Birthday Fic: Third Time's the Charm

[amberfocus]

Title:  Third Time's the Charm (1/1)
Author:  amberfocus
Characters/Pairings:  alt!Nine (John Smith)/Rose Tyler, Toshiko Sato
Genre:  Romance
Rating:  Teen
Betas:  amyo67, jeprdyfrndly
Summary:  Set in Pete's World where Journey's End and End of Time never happened.  A familiar face comes to work at Torchwood.  He's not the Doctor.  He's just John Smith.  But why does he look so much like the man Rose first met in a different universe?
A/N:  Okay, this was supposed to be a drabble.  I asked wiggiemomsi for a simple drabble prompt for her birthday.  Instead she sent me a plot poodle.  She wanted an alternate version of the Ninth Doctor and Rose meeting in Pete's world.  And she wanted it to be without the screwed up "real" canon getting in the way.  Her prompt itself was: substitute love.  There is a bit of dialog from the episode "Rose" and a bit of dialog from "Journey's End."  I'm posting a day early due to internet issues.  Happy Birthday, Wiggie!  Oh, and ladychi?  Yours kind of turned into a ficlet as well, and may not be ready until Sunday.

Third Time's the Charm

 

When he first shows up at Torchwood, Rose doesn’t know what to think. He says his name is Smith, John Smith, and he claims to be a doctor. He doesn’t, not once, claim to be the Doctor, and he shows absolutely no sign of knowing who she is. He doesn’t look exactly like the first man she’d known, which is a good thing because it might have broken her heart if he had, but the basic building blocks, the high cheekbones, the craggy face, the piercing blue eyes, are the same.

He is scruffy with a slightly too long beard in need of a trim and hair long enough to be held back in a small ponytail at the nape of his neck, though half the time he forgets to do so. He has a long scar that starts in the middle of his left eyebrow and continues up into the fringe of his hair. He wears jeans, but not jumpers, dress shirts, but not ties, a blazer instead of a leather jacket, and combat boots instead of standard Doc Martens.

His accent is Scottish and not Mancunian, which does strange things to her whenever they get caught in conversation for too long. She tries to avoid him for the first few weeks, but since she is constantly bringing in new devices to be deciphered and he seems to have an immediate grasp on alien technology, it has become all but impossible. More and more often they are working together. It’s a favor to her father, because aside from his ballsy Japanese assistant, no one else can really handle him.

For everyone else it solves the difficult problem of whom they both should be partnered with. Not many people have the patience to deal with Rose’s aloofness, she’s burned through more partners than she can count, or Dr. Smith’s know it all attitude, but neither one seems to mind the other’s failings. After the first awkward days Rose finds she really doesn’t mind that he looks like her lost love and acts to a certain arrogant degree just like him, because his behavior is never enough that she mistakes him for the same man.

She asks him from time to time where his knowledge comes from and he responds with one of his rare smiles, like he is humoring himself more than her in answering, “I’m dead clever, me.” He never explains further and she doesn’t press. She just gives him a smile with her tongue between her teeth and he always looks at her askance when she does, and then she agrees with him that he is clever, but not the cleverest man she’s ever met. He demands for her to prove it and she tells him she will, but first he has to break down the walls between parallel realities. When he says that is impossible, she tells him he’ll just have to take her word for it then. She is surprised that it doesn’t hurt to talk about it and wonders just when it was that the pain stopped.

He never claims to be anything but human and after a while she forgets his resemblance to her first Doctor. He is quite clearly his own man and slowly her guard comes down bit by bit. It seems to coincide with his own walls becoming less sturdy. If anyone else notices that the taciturn Dr. Smith and the heartbroken heiress have begun spending more and more time together outside of work, wisely nobody says anything. Occasionally a photo of the two of them eating lunch in some bistro near work or on their way to a science symposium or simply out for a walk while he talks through a theory with her will hit the tabloids. Everyone Rose works with knows better than to bring such things to her attention, but on occasion a photo will cross her desk and every time one does she is surprised at how happy she looks.

She laughs at being linked to the man who has become her partner and friend, something a few months ago would have been thought impossible. Rose Tyler doesn’t usually even smile, let alone laugh. Those close to her, Mickey, Jake, her mum, notice the changes, have noticed the tension that she’s carried for as long as she’s been in this universe, as long as she’s worked at Torchwood, has left her. Subordinates no longer fear messing up under her watch, though they still strive hard not to do so. As the work friendship between John and Rose progresses they become more and more comfortable being together and so when he suggests dinner and a movie she sees no reason to say no.

It isn’t until they are standing at the door to her flat at the end of the evening out and everything has gone extraordinarily well and she’s thinking about how much she wants to do this again, that it occurs to Rose that this has been a date. It’s when she’s okay with that that Rose thinks she might be falling for him. When he asks if he can kiss her she tells him yes and when he does she thinks for a moment that fireworks are going off in the sky. It’s more than she ever expected to feel again and as the days pass the feeling doesn’t go away.

After that everything moves far too quickly according to everyone else, but not fast enough for them. It’s like they’re both trying to live a lifetime together before something can go wrong. Rose has always been impulsive, but it’s been combined with good instincts and she knows deep in her heart that this is how everything is supposed to turn out. The reason for being stuck here away from her first real love was to bring her to the man that she’s now firmly convinced is her true love.

When he proposes three months after they move in together and Rose says yes, her mum accuses John of being a substitute love for the Doctor and Rose doesn’t speak to her for a month. Eventually they do make up and Jackie takes much delight in planning a wedding. It turns out to be beautiful, but when aliens crash the reception and John’s assistant at Torchwood rushes to his side with an elaborate silver fob watch and he opens it, her life is suddenly turned upside down.

Everything changes in the blink of an eye and suddenly the man she’s just married is not the man she’s in love with. He’s the man she used to be in love with, only not. Alternate Time Lords are not supposed to be possible, her own Doctor told her that, but as this man haltingly explains himself to her, explains that John Smith didn’t really exist and that he’s an alien called the Doctor who travels through time in a space ship that’s bigger on the inside than the out, she knows that the first man was wrong.

His assistant, a woman named Toshiko who is really his companion, watches them with sad eyes. “He never told me what to do,” she says, “if he fell in love. He never expected it to happen. And when it did, I didn’t think it was right of me to stop it. Maybe I should have, but…” She shrugs. “It was the first time I’ve ever seen him happy.”

“So now you know, Rose Tyler, who I am and what I am. The question is do you still want to be with me?” he asks.

“How much of you is him?” she asks.

“You mean do I still love you?” he replies.

“Yeah.”

“I look like him and I think like him. Same memories, same thoughts, same everything. Except I’ve got two hearts.”

“But am I in them?” she asks.

He looks like he wants to say yes, but those aren’t the words that come. “I—I don’t know.” It breaks her heart, her single, human heart, to hear those words, but they’re not the only words he says. “But I’d like the chance to find out, because walking away from you is something I don’t want to do. You could come with me.” And then he smiles, so much hope on his face. She stares at him in consternation. “What do you say? You could stay here, fill your life with work and food and sleep, or you could go…anywhere.”

The words echo another invitation, one from when she was but a girl, when the life she had was one she wanted to run away from. Now the life she has grown happy with has suddenly been wiped out. But he is still here, a man who wears a face she’s fallen in love with twice. A man who while wearing that face had fallen in love with her twice. And though parts of him are different, something basic remains the same. Is it really all that different from a regeneration? If she could accept it before, can’t she accept it again? Can’t she take the leap of faith that he is asking for? She’s done it twice now and never regretted it.

A beaming smile breaks over her face and she leans up and kisses him. He kisses her back and with an amount of passion that tells her more than his words could ever say about how he still feels. What does she say? “Why not? Third time’s the charm.”