Fic: Journey Into Night 5/11 + Epilogue
Title: Journey Into Night
Author: Kaethel (kae-nine)
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, eventually Ten/Jack/Rose
Rated: M
Warnings: explicit OT3 content, character death in the second chapter (none of the main three characters)
Spoilers: Nothing beyond DW’s Journey’s End. Small mention of Torchwood’s Exit Wounds.
Summary: He’s got the biggest family in the universe - but he keeps pushing them away.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who characters and episodes belong to the BBC; I’m just borrowing them for some shameless bit of fun. ;)
A/N: This story wouldn’t ever have left the realms of my hard drive without wendymr’s and dark_aegis’ huge help throughout the writing process. They’ve been the best BRs, cheerleaders, supporters, and brainstormers that I could ever hope for. Many thanks also go to both yamx and botanee, who brainstormed several scenes with me and were always ever so encouraging and helpful. The story is now complete, so I will be posting a new chapter about twice a week.
Chapter 1: Mistakes and Memories | Chapter 2: Loss and Longing | Chapter 3: Woe and Weakness | Chapter 4: Culpability and Consequences
- Chapter 5 -
Debt and Delays
Cardiff was no different from every other city in the world on the day after the Earth moved. Improvised celebrations, concerts and fireworks were taking place throughout the centre and the Bay. People gathered outside to look at the sky, disbelief written on their face after the past twenty-four hours’ nightmare. The Earth was back where it belonged, and the Daleks were no more.
The ground was strewn with debris, bits of dalekanium and burnt-out shells that had once been cars, but the crowd thronging into the streets concealed scars that no-one felt ready to face yet. The city would need time to mourn its dead and rebuild what the war had destroyed, but right now, the joy of being alive prevailed.
Jack strolled along the sea front, waving a hand at the lovely waitress tending to patrons at the Bosphorus, shouting a greeting to the equally handsome - and uniformed - sailor mooring his boat to one of the crowded pontoons.
Passing under the bridge and onto Roald Dahl Plass, he closed his eyes and breathed in the humid air from the bay, appreciating for the first time the drizzle that whipped at his face. While the joy of being alive was all very relative to him, today, just today, he shared everyone’s happiness.
He walked into the Hub, glad for the silence that greeted him inside. In her eagerness to see Tom again, Martha had taken the first train back to London. Mickey had needed some time to himself to rediscover a universe he’d left a few years earlier. Gwen and Rhys were probably out there somewhere, celebrating their narrow escape. Ianto might even have gone to his sister’s for the occasion.
Papers, hardware and shattered glass smattered the floor, silent witnesses to the Earth’s ride back to the solar system.
Ignoring the mess, Jack went to his office and poured himself a glass of unidentified alcohol. It was a bottle that Owen had found near the Rift; once the team had seen Jack drink a few drops without dying, they’d all wanted to have a taste of the strange mixture that smelled like vodka, tasted like port, and never made you drunk.
He was pouring himself a second glass when he heard the familiar thrumming of the TARDIS materialisation sequence.
There was a time when that sound would have made him bounce to his feet and run out towards the Doctor’s ship. Then again, there was a time when he’d stopped hoping he’d ever hear that sound again. Not any more, though. The Doctor accepted his immortality and, while he didn’t drop by for tea or send Christmas postcards, Jack knew that he could now count on his friend not to run away from him.
This was still an unexpected visit, so close to their last goodbye. It’d been no more than an hour since the Doctor had - once more - disabled his teleport. And did he really believe that Jack couldn’t fix it again? So what brought him back here now?
He waited for a couple of minutes, confident that he’d soon see the freckled face of the Doctor peer through the doorway.
“Missed me already?” he called when he heard footsteps outside his office.
The door swung open, and the Doctor stepped in, Rose in tow.
“I swear it wasn’t my fault! Come on, I can’t have had time to make a mess yet, can I? Or do you really think I’m that good?”
“I did wonder how much trouble you could get into while I was gone,” the Doctor shot back, an amused smile playing about his lips. “Want to tell me now or are you waiting for me to find out?”
Jack laughed and got to his feet, circling around the desk to stand before his friends.
That was a sight he thought he’d never see again: the Doctor and Rose Tyler, here, with him. While this brown-eyed regeneration didn’t wear leather, there was something strangely familiar about seeing the two of them together.
“Look who’s talking! Give me at least a couple of hours, Doctor. I’m not as good a trouble-magnet as you are! It’s good to see you,” he said, turning his attention to Rose and opening his arms for her. “Come here.”
He pulled her against him, squeezing her tight. The raging battle they’d fought had given little opportunity to get reacquainted with her, and he hadn’t wanted to intrude on her reunion with the Doctor. But holding her now, he was reminded of the carefree time they’d spent together, the three of them, running headfirst into danger, supporting each other through the worst situations, and always pulling through mostly unscathed. It’d been over a century for him, and yet it felt like yesterday.
Rose drew away from him then, interrupting his thoughts when she swatted his chest.
“Hey! What’s that for?”
“I thought you were dead!” she said, setting her hands on his waist. “When that Dalek shot you, I saw it happen! I saw you collapse and… you’re still alive! How come you’re still alive?”
She pulled him back to her and buried her face in his neck. Jack, wide-eyed, looked towards the Doctor, who lowered his head in undisguised embarrassment and refused to meet his gaze.
She didn’t know. He hadn’t told her. He’d run away from him on Satellite Five, taking Rose with him, but he hadn’t told her why they were leaving him behind.
Had she asked about him? Had he lied? Told her he was dead? Or worse, pretended that leaving them both was his idea?
A loud crashing startled him out of his musings. The Doctor had grabbed a couple of alien artefacts from the shelves behind Jack’s desk, obviously unaware that he’d dropped two grand’s worth of computer hardware to the floor in the process.
“The fiftieth Anteglobe! Oh, that is…”
One hand lifted the smooth, phosphorescent item from its plinth while the other fished into his suit pocket for his glasses. His specs perched on the bridge of his nose, he inspected the large ball of light.
“I thought they’d all been destroyed in the fall of Bazilania. How did you get one of these?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, sudden interest in another object making him forget all about the globe. With a gasp betraying his puzzlement, he grabbed the small wooden box that lay on the top shelf. He examined it, undid the clasp, and when he lifted the lid, a small puff of white smoke dissipated into the air.
“Antinea’s breath.” He turned towards Jack, a look of utter fascination on his face. “Where did you find this?”
“The Rift spits out all sorts of things now and again. Gwen found that box right outside the Hub a few weeks ago. We hadn’t figured out what it was yet.”
“It’s a religious artefact from the Sandocan civilisation, but Jack… that’s impossible!”
“Sandocan?”
“A solar system right on the edge of the Gho Chan Galaxy. Five planets that got burnt when…” He trailed off, a faraway look on his face. “During the Time War.”
“Oh.”
“Sandocans would have one in each home, sort of like Romans with their House Gods.”
The Doctor put the box back onto the shelf and frowned at the item next to it. “Now, this…” he said, frowning at the object in his hand and manoeuvring the switch. “Quite unexpected. Twentieth Century Earth, electric device… Jack, what’s a hair-dryer doing here?”
“Oh, that’s Ianto’s.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. Just as well. Jack made a mental note to remind Ianto not to leave his personal gear all over the place in the Hub.
“So where are Donna and the second you, anyway?” Jack asked, hoping to distract the Doctor from rummaging through other Torchwood finds. “Off getting intimately acquainted? Though they’ve already been pretty intimate. Can you have telepathic sex when you share a brain?”
There was no smile to answer him, nor the outraged retort he expected from the Doctor. Just a tug on his sleeve, and the anxious look on Rose’s face.
“Jack, no…”
He frowned, thrown off balance by her urgent whisper and the frantic shake of her head.
Something wasn’t right.
How long had they been away? It had only been an hour for him but, for all he knew, the Doctor and Rose could have explored twelve planets through four different solar systems in the meantime.
When he looked up at the Doctor, his friend averted his eyes and focused once more on the shelf behind the desk. He ran his fingers along the length of an energy converter that the team had scavenged from the Notilian spaceship that had crash-landed in the bay a few months earlier.
Jack expected his friend to tell him off for keeping such a dangerous weapon out in the open, but the Doctor’s silence was enough of a clue that he wasn’t paying attention to what his hands were touching. His face was a mask, and a tiny muscle was twitching in his jaw.
Jack’s gaze shifted back to Rose; her blonde hair, longer than he remembered, her face, free of any of the heavy make-up she used to wear, her clothes the only part of her appearance that hadn’t changed… and the red bag at her feet, the rucksack she would use whenever Jackie coaxed her into spending the night at the flat.
Hang on a minute… rucksack? What the hell… What was Rose doing here with an overnight bag?
“Doctor?” he asked, and saw the Doctor’s fingers tighten around the converter.
Walking over to his friend, he took the item from the Doctor’s hands and put it back onto the shelf.
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
The Doctor sighed, tugged at his ear in what Jack had learned to recognise as a nervous tic. “Oh, I just thought we’d say hello.”
“Well, hello.” Jack waved his hand and rolled his eyes at the same time. “Tell me, though. Why are you here?”
He looked past Jack’s shoulder and over to Rose, sadness and regret visible in his eyes.
“I’d like you to do something for Rose.”
Jack nodded and motioned for them both to sit. Eyeing the still full glass of amber alcohol on the side of his desk, he grabbed a couple of cups. Instant coffee for Rose, tea for the Doctor. The task took a few minutes to complete, punctuated by the Doctor’s impatient drumming of his fingers on the side of his chair.
When he placed the steaming cups onto the desk and sat down again, the Doctor ignored his.
“You’ve got to help Rose get a proper identity,” he said without any further preamble. “Something she can use in this universe without attracting questions she couldn’t answer.”
“A proper identity?”
“I died… I mean, Rose Tyler died at Canary Wharf.” Rose’s voice became a little hoarse as she spoke the last words.
The Doctor reached across his seat to grab her hand, but froze before his fingers touched hers. His arm retreated and fell back against his lap.
“I know,” Jack said, choosing to ignore the aborted gesture of affection.
For over a hundred years, he’d hoped to see her again, filling the emptiness with occasional visits to the Powell Estates during the late eighties.
He’d watched her from afar, careful not to be noticed, as she grew into the wonderful woman who would one day hang from a barrage balloon and land into his arms.
He’d looked for her again after the time the Doctor had abandoned him on Satellite Five, but his next encounter with Rose Tyler then had been in tiny engravings on a memorial stone standing on Trafalgar Square.
Rose Tyler 1986-2007.
The name had stood out among the hundreds carved in the marble monument, and he’d wondered if she’d been with the Doctor then, if he’d seen it happen, if he’d blamed himself for her death.
But she hadn’t been dead.
“Parallel world!” the Doctor had said, beaming in his pretence that this was good news. And Jack had believed him… until he’d confessed that Rose wasn’t just living in a different universe; she was trapped there, and she hadn’t left him by choice.
“I also need a place to stay,” she said, cutting through his recollection and bringing him back to the dark, messy room where his two former travelling companions were asking what looked more and more like the unthinkable.
Frowning, Jack looked from Rose to the Doctor, then to the rucksack still lying by the door. “Sure,” he said, his voice trailing on the word. “Place to stay. Temporary arrangements?”
“Permanent.” It was the Doctor who replied this time. Calmly. Matter-of-factly.
Rose winced, failing to hide her reaction behind a cough.
And the suspicion that had nagged at the back of Jack’s mind in the past few minutes turned into the finality he’d dreaded all along.
The Doctor… the Doctor was abandoning Rose.
The Doctor, who hadn’t been able to hide how miserable he was without Rose, how much it had hurt him to lose her, how much he needed her by his side, was pushing her away, a mere few hours after having found her again.
He was literally dumping her back on Earth. Just like he’d done to Sarah-Jane all those years ago, just like he’d done to him on Satellite Five, just like he would have done to Martha if she hadn’t left first.
In fact, Rose should probably count herself lucky that he wasn’t dropping her off somewhere without as much as goodbye. Small consolation, but he cared enough about her not to leave her completely alone in a universe where she had no family left, no home, and not even a valid identity. In the end, though, it all came down to the same. Rose Tyler wouldn’t be travelling with the Doctor any more. And going by the way her hands were tightening around the cup she was holding, the decision was not hers.
The Doctor was staring at him now, waiting for an answer. Did he really expect him to comply and do as he’d said, no questions asked? Did he know him at all then?
He rose from his chair and stood in front of the Doctor, leaning against the desk and folding his arms across his chest. Intimidating tactics had little chance of working on a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord, but he wasn’t above trying.
“All right. Out with it, now. What happened?”
A pair of wide eyes looked back at him. A mixture of annoyance and stubbornness shone in them as the Doctor held Jack’s stare, and he didn’t reply.
“Come on, Doctor,” he coaxed, his voice softer. “Tell me.”
The Doctor’s lips tightened and he averted his eyes.
Rose spoke then, her words hushed as she told him what had taken place in the TARDIS after their parting - Donna losing her memory; the duplicate Doctor trying to save her, and dying in the process; the absence of regeneration in a half-human Time Lord.
She rushed through her account, keeping it to facts that Jack knew to be no more than the tip of the iceberg. Throughout, the Doctor was looking away, as if shutting himself off from the entire conversation, and chances were that he was.
“Are you going to help us?”
Help them? Help them run away from each other? Help the Doctor cut off bridges with those he cared about? With Rose? Help him mourn alone again?
He’s rubbish on his own, Donna had confided in him as they piloted the TARDIS to tow the Earth back where it belonged. She’d expressed her relief at seeing Rose back at the Doctor’s side, confessing that she’d always wondered what would’ve happened to him and the universe if he’d stayed on his own after he’d lost her.
Jack couldn’t agree more. Without a companion to keep him grounded, the Doctor was a time-bomb. Every loss, every death was a blow to his sanity, and if no-one was there to comfort him…
Rose was staring at him, resignation replaced by hope in her eyes as she asked him to help, and he heard the words she implied but couldn’t say out loud.
Help him. Help the Doctor. Something she couldn’t do but believed that he, Captain Jack Harkness, could figure out.
What did she expect him to do? Tie him down to the chair until he changed his mind? Not that the idea of the Doctor all trussed up in ropes lacked appeal, but... He shook his head, ridding his mind of an image that wasn’t helping him think clearly.
He reviewed a long string of arguments to dissuade the Doctor from a step he was clearly determined to take, ticking them off one by one as each appeared less and less likely to convince him. Pretending that it was impossible for him to create a brand new identity without arousing suspicion wouldn’t fly. Torchwood had complete administrative clearance; they could create a whole army of fake passports without anyone questioning them. Arguing about the lack of accommodation available in Cardiff after the battle, while only half a lie, was unlikely to make the Doctor change his mind as well.
Seconds ticked by, and an idea - wild, mad, crazy - germinated in his mind. It was a gamble, something that, when he voiced it, was likely to make the Doctor scamper off and never come back. But he was running out of time, and there was a chance, a tiny little chance, that by the time the Doctor reached the doorway he’d think of something else. And if he didn’t, then maybe Rose would, or else, once she figured out what he had in mind, she’d find the words to back him up.
He turned away from Rose and their silent exchange, and his eyes fixed upon the Doctor.
“You still owe me one trip, don’t you?”
“One trip?”
Jack nodded. “Through time and space. In the TARDIS.”
“Jack…”
“Come on! The old team, you, me and Rose. Just like old times!”
The Doctor shook his head. “Did you not hear what I said?”
There was a disapproving frown on his face, as well as exasperation in his voice. When he’d decided to bring Rose to Cardiff, he clearly hadn’t expected to gain an extra companion on his ship. More than that, he’d been trying to get rid of Rose, his last companion, the one person for whom he’d ever come close to expressing romantic feelings - though he’d probably deny it all if asked. He was distancing himself from everyone who knew and cared about him. The Doctor, so brave in the face of danger, was acting like a coward, running away from Rose just like he’d run away from him at the Game Station, every bit as fast, as desperately, and with every bit as much determination not to come back.
Time to lay his last trump card. The guilt trip, assuming the Doctor could be motivated to feel guilt at all.
“You owe it to me, don’t you?”
Jack was serious now, aware that the Doctor was more than able to bolt from his chair and run back to the safety of the TARDIS, probably make his ship travel all the way to the end of the universe to distance himself from the request.
It was a risk he was willing to take. Rose was worth it. Hell, they were all worth it.
“Well, Doctor?”
***
Chapter 6: Talk and Tinkering
Author: Kaethel (kae-nine)
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, eventually Ten/Jack/Rose
Rated: M
Warnings: explicit OT3 content, character death in the second chapter (none of the main three characters)
Spoilers: Nothing beyond DW’s Journey’s End. Small mention of Torchwood’s Exit Wounds.
Summary: He’s got the biggest family in the universe - but he keeps pushing them away.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who characters and episodes belong to the BBC; I’m just borrowing them for some shameless bit of fun. ;)
A/N: This story wouldn’t ever have left the realms of my hard drive without wendymr’s and dark_aegis’ huge help throughout the writing process. They’ve been the best BRs, cheerleaders, supporters, and brainstormers that I could ever hope for. Many thanks also go to both yamx and botanee, who brainstormed several scenes with me and were always ever so encouraging and helpful. The story is now complete, so I will be posting a new chapter about twice a week.
Chapter 1: Mistakes and Memories | Chapter 2: Loss and Longing | Chapter 3: Woe and Weakness | Chapter 4: Culpability and Consequences
- Chapter 5 -
Debt and Delays
Cardiff was no different from every other city in the world on the day after the Earth moved. Improvised celebrations, concerts and fireworks were taking place throughout the centre and the Bay. People gathered outside to look at the sky, disbelief written on their face after the past twenty-four hours’ nightmare. The Earth was back where it belonged, and the Daleks were no more.
The ground was strewn with debris, bits of dalekanium and burnt-out shells that had once been cars, but the crowd thronging into the streets concealed scars that no-one felt ready to face yet. The city would need time to mourn its dead and rebuild what the war had destroyed, but right now, the joy of being alive prevailed.
Jack strolled along the sea front, waving a hand at the lovely waitress tending to patrons at the Bosphorus, shouting a greeting to the equally handsome - and uniformed - sailor mooring his boat to one of the crowded pontoons.
Passing under the bridge and onto Roald Dahl Plass, he closed his eyes and breathed in the humid air from the bay, appreciating for the first time the drizzle that whipped at his face. While the joy of being alive was all very relative to him, today, just today, he shared everyone’s happiness.
He walked into the Hub, glad for the silence that greeted him inside. In her eagerness to see Tom again, Martha had taken the first train back to London. Mickey had needed some time to himself to rediscover a universe he’d left a few years earlier. Gwen and Rhys were probably out there somewhere, celebrating their narrow escape. Ianto might even have gone to his sister’s for the occasion.
Papers, hardware and shattered glass smattered the floor, silent witnesses to the Earth’s ride back to the solar system.
Ignoring the mess, Jack went to his office and poured himself a glass of unidentified alcohol. It was a bottle that Owen had found near the Rift; once the team had seen Jack drink a few drops without dying, they’d all wanted to have a taste of the strange mixture that smelled like vodka, tasted like port, and never made you drunk.
He was pouring himself a second glass when he heard the familiar thrumming of the TARDIS materialisation sequence.
There was a time when that sound would have made him bounce to his feet and run out towards the Doctor’s ship. Then again, there was a time when he’d stopped hoping he’d ever hear that sound again. Not any more, though. The Doctor accepted his immortality and, while he didn’t drop by for tea or send Christmas postcards, Jack knew that he could now count on his friend not to run away from him.
This was still an unexpected visit, so close to their last goodbye. It’d been no more than an hour since the Doctor had - once more - disabled his teleport. And did he really believe that Jack couldn’t fix it again? So what brought him back here now?
He waited for a couple of minutes, confident that he’d soon see the freckled face of the Doctor peer through the doorway.
“Missed me already?” he called when he heard footsteps outside his office.
The door swung open, and the Doctor stepped in, Rose in tow.
“I swear it wasn’t my fault! Come on, I can’t have had time to make a mess yet, can I? Or do you really think I’m that good?”
“I did wonder how much trouble you could get into while I was gone,” the Doctor shot back, an amused smile playing about his lips. “Want to tell me now or are you waiting for me to find out?”
Jack laughed and got to his feet, circling around the desk to stand before his friends.
That was a sight he thought he’d never see again: the Doctor and Rose Tyler, here, with him. While this brown-eyed regeneration didn’t wear leather, there was something strangely familiar about seeing the two of them together.
“Look who’s talking! Give me at least a couple of hours, Doctor. I’m not as good a trouble-magnet as you are! It’s good to see you,” he said, turning his attention to Rose and opening his arms for her. “Come here.”
He pulled her against him, squeezing her tight. The raging battle they’d fought had given little opportunity to get reacquainted with her, and he hadn’t wanted to intrude on her reunion with the Doctor. But holding her now, he was reminded of the carefree time they’d spent together, the three of them, running headfirst into danger, supporting each other through the worst situations, and always pulling through mostly unscathed. It’d been over a century for him, and yet it felt like yesterday.
Rose drew away from him then, interrupting his thoughts when she swatted his chest.
“Hey! What’s that for?”
“I thought you were dead!” she said, setting her hands on his waist. “When that Dalek shot you, I saw it happen! I saw you collapse and… you’re still alive! How come you’re still alive?”
She pulled him back to her and buried her face in his neck. Jack, wide-eyed, looked towards the Doctor, who lowered his head in undisguised embarrassment and refused to meet his gaze.
She didn’t know. He hadn’t told her. He’d run away from him on Satellite Five, taking Rose with him, but he hadn’t told her why they were leaving him behind.
Had she asked about him? Had he lied? Told her he was dead? Or worse, pretended that leaving them both was his idea?
A loud crashing startled him out of his musings. The Doctor had grabbed a couple of alien artefacts from the shelves behind Jack’s desk, obviously unaware that he’d dropped two grand’s worth of computer hardware to the floor in the process.
“The fiftieth Anteglobe! Oh, that is…”
One hand lifted the smooth, phosphorescent item from its plinth while the other fished into his suit pocket for his glasses. His specs perched on the bridge of his nose, he inspected the large ball of light.
“I thought they’d all been destroyed in the fall of Bazilania. How did you get one of these?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, sudden interest in another object making him forget all about the globe. With a gasp betraying his puzzlement, he grabbed the small wooden box that lay on the top shelf. He examined it, undid the clasp, and when he lifted the lid, a small puff of white smoke dissipated into the air.
“Antinea’s breath.” He turned towards Jack, a look of utter fascination on his face. “Where did you find this?”
“The Rift spits out all sorts of things now and again. Gwen found that box right outside the Hub a few weeks ago. We hadn’t figured out what it was yet.”
“It’s a religious artefact from the Sandocan civilisation, but Jack… that’s impossible!”
“Sandocan?”
“A solar system right on the edge of the Gho Chan Galaxy. Five planets that got burnt when…” He trailed off, a faraway look on his face. “During the Time War.”
“Oh.”
“Sandocans would have one in each home, sort of like Romans with their House Gods.”
The Doctor put the box back onto the shelf and frowned at the item next to it. “Now, this…” he said, frowning at the object in his hand and manoeuvring the switch. “Quite unexpected. Twentieth Century Earth, electric device… Jack, what’s a hair-dryer doing here?”
“Oh, that’s Ianto’s.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. Just as well. Jack made a mental note to remind Ianto not to leave his personal gear all over the place in the Hub.
“So where are Donna and the second you, anyway?” Jack asked, hoping to distract the Doctor from rummaging through other Torchwood finds. “Off getting intimately acquainted? Though they’ve already been pretty intimate. Can you have telepathic sex when you share a brain?”
There was no smile to answer him, nor the outraged retort he expected from the Doctor. Just a tug on his sleeve, and the anxious look on Rose’s face.
“Jack, no…”
He frowned, thrown off balance by her urgent whisper and the frantic shake of her head.
Something wasn’t right.
How long had they been away? It had only been an hour for him but, for all he knew, the Doctor and Rose could have explored twelve planets through four different solar systems in the meantime.
When he looked up at the Doctor, his friend averted his eyes and focused once more on the shelf behind the desk. He ran his fingers along the length of an energy converter that the team had scavenged from the Notilian spaceship that had crash-landed in the bay a few months earlier.
Jack expected his friend to tell him off for keeping such a dangerous weapon out in the open, but the Doctor’s silence was enough of a clue that he wasn’t paying attention to what his hands were touching. His face was a mask, and a tiny muscle was twitching in his jaw.
Jack’s gaze shifted back to Rose; her blonde hair, longer than he remembered, her face, free of any of the heavy make-up she used to wear, her clothes the only part of her appearance that hadn’t changed… and the red bag at her feet, the rucksack she would use whenever Jackie coaxed her into spending the night at the flat.
Hang on a minute… rucksack? What the hell… What was Rose doing here with an overnight bag?
“Doctor?” he asked, and saw the Doctor’s fingers tighten around the converter.
Walking over to his friend, he took the item from the Doctor’s hands and put it back onto the shelf.
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
The Doctor sighed, tugged at his ear in what Jack had learned to recognise as a nervous tic. “Oh, I just thought we’d say hello.”
“Well, hello.” Jack waved his hand and rolled his eyes at the same time. “Tell me, though. Why are you here?”
He looked past Jack’s shoulder and over to Rose, sadness and regret visible in his eyes.
“I’d like you to do something for Rose.”
Jack nodded and motioned for them both to sit. Eyeing the still full glass of amber alcohol on the side of his desk, he grabbed a couple of cups. Instant coffee for Rose, tea for the Doctor. The task took a few minutes to complete, punctuated by the Doctor’s impatient drumming of his fingers on the side of his chair.
When he placed the steaming cups onto the desk and sat down again, the Doctor ignored his.
“You’ve got to help Rose get a proper identity,” he said without any further preamble. “Something she can use in this universe without attracting questions she couldn’t answer.”
“A proper identity?”
“I died… I mean, Rose Tyler died at Canary Wharf.” Rose’s voice became a little hoarse as she spoke the last words.
The Doctor reached across his seat to grab her hand, but froze before his fingers touched hers. His arm retreated and fell back against his lap.
“I know,” Jack said, choosing to ignore the aborted gesture of affection.
For over a hundred years, he’d hoped to see her again, filling the emptiness with occasional visits to the Powell Estates during the late eighties.
He’d watched her from afar, careful not to be noticed, as she grew into the wonderful woman who would one day hang from a barrage balloon and land into his arms.
He’d looked for her again after the time the Doctor had abandoned him on Satellite Five, but his next encounter with Rose Tyler then had been in tiny engravings on a memorial stone standing on Trafalgar Square.
Rose Tyler 1986-2007.
The name had stood out among the hundreds carved in the marble monument, and he’d wondered if she’d been with the Doctor then, if he’d seen it happen, if he’d blamed himself for her death.
But she hadn’t been dead.
“Parallel world!” the Doctor had said, beaming in his pretence that this was good news. And Jack had believed him… until he’d confessed that Rose wasn’t just living in a different universe; she was trapped there, and she hadn’t left him by choice.
“I also need a place to stay,” she said, cutting through his recollection and bringing him back to the dark, messy room where his two former travelling companions were asking what looked more and more like the unthinkable.
Frowning, Jack looked from Rose to the Doctor, then to the rucksack still lying by the door. “Sure,” he said, his voice trailing on the word. “Place to stay. Temporary arrangements?”
“Permanent.” It was the Doctor who replied this time. Calmly. Matter-of-factly.
Rose winced, failing to hide her reaction behind a cough.
And the suspicion that had nagged at the back of Jack’s mind in the past few minutes turned into the finality he’d dreaded all along.
The Doctor… the Doctor was abandoning Rose.
The Doctor, who hadn’t been able to hide how miserable he was without Rose, how much it had hurt him to lose her, how much he needed her by his side, was pushing her away, a mere few hours after having found her again.
He was literally dumping her back on Earth. Just like he’d done to Sarah-Jane all those years ago, just like he’d done to him on Satellite Five, just like he would have done to Martha if she hadn’t left first.
In fact, Rose should probably count herself lucky that he wasn’t dropping her off somewhere without as much as goodbye. Small consolation, but he cared enough about her not to leave her completely alone in a universe where she had no family left, no home, and not even a valid identity. In the end, though, it all came down to the same. Rose Tyler wouldn’t be travelling with the Doctor any more. And going by the way her hands were tightening around the cup she was holding, the decision was not hers.
The Doctor was staring at him now, waiting for an answer. Did he really expect him to comply and do as he’d said, no questions asked? Did he know him at all then?
He rose from his chair and stood in front of the Doctor, leaning against the desk and folding his arms across his chest. Intimidating tactics had little chance of working on a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord, but he wasn’t above trying.
“All right. Out with it, now. What happened?”
A pair of wide eyes looked back at him. A mixture of annoyance and stubbornness shone in them as the Doctor held Jack’s stare, and he didn’t reply.
“Come on, Doctor,” he coaxed, his voice softer. “Tell me.”
The Doctor’s lips tightened and he averted his eyes.
Rose spoke then, her words hushed as she told him what had taken place in the TARDIS after their parting - Donna losing her memory; the duplicate Doctor trying to save her, and dying in the process; the absence of regeneration in a half-human Time Lord.
She rushed through her account, keeping it to facts that Jack knew to be no more than the tip of the iceberg. Throughout, the Doctor was looking away, as if shutting himself off from the entire conversation, and chances were that he was.
“Are you going to help us?”
Help them? Help them run away from each other? Help the Doctor cut off bridges with those he cared about? With Rose? Help him mourn alone again?
He’s rubbish on his own, Donna had confided in him as they piloted the TARDIS to tow the Earth back where it belonged. She’d expressed her relief at seeing Rose back at the Doctor’s side, confessing that she’d always wondered what would’ve happened to him and the universe if he’d stayed on his own after he’d lost her.
Jack couldn’t agree more. Without a companion to keep him grounded, the Doctor was a time-bomb. Every loss, every death was a blow to his sanity, and if no-one was there to comfort him…
Rose was staring at him, resignation replaced by hope in her eyes as she asked him to help, and he heard the words she implied but couldn’t say out loud.
Help him. Help the Doctor. Something she couldn’t do but believed that he, Captain Jack Harkness, could figure out.
What did she expect him to do? Tie him down to the chair until he changed his mind? Not that the idea of the Doctor all trussed up in ropes lacked appeal, but... He shook his head, ridding his mind of an image that wasn’t helping him think clearly.
He reviewed a long string of arguments to dissuade the Doctor from a step he was clearly determined to take, ticking them off one by one as each appeared less and less likely to convince him. Pretending that it was impossible for him to create a brand new identity without arousing suspicion wouldn’t fly. Torchwood had complete administrative clearance; they could create a whole army of fake passports without anyone questioning them. Arguing about the lack of accommodation available in Cardiff after the battle, while only half a lie, was unlikely to make the Doctor change his mind as well.
Seconds ticked by, and an idea - wild, mad, crazy - germinated in his mind. It was a gamble, something that, when he voiced it, was likely to make the Doctor scamper off and never come back. But he was running out of time, and there was a chance, a tiny little chance, that by the time the Doctor reached the doorway he’d think of something else. And if he didn’t, then maybe Rose would, or else, once she figured out what he had in mind, she’d find the words to back him up.
He turned away from Rose and their silent exchange, and his eyes fixed upon the Doctor.
“You still owe me one trip, don’t you?”
“One trip?”
Jack nodded. “Through time and space. In the TARDIS.”
“Jack…”
“Come on! The old team, you, me and Rose. Just like old times!”
The Doctor shook his head. “Did you not hear what I said?”
There was a disapproving frown on his face, as well as exasperation in his voice. When he’d decided to bring Rose to Cardiff, he clearly hadn’t expected to gain an extra companion on his ship. More than that, he’d been trying to get rid of Rose, his last companion, the one person for whom he’d ever come close to expressing romantic feelings - though he’d probably deny it all if asked. He was distancing himself from everyone who knew and cared about him. The Doctor, so brave in the face of danger, was acting like a coward, running away from Rose just like he’d run away from him at the Game Station, every bit as fast, as desperately, and with every bit as much determination not to come back.
Time to lay his last trump card. The guilt trip, assuming the Doctor could be motivated to feel guilt at all.
“You owe it to me, don’t you?”
Jack was serious now, aware that the Doctor was more than able to bolt from his chair and run back to the safety of the TARDIS, probably make his ship travel all the way to the end of the universe to distance himself from the request.
It was a risk he was willing to take. Rose was worth it. Hell, they were all worth it.
“Well, Doctor?”
***
Chapter 6: Talk and Tinkering