The Watchmaker's Daughter: Chapter Five

[amberfocus]

Title: The Watchmaker's Daughter (5/10)
Author: amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: The Tenth Doctor(John Smith)/Rose Tyler, Pete Tyler, Martha Jones, Joan Redfern, Timothy Lattimer, various original characters
Genre: Action/Adventure, Romance, HN/FOB rewrite
Rating: Teen (for now, may go up later)
Betas: amyo67, thetesh
Summary: At the Doomsday wall an unexpected twist of fate sends Rose and Pete Tyler back to 1913 instead of to the parallel universe. While the Doctor and Martha are hiding from the Family of Blood at Farringham School for Boys the Tylers try to make a life for themselves in the nearby village.
Author's Notes: Recognizable dialogue is from the episode Human Nature. And yes, I'm aware that Joan's husband's name is actually Oliver. Let's just chalk that up to it being totally AU.

Previous Chapters: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/565160.html

Chapter Five: Strengthening Bonds

Martha was completely disconcerted by Miss Tyler, so much so that she had never even bothered to get the woman’s first name. She could ask Onna if she saw her again before she came to tea. Of course Miss Tyler would still have to invite her to use it. She knew better than to assume anything, no matter how friendly the other person might seem. She’d made enough mistakes her first week in 1913, by sheer dint of being an independent, strong-willed woman in a job where that sort of personality did her no favors.

Miss Tyler had to be the person that Timothy had referred to, the watchmaker’s daughter. She didn’t know quite why his words had affected her so deeply. Well, maybe she did. She’d known Tim for a little over seven weeks now and he often let little things slip. Things that made her believe he saw things in a different way from other people. His words were predictive and often came true. At first she had thought it was coincidence, but she had seen many things travelling with the Doctor and had come to expect that coincidence was just another word people liked to throw around when they couldn’t explain things through science.

She picked up the package of spices first. She wouldn’t risk the shop closing before she’d done that. Cook had warmed up to her in the last couple of weeks, but she knew that her place in anyone’s affections would easily be destroyed by any wrong move she might make. She sighed. She hated the pressure of it.

In the real world, or at least in the time period she’d come from, for this world was real despite how much she wanted to wish it away, she thrived on pressure. Being a medical student, she had to. But it was altogether different from the type of pressure she was undergoing now. She was keeping a secret so immense that if she failed at it, it could kill the Doctor and set loose immortal monsters on the universe. Trying to pass herself off as someone she was not and trying to remember her place here was not the one of a highly educated woman from an upper middle class family, but of a girl with little future beyond scrubbing floors, delivering food, making beds, and prepping vegetables. Thank goodness it wasn’t forever.

She stopped next at the haberdashery. She had to wait while the man behind the counter served three other people, two of which had come in after her. When he finally nodded to her and she told him what she wanted, she bought a single needle pushed through a piece of cardboard and a spool of strong, white thread and one of black in case there was a problem with Tim’s coat and not just the shirt. She also got a small length of white linen in case she needed to add a patch to Tim’s shirt. It wasn’t too much of a hit from her meager savings. If Timothy remembered to bring her his ripped uniform she could wash it that evening and it should be dry by the next. She could mend it and get it back to him before anyone might realize it was missing. After all, she’d sewn up people in A&E. How hard could it be to sew a sleeve?

Maybe when she saw Tim again she could ask him what he’d meant by his words. Whatever could it be about Miss Tyler that had made him say that it would always be her? This was exactly the sort of thing she would talk over with the Doctor, had he been himself. It was frustrating. At least as John Smith the Doctor had forgotten who he really was. Martha almost wished she could forget who she really was for the next five weeks. Would that make things any better, though? Would accepting how she was treated if she didn’t know it would be coming to an end in another month make things any easier?

Instead of heading towards the moor, she veered into the woods behind the village. She’d just check on the TARDIS, hidden in an old, unused stable and spend some time getting herself back together, before returning to the school.




After another savory supper that had left Rose pleasantly full, and two teacups worth of Mrs. Jenkins’ medicinal brew, the night time dose, she and Pete retired to their rooms. Instead of heading straight for bed, Rose sat on the sofa in the sitting room. Pete shut the door and sat in the overstuffed armchair across from her. He pulled the teleport out of his pocket and set it on the small table between them. “Any progress?” Rose asked.

“Not really. What I wouldn’t give for a miniature soldering iron.”

He removed a small box of broken watches from under the table. “Mr. Jenkins gave me these to work with. I told him I wanted to try to create a few new watches from the parts, so I’ll have to do that as well. It gives me a cover though, when I’m working on the teleport.”

“What do you need to get the teleport working?” Rose asked.

“Well,” he began, popping the back cover off the device, “you can see here,” he pointed with a thin, long tool that reminded Rose somewhat of a dental instrument, “where the parts are blackened, it’s been shorted out. I could possibly repair it with a paper clip. When did they invent the paper clip?”

“I don’t know, but they’d have pins and needles at the haberdashery. Martha was going to get some sewing supplies.”

“Who’s Martha?”

“She’s a maid at the school. She walked back with us. I invited her over for a visit on Saturday,” Rose said.

“You did what?” Pete looked flabbergasted.

“I invited her over,” Rose repeated. “What? I’m allowed to make friends.”

“Rose, if you go gallivanting around the countryside with a maid for your companion it’ll blow our cover here. You’re putting us at risk. You’re supposed to be from the merchant class, not the serving class.”

“It’ll be fine. And anyway, I’m not gallivanting. She’s coming here. We’ll stay here and talk.”

“You need to be more careful,” Pete said.

“You aren’t actually my father, you know,” Rose said in annoyance.

“I’m just concerned,” Pete said looking slightly hurt. “I may not be your father, but I feel responsible for you.”

“Well, you needn’t.”

“Well, I do,” he said stubbornly. “I helped invent this technology and it’s what dragged us here, instead of—.”

“Instead of into the Void,” Rose said, suddenly defending him. “Because that’s where I was heading if you hadn’t jumped in when you did. Don’t you dare feel guilty for that. You saved my life and you aren’t responsible for our circumstances. You were only trying to do a favor for my mum.”

“Catch me doing that again,” he said, but Rose could tell from his tone that he didn’t mean it.

Rose sat back on the couch. “I miss him,” she said softly.

“I know,” Pete returned quietly. “You really love him, don’t you?”

She felt her eyes beginning to tear up and shoved her emotions back down violently. “I never thought I might have to live the rest of my life without him. Especially here. I knew there were risks to time travel, but I always thought we’d be taking them together. If we got stuck I’d have him to lean on.”

“And now all you’ve got is me,” he said self-deprecatingly, his eyes staying firmly on the watch parts he was fiddling with.

“Almost a fair trade,” Rose said with a half-smile. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you here. I just wish…”

“What?”

“That you were my real dad. Being stuck here would be worth it if I had the chance to know him. You’re like him, so much, but…”

“It’s not the same.”

“When the Doctor took me to meet him, it was hard. Maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I had to watch him die. Then when I met you, it was like maybe the universe was giving me another chance,” Rose said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“Maybe it is.”

Rose looked up sharply and he met her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“When I met you, Rose, I wasn’t prepared to be a father.” He spread his hands wide. “I wasn’t prepared to be compared to a man that you so clearly adored. But don’t think I haven’t thought about it. These last three years I thought long and hard about what a daughter of mine would have been like and I know in my heart that she would have been so much like you.”

Pete touched her hand. “I swear, Rose, I will do everything in my power to get you back to him. Not just because you are who you are, but for the daughter I could have had.”

“I know you’ll try.”

“I’ll do it.”

“It’s just words,” Rose said. “I know it and you know it, that there’s a very good chance that this is all there is. 1913 and you and me stuck here.”

“I’m not giving up yet,” Pete said firmly.

“I’m not either, but…I just never thought what I would do if there wasn’t a way. I’ve always had a way back to him. Every other time we’ve been separated there has been a way. I’ve found him or he’s found me, but he won’t even know where to come looking,” Rose said.

Pete didn’t know what to say. He squeezed Rose’s hand and then let it go. “I’ll fix it,” he said. I’ll find a way.”

They sat in melancholy silence for a while until Rose finally shook herself. “I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine,” she said.

“How much money do we have left?” Pete asked, changing the subject.

“I didn’t count it,” Rose said. She got up and walked into her room where she’d left the drawstring bag she’d borrowed from Mrs. Jenkins. She took the wallet out of it and handed it to Pete, who counted out the remainder of the money left from the sale of Rose’s necklace.

“We’ll need to be careful with what we have left. Mr. Jenkins will be paying me by the month so we have a few weeks to get through before I get paid.”

“Do you think we’ll still be here then?” she asked him.

“Where else are we going to go? This is as good a set up as any. While we’re waiting for my pay we can each take a small allowance once a week to buy one or two things that will make living in 1913 a bit easier to bear.” He tossed the wallet onto the table and started rooting around in the box of clockworks.

“Are there any parts like what you need in that box?”

“I don’t know. I’m hoping I can improvise. I haven’t had a chance to go through and strip out the components I’ll need. The end result may be a bit…steampunk,” he told her.

“Whatever made you decide to go for a design like clockwork in the first place?” she asked him, interested despite herself. Maybe a lighter conversation would help her recover from the emotionally draining one they’d just had.

“I’ve always been fascinated by how a few simple cogs, springs and some quartz can keep perfect time. It’s part of being an inventor.”

“You did a fair bit better than my real dad at inventing things. Though he had come up with Vitex juices just a little while before he was killed, he never had time to market them.”

Pete didn’t say anything in response to that. He took an old time piece out of the box and began prying it apart. He stripped everything out of the inside. “I might be able to do something with this.”

“I was almost killed by a clockwork man once,” Rose said staring off into the distance.

Pete looked up at her. That was the last thing he’d expected her to say. “Really?”

“Yes. On a space ship.”

Pete laughed. “That seems to be two incongruent pieces of technology.”

“Well, the spaceship they were on had also wired bits of the crew into the systems. It was not a place I would ever care to revisit.”

Rose yawned then, so widely and loudly that she apologized.

“You’d better get to bed. I think Mrs. Jenkins’ medicinal brew has gotten to you.”

“Yes, all right,” she said.

“Is the arm any better?”

Rose shrugged and then winced. “It’s healing, I think.”

“Good.”

Rose removed herself to her bedroom and changed, leaving the sling on her night table. Then she crawled under the warm covers and let out a long sigh. Walking across the moor and back had definitely been tiring, but so worthwhile. She’d managed to make three friends, she counted Onna on that list, during the short amount of time she’d been in 1913. She might be stuck here for a while, but at least she could nourish these new friendships and stay as busy as she could while Pete fixed the teleport.

And if he couldn’t…well, she didn’t like to think about that, but if he couldn’t she’d have people she could count on while she tried to figure out a way of signaling the Doctor that she was in fact still in the same universe as he was.



As Joan Redfern made her way across the landing on the second floor, John Smith opened a door and emerged with a large stack of books, the top one tumbling from the pile as he stopped quickly to prevent a collision.

“Let me help you,” she said as he tried to corral the book with his foot.

“Oh, no, no, no. I’ve got it, no,” he said, even though he very clearly didn’t. Instead of allowing her to stoop to pick up the book he’d dropped, the easiest option for either of them, he handed her off the large stack and bent to retrieve it himself. She tried not to sigh at the man’s lack of common sense, but it did bring a slight smile to her face as he bumbled about. Thomas had been a bit of a bumbler himself.

Once he was holding it again, he left her holding the other books. “So, um, how was Jenkins?” he asked.

Young Jenkins had been in her office the night before. “Oh, just a cold, nothing serious,” she told him. “I think he’s missing his mother more than anything.”

“Oh, well, you can’t cure that.”

“He received a letter this morning so he’s a lot more chipper. And I appear to be holding your books,” she pointed out.

“Yes, so you are. Sorry, sorry.” He tried to take them. “Just let me—.”

“No, why don’t I take half?” she asked, thinking that the best solution all around.

“Ah, brilliant idea. Brilliant. Perfect,” he said with a goofy, sweet smile. “Division of labor.”

“We make quite a team,” she said.

“Don’t we just.” His smile was bigger and she couldn’t help but smile back. The poor man seemed completely inept whenever she ran into him. Perhaps that was with all women.

“So these books, were they being taken in any particular direction?” she asked when he just stood there grinning at her.

“Yes, um…” He looked ahead and then behind him. “This way.” He stepped back and let her go first. “I always say, Matron, that if you give the boys a good head of steam, they’ll soon wear themselves out.”

She almost frowned at the word matron. It suddenly made her feel dowdy and old, when she was still quite a young woman. “Truth be told, when it’s just you and me, I’d much rather you call me Nurse Redfern. Matron sounds rather, well, matronly.”

“Ah…ah, Nurse Redfern it is then.” They were at the top of the stairs and he turned to look at her.

“Though we’ve known each other all of two months, you could even say Joan,” she invited, hoping it wasn’t too forward. Somehow making a new friend in Miss Tyler made her think maybe making friends with John wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

“Joan?”

“Joan. That’s my name.”

“Well, obviously.”

“And it’s John, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes, yes, it is, yes.”

She smiled, he took a step backwards and next thing she knew he was tumbling down the front stairs. She sighed. The man really was a hopeless case. She hurried down the steps to make sure he hadn’t cracked his head open.

Ch. 6: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/568028.html