amberfocus | A Sky Without Zeppelins: Prologue and Chapter One

A/N: This is a very alternate reality Ten2/Rose Tyler story. I only include Ten/Rose in the prologue to set it up and avoid the confusion of just plowing ahead with chapter one and hoping no one gets lost. I'd put it in the author's notes but I know a lot of people skip those so you get a little bit of a happy reunion for them here before the main story begins.

Prologue:

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Rose asks the Doctor clutching his hand tightly in hers. She had come so close to losing her Doctor again and it had only been a last minute change of hearts that had sent him racing back out of the TARDIS doors and onto the sand, pulling her into his arms and kissing her desperately himself. He hasn’t yet admitted he loves her, but it was clear enough when he’d announced he could never let her go, that he’d been a fool for thinking he ever could.

The human Doctor had crumbled in the face of this and knowing he would never stand a chance had insisted they take him back to the other universe, overwrite his DNA with the chameleon arch and make him completely human so he could live out a life without having to remember what he had lost and what he’d once been. It hadn’t been that easy and the Doctor had had to install certain blocks within the other man’s mind, but eventually he was certain the memories would be locked away for a lifetime.

As a gift to his human self they had found a small tear into a different universe, one that had a Rose Tyler in it and had set him up in a life in London in close proximity to where the woman worked. It would be up to fate to bring them together, but at least there was a chance that he too, might have a happy ending. They’d gone back in time and laced his planted past with inventions that they’d patented in his name, establishing an identity for him as a man of great innovation, making it easy to manipulate him into a job that should keep him set for life.

“I think if he has half the good fortune I do, he’ll meet this other you, fall in love and live happily ever after. Anyway, I planted an impulse to shop at Temmel’s in his head. It’s only a matter of time.”

“You’re a romantic, you are,” she says bumping him with her shoulder.

He watches the man walk away on the TARDIS monitor and kisses Rose again. They dematerialize and he puts events in motion to seal up this much more stable universe. Then he turns to his Rose. “I love you,” he finally says. She beams and pulls him after her down the corridor to the nearest bedroom.

“Took you long enough,” she says.

“Not really,” he shrugs. “I always have.” She responds by kissing him and then no more words are spoken for a very long time.

Chapter One

It has been a long day and Dr. Jonathon Smith is tired. Three days in this new city, in a new flat and working at a shiny new job and he’s exhausted. Though he usually likes challenges, the type life has been throwing at him lately have not been exactly the sort he thrives on. They’re simply inconvenient. He hangs up the phone and frowns at the bad news he’s just received from his moving company. The lorry carrying the majority of his belongings has not only overturned on the motorway, it has caught on fire. A life’s worth of paraphernalia has gone up in a matter of minutes.

He wonders why he doesn’t seem to care all that much, like they’re only things, like there’s so much more he could have lost in his life already if he only thought about it long enough, concentrated hard enough. But as always when he tries to focus on distant memories of a past he can’t quite recall it flits away from him. It’s not exactly amnesia but he isn’t sure what else to call it. He remembers facts and figures and places, a timeline of his life, but when he tries to concentrate on people, on faces, his mind grows dim. He knows that his family is dead, the dull ache of loss is always with him, but he can’t remember them dying. He thinks maybe it’s all a defense mechanism, figures it’s the only thing that keeps him going some days.

He looks around at his empty office and remembers his equally barren flat and realizes that if he doesn’t want to keep living life out of a suitcase and a sleeping bag, he’s going to have to go shopping. Clothes first, he imagines. Then furniture; a decent bed before anything else. Kitchen supplies can go last. He can eat his meals out until he gets pots and pans and everything else and he’s not all that brilliant at cooking anyway.

He checks his bank account balance on the office computer and is relieved to see that not only did the payment for the last invention he’d sold come through, so has the hefty signing bonus he had been bribed with to move to London and go to work for Illuminate Corporation. The Ideas People, they call themselves, when really they bought other people who had the ideas. He supposes that is how things work in the real world. He’s spent far too much of his adult life in laboratories or university to really pay attention.

What is the name of that upscale department store he walks past every day on his way to work? Temmel’s, isn’t it? Well, he supposes he can start there. With a sigh he locks up his office for the night and goes down the hall to the floor receptionist where the time clock is and punches out for the night with a casual good-bye to, what is her name? Denise? Delia? Something with a D. He can’t remember and her name plate is missing. He isn’t sure if he’ll ever get used to doing something so mundane. He’s always been his own man.

He wonders for the thousandth time if he hasn’t made a mistake accepting this job in the first place. It’s not exactly that he misses Cardiff, but it feels like he should have stayed there, like it was some place he was meant to be, like by leaving that city he was giving up his old life forever. Well, no help for it now. He’s signed a contract and for the next five years his inventions belong to Illuminate and so does he, more or less. And really, it could be much, much worse. After all, his boss is a clever man and very personable. There are people much worse in the world to work for than James Lumin.

The walk to Temmel’s does not take long and a friendly greeter directs him to clothing on the second floor. He watches with mild curiosity as an uppity brunette employee gets into a bit of a scrap with a customer and leaves a younger blonde girl to deal with the fallout. As young as she looks there is an interesting maturity about her born out of life experience, he thinks. Something about the blonde holds his attention as she deals with the angry customer, apologizing and hastily reassuring the woman that her concerns will be taken into account and the situation will be remedied to her satisfaction. The woman leaves the store with a smile on her face and a rather large discount card in her wallet.

With a sigh the blonde girl stares off into space for a moment and then pulls herself together, straightening her posture and reaching back and pulling her ponytail tighter. He watches as the employee who had created the mess in the first place apologizes to the blonde for leaving her to deal with the nasty customer because, “You’re so much better at it than me,” and she responds warily, distrust of the other woman clear in her body language, before moving away and into the men’s wear department.

He approaches the young woman. “Excuse me,” he says politely from behind her. She turns with a pleasant smile on her face and for a moment she freezes uncertainly. “Hello.”

“Hello,” she responds with a tight smile. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I think so. You see I’m new to the area and there was an accident with the moving company, the lorry overturned and everything caught on fire, and well, to make a long story short I need to replace my entire wardrobe. All I have left are the clothes on my back.” He’s babbling and he stops himself abruptly from spilling out his entire life’s story to the pretty girl.

She eyes him critically and it’s clear she does not think much of the blue suit with red pinstripes or the slightly clashing burgundy jumper he wears beneath it. “Your entire wardrobe, you say?” she asks and it’s clear she is thinking that might not be such a bad thing.

“Well, my entire everything really,” he replies. “I’ve got very little left, but the wardrobe will do for a start.”

“I can help this gentleman, Rose,” says the brunette moving in on them like a predator. The woman’s, Rose’s, eyes narrow. He knows what the brunette is doing, because it isn’t the first time he’s seen something like this. She’s overheard the conversation and she is greedily trying to take away Rose’s commission, one that will be rather large.

“Chelsea, I’m fine with him.”

“There’s stock that needs bringing up from the basement,” this Chelsea woman insists.

Well, he won’t put up with that sort of behavior. “Oh, well, if you’re busy,” he says to Rose, “I can come back another time.” He turns to Chelsea. “I’d prefer this young lady wait on me. I saw how patient she was with that rather rude customer. I’m afraid I need someone who can exercise a lot of patience. I’m a bit demanding myself.” He turns back to Rose. “When’s your next shift?”

“Nonsense, I’m very patient,” Chelsea says as she sees the money slipping away from her grasping fingers.

“I don’t think so,” he answers giving her a good once over and flicking his eyes away dismissively. “Besides,” he says, “I prefer blondes.”

“Fine,” Chelsea snaps just this side of rude because she doesn’t want to lose the sale for the store. “Take care of him, Rose.” She flounces off in a huff of annoyance.

Rose turns and gives him a shy smile. “Don’t care for that type one bit,” he mutters. He looks at Rose. “This will probably take a couple of hours, so how about we introduce ourselves? I’m Dr. Jonathon Smith.”

“And as you’ve already heard, I’m Rose,” she says. “So what is your particular choice in clothing style?” she asks him, her eyes again going over the blue suit and it is still clear she is not at all pleased at what she sees.

“You know, I don’t think I have one. Tell you what, why don’t you pick out what you think will look good on me and I’ll try it on and we’ll go from there,” he suggests.

Rose laughs. “What? You’re going to be my living Ken doll?”

“Well,” he says, “More or less. A little more than less since I am, however, anatomically correct.” Rose blushes furiously at his statement and he continues as if he doesn’t see it, as if his conversation isn’t heavily laced with flirting, but his heart is racing madly. He can’t help himself and he doesn’t know why. The age difference between them should make this conversation highly inappropriate, he’s not even sure she’s out of her late teens, and he doesn’t quite care. “Dress me up, dress me down, whatever. You have quite lovely taste in your own clothing. I’m sure you can do me right.”

She’s clearly startled at his naughty turn of phrase and he can see her visibly shake herself. She shyly meets his eyes after that last statement because now she knows he’s flirting and she’s not quite sure how to cope so she chooses to ignore it. She glances up and down his body one more time and then says, “Right. This way. We’ll start with casual…”

He buys far more than he should because he can’t seem to resist anything that makes her face light up in a smile each time he walks out of the changing room. He thanks her profusely for her help and is rewarded again by another one of her brilliant smiles and this one isn’t quite so shy. As he leaves the store behind him he thinks that it’s too bad that he’ll probably never see her again.

It is two days later when Rose Tyler runs into Dr. Smith again when he’s stopped at a chippie on his walk home from work. “Rose,” he calls out to her and when she turns in surprise at the not quite familiar voice calling her name, she is greeted with a warm smile. He is sitting at a nearby table with his packet of fish and chips and she gives him a wave before turning back and placing her order.

A few minutes later with her steaming hot food in her hands she searches for an empty table, but he’s waving her over. “Rose, come and join me?” he calls beseechingly. She hesitates for a moment. As much as she’d enjoyed his company the other day at the shop, and his wild flirting, he is still a virtual stranger and really far too old for her. She places his age at somewhere in the middle thirties and at nearly twenty-two she has no business developing an interest in the man. Or any man. Not until she's settled into her real career post-graduation. Life is hard enough working a full time job and juggling a full course load at University. There’s not time for dating. If that’s what this man has in mind. She’s not quite sure.

Still, the place is public and open, he seems harmless enough, and she is a social creature by nature preferring not to eat alone. She settles into the chair across from him and when he turns a happy, almost child-like grin on her she can’t help but smile in return. “I hope you don’t think I’m strange or stalking you or anything,” he says with a bit of a shrug. “It’s just I haven’t really met anyone since moving here and it was such a relief to see a familiar face.”

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “A bit weird, but okay.” He’s wearing a light blue dress shirt rolled up to just beneath the elbows and a brilliant blue tie with lighter blue swirls on it and black trousers and he looks amazing. A far cry from how he looked in the ugly clothes he’d worn into the store. Of course, he looked just as amazing in it when he’d tried it on the other day.

“You look good in my clothes,” she blurts out and when he laughs she says, “I mean the clothes I helped you pick out.”

“I know what you mean, Rose.” She likes the way the corners of his eyes crinkle up when he laughs.

“I bet you’d look good in mine,” he says daringly and for a moment he thinks he’s shocked her into complete silence, but then she recovers. He wonders why she doesn’t run away from him when he makes this absurd statement.

Instead she flirts back. "Bet I would." This time it's he who is left speechless. “So, tell me about yourself,” she says changing the subject. “You said you were a doctor. Doctor of what? Medicine?”

“No, though I do know a fair bit about it. Most of my doctorates are in the sciences. Genetics, biochemistry, astrophysics, technology, that sort of thing,” he says with a wave of his hand.

“How many doctorates do you have?” she asks slightly intimidated.

He frowns for a moment and she can see him counting in his head. “Six? No, seven.”

“You don’t look old enough to have seven doctorates,” she tells him.

“Well, bit of a genius, me.” He says it without bragging, stating it simply as fact. “And oh, was that a clever way of asking me how old I am?”

Rose tries not to blush again, she’s done far too much of that around this man already. He smiles again and says softly, “I’m thirty-four. But age is really just a random number imposed on us by the strictly linear nature of how we view time.”

“How else should we view time?” she asks him. “It’s not exactly subjective, is it?” He opens his mouth and then closes it as if he’s unsure of how to answer that question. He’s sure that once upon a time he could have rattled off an answer that would have left her speechless. Instead he shrugs. “So what do you actually do?” she asks him. “For a living I mean?”

“Research and Development for Illuminate Corporation,” he tells her.

“Ah, the Ideas People.” He nods. “And you…?”

“Build gadgets mostly, things that make life easier on a day to day basis,” he tells her.

“Anything I might use?” she asks him. He lists off a number of items and her mouth falls open. “Really?”

He shrugs. “Been inventing a long time.”

“Can’t have been too long if you’re only thirty-four,” she comments.

He smiles and then turns the subject onto her. “So what about you, Rose? What do you do outside that shop?”

“Well, aside from working full-time at Temmel’s, I’m in my fourth year at University studying robotics and computer programming. I’ll graduate in a couple of months.” His expression of delight makes her grin. “Weren’t expecting that from an ordinary shop girl, were you?” she asks.

“Whoever said you were ordinary?” he wants to know.

Oh, he’s good, this one, she thinks. She tries not to show her pleasure at his statement. “It’s a normal first impression. People look at me and see Rose Tyler, shop girl. Rose Tyler, from down the estate. Rose Tyler, raised by a single mum on a hairdresser’s salary and clothes out of the charity box. Or even just Rose Tyler, bleached blonde. Most people don’t see me; they just see who they think I am.”

She wonders why she’s confiding in this man, wonders further why the hell she just told him she dyes her hair when for once the roots aren't obviously showing. Maybe it’s the sympathy in his warm brown eyes and the fact that he’s easy to talk to. Maybe it’s because for the first time in forever she’s met a man who seems interested in her and not just in whether or not they can get the pretty blonde girl on her back and soon. She isn’t entirely sure he won’t be heading there eventually, if not quite as soon as her age mates would be. She’s not sure how she’ll feel about it if he does.

“I’ve worked hard to get where I am. I want to have a good career, one that pays well, one that’ll let me buy a little house for my mum and get her out of the estate. Had my nose to the grindstone all my life it seems, but I’m gonna get there,” she says fervently.

“I believe you,” he tells her.

It’s odd because for some strange reason, she thinks he really does. When she looks down at her empty food wrappers she is somewhat surprised because she doesn’t even remember eating the fish and chips, so caught up has she been in her conversation with the man in front of her. She can’t remember the last time a man has made her forget the taste of chips.

They’re both done eating and he seems as reluctant as she does to leave, but she really needs to get back to studying. She only stopped here on her way to the bus to grab a quick bite and she’s already wasted, well, maybe not wasted but spent, far too much time away from her books.

“I suppose I should get going,” she tells him. His face actually falls, but he covers well.

“It was lovely running into you again,” he told her. “I don’t suppose…” He trails off. “Nah, never mind.”

“What?”

“It’s nothing,” he says.

“No, what?”

“Do you always work in the clothing department at Temmel’s?”

“No, I rotate around. I’ll be in furniture tomorrow and the next day.”

“Really?”

“Um, yeah,” she says looking at him like he’s a bit slow if he thinks she doesn’t know her own work schedule.

“No, it’s just…I need to furnish my apartment and I really trust your taste after the other day. What time’s your shift tomorrow?” he wants to know. She tells him.

“Great,” he says. “And you’ll help me out?”

“That’s my job,” she replies. She has a funny feeling that she’d help him anyway even if it wasn’t.

Ch. 2: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/116220.html