn't thanked him sooner.

The stranger's eyebrows went up and he broke into a thin smile. Then it whipped away. His eyes did too, down and past her shoulder. "Oh, now that's rubbish, no, look what I've done—"

And he dove to the ground.

"What?" Rose, alarmed, dropped back down into a crouch, pinching bits of sidewalk and dirt out of a now-stinging palm.

She ducked further, trying to see past his scrambling lanky arms. Jackie's nightcap had been squashed in the excitement. The boxes were lopsided. A teabag or two littered the pavement. It was a domestic massacre. The stranger was plucking teabags left and right, trying to make them fit back inside their container now that it wasn't exactly box-shaped anymore. The way he'd reacted, she'd thought pieces of her were strewn all over the sidewalk and the adrenaline had kept either of them from realizing it. Watching the man gingerly fishing for tea in the orange streetlight, Rose wanted to laugh again. It might even feel as nice as running had.

"Forget it, yeah?" She felt her mouth twitching. "I can get more, shop's not going anywhere."

He didn't stop.

"S'all right, just leave it—"

"Absolutely not," he said, stuffing the last of it back into one of the less-squished boxes and glancing up at her. "No way, no. My fault. I'll replace it."

"It's fine," Rose replied, trying harder not to laugh. He seemed very serious about the tea. "Really."

He would not be dissuaded. "You've had a shock, tea's the thing, and I've just bungled your supply. Least I can do is get you a refill, eh, come on then." He stood, patting the box sharply on its lid, one pat. Sniffing. "Where's this shop?"

"You sound like my mum," Rose snorted, rising with him. "You break a bone with her, tea's the first thing she runs for. Can't keep her out of it."

"Yeah?"

"S'not like all this is for me," she added, suddenly realizing how much tea there still was on the ground around them.

Only her mother, even in a mansion that had just run dry, could use every last bag. Explaining seemed important.

"Right," said the bloke, eyebrows climbing even higher, "well, in that case I really can't send you off empty-handed, can I?"

He shifted his weight, clutching the box, toe of one shoe shuffling near a burst teabag. Looking earnest and disheveled and embarrassed. Generally awkward. She wasn't sure what he had to be uncomfortable about. She had been the one about to be mowed down in the middle of the road, stupid and slow and living anywhere but in the moment.

All the things I've seen. Everything I survived before, and a ruddy car nearly gets me. Just like that.

Useless. Maybe he should've let it come.

"S'okay," Rose tried again. "Honestly, never mind. It's just over there."

"Come on, let me help," he pleaded. "If it weren't for me, you'd be back by now, tea and all." He wiggled the box.

"No, splattered all over the crosswalk, more like," Rose argued, tilting her head toward the pedestrian button on the other side of the road. Her teeth made an appearance in a rare smile. "You've done enough."

"What, that?" He scoffed, eyebrows pinched, eyes screwed up in mock indignance. "That was…nothing, drunk driver, regular old Tuesday for me."

"Seriously?"

"No," he said, and grinned out-and-out when she laughed, and she grinned back because the laugh did feel nice. He added, much more firmly, "But I do feel bad about the tea. Besides, what if you need protecting?"

And then everything seemed to slow down even further. The colors in the shop windows and streetlights got dimmer. The itch to do more of Jackie's hiding started somewhere in her throat. Just at that one word.

"Protecting," she repeated, almost dumbly. Felt her smile sliding off like melting ice cream.

"Protecting, yeah. You never know when another sloshed angry driver's gonna be barreling round the next bend." He squared up, replanting his feet, gesturing with one free hand. Making a motion like a palm-shaped car zooming past. "Another pair of eyes, that's what you need."

With that itch in her throat, Rose actually found she was done with her walk for now. She didn't need air anymore. She just needed quiet. She could see it was going to take longer getting home if she kept putting him off. He may have been leggy and silly, but there was a little steel in his eyes that suggested he might be hard to get rid of. And besides, he didn't look anything like a serial killer, or a stalker. Just a nutter. Maybe only half nutter.

And he'd saved her life.

She sort of owed him one.

"Come on then," she said, rolling eyes and head and forcing the smile back on. Just to make sure she didn't seem ungrateful.

The rolling didn't put him off; he looked visibly lighter before she turned to head down the sidewalk. He was like a Labrador. He tripped after her, all energy, head down like he had to watch where he was putting his feet. Back to the crosswalk. And almost before they'd come to a full stop to wait, he was punching at the pedestrian button with practically his whole arm.

The other people who had been there gawking at the traffic lights had already gone. Now it was just Rose and the Labrador man, standing in the cold and damp and making Jackie pine longer for her tea. The zeppelins were winking like too-close planes up above them, in and out of a few feeble snow clouds. The cars seemed even noisier now that she had someone to talk to; she had to both use and raise her voice to respond when he did talk. It should have been refreshing, because Rose had always enjoyed meeting new people. She hadn't let herself do that for months, really. Any planet, any time. Always good for a getting-to-know-you session.

But that was one of those things that she felt was slowly dying inside her. The chatting. The penchant for befriending. In the last year little bits of Rose Tyler seemed to be flickering out. She didn't appear to have the energy to stop them going.

Therefore it wasn't refreshing when he spoke and she listened and answered back. It was just autopilot.

"So what's your hurry, anyway?" His tone was light, curious. "Running into the street like that."

"I dunno," she said dully. "Didn't wanna wait."

"Why not?"

She kept her eyes on the little red man, like the lady with the toddler, focusing on not leaning forward too much. After a moment of realizing he seemed to think a shrug wouldn't do for an answer, feeling his eyes on her, she glanced at him and back to the light, saying, "'Cos I didn't."

That wouldn't do either, apparently. He pressed the pedestrian button again, two fingers. "Is that it then?"

"Why's it matter?"

"Because you were almost very fresh nasty roadkill a minute ago."

She snorted, which was still not enough for him, even if he did make a sort of laughing exhale back.

"What's wrong with waiting?" he demanded.

"Nothing." Rose gave him another glance, sideways this time. "It's boring."

Something about the way he wasn't answering that right off made her give him her full attention. The bloke was looking steadily at her, pleased, as if he liked that that was her reason. Maybe he was asking because he didn't fancy boredom any more than she did. Maybe that was why he'd been the one to save her from the car. Like recognized like in that heartbeat, and it was possible the befriending bit of her wasn't quite dead yet. Just now it seemed to be standing up and clapping, cheering like Mickey during a football match. She was pleased too.

And he could see it. His eyes had narrowed. "What's your name?"

"Rose."

"Nice to meet you, Rose." He held out a hand.

She hesitated, just long enough that it wasn't weird, and then took it gingerly. She didn't think anybody their age really shook hands anymore unless they were applying for a job. Plus he moved like it hurt; maybe the sidewalk had done him some damage after all? Their arms bobbed up and down and she pursed her lips, knowing her eyebrows were mocking the movement, even if her mouth wasn't.

"Yep," she said, swallowing the urge to laugh again. "Pleasure."

"Wilfred."

"Sorry?"

"I'm Wilfred, that's me." He reached up with his free hand to tug at his shirt collar. Like it was uncomfortable. Or like someone playing with a necklace, only he wasn't wearing a necklace and his hand seemed confused. "Actually, nobody calls me that. It's Will."

"Okay." Rose's tongue clicked. It was either that or let it poke out between her teeth, a habit she'd never outgrown since she was six, and she really didn't feel like letting it loose much these days. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something else, because he hadn't stopped shaking her hand, so she added obligingly, "Will."

He grinned and released her. The little green man arrived on the sign, the lights changed, and they headed back to the tea shop. Rose was dimly aware of Will at her elbow as they crossed, of him looking diligently to the left and the right as if the swervy black vehicle might be back for round two any minute. She realized she hadn't even been angry at the driver afterward. Or scared, or anything much except vaguely surprised. Her body knew how to be frightened. It knew what near-death experiences looked like so well; they were almost old friends.

But it hadn't reacted at all.

Was she that numb?

After only a year?

Was that what happened when you lost the person you loved, you got numb to things like almost-dying?

Will had looked scared. In that second when they'd first met eyes, he'd been afraid. It had gone away quickly enough when they'd started talking, but it had been there. It wasn't fair. He was a blueprint, showing her what she should be feeling. Because he was just a normal person, but she wasn't allowed that. Rose wasn't allowed to be normal anymore. Not that she ever really wanted to be exactly normal again, but it might come in handy. For times when you were nearly crushed by cars. Or times when you couldn't cry anymore, after a year, and you still always felt like you needed to.

He was talking again and she hadn't been listening. She knew when he stopped walking and looked expectantly at her. They had reached the other side of the road and she was blindly retracing her steps to the shop with Will stitched to her side. And then he wasn't.

"Sorry, what were you saying?" she mumbled.

He jiggled the smushed box of tea he was—for some reason—still holding. Against his leg, twice. "You all right?"

"M'fine."

"We can stop. We can sit if you want."

Rose watched the tea box jiggling, and his leg jiggling, let her eyes flick clearly from one to the other to his face. "Do you?"

He blinked and swiped his hair out of his eyes, smirking. "Yeah okay, but I mean it, we can stop. You might be in shock. I can sit. I promise." He snapped his fingers and pointed at her, firmly. "You say sit, and I will be sat."

"What, like a dog?" Rose teased.

"That's right." He spread his free fingers. "I can even bark if you fancy it."

Will seemed to catch on very quickly. They could be friends. Something soft and vintage-Rose started crackling through.

But she shook her head, tempering it. "S'all right, we're nearly there anyway."

The shop was old and worn and very strong-smelling. Jackie had a whole fortune at her fingertips, married money. The first thing she bought for herself post-honeymoon was the biggest pair of rhodolite garnet earrings on the market. She slept in them even now, after months. But in spite of all those riches, with the husband she never thought she'd have again and the biggest house any Tyler had ever owned in the multiverse, Jackie still liked her tea cheap. From drug stores, or little holes-in-the-wall. Places that sold snacks and Advil on the same shelf. The sort of shop you went into only when you'd run out of toilet rolls.

Will's hands were never immobile, Rose was realizing. He was touching every single thing he passed, examining it while she went through the exact same motions she'd gone through twenty-five minutes earlier. Yorkshire, Barry's, Twinings, it all got tipped into the basket. Rose wasn't even sure she hadn't mixed in a package of sponges while she was at it. She wasn't really looking.

Meanwhile her escort was unashamedly popping the top off of a bottle of tomato juice and sniffing it, as if he didn't trust the expiration date. When he'd finished with that, he grabbed a bag of Wine Gums and ducked round to the next aisle. Rose, fascinated, watched him flick at the tail of dusty knit scarves hanging off an endcap with one hand, running the other along whatever line of products sat on the middle shelf.

That's me then, Rose thought, knocking a box of Earl Grey into the basket. Always attract the weirdos.

Still. She liked his energy.

When he came back around, he'd left behind the jelly sweets and was happily splitting open a package of Jammie Dodgers. He smiled at her around a mouthful of dry white biscuit as their eyes met.

"You gonna pay for those?" Rose asked, eyebrows rising.

Will's eyebrows mimicked hers. He swallowed before replying quickly, "'Course I am. This and your tea." He stooped, glancing into the basket. "Nearly finished?"

Rose nodded, leading the way to the next selection. He was happily chewing somewhere behind her, and she thought she heard his elbow knock into a hookful of plastic straws as they walked. The need for real quiet, for being alone, was still pressing in the back of her throat. But she could do this, she could be nice. Just for a little longer. Just for the trip back to the house. He wasn't unpleasant company, after all. Clumsy, though. Like a teenager. Or a big dog that thinks it's a small dog.

"So where you from?" Rose asked, checking the bag count on a tin of Earl Grey.

"87 Miller's Road, Chiswick, London." He said it like he was reading something aloud. "Six miles west of Charing Cross."

"No it's not," Rose said, giving him a funny look. Not here it's not. "S'east of it. The other way."

Will paused, brow furrowed, the next biscuit halfway to his mouth. "Is it?"

Rose decided to let it go. Will was the type to forget anything, obviously. And she didn't want to talk about distances, and why they were different, and how everything here was just slightly wrong. She took a box of Jaffa Cakes and dropped it into the basket; Jackie liked them with her tea. She pretended they were diet food.

"Anyway," she said, "that's a bit far."

"Oh, I don't live there now, no," Will explained, trailing behind her as she went for the till. "That's where I was brought up. Now I live in a flat, small one. St. James. Above Henrik's, d'you know it?"

"Used to." There had been the same sort of apartment building back home, near where she'd worked. Before it blew up. But it hadn't been above anywhere. She swallowed a sigh and watched him pay, trying not to think of Wilson and plastic. "You on your own, then, I mean—how d'you manage the rent?"

"I build toys," he said, proudly. Like he'd just announced he was Prime Minister. "And I've got two roommates." He sniffed. "Married. Kiss a lot. Take good care of me, though."

Rose grinned. He definitely seemed to need that—and the way he talked, it was clear he quite liked being taken care of.

When they got outside, Will offered her the last Jammie Dodger. She almost felt bad taking it, he seemed to like them so much, except he smiled so sincerely when she bit into it. The street was quieter now, less cars, less people altogether. It would have been creepy if it hadn't been for the zeppelins. They made enough noise to make up for the lack of automobiles. There didn't seem to be anything more to talk about, or anything more to be done that needed two.

Come to think of it, this hadn't needed two.

"So." Rose took a deep breath, glancing from one end of the street to the other. She used to be better at this. Maybe she was going to be rubbish at goodbyes from now on, forever. The rest of her life. One more side effect. She tried to make her smile brighter than it felt coming up. "Thanks again, yeah?"

Will's face fell.

She felt her eyebrows pinch. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just." Will shook his head, eyes darting to the ground. "I thought you might like a bit more company. Dark night and all. Could walk you home if you want, where d'you live?"

She chortled. He was getting harder not to like by the minute. "Really mate, I'm all right. You've already bought the tea. And then the...saving-my-life bit. And the biscuit," she added, grinning again. "That's plenty."

He shrugged more with his head than his shoulders. "Well, I reckon I might as well go the extra-extra mile."

"Yeah?"

"Why not, you're nice and I'm easily bored." He beamed when she laughed, and plucked the bag of purchases from her jauntily. "Is it far? Can we take the bus, I love the bus. You never meet anybody normal on a bus."

"Nah, zeppelin's faster," Rose said without thinking, starting down the sidewalk. The nearest landing space was south. She only took the bus when she was feeling particularly nostalgic; she'd started taking advantage of the zeppelins within the first few months here. Mum had insisted.

She realized Will was staring at her, walking beside her instead of bumbling along behind, and remembered people usually needed lots of money to take the zeppelins anywhere. It would seem especially strange to him, her thinking of taking one short-distance. It was like wearing diamonds everywhere you went. Flaunting. Rose felt her face heat up.

"I can get one anywhere," she said, because she might as well. And it was funny to see his mouth fall open.

"Are you minted?" he demanded, as if he, too, seemed to think that was funny.

"Yep," she said, pursing her lips against another laugh. "My dad's the Vitex spokesman."

"The what?"

"Spokesman?" Rose repeated. "And the owner. He invented it."

"No, the other thing. The Vitex thing, what's Vitex?"

Rose paused, stopping under a street lamp. That was two major pieces of information everyone had logged away that he seemed to have missed. A few years ago, she might not have thought anything of it. But she knew more now. She'd lived more now. Coincidences were dangerous.

"How long've you lived here?" she asked.

Will blinked. "Dunno," he said, mouth pulling down. "Few years. Why?"

Rose slid her hands into her back pockets, shrugging with her elbows. "I thought everyone knew Vitex."

He looked bleary, blinking some more. Baffled by her sudden seriousness. "Sorry."

"S'all right, it's just..." Rose licked her lips, really trying to see if he was having her on. She was peering at him, almost. "It's weird, that's all."

He didn't seem to be teasing her. And he looked genuinely concerned about not knowing. She wasn't being fair—he was nutty. He could've just been one of those men holed up all the time paying attention to nothing but food, work, and computer games. Only emerging to make a living and occasionally save idiots at crosswalks.

Rose nodded absently. "Tell you what," she said, lifting a hand gingerly to gesture to the bus stop across the street, "we can take the bus."

Will gave a hazy sort of smile this time, eyes unfocused. He bumped shoulders with her as they crossed, wind whipping the bag of tea and trying to cast Rose's hair into her mouth. The bus was nearly empty as they boarded. Jackie would still be up, however late it was. She wouldn't go to bed until Rose came home, even now.

"So is he famous, your dad?"

Rose sat down in the second row from the front and Will sat right beside her. He smelled like the most general sort of cologne, or old paper in books. Or both, mixed together. It was nice. Like sitting next to a home library.

"Sort of." She focused on the streetlights as the bus began pulling away and picked up speed.

"Because of this Vitex stuff?"

"Partly." Rose exhaled through her nose, wishing they could stop talking now. Or talk about anything else. She was running out of energy. "It's a health drink. S'rubbish, I think, but...I dunno. People like it."

Pete had explained it to them by comparing it to striped toothpaste. Don't change much, he would say. Looks good, though.

"And you work for him?" Will was rummaging through the tea bag, turning over the boxes with his restive hands.

"No," Rose snorted, then tried to stifle a much more unladylike guffaw. "No, um—I just inherit."

"Like a princess."

She huffed, turning her attention from the window to him and splitting into a grin. "That's me. Diana of the tonics."

"Queen Water-Lite," Will offered, nodding past her shoulder.

Rose followed his gaze to a moving billboard outside. There was Pete, dandied up, brandishing the water-lite Vitex in both hands. A wink and the smile that made Jackie threaten to slap him daily. Trust me on this.

"Well, I'm a believer," Will said very seriously. "Really, look at that suit. I'll take ten cases."

Rose laughed. It was small, but she let it last until it was properly in her chest, and covered her eyes with a hand. "It's pop!"

"What, seriously?"

"I swear, just pop." Rose's laugh stopped suddenly and her hand flew off to poke his shoulder. "Don't say anything."

"Oh, never, cross my heart." He mimed it, too, drawing an X over his tee shirt. Chortling with her. "I prefer tea anyway, keep your billions."

She fought to keep her tongue from slipping out between her teeth at him. But she could match his smile. She could have some fun, just for now. Maybe then Jackie could stop with all the hiding talk. This was better than riding alone. Better than taking a zeppelin, too.

"What do you do, then, eh? You never said."

The smile retreated. "Nothing. I do work," she added quickly, "for a—big place, sort of like...police, but—s'mostly paperwork."

Paperwork that talked about potential alien invasions. Paperwork detailing missions into abandoned malls and stopping underground, failed Cybus disciple uprisings. Jake and Mickey and Sally and learning how to use really big guns she still never felt comfortable wielding. She hadn't had to shoot anything yet. She hadn't met a proper alien here yet either. No recent off-worlders on this side of the Void.

But she could hardly tell a perfect stranger about Torchwood, nor could she tell a new friend. That was part of the paperwork.

The bus stopped and Rose nodded to the door, pointing, mumbling something about this being their turn to get off. They scrambled up. The neighborhood outside was posh and there were huge, sprawling stretches of land in between each home. Will looked around and whistled meaningly.

"Anyway, that's enough about me," she said, leading the way up a long gravel path to the manor, forcing another, duller smile. Too big. She blew out hard, ballooning her cheeks. "I'm just...boring, let's hear more about you, yeah? Toymaker, you said? D'you have a bedroom full of like, creepy half-made dolls or something?" Smile still too big. She used to be better at this, too.

"Nah, little rocket ships, metal dogs, bits and bobs, that sort of thing. For the shop downstairs." Will blinked up at the moon. "And you're not."

"Not what?"

His head came back down and he looked at her, lids down and brows up. "Boring."

Rose's smile got less forced. Their feet crunched against the gravel, harmonizing. "You don't know, I might be. Never even got my A-levels."

"Nor me," Will said. "Don't much remember my school days, not really, but that's boring, isn't it? Not you, look at you." She glanced at him and he colored, and then flapped his free arm pointedly at the Tyler mansion, which had just come into view. "Look at where you live! Blimey, if I had that many rooms I could open my own toy shop, couldn't I?"

The mansion was huge, and pretty, though only half the outdoor lighting was being used at that moment. The archway in front of the doors made the entrance seem darker as they approached. Rose could see Jackie through one of the windows, just barely, in her satin robe and slippers in front of the TV. The dying fire, the living room lamps, and the news all gave off a glow that made the place seem warmer than it was. Especially when you were standing outside in the wind.

"S'just a house," Rose muttered, almost involuntarily.

"You don't like it."

She wondered how he was doing that, with his eyes like that. Taking in exactly what she was feeling with a glance. He stopped at the double-doors, watching her with an expression like a toddler's in a crowd. Distracted, worried, wetter than necessary. His fringe was barely altered by the persistent breeze. He was carrying the bag of tea and cakes with an incredibly tight fist, as if it might blow away from him any moment.

"I'm still getting used to it," she said, because he was easy to talk to, and then, "Been...traveling a lot," because he was too easy to talk to and she kept not making sense.

Traveling seemed louder than the other words by far. It made her chest twist up. A wave of homesickness swept over her, and suddenly the last thing she wanted to do was stand there, or go inside, or keep her eyes open. The mansion would feel like an enormous fancy cage. The stoop was a wasteland. Her energy was almost gone.

Will kept bringing it back. He was good company, she realized with a pang. That was rare nowadays. She didn't appreciate it often enough.

The Tardis would've liked him, she thought, and she felt like crying. Again.

He seemed to take that in too. "D'you miss it?"

She would not cry in front of him. Couldn't do that to this sweet, odd stranger holding all Jackie's tea. But it still sounded wavy when she said, "All the time."

Will had the grace not to look awkward. In fact, the wobble in her voice seemed to make him slow down for the first time that night. He watched her out of the tops of his eyes—his head always seemed angled down, she noticed. A little quirk in the right-hand corner created something between a smile and a frown. Even his hands were unmoving.

"I meant it," he said quietly. "You're not boring. I like you, Rose. I'm glad I was at that crosswalk."

"Me too," Rose replied, feeling it. She was surprised she had any smiles left tonight.

"Bet you are," Will suddenly teased. "Roadkill."

Rose discovered she couldn't quite laugh again, but she gave a puff she hoped was sufficient and swiped a hair our two out of her face. Blinking. Trying to get a grip. She knew this limbo couldn't last; soon she'd have to say goodnight and go in the cage, or else say goodnight and wander the wasteland a bit more. Her feet shuffled together in that impatient way that drove Mickey mad.

When Will passed her the tea, she blurted, "D'you wanna come in? Got plenty to drink now if you want." She held the bag higher with three fingers looped through the handles. "Don't worry. Even my mum can't get through it all in one go."

Will's eyes lit up, but he shook his head. "Oh, not me, not tonight, thanks. Best be getting back, flatmates will be worried." He frowned. "They're always fussing over me, never sure why, it's like they think I can't cope. Good fun apart from that. Anyway." The frown changed so quickly it was almost a blur. "See you around, Rose."

"See ya," Rose answered, and found herself hoping it was true.

Jackie was, to nobody's surprise, watching Will walk away from behind one of the curtains as her daughter entered the house. "Who's that, then?" she demanded, by way of greeting.

"No one."

"Oh, he's gorgeous," Jackie said, also to nobody's surprise. "Pop out for the shopping, come back with a man, you're getting as bad as I am!"

Rose flatly ignored that and dumped the bag on the nearest plush armchair and busied herself unbuttoning her coat.

"He could've stayed for a cuppa." Jackie gave one last remorseful look out the window and started in on the bag. She pulled out the Jaffa cakes first, then stopped when she saw Rose's expression. Her voice gave an eyeroll where her face didn't. "Oh, and look at you. Didn't even offer, did you? And here's me thinking you've finally got a friend outside of that Torchwood."

"He didn't want to," Rose muttered, shooting her mother a petulant look.

"With the face you've got on these days, it's no wonder," Jackie poked the biscuit package in Rose's general direction. "What's the point in bringing 'em home if you won't try, answer me that. 'Course he wouldn't stay! Your heart's a million miles off, it is, anyone can see. Makes you look older."

"It wasn't like that."

"No," Jackie agreed, suddenly serious. Suddenly muted. "S'pose it couldn't be, could it? Not yet." And then she started in that softer, washy tone, "But some day, sweetheart—"

Rose gave her mother another look, a harder one this time, and immediately headed for the stairs. She heard Jackie grumbling, clicking her tongue, making a general complaint under her breath the entire way up. There was no sign of her father, and Tony had long since been put down for the night. Either Pete was working late or he'd already gone to bed. Good. The only person to interrupt her now was Mum, and she knew better than to follow Rose when she went out onto the roof.

The stars were different.

They were different here than they had been in her home dimension. Rose lowered herself down onto the pristine slates, ignoring the scratching at the back of her shirt and jeans, glaring up into the sky. She lay flat on her back, counting the different pricks of light.

There was one good thing about the mansion—you could see the night so much better, out away from the city. Away from the light pollution and the noises and the Vitex advertisements. The zeppelins only had airspace clearance above the Tyler acreage when the family needed them, so she could sometimes pretend she was back on her own Earth.

Except for the stars.

All the same, she longed for them. Rose curled under a thin blanket on the roof outside her bedroom, one arm behind her head, longing for outer space and freedom and places uncharted. Had anyone ever explored the galaxies of this world? Did anybody in this whole universe know what it was like out there? She already had been out-of-place back home, thanks to the Tardis. Thanks to the running. The adventures in time and space.

But now she was even further removed. Now she was more alone than ever. People like Will would flit in and out, making things a little more bearable, yes, but ahead of her, all Rose could see was loneliness. Like she was missing a limb. She would never stop feeling homesick, and not just for her own dimension or the Tardis or the possibilities waiting in time and space. She would always have this emptiness.

And nobody's pale eyes and lopsided smiles were going to keep it down for long. Jackie wasn't going to understand that, so there was no point explaining.

Instead, she carried on. She went up to her room and she opened the window and she got as close to the stars as she could get without the irritating, incorrect hum of a zeppelin. Because it was all she had left.

"G'night," Rose said on an exhale. She said it to the stars. The way she did every night.

She said it to the stars, and she said it to the Doctor.

(Author's Note: Yes, this one is a multichapter. Yes, that's the Eleventh Doctor. Yes, this is one of those Human Nature-inspired plots. Please drop a review if you made it this far! -Doverstar)