Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space (26/27)
Title - Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space (26/27)
Author --
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters -- Ten, Rose, Jackie, Jack, Martha, OCs
Spoilers: Through the end of S2.
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. Hijinks ensue from there.
Author’s Notes - The icon was created by
punkinart , commissioned by
aibhinn , who graciously offered it to me for my use.
Thanks to
jlrpuck for her excellent beta-work and even more excellent general awesomeness. Many thanks also to Kristin-who-won't-get-an-LJ, who brainstormed this fic with me endlessly and
bouncy_castle79 , who gave it the first major outside-eyes read-through.
Ch.1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13 - Ch. 14 - Ch. 15 - Ch. 16 - Ch. 17 - Ch. 18 - Ch. 19 - Ch. 20 - Ch. 21 - Ch. 22 - Ch. 23 - Ch. 24 - Ch. 25
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rose began laughing, overflowing with joy, as their breaths began to return to normal, and the Doctor began laughing as well. He rolled with her, curling her tight against him, and they laughed together until they suddenly were not laughing anymore, until her ear was pressed against his chest, listening to his heartbeats, and she whispered, “I always knew, you know.”
“Always knew what?”
“That you loved me.”
“I suspected you might. Having told Brem that I would never use three words to say ‘I love you’ if I could use three hundred instead.”
“Aw,” she said, in mock regret for the equally mock indignation she heard in his voice. “But that’s what I love about you.” She turned in his arms, to press a smiling kiss onto his lips, and he smiled back into the kiss.
“You,” he said into her mouth, “were supposed to be exhausted. I was supposed to be putting you to bed.”
“But you did put me to bed,” she grinned, still kissing him. By now she had managed to push him completely onto his back, was sprawled across his chest. “You did such an excellent job putting me to bed.”
“Wellllllll,” he said, smugly. “Yes. If I do say so myself.”
She smiled, rubbing her nose against his. “I love every daft, irritating thing about you.”
“You just made my hearts skip a beat each.”
“Tell me how you got to the other universe to get me back. What did you have Brem do?”
The Doctor was silent under her for a second. “Oh, I’d forgotten how very, very good you are.”
“Tell me,” she said, her eyes wide and solemn. “I need to know.”
He took a deep breath. And he began talking. “In the beginning…when you first fell through…Brem was…I mean, I don’t think I knew-grasped-Brem, until I lost you. Brem is…smarter than the both of us combined. And he…They wanted you back, Rose. They wanted you back so badly. I wanted you back so badly. And I let him…I mean, by then I’d gotten us mixed up, right? I let Brem get his own way for so long, because he knew so much more than me, about what Pinky was, and the thing about the crusts on the bread, and that if I gave Athena a pink ribbon it would make her happy for days.”
He wasn’t making any sense at all, which alarmed her. “Doctor. What did you have him do?”
“Nothing he wasn’t ready for, it turned out. I mean, Rose, everything turned out fine. Look at us, right? Aren’t we fine?”
“Yes. We are. And I’m sorry you had to ask him to do whatever you asked him to do.”
“There wasn’t any other choice, Rose. I knew that. I spent weeks pretending I didn’t know that. I did the same thing before…”
She finished it for him, in her head. He must have done the same thing in the Time War, pretending he didn’t know what he had to do. She bent her head into the curve of his shoulder.
“I went to Sarah Jane,” he said, after a second. “I needed someone to watch the kids. Someone who wasn’t Brem. Why should Brem have to be in charge of everything? Brem used to be this happy little boy, remember?”
“He still seems like a happy little boy to me.”
“I’ve never seen Brem cry so hard as he did today, Rose. Not since he was an infant.”
“He needed to get that out. He’s going to be fine.”
“Everything I wanted for Brem, for Athena, was that they would never be like me. And Brem stood in that control room this morning, Rose, and made a decision to do something he didn’t want to do, for the good of me. And what did I do? I let him do it.”
Rose lifted her head to meet his eyes. “Brem forgives you for it. I forgive you for it.”
“He held the breach open for me. I needed someone at this end to do it, I couldn’t get through without someone holding it open for me to get back. And the only person capable of doing that was Brem. I mean, Athena helped. Had Athena been four instead of two, Athena probably could have done it. But in the end, it was Brem who grasped what he was doing.”
Rose was silent for a second. “If he couldn’t do it…”
“We would have gotten stuck. In Pete’s World. In the Void.”
“And he would have carried around that guilt for the rest of his life.” Rose pushed herself up onto her elbows, staring at him. “And you let him do it.”
The Doctor looked irritated. “I thought you forgave me for it. And anyhow, it turned out okay, didn’t it?” When Rose stayed silent, he bit out, “I didn’t have a choice, Rose. We didn’t have a choice. There you were, in Pete’s World, so sure I’d come and get you that you didn’t even feel it necessary to name our daughter until I showed up. And I couldn’t do it, Rose, without Brem doing what he did today. Am I happy about? No. Am I proud of myself for not being able to come up with another solution? Obviously not. But am I proud of him? Yes. And would I do it again? I would. Yes. Now go ahead. Tell me I should have made a different choice.”
She gazed at him for a long moment. Nothing in their lives was ever easy, was it? No choice for a Time Lord was ever a simple one. Never for the Doctor. And never for Brem. And to wish it was different was to wish, basically, that she’d fallen in love and had children with a totally different man. “I don’t want to fight about it,” she began, intending to tell him that she understood, much as she hated it, that she understood, but he cut her off.
“And another thing,” he said, feeling himself compelled by some self-destructive desire to get everything out on the table. “We need to talk about Jack.”
She blinked. “Jack? Jack Harkness?”
“Jack helped.”
“Jack…? Jack’s alive?”
“I told you he was, didn’t I?” asked the Doctor, irritated.
Yes, she thought. He had. Busy re-building the future. She had not believed him. She had assumed he’d lied to avoid saying the awful truth out loud. She could not believe he’d been telling the truth. She also couldn’t believe that she’d just decided to allow him to lie to her, rather than straightening things out. She forced herself to think. If the Doctor had told the truth about Jack… “You took the kids to the future?”
“No.” The Doctor’s tone was short, to the point. “Jack helped here.”
“Twenty-first century London?”
“Well. Cardiff.”
“Twenty-first century?” Rose persisted. “Jack is in the twenty-first century?”
The Doctor met her eyes, stubbornly. “Yes.”
She knew that he’d known all along--she didn’t even have to ask the question. She sat up, away from him, dazed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He can’t die, Rose.”
“He can’t what?”
“He can’t die. Jack died, on the Gamestation. You brought him back to life, after you killed the Daleks. A profusion of life. He can’t die.”
Rose stared at him, her gaze growing hard. “How long have you known this?”
He looked at her.
“How could you have never told me this?” she demanded, furious. “How could you have kept this a secret? You made it sound like…like he was off being the most important person in the year 200,000!”
“For a little while, that was completely true.”
“Do not!” she shouted at him. “Do not!” But she wasn’t even sure what she was telling him not to do.
He sat up in the bed, ticking off on his fingers. “Reason number one I didn’t tell you: I didn’t have the easiest regeneration, you may recall. Remember that? Ill, in Howard’s jim-jams, in your bed?”
“And then you got better,” Rose reminded him, between her clenched teeth.
“Reason number two,” he said. “Jack really was helping to rebuild the Earth. I wasn’t lying about that. There was no reason to go to any more detail.”
“No reason?” she gasped, in disbelief.
“Reason number three,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do to help Jack. And I didn’t want to make you feel guilty about something that you couldn’t help, that neither one of us can help. This ship is weighed down in guilt. I didn’t want to add yours to it.”
“Don’t pretend,” she spat out, “to have done this for me.”
“You know what, Rose?” he snapped back. “You stood in front of me on a beach and lied to me-a direct lie-when I asked you if you were pregnant. Forgive me if your self-righteousness here rings the slightest bit hollow.”
Rose blanched. “But I did that for you. Because I didn’t want you to-”
“Don’t tell me that was for me--and then tell me that I’m lying when I say that I didn’t tell you the whole truth about Jack for you.”
Rose opened and closed her mouth, suddenly aware that yes, he may have been right to point out a hypocrisy there.
“Reason d,” he said, wearily, leaning against the headboard. “Or three. Or four. Whatever. I’ve lost count. But I’m in love with you, Rose. And I was scared you…”
Rose stared at him. “Did you think I loved him more? Wanted him more? Than I wanted you?”
“I…” He ruffled his hair. “Was scared of the answer to that question, yeah.”
“You stupid man,” she said. “I have never wanted anything as much as I have always wanted you.”
“That’s so odd,” said the Doctor.
“Why is that odd?”
“Because it’s exactly how I feel about you.”
She smiled at him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Jack earlier.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Fortuna, when you asked me on the beach.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with a solution that didn’t have the potential to destroy Brem.”
“I’m sorry I slipped off the lever.”
“Rose,” he said, in shock. “That was not your fault.”
“That never seems to stop you from apologizing.”
He looked at her for a long moment. She leaned forward and kissed him, to show him they were okay. He kissed her back in relief.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he said.
But when they laid back down in the bed, he was the one who fell asleep; Rose was no longer tired. She stared at the ceiling and turned everything over in her mind. Being back. Saying Gallifreyan vows. Having the Doctor say he was in love with her, which somehow was more than just I love you, which she felt she had already known. Jack, alive, forever, because of her exuberance with the Vortex, and the Doctor never telling her that he was around, to visit, whenever they wanted.
She rolled to her side, watching him as he slept, looking remarkably like Brem in his boyishness. She wondered how much he’d slept since she’d left them. It was unlike him to sleep for so long a time at a clip, and she kissed his cheek gently. His lips curved into a smile, but he didn’t wake. She smiled in response, before sliding out of bed.
She walked over to the wardrobe and chose a new outfit, thrilled to have her old clothing back. She took a quick shower before changing, relishing the fact that she felt sore, and sated, and happy. The Doctor was still sleeping, so shocking an occurrence that she tiptoed over just to make sure he was still breathing. He was; she left him there, wrapped under the covers, and ventured outside.
For a moment, she was bewildered, because the place where she was seemed so empty.She was looking for her children and her mother in a bit of a panic, when she noticed the woman at the workstation, watching her curiously. “Excuse me,” she said, walking over to her and smiling. “I’m Rose.”
“Oh, I know that,” said the woman. “I’m Martha Jones. I work with Jack.”
“Is Jack around?” Rose asked, in relief.
“He got the kids pizza. They’re up eating it in one of the conference rooms. I can show you.” Martha stood up, prepared to act as tour guide.
“Thanks,” said Rose, following her as they headed to a stairway. She was suddenly aware of all the women who must have stepped in to fill her role while she was away, in so many little ways. “So you helped take care of Brem and Athena? While they were holding open the breach?”
Martha shrugged. “They’re pretty self-sufficient.”
Rose smiled. “True. I suppose they’d like to think they take care of themselves. But, anyway, thanks.”
“I really didn’t do much,” Martha said. “Brem is…something else.”
Rose heard Molly calling Brem “weird” that disastrous day she’d tried to force Brem into a play group, and bristled a bit. “Brem is amazing.”
“Oh, no argument from me there,” said Martha, smiling. “And Athena certainly knows how to hold her own against him, which is better than I can say.”
Rose smiled back, feeling silly and sensitive. “More than his father and I can say, too, but don’t tell him that.”
Martha laughed, as she swung open the conference room door. Brem and Athena both exclaimed, “Mum!” around their bites of pizza. Brem was wearing a ridiculous, too-big-for-him captain’s hat that had slipped over one of his eyes and made him look adorable.
Rose smiled at them, and then glanced at Jack, who lifted up one corner of his mouth in a smile.
“Well. Look at what the cat dragged in,” he said.
“I always did know how to make an entrance.”
“That’s for sure,” he agreed.
“I’m going to grab a slice of pizza,” she said to her kids, “and then I’m going to talk to Captain Jack for a bit.”
“Mum,” said Brem, seriously. “He’s dressed.”
“Oh, give him a few minutes,” said Rose, as she slid a piece of pizza onto a paper plate and turned to Jack.
“My,” said Jack. “A few minutes? Really? I can’t wait to see what this talk’s going to be about.”
Rose laughed as she headed back out of the conference room, Jack following her. She walked down the stairs, back to the desks, set down her piece of pizza, turned to him, and hugged him. “Oh, Jack,” she said. “I didn’t know. He told me…”
“That I was dead?” guessed Jack.
“No,” she admitted, almost laughing at her foolishness. “That you were alive. But I thought he was lying, so that he wouldn’t have to tell me you were dead. I couldn’t believe he would leave you behind if you were alive.”
“He had his reasons,” said Jack.
“Not very good ones.”
“It’s fine. You learn not to carry grudges when you’re going to live forever. It’s just too exhausting.”
“Oh, Jack. I didn’t mean it. And I can’t believe he didn’t tell me you were right here in Cardiff all this time. I would have come to visit you, right away.”
“He does the stupidest things sometimes, Rose. And don’t apologize. I know you didn’t mean it. And living forever? Turns out it’s not so bad.”
Rose pulled back, perched on the desk and took a bite of her pizza, grinning. “Tell you what. If anyone in the universe ought to live forever, it should be Jack Harkness.”
“Just what do you tell your kids about me, Rose?”
Rose’s eyes sparkled at him. “Nothing but the truth.” She grew sombre suddenly. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Helping him. When you probably should have told him to go to hell.”
“Yeah, well…” Jack shrugged. “I’ve never had the best judgment.”
“And you’ve always had a bigger heart than you ever wanted to admit.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Jack said, seriously. “He hung onto you. That makes him smarter than I ever gave him credit for.”
“I don’t know if he hung on, or I just wouldn’t let him let go,” said Rose.
“Where is he, anyhow? I thought he was putting you to bed.”
“That ended up reversing itself a bit. He’s sleeping. I couldn’t. Not after…I wanted to talk to you. After he told me you were here.”
“So. This kid you call Brem.”
“Yeah,” Rose smiled.
“I hear his middle name is Jack.”
“Yeah, but that’s after Jack Davenport. You know, the bloke on Coupling.”
“Right. I figured.”
Rose finished her pizza and tossed the paper plate away, feeling the exhaustion begin to tug at her again now that she had gotten to talk to Jack.
Jack must have sensed it, because he said, “Let’s go see your children.”
“Your father’s sleeping,” Rose told them, when she and Jack got back to the conference room. “And, to tell you the truth, I’d like to join him. So, let’s go back to the TARDIS and relax for a bit, what do you say?”
“Oh, I’d love to just relax,” said Jackie, and Rose figured she was probably exhausted, too.
They gathered the kids into the TARDIS, and Rose left them momentarily with her mother while she slipped into her bedroom. The Doctor was still out like a light, although he did rouse himself a bit when she clambered over him trying to tug pyjama bottoms onto him. “What are you doing?” he protested, sleepily.
“Getting some clothing on you so the kids can get into bed with us.”
“Mmmphmmhmm,” he mumbled, which made absolutely no sense to her and she ignored him and pulled her own pyjamas on.
Jackie had found a guest room, and Rose rounded the kids into her bedroom, all of three of them, with Madrid in tow. Brem and Athena enjoyed the novelty of their father sleeping, shushing each other as loudly as possible as they crawled into the bed. Rose managed to get them settled, placing Fortuna between them for safe keeping, and made them promise to be quiet while everyone slept. She curled up into the Doctor, and he rolled over automatically, his arm bringing her against him. She smiled at her children, and they were the last thing she saw before she fell asleep.
When the Doctor finally awoke, only minutes later, groggy from the long nap, which he was very unaccustomed to, he found Rose snugly in his arms and all three of his children regarding her with wide, astonished eyes, as if they couldn’t quite believe she was really there with them. He knew the feeling.
Next Chapter
Author --
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters -- Ten, Rose, Jackie, Jack, Martha, OCs
Spoilers: Through the end of S2.
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. Hijinks ensue from there.
Author’s Notes - The icon was created by
punkinart , commissioned by
aibhinn , who graciously offered it to me for my use.
Thanks to
jlrpuck for her excellent beta-work and even more excellent general awesomeness. Many thanks also to Kristin-who-won't-get-an-LJ, who brainstormed this fic with me endlessly and
bouncy_castle79 , who gave it the first major outside-eyes read-through.
Ch.1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13 - Ch. 14 - Ch. 15 - Ch. 16 - Ch. 17 - Ch. 18 - Ch. 19 - Ch. 20 - Ch. 21 - Ch. 22 - Ch. 23 - Ch. 24 - Ch. 25
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rose began laughing, overflowing with joy, as their breaths began to return to normal, and the Doctor began laughing as well. He rolled with her, curling her tight against him, and they laughed together until they suddenly were not laughing anymore, until her ear was pressed against his chest, listening to his heartbeats, and she whispered, “I always knew, you know.”
“Always knew what?”
“That you loved me.”
“I suspected you might. Having told Brem that I would never use three words to say ‘I love you’ if I could use three hundred instead.”
“Aw,” she said, in mock regret for the equally mock indignation she heard in his voice. “But that’s what I love about you.” She turned in his arms, to press a smiling kiss onto his lips, and he smiled back into the kiss.
“You,” he said into her mouth, “were supposed to be exhausted. I was supposed to be putting you to bed.”
“But you did put me to bed,” she grinned, still kissing him. By now she had managed to push him completely onto his back, was sprawled across his chest. “You did such an excellent job putting me to bed.”
“Wellllllll,” he said, smugly. “Yes. If I do say so myself.”
She smiled, rubbing her nose against his. “I love every daft, irritating thing about you.”
“You just made my hearts skip a beat each.”
“Tell me how you got to the other universe to get me back. What did you have Brem do?”
The Doctor was silent under her for a second. “Oh, I’d forgotten how very, very good you are.”
“Tell me,” she said, her eyes wide and solemn. “I need to know.”
He took a deep breath. And he began talking. “In the beginning…when you first fell through…Brem was…I mean, I don’t think I knew-grasped-Brem, until I lost you. Brem is…smarter than the both of us combined. And he…They wanted you back, Rose. They wanted you back so badly. I wanted you back so badly. And I let him…I mean, by then I’d gotten us mixed up, right? I let Brem get his own way for so long, because he knew so much more than me, about what Pinky was, and the thing about the crusts on the bread, and that if I gave Athena a pink ribbon it would make her happy for days.”
He wasn’t making any sense at all, which alarmed her. “Doctor. What did you have him do?”
“Nothing he wasn’t ready for, it turned out. I mean, Rose, everything turned out fine. Look at us, right? Aren’t we fine?”
“Yes. We are. And I’m sorry you had to ask him to do whatever you asked him to do.”
“There wasn’t any other choice, Rose. I knew that. I spent weeks pretending I didn’t know that. I did the same thing before…”
She finished it for him, in her head. He must have done the same thing in the Time War, pretending he didn’t know what he had to do. She bent her head into the curve of his shoulder.
“I went to Sarah Jane,” he said, after a second. “I needed someone to watch the kids. Someone who wasn’t Brem. Why should Brem have to be in charge of everything? Brem used to be this happy little boy, remember?”
“He still seems like a happy little boy to me.”
“I’ve never seen Brem cry so hard as he did today, Rose. Not since he was an infant.”
“He needed to get that out. He’s going to be fine.”
“Everything I wanted for Brem, for Athena, was that they would never be like me. And Brem stood in that control room this morning, Rose, and made a decision to do something he didn’t want to do, for the good of me. And what did I do? I let him do it.”
Rose lifted her head to meet his eyes. “Brem forgives you for it. I forgive you for it.”
“He held the breach open for me. I needed someone at this end to do it, I couldn’t get through without someone holding it open for me to get back. And the only person capable of doing that was Brem. I mean, Athena helped. Had Athena been four instead of two, Athena probably could have done it. But in the end, it was Brem who grasped what he was doing.”
Rose was silent for a second. “If he couldn’t do it…”
“We would have gotten stuck. In Pete’s World. In the Void.”
“And he would have carried around that guilt for the rest of his life.” Rose pushed herself up onto her elbows, staring at him. “And you let him do it.”
The Doctor looked irritated. “I thought you forgave me for it. And anyhow, it turned out okay, didn’t it?” When Rose stayed silent, he bit out, “I didn’t have a choice, Rose. We didn’t have a choice. There you were, in Pete’s World, so sure I’d come and get you that you didn’t even feel it necessary to name our daughter until I showed up. And I couldn’t do it, Rose, without Brem doing what he did today. Am I happy about? No. Am I proud of myself for not being able to come up with another solution? Obviously not. But am I proud of him? Yes. And would I do it again? I would. Yes. Now go ahead. Tell me I should have made a different choice.”
She gazed at him for a long moment. Nothing in their lives was ever easy, was it? No choice for a Time Lord was ever a simple one. Never for the Doctor. And never for Brem. And to wish it was different was to wish, basically, that she’d fallen in love and had children with a totally different man. “I don’t want to fight about it,” she began, intending to tell him that she understood, much as she hated it, that she understood, but he cut her off.
“And another thing,” he said, feeling himself compelled by some self-destructive desire to get everything out on the table. “We need to talk about Jack.”
She blinked. “Jack? Jack Harkness?”
“Jack helped.”
“Jack…? Jack’s alive?”
“I told you he was, didn’t I?” asked the Doctor, irritated.
Yes, she thought. He had. Busy re-building the future. She had not believed him. She had assumed he’d lied to avoid saying the awful truth out loud. She could not believe he’d been telling the truth. She also couldn’t believe that she’d just decided to allow him to lie to her, rather than straightening things out. She forced herself to think. If the Doctor had told the truth about Jack… “You took the kids to the future?”
“No.” The Doctor’s tone was short, to the point. “Jack helped here.”
“Twenty-first century London?”
“Well. Cardiff.”
“Twenty-first century?” Rose persisted. “Jack is in the twenty-first century?”
The Doctor met her eyes, stubbornly. “Yes.”
She knew that he’d known all along--she didn’t even have to ask the question. She sat up, away from him, dazed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He can’t die, Rose.”
“He can’t what?”
“He can’t die. Jack died, on the Gamestation. You brought him back to life, after you killed the Daleks. A profusion of life. He can’t die.”
Rose stared at him, her gaze growing hard. “How long have you known this?”
He looked at her.
“How could you have never told me this?” she demanded, furious. “How could you have kept this a secret? You made it sound like…like he was off being the most important person in the year 200,000!”
“For a little while, that was completely true.”
“Do not!” she shouted at him. “Do not!” But she wasn’t even sure what she was telling him not to do.
He sat up in the bed, ticking off on his fingers. “Reason number one I didn’t tell you: I didn’t have the easiest regeneration, you may recall. Remember that? Ill, in Howard’s jim-jams, in your bed?”
“And then you got better,” Rose reminded him, between her clenched teeth.
“Reason number two,” he said. “Jack really was helping to rebuild the Earth. I wasn’t lying about that. There was no reason to go to any more detail.”
“No reason?” she gasped, in disbelief.
“Reason number three,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do to help Jack. And I didn’t want to make you feel guilty about something that you couldn’t help, that neither one of us can help. This ship is weighed down in guilt. I didn’t want to add yours to it.”
“Don’t pretend,” she spat out, “to have done this for me.”
“You know what, Rose?” he snapped back. “You stood in front of me on a beach and lied to me-a direct lie-when I asked you if you were pregnant. Forgive me if your self-righteousness here rings the slightest bit hollow.”
Rose blanched. “But I did that for you. Because I didn’t want you to-”
“Don’t tell me that was for me--and then tell me that I’m lying when I say that I didn’t tell you the whole truth about Jack for you.”
Rose opened and closed her mouth, suddenly aware that yes, he may have been right to point out a hypocrisy there.
“Reason d,” he said, wearily, leaning against the headboard. “Or three. Or four. Whatever. I’ve lost count. But I’m in love with you, Rose. And I was scared you…”
Rose stared at him. “Did you think I loved him more? Wanted him more? Than I wanted you?”
“I…” He ruffled his hair. “Was scared of the answer to that question, yeah.”
“You stupid man,” she said. “I have never wanted anything as much as I have always wanted you.”
“That’s so odd,” said the Doctor.
“Why is that odd?”
“Because it’s exactly how I feel about you.”
She smiled at him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Jack earlier.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Fortuna, when you asked me on the beach.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with a solution that didn’t have the potential to destroy Brem.”
“I’m sorry I slipped off the lever.”
“Rose,” he said, in shock. “That was not your fault.”
“That never seems to stop you from apologizing.”
He looked at her for a long moment. She leaned forward and kissed him, to show him they were okay. He kissed her back in relief.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he said.
But when they laid back down in the bed, he was the one who fell asleep; Rose was no longer tired. She stared at the ceiling and turned everything over in her mind. Being back. Saying Gallifreyan vows. Having the Doctor say he was in love with her, which somehow was more than just I love you, which she felt she had already known. Jack, alive, forever, because of her exuberance with the Vortex, and the Doctor never telling her that he was around, to visit, whenever they wanted.
She rolled to her side, watching him as he slept, looking remarkably like Brem in his boyishness. She wondered how much he’d slept since she’d left them. It was unlike him to sleep for so long a time at a clip, and she kissed his cheek gently. His lips curved into a smile, but he didn’t wake. She smiled in response, before sliding out of bed.
She walked over to the wardrobe and chose a new outfit, thrilled to have her old clothing back. She took a quick shower before changing, relishing the fact that she felt sore, and sated, and happy. The Doctor was still sleeping, so shocking an occurrence that she tiptoed over just to make sure he was still breathing. He was; she left him there, wrapped under the covers, and ventured outside.
For a moment, she was bewildered, because the place where she was seemed so empty.She was looking for her children and her mother in a bit of a panic, when she noticed the woman at the workstation, watching her curiously. “Excuse me,” she said, walking over to her and smiling. “I’m Rose.”
“Oh, I know that,” said the woman. “I’m Martha Jones. I work with Jack.”
“Is Jack around?” Rose asked, in relief.
“He got the kids pizza. They’re up eating it in one of the conference rooms. I can show you.” Martha stood up, prepared to act as tour guide.
“Thanks,” said Rose, following her as they headed to a stairway. She was suddenly aware of all the women who must have stepped in to fill her role while she was away, in so many little ways. “So you helped take care of Brem and Athena? While they were holding open the breach?”
Martha shrugged. “They’re pretty self-sufficient.”
Rose smiled. “True. I suppose they’d like to think they take care of themselves. But, anyway, thanks.”
“I really didn’t do much,” Martha said. “Brem is…something else.”
Rose heard Molly calling Brem “weird” that disastrous day she’d tried to force Brem into a play group, and bristled a bit. “Brem is amazing.”
“Oh, no argument from me there,” said Martha, smiling. “And Athena certainly knows how to hold her own against him, which is better than I can say.”
Rose smiled back, feeling silly and sensitive. “More than his father and I can say, too, but don’t tell him that.”
Martha laughed, as she swung open the conference room door. Brem and Athena both exclaimed, “Mum!” around their bites of pizza. Brem was wearing a ridiculous, too-big-for-him captain’s hat that had slipped over one of his eyes and made him look adorable.
Rose smiled at them, and then glanced at Jack, who lifted up one corner of his mouth in a smile.
“Well. Look at what the cat dragged in,” he said.
“I always did know how to make an entrance.”
“That’s for sure,” he agreed.
“I’m going to grab a slice of pizza,” she said to her kids, “and then I’m going to talk to Captain Jack for a bit.”
“Mum,” said Brem, seriously. “He’s dressed.”
“Oh, give him a few minutes,” said Rose, as she slid a piece of pizza onto a paper plate and turned to Jack.
“My,” said Jack. “A few minutes? Really? I can’t wait to see what this talk’s going to be about.”
Rose laughed as she headed back out of the conference room, Jack following her. She walked down the stairs, back to the desks, set down her piece of pizza, turned to him, and hugged him. “Oh, Jack,” she said. “I didn’t know. He told me…”
“That I was dead?” guessed Jack.
“No,” she admitted, almost laughing at her foolishness. “That you were alive. But I thought he was lying, so that he wouldn’t have to tell me you were dead. I couldn’t believe he would leave you behind if you were alive.”
“He had his reasons,” said Jack.
“Not very good ones.”
“It’s fine. You learn not to carry grudges when you’re going to live forever. It’s just too exhausting.”
“Oh, Jack. I didn’t mean it. And I can’t believe he didn’t tell me you were right here in Cardiff all this time. I would have come to visit you, right away.”
“He does the stupidest things sometimes, Rose. And don’t apologize. I know you didn’t mean it. And living forever? Turns out it’s not so bad.”
Rose pulled back, perched on the desk and took a bite of her pizza, grinning. “Tell you what. If anyone in the universe ought to live forever, it should be Jack Harkness.”
“Just what do you tell your kids about me, Rose?”
Rose’s eyes sparkled at him. “Nothing but the truth.” She grew sombre suddenly. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Helping him. When you probably should have told him to go to hell.”
“Yeah, well…” Jack shrugged. “I’ve never had the best judgment.”
“And you’ve always had a bigger heart than you ever wanted to admit.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Jack said, seriously. “He hung onto you. That makes him smarter than I ever gave him credit for.”
“I don’t know if he hung on, or I just wouldn’t let him let go,” said Rose.
“Where is he, anyhow? I thought he was putting you to bed.”
“That ended up reversing itself a bit. He’s sleeping. I couldn’t. Not after…I wanted to talk to you. After he told me you were here.”
“So. This kid you call Brem.”
“Yeah,” Rose smiled.
“I hear his middle name is Jack.”
“Yeah, but that’s after Jack Davenport. You know, the bloke on Coupling.”
“Right. I figured.”
Rose finished her pizza and tossed the paper plate away, feeling the exhaustion begin to tug at her again now that she had gotten to talk to Jack.
Jack must have sensed it, because he said, “Let’s go see your children.”
“Your father’s sleeping,” Rose told them, when she and Jack got back to the conference room. “And, to tell you the truth, I’d like to join him. So, let’s go back to the TARDIS and relax for a bit, what do you say?”
“Oh, I’d love to just relax,” said Jackie, and Rose figured she was probably exhausted, too.
They gathered the kids into the TARDIS, and Rose left them momentarily with her mother while she slipped into her bedroom. The Doctor was still out like a light, although he did rouse himself a bit when she clambered over him trying to tug pyjama bottoms onto him. “What are you doing?” he protested, sleepily.
“Getting some clothing on you so the kids can get into bed with us.”
“Mmmphmmhmm,” he mumbled, which made absolutely no sense to her and she ignored him and pulled her own pyjamas on.
Jackie had found a guest room, and Rose rounded the kids into her bedroom, all of three of them, with Madrid in tow. Brem and Athena enjoyed the novelty of their father sleeping, shushing each other as loudly as possible as they crawled into the bed. Rose managed to get them settled, placing Fortuna between them for safe keeping, and made them promise to be quiet while everyone slept. She curled up into the Doctor, and he rolled over automatically, his arm bringing her against him. She smiled at her children, and they were the last thing she saw before she fell asleep.
When the Doctor finally awoke, only minutes later, groggy from the long nap, which he was very unaccustomed to, he found Rose snugly in his arms and all three of his children regarding her with wide, astonished eyes, as if they couldn’t quite believe she was really there with them. He knew the feeling.
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