#v:parallel

     Scratchy, industrial-grade carpet aside, Rose Tyler remains cross-legged on the floor with a cat on her lap, the blonde nibbling absently at her thumbnail as she frowns down at her physics homework. It's almost chaotic, really, the mess she's making with her books and files-- she'll clean it up eventually, she promises. It's another minute before she stops, chin tilting upwards to rest the back of her head on the seat of the couch. Yes, it's the second break she's taking in half an hour, but she reckons she needs it. "John." And her voice comes out quieter than she'd have liked, so she tries again-- "John."      The cat chooses that moment to bound off her lap to pad away from her and into the kitchen -blimey, they'd have to figure a name out for it soon-, but she pays it no mind, having more pressing matters to discuss-- " 'm hungry."

"No." She calls out stubbornly still through the half-ajar door, throat sore and voice hoarse. "S'nothin' to be concerned 'bout. Really. Just a--" Painful coughs rack her frame then, each and every one wheezy, raspy, just-a-tad-too-loud-for-her-ears and above all, seemingly never ceasing. Obstinate or not, Rose Tyler's curled up by the end of it, knees pulled up to chest as she rolls over on her bed, pressing her face into a soft pillow with a muffled, exasperated moan. "Jus' a cold." A terribly unpleasant one, if her state was anything to go by-- her immune system had yet to adjust to the similar, yet unidentical aspects of the harmless infection in this parallel universe.

Gonna smush my nose in if y' try tha' some more, s'all. Reckon five times is more than enough, don't you? 

                                               ”Shut up.”The words come out harsher than she means them to, a quiver in her voice or not, but she’s hardly about to turn back and apologise— she can’t; he’d laid himself bare before her, in mind and in soul, and as much as Rose Tyler wants to accept him wholly, she can’t. "Shut up," is echoed, the words now bearing less conviction than they’d held earlier.And here, having turned her back cravenly on the Doctor -John, he was John- earlier, she now makes an effort to turn to meet the gaze she’d been so very keenly avoiding—— she’d been shying away from the intense pull of love and tenderness and adoration and familiarity and affection and devotion and the-hundred-other-synonyms-for-the-word that  he held in his fathomless brown eyes, fearful of the fact that he seemed to know so much more about her than she did him.Them whispering rumors and stories about John Smith hadn’t helped—                                      the others, all black and white and boring whilst                                      John was lovely and vibrant and red and blue and                                      warm brown and stood out in the sea of grey;  Rose                                      Tyler’s still not quite sure why she’d been so ready to                                      believe them when they’d come to her.Perhaps it was because he was simply too good to be true. “You’re.. you’re not right in the head, John. You’re not a doctor, an’ I’m not that Rose y’want me to be. We’re different— I’m different, an’ I’m not gonna be some ghost of a girl y’once knew.”"You’re mad, an’ I’m sick, and this love y’think y’have for me isn’t properly real— you’re thinkin’ of someone else, an’ I’m just.. I was jus’ desperate for someone to pay attention to me. We’re not good for one another.”

"—I’ll be on my way." 

It's nearing noon, and she's still vibrant with energy-- and why shouldn't she be? She'd woken up in her bed slightly disappointed to find John no longer by her side, to be sure, but the lone luminescent star stuck to her ceiling (and she's still working on fathoming just how he'd managed to attach it to her ceiling without rousing her from her slumber, mind-- she suspects the office chair now closer to her bed than it'd been the night before had played a part) that still glowed faintly as the dawn broke had warmed her heart considerably, tugging her lips upwards into a smile that had yet to fade. --The group of students lurking at the end of the hallway threatens to destroy the happy haze she'd been in, however: they straighten themselves up as she approaches, obnoxious smirks on their faces. And, well, she only tightens her grip on the straps of her backpack, hoping they'd simply let her pass this time, but they don't.  It's nothing she hasn't heard from this lot before, and for a while, she only stands there and takes it as they corner her and taunt and jab and mock, but then they bring John into the mix ( apparently, leaving in the middle of class with him yesterday had been a wrong move in their eyes), and Rose starts to retaliate, awash with a sudden sense of fury-- it was all well and fine if they mocked her for not getting good grades (no matter how hard she tried) or thinking differently, because she'd been taught growing up that words were simply words, and they only bothered her a lot slightly; it wasn't fair, however, to go on about John.  Except there are more of them and only one of her, and eventually, they win. At one point, she finds herself at a loss of words to say, and they hone in on that, seeming to crowd in on her as their taunts increase in ferocity, rendering her all the more speechless and humiliated. Hazel irises flick about the hallway, hoping against hope to see a familiar face, but when there's none to be found, she finally yields, pushing her way past the gang of goading students when words fail her and her eyes start to sting with tears instead. Instead of defending herself, Rose Tyler runs, and as she notices John Smith standing before her, she pushes past him too, unwilling to let even him see her in her state right now.  When it came down to it, there were no true princes and princesses, and life wasn't a fairy tale-- she'd been fooled into ever believing otherwise. 

                                                                          Thud.                                                             Thud.                                            Thud.             Right. With an exhausted sigh, she slides off the bed, blinking rapidly as her fingers flip the light switch on, illuminating the previously pitch black room.  Expelling a yawn from her lips, Rose rubs the sleep out of her eyes as she ambles over to the window, investigating on the cause of the commotion. There, under the street lamp-- she squints down at the figure, prepared to burst into outrage if it were some hooligan or drunk teenager trying to cause trouble in the middle of the night-- "--John?" It was! "Blimey, s'two in the morning. Not sleepwalking or somethin', are ya?"

The almost-too-enthusiastic tone of voice interrupting the lecture is what draws Rose to glance up from her doodle of Big Ben, gaze honing in on John-who-sat-two-rows-behind-and-one-seat-to-the-left-of-her; John, who had a tendency to speak when not spoken to; John, who always seemed to know all the answers to all the topics in the syllabus. ...Alright, so maybe Rose wasn't like the rest of her classmates, who had the capability to pay rapt attention every hour of the day, evident in her careless doodling of images she'd recalled from her dreams, but was it truly her fault? Anyway. Hues of hazel return to the boy, expression perking up fractionally as he makes his opposing stand on the topic at hand, something that generally amused her. Only this time... this time, the blonde finds herself raising her hand before the teacher has the time to roll her eyes and instruct John to keep quiet and pay attention, chipping in with a "Think he's right.". And now thirty sets of eyes are honing in on her, but she only hesitates briefly, grazing her teeth against her bottom lip before continuing. "--Think John has a point."