#out to do alsjkfjgksjd

[quietwingsinthesky]

does/did Even ever get to meet Rose????

yes, actually! Even’s original stay on the TARDIS with lasts from just a little bit after Voyage of the Damned (with one-on-one companion time with the doctor until they pick up donna) to Journey’s End, and that’s when they meet Rose. They don’t really get to bond with her until the AU elements I’m throwing in kick in at the end of that episode, that Tentoo chooses not to leave Donna alone in her amnesia and is just time lord enough to fobwatch himself to join her (and since he’s inserted as a part of her life as her friend, john smith, he doesn’t end up triggering her memories.) rose, given the choice between the other dimension alone again or a version of the doctor who is a stranger who she loves, chooses tentoo and donna. and even goes with them. because that’s what they think the doctor would want them to do, what he’s always been trying to teach them to do, to be willing to give up what makes them happy to take care of people they love.

(you know, i don’t think he thought even would leave. he lets them go. he has to. but i don’t think he considered it could happen. and i think that’s why he never visits them in the months between.)

between journey’s end and end of time, even lives with rose and tentoo.

(which. i think i implied it in that one fic but if not i’ll outright say that it’s because even. can’t get a job. and subsequently, can’t even begin to save to get their own place, whatever fake identity papers they were supplied by UNIT or other. because Spaceship Origin Reasons™️. and on top of that, that they’re also just. autistic. and so much worse at coping with this society they’ve been tossed into than they were with living on the tardis, where for a good bit the only other person they were around most of the time was also neurodivergent and accommodated them in ways they did not notice until those things disappeared.)

anyway. point is that even lives with them. the not-doctor and the girl they know all the doctor’s stories about. and they are so human. they are real in ways that they have never been before, and this does nothing to lessen even’s crush on rose or soften their loyal affection to tentoo that extends from their friendship with the doctor. the fact that even and rose have to share this secret from tentoo and donna only ties them closer. (in. ways that are probably less than healthy. like they would have been more. Normal. about it. but if even had stayed with rose instead of ended up with the master in that whole mess, that could have been the place their codependent tendencies latched onto. especially if they’d gone on with rose to join torchwood and been stuck in this AU’s version of Children of Earth with her.)

Rose teaches Even to bleach their hair proper, though they liked the pinkish-red they had already and plan to go back to that when the blonde she helps them achieve grows out again. (they. don’t get that chance.) Even is the person Rose can most easily reach out to to talk about the Doctor, with every emotion she’s been left with, anger at having come all this way just to lose him again, guilt at that anger when Tentoo is here and she loves him but he’s not the doctor except in all the ways he is and it hurts, plans for how when he visits (they never say if) that they’ll finagle a trip or two out of him on the TARDIS and confront him for taking so long to show up. Rose doesn’t know what to do when Even has meltdowns. Even doesn’t know how to comfort her when she cries about the fact that she chose this and will probably never see her mother or her other universe dad again or her half(?)-brother grow up. They watch bad movies together and try to plan for a future they didn’t expect would look like this.

And then Even has the bright idea to find a way to fix Donna’s amnesia without killing her. Which goes nowhere until they decide, hey, if one time lord couldn’t fix it, you know what’s a great idea? get involved somehow in getting the other one. the dead-but-not-anymore one.

(even voice) im only not telling rose about this because i want it to be a surprise when it definitely goes well and NOT because i know im doing something wrong that would upset her and she’d make me stop.

which. obviously. ends up with even getting scooped up into gallifrey with the master. and wilf having to tell rose what happened, all of it, much later. and her knowing that the entire time she, tentoo, and donna hang up missing posters for even that will never go anywhere. wondering if this is how mickey felt when he knew she wasn’t dead but that she might never come back, lost in time and space with the doctor and he couldn’t tell a soul. she hangs up more missing posters. even doesn’t come home.

so, yeah, they met.