Title: Annus Mirabilis
Author: kbk
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Well, the BBC is publicly-funded...
Notes: Written for the Nine ficathon - master list yon. At the request of Hathor who wanted: Doctor/Rose tension (if not Real Romance), a vague explanation of the TARDIS, travelling into the past. This is dialogue-heavy and rushed and. A bit meh, I'm afraid. And I just got obsessed with this idea and. Yeah.

"Going to run an errand in 1905. Dress up a bit if you want, Rose, but, um, a little less cleavage than last time? I mean, I don't mind, but..."

"Oi! Watch it, you." Rose grinned back at the Doctor before she flounced off to the wardrobe. The door opened to a different section this time, one that held outfits apparently designed to cover as much skin as possible, along with some rather alarming corsetry. Rose sighed.

Forty minutes later, the Doctor was pacing impatiently. Bloody human, he thought, bloody woman can't get anything done quickly. He conveniently forgot his own procrastinatory tendencies. And the fact that it didn't really matter when they arrived, and he could control said time of arrival since he was in a time machine, and he was the one that told Rose to change in the first place, and... He shrugged into his leather jacket for the fifth time and set out for the wardrobe room in a determined fashion.

Of course, Rose met him just outside the door. "This looks awful on me," she whined.

"Yeah, it does," the Doctor agreed, then realised what an utterly stupid thing that was to say. "Uh. Looks awful on everyone, I mean. Really. At least you're pretty. Sorta. I mean... can we go now?"

Rose glared at him for a couple of seconds just on principle, but gave in when he started twitching. "Yeah, let's go. I still think you should dress up too, though."

The Doctor, who was very fond of his leather jacket, just shook his head.

The TARDIS doors opened onto a narrow alleyway between stone buildings - it didn't do to be too conspicuous, though the police box would stand out somewhat. The Doctor was of the opinion that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with the chameleon circuit any more - he'd certainly fixed it enough times - it was just her own neurosis that kept her looking like that. Still, it made locking the door easy enough.

"Berne, Switzerland," he said to Rose as she peered about curiously. "The Old Town. It stays pretty much the same for a few hundred years - nice place."

"Why we here now, then?" She took his arm and they set off down the alley.

"Going to register a patent." He grinned widely at her, and she coudn't help smiling back.

Rose did have to keep him from getting over-excited, though. Bad things happened when the Doctor got too excited. So she sounded properly doubtful when she asked, "We are?"

"We are!" They reached a long street with shopping arcades down each side, and wound up walking down the cobbled centre. Rose was happy to see that most of the women looked even worse than she did.

"Right. What for?" Sometimes, Rose thought, the Doctor took far too long to answer a simple question. And he never explained what he was up to. She had to back him into a corner every time. It was kind of fun.

"I want to meet somebody. This is a damn good year for him, professionally." The Doctor skipped a little, boyishly excited.

Rose laughed a little. "Um. I meant, what's the patent for?"

"Oh. Should have thought of that." The Doctor's face fell, and stopped dead in the middle of the street, pulling Rose to a halt as well.

"You could show him the sonic screwdriver," she offered.

"Screwing with technological development, I don't bloody think so." The frown on his face was darker than it usually got.

"All right, it was only a suggestion! Come on, let's walk while you think about it."

They dawdled down the street for a little while, and Rose gazed around, taking in the sights. It was weird, really - not as alien as some places she'd been, but still very different. The clothes, the buildings, even the air smelled different - no cars, she realised, no petrol fumes.

"So, this guy works in the patent office?" she asked when they reached the end of the street.

"Yeah. It's just a job, though. Damn, I can't think of anything that'll work." The Doctor shook his head despondently, and lead the way down a smaller street. "Still, I don't really need to. Just want to say hello. And he doesn't exactly work on the front desk, it'd be easier just to meet him on his way out."

"So what does he do?"

"This year? He only writes three Nobel-worthy papers and another one that becomes iconic." The Doctor glanced at Rose, good humour apparently restored. "You remember how I was trying to explain how we travel?"

Rose remembered, all right. He'd started out with a whole pile of jargon, kept talking until she physically stopped him, and then talked like she was a three-year-old. Though she didn't really understand what he was trying to say then, either. "The, uh, n-dimensions, going out of regular space and time and nipping round the back?"

"Exactly. We have to do that because it violates relativity." He looked at Rose expectantly. Rose looked blank. "Relativity! Berne! Patent office! Don't tell me you still don't know, he's only bloody famous, only revolutionises humanity's entire understanding of the universe, only..."

"All right! I'm stupid, I get it, who?"

"What's the first physics equation you think of?"

Rose was really getting sick of the way he did that. Always with the random questions. "I dunno, probably... E equals m c squared, I guess."

"That's the fourth paper." He nodded at her importantly.

"OK. So, um. The guy with the hair, right? Einstein."

The Doctor rolled his eyes at her in disbelief. "You do not deserve to meet the man."

"If you're this excited about it, why haven't you done it before?"

"Oh, I have. Just not right now."

It was Rose's turn to roll her eyes. The man had done too much for his own good. Still, she managed to give him the odd new experience. She wondered if he'd ever been slapped by someone's daughter.

"Really, though," the Doctor continued, "we just talked about socialism, he didn't really talk about himself. Nice man. Good thoughts, even outside his field. The importance of education!"

Rose wondered if that was a dig at her. It wasn't her fault. She'd been going to do her A-levels. She didn't really listen as the Doctor rambled on about some school on some planet somewhere, just walked along and watched the world go by. Though she thought she'd seen that fountain twice, now.

"Doctor?" she asked next time he paused. "Are we lost?"

"Of course not," he said. "We just... um. Hmm. Let's go this way, shall we? It's a lovely city to wander."

"Right." They were so lost, she thought. They were never going to find the patent office. And her feet were starting to hurt, and all the bloody boning was digging into her, and...

The Doctor nudged her a little and ducked his head to look at her. "Cheer up! When we find a tea-shop we can have cake, all right?"

He's bribing me with cake, she thought. He thinks I'm a child and an idiot, she thought. Then she saw the way he was smiling at her, and she didn't really mind. He didn't think much of her intelligence, but that smile said he thought the world of her.

"All right," she said.

~ende~

[The papers that Einstein published in 1905 - on Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity - are commonly referred to as the Annus Mirabilis Papers. The 2005 Year of Physics marked the centennial anniversary of said publishing.]