[DISCONTINUED] Hazel Eyes - DW Fanfic

Chapter One - A Different Rose

Rose stuffed the last couple shirts into her large trunk and looked around the room. She’d already stripped the bed of its bedding and emptied most of the closet. The room was sparse at best and it showed off the old wooden floorboards that were full of scratches and dents. No one used wood to build houses anymore. Or anything really. The light from the big window, open in hopes of an inexistent breeze, caught the bits of dust lazily floating through the air. The warm, muggy Louisiana summer was stifling. She’d be glad to breathe in the crisp Maine air soon.

She stood up with a deep sigh. Even with fall on its way her shirt clung to her back with sweat. She closed the window before dragging her trunk out through the house and out the door to her little car, already packed with boxes.

It’s funny how things change. Rose watched tee-shirts become retro, gas powered cars become ghastly and computers become museum pieces. Her car was a small boxy thing powered by solar (of course solar panels didn’t look the same anymore, they were cleverly disguised into the smooth white roof) but inside it was surprisingly roomy with two rows of seating and a back area where she had loaded in her trunk. Honestly, it was fairly old. No one actually drove their cars anymore, it was all on auto. Not Rose though, she liked how it felt to be in charge. Most people took the pods nowadays anyway. Much quicker, but Rose had time.

She walked back into the house to take a last look around and lock everything up. It was a really old house. Pretty much abandoned when Rose had bought it, the thing was on the verge of falling down. She had fixed it up, keeping some things from the original house including most of the floorboards and old wooden furniture no one had bothered getting rid of. It was a one-story ranch house with the open concept you just never saw anymore. In the back was her bedroom, the spare bedroom and the bathroom with her office set up in the basement.

Everything looked sorted. She had left the window in the spare bedroom open with only a tarp over it, the neighborhood kids always snuck into this house when she was away. It was their little hideout and frankly, she didn’t see a reason to stop them. Of course they didn’t know she knew.

Rose took a peek into the basement to make sure everything was in order. Her eyes taking in the old swivel chair and her desk where she had set up 24th century glass computer monitors (naturally with the computers built in). She had several other work tables set up covered in wires and bits of projects. Her most important ones she had packed up to bring with her, but a good number of lesser ones she was just leaving here. 

She frowned when she caught sight of the green purse sitting on the desk. It could be dangerous to take it, but if one of the neighborhood kids broke into her basement it would be a proper uproar. She grabbed it quickly.

And with that she swept out of the front door and, with a last backward glance, down the steps from the front porch. Rose started up the car and pulled out of the driveway. She set up the directions into the smart glass of her car’s windshield.

She turned up the radio, one of the things that managed to still be around, and pulled out of the driveway, sighing. It would take a few days to ride up the coast to Maine. Although she had to compliment the century’s traffic management. With their improvements to their, now entirely green, cars accidents were rare and average traveling speeds were faster. And yet, more than two hundred and fifty years into living in America, it still seemed like they drove on the wrong side of the street.
A lot had changed.

Rose had watched them make the first friendly contact with aliens. She and him it had been back then. She had watched the world rumble with the third world war. The 21st century had been remembered as the Last Golden Age. She had watched the world struggle to support its 10 million residents with food and water, the Energy Wars. And then she’d watched them move into the stars. Of course she had opted to stay on Earth, no space hops to the moon for her. She’d had enough of space.

Right now she was smack dab in the Green Age. An age of innovation and exploration. It was the futuristic world humans had always dreamed of. Shinning white skyscrapers and fast bullet trains. All running completely green. Earth had prevailed through hunger and drought and storms, Rose along with it.

Not the same Rose though, she had changed.

She wasn’t the shop girl the Doctor had plucked out of the 21st century anymore. Three hundred years did things to people. She didn’t laugh as easily. Friends were something long forgotten. She’d been depressed and she’d been happy. Her moods had become somewhat erratic and unpredictable.

And then there were the things that leaked into her head. Hacking, programming, books yet to be written and history yet to be enacted. Even things like how to cook and how to shoot a gun. The stories too. The ones about Gallifrey that never let her forget what she had seen, what she had been a part of and what she would rather forget.

Those were the things that filled Rose’s mind as she turned onto the highway.

Author's Note: Hey guys, hopefully someone will actually read this. I know I lost a lot of readers taking that break so if you're reading this big thank you to you. Not many people read the last little note I left, though that wasn't a real chapter so I guess that's understood. Hopefully this will fare better. In other news I think I'm going to continue to add the author's note at the bottom of the chapters, i just think it interrupts less. So, once again, thanks for reading and I love you guys - Tacoma