#i'm gonna try to work on the god complex rewrite this weekend too!

[smallblueandloud]

For the AU ask meme: Thirteen x Rose, Role Reversal AU ✿

thank you so much for being patient with me - i hope this makes up for the wait! (under a cut, because this one got long. turns out i’ve missed doctor who writing, lol.) send me an au and i’ll send you 5+ headcanons about it (eventually!)

jane smith is thirty five years old and she lives in cardiff.

she lives with her granddad, graham, and her step-second-cousin (yeah, it sounds rather awkward) ryan, who’s the grandson of her granddad’s second wife grace. ryan’s got a best friend named yaz, who’s training to be a police officer, and who stops by more days than not after she gets out of work.

ryan’s working as a mechanic, and jane goes with him sometimes to help him out - she loves using her hands and working to take things apart and put them back together.

she herself has a job as a primary school science teacher. she loves working with kids - has for her entire life - and she loves teaching them to look at the universe with just a little more wonder. she’s never really thought about having kids, though. she’s never really dated anyone very seriously, is the thing, and anyways she doesn’t want them. she used to, she knows, but something changed at some point, and now she knows that’s never going to happen.

it’s just her and her granddad, these days, and of course ryan and yaz, since her parents died in an accident while she was in uni.

but she’s happy! she loves her students, she loves what she teaches, and she loves getting up in the morning. she’s working on a novel in her free time, about an adventurer of some kind who travels through time and space - she’s thinking it should be some kind of kids’ series, to teach them history and science in an interesting way - but she’s rather bad at writing, so it’s not very good. she loves writing it, though!

one day, she’s out to the store with her granddad when she bumps into a blonde woman, completely knocking her foodstuffs out of her hands. after a hasty apology (or seven) later, and lots of blushing, jane and her granddad go on their way.

graham teases her about it, a little, but jane still has to work on her lesson plan for the coming week, so she rushes him home and tries not to think about the woman’s (rose, she’d said, my name is rose) smile and hands and-

jane is thirty five years old and has only ever had three boyfriends. she’s starting to think it might be because of a bigger issue than her chronic absent-mindedness.

a few weeks later, she’s out to the movies with ryan and yaz, when they run into rose again. this time, she’s with a friend of hers, who winks suggestively at her when he introduces himself but seems nice enough.

jane’s… reasonably sure that rose and her friend jack aren’t dating, but something about jack still puts her on edge. she shrugs and tries to wave it off, though, because the movie is rather good and afterwards they go out for ice cream.

surprise, surprise! rose and jack are there too. it’s a genuine mistake on everyone’s part, but the two groups sit together to discuss the movie, and by the end, ryan has gotten rose’s number to ask her a question about the engine that rose mentioned she’s building in her garage.

ryan makes plans to go over to rose’s house to look over the engine, and he asks if he can take jane along (she’s a big fan of mechanics, too!). rose agrees immediately, and so off jane goes, and tries not to act too embarrassingly.

at some point, ryan is engrossed in the engine, and rose sidles over to jane. they begin a conversation, mostly about engines, that devolves into their greater life circumstances, and eventually about jane’s job.

jane is halfway through a long, impassioned rant about the utter beauty of the voyager probe and the things that humanity decided represented itself when rose kisses her.

jane is thirty five years old and she is definitely not straight.

they break apart to ryan grinning at them. nice one, jane! he says to her. she’s had a crush on you since the beginning, he says to rose.

rose smiles at her. that’s good. i have too.

and so begins the tale of rose and jane. they’re suddenly in the middle of each other’s lives, and it’s wonderful.

rose is over at their house almost once a week for movie night (they cuddle on the couch - it’s the highlight of her week). jane goes over to the house that rose shares with jack every friday, and they work on rose’s engine together.

jane can’t draw, and she can’t really write, and she can’t paint. but she can make things. she gets into the habit of making little mechanisms for rose - sort of half sculpture, half tool things that will, for example, fix a squeaky hinge, or walk after being wound up, or just look pretty. rose collects things that remind her of jane and give them to her the next time she sees her - things like lines of poetry, pictures of beautiful places, or flowers. jane gets a lot of flowers.

sometimes she catches rose looking at her sadly. she always says it’s nothing when jane asks, but one day, at jane’s house, she confesses that jane sometimes reminds her of an old, old boyfriend, who rose still misses. i guess i have a thing for adorable science nerds, says rose, grinning. i love you, though. you know that, right?

(jane is floating on air for days after that conversation.)

rose’s job is dangerous. jane doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but she knows it’s under jack somehow and that it’s important work. sometimes she gets to dinner looking exhausted and worried, and sometimes she’s injured - she never tells jane exactly what it is, though, just smiles at her and asks about her students.

one day, though, jane is out with everyone - rose, her granddad, ryan, yaz - for dinner. the waitress is being very rude, asking all sorts of personal questions, and downright ignoring yaz. she even leans over their food - to “see how good it smells”, apparently - in a bid that seems like a convoluted way to spit in their food as they watch. jane is, therefore, in a bad mood.

rose seems nervous, too. they don’t even get through their appetizers before she’s completely ignoring any attempts at conversation in favor at craning her neck to watch the waitress, who’s standing at the door of the kitchen with three other people who do not look like they belong in their restaurant. in fact, if jane squints, the shortest one looks a lot like a little boy in the class next door to hers.

several things happen in quick succession:

the four at the kitchen turn and begin to walk towards their table as one. rose opens her phone and yells NOW into it. jack - of all people, what the heck is going on, thinks jane - bursts in carrying something that jane belatedly recognizes as a huge gun-looking thing. it seems like it wouldn’t be out of place in her terrible novel, in fact.

jane rips her attention away from rose, who is grabbing the gun from jack and yelling EVERYONE GET UNDER THE TABLES, because ryan is tugging on her sleeve and looking panicky.

we need to go, he says, and behind him yaz and jane’s granddad nod in frantic agreement. we have to go, jane!

i’m not leaving rose here! says jane, before everyone’s attention is drawn back to rose, who’s locked in some sort of... stalemate with their rude waitress, who has also produced a sci-fi looking gun.

jane, says rose, very quietly, turning back to her. she looks like she’s in pain, but she also looks very certain of how this is going to go. please. you need to go.

jane doesn’t go.

rose sighs and turns back to the waitress. you’re here for me, i expect, she says. fine. as long as you don’t hurt the others.

jane, says yaz, but jane ignores her. jane, we really HAVE to go. now.

the waitress laughs. you think we’re here for you, silly girl? get out of our way.

rose blinks, surprised. you’re-

she turns to look at jack, who looks just as surprised. you’re here for me? he says. i’m not going to be able to help you. you can’t steal anything from me.

the waitress laughs again. oh, humans. so arrogant. step aside. she looks across the restaurant and makes eye contact with- with jane, of all people. she and the other three begin to move towards her. jane suddenly understands, with devastating clarity, what the phrase “a deer in headlights” feels like.

no! shouts rose, and shifts in between them. her voice has changed, somehow. it sounds different. it sounds powerful.

you will NOT harm them, she says, but something is wavering, like her students’ voices do when they haven’t practiced something enough yet. they are under my protection. SHE IS UNDER MY PROTECTION.

and again, the waitress scoffs, and brushes rose aside as if she’s nothing.

i’ll give you anything you want!, says rose, sounding desperate now. the power has left her voice, or maybe run out - and now she just seems scared. i love her! i can’t- you can’t- my husband warned me of you. i know who you are! the Family. your kind nearly killed my husband. you will NOT kill my girlfriend!

finally, the waitress stops to look rose in the eye. she shakes her head. foolish girl, she says. you may be powerful, but you are still young, and your ship is far away. who are you to claim to protect a time lord?

NO, shouts ryan and yaz, in unison. jane falls to her feet with a splitting headache that she’s only just noticing she has, and graham runs to her side. doctor, he says, we need you! come back, doctor! look- and he pulls an old fashioned fob watch out of his pocket. doctor, come back!

jane has just enough time to think it’s just like my novel, when-

he opens it, and everything goes white.

the doctor is several thousand years old and lives in her tardis.

she lives with her friends: graham, his grandson ryan, and yaz. she also lives with rose tyler, the love of her life, who returned to her after a lifetime spent in another universe with another version of her.

when the doctor thinks about how they reunited, she can’t stop herself from laughing. “you must’ve thought i was so foolish,” she says to rose, one day, as they’re sitting in the kitchen together. “here i was talking about saturn and the mysteries of its rings, and you’d been all over the universe, both with me and on your own.”

rose smiles at her and winds their fingers together. “i dunno,” she says, and looks at the way that their matching rings glint in the light. “i thought you were magical.”