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It would not be strictly accurate to say it's an accident that they bump into each other. Accident implies, well, that Rose hadn't spent many fruitful hours on Google, clearing out her cache again and again so it isn't just one long line of donna noble, sarah jane smith, martha jones. It isn't stalking, she reasons. It's not like she's actually going to go to the hospital where Dr. Jones works, and when she does go, it's not like she's going to follow Martha around to get a sense of what exactly is so special here, and when she -- right, so maybe it is a little like stalking. She can't decide whether to blame the Doctor or Donna Noble.
It's simply that things are very complicated, she assures herself; that anyone who had fallen in love with an alien and then been forced to keep his twin in an alternate dimension, listening to his endless stories about other people, anyone would be curious and annoyed and confused and prone to stalking. She's sure of it.
But tripping over Martha when trying to find a vending machine, that's an accident, particularly when she twists her ankle on the way down.
"You all right?" Martha says, bending down. She touches the ankle, tests the calf. She's very professional. "Oh, that's not even a sprain. Put some weight on it?"
Rose gets her number.
"Me?" Martha points at herself with her chopsticks. "I'm just a resident. New full doctor, actually, it's ... d'you want my potsticker, or are you just going to keep admiring it?"
Rose, who had been looking at the potsticker in an attempt to keep from asking so why exactly did you walk the entire way around the planet, forks it towards herself. "Thanks. But being a doctor, doing medicine and things..."
"No 'and things', last I heard about it," Martha says. She taps her chopsticks against the table. "Truth is, I always wanted to work Torchwood, like my cousin, but with the whole Cybus mess ... they say I'd have emotional issues, can you believe it? A surgeon in training."
"Oh, yeah?" says Rose with elaborate casualness. "How about that."
"You know, just mentioning it, but I hear you're connected," Martha says, with a little grin. "You want to give me a hand?"
"Are you just using me for my dad?" says Rose. "That's horrible, that is."
"No worse than faking a broken ankle to get someone's number, Miss Tyler," says Martha. "Pass me another spring roll?"
"We're going out clubbing," says Rose, with a big smile. She laces on her shirt. "Me and Martha. Together. It's brilliant, really it is."
"Um, all right," says the Doctor, scratching the back of his head. "Sure. Only... well."
"I don't want to hear it."
The Doctor says, tentatively, "Well, it's a tad bit completely insane, isn't it?"
"Yeah," says Rose, sticking up her nose, a gesture made invisible by the fact that she's tugging a sweater on over it. At the Doctor's look she laughs. "It worked for you, mate."
"Ye-es," says the Doctor, doubtfully, "but it was a little less complicated than your current issue at hand. On hand? It's redundant, anyway. Rose, I really think--"
"You shut your trap or I'll tell Jackie that you'd love to babysit again," Rose says, tugging on her jeans. "Are these going to split down the side?"
It turns out, of course, that Martha Jones is a great dancer, and can get men to buy them drinks that Rose previously had not even considered as options. They're the center of some attention until the song turns slow, and then Martha looks up at her and goes to move off the dance floor, and Rose says, "We could--" and Martha says "D'you want to?" and of course they both do, very much.
Martha's a good slow dancer, too. She's Rose's height. Rose isn't used to that, but she puts her arms around Martha's waist and it feels comfortable, if not at all familiar.
This is not what I had planned, Rose thinks, somewhat hysterically.
She says, "I was jealous." She feels very daring suddenly; rests her head on Martha's shoulder, speaks into the open air. "It seems more than a bit silly now, but what're you going to do, you go on being silly and emotional and stupid over people who leave you stranded, even when it ain't their fault or yours, is it. You go on being a mess, and then you find out they weren't a mess, they were just, you know, going on, and they were going on with people who were a lot better at it than you ever were, and it's all very complicated, but it meant that I did a fair bit of thinking about you lot."
"I don't date people who are about to be sectioned," Martha mumbles, her forehead coming to rest against Rose's, and smiles. "You're drunk, what're you going on about."
"'M trying to tell you how I feel," Rose protests. "It's complicated, is what it is."
Martha kisses her.
It turns out it isn't all that complicated after all.