Episode Two
To Find The Journey's End In Every Step Of The Road
Written by: treblebeth, onlylyin, and ljg_fanfic
Part Two
One day, without trying at all, it was different.
That day she shifted and it all shifted. She was in the right universe and it was the right time and the world crumbling around her was the right one. He was close and she could feel it all rushing through her, the way the timelines were all wrapping together, twisting towards an end. Either they win or they lose. She knew how both options turned out, and that was enough weight that she didn’t need the gun anymore.
Maybe her knowledge could be the weight that loaded the dice for a win.
She met Donna’s family, saved them for all the times Donna had saved the Doctor, and asked them for luck she wanted but didn’t need. She could feel it bubbling up in her before the last jump, because the walls were tumbled and she knew he was going to be on the other side of that last starburst of blue light. Her last jump, taking her to where she was supposed to end up in the first place- to the Doctor, her brown pinstripes Doctor, and oh she knew he’d run to her if he could.
When she finally saw him, it was beautiful and slow-motion and radiant. Because she had been lost in the knowing of what was to come, and seeing him let her forget it for a little while. She wondered if the same was true for him.
When he fell, her whole body shook. In her head, she could hear accusations on replay, This is how the universe ends. This is the world in which we fail, because he was running to me. This is how the universe ends, for the want of a hug…
She couldn’t catch her breath from the moment he started changing, the ache running down into her lungs and all she could say was “But you can’t,” because she’d seen a thousand could-be’s but never this, not a new Doctor, not now or here or even ever for her.
Then everything went quiet again when she got her hug and she was hugging him for the fate of the universe, for every time she had to stand back and watch. She was hugging him knowing that somehow, part of this was for her. She remembered she loved presents. She wasn’t sure how she forgot.
After that she tried not to panic every time something went wrong, since she didn’t really know what wrong was anyway.
The Doctor, her Doctor even after his regeneration, knew that something had happened, was happening, to her. “Rose, you’ve been in a parallel world, that world is running ahead of this universe. You’ve seen the future. What was it?” His question shocked her. She never thought he would ask, he who was trained so thoroughly in the ways of time loops and paradox. Besides, he’d always hated spoilers.
She didn’t know what she could tell. There is so much to say and not to say. She found it hard to look at Donna; she couldn’t count the number of times she had seen this woman be extraordinary. But in her travels, Rose had heard the song of the Doctor-Donna, seen it humming through vibrating timelines. She might not have the lyrics down but she didn’t have to guess the ending.
So she glossed things over, exaggerated a couple things as she rushed through what she decided she could say. Focusing on the darkness, she explained the stars going out, and the dimension cannon. She waited for the lecture about fracturing time and space, flashing on memories of broken glass littering the Torchwood offices at Canary Wharf.
Instead he grinned at her with such unabashed glee that she wrapped herself up in it, trying to ignore the hint of desperation that made her realize she needed that lecture. She missed it.
She worried that he was a little too far fallen as it was.
Later, as his TARDIS slipped away with Donna locked inside, she put her hand in his, fighting her panic by stroking her thumb over his knuckles. She tried to squeeze his hand hard enough to keep him standing still, and managed not to pull back when he squeezed back so hard his nails left a pattern across her skin.
The sound of gunshots spun her around, Jack shooting wildly at the Dalek. Insane - he knew that it was useless. When the Dalek blasted him, she rushed over to him, cradling his head in her hands and kissing his cheek again. She squeezed him twice on the arm and they both remembered, his eyes flaring before they fluttered shut.
She realized that Davros was the one who would inadvertently pick the Doctor back up from where he had fallen, reinventing him once again. The Destroyer of Worlds. So she spent the rest of her time saving the universe as the necessary bystander, a bystander but also the witness. To remind him of the Time Lord he was and the man he had become. In that split second when all seemed lost, Rose saw the Doctor harden. She got another glimpse of his soul, and she wished he only had a better view.
In that split second, she knew which way was up and which way was right, and she loved him so completely she had to look away.
Only to find herself looking at the TARDIS, the grinding hum of its engines coming back for all of them, Martha Jones, Mickey, Sarah Jane, Jack, her mother, the Doctor, her and the universe.
She loved that blue box.
The doors opened and at first there was only blinding light and then him. Standing as their champion even when he was standing beside her, too.
The other Doctor, her Doctor she thought with a start, came flying out of the perfectly-intact TARDIS brandishing something suspiciously gun-like. She studied him, watched him fumble and recover, saw Donna rise with pride and half-remembered envy of what Time felt like burning behind human eyes. She watched the three Doctors together save the Whole Fucking Universe. Watched, smiling and laughing and crying, committing every word and gesture into her memory.
She watched the Doctor in the blue suit decide to save the universe in a way she’d never witnessed him choosing before- though she knew he had, once. Wiping out the Daleks. Nothing she hadn’t done herself once.
She didn’t say a word to stop him.
At first she didn’t know what to say to this Doctor at all.
She stayed beside the one she had always known, close enough to smell the scent of his hair and the smoke that had seeped into his brown pinstripes suit when he’d gone back for Davros, to feel his laugh resonate in her chest when they shared their inside jokes. To catch each last smile as they all flew the Earth home.
She’d seen him happy before. But for a moment, everyone clustered and clutching each other and pounding each other’s backs, his face was glowing. He was home.
Rose would picture him like that in her heart forever.
And then it was over. All except the good-byes
He loved the hugs; he’d always loved the hugs. She could see him tuck them all away against his hearts. Once the Earth was in her proper place, he reached out and threw the lever that took them into the vortex. Rose watched his other self raise a brow and send him a look.
Whatever the message was, Donna got it, too. She laid her hand on the blue-coated Doctor’s sleeve and nodded toward the kitchen. “Alright, you lot,” she said, her smile real and warm. “Let’s have a bit of a meet-n-greet, yeah?” She looped one arm in Mickey’s and one in Jackie’s. “Come on, Space-Boy!” she threw over her shoulder as she breezed toward the kitchen. The blue-suit Doctor crooked one elbow at Sarah Jane, the other elbow at Martha and, with a wink at Rose, swept past.
Rose eyed the Doctor and he inhaled sharply, looking up and away and then back, flicking his gaze between her and Jack. “Fancy a bit of a chat?”
Jack nodded slowly, “Yeah,” he drawled.
“Well, then.” The Doctor looked at her and she realized that Jack had her hand firmly in his. For just a moment, she thought that the Doctor knew, that he could see her memories, the secrets that she kept. But his face softened as he looked at her.
He didn’t know. That thought amazed her. She knew what would happen, and the Doctor didn’t. He looked at her and Jack’s linked fingers, swallowed and turned, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I was thinking we’d have tea in the garden.”
The way to the garden was a left, a left and another left. Very funny, she thought toward the TARDIS. The door to the garden was open and Rose could smell growing things.
The TARDIS had it all ready, a bright spring afternoon and a little gazebo all tricked out with twining roses and a silver tea service. But there was Rose’s favorite mug, the one with the crack in it, and Jack’s that he’d got from that potter he’d spent the week with on Hellinsport, and the mug that Rose had given her first Doctor that was the exact shade of blue as his eyes.
She had to take a breath when he saw those mugs sitting so comfortably together side-by-side. They all paused on the gazebo steps, just looking.
Jack put a hand to the Doctor’s shoulder and the Doctor twitched, practically leaping up the remaining steps. Rose came up the steps, sat down and began to pour. “No coffee, Jack,” she murmured, handing him his mug. “You’ll have to settle.” Bending her head over the Doctor’s mug, she added cream and sugar, looked up at the Doctor, and stirred in another sugar.
Jack considered her over his mug. She considered him back.
Sudden unshed tears filled her eyes and she looked down. She took a long, slow breath, placed her mug carefully back on the table and folded her hands neatly in her lap. When she looked up, her eyes were clear and her lips creased into a small, sad smile. She'd gotten roaring drunk that night, the night that she and Donna had watched the sky burn. “I've had tea with you twice this week, Jack." She blinked, remembering the smell, the cold park bench and Donna's confused sorrow for a man she didn't know. "I think I might float away if I have another.”
He blinked. “Third time’s the charm, they say.” She watched Jack take a long, slow sip from his mug, questions swirling behind his eyes. “Long week?”
Rose nodded. “Yeah. I kept running into you. ‘Though, come to think of it, it’s probably been more than a week. It gets all mixed up.” She sighed and rubbed her forehead.
“I remember. There was this one time I got stuck in a loop…But not like you. I mean, I was in the same dimension.” He sipped his tea, frowning. “I think.”
“I,” she started to blurt out and stopped herself, turning her eyes to the Doctor and then back to him, “I work at Torchwood, the one in my uni…that is, the other universe … I… I work for Torchwood Three, now, in Cardiff.”
He shook his head. “Torchwood. Well. Of course you do.”
She looked away again. “You say that,” her fingers twisted together and she stilled them, “you say it just like that.” She met his eyes. “Every time.”
He hid his own face in his mug and then brought it down, cradling the warmth of it in his hands. “How long has it been for you?”
“Four years, I suppose. Give or take.” She turned to the Doctor. “Been a bit longer for you, hasn’t it, Jack?”
He’d never told her, never let her share the burden of that weight, that very particular pain of companions left behind. A part of her knew that the young girl who she’d been wouldn’t have understood. He didn’t tell her because sometimes it was easier to just take the blame. She watched his eyes go from closed-off to loving to pained to distant in a matter of seconds.
Quite a trick, that.
Jack laid his hand on the Doctor’s knee. “Hey,” he said with a squeeze, asking for attention, “this is me; this is Rose.” Jack had been watching the Doctor’s eyes, too. “Damn,” he said quietly, “how can you do that? You’re so … so …”
“Alien?”
Rose thought for just a moment that Jack might toss his tea in the Doctor’s face. Instead, he sat back and sighed. “I was going to say repressed.”
The Doctor smiled, dark and ironic at first, but then easing into something lighter. “Repressed?” He shook his head. “Really, Jack.”
Rose looked back and forth between the two men. The mood had shifted, and she was glad. “Aw,” she chuckled, “don’t tell me I’ve been missin’ all the good stuff?”
“Good stuff?” Jack set his hand in his chin and studied the Doctor. “Intense, maybe. Definitely traumatic. And, well, life-altering. But good?”
The Doctor raised his brows. “It wasn’t good for you?”
She lost it, then, her laugh catching her by surprise. She met the Doctor’s eyes, saw the twinkle of manic glee that always lurked right below the surface, and let herself go, bending forward in her laugh. She stood, still chuckling, and without a word, took their hands and pulled them down the steps and into the tall grass.
Plopping herself down on the warm ground, she yanked them down, one on each side of her, and looked up into the sky. After a moment, she pointed. “Look,” she waved her fingers, “that one there! A dragon, yeah?”
The Doctor scrunched his nose. “A dragon? But where’s its hind legs?”
“Charkoloo Six,” Jack nodded. “Remember those fellas that had us pinned on that island?”
“Oh,” the Doctor agreed, “yes!”
“And that one there,” Rose pointed, “’S like those cat-horse things on Veeblin….”
Much later, Rose watched Donna smile and brush the grass from his hair. She gathered that last, final image into her heart, as the Doctor held open the TARDIS door for Sarah Jane, his eyes flicking once towards her and Jack before he stepped out.
Martha was hugging the blue-suit Doctor fiercely; Rose dismissed the quick pang of possessiveness at the sight as utterly inappropriate. Jack hadn’t missed her glance. When he nudged her, his expression was amused, hiding the strain she knew was there.
He knew, too. He was Jack. Of course he did.
“I should be next,” he said, shrugging his shoulders under that familiar coat. “Better to get back soon. You know Torchwood. Always another problem ready to spring around the corner. That team of mine, they couldn’t get along without me.” He flashed a grin of perfectly white teeth. “Well, they could- I just wouldn’t want them to.”
“I’m glad,” she said warmly. “That you’ve got them, that you’re defending the earth-” she hesitated.
“That I’m alive?” he finished, tilting his head almost ruefully.
Rose didn’t flinch, but she wanted to. Part of her wanted to be sorry because she knew what he’d been through, but having him standing here in front of her, strong and handsome and so very Jack, made an apology impossible. It would have been a lie. She wasn’t sorry she’d brought him back. “Yeah,” she said. “Especially that. It’s been so good to see you again, Jack. Even if I saw you a bit more than you saw me.”
He threw back his head, laughing a little. “Wouldn’t count on that,” he said, eyes dancing. “Did I mention, I saw you take the bronze at your under-sevens gymnastics. That midget who took the silver didn’t have half so cute a handspring as you.”
“You didn’t,” she said, grinning and shoving his chest. “Jack! What else did you see?”
“All good things,” he said. Rose wasn’t appeased, since she was certain Jack had a looser definition of good things than she did, but she didn’t prod as his grin sobered. “I waited a long time to catch up with you, Rose.” He didn’t need to say and him. They both knew that. “And here we go again, saying good-bye.”
She fought to keep her lip from trembling. She’d struggled for so long to get here and so had he and neither of them would or could stay. “Let’s not, then,” she said. “I’ll see you, Jack.”
“Not if I see you first,” he said, smiling contagiously, and his eyes were too blue to tell if there was water in them. “Keep fighting, Rose Tyler. I’ll be fighting for you.” Casually, he glanced over his shoulder, nodding to Martha and managing to incline his head in the blue-suit Doctor’s direction too. “And have a little fun for me, will you?” he said, sotto voce, and planted a kiss smack on her lips before she could react.
He pulled back, her face cupped in his hands for a moment, maybe imprinting her on his memory the way she was memorizing Captain Jack Harkness, hoping this wasn’t the very last time she’d be seeing him.
Even though she knew it was.
He turned and she watched his coat sweep away. Her pinstripes Doctor had come back in without her noticing and was watching her with closed-off eyes. With a nod, the Doctor let Donna send the TARDIS to Cardiff, just a little jump, and Jack gathered Martha under his arm. Pausing on the ramp, Jack looked over his shoulder, a sweep of eyes that took in all of the Control Room, and with a grin for Rose, he pushed open the doors and walked out of her life.
She looked over towards Donna, wanting a better chance to talk to her, to try to explain, but Donna was already dialing a number on her phone. A superphone, undoubtedly, thought Rose, strolling to the heart of the TARDIS, reveling in the way her footsteps sounded against the grating of its floor. She reached out towards its familiar levers and buttons, let the different surfaces skim her skin. Anywhere in time and space, if the pilot knew what he or she was doing, and even if it wasn’t quite where they’d meant to go it was always the right place. So much better and so much less lonely than careening from universe to universe without any blue walls around her.
"Hello."
It was the Doctor's voice. Rose stopped running her hand lightly over the TARDIS' controls and looked over her shoulder, unable to keep from smiling. Her smile stilled as she turned. It was the Doctor's grin too, and his wave, fingers twiddling on the Doctor's hand. But it was the other man looking at her, the new new new Doctor in his blue suit.
"Rose Tyler," he added, rocking back on his heels a bit. Her name rolled off his lips a touch more crisply, maybe an extra trill to the Rs as well. She couldn't help but stare at his waving hand, and he couldn't help but notice with one swift glance between her gaze and the hand it was locked on. His fingers stopped twiddling and he lowered his right hand slowly, his tongue poking out his cheek as he waited for her to say something.
The hand he'd lost on Christmas, so long ago now and still yesterday, too. The hand this Doctor had somehow sprouted from. Or sprouted from Donna- Rose knew she'd come a long way from her shopgirl days and could manage a solid pseudo-technobabble, but that didn't mean she had a handle on the particularities of instantaneous cross-species biological meta-crisis.
Rose steeled herself and met his eyes. She knew his eyebrows, those sideburns, those very proportional ears. And part of her wanted to simply reach out and cup his face, because she’d come so far for him and there was so much she’d wanted to say and she knew but that left a sour taste in her mouth too, like when Shareen or another school friend would push to set her up with some bloke, whatever her say in the matter. "Hello," she said, trying to match his initial cheer. "Doctor?"
"Oh yes," he said, bobbing his head and giving her that impossibly infectious grin.
Rose glanced behind her at the closed wood doors, then tilted her head and squinted at the Doctor saying hello as if he was burning too bright. "So, you're something like a clone, yeah?"
"Me? A clone?" he said, aghast. "A clone? Nahh. Not anymore than I'm- say- a Slitheen." He waited to see her reaction, then winked. "Remember that, yeah?"
Her heart jumped. She'd missed that wink. He kept winking at her, this blue-suit Doctor. Rose wondered if he knew, too. She couldn't help but think of this Doctor as Donna's, and of hers as outside. But she knew better. And that wink was for her. "'Course I remember," said Rose, bemused and drifting closer. "Sort of surprised you do."
"Oh but I remember everything," he said, tapping a finger against his head. "Bit like last time. But with two old heads instead of one new one. And a body for each, which I rather think is a stroke of good luck."
Rose decidedly agreed. "Suit for each too," she said, nodding at his outfit. "Blue's new."
"Newer, actually," he said. "This suit's had a little wear and tear- more than this body, frankly. Wore blue a lot, after- well, with Martha- d'you like Martha?- quite a girl, that Martha Jones," he said, and Rose, who really rather had liked Martha, detested her for a split-second, just from the way he lifted his eyebrows. "Her and me and this suit, we got around. Met Shakespeare in this suit- ooh, you'd like Shakespeare, Rose. Genius. But bad breath. Still, name like yours, bet he'd write you a sonnet too. And I got old in this suit- just for a bit... I don't look good old," he said, halting suddenly and with a peculiar expression on his face. "So- what do you think?"
She rested her tongue against the back of her teeth, fighting a grin as she studied him. "About the suit?" she said, and this Doctor, seeming almost winded, nodded as she looked him up and down. "It'll do," she said critically, and then her smile got loose and escaped towards her ears. "Matches the TARDIS!"
"Doesn't it just," he said, looking pleased and reaching with both hands as if to tug on something at his neck. He frowned a little at finding nothing. "Could use a tie. But you!" he said, looking her over and beaming proudly. "You, Rose Tyler- you're still fantastic."
She paused a moment, almost caught her breath. "Not brilliant?"
"Also brilliant," he said, without hesitation. "Absolutely brilliant. Smashingly brilliant, fantastically brilliant- ooh," he said, very brown eyes lighting. "I like that. Quite like that. Two in one. Though- bit mouthy?"
"Meh," she said, shrugging, and met his dancing eyes and they both broke out laughing. He tilted his head back and she bent forward, hair falling into her face and it was old times again. Everything seemed funny no matter how simple because here they were, all alright, and Earth safe again for today and Rose was back on the TARDIS if just for the moment. And it really was unbearably laughable in itself having two- let alone essentially three- Doctors running about. Rose thought then about the Doctor outside, in his brown pinstriped suit exactly like it had when he'd burned a sun to say good-bye to her at Bad Wolf Bay and found herself feeling uncomfortable. Her laugh trailed off and she straightened her shoulders, still smiling.
"You're still you, too," she said, marveling.
"Still me."
Fade Out
To Be Continued in Episode Three
Written by: treblebeth, onlylyin, and ljg_fanfic
Part Two
One day, without trying at all, it was different.
That day she shifted and it all shifted. She was in the right universe and it was the right time and the world crumbling around her was the right one. He was close and she could feel it all rushing through her, the way the timelines were all wrapping together, twisting towards an end. Either they win or they lose. She knew how both options turned out, and that was enough weight that she didn’t need the gun anymore.
Maybe her knowledge could be the weight that loaded the dice for a win.
She met Donna’s family, saved them for all the times Donna had saved the Doctor, and asked them for luck she wanted but didn’t need. She could feel it bubbling up in her before the last jump, because the walls were tumbled and she knew he was going to be on the other side of that last starburst of blue light. Her last jump, taking her to where she was supposed to end up in the first place- to the Doctor, her brown pinstripes Doctor, and oh she knew he’d run to her if he could.
When she finally saw him, it was beautiful and slow-motion and radiant. Because she had been lost in the knowing of what was to come, and seeing him let her forget it for a little while. She wondered if the same was true for him.
When he fell, her whole body shook. In her head, she could hear accusations on replay, This is how the universe ends. This is the world in which we fail, because he was running to me. This is how the universe ends, for the want of a hug…
She couldn’t catch her breath from the moment he started changing, the ache running down into her lungs and all she could say was “But you can’t,” because she’d seen a thousand could-be’s but never this, not a new Doctor, not now or here or even ever for her.
Then everything went quiet again when she got her hug and she was hugging him for the fate of the universe, for every time she had to stand back and watch. She was hugging him knowing that somehow, part of this was for her. She remembered she loved presents. She wasn’t sure how she forgot.
After that she tried not to panic every time something went wrong, since she didn’t really know what wrong was anyway.
The Doctor, her Doctor even after his regeneration, knew that something had happened, was happening, to her. “Rose, you’ve been in a parallel world, that world is running ahead of this universe. You’ve seen the future. What was it?” His question shocked her. She never thought he would ask, he who was trained so thoroughly in the ways of time loops and paradox. Besides, he’d always hated spoilers.
She didn’t know what she could tell. There is so much to say and not to say. She found it hard to look at Donna; she couldn’t count the number of times she had seen this woman be extraordinary. But in her travels, Rose had heard the song of the Doctor-Donna, seen it humming through vibrating timelines. She might not have the lyrics down but she didn’t have to guess the ending.
So she glossed things over, exaggerated a couple things as she rushed through what she decided she could say. Focusing on the darkness, she explained the stars going out, and the dimension cannon. She waited for the lecture about fracturing time and space, flashing on memories of broken glass littering the Torchwood offices at Canary Wharf.
Instead he grinned at her with such unabashed glee that she wrapped herself up in it, trying to ignore the hint of desperation that made her realize she needed that lecture. She missed it.
She worried that he was a little too far fallen as it was.
Later, as his TARDIS slipped away with Donna locked inside, she put her hand in his, fighting her panic by stroking her thumb over his knuckles. She tried to squeeze his hand hard enough to keep him standing still, and managed not to pull back when he squeezed back so hard his nails left a pattern across her skin.
The sound of gunshots spun her around, Jack shooting wildly at the Dalek. Insane - he knew that it was useless. When the Dalek blasted him, she rushed over to him, cradling his head in her hands and kissing his cheek again. She squeezed him twice on the arm and they both remembered, his eyes flaring before they fluttered shut.
She realized that Davros was the one who would inadvertently pick the Doctor back up from where he had fallen, reinventing him once again. The Destroyer of Worlds. So she spent the rest of her time saving the universe as the necessary bystander, a bystander but also the witness. To remind him of the Time Lord he was and the man he had become. In that split second when all seemed lost, Rose saw the Doctor harden. She got another glimpse of his soul, and she wished he only had a better view.
In that split second, she knew which way was up and which way was right, and she loved him so completely she had to look away.
Only to find herself looking at the TARDIS, the grinding hum of its engines coming back for all of them, Martha Jones, Mickey, Sarah Jane, Jack, her mother, the Doctor, her and the universe.
She loved that blue box.
The doors opened and at first there was only blinding light and then him. Standing as their champion even when he was standing beside her, too.
The other Doctor, her Doctor she thought with a start, came flying out of the perfectly-intact TARDIS brandishing something suspiciously gun-like. She studied him, watched him fumble and recover, saw Donna rise with pride and half-remembered envy of what Time felt like burning behind human eyes. She watched the three Doctors together save the Whole Fucking Universe. Watched, smiling and laughing and crying, committing every word and gesture into her memory.
She watched the Doctor in the blue suit decide to save the universe in a way she’d never witnessed him choosing before- though she knew he had, once. Wiping out the Daleks. Nothing she hadn’t done herself once.
She didn’t say a word to stop him.
At first she didn’t know what to say to this Doctor at all.
She stayed beside the one she had always known, close enough to smell the scent of his hair and the smoke that had seeped into his brown pinstripes suit when he’d gone back for Davros, to feel his laugh resonate in her chest when they shared their inside jokes. To catch each last smile as they all flew the Earth home.
She’d seen him happy before. But for a moment, everyone clustered and clutching each other and pounding each other’s backs, his face was glowing. He was home.
Rose would picture him like that in her heart forever.
And then it was over. All except the good-byes
He loved the hugs; he’d always loved the hugs. She could see him tuck them all away against his hearts. Once the Earth was in her proper place, he reached out and threw the lever that took them into the vortex. Rose watched his other self raise a brow and send him a look.
Whatever the message was, Donna got it, too. She laid her hand on the blue-coated Doctor’s sleeve and nodded toward the kitchen. “Alright, you lot,” she said, her smile real and warm. “Let’s have a bit of a meet-n-greet, yeah?” She looped one arm in Mickey’s and one in Jackie’s. “Come on, Space-Boy!” she threw over her shoulder as she breezed toward the kitchen. The blue-suit Doctor crooked one elbow at Sarah Jane, the other elbow at Martha and, with a wink at Rose, swept past.
Rose eyed the Doctor and he inhaled sharply, looking up and away and then back, flicking his gaze between her and Jack. “Fancy a bit of a chat?”
Jack nodded slowly, “Yeah,” he drawled.
“Well, then.” The Doctor looked at her and she realized that Jack had her hand firmly in his. For just a moment, she thought that the Doctor knew, that he could see her memories, the secrets that she kept. But his face softened as he looked at her.
He didn’t know. That thought amazed her. She knew what would happen, and the Doctor didn’t. He looked at her and Jack’s linked fingers, swallowed and turned, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I was thinking we’d have tea in the garden.”
The way to the garden was a left, a left and another left. Very funny, she thought toward the TARDIS. The door to the garden was open and Rose could smell growing things.
The TARDIS had it all ready, a bright spring afternoon and a little gazebo all tricked out with twining roses and a silver tea service. But there was Rose’s favorite mug, the one with the crack in it, and Jack’s that he’d got from that potter he’d spent the week with on Hellinsport, and the mug that Rose had given her first Doctor that was the exact shade of blue as his eyes.
She had to take a breath when he saw those mugs sitting so comfortably together side-by-side. They all paused on the gazebo steps, just looking.
Jack put a hand to the Doctor’s shoulder and the Doctor twitched, practically leaping up the remaining steps. Rose came up the steps, sat down and began to pour. “No coffee, Jack,” she murmured, handing him his mug. “You’ll have to settle.” Bending her head over the Doctor’s mug, she added cream and sugar, looked up at the Doctor, and stirred in another sugar.
Jack considered her over his mug. She considered him back.
Sudden unshed tears filled her eyes and she looked down. She took a long, slow breath, placed her mug carefully back on the table and folded her hands neatly in her lap. When she looked up, her eyes were clear and her lips creased into a small, sad smile. She'd gotten roaring drunk that night, the night that she and Donna had watched the sky burn. “I've had tea with you twice this week, Jack." She blinked, remembering the smell, the cold park bench and Donna's confused sorrow for a man she didn't know. "I think I might float away if I have another.”
He blinked. “Third time’s the charm, they say.” She watched Jack take a long, slow sip from his mug, questions swirling behind his eyes. “Long week?”
Rose nodded. “Yeah. I kept running into you. ‘Though, come to think of it, it’s probably been more than a week. It gets all mixed up.” She sighed and rubbed her forehead.
“I remember. There was this one time I got stuck in a loop…But not like you. I mean, I was in the same dimension.” He sipped his tea, frowning. “I think.”
“I,” she started to blurt out and stopped herself, turning her eyes to the Doctor and then back to him, “I work at Torchwood, the one in my uni…that is, the other universe … I… I work for Torchwood Three, now, in Cardiff.”
He shook his head. “Torchwood. Well. Of course you do.”
She looked away again. “You say that,” her fingers twisted together and she stilled them, “you say it just like that.” She met his eyes. “Every time.”
He hid his own face in his mug and then brought it down, cradling the warmth of it in his hands. “How long has it been for you?”
“Four years, I suppose. Give or take.” She turned to the Doctor. “Been a bit longer for you, hasn’t it, Jack?”
He’d never told her, never let her share the burden of that weight, that very particular pain of companions left behind. A part of her knew that the young girl who she’d been wouldn’t have understood. He didn’t tell her because sometimes it was easier to just take the blame. She watched his eyes go from closed-off to loving to pained to distant in a matter of seconds.
Quite a trick, that.
Jack laid his hand on the Doctor’s knee. “Hey,” he said with a squeeze, asking for attention, “this is me; this is Rose.” Jack had been watching the Doctor’s eyes, too. “Damn,” he said quietly, “how can you do that? You’re so … so …”
“Alien?”
Rose thought for just a moment that Jack might toss his tea in the Doctor’s face. Instead, he sat back and sighed. “I was going to say repressed.”
The Doctor smiled, dark and ironic at first, but then easing into something lighter. “Repressed?” He shook his head. “Really, Jack.”
Rose looked back and forth between the two men. The mood had shifted, and she was glad. “Aw,” she chuckled, “don’t tell me I’ve been missin’ all the good stuff?”
“Good stuff?” Jack set his hand in his chin and studied the Doctor. “Intense, maybe. Definitely traumatic. And, well, life-altering. But good?”
The Doctor raised his brows. “It wasn’t good for you?”
She lost it, then, her laugh catching her by surprise. She met the Doctor’s eyes, saw the twinkle of manic glee that always lurked right below the surface, and let herself go, bending forward in her laugh. She stood, still chuckling, and without a word, took their hands and pulled them down the steps and into the tall grass.
Plopping herself down on the warm ground, she yanked them down, one on each side of her, and looked up into the sky. After a moment, she pointed. “Look,” she waved her fingers, “that one there! A dragon, yeah?”
The Doctor scrunched his nose. “A dragon? But where’s its hind legs?”
“Charkoloo Six,” Jack nodded. “Remember those fellas that had us pinned on that island?”
“Oh,” the Doctor agreed, “yes!”
“And that one there,” Rose pointed, “’S like those cat-horse things on Veeblin….”
Much later, Rose watched Donna smile and brush the grass from his hair. She gathered that last, final image into her heart, as the Doctor held open the TARDIS door for Sarah Jane, his eyes flicking once towards her and Jack before he stepped out.
Martha was hugging the blue-suit Doctor fiercely; Rose dismissed the quick pang of possessiveness at the sight as utterly inappropriate. Jack hadn’t missed her glance. When he nudged her, his expression was amused, hiding the strain she knew was there.
He knew, too. He was Jack. Of course he did.
“I should be next,” he said, shrugging his shoulders under that familiar coat. “Better to get back soon. You know Torchwood. Always another problem ready to spring around the corner. That team of mine, they couldn’t get along without me.” He flashed a grin of perfectly white teeth. “Well, they could- I just wouldn’t want them to.”
“I’m glad,” she said warmly. “That you’ve got them, that you’re defending the earth-” she hesitated.
“That I’m alive?” he finished, tilting his head almost ruefully.
Rose didn’t flinch, but she wanted to. Part of her wanted to be sorry because she knew what he’d been through, but having him standing here in front of her, strong and handsome and so very Jack, made an apology impossible. It would have been a lie. She wasn’t sorry she’d brought him back. “Yeah,” she said. “Especially that. It’s been so good to see you again, Jack. Even if I saw you a bit more than you saw me.”
He threw back his head, laughing a little. “Wouldn’t count on that,” he said, eyes dancing. “Did I mention, I saw you take the bronze at your under-sevens gymnastics. That midget who took the silver didn’t have half so cute a handspring as you.”
“You didn’t,” she said, grinning and shoving his chest. “Jack! What else did you see?”
“All good things,” he said. Rose wasn’t appeased, since she was certain Jack had a looser definition of good things than she did, but she didn’t prod as his grin sobered. “I waited a long time to catch up with you, Rose.” He didn’t need to say and him. They both knew that. “And here we go again, saying good-bye.”
She fought to keep her lip from trembling. She’d struggled for so long to get here and so had he and neither of them would or could stay. “Let’s not, then,” she said. “I’ll see you, Jack.”
“Not if I see you first,” he said, smiling contagiously, and his eyes were too blue to tell if there was water in them. “Keep fighting, Rose Tyler. I’ll be fighting for you.” Casually, he glanced over his shoulder, nodding to Martha and managing to incline his head in the blue-suit Doctor’s direction too. “And have a little fun for me, will you?” he said, sotto voce, and planted a kiss smack on her lips before she could react.
He pulled back, her face cupped in his hands for a moment, maybe imprinting her on his memory the way she was memorizing Captain Jack Harkness, hoping this wasn’t the very last time she’d be seeing him.
Even though she knew it was.
He turned and she watched his coat sweep away. Her pinstripes Doctor had come back in without her noticing and was watching her with closed-off eyes. With a nod, the Doctor let Donna send the TARDIS to Cardiff, just a little jump, and Jack gathered Martha under his arm. Pausing on the ramp, Jack looked over his shoulder, a sweep of eyes that took in all of the Control Room, and with a grin for Rose, he pushed open the doors and walked out of her life.
She looked over towards Donna, wanting a better chance to talk to her, to try to explain, but Donna was already dialing a number on her phone. A superphone, undoubtedly, thought Rose, strolling to the heart of the TARDIS, reveling in the way her footsteps sounded against the grating of its floor. She reached out towards its familiar levers and buttons, let the different surfaces skim her skin. Anywhere in time and space, if the pilot knew what he or she was doing, and even if it wasn’t quite where they’d meant to go it was always the right place. So much better and so much less lonely than careening from universe to universe without any blue walls around her.
"Hello."
It was the Doctor's voice. Rose stopped running her hand lightly over the TARDIS' controls and looked over her shoulder, unable to keep from smiling. Her smile stilled as she turned. It was the Doctor's grin too, and his wave, fingers twiddling on the Doctor's hand. But it was the other man looking at her, the new new new Doctor in his blue suit.
"Rose Tyler," he added, rocking back on his heels a bit. Her name rolled off his lips a touch more crisply, maybe an extra trill to the Rs as well. She couldn't help but stare at his waving hand, and he couldn't help but notice with one swift glance between her gaze and the hand it was locked on. His fingers stopped twiddling and he lowered his right hand slowly, his tongue poking out his cheek as he waited for her to say something.
The hand he'd lost on Christmas, so long ago now and still yesterday, too. The hand this Doctor had somehow sprouted from. Or sprouted from Donna- Rose knew she'd come a long way from her shopgirl days and could manage a solid pseudo-technobabble, but that didn't mean she had a handle on the particularities of instantaneous cross-species biological meta-crisis.
Rose steeled herself and met his eyes. She knew his eyebrows, those sideburns, those very proportional ears. And part of her wanted to simply reach out and cup his face, because she’d come so far for him and there was so much she’d wanted to say and she knew but that left a sour taste in her mouth too, like when Shareen or another school friend would push to set her up with some bloke, whatever her say in the matter. "Hello," she said, trying to match his initial cheer. "Doctor?"
"Oh yes," he said, bobbing his head and giving her that impossibly infectious grin.
Rose glanced behind her at the closed wood doors, then tilted her head and squinted at the Doctor saying hello as if he was burning too bright. "So, you're something like a clone, yeah?"
"Me? A clone?" he said, aghast. "A clone? Nahh. Not anymore than I'm- say- a Slitheen." He waited to see her reaction, then winked. "Remember that, yeah?"
Her heart jumped. She'd missed that wink. He kept winking at her, this blue-suit Doctor. Rose wondered if he knew, too. She couldn't help but think of this Doctor as Donna's, and of hers as outside. But she knew better. And that wink was for her. "'Course I remember," said Rose, bemused and drifting closer. "Sort of surprised you do."
"Oh but I remember everything," he said, tapping a finger against his head. "Bit like last time. But with two old heads instead of one new one. And a body for each, which I rather think is a stroke of good luck."
Rose decidedly agreed. "Suit for each too," she said, nodding at his outfit. "Blue's new."
"Newer, actually," he said. "This suit's had a little wear and tear- more than this body, frankly. Wore blue a lot, after- well, with Martha- d'you like Martha?- quite a girl, that Martha Jones," he said, and Rose, who really rather had liked Martha, detested her for a split-second, just from the way he lifted his eyebrows. "Her and me and this suit, we got around. Met Shakespeare in this suit- ooh, you'd like Shakespeare, Rose. Genius. But bad breath. Still, name like yours, bet he'd write you a sonnet too. And I got old in this suit- just for a bit... I don't look good old," he said, halting suddenly and with a peculiar expression on his face. "So- what do you think?"
She rested her tongue against the back of her teeth, fighting a grin as she studied him. "About the suit?" she said, and this Doctor, seeming almost winded, nodded as she looked him up and down. "It'll do," she said critically, and then her smile got loose and escaped towards her ears. "Matches the TARDIS!"
"Doesn't it just," he said, looking pleased and reaching with both hands as if to tug on something at his neck. He frowned a little at finding nothing. "Could use a tie. But you!" he said, looking her over and beaming proudly. "You, Rose Tyler- you're still fantastic."
She paused a moment, almost caught her breath. "Not brilliant?"
"Also brilliant," he said, without hesitation. "Absolutely brilliant. Smashingly brilliant, fantastically brilliant- ooh," he said, very brown eyes lighting. "I like that. Quite like that. Two in one. Though- bit mouthy?"
"Meh," she said, shrugging, and met his dancing eyes and they both broke out laughing. He tilted his head back and she bent forward, hair falling into her face and it was old times again. Everything seemed funny no matter how simple because here they were, all alright, and Earth safe again for today and Rose was back on the TARDIS if just for the moment. And it really was unbearably laughable in itself having two- let alone essentially three- Doctors running about. Rose thought then about the Doctor outside, in his brown pinstriped suit exactly like it had when he'd burned a sun to say good-bye to her at Bad Wolf Bay and found herself feeling uncomfortable. Her laugh trailed off and she straightened her shoulders, still smiling.
"You're still you, too," she said, marveling.
"Still me."
Fade Out
To Be Continued in Episode Three