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It’s three hours after they discover the break in when Wilf, her head of security, sucks air in between his teeth and lets out an admiring grunt. He’s on the phone, and mutters, “Oh, that’s brilliant, that is” before thanking Mickey for his time and hanging up.
‘Worked it out, then?’ Rose asks him, fingers tight around her tea mug. ‘Knew you would.’
‘Had more faith in me than I did, love.’ He gives her a smile anyway and then turns back to the bank of security monitors. His gnarled finger taps against the screen, directing her eyes to a faint glimmer of static, barely noticeable, on the frozen tape. ‘That there is our thief’s handiwork. Overrode our signal and replaced it with his own – from last week’s recording of the same corridor. Here,’ Wilf gestures towards the next monitor in the row, ‘keep your eye on the vase of flowers.’
He presses “play”, and the tape resumes; Rose watches as the elegant display of lilies flicker, and then suddenly change position – no, it’s a different bouquet entirely, not all the buds in bloom, the leaves slightly fuller in the front than before. The variances of shape and height are only noticeable because she was looking right there – the casual eye could blink and miss it, and it had.
‘Clever,’ she allows, grudgingly. ‘But I thought this was closed-circuit. Shouldn’t it be…hacker-proof or something?’
Wilf lifts his eyes skyward, which isn’t an eye roll, not from someone so deferential. It’s self-deprecating, really, and his words reinforce it. ‘Wrong person to ask, I’m afraid. Had to have Mickey explain it three times before it stuck, and even now I’m not sure how it was done. He said he was going to sweep the area an’ see if any transmitting devices show up, but he didn’t sound optimistic.’
Rose makes a non-committal sound and sips her rapidly cooling tea.
-.-.-
The second time the thief breaks into the mansion the cameras are fine, untouched. He’s tall, Rose discovers, watching the playback and seeing glimpses of him in the edges of the frames. He wears a dark jumper and a hat, and walks like the ground is made of glass. He locks the doors behind him, conscientious as he steals her mother’s fifth-favourite necklace.
The third time, it’s not enough – it’s more than – and Rose grits her teeth. She’s had a parade of police officers through her house, adding nothing to the investigation other than muddy footprints on her carpets. They’ve wrung their hands and gulped her coffee, and patted her on the shoulder, platitudes falling from their mouths. Not to worry, sweetheart, they’ve told her, distracted by another call, we’ll find him.
She has friends, of course, in high places: shiny politicians and well-dressed CEOs. But it’s her friends in low places that she seeks out, the telephone cradled between her ear and shoulder as she jots down notes on a pad of paper. The information relayed to her fits on one page, the words uncramped between the printed lines.
The best she’s given is an alias. “The Doctor”, Jack tells her, and it’s almost fond, the way he says it with his head shaking and his smile wry. It’s almost, bitter, too, how heavy the name comes out, something drawn from him, unwillingly, from where he’d kept it hidden. Rose pecks him on the cheek and leaves his office quickly.
-.-.-
Rose Tyler runs.
It’s always the same. The ritual of gym shorts and white ear buds. The slow build as she stretches muscles forced into desk chairs and high heels. She feels her lungs unfolding, letting her breathe deeper, clearer, cleaner, the breaths she takes when running through the park so different to the sips of air she subsists on when working in closed spaces. There’s sweat, hot then cool and entirely earned, and it trickles down the side of her face, down the back of her neck; it seeps into the front of her shirt and makes cotton stick to skin.
This is where Adam Mitchell finds her, retying the laces of her trainer, her foot propped up on a park bench.
‘Miss Tyler?’ He asks, voice bleeding through the music pounding in her ears. ‘Rose Tyler?’
She pops out the ear buds and straightens up as she sees him. The back of her hand wipes across her forehead, flattening down wisps of her hair in the process. ‘Um, do I know you?’
‘No. I’m a friend of a friend.’ He clears his throat and he looks nervous, not able to meet her eyes. ‘… of a friend of yours, I suppose. I’m Adam. Adam Mitchell.’ He extends his right hand to her – the left is clutching at a folder, creating creases in the cardboard – and Rose shakes it, all firm grip and at least three shakes, just like her father taught her. ‘I heard you were looking for information.’
She gives him a once over, flicking her gaze from his head to his toes. He’s well-kept, but lazy: he’s got a department-store button down shirt that’s got wrinkles on the sleeves, and a face that’s clean shaven apart from where he got sloppy with the razor.
He’s not dangerous though, not in a way that makes her heart race or her muscles tense, so she glances at her watch and decides she can spare the time. ‘Might be. What’ve you got?’
‘It’s not free,’ Adam tells her, sharp enough for her to realise a few things. He’s not used to this, the negotiation part, the give and take and careful word play; the bluffing and withdrawing and chipping away at prices that Rose deals with every day. He’s also anxious, and she thinks this must be daring for him – outside his comfort zone, an opportunity he’s seized in order to make some quick cash.
‘Didn’t think it was.’ Rose mutters, but that’s her act, now.
She’s happy to – and does – low-ball him on the price, though he doesn’t realise it, clearly: he preens a bit and smirks at her, and gladly hands over the material. Her father always said the sign of a good deal was both parties walking away, thinking they’d got the better end of it, but there’s no beating the nice, warm glow in Rose’s stomach when she knows she has.
The feeling burns brighter and hotter when she flips open the folder and sees the dog-eared pages and crooked photocopies stuffed inside. It’s him. It’s The Doctor.
-.-.-
The following Sunday, Rose Tyler slides into the seat opposite him and steals a triangle of toast.
‘You’re older than I expected.’ Her thumb brushes away crumbs from the corner of her mouth. ‘Thought you’d be, ooh, I don’t know. Thirty. Maybe forty. How old are you, anyway?’
He looks up from his newspaper. It rustles, crinkles where the edge of the table rests against it; makes his fingers dark with smudged ink, and Rose finds herself liking that carelessness, just a bit: he’s been so fastidious in everything else, never leaving so much as a fingerprint, but the sides of his tea cup are littered with them, whirls and loops outlined inTimes black.
‘Oh, I think you know that already, Miss Tyler,’ he replies, and there’s something about his voice, about how it rumbles up and flows out, rolling over his lips and tongue that has Rose swallowing nervously by the time he says her name. ‘Shouldn’t think there’s very much you haven’t discovered at this point.’
‘Your name,’ she blurts out, feeling her cheeks go red, and she’s not sure which emotion is causing it. She rather suspects it’s not embarrassment. ‘I don’t know your name.’
He stands, the chair screeching against floorboards, and puts down a pair of notes to pay for his breakfast; they are folded over neatly, and he tucks them under the rim of his plate. ‘Ah yes. Quite the mystery, if I do say so myself.’ The Doctor smiles tightly. ‘All in good time. Good morning, Miss Tyler.’
Rose watches him leave the café, following the clean movements of his walk, the careful and efficient use of space. The coffee she ordered arrives and she dissolves sugar into the milky froth, wondering if she cocked it up as badly as she suspects she has.
He steals her late father’s pocket watch later that evening from where she keeps – kept – it safe, locked tightly in her bedside drawer.
-.-.-
‘Would you like the Arts section?’ He asks her the next day, looking at her over his newspaper. His finger separates the pages, ready to hand her the supplement. ‘I’m afraid it was muesli for me this morning, so I’ve no toast for you.’
Rose is trembling from suppressed rage, but she doesn’t want to show it. She grips the corner of the table, feels her knuckles going white and ignores it; she takes a deep breath, puts on a smile, and exhales. ‘I don’t want the Arts section, Doctor. I want my father’s watch back.’
He sighs and presses his lips together. Rose wonders if he’s debating how to answer her, but he can’t, not with how swiftly he puts aside the Times and retrieves the familiar watch from the inside of his jacket.
It gleams in the morning sun, obviously polished sometime between when he stole it out from under her and right now as he gives it back, and when Rose reaches out to take it from him, it’s warm from being nestled against his body. Her fingers brush his palm – his skin is soft, firm, not like paper or leather, like she expected – and his mouth quirks at the contact, a twitch that’s a smile, given the context.
Suddenly, his face makes sense. Rose’s vision seems to flicker, and his features come into focus; she can see him now. His eyes aren’t pale, they are simply bright, lit with amusement, and, as they dart across her own face, something close to apprehension. There’s vulnerability, too, in how large they are, something she hadn’t noticed before. The severe lines of his cheekbones give him a bitter look, but now she can see how it’s truly only a disguise: it hides a playfulness of mouth and eyebrows, a certain boyish charm he’s preserved, despite his age.
Rose starts, realising she’s been staring, and she finally takes the watch from his hand.
‘Thank you,’ she mutters, running her fingers over the battered case, tracing around the “P. Tyler” engraved in the metal. ‘I don’t even know why you took it. It’s not worth anything, and it barely keeps the right time. Have to wind it every day.’
The Doctor stirs his tea, pops the spoon in his mouth and then puts it back on the napkin, making sure the handle lines up with the edge of the paper. ‘Surely you know, by now, that it’s not about… financial reward.’ He sniffs, offended.
‘Yeah, because breaking into mansions and stealing art and jewellery is never about the money.’ Rose rolls her eyes. ‘Poor man’s game, that.’ Without her consent, her tongue slips under her teeth, as cheeky as she ever is, and it’s dangerous, that she’s slipping, that she’s softening towards this man who knows how to sneak into her bedroom without waking her up.
He huffs a laugh – dry, but not reserved – and clasps his hands in front of his face, elbows on the table. ‘Oh, it’s practically for paupers,’ the Doctor agrees, eyebrows lifting, eyes widening to show his earnestness. He taps his lips with his knuckles, then continues: ‘I like a challenge, Miss Tyler. I like a puzzle. I like unravelling it. Finding the solution.’ Leaning close, he drops his voice until it’s too intimate by half. ‘And I think you do, too.’
Somewhere in the distance a waiter drops a jug of water; the loud smash of glass hitting the floor makes her jump, returns her to her senses forcefully: Rose rears back, her spine pressing against the back of her chair. Her hand clutches around her father’s watch.
‘You don’t know anything about me.’ She whispers harshly, and pushes away from the table.
As she walks towards the door, the Doctor calls after her.
‘You came looking for me, Rose. Twice. It tells me all I need to know.’
She lets the door slam closed on her way out.
-.-.-
‘You have a long, and not-so-illustrious, history, Doctor,’ Rose tells him the next morning. She’s calm and collected, and has built an officious barrier around herself: clothes and hair and make up picked to make her appear professional, impenetrable, and to protect her from the way he looks at her, like there’s nothing stopping him from plucking the thoughts straight from her head.
‘Must you say my name like that?’ he complains, handing her a plate of eggs on toast. She accepts and cracks pepper on the perfectly cooked yolks. ‘You make it sound like a disease.’
‘Well, it’s hardly a proper name, is it?’ She asks with just a hint of exasperation, as if they’ve had this argument a hundred times before.
Rose opens the manila folder she brought with her to breakfast. It’s not Adam’s rumpled thing, but made of creamy cardboard, and as it parts it reveals a thick wad of photographs and old newspaper clippings. Her hands move rapidly, spreading them out across their table, flipping and rotating until they all face up and he can read them. His sharp eyes scan the pages, and then he shrugs, telling her he’s unimpressed with her research.
She’s not deterred – she taps one faded article with her finger, her nail stark and red against the grey paper. ‘You nearly got caught stealing from The British Museum back in the ‘80’s.’
‘Nearly being the keyword, there. Didn’t. Had a limp for a few weeks, but that’s a fair price for falling through a second floor window. And for a delightful bit of 18th century silverware – I’ve yet to see anything come close to matching it.’
Rose ducks her head to hide her smile; she cuts her toast with precise movements, putting far too much attention into the task so she doesn’t have to look at him. ‘You’re impossible.’
‘I know. I think you like it.’ The Doctor drawls this, draws it out as he takes a sip of tea, the words sliding under her skin, just like he’s managed to do himself. Before she can shake her head, he puts up a patient hand, stopping her. ‘Oh, you hate that I’ve broken into your house, and that I’ve stolen your possessions – I’ve no doubt of that – but that’s not all there is here, is it?’
Her breath is not moving from her throat, so she swallows, hard, pushing the air away through force. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He smiles, not a wide and toothy grin, but it might as well be, with how subtle his expressions are. ‘Rose Tyler,’ the Doctor shifts back in his seat and seems to change his approach. ‘You’re multi-faceted. Mutli-talented. I like that.’
‘What d’you mean?’
The Doctor takes another sip, swishes it around his mouth. All that’s left is dregs, clumpy leaves sitting in a muddy pool at the bottom of the cup, and he places it back back on the table, finished. ‘It’s not hard to figure out. A clever girl like you.’
Appraising eyes look over her, from the top of her hair to where the table meets her blouse, just below her breast. A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction, Rose thinks, and in the same moment sees that his guard is down. Enough, at least, for her to note the exact weight of the tiredness he carries. The loneliness, as well. A strange sort of compassion blooms in her chest, warm and overwhelming, lighting up her ribcage and burning her throat.
‘You’re too clever,’ he continues, suddenly, as if realising he’s given away all his secrets. His voice is rough, and there’s not enough tea to smooth it. ‘Too charming. Too beautiful. Too bold. You’re too…’ For the first time he appears lost for words. ‘Too much, and it must kill you, this life, and how small it is.’
He leaves then, as flustered as she’s ever seen him – his hip bumps the table on the way out, and Rose spends the next five minutes mopping at her notes. She spends the next few hours, though, thinking about what he’d said.
-.-.-
That night, there’s no finesse to the break in. No carefully picked locks, no high-tech tampering: just a smashed window and alarms blaring and the floodlights flashing, bleaching out all colour from the mansion grounds. Rose follows the path of destruction – the crushed glass and knocked-over end tables – through her home.
She finds him in the library. He looks collected enough, reclining against the door like that. Unconcerned and unfazed by the fact there are security guards running up and down the corridor outside the room trying to find a way inside.
‘I have to warn you,’ he begins, stepping towards her, ‘there is a lot of running in this business. Not always of the literal sort, of course, but enough to be worth mentioning.’
Rose laughs, and it makes him grin. The pounding footsteps stop just beyond the door, and she can hear quiet, muttered discussions bleeding through the walls. ‘You’ve got to be joking…’
Another step. ‘I’m not. Thief’s honour.’
‘I heard there wasn’t any with you lot.’ Her eyebrows lift in challenge, and oh, this really isabsurd. ‘What’s the pay like?’
‘Oh,’ he shakes his head in disappointment, ‘it’s shit. Completely rubbish.’
They both laugh this time. The excitement bubbles up and over, and she can’t help it, can’t even fathom how it’s there because she’s got a home and a career and a whole life already, and this ridiculous, strange man who has broken into her house is coaxing her to chuck it all in.
‘It’s dangerous. Never safe.’ The Doctor is close enough to touch her, and he does, his hands resting on her shoulders, then, a beat later, moving to cup her face. ‘But you’ll get to be brilliant, Rose. Completely, utterly, wonderfully brilliant.’
By the time the door cracks and splinters, burst apart by the security team, they are both long gone: there’s an open window and two sets of muddy footprints that disappear as soon as earth meets gravel.