#like yes bitch you did clock that this vague post was partially about you

[stonesandswords]

.

[lirlovesfic]

The Choice

A Doctor Who fanfic Summary: After GitF, the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey back to the estate to solve a problem involving the TARDIS herself. But when they see a familiar face, the face of someone who should not exist, they realize the problem is deeper than they thought and could endanger the Doctor’s very existence. Primary characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler. Genres: Romance, mystery, adventure, drama, character study, HN AU, fobbed!Nine, sick TARDIS. Pairings: Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose Rating: Adult

Warning: None for this chapter

a/n: I am currently working on editing this chapter-by-chapter, with the hopes of completing a chapter a day until I catch up with myself. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m doing it to try to get back into the swing of writing and to build some momentum in order to finish this. Also, there have been some tiny things nagging at me for a while (grammar, punctuation, etc.) so I’ll be correcting as many of them as I can find as I go. The story will not change. In fact, most of the changes are going to be so minor that I doubt anyone (besides myself) will notice. But to keep me on target, I’ll be posting it all here as I go, with links to the other websites it’s on. I hope you enjoy it.

This chapter: on AO3, on TSP, on ffnet

Chapter One—London, 7 July 2007

Present day…

Long blonde hair. Big brown eyes. A generous mouth…

John woke with a start to the sound of screaming coming from outside his window. Curses were being hurled back and forth, or maybe they were being volleyed. It was almost like a tennis match.

The neighbors were rowing again. There was always someone rowing in this block of flats. This time it was the unmarried couple, Rita and Chuck, two over and one down.

He tried to get back to sleep, to recapture the elusive dream. He dreamt about a lot of things ever since he’d woken up in the alley on New Year’s. His dreams were strange and bizarre, all about alien planets and stars, about fire and war, about the color blue and gigantic pepper pots of all things. But he mostly dreamt about the girl. The girl’s face haunted him, both when he was asleep and awake. He still didn’t properly remember anything, not even his real name, but the girl—the girl was the closest to an actual memory as he came. Maybe he knew her from somewhere. He couldn’t quite recall what she looked like when he was awake—just had a vague impression of blonde hair and big, expressive eyes—but he could when he was sleeping. Her face was clearest to him in dreams. With thoughts of her, he began to drift off…

Rita let out a string of expletives in a variety of languages, and John was jerked awake again. For a second, as Rita shouted, he wondered if she had been in the navy. That was the only possible way she could have learned a few of those words, and how to pronounce them in exactly that way. She even used the right syntax.

John groaned as he glanced over at the clock. Half four in the morning. Too early for him to get up. Too early in fact for them to be up. They were never up before eleven. This must be the tail end of whatever had been going on between them last night.

There was a lull in the arguing. Thanking all the gods of the Greek pantheon, he pulled the pillow back over his head and tried to get back to sleep again. A fool’s errand, he realized, as Rita almost immediately began to swear again. That was followed by a loud crash. Soup pot against something hard and probably breakable by the sound of it. Not the window. That would have shattered. This was either the drywall or perhaps the door. The doors in this block of flats were thin, easily broken, particularly the interior doors. And as part-time maintenance man in return for a reduction in the rent, he’d probably be the one who’d have to fix it.

With a heavy sigh, he hauled himself out of bed, slipped on his jeans and a lightweight jumper, and headed out the door.

A crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle. There were people everywhere: on the balcony, on the landing, in the courtyard, even on the balconies of the other buildings.

“This is better than last night’s EastEnders,” he heard someone say as he headed down the stairs to the floor below.

“What isn’t?” someone else replied. “Last night’s episode was horrible.”

With an eye roll, John pushed his way through the crowd to the arguing couple. Rita was standing in the doorway to her flat, clad only in a thigh-length T-shirt and fuzzy slippers, while Chuck, standing against the railing, was dressed in a buttoned down shirt, jeans, and some sort of high-priced trainers. As John drew close to them, he got a whiff of cigarettes and stale beer coming from Chuck’s general direction.

“Oi!” he shouted. “Knock it off!” At the sound of his voice, the arguing couple both quieted for a moment, almost as if they hadn’t realized they were the center of a spectacle. “Rita, Chuck, I’ll thank you to save the domestics for a reasonable hour. Other people have to get up in the morning.”

Rita tossed her long, black hair over her shoulder. “John,” she said. “That… that…” Her dark brown eyes flashed angrily as she gestured at her boyfriend. She slipped into Spanish, as she often did when upset. “Este pinche hijo de puta que no vale nada esta dentrando a las cuatro de la mañana y el cabron ni tiene la dignidad que dar una buena escusa.” She became more and more animated as she spoke. “¡Estoy segura que esta cogiendo una puta por ay!” She looked at her boyfriend in disgust. “Su verga ni esta tan grande para que todas estas putas se tiren en su camino.”

“Más despacio, por favor,” John replied in fluent and unaccented Spanish. “And in English this time. My Spanish is a bit rusty.”

“This… piece of shit… has been shagging the waitresses down at the pub, I’m sure of it,” she spat. “Then the bloody wanker has the nerve to come back here—at 4 am—and tell me it’s all in my mind!”

John turned to Chuck, a young man whose pointed nose and greasy brown hair made him look a bit like a weasel. “Is this true? You been sleepin’ around on her?”

“Yes, it is!” Rita interjected before Chuck could answer. “But why they’d bother with him, I have no idea. The son of a bitch can’t even get it up half the time.”

“Shut up, you slag!” he yelled. He lunged at her, and John caught him with one hand.

“Knock it off!” John ordered. Then he pulled a face as he caught a whiff of more than just beer and cigarettes. “What is that smell?” He took a big sniff and grimaced. “You definitely need a shower, for one thing. And for the second, unless you’ve taken to wearing women’s perfume, she’s right.”

Chuck shook John’s hand off his shoulder. “You’ve got it all wrong…” His voice trailed off and he didn’t continue.

John raised an eyebrow. “Seriously. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’ That’s what you’re goin’ with?” He tapped his nose. “If there’s one thing this nose is good for, it’s smellin’ shite, and I’m smellin’ it now. And as for you,” he said, turning back to Rita, “I don’t know why you put up with him. If I were you, instead of throwing pots against the door, I’d be throwing his stuff out into the courtyard.”

“She can’t do that!” Chuck protested.

“Oi! I’m talking here!” John said to him. He turned back to Rita. “I’d toss him and his sorry arse out onto the street. You shouldn’t put up with that kind of behavior.”

“He’s right,” said an old woman who lived next door. She was wearing a floor-length dressing gown patterned with sunflowers, and her snow white hair was pinned up in pin curls. “I threw my second husband out for that and never looked back. Or was it my third…”

“It was your third, Gladys,” her sister answered. She was dressed almost identically in a floral dressing gown, only hers had daisies. She wore her steel grey hair loose around her shoulders. “Remember? He was the one who you told me always ate crisps in bed.”

“You’re right, Irene,” Gladys answered. “My second one was the one who—”

“Anyway,” John interjected before the women could continue to reminisce. “You,” he pointed to Chuck, “shut the hell up and find somewhere else to be, and you,” he pointed to Rita, “stop yelling and throwing things. And the rest of you lot, go back to your flats. I’m headed back to bed, and I don’t want to hear another word out of any of you.”

He glared at the crowd for good measure, and slowly they trailed off. With another glare at Rita and Chuck, John returned to his own flat.

Back in his bedroom, he stripped down to vest and pants and crawled back into bed. But after tossing and turning for almost half an hour he finally gave up, sleep having proved elusive after the confrontation. Damn, he thought with resignation. Might as well get up.

As he toweled off in the tiny bathroom after showering, out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of an unfamiliar figure in the small mirror above the sink. Startled, his heart pounded with the surge of adrenalin at the sight of a stranger in his flat. He momentarily froze, then slowly turned to face the intruder head on. The image in the mirror turned with him.

John snorted and rolled his eyes. It was his own reflection.

“You’re definitely losin’ it,” he said to his reflection.

He frowned and leaned forward, scrutinizing his appearance. For a split second, when he’d emerged from the shower he had expected to see a different face reflected in the glass. Older, wizened—no, younger, perhaps, with dark, curling locks. But no. His own steely-blue eyes stared back at him as he examined a largish nose and oversized ears partially covered by straight-as-a-brick dark hair. No curls here.

He ran a hand over his cheeks and chin, feeling the prickles of what, if he left it alone, would undoubtedly turn into a thick beard. For a moment, he considered shaving and then decided against it. Why bother, he thought. He had just shaved yesterday. Or perhaps it was the day before. No matter. Besides, no one cared what he looked like. Not even him.

He returned to the bedroom. As he dressed, this time in a denim work shirt rather than a jumper, his eye caught the sketchpad that he kept on the bedside table. He’d been trying to record images of his dreams, to see if by analyzing them he could somehow trigger his memories, but so far it hadn’t helped. Instead of clues to his past, the notebook was filled with rough sketches of metal men and spaceships and disjointed, unfamiliar faces.

But by far, the most common image was of the blonde girl.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, picked up the sketchpad and a pencil and began to work on the drawing he had started the day before.

Long blonde hair, big brown eyes, a wide smile…

Her nose. He couldn’t quite remember what her nose looked like. Cute, he thought. Feminine. Nothing like the hawkish beak he’d been born with.

He sketched in a smallish nose. Dissatisfied with the results, he erased and began again. Still not right. He frowned. Maybe work on her ears. Her ears… smallish, well, smaller than his at any rate. Then again, whose weren’t?

And for the next two hours he worked on a sketch of a girl he couldn’t remember ever having met before. But a girl, if she was real, who could possibly hold the key to whoever he was.

~oOo~

Mickey Smith sat on the jump seat in the TARDIS control room watching the Doctor at the mushroom shaped console in the center of the room. He was programming in their next destination: an alien planet, he had promised. One with a purple sky and green clouds and the best food this side of the galaxy. It might have been interesting, if he hadn’t been talking about it for fifteen minutes straight without taking a breath.

Bored with listening to his rambling monologue, Mickey glanced over at Rose. She stood nearby, leaning against one of the coral struts that stretched from the floor to the arching ceiling high overhead. Her arms were crossed, face carefully schooled to be completely expressionless. Having known her since childhood, and even dated her for a short time, Mickey knew that expression well. She was upset. But not the kind of upset that would result in a row. No, she was hurt. And he knew exactly why.

Ever since they had left the spaceship that had held portals to eighteenth century France, the tension between the Doctor and Rose had been so thick you could cut it with a knife. Oh, they were both ignoring it, pretending it didn’t exist, but neither of them were fooling him, or each other.

“Rose,” the Doctor said, “come here for a moment.” As she moved to stand next to him, he gestured at the controls in front of her. “Hold this button down while I begin the materialization process.”

With a small nod she silently obeyed.

Mickey wished she’d just yell, slap him, throw things… just something, anything rather than being quiet like this. This wasn’t the Rose Tyler he knew.

Oh, this is bad, he thought. The last time he had seen her at this way was…

The TARDIS gave a sudden lurch and an ominous sounding bell began to toll. Its deep bong bong bong echoed through the TARDIS so loudly that Mickey could feel the reverberations in his bones. The Doctor lunged at the controls, and Mickey saw something on the Doctor’s face he had never seen before: panic.

“What? What is it? What’s goin’ on?” he shouted.

“Somethin’ bad, Mick,” Rose shouted back.

“That’s the Cloister Bell. Only rings in dire circumstances. Looks like we’re gonna have to put off your visit to the Rhomulian cluster a little bit longer,” the Doctor said loudly, trying to be heard over the sound of the bell.

The TARDIS shook violently and jerked to a sudden stop. Rose and the Doctor, who had been hanging onto handholds built into the control panels, were thrown against the console. Mickey hurriedly grabbed onto the edge of the seat, barely preventing himself being flung to the floor.

The Doctor and Rose rushed out the TARDIS door. Mickey followed close behind. He bumped into Rose who had stopped short only a foot outside the doorway. Behind them, the Cloister Bell fell silent.

The TARDIS had landed on the pavement of a deserted city street. Its back was flush against a tall graffiti-covered fence that surrounded a dilapidated building. Across the street was a vacant lot, filled with weeds, abandoned car parts, empty beer cans, and other, less appealing things. Tall concrete buildings less than a block away loomed overhead, dominating the skyline to their right. In the distance, they could hear the sounds of city traffic and of a radio blaring rock music.

“Is this some sorta joke?” Mickey asked.

“We’re on the Estate,” Rose exclaimed in disbelief. “What are we doing here?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor answered. He was walking around in a circle, staring in puzzlement at their surroundings. “And this is no joke. The Cloister Bell doesn’t ring for no reason.”

“Well, it looks pretty peaceful to me,” Mickey said. “No plastic people walking the street, no alien ships overhead. So where’s the big emergency?”

“I don’t know!” the Doctor snapped. He turned and stalked back into the TARDIS. Rose shrugged, and she and Mickey followed him.

Inside, the Doctor was squinting at a display screen on the console. It was covered with the circles and other geometric shapes that Mickey knew was the written form of the Doctor’s own language. Muttering under his breath, the Doctor pulled his glasses out of a pocket and put them on. He shook his head.

“I don’t get it. The TARDIS says that the emergency is here, in this place and time, and what’s more, involves the TARDIS herself.” He moved closer to the screen and his forehead furrowed. “And me,” he said in surprise. He took off his glasses, shoved them back in his pocket and turned to them.

“Well, we can’t leave here until we figure out what’s going on,” he said irritably. “Rose, why don’t you and Mickey look around a little, see if there’s anything going on out there while I examine the TARDIS a bit more.”

Rose stared at him for a moment and then bit her lower lip, a gesture Mickey recognized as meaning she was nervous, but he couldn’t imagine why: they were on the Estate.

Then the penny dropped.

“You’re leavin’ us here, aren’t you?” he accused. “Just like you did with Sarah Jane. You’re tryin’ to trick us into leavin’ the TARDIS, and then you’re just gonna take off.”

The Doctor’s jaw dropped. He gaped at them. “Is that what you think?” He turned to Rose. “Both of you? You think this is just some ploy to abandon you here?” Rose didn’t answer. “But I told you…” His voice trailed off as he stared at her. “I am not leaving you behind. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t,” that part was accompanied by a shake of his finger at both of them, “I wouldn’t be able to, because with the TARDIS in the state she’s in, she wouldn’t take off anyway.”

He fell silent. He searched Rose’s face and looked troubled at what he found there. “Mickey, would you excuse us for a minute, please?”

Mickey looked at Rose for confirmation. She nodded. As he left he caught snatches of their conversation.

“Honestly, Rose, how could you think—”

“Seriously? How could I think anything else after you—”

Evidently he had been wrong, Mickey thought. They were going to row.

With a small smirk of satisfaction, Mickey shut the door behind him to give them some privacy.

~oOo~

When Rose left the TARDIS a few minutes later, Mickey was waiting for her.

“So?” he prompted.

She didn’t answer. Instead she stalked off down the street. Mickey had to jog to catch up with her.

“What happened?” he asked. “What did he say?”

“Don’t want to talk about it,” she told him shortly. She didn’t look at him. “Just need to get out of there for a bit.”

“This isn’t the way to your mum’s,” he said. “And it’s not the way to my flat either. So where are we headed?”

“I… I don’t know,” she said. She came to a stop and turned to him. “I don’t want to face Mum right now, and I don’t want to go back to the TARDIS either.”

“All right,” he said slowly. “I have an idea. He was gonna take us to eat, and he didn’t. Let’s go ourselves then. Leave him here to do… whatever the hell he doin’ in there.”

“Mick…” Rose said. “I’m not really hungry.”

“Well, I am,” he told her. “So we’re goin’.” And with that, he took her arm and pulled her down the street.

Ten minutes later they were sitting at a small table at the back of Mickey’s favorite pub on the Estate, a table they had been very lucky to get. When they had arrived, they had discovered it was Saturday at lunchtime and the place was packed. As was typical, on the telly over the bar there was a game on, but for once Mickey wasn’t trying to keep sight of it. Instead, unlike every time they had gone to the pub while they had been dating, he was entirely focused on Rose.

“Honestly, Rose, I don’t know why you let him treat you like that,” he said.

“He doesn’t treat me any different than anyone else,” she told him.

“And that’s part of the problem. He should,” Mickey said. “Besides, he didn’t treat that fancy French bint that way.”

“He had to save her,” she said. “This is what he does.”

At this Mickey rolled his eyes.

“Seriously, Mick. Those robots weren’t supposed to be there. And I looked her up. She was really important in France’s history, influenced the revolution and stuff. If it wasn’t for her, who knows what would have happened? It’s his job to fix things like that.”

“Was it his job to snog her? And then brag about it? He threw it in your face, Rose. Not to mention the fact that who knows what the two of them got up to while he left us on the ship. He treated you like crap. Shitty boyfriend he turned out to be. Almost as bad as Jimmy.”

Rose gave him a look that said don’t go there. “I told you, Mick, we aren’t like that. We’re just friends. Who he snogs is none of my business.”

��‘We aren’t like that, Mick,’” he said mockingly. “‘We’re just friends, Mick.’”

“We are!” she insisted.

“Yeah, right. Pull the other one while you’re at it. If you’re just friends, I’m the Queen.”

“Nice to meet you, your Majesty.”

They were interrupted by a waiter carrying a heavily laden tray. Big baskets of deep fried cod and chips and tall pints of light gold cider were placed on the table in front of them. Mickey immediately tucked in, eating with gusto. While he shoved huge forkfuls of food in his mouth, Rose picked at the basket in front of her.

“Let’s just say I believe you,” Mickey said around a mouthful of food. “Which I don’t. But even if I did, he still abandoned us on that spaceship.”

“Mickey, he told me straight off, on one of our very first trips, that it was a new morality out there. I had to get used to it or go home.”

He shook his head and stared at her. “So that’s it then? Get used to it or go home? And you’re okay with that?”

“It’s worth it. Getting a chance to see what’s out there… it’s worth it,” she said.

“Rose, he abandoned us on that ship. Not just you. Us. We almost got killed by those robot things while he was off gettin’ drunk.”

“He didn’t know—”

The crowd in front of the telly let out a cheer, but neither of them paid attention.

“Maybe not,” Mickey said, raising his voice loudly enough to be heard. “But that’s not the point. You might be able to live with that, but I can’t. So if I have to get used to it or go home, I guess I should go home.” His eyes widened, as if he was shocked at the words that had come out of his mouth.

She blinked. “You’re… you’re gonna stay here?”

“I, uh, I guess I am,” he said.

Rose bit her lip. She hadn’t initially wanted Mickey to come with, but now that he wasn’t going to travel with them anymore, she realized she didn’t want him to leave. “I… I can’t stay.”

“I know.”

“I’m gonna keep traveling with him as long as he’ll let me. I can’t imagine anything that would make me want to stay here.” She looked up to see him frowning at her. “I’m sorry, Mick. I didn’t mean…”

“No,” he said. “We talked about this before. It’s been over between us for a while. It’s been over since that first day the two of you met, probably. Just one question though. Are the two of you really just friends?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Just friends.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why’?” she asked.

“I mean, it’s obvious how much he cares about you, and I know how you feel about him…” he said. “Wait a minute. Does he know how you feel about him?”

“Yeah. Maybe… I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t do that sort of thing.”

“Oh, yes, he does,” Mickey argued. “I think Reinette proved that.”

She leaned across the table and slugged him in the arm. “‘S not what I meant. He can, he told me he can… don’t ask,” she said, holding up a hand and cutting him off before he could say anything. “He just doesn’t do… relationships. Too tough on him. He’s lost so many people, he told me so, and I don’t think he can bear to lose anyone else. Or maybe it’s that he can’t do relationships. Thing is, he’s alien. He looks human, but he’s not. He doesn’t react the same way to things as we do, doesn’t think the same way we do.”

“What if he was human, Rose?” Mickey asked. “What then?”

She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not gonna happen. It’s not like he can just up and turn himself human. And why would he want to anyway?”

Another loud cheer came from the front of the pub, and this time Mickey strained his neck to try and see the match over Rose’s head.

“Go ahead,” she said indulgently. She jerked her head towards the television. “Might as well get caught up.”

Mickey grinned. “You’re the best, babe,” he said, picking up his basket and cider and carrying it to the bar.

With a sigh, she sprinkled more vinegar on her food and speared a chip with her fork. It was only halfway to her mouth before he was back.

“You gonna eat your fish?” he asked. He didn’t bother waiting for a reply, just grabbed it with his fingers and put it in his basket.

She rolled her eyes. “Not anymore,” she replied.

He grinned and gave her a kiss on the cheek before returning to the bar.

Later, after they had both finished eating and, more importantly, when the match was over, Mickey and Rose wandered back out onto the street.

“So you’re really gonna do this then?” she asked. “You’re really gonna stay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “I mean, it’s exciting an’ all, the aliens, the adventures, the runnin’ for your life, but it just doesn’t do it for me like it does for you.”

“It’s not always like that, Mick,” she told him. “There’s lots and lots of times when we’re just traveling, just going new places, seeing new things. Like that planet he was going to take us to.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Come on with us when we go. You’ll see.”

After a moment, Mickey shook his head. “My flat is still here. I’m gonna go see if I can get my old job back. After all we’ve only been gone, what, a day or two?”

They rounded a corner and stopped in shock when they saw the shop. It looked different somehow, newer almost. The sign in front had received a fresh coat of paint and the plate-glass windows were sparkling. From where they stood, it looked like the repair bays of the garage were full. The tiny car park next to the shop was filled, as was the street in front.

“Wow, I’ve never seen it so busy,” Mickey said in amazement. “For sure I’ll get my job back.”

Rose didn’t mention her suspicions that the changes that had taken place had to have taken more than a day or two to make.

The inside of the garage was as packed as the outside. Cars were indeed in every bay, and the waiting area in the office was packed with people. They made their way to the reception desk where the receptionist was on the telephone.

The receptionist/bookkeeper/office manager was Abhirati Mudali, the wife of the owner. Her name—which could be loosely translated as mother of five hundred children—suited her, as they had five children at home and appeared to have a sixth on the way. And very soon by the look of her.

“Mrs. Mudali,” Mickey said. “Where’s Mr. Mudali?”

“I don’t know,” she replied crossly. “Somewhere in there.” She gestured vaguely with her hand at the interior of the garage.

“Can we go find him?”

She shrugged. “You can try,” she said. As they turned to leave, she called after them. “And if you do manage to find him, tell him we need more help here unless he wants to have this one born in the office rather than in hospital!”

Like the office, the garage itself was also a study in chaos. People were everywhere. As Mickey searched for his former boss, Rose trailed along behind him. It was either that or go back to the TARDIS or go to her mum’s flat, and she really wasn’t in the mood to see either the Doctor or her mum yet. As much as she had protested to Mickey that she wasn’t upset by the business with Madame de Pompadour, it did bother her that the Doctor had been so quick to leave them behind on the spaceship. Not to mention how much it hurt that he had asked Reinette to go on a trip with them. She’d never forget the look on his face when he found out she had died waiting for him. As much as he denied it, she knew he had been crushed.

The business with Reinette following immediately after running into Sarah Jane just drove home the point to her that she was merely one in a long parade of people—women—in his life. And despite his claims she was different, that he’d never leave her behind, the truth was he had left her behind, her and Mickey both, almost immediately after that. That told her that not only was she just one of many, she wasn’t even an important one.

She tamped down the jealousy that was again threatening to overwhelm her. She had always been jealous of the attention he had shown other women, right from the very first, starting with Jabe at the end of the Earth. But her feelings for him weren’t the reason she was staying with him. That part of what she had told Mickey was the truth. Reinette had had it backwards. The Doctor wasn’t worth the monsters. The chance of traveling the stars in the TARDIS was worth whatever she had to put up with with him.

But she still wasn’t ready to face her mother right now. Her mother had a way of knowing what she was feeling by just looking at her, and she didn’t want to risk it all coming out.

All of a sudden she realized that she had lost track of Mickey. She looked around. She recognized a couple of the mechanics she had known from when she had been dating Mickey. There were a couple of others she didn’t know, and then there was the one that had his head buried under the bonnet of a midnight blue car she recognized as a Vauxhall of some type. His dark jeans and heavy work boots looked vaguely familiar, as did the shape of his back as he was bent over the engine, but there was really no way of knowing who he was unless she got a closer look.

Finally she spotted Mickey, deep in conversation with his old boss. She made her way across the room. Since she didn’t want to disturb them, she stopped before she actually joined them, but she still made sure she was within earshot.

“Please?” Mickey was begging. Neither of them seemed to notice her, which suited her just fine.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Mudali said. “You were gone three months—”

“Three months?” Mickey asked in disbelief.

“And I couldn’t wait any longer. I hired someone else, a brilliant mechanic. He’s the reason that we’re so busy. People come all the way from Ealing to have him look at their cars. One even came from Reading. We’re doing so well I’m even thinking of expanding, having him take over here while I open a new shop across town.” Mudali paused thoughtfully. “We might be busy enough to take on another mechanic part time. I’ll let him decide. And you know he’s another Smith, in fact. Maybe you two are related.” Mudali laughed at his own joke. “Hey, Manchester, come here! There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Oi, I’m busy here!” the man shouted back. Even muffled by the rest of the sounds of the garage, as well as his head being halfway in the engine, it was obvious he had a strong Northern accent.

“Who’s in charge, eh?” Mudali snapped. “You come when I tell you to come.”

With an irritated groan the man stood up and turned towards them. Rose’s breath caught and her heart skipped a beat. She walked up to join Mickey, who was gaping at the sight of the mechanic.

“It can’t be,” he said in a low voice. “‘S just someone who looks like him a bit, is all. You can’t really tell under all that hair.”

Rose didn’t answer, still staring in shock at a prominent nose and overly large ears, features that—despite being hidden behind slightly too long hair and an unshaven face—she knew as well as her own. Her heart began to beat again, pounding wildly, almost painfully, in her chest.

“It can’t be him,” she whispered. “It can’t be. I saw him change myself.”

As the man crossed the room to join them, he stumbled over a large spanner that had been left in the middle of the floor.

“Oi!” he shouted to the room at large. “Who’s the stupid ape who left this lying here?”

“Oh my God,” Rose murmured. “It’s him. It’s really him. It’s the Doctor.”