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The Professor is still arguing with the Station Master up in the plastiglass bubble that looks over the docking bay. Ace can only see the Professor's hat, but it's moving with short, angry gestures: the negotiations are going badly. She crosses her legs and gets comfortable on top of the crate. She's not leaving their cargo unattended, not in this dive of a space station. Time for some people-watching. She sees a tribe of Ogrons hooting and hanging off a pylon. Family of Slitheen, people to keep an eye on. Tall orange-skinned reptilian blokes with pointy heads: Ace doesn't recognise the species and makes a note to ask the Professor if they're friend or foe. Or both – sometimes it's like that. One human, a blonde woman, haggling for a docking fee with more front than confidence.
"Hang in there!" Ace mutters under her breath, though the woman can't hear her. "Look at his antennae twirl; you've got him on the run!"
The woman 's jaw is set as she argues the Haxalian docking clerk into a corner. Eventually he puts his clawed hands up and accepts her price. She grins, hands on her hips, clearly pleased with herself.
She's got TARDIS written all over her, thinks Ace. She's getting good at picking the ones who have travelled with the Doctor by now – he's the Doctor when he's not the Professor, which makes it a lot less confusing. For both of them, really.
The woman sees her, and her face lights up with recognition, which could mean that they've met in another timeline, or just that Ace looks like someone she knows. She hands her credit stick to the Haxalian and jogs over to where Ace is sitting on her pile of crates.
"You human? Haven't seen any humans around here." Her accent is pure London, and Ace grins.
"Yeah, human." Ace sticks out her hand. "Ace. Perivale."
The woman laughs. "Rose. Peckham. Isn't it the way? You go halfway around the universe, and you meet your neighbours at the airport."
Ace is about to ask her if she wants a coffee – or what passes for coffee in this port, which is actually a kind of caffeinated bean paste – but a man in a leather jacket give a sharp whistle from the gangway of a trading hulk.
"Oi, Rose!" he shouts, and beckons her over. He gives Ace a furious glare, and she holds her hands up to say she meant no harm. This regeneration looks like trouble: she's never seen one so tense, whose every gesture shouts "Leave me alone!"
What the hell happened to you, mate? she thinks. The Doctor doesn't answer, he simply scowls and shoves his hands deep in his pockets.
Rose smiles like someone gave her the whole planet with a bow tied on. "Sorry, got to go!"
"S'all right," says Ace. "Go on, you've got your docking permit."
The Doctor gives Ace one last narrow-eyed look, then scoops an arm around Rose's shoulder and ushers her onto the gang way.
Rose looks back, waves to Ace. "I'll see you later!"
Ace nods, and wonders, and wishes she could ask the Professor about it, but not even he will bend that rule.
---
It's much later when Ace sees Rose again, months or years, it's hard to tell. It happens one night when she's tinkering with the TARDIS console. The Professor is in the library, pretending he hasn't seen her unspooling the photon accelerator coils across the floor. She's got to learn how this all works somehow, and the best way to learn about something, she's found, is to take it to pieces.
The room judders and lights up iridescent blue. Ace drops the coil she's working on and backs up to the wall in shock. This can't be something she's done. Then Rose is there, in and above the rotor at the same time, streaming ribbons of light from her eyes, her fingertips, her skin. She dwarfs the console, makes the whole room tiny. She's terrible and beautiful and it makes Ace ache inside her chest. Whatever choice Rose has made, it is one that will have consequences.
She swallows, mouth dry. "You all right, Rose?" It seems ridiculously mundane to ask that, but sometimes the mundane can ground a person, even if Rose is a galaxy away from being grounded.
"I am all possibilities," says Rose, and it's not her voice. She staggers, and the room lurches. The light dims, and her eyes are normal for a moment. "Ace? I lost him. Can't find him. Have to..."
She's in the Time Vortex. Ace doesn't know how, and for once in her life really doesn't want to know why. "You're too far back, Rose. You've got to go forward. Your Doctor, he's in the future." It was the only thing she could get out of the Professor that day in the space port, that Ace had seen a future regeneration.
Rose's eyes glow, and the chronal energy streams from her body again. She reaches up and snags the Time Vortex in her fist as easily as Ace would a kite string. "Forward. I am all times. All possibilities and none." When she vanishes, the room is left singing.
"Ace!" The Professor comes roaring into the console room with his hat in one hand and the umbrella pointed like a rapier. The sound is still fading, and he cocks his head to listen. "I've heard that tune before." He pokes an accelerator coil with one toe. "Ace," his voice takes on a warning note. "What did you do?"
Ace curls her fingers under the edge of the console and braces for impact. Whatever Rose is doing involves the Time Vortex, and Time Vortex-y things tend to go bang. "Not me this time, Professor, but I reckon you'd better hang on. There's something big about to happen."