The Watchmaker's Daughter: Chapter Six

[amberfocus]

Title: The Watchmaker's Daughter (6/10)
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 episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood.

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

Chapter Six: Orbiting

The rest of the week passed quickly for Martha. She’d been adept at repairing Tim’s shirt and getting the stains out of it and no one had been the wiser when she’d gotten it back to him. When she’d queried him about the comment he’d made about the watchmaker’s daughter, he looked confused.

“Sometimes I just go off somewhere in my mind,” he said. “I say little things. Silly things or serious things. I don’t know where they come from. It’s just that often they’re right.”

“But she’s not a danger, is she?”

“Not a danger to you, no. In fact she may be your best ally.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There’s a battle coming.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I—.”

“Timothy, what do you mean?”

“I’m not sure I know,” he replied.

She didn’t press him any further and allowed him to go because he looked frightened. Whatever reason he’d had for saying it, it clearly wouldn’t infringe on her new friendship with Miss Tyler and she was able to rest a little easier as she made her plans to return to the village. She and Jenny were going to ride bicycles into town and while Jenny was visiting her sister, Martha would be visiting Miss Tyler. Then they’d meet up afterwards for a drink at the pub. It was hard to gauge whether or not Miss Tyler might want to come along. If her father would let her go off with not one, but two maids, and no male escort.

Honestly, she was happy to have the distraction. John had been behaving oddly all week and Martha wasn’t entirely sure she could trust Matron Redfern’s diagnosis of no concussion after he’d taken that tumble down the stairs. And those dreams of his seemed to be getting out of control. He’d had them from the first night, but the frequency was increasing. He’d dreamed about being in 2007 the night before and she’d shown him the newspaper with today’s date, but she wasn’t sure how much longer things were going to hold together. If he said something to the wrong person…well, as far as she knew the Family had not tracked them back to Earth yet, but she’d rather not have those sorts of notions floating around out there where anyone could hear them.

She looked at the clock and then went to find Jenny. It was time to head to the village and meet up with Miss Tyler.




John Smith had not been present at lunch and that had sent Joan to his rooms to check on him. The man was not one to miss a meal. A stomach ailment of some sort was passing through one of the dorms and she wanted to make sure he hadn’t fallen ill to it. She knocked lightly on his door. He appeared a moment later looking slightly flustered when he saw who it was.

“Are you feeling all right, Mr. Smith?” she asked. “You weren’t at table. I thought perhaps you had taken ill.” She noticed his breakfast tray sitting untouched.

He glanced behind him at the clock on the mantle and seemed to become aware of the lateness of the hour. “No, I’m well,” he said. “I just got absorbed in something and lost track of time.”

“In what?” she asked curiously.

“Oh,” he said sheepishly, “just some fiction stories I’m writing. You…you wouldn’t care to see them, would you?”

He looked at her so hopefully she couldn’t bear to say no. “I like fiction.”

“They’re really, well, these dreams I’ve been having. I dream that I’m this adventurer called the Doctor and, well, look I’ve written them down in my book.” He held it out to her.

“The Journal of Impossible Things,” she read and began looking at the pages. Strange images adorned the pages along with some awfully sloppy penmanship. “Just look at these creatures. Such imagination.”

She turned a few more pages. “And quite an eye for the pretty girls. You say that you’ve been dreaming these stories?”

“Yes. Though sometimes they feel like memories.”

“Well, this one might be from a memory,” she said tapping the face of the girl in the book and giving him a thoughtful look. “Have you been down to Jenkins’ shop since he hired the new watchmaker? Because this girl is the spitting image of his daughter.”

“No, this isn’t modeled after a real person. She’s just someone from my dreams. Her character is called Rose and she’s there quite a lot at first, but seems to go away later on.”

“But there’s no mistaking it.” Joan shook her head and frowned, then made up her mind. “It’s not just a resemblance. I’d swear they were the same girl. And Miss Tyler’s first name is Rose. You must have seen her.”

“It can’t be. These are stories. I’ve never even been to the village.”

“Maybe you saw her in passing? She did come to visit me earlier in the week. Perhaps you saw her in the halls.” she suggested.

“No, I didn’t. I’m quite sure I’d remember that, a girl walking right out of my journal.” He looked down at the drawing, his voice wistful.

“Well, you should go see for yourself. Didn’t you say your father was a watchmaker?” she asked. “That’s as good as any reason to go and introduce yourself to Mr. Tyler.”

“That seems an awfully thin excuse for something that may not even be real. It is, after all, a journal of impossible things.”

“I don’t think so, John,” she said. Her curiosity was far too aroused. “I can go with you and ask after Rose. She hurt her shoulder and it wouldn’t hurt for me to check on it a third time. Unless you can think of a better idea.”

“Come to think of it, I have my father’s watch and it doesn’t work. Hasn’t in years. I could take it in to the village and see about getting it repaired and perhaps meet this Rose of yours. It’s not an imposition? You didn’t have plans today?”

“I had plans to walk to town and pick up an order from the book store. I can introduce you to her father. You can tell me more of your stories on the way,” Joan said.

John stood up and picked up the watch, slipping it into his coat pocket. Joan left to retrieve her own coat and hat and met him at the top of the stairs. “Perhaps you should use the banister,” she said with a lightly teasing tone. “Wouldn’t want you to take another tumble.”

“Yes, quite,” John said, blushing very red.

As they left the school and headed towards the road that wound through the moors they were passed by Martha Jones on a bicycle, followed by a madly cycling Jenny.

“Now why didn’t we think of that? The school has adequate cycles available,” she said.

“I’m afraid I never learned how to ride one,” John told her.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m very good at running.”

“Are you?”

“Indeed, I am.”

“And how good are you at walking? Because I’m afraid with these shoes on that is all I’m prepared to do.”

“It has its moments,” he said, an image of a hand held firmly in his flashing through his mind. He’d been walking with someone. “It’s the turn of the Earth,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, never mind. As I said, I’ve not gone into the village before. Haven’t had a need to. What’s it like?”

“Smelly and dirty, like most villages, but with lots of things to do. They have an active Junior League and they’re always hosting events. I believe there’s a dance coming up soon at the Village Hall. But I think you’ll quite like the gadgets and things in Jenkins’ workshop. Onna spends hours there,” she replied.

“Onna?”

“Lattimer. Tim’s sister. I’m sure you’ve seen her about. She sneaks in often to see him. Little girl about so high,” she held out her hand, “brown hair, brown eyes like Tim, freckles, talks constantly except when she’s drawing.”

“I thought she was Cook’s child.”

“No. But she and her brother are very close and Cook is fond of her so she’s often in the kitchen. She’s an incredibly intelligent child, but things being what they are…well.”

“Yes.” He frowned. “She’d do quite well in my stories. Spunky, intelligent, and smart. The Doctor,” he made quote marks with his fingers and then frowned again at the gesture, “would want her along. Grown up, of course.”

Joan didn’t know what to say to that, so instead said, “You’ve realized, of course, how smart Tim is.”

“Yes, and he doesn’t work up to it. Doesn’t want the older lads ganging up on him. They do anyway, so he may as well use his full intelligence.”

“They do tend to send him to the infirmary rather a lot,” she said. “And it’s not just his intelligence. Since his family’s change in fortune there’s been some rank classism going on. Rochester is the worst. And Baines.”

“Once he gets older and can defend himself, maybe he’ll be more secure in his intelligence,” John said.

“Maybe. I feel more for his sister than for him, though. Onna is just as smart as he is. She’ll never get to use it, though.”

“Well, is she pretty?” John asked.

Joan frowned. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, but yes.”

“Then she’ll marry well,” John said.

“What does that matter? She won’t get to use her brain,” Joan said.

“But she won’t have to, then, will she?” John said. “She’ll be taken care of.”

“Sometimes a woman wants more out of life than to be taken care of,” Joan said with a slight edge to her tone.

“Yes, well…”

Joan sighed. John was less than a forward thinker. The conversation dwindled to nothing and she was glad when they got to the edge of the village. They mounted the boardwalk and she led him to the correct shop.

“Here we are,” she said, but she was having second thoughts on having him meet Rose. Not that there was much option at this point.

“Jenkins’ Jewels and Time Pieces,” John read the sign on the door before opening it and gesturing for Joan to go ahead of him.

The little bell above the door rang and Mr. Tyler popped out from the back.



Pete Tyler had stayed up late almost every single night since he and Rose had arrived in 1913. He had sifted through parts, disassembled many broken watches, filched a big piece of quartz, and had tried numerous times to get the teleport working again. Every experiment he did led him back to the same answer. The reserve power supply had been destroyed in their backwards jump through time. The crystal that had stored that energy was cracked and empty. Even with proper cutting the replacement quartz didn’t work. It simply didn’t resonate on quite the same frequency as the one from his home world had.

The main power supply crystal was functional, but was not making contact with its leads. The contact wire had completely melted into the base of the teleport. It would have to be replaced. It would function again if he could just solder the pin he’d bought at the haberdashery. In less than a decade the soldering iron would be patented, at least if technology followed the same course here. But that didn’t do him any good now.

Ancient cultures had soldered things, but he didn’t have any idea what methods they had used. He possibly might be able to heat another pin up hot enough to do the required work, but even then, it wouldn’t solve the main problem he was facing. If he had a lighter and he could burn the pin long enough, maybe, but he didn’t. A match wouldn’t last long enough to super heat the metal. Without that they’d never get home again.

No, he had to tell himself the truth, even if he couldn’t say it to Rose. With soldering he could fix it just enough to make the recall function work. It would take the wearer back to their previous location, just as it had when Rose had returned from the parallel universe and immediately gone back to the Doctor and the lever room. It should return about five minutes after they’d left, a built in safety mechanism that prevented teleporting into the space you were already occupying in the time stream. It might just be long enough for the Void to close. It was that very mechanism that had malfunctioned. A five minute jump forward should never have translated to a multi-decade jump backwards.

Of course repeating that time jump in the opposite direction would burn out the remaining crystal. He’d come to that conclusion the previous night. If he had the right tools, if he could find compatible pieces, if, if, if, he could fix it. But it would never carry two people again. It wasn’t meant to and without the backup power supply, there wasn’t even the slightest chance it would. He could get Rose back to the Doctor, but he’d have to stay behind. And it would be too late for anyone to retrieve Jackie and Mickey. They’d be on their own.

He cursed his limited abilities. He didn’t want to think of Jackie in a world completely foreign to her. The only reason she’d gone with him was that she thought they might be able to have a life together and now they wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be there to smooth over the identity issues, to pay whatever amount of money it would take to bring his wife back from the dead. He wouldn’t be there for their second chance.

It would have to be Rose that went. It would do him no good to go into the future on this planet with a teleport that would burn out the moment he got there, whether the Void was still open or not. He wouldn’t be able to get back to his own life. So if he fixed the teleport, he would stay here in 1913, and send Rose back to the life she wanted if he could convince her to go without him. He wasn’t about to make that decision for her, but he would do what he could to get her to say yes.

He’d lay out all the facts. He’d explain to her how this was the best option. He could survive here better than she could. He had marketable skills and the privilege of being white and male and sounding well-bred in an era where all of that mattered too much. He could make a life for himself, a comfortable and pleasant life. A reunion with Jackie would have to recede into the world of dreams alone. His reality was here now and that was a fact that was never going to change. He might even find a way to be happy.

Rose might refuse to go without him. She might even insist he go alone. There was no way he would leave her here by herself. Parents made sacrifices all the time for their children. But she’s not your child, whispered a small, sad voice.

“Father?” His heart did an odd leap as the word came from Rose’s mouth. It was the first time since they’d been here that she’d addressed him as such. He didn’t understand the strange tumult of emotions overwhelming him.

Rose came into the workshop, a pretty young woman trailing nervously behind her. “There you are.”

“Yes, did you need something, Rose?”

“Just to tell you I’m leaving. Martha and I decided to take Onna and her friend Lucy Cartwright to Cooper’s Field for a picnic. Martha, this is my father. Father, my new friend Martha.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Martha said.

“Likewise,” he said with a nod of acknowledgement. He turned his eyes back to Rose. “Be careful that you don’t overtask your arm.”

“I won’t. Martha will carry the basket and Onna the blankets. I’ll be fine.”

“Can I expect you home for supper?” he asked.

“Yes, I think so.” She looked sidewise at Martha. “We might stop for a drink at the pub.”

“Rose.”

“It’s all right. They’ll serve us outside. We won’t be around the rough and tumbles.”

“Okay. Have fun,” Pete told her. “And I’d like to speak with you tonight before you retire.”

Rose nodded. “Certainly,” she said. They said their good-byes and the two young women left the shop and moved toward the back door.

He heard Martha say, “He’s going to think I’m a bad influence on you.”

“He can think what he pleases and so can I. I was raised to have a mind of my own. It’s too late to change that,” Rose said. “I’m afraid I’ve always been a difficult daughter.”

The giggles of the two younger girls waiting outside drifted to him as they opened the back door then closed it on their conversation.

No, Rose wasn’t his daughter, but he was no longer running from the idea of that relationship. He could see her becoming something to him. Perhaps more like an affectionate niece.

The front door bell chimed as someone came into the shop. “May I help you?” he asked.

“It’s just me, Mr. Jenkins. Oh, you’re not Mr. Jenkins. Hello, I’m Mrs. Bradshaw from the Junior League.”

“I’m Pete Tyler,” he said.

“We’re having a dance next Saturday. Mr. Jenkins lets me put up advertising when we hold events.”

“Oh, of course,” he said.

Quickly she attached a piece of paper to the back of the cash register with something black and gummy looking. The machine was an antique even by 1913 standards and he hoped the adhesive wouldn’t damage it.

“Thank you and good day,” Mrs. Bradshaw said.

“You’re welcome,” he managed to say as the woman bustled out of the shop. He returned to his work bench in the back, but only a few seconds had passed before the bell rang again. He popped out saying, “Did you need something else, Mrs. Bradshaw?”

“No, it’s me, Mr. Tyler. Joan Redfern. And I’ve brought a friend.” He came around the corner and stopped in his tracks. The Doctor stood beside the nurse. He closed his eyes. They were saved.

Ch. 7: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/570005.html