Fic: Tomorrow Is a Long Time, part four.
Title: Tomorrow Is a Long Time
Characters: Rose Tyler, the Tenth Doctor, many others.
Rating: Adult for violence, language, and sexual content.
Warnings: None.
Betas: Much thanks to eponymous_rose and earlgreytea68 for their comments, support, and general excellentness.
Spoilers: Through The Eleventh Hour.
Summary: If today was not an endless highway, if tonight was not a crooked trail, if tomorrow wasn't such a long time, then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all. Rose Tyler, on the road to Journey's End. The penultimate chapter.
part one. part two. part three.
++
Travelling has taught her a lot about human nature.
People - particularly human people, but other sorts as well - have certain ways of dealing with deprivation and disaster. After the blast, most everyone she met was dying or dead (fingers clench around a spade that isn’t there, the wet give of the earth and gathering clouds overhead) and even those who had months, maybe years before they felt the effects of the radiation had an inescapable absence in their eyes. A numbness that inured them to the cold.
Her new co-workers at UNIT have different ways of coping.
“Coffee,” says Private Parish. He slouches in his chair and rests his heels on the edge of the break room table. “No doubt about it. I miss coffee the most.”
“Addict,” Private Ellis says, affection in the ironic tilt of her head. She takes a bite from her ration pack and swallows quickly, her lips pinched in disgust. “Tell you what, though. Give me a choice between the finest coffee in Brazil and a half-decent ham sandwich, and I know what I’d pick.”
Another soldier nods. “Ham sandwich,” he says. “Every time.”
Private Parish turns and looks up at her, smiling. “What about you, ma’am? What do you miss the most since the Blast?”
She knows the rules of the game. No mentions of the dead, nothing personal, nothing lost forever. Just trivialities that evoke a nostalgia for an easier life, the life before. Coffee, sandwiches, and scented soap. Telly, chips, and beans on toast.
It’s been so long since she led a normal life.
“Voice-activated phone menus,” she says. “Don’t know what I’ll do for fun without them.” She finishes her water ration with a single gulp, then turns and walks to the door, ignoring their baffled stares.
“Blimey,” she hears Private Ellis say as the door closes behind her. “What planet is she from?”
Outside the warehouse the sky is dawn-pale, but inside the light towers burn brightly as the midday sun. They’ve worked through the night, and still the warehouse bustles with activity. She dodges a pair of soldiers hauling long strips of corrugated steel, and then nearly walks into another pushing a cart of carefully stacked mirrors.
“Careful, ma’am,” the private says as she leaps aside. “Don’t think any of us can afford the bad luck.”
“No kidding,” she mutters, and makes a beeline for the TARDIS. It stands in the middle of the warehouse, the still center in a frenzy of computers and construction. She steps carefully over the bundle of wires and slips through the open door into the dim light of the console room. The grated floor is littered with tools and open files, and she crouches at the top of the stairs, flipping through a few pages of complex diagrams and equations. She understands the theory behind about half of what she sees; she’s pretty sure the other half is wrong.
The room is too quiet.
“Malcolm?” she says. “I left you alone for five minutes. Have you already set yourself on fire?”
A head pops up from a hole in the floor, and Dr. Malcolm Taylor blinks at her through an absurdly large pair of magnifying goggles. “Only a little,” he says, lifting his arm so she can see the singe marks on the sleeve of his lab coat. “I put it out straight away, this time.”
She sits on the floor at the edge of the hole, folding her legs beneath her. “Malcolm, I looked at some of your recent equations-”
He waves his hand dismissively. “Rubbish, all of it. Forget you ever saw them.” He disappears back into the hole and crawls beneath the console. “I certainly have.”
“Why?” she asks, carefully keeping the apprehension from her voice. “Did you learn something new?”
“Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. The answer would depend, I suppose, on your definition of new, which-” There’s an echoing thunk from beneath the console, and he goes suddenly quiet. “Oh. Oh, sweet mother Mary, that was my thumb.”
“Malcolm?”
After a brief, loud struggle with a bundle of wire, he reappears without the goggles, his graying hair a sweaty mess. He holds up his thumb. “Tell me the truth. Is it bad?”
She looks closely, frowning. “Bend it.” He does. She pokes it once, gently, and he winces. She sits back. “I think you’ll live.”
“You’re not just saying that to bolster my spirits?”
“Not my style.” She rests her chin on her hand and looks down into the pit of wires and mislaid tools. He’s got farther than she thought; she left him alone too long. “Malcolm-”
“What I’ve learnt is new to me,” he says, “but not, I think, new to you.” His wire-rimmed glasses slip down his nose, and he pushes them up again before meeting her eyes, his expression unusually grave. “You told us the TARDIS was dying, but it’s not, is it? That’s why all the diagnostics I run go strange - I thought the ship was surviving on low power because it didn’t have any power to spare.” He presses his lips together in a thin line. “I’ve been trying to mend something that doesn’t need mending.”
She swallows. “Yeah.”
He takes a step back, hurt. “You sent it into a dormant state before you let us inside. You don’t trust us.”
“I trust you,” she says, and to her surprise it feels like the truth. “I trust the Brigadier.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “If the TARDIS is working, if you can still use it to travel in time, why do you need us? Why don’t you just take Ms. Noble back to Little Sutton Street yourself?”
She sighs. “Because I’ve seen the moment of intervention, and there was only one of me there. Only one me, and only one TARDIS. Donna has to get there some other way, and she has to go alone.” She rubs her hand over her face, feeling the slow creep of exhaustion. “I can’t risk changing what I saw, Malcolm. There’s too much at stake.”
He gives her a faint smile. “That I understand.” He reaches up and pats her hand. “I won’t tell them,” he says. “You have my word.”
“Won’t tell who what?” Captain Erisa Magambo asks from the door. It takes every bit of self-control Rose possesses to keep from jumping. Her spine goes ramrod straight.
Malcolm gapes at Magambo, fish-like. “Captain! I, I mean we, I mean I didn’t see you there. I mean, obviously, because if I had I would’ve said hello.” He stops, then lifts his hand in a quick wave. “Hello!”
Rose turns and gives Magambo her second most harmless smile. “Good morning, Captain. Back on duty already?”
Magambo salutes. “Ma’am.” She folds her arms behind her back. “Never went off duty, actually. There was a problem with a shipment.”
Rose raises an eyebrow. “Highway bandits or angry mob?”
“Bandits, this time.” She leans against the doorframe, careful not to step fully inside. “Are we making progress with the machine?”
Malcolm makes a soft noise of protest, and Rose winces. “Please don’t call the TARDIS that,” she says. “It can hear you.”
Magambo gives her a sardonic look. “I’m sure it understands that I meant no disrespect.” She turns to Malcolm. “Dr. Taylor, what’s your status?”
He wipes his glasses on the singed sleeve of his lab coat, avoiding her eyes. “Oh, everything’s coming along nicely. If the construction of the lodestone goes to plan we should be ready for testing in two days.”
Magambo nods. “Does that fit your timeline, ma’am?”
Rose shrugs. “It’s not my timeline, Captain - it’s Donna Noble’s. I’m jumping into Leeds tonight to check up on her. If she’s ready to hear what I have to say-”
“Quite.” There’s a sudden burst of sound from the warehouse outside, shouting and the hard percussion of soldiers’ boots against concrete. A corporal appears behind Magambo, breathing fast.
“Intruders, ma’am, at the north entrance,” he says. “We think it’s Torchwood.”
Rose pushes herself to her feet, her hand going to the gun at her hip. “Erisa, they can’t see the TARDIS. If they do-”
“I know.” Magambo turns to the corporal. “Detain the intruders and move them to the secondary site. Keep them away from this area.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hurries off, shouting orders. Rose slams down the stairs to the door and pushes past Magambo.
“You said no one would know the TARDIS was here,” Rose says through her teeth. “You promised me this would be secure.”
Magambo follows her out into the madness of the warehouse. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but yours isn’t the only UNIT operation that might attract the interest of Torchwood’s rag tag team of lunatics.”
Rose stops walking and turns back to the other woman. “You think they’re here about the ATMOS deaths?”
“They do tend to involve themselves in these sorts of situations,” Magambo says. She frowns. “They seem to think they can help, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.”
“Well, they’re in the wrong part of the world if they want to investigate ATMOS. Britain doesn’t even have one of their satellite factories.” Rose runs her hand roughly through her hair. Diet pills and car exhaust, he’d said. First the Adipose and now ATMOS. She could’ve stopped this.
“I can stop this,” an American man shouts from the crowd of UNIT soldiers at the north entrance to the warehouse. He struggles against the men snapping restraints around his wrists. Rose can’t see his face; she moves closer. “Look,” the man says, “we don’t have time for this. Maybe if you morons had pulled your heads out of your collective asses a few months ago when it first came on the market-”
“Oh yes,” another intruder says drolly, “because that’s precisely the sort of delicately-worded argument needed to show them the error of their ways.”
“Sarcasm, Ianto,” a dark-haired woman says. “Not exactly helpful.” Her accent is Welsh and oddly familiar. Rose steps up to the crowd, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Hello there,” she says, smiling. “If you lot are Torchwood, I assume you’re here to steal something?”
Then the American turns towards her, and the smile drops off her face.
“It can’t be,” Captain Jack Harkness whispers, his eyes wide. “Your name was on the list of the dead.”
Rose turns to Magambo, hiding her shaking hands in her trouser pockets. Her voice is steady. “I need an interrogation room. No cameras, no microphones, no interruptions.”
Magambo’s lips press together in a thin line. “Procedure would dictate-”
“I really don’t care, Captain. I want that room now.” She gives Jack a hard look. “Dead or not, I’ll shoot you if you say another word.”
Jack recovers from his astonishment long enough to give her a silent, ironic little bow; the other two intruders stare at him in open disbelief. “Now hold on just a minute,” the dark-haired woman begins, but Jack shakes his head. She stops, her mouth pursed in annoyance.
“Wonderful,” the man called Ianto says with a genteel sigh. “More secrets.”
Rose knows exactly how he feels.
++
They stare at each other across the empty break room table. His wrists are cuffed, resting on the table between them. Her arms are folded, her legs crossed neatly at the knee.
Jack is the first to break the silence. “You look different.”
“You don’t.”
“Well, you know what they say.” He smiles thinly. “The young at heart never grow old.”
She watches him from across the table, the familiar cut of his heavy coat and the solid squareness of his jaw. She looks at him and thinks it could’ve been only yesterday, strolling through the universe with the Doctor’s hand in her right and his in her left. Adoring and adored. “I thought you were dead,” she says.
She sees a brief flicker of emotion behind his eyes before his expression turns hard again. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Mostly because he promised me you weren’t.” She reaches across the table and touches his hand. “I’ve missed you, Jack.”
He leans forward, his eyes as cold as she’s ever seen them. “Listen, sweetheart - whoever you are and whatever you’re doing here, you picked the wrong human to impersonate. I knew Rose Tyler.”
She squeezes his fingers, and he flinches away from her. “Jack-”
“No,” he says. “I’ve seen the records. Rose Tyler died during the Battle of Canary Wharf.”
“Rose Tyler went missing during the Battle of Canary Wharf. Different thing.” She sits back in her chair and gives him an impatient look. “I was trapped in a parallel universe, Jack. It made getting in touch with old friends a little difficult.”
The hard line of his mouth twitches, then relents. “The Cybermen invaded through a breach between our universe and theirs.”
“And lucky girl that I am, I got stuck on the wrong side. I’ve spent the last five years trying to get back.”
His eyes narrow. “To him?”
“No,” she says, and it’s only half a lie. “To stop what’s coming.”
Jack watches her carefully, his face unreadable. “I’m guessing,” he says, “that you don’t mean the Sontarans.”
She blinks. “The who?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” he says. Then, slowly, he grins at her. He grins, and she’s nineteen again, falling into his arms. “Rose Tyler,” he says, savouring the sound of it. He slaps the table and laughs. “Little Rosie Tyler!”
She tries to scowl at him. “I meant it when I said I’d shoot you.”
He stands and holds out his arms. “You minx. Uncuff me so I can hug you.”
She rolls her eyes, still fighting a smile. “So you can grope me, more like.” She pulls the key from her pocket and frees his hands; she barely has time to drop the handcuffs onto the table before he scoops her up in his arms, swinging her in the air. She laughs out loud, fighting the instinct to struggle free. Then his hands wander south, and she gives him a light punch in the ribs. He drops her to her feet, still beaming.
“Rose Tyler,” he says again, holding her by the shoulders. “Rosie Rosie Rose.”
“Yeah,” she says, “I need you to not say my name so much. Or, you know, at all.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Traveling incognito, are we?”
“That, and it’s starting to get annoying.” She slips her hand past his coat lapel and snaps one of his braces. “So. Sontarans?”
He sits on the edge of the break room table. “Militaristic Mr. Potato Heads from the planet Pain in my Ass. We’ve definitively linked them to the ATMOS deaths.”
“Brilliant,” she says. “Then why are you skulking about a high security UNIT base like a well-coiffed cat burglar? Go save the planet.”
His smile turns deliberate and charming, and once again she can see the hard edge beneath the familiar affection in his eyes. “Time was, you would’ve jumped at the chance to help me.”
“I was young then, Jack. Young and stupid and reckless.” She crosses her arms over her chest and sighs. “Now I suppose I’m just stupid. What do you need?”
He grins. “Rosie.”
“Shut up, Jack. What do you need?”
“Working transmats for myself and my team.” He taps the leather band on his wrist. “My teleport’s fried, and the 21st century, while a lovely place to summer, doesn’t have the parts I’d need to build my own.”
She frowns; Magambo isn’t going to like this. “What kind of range do you need?”
He shrugs, casually. “Two, maybe three hundred miles.”
She stares at him. “You’re going to transmat onto their ship and destroy it from the inside.”
He rubs his hands together and nods. “It’s old school, isn’t it? I’m pretty excited.”
“Jack, it’s suicide.”
His smile fades, and his face is like stone. “My people know the risks, and they know what the consequences will be if we do nothing.” Again, he doesn’t say, but he doesn’t need to.
She takes his hand, slipping her fingers through his. His skin is warm. “I’ll get you the equipment,” she says, “but I’m sorry - I can’t come with you.”
“Somehow I knew you’d say that.” He tugs her closer by their joined hands. “Of course, I never invited you.”
“Ass,” she says, and he laughs, leans in and kisses her cheek. They stand close, his hand on her waist. They could be dancing.
“Were you-” He pauses, and his brief, pained silence makes something cold and sharp settle in the pit of her stomach. “Were you with him when he died?”
“No,” she says. She watches his face. “I saw him after.”
Jack’s eyes close, and in the harsh florescent light he looks painfully young. “Rose, I hacked into the UNIT secure server after I heard, and I - I found this report-”
She grips his fingers hard enough to bruise. “He thought he had time to escape, Jack. The water rose too fast and he - it isn’t true. The report was wrong.”
He looks at her again, and for the first time she wonders how long it’s been, for him. There’s something ancient in his eyes. “Was it?”
“Yes,” she says. “I promise.”
He exhales a long, tense breath. “All right,” he says, and she can hear it in his voice. He believes her.
There’s a knock at the break room door.
“Enter,” she says sharply, and Jack gives her an amused look.
“General Tyler. Who would’ve thought the military life would suit you so well?”
She pushes him back into his chair. “At ease, Harkness.”
Captain Magambo opens the door. “Ma’am, Mr. Jones and Ms. Cooper want to speak with you. They’re rather insistent.”
“Let me guess,” Rose says. “Fate of the planet, billions of lives, end of the world? That sort of thing?”
“Precisely.” Magambo arches an eyebrow at Jack’s free hands and the dirty boots he’s propped up on the break room table. “I take it you’ve decided not to have them transferred to the holding facility?”
Rose folds her arms and leans against the table. “Well, we could,” she says, “but since we’re about to give them three of our best transmat prototypes, I don’t see how locking them up would do much good.”
Magambo stares at her. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
Rose shakes her head, grinning. “Nope.”
Jack bounces out of his chair. “I’ve always relied on the kindness of nameless blonde strangers,” he says, ruffling Rose’s hair. She smacks his hand away, and he gives Magambo a jaunty salute as he strides out the door. “Oh, Ianto, Gwen!” he calls, his voice echoing down the corridor. “Where are my wandering parakeets?”
Magambo watches him go. “Captain Jack Harkness,” she says. “I’ve heard stories about him.”
“They’re probably all true.” She smoothes down her hair. “You know, technically speaking, I don’t have the authority to requisition those prototypes.”
“I know.”
“You, on the other hand-”
The corner of Magambo’s mouth twitches in something like a smile. “This is your idea of asking nicely, isn’t it?”
Rose sits in one of the empty chairs and looks down at the stained tabletop. “I suppose my social skills have got a bit avant-garde in my old age.” She scrapes at the chipped paint with the edge of her thumbnail. “You must think I’m mad for helping them.”
“No,” Magambo says, “I knew you were mad from the beginning. I’ve had time to adjust my expectations.” She sits and folds her arms on the table, leaning forward. “I’ve heard stories about you, too.”
Rose frowns. “What sort of stories?”
“The rubbish sort, mostly. In times like these-” She stops. “Well. People get superstitious.”
“Oh,” Rose says. She glances at the open door and thinks of all the men and women in the warehouse beyond, men and women she’s worked with for months. “They think I’m-” She laughs, an awkward, pained sound. “What do they think, exactly?”
Magambo sits back in her chair, her gaze steady and piercing. “There’s a woman they talk about in the refugee camps. They say that each night she slips past the radiation lines and travels deep into the fallout territories, alone, in the dark.” She pauses. “They say that each dawn she returns, guiding to safety those we’d been forced to leave behind. The lost.”
Rose takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Erisa-”
“She never falls ill, never stays, and never gives her name. An old woman with a young face.” Magambo smiles, not unkindly. “Sound like anyone we know?”
“No,” Rose says. “It doesn’t.” She stands, fists clenched at her sides. “I need those transmat prototypes, Captain, and I need them now. Neither of us have time for stories.” She walks to the door.
“They say you bury them yourself.” Magambo stays in her chair, hands folded in front of her. “All those people. You save them, knowing they’re already dead.” She turns and meets Rose’s eyes. “I don’t follow your orders because you outrank me, ma’am. You don’t.”
There’s a silence. “I know,” Rose says.
“Good.” Magambo stands. “Harkness will have his prototypes. What range does he need?”
“Three hundred miles.”
Magambo’s eyes widen slightly. “A suicide mission?”
“Yeah.” Rose covers her eyes with one hand, briefly. “It has to be done. If I could go with him-”
“You can’t,” Magambo says, and it isn’t so much a denial as a simple statement of fact. “You’re essential to the success of our mission. If you tried to go with him, I would stop you.”
“Of course you would,” Rose says. She folds her arms across her chest and leans back against the door frame, grinning. “I’m glad I met you, Captain.”
Magambo shakes her head, a small quirk at the corner of her mouth that’s almost a smile. She crosses to the door. “If this operation succeeds, ma’am, you won’t have.”
“I’ll remember anyway.”
Magambo’s smile fades. “Everything?”
Rose doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to.
Magambo reaches out and, for the first time in their three month acquaintance, touches Rose’s shoulder. “Ma’am.”
Rose raises her hand in a small salute. “Captain.”
Magambo leaves the room. Rose remains, listening to the fading sound of her footsteps.
++
The lodestone is time travel at its most primitive, its most brutal, and she can feel the rising power like a pressure behind her eyes, an ache at the back of her teeth. Suddenly the cold air of the warehouse tastes sharp, like something she’s forgotten, and she fights the urge to lick her lips. The lights grow brighter, and Donna Noble stands alone in a circle of mirrors.
“Activate,” Magambo shouts, and the warehouse explodes with light.
The lodestone is blinding, and Rose darts away from a bundle of wires just before it explodes in a shower of sparks. She turns and runs for the open door of the TARDIS, Magambo and Private Ellis following close behind. The console room is thick with smoke, and Rose slams up the stairs, towards the fires consuming the time rotor. Glass shatters, the floor quaking beneath their feet, and then from deep within her impossible ship the Cloister Bell sounds. It worked.
“What’s that noise?” Private Ellis says, clutching the doorframe. “Captain, what’s gone wrong?”
“Ma’am,” Magambo says, her hand covering her nose and mouth. “Ma’am, is this-”
Rose turns back to them, a smiling silhouette in smoke and fire. “Well, ladies,” she says. “Looks like Donna Noble just destroyed the universe.” She waves. “Catch you in the one next door.”
Then she feels a familiar pull, a sideways slip through the walls of the world, and she’s standing in the middle of an empty city street - at night, in the drizzle. The air smells a little sour, like rubbish and city rain, and when she looks up she sees the faintest flicker of stars through the haze.
“London,” she breathes. “I’m-”
A door slams open behind her, and three men stumble out of the smoke and sounds of a pub, laughing loudly. “Oh ho,” crows a young, heavyset man. “What have we here?” He trips over his own feet, and the other two men rush forward to catch him. He regains his balance and saunters over to her. “Well, hello there, little miss. You lost?”
“Very,” she says. “What’s today’s date?”
“The fifteenth, I think.” He seems to realise that there’s nothing particularly lecherous about this answer, so he adds a cartoonish leer. “Give me a go, sweetheart, and I’ll make you forget more than the date.”
“That’s awfully nice of you,” she says, and sniffs the air. “So fifteenth of March, is it?”
He frowns. “April.”
“Right, of course. Silly me.” She slips her hands into her pockets and rocks back on her heels, her eyes innocent and wide. “And the year?”
One of the man’s friends snickers, shuffling towards them on skinny, unsteady legs. “Girl’s drunker than you, Roger.”
The other friend nods, his head bouncing up and down a few too many times. “Can always count on ol’ Rog to pick the nutters, yeah? He’s like a magnet.” He stops. Considers. “Yeah. A drunk nutter magnet.”
She nods gravely. “It’s like you can see inside my soul.” She takes a few steps backwards. “Well, best be off. A drunk nutter’s work is never done.”
Roger grabs her arm with one meaty hand. “Hey, now - that’s not very friendly. We were only just getting acquainted.”
She looks down at the hand on her arm, then back up into his small, bleary eyes. “You really don’t want to do that.”
He tugs her into his chest. “That so, sweetheart?”
She laughs, and his eyes narrow. “I’m sorry,” she says, “it’s just sort of cute. You’re probably the least intimidating person I’ve met in, oh, seven or eight universes, and yet here you are-” She easily slips free of his grasp, locks her fingers around his forearm and twists, pinning him in place. She lowers her voice in a gruff imitation of his. “That so, sweetheart? It’s hilarious.”
“Oi!” Roger shouts, struggling against her. “Let go!” She does, and as he falls back onto the asphalt a strange shudder runs through his body. He clutches his stomach and cries out, roiling through the pain.
“You sick bitch,” the skinny friend says, kneeling over Roger and grabbing for his hand. “What have you done to him?”
“I didn’t-” she says, but then Roger shudders again, and beneath his shirt something pulls free from his stomach, rolling upward along his torso. Roger shrieks, and a tiny, white hand reaches up from his collar and pats him comfortingly on the chin.
“Holy shit,” the bobble-headed friend says, his voice hoarse. “What is that?”
The hand is quickly followed by a small, sweet face. The Adipose wiggles out from beneath Roger’s shirt and hops onto his chest, smiling beatifically at them before jumping to the asphalt and toddling away down the street.
“It’s going to meet the ship,” she says, watching it go. “It’s happening again.” She turns back to the men and crouches down beside them. “Adipose Industries. Where are their offices?” They stare at her blankly, shocked, and she snaps her fingers at them. “Yes, gentlemen, I know it’s all very alarming, but your friend’s life and the lives of thousands of others very probably depend on the answer to this very simple question, so if you could just focus, just for a moment, and tell me - where can I find Adipose Industries?”
“Adipose?” the skinny friend says. His hands are shaking. “My sister works there, she - oh god - she was having trouble meeting her sales quota, so Roger bought those pills. He was doing her a favour-”
“Yes, good, excellent,” she says. “Where does your sister work?”
“Brooks Street. Only a few blocks that way,” he says, and points east. Roger’s stomach begins to move again, and he whimpers in horror.
“Fantastic.” She pops up to her feet. “I’m going to go try to save dear Roger’s life, and if I succeed I’ll expect a full, detailed apology for your behaviour this evening, signed by yourselves and witnessed by your mothers.” She turns to go, but the bobble-headed friend stops her.
“Wait!” She does, and he stares at her, young and drunk and frightened. “Is Roger going to die?”
“I hope not,” she says, and runs.
She heads east, towards Brooks Street, but soon finds her way blocked by a long procession of smiling, cooing Adipose. She slips into a side alley, and she’s deep in the shadows when a strong hand seizes her arm. Instinct kicks in and she reaches blindly for her attacker, slams him (tall and slim but solid, a staggering weight) into the brick wall behind her. She holds her arm hard against his throat, and he jerks his head back, breathing fast. Her gun is already in her hand; she lets it jut into his stomach, her thumb on the safety.
“If you were planning to mug me,” she says, “this really isn’t your night.”
He doesn’t look much like a mugger - it’s hard to tell in the half-light, but he seems to be wearing tweed, and there’s something like a slightly squished bowtie under her arm. He swallows once, his throat working against her forearm, but he doesn’t fight her. “You have a gun,” he says, sounding faintly surprised. “You have a gun, and you’re-” He looks down. “Well, now. Isn’t that interesting.”
She tips her head to one side. “Interesting? Not the word most people would choose.”
“That,” he says, “is because most people aren’t me.” He grins at her, broadly, and the light catches the eerie gleam of his teeth. “Rose Tyler. You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, would you?”
She goes still, her shoulders stiffening as if bracing for a sudden impact. She studies the man before her, breathless as she takes in his square, exaggerated features, the youth of his grin and the age she sees in his eyes. His face is friendly and deliberately unthreatening, arranged in a hapless who, me? expression that she knows far too well. She should; she’s been using it for years.
“I’m going to take my arm off your throat now,” she says, her voice surprisingly even. “If you move, I’ll shoot you.”
“Sounds fair,” he says, still grinning. Behind the grin there’s another expression altogether, a shadow too well-hidden for her to read. She steps back, releasing his throat but keeping the gun snug against his stomach. Blue shirt beneath a tweed coat, a bowtie and braces - her free hand darts into his breast pocket and for a dizzying moment her fingers grasp impossible, empty space (bigger on the inside) before pulling out a slim leather wallet. She flips it open and, for the first time since she shoved him against the wall, she looks away from his face.
Inside the wallet is a single sheet of psychic paper, and three words scrawl across the empty space in dark, curving ink: I’d almost forgotten.
The gun slips back into the holster at her waist, a single, smooth movement despite the slight tremor of her hands. She turns the psychic paper towards him and says, “Forgotten what, Doctor?”
His too-bright grin disappears; he snaps the wallet from her hand and returns it to his pocket. “None of your business.”
She laughs, surprised into a dry chuckle. “Nice.”
He steps away from the wall, straightening his bowtie. “Yes, well, rude again. What did you expect?”
“Not this,” she says. She stares at him - long hair and long face and thin, unsmiling mouth. She stares, but it isn’t this face she sees. “How did it happen?”
He looks down, and his fringe falls into his eyes “I can’t tell you that.”
Funny how regeneration changes everything but the bits that make her want to smack him. “Oh,” she says through her teeth. “Can’t you.”
“No, no, no,” he says, raising his hands as if to fend her off. “I can, I could, but I shouldn’t. You see, I’m not the me you’re looking for. Or, rather - I’m not that me anymore.” He reaches out and touches her arm, hesitantly. Pats it. “You haven’t found me yet, Rose, but you will. I promise.”
She looks down at the hand on her arm, and he lets it fall back to his side. She takes a slow, deep breath. “I assume,” she says, “you didn’t risk a paradox just to assault me in a dark alley.”
“Assault you?” he says, his voice going slightly high in his indignation. “I gave you a little tap on the shoulder; you’re the one with the-” He makes a strange chopping motion with his hands that may or may not be meant to invoke some sort of martial art, “-and the say hello to my lee-tle friend. If anyone assaulted anyone-”
An enormous spaceship passes overhead, its green light filling the sky. Her hand goes again to the gun at her hip, to its comforting weight. “So,” she says. “We should probably do something about that.”
“About what?” He looks up. “Oh. That.” He waves a dismissive hand. “No, Donna and I already took care of it. Are taking care of it. Will have taken care of it?” He wrinkles his nose. “English. Such annoying verb tenses. However you conjugate it, it’s not my problem, and it certainly isn’t yours.”
The Adipose ship glides to a stop in the sky over Brooks Street; she takes an almost unconscious step towards its light. “Then you’re here. You and Donna-”
He slips into her path, hands clasped in front of him. “Rose. You can’t.”
“Get out of my way.”
“Listen to me. It’s not the right time.”
“I don’t follow your orders,” she says. “I don’t even know you.”
His expression hardens and he leans in close, his eyes bright and far too near her own. “In case you’re slower than I remember, I’ll say it again: it is not the right time. Now, maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think I’m not who you know I am, or maybe I am who I am but I have some obscure, nefarious reason for keeping us apart, or maybe I am who I am but my obscure, nefarious reason for keeping us apart is to damn the timeline and keep you for myself, or - I really don’t know. I’ve run out of stupid human things you might be thinking.” He pauses. “It’s a bit of a strain, thinking at your level. If you can call it thought.”
“Oh, I see,” she says. She gives him a wide, deliberate grin. “I’m going to do something that will piss you off.”
He takes a step closer, crowding her, and her back hits the rough brick of the alley wall. He doesn’t move away, and he doesn’t touch her. “I am not pissed off.”
“You are. You’re furious.” She raises her chin and meets his eyes. “Did I leave you?”
“Yes. No.” He looks away, his jaw tense. “It’s complicated. Will be complicated. Can’t go into it in further detail or the world might end.”
She watches his face, the shadow and the light. The sad twist at the corner of his mouth. “Did you leave me?”
His fingers curl around her wrist, just above the cuff of her jacket. “Rose,” he says, and for the first time she can hear the pain in it. It hurts him to say her name. “I’m only here to prevent a disruption in my timeline. The TARDIS sensed a potential paradox; if I’d known it was you-” He stops, his lips pressed thin.
“If you’d known it was me,” she says, “you would’ve sent someone else.”
He meets her eyes. “Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“I can’t tell you that.” He pauses, and his fingers tighten around her wrist, his thumb sliding low over her pulse. “Amy. Her name is Amy. Amelia Pond.”
She swallows. “Good name. A little fairy tale.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Careful. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.” She reaches up with her free hand and touches the knot of his bowtie. “I’ve been dreaming about you.”
“Well,” he says, his voice faint, “I am rather dreamy.”
“While I’m awake.”
“Not usually a good sign.” He bends his knees until his eyes are on level with hers and leans in until their noses touch. He looks into her eyes as if searching for something. “Visual and auditory hallucinations?”
“The works,” she says. “Visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile-”
“Gustatory?”
“That’s a bit personal.”
“Is it?” He pulls a long, thin contraption from his coat pocket and holds it to her temple. It whirs, glowing green, before he snaps it away again. “You can learn a lot about something by giving it a good lick. Next time you see dream-me, you ought to go right up to him and-”
“Yes,” she says. “I could taste you.”
He goes still, his eyes wide. “Oh. Right.” He turns away from her, then abruptly turns back. “You’ve been looking for me for a long time. Have I said or done anything in these hallucinations that suggests they might be anything more than simple wish fulfillment?”
She gives him a wry half-smile. “You think I’ve gone mad.”
He tucks the long contraption back into his coat pocket. “It wouldn’t surprise me, no.”
She looks away, to the night sky in the distance. Thousands of Adipose are rising through the air, toward their ship. Toward home. “You warned me about the Christmas Day crash of the Titanic,” she says. “In Donna’s universe.”
His brow furrows. “Did I tell you how to stop it?”
“No,” she says. “You told me to stay away.”
He snaps his fingers at her, grinning. “Ah, but you didn’t, did you? Rose Tyler runs toward the danger - always has, always will. You can change a lot about a person, but you can’t change that. So you decided to investigate on your own, probably saving the world in the process. Good for you. Question is, how did a hallucination-” He stops and stares into her eyes, but she can tell that he isn’t really seeing her. He’s remembering. “Donna told me. She said that London was destroyed in that universe - only London, though the crash of a ship that size should’ve wiped out all life on Earth. I knew that. I’ve known that for ages.” He moves close again, rests one large palm on the wall by her head and leans in. “Rose Tyler. Furious, gun-toting, grieving Rose Tyler. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I-”
He covers her mouth with his hand. “Do you mind? I’m still thinking.”
She knocks his hand away from her face. “If you do that again, I’ll bite you.”
“If you bite me, I’ll bite you back.” Suddenly he retreats to a respectful distance, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders held high and tense. “So, odd question but I have to ask it: Rose, this hallucination of yours - does he have one heart?”
She closes her eyes, and the memory rises in the darkness - the chill of his skin under her fingers, and the single, impossible pulse at the inside of his wrist. She takes an unsteady breath. “I don’t want to know. Whatever’s happened to him, whatever’s going to happen - I don’t want to know.”
She feels him touch her cheek, and she flinches away, her eyes flying open. His hand remains in the air, fingers outstretched. Reaching for a face that isn’t there. “Rose,” he says. “I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”
It begins to rain, a slow downpour of heavy, oily drops that cling to their clothes and darken their hair. The Adipose ship is gone, the clouded sky dark without it. She steps around him, into the middle of the alley. Turns and watches him as he watches her, rainwater beading in her eyelashes. “I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other,” she says, eventually.
He looks down at his shoes, his hair curling in the damp. “Five times I’ve said goodbye to you, Rose Tyler, and never expected to see you again.” He raises his eyes to hers. “And five times I’ve been wrong.”
“Well, maybe the sixth time’s the charm,” she says, and though she’s able to force a smile it turns brittle at the edges. She pulls the ‘verse jumper from her pocket, fumbling slightly. “I had no idea I was such a nuisance; I promise to stay out of your way after we save the multiverse. If we save it.”
“Rose-”
She turns away, twisting dials on the jumper. “You can go now, Doctor. We’re done.”
“Oh, honestly,” he says, and then he reaches for her shoulder, turning her into him. His hands are clumsy, his jacket strange and rough under her open palms, but when his mouth touches hers - just at the corner, the barest suggestion, the ellipsis of a kiss - she doesn’t push him away. His lips leave hers a breath later but he stays close, his eyed closed, his cheeks flushed. “Rose. Say something.”
“Blimey,” she says, and he laughs, a low, choked sound. He kisses the rise of her cheek, his lips dry and cool, and long fingers curl into her hair.
“I really wasn’t going to do this,” he says, and she wants to taste the smile she hears in his voice. She lifts her chin and her mouth catches his, briefly. His fingers clench, knuckles bumping against the base of her skull. “I wasn’t. I specifically forbade myself.”
“That sounds serious.”
“It is. Very.” His forehead rests against hers and he swallows hard. When he speaks again, his voice is rough. “Nothing good comes of nostalgia, Rose. It’s long past time for me to let go.”
She touches his lapel, resting her fingers over his pocket and the psychic paper inside. “To forget?”
“Maybe,” he says. “If I can.”
She nods. Steps out of his arms and looks up into his face, her eyes stinging and dry. “I’ve been looking for you so long - years longer than the time I spent travelling with you.” She reaches out and takes his hand, twining her fingers through his. The fit is wrong, but that only makes her hold tighter. “I hope you never have to say goodbye again,” she says. “I hope you forget.”
The Doctor squeezes her hand once, hard, and then they both let go.
The ‘verse jumper lies at their feet; she’d dropped it when he kissed her, dropped it with a carelessness that shocks her a little, now that she thinks of it. The Doctor bends down and picks the jumper off the asphalt, turning it over idly in his hands. He pulls the long contraption from his pocket again and holds it to the navigational control before she can protest; it whirs, glowing green. Then he tucks the sonic screwdriver back into his pocket.
“I’ve programmed your next two destinations,” he says. “You’ll leave as soon as it’s finished building its charge.” He presses the jumper into her hands. “Three minutes, at the most. Then you’ll be gone.”
She slides the jumper into her jacket pocket. “And where will I be going?”
“Let it be a surprise. One last wonderful surprise.” He folds his hands in front of him, knitting his fingers together. “Well. You may not think it’s so wonderful, but these things are a matter of perspective.”
“Most things are.”
“Most things,” the Doctor says, “are only a matter of time, and time-”
“-is only a matter of perspective. I know.” She smiles at him, her chest aching. “Three minutes left, and we spend it talking nonsense.”
“Excuse me, what’s wrong with nonsense? Nonsense is the best sort of sense there is. I never feel so sensible as when I’m talking nonsense.” He looks away. Swallows. “I should probably go. Before you-”
“Yeah,” she says, softly.
Neither of them moves. They stand silently for a long moment, his eyes everywhere but her face. Then, finally, he looks at her. “I’ll tell you, Rose. Before it’s over, I’ll tell you everything.”
“I think you know that’s not true.” She raises her hand, rests her palm against the center of his chest and feels the heavy double beat within. She looks up and meets his eyes. “I find you.”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s all I need to know.” She lowers her hand. “Goodbye, Doctor,” she says, and walks away.
He doesn’t follow.
Two blocks until she reaches the police barricade on Brooks Street, and she stops, stands among the milling crowd. The rain eases as she waits, listening silently to awed, frightened whispers of diet pills and fat babies and aliens, again, can you believe it? She knows the atmosphere well, the respite after the storm, the slow return to normalcy. The shaken, almost giddy relief of those who survive. He’ll leave now - he and Donna may already be standing together at the TARDIS console, grinning like idiots and having a laugh about diet pills and fat babies and London, again, can you believe it?
Her grip tightens on the barricade, and the wood splinters a little under her fingers.
“Listen,” a familiar, female voice says, and then Donna Noble is standing behind her, flushed and beautiful and impossibly happy. She looks at Rose with a friendly sort of blankness, without the slightest hint of recognition in her eyes.
He was right; it’s too soon. If the Doctor is with her, if he sees her now-
“Listen,” Donna says, and Rose does nothing. Says nothing. It must look like agreement, because Donna says, “There’s this woman who’s going to come along - a tall, blonde woman called Sylvia. Tell her, That bin there.” Donna points, grinning as if she’s just told a wonderful joke. “It’ll all make sense, just - that bin there.” Then Donna turns, still grinning, and runs off.
Seconds later Rose fades away, and it’s as if she was never there at all.
++
Characters: Rose Tyler, the Tenth Doctor, many others.
Rating: Adult for violence, language, and sexual content.
Warnings: None.
Betas: Much thanks to eponymous_rose and earlgreytea68 for their comments, support, and general excellentness.
Spoilers: Through The Eleventh Hour.
Summary: If today was not an endless highway, if tonight was not a crooked trail, if tomorrow wasn't such a long time, then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all. Rose Tyler, on the road to Journey's End. The penultimate chapter.
part one. part two. part three.
++
Travelling has taught her a lot about human nature.
People - particularly human people, but other sorts as well - have certain ways of dealing with deprivation and disaster. After the blast, most everyone she met was dying or dead (fingers clench around a spade that isn’t there, the wet give of the earth and gathering clouds overhead) and even those who had months, maybe years before they felt the effects of the radiation had an inescapable absence in their eyes. A numbness that inured them to the cold.
Her new co-workers at UNIT have different ways of coping.
“Coffee,” says Private Parish. He slouches in his chair and rests his heels on the edge of the break room table. “No doubt about it. I miss coffee the most.”
“Addict,” Private Ellis says, affection in the ironic tilt of her head. She takes a bite from her ration pack and swallows quickly, her lips pinched in disgust. “Tell you what, though. Give me a choice between the finest coffee in Brazil and a half-decent ham sandwich, and I know what I’d pick.”
Another soldier nods. “Ham sandwich,” he says. “Every time.”
Private Parish turns and looks up at her, smiling. “What about you, ma’am? What do you miss the most since the Blast?”
She knows the rules of the game. No mentions of the dead, nothing personal, nothing lost forever. Just trivialities that evoke a nostalgia for an easier life, the life before. Coffee, sandwiches, and scented soap. Telly, chips, and beans on toast.
It’s been so long since she led a normal life.
“Voice-activated phone menus,” she says. “Don’t know what I’ll do for fun without them.” She finishes her water ration with a single gulp, then turns and walks to the door, ignoring their baffled stares.
“Blimey,” she hears Private Ellis say as the door closes behind her. “What planet is she from?”
Outside the warehouse the sky is dawn-pale, but inside the light towers burn brightly as the midday sun. They’ve worked through the night, and still the warehouse bustles with activity. She dodges a pair of soldiers hauling long strips of corrugated steel, and then nearly walks into another pushing a cart of carefully stacked mirrors.
“Careful, ma’am,” the private says as she leaps aside. “Don’t think any of us can afford the bad luck.”
“No kidding,” she mutters, and makes a beeline for the TARDIS. It stands in the middle of the warehouse, the still center in a frenzy of computers and construction. She steps carefully over the bundle of wires and slips through the open door into the dim light of the console room. The grated floor is littered with tools and open files, and she crouches at the top of the stairs, flipping through a few pages of complex diagrams and equations. She understands the theory behind about half of what she sees; she’s pretty sure the other half is wrong.
The room is too quiet.
“Malcolm?” she says. “I left you alone for five minutes. Have you already set yourself on fire?”
A head pops up from a hole in the floor, and Dr. Malcolm Taylor blinks at her through an absurdly large pair of magnifying goggles. “Only a little,” he says, lifting his arm so she can see the singe marks on the sleeve of his lab coat. “I put it out straight away, this time.”
She sits on the floor at the edge of the hole, folding her legs beneath her. “Malcolm, I looked at some of your recent equations-”
He waves his hand dismissively. “Rubbish, all of it. Forget you ever saw them.” He disappears back into the hole and crawls beneath the console. “I certainly have.”
“Why?” she asks, carefully keeping the apprehension from her voice. “Did you learn something new?”
“Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. The answer would depend, I suppose, on your definition of new, which-” There’s an echoing thunk from beneath the console, and he goes suddenly quiet. “Oh. Oh, sweet mother Mary, that was my thumb.”
“Malcolm?”
After a brief, loud struggle with a bundle of wire, he reappears without the goggles, his graying hair a sweaty mess. He holds up his thumb. “Tell me the truth. Is it bad?”
She looks closely, frowning. “Bend it.” He does. She pokes it once, gently, and he winces. She sits back. “I think you’ll live.”
“You’re not just saying that to bolster my spirits?”
“Not my style.” She rests her chin on her hand and looks down into the pit of wires and mislaid tools. He’s got farther than she thought; she left him alone too long. “Malcolm-”
“What I’ve learnt is new to me,” he says, “but not, I think, new to you.” His wire-rimmed glasses slip down his nose, and he pushes them up again before meeting her eyes, his expression unusually grave. “You told us the TARDIS was dying, but it’s not, is it? That’s why all the diagnostics I run go strange - I thought the ship was surviving on low power because it didn’t have any power to spare.” He presses his lips together in a thin line. “I’ve been trying to mend something that doesn’t need mending.”
She swallows. “Yeah.”
He takes a step back, hurt. “You sent it into a dormant state before you let us inside. You don’t trust us.”
“I trust you,” she says, and to her surprise it feels like the truth. “I trust the Brigadier.”
He shakes his head, frowning. “If the TARDIS is working, if you can still use it to travel in time, why do you need us? Why don’t you just take Ms. Noble back to Little Sutton Street yourself?”
She sighs. “Because I’ve seen the moment of intervention, and there was only one of me there. Only one me, and only one TARDIS. Donna has to get there some other way, and she has to go alone.” She rubs her hand over her face, feeling the slow creep of exhaustion. “I can’t risk changing what I saw, Malcolm. There’s too much at stake.”
He gives her a faint smile. “That I understand.” He reaches up and pats her hand. “I won’t tell them,” he says. “You have my word.”
“Won’t tell who what?” Captain Erisa Magambo asks from the door. It takes every bit of self-control Rose possesses to keep from jumping. Her spine goes ramrod straight.
Malcolm gapes at Magambo, fish-like. “Captain! I, I mean we, I mean I didn’t see you there. I mean, obviously, because if I had I would’ve said hello.” He stops, then lifts his hand in a quick wave. “Hello!”
Rose turns and gives Magambo her second most harmless smile. “Good morning, Captain. Back on duty already?”
Magambo salutes. “Ma’am.” She folds her arms behind her back. “Never went off duty, actually. There was a problem with a shipment.”
Rose raises an eyebrow. “Highway bandits or angry mob?”
“Bandits, this time.” She leans against the doorframe, careful not to step fully inside. “Are we making progress with the machine?”
Malcolm makes a soft noise of protest, and Rose winces. “Please don’t call the TARDIS that,” she says. “It can hear you.”
Magambo gives her a sardonic look. “I’m sure it understands that I meant no disrespect.” She turns to Malcolm. “Dr. Taylor, what’s your status?”
He wipes his glasses on the singed sleeve of his lab coat, avoiding her eyes. “Oh, everything’s coming along nicely. If the construction of the lodestone goes to plan we should be ready for testing in two days.”
Magambo nods. “Does that fit your timeline, ma’am?”
Rose shrugs. “It’s not my timeline, Captain - it’s Donna Noble’s. I’m jumping into Leeds tonight to check up on her. If she’s ready to hear what I have to say-”
“Quite.” There’s a sudden burst of sound from the warehouse outside, shouting and the hard percussion of soldiers’ boots against concrete. A corporal appears behind Magambo, breathing fast.
“Intruders, ma’am, at the north entrance,” he says. “We think it’s Torchwood.”
Rose pushes herself to her feet, her hand going to the gun at her hip. “Erisa, they can’t see the TARDIS. If they do-”
“I know.” Magambo turns to the corporal. “Detain the intruders and move them to the secondary site. Keep them away from this area.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hurries off, shouting orders. Rose slams down the stairs to the door and pushes past Magambo.
“You said no one would know the TARDIS was here,” Rose says through her teeth. “You promised me this would be secure.”
Magambo follows her out into the madness of the warehouse. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but yours isn’t the only UNIT operation that might attract the interest of Torchwood’s rag tag team of lunatics.”
Rose stops walking and turns back to the other woman. “You think they’re here about the ATMOS deaths?”
“They do tend to involve themselves in these sorts of situations,” Magambo says. She frowns. “They seem to think they can help, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.”
“Well, they’re in the wrong part of the world if they want to investigate ATMOS. Britain doesn’t even have one of their satellite factories.” Rose runs her hand roughly through her hair. Diet pills and car exhaust, he’d said. First the Adipose and now ATMOS. She could’ve stopped this.
“I can stop this,” an American man shouts from the crowd of UNIT soldiers at the north entrance to the warehouse. He struggles against the men snapping restraints around his wrists. Rose can’t see his face; she moves closer. “Look,” the man says, “we don’t have time for this. Maybe if you morons had pulled your heads out of your collective asses a few months ago when it first came on the market-”
“Oh yes,” another intruder says drolly, “because that’s precisely the sort of delicately-worded argument needed to show them the error of their ways.”
“Sarcasm, Ianto,” a dark-haired woman says. “Not exactly helpful.” Her accent is Welsh and oddly familiar. Rose steps up to the crowd, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Hello there,” she says, smiling. “If you lot are Torchwood, I assume you’re here to steal something?”
Then the American turns towards her, and the smile drops off her face.
“It can’t be,” Captain Jack Harkness whispers, his eyes wide. “Your name was on the list of the dead.”
Rose turns to Magambo, hiding her shaking hands in her trouser pockets. Her voice is steady. “I need an interrogation room. No cameras, no microphones, no interruptions.”
Magambo’s lips press together in a thin line. “Procedure would dictate-”
“I really don’t care, Captain. I want that room now.” She gives Jack a hard look. “Dead or not, I’ll shoot you if you say another word.”
Jack recovers from his astonishment long enough to give her a silent, ironic little bow; the other two intruders stare at him in open disbelief. “Now hold on just a minute,” the dark-haired woman begins, but Jack shakes his head. She stops, her mouth pursed in annoyance.
“Wonderful,” the man called Ianto says with a genteel sigh. “More secrets.”
Rose knows exactly how he feels.
++
They stare at each other across the empty break room table. His wrists are cuffed, resting on the table between them. Her arms are folded, her legs crossed neatly at the knee.
Jack is the first to break the silence. “You look different.”
“You don’t.”
“Well, you know what they say.” He smiles thinly. “The young at heart never grow old.”
She watches him from across the table, the familiar cut of his heavy coat and the solid squareness of his jaw. She looks at him and thinks it could’ve been only yesterday, strolling through the universe with the Doctor’s hand in her right and his in her left. Adoring and adored. “I thought you were dead,” she says.
She sees a brief flicker of emotion behind his eyes before his expression turns hard again. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Mostly because he promised me you weren’t.” She reaches across the table and touches his hand. “I’ve missed you, Jack.”
He leans forward, his eyes as cold as she’s ever seen them. “Listen, sweetheart - whoever you are and whatever you’re doing here, you picked the wrong human to impersonate. I knew Rose Tyler.”
She squeezes his fingers, and he flinches away from her. “Jack-”
“No,” he says. “I’ve seen the records. Rose Tyler died during the Battle of Canary Wharf.”
“Rose Tyler went missing during the Battle of Canary Wharf. Different thing.” She sits back in her chair and gives him an impatient look. “I was trapped in a parallel universe, Jack. It made getting in touch with old friends a little difficult.”
The hard line of his mouth twitches, then relents. “The Cybermen invaded through a breach between our universe and theirs.”
“And lucky girl that I am, I got stuck on the wrong side. I’ve spent the last five years trying to get back.”
His eyes narrow. “To him?”
“No,” she says, and it’s only half a lie. “To stop what’s coming.”
Jack watches her carefully, his face unreadable. “I’m guessing,” he says, “that you don’t mean the Sontarans.”
She blinks. “The who?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” he says. Then, slowly, he grins at her. He grins, and she’s nineteen again, falling into his arms. “Rose Tyler,” he says, savouring the sound of it. He slaps the table and laughs. “Little Rosie Tyler!”
She tries to scowl at him. “I meant it when I said I’d shoot you.”
He stands and holds out his arms. “You minx. Uncuff me so I can hug you.”
She rolls her eyes, still fighting a smile. “So you can grope me, more like.” She pulls the key from her pocket and frees his hands; she barely has time to drop the handcuffs onto the table before he scoops her up in his arms, swinging her in the air. She laughs out loud, fighting the instinct to struggle free. Then his hands wander south, and she gives him a light punch in the ribs. He drops her to her feet, still beaming.
“Rose Tyler,” he says again, holding her by the shoulders. “Rosie Rosie Rose.”
“Yeah,” she says, “I need you to not say my name so much. Or, you know, at all.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Traveling incognito, are we?”
“That, and it’s starting to get annoying.” She slips her hand past his coat lapel and snaps one of his braces. “So. Sontarans?”
He sits on the edge of the break room table. “Militaristic Mr. Potato Heads from the planet Pain in my Ass. We’ve definitively linked them to the ATMOS deaths.”
“Brilliant,” she says. “Then why are you skulking about a high security UNIT base like a well-coiffed cat burglar? Go save the planet.”
His smile turns deliberate and charming, and once again she can see the hard edge beneath the familiar affection in his eyes. “Time was, you would’ve jumped at the chance to help me.”
“I was young then, Jack. Young and stupid and reckless.” She crosses her arms over her chest and sighs. “Now I suppose I’m just stupid. What do you need?”
He grins. “Rosie.”
“Shut up, Jack. What do you need?”
“Working transmats for myself and my team.” He taps the leather band on his wrist. “My teleport’s fried, and the 21st century, while a lovely place to summer, doesn’t have the parts I’d need to build my own.”
She frowns; Magambo isn’t going to like this. “What kind of range do you need?”
He shrugs, casually. “Two, maybe three hundred miles.”
She stares at him. “You’re going to transmat onto their ship and destroy it from the inside.”
He rubs his hands together and nods. “It’s old school, isn’t it? I’m pretty excited.”
“Jack, it’s suicide.”
His smile fades, and his face is like stone. “My people know the risks, and they know what the consequences will be if we do nothing.” Again, he doesn’t say, but he doesn’t need to.
She takes his hand, slipping her fingers through his. His skin is warm. “I’ll get you the equipment,” she says, “but I’m sorry - I can’t come with you.”
“Somehow I knew you’d say that.” He tugs her closer by their joined hands. “Of course, I never invited you.”
“Ass,” she says, and he laughs, leans in and kisses her cheek. They stand close, his hand on her waist. They could be dancing.
“Were you-” He pauses, and his brief, pained silence makes something cold and sharp settle in the pit of her stomach. “Were you with him when he died?”
“No,” she says. She watches his face. “I saw him after.”
Jack’s eyes close, and in the harsh florescent light he looks painfully young. “Rose, I hacked into the UNIT secure server after I heard, and I - I found this report-”
She grips his fingers hard enough to bruise. “He thought he had time to escape, Jack. The water rose too fast and he - it isn’t true. The report was wrong.”
He looks at her again, and for the first time she wonders how long it’s been, for him. There’s something ancient in his eyes. “Was it?”
“Yes,” she says. “I promise.”
He exhales a long, tense breath. “All right,” he says, and she can hear it in his voice. He believes her.
There’s a knock at the break room door.
“Enter,” she says sharply, and Jack gives her an amused look.
“General Tyler. Who would’ve thought the military life would suit you so well?”
She pushes him back into his chair. “At ease, Harkness.”
Captain Magambo opens the door. “Ma’am, Mr. Jones and Ms. Cooper want to speak with you. They’re rather insistent.”
“Let me guess,” Rose says. “Fate of the planet, billions of lives, end of the world? That sort of thing?”
“Precisely.” Magambo arches an eyebrow at Jack’s free hands and the dirty boots he’s propped up on the break room table. “I take it you’ve decided not to have them transferred to the holding facility?”
Rose folds her arms and leans against the table. “Well, we could,” she says, “but since we’re about to give them three of our best transmat prototypes, I don’t see how locking them up would do much good.”
Magambo stares at her. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
Rose shakes her head, grinning. “Nope.”
Jack bounces out of his chair. “I’ve always relied on the kindness of nameless blonde strangers,” he says, ruffling Rose’s hair. She smacks his hand away, and he gives Magambo a jaunty salute as he strides out the door. “Oh, Ianto, Gwen!” he calls, his voice echoing down the corridor. “Where are my wandering parakeets?”
Magambo watches him go. “Captain Jack Harkness,” she says. “I’ve heard stories about him.”
“They’re probably all true.” She smoothes down her hair. “You know, technically speaking, I don’t have the authority to requisition those prototypes.”
“I know.”
“You, on the other hand-”
The corner of Magambo’s mouth twitches in something like a smile. “This is your idea of asking nicely, isn’t it?”
Rose sits in one of the empty chairs and looks down at the stained tabletop. “I suppose my social skills have got a bit avant-garde in my old age.” She scrapes at the chipped paint with the edge of her thumbnail. “You must think I’m mad for helping them.”
“No,” Magambo says, “I knew you were mad from the beginning. I’ve had time to adjust my expectations.” She sits and folds her arms on the table, leaning forward. “I’ve heard stories about you, too.”
Rose frowns. “What sort of stories?”
“The rubbish sort, mostly. In times like these-” She stops. “Well. People get superstitious.”
“Oh,” Rose says. She glances at the open door and thinks of all the men and women in the warehouse beyond, men and women she’s worked with for months. “They think I’m-” She laughs, an awkward, pained sound. “What do they think, exactly?”
Magambo sits back in her chair, her gaze steady and piercing. “There’s a woman they talk about in the refugee camps. They say that each night she slips past the radiation lines and travels deep into the fallout territories, alone, in the dark.” She pauses. “They say that each dawn she returns, guiding to safety those we’d been forced to leave behind. The lost.”
Rose takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Erisa-”
“She never falls ill, never stays, and never gives her name. An old woman with a young face.” Magambo smiles, not unkindly. “Sound like anyone we know?”
“No,” Rose says. “It doesn’t.” She stands, fists clenched at her sides. “I need those transmat prototypes, Captain, and I need them now. Neither of us have time for stories.” She walks to the door.
“They say you bury them yourself.” Magambo stays in her chair, hands folded in front of her. “All those people. You save them, knowing they’re already dead.” She turns and meets Rose’s eyes. “I don’t follow your orders because you outrank me, ma’am. You don’t.”
There’s a silence. “I know,” Rose says.
“Good.” Magambo stands. “Harkness will have his prototypes. What range does he need?”
“Three hundred miles.”
Magambo’s eyes widen slightly. “A suicide mission?”
“Yeah.” Rose covers her eyes with one hand, briefly. “It has to be done. If I could go with him-”
“You can’t,” Magambo says, and it isn’t so much a denial as a simple statement of fact. “You’re essential to the success of our mission. If you tried to go with him, I would stop you.”
“Of course you would,” Rose says. She folds her arms across her chest and leans back against the door frame, grinning. “I’m glad I met you, Captain.”
Magambo shakes her head, a small quirk at the corner of her mouth that’s almost a smile. She crosses to the door. “If this operation succeeds, ma’am, you won’t have.”
“I’ll remember anyway.”
Magambo’s smile fades. “Everything?”
Rose doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to.
Magambo reaches out and, for the first time in their three month acquaintance, touches Rose’s shoulder. “Ma’am.”
Rose raises her hand in a small salute. “Captain.”
Magambo leaves the room. Rose remains, listening to the fading sound of her footsteps.
++
The lodestone is time travel at its most primitive, its most brutal, and she can feel the rising power like a pressure behind her eyes, an ache at the back of her teeth. Suddenly the cold air of the warehouse tastes sharp, like something she’s forgotten, and she fights the urge to lick her lips. The lights grow brighter, and Donna Noble stands alone in a circle of mirrors.
“Activate,” Magambo shouts, and the warehouse explodes with light.
The lodestone is blinding, and Rose darts away from a bundle of wires just before it explodes in a shower of sparks. She turns and runs for the open door of the TARDIS, Magambo and Private Ellis following close behind. The console room is thick with smoke, and Rose slams up the stairs, towards the fires consuming the time rotor. Glass shatters, the floor quaking beneath their feet, and then from deep within her impossible ship the Cloister Bell sounds. It worked.
“What’s that noise?” Private Ellis says, clutching the doorframe. “Captain, what’s gone wrong?”
“Ma’am,” Magambo says, her hand covering her nose and mouth. “Ma’am, is this-”
Rose turns back to them, a smiling silhouette in smoke and fire. “Well, ladies,” she says. “Looks like Donna Noble just destroyed the universe.” She waves. “Catch you in the one next door.”
Then she feels a familiar pull, a sideways slip through the walls of the world, and she’s standing in the middle of an empty city street - at night, in the drizzle. The air smells a little sour, like rubbish and city rain, and when she looks up she sees the faintest flicker of stars through the haze.
“London,” she breathes. “I’m-”
A door slams open behind her, and three men stumble out of the smoke and sounds of a pub, laughing loudly. “Oh ho,” crows a young, heavyset man. “What have we here?” He trips over his own feet, and the other two men rush forward to catch him. He regains his balance and saunters over to her. “Well, hello there, little miss. You lost?”
“Very,” she says. “What’s today’s date?”
“The fifteenth, I think.” He seems to realise that there’s nothing particularly lecherous about this answer, so he adds a cartoonish leer. “Give me a go, sweetheart, and I’ll make you forget more than the date.”
“That’s awfully nice of you,” she says, and sniffs the air. “So fifteenth of March, is it?”
He frowns. “April.”
“Right, of course. Silly me.” She slips her hands into her pockets and rocks back on her heels, her eyes innocent and wide. “And the year?”
One of the man’s friends snickers, shuffling towards them on skinny, unsteady legs. “Girl’s drunker than you, Roger.”
The other friend nods, his head bouncing up and down a few too many times. “Can always count on ol’ Rog to pick the nutters, yeah? He’s like a magnet.” He stops. Considers. “Yeah. A drunk nutter magnet.”
She nods gravely. “It’s like you can see inside my soul.” She takes a few steps backwards. “Well, best be off. A drunk nutter’s work is never done.”
Roger grabs her arm with one meaty hand. “Hey, now - that’s not very friendly. We were only just getting acquainted.”
She looks down at the hand on her arm, then back up into his small, bleary eyes. “You really don’t want to do that.”
He tugs her into his chest. “That so, sweetheart?”
She laughs, and his eyes narrow. “I’m sorry,” she says, “it’s just sort of cute. You’re probably the least intimidating person I’ve met in, oh, seven or eight universes, and yet here you are-” She easily slips free of his grasp, locks her fingers around his forearm and twists, pinning him in place. She lowers her voice in a gruff imitation of his. “That so, sweetheart? It’s hilarious.”
“Oi!” Roger shouts, struggling against her. “Let go!” She does, and as he falls back onto the asphalt a strange shudder runs through his body. He clutches his stomach and cries out, roiling through the pain.
“You sick bitch,” the skinny friend says, kneeling over Roger and grabbing for his hand. “What have you done to him?”
“I didn’t-” she says, but then Roger shudders again, and beneath his shirt something pulls free from his stomach, rolling upward along his torso. Roger shrieks, and a tiny, white hand reaches up from his collar and pats him comfortingly on the chin.
“Holy shit,” the bobble-headed friend says, his voice hoarse. “What is that?”
The hand is quickly followed by a small, sweet face. The Adipose wiggles out from beneath Roger’s shirt and hops onto his chest, smiling beatifically at them before jumping to the asphalt and toddling away down the street.
“It’s going to meet the ship,” she says, watching it go. “It’s happening again.” She turns back to the men and crouches down beside them. “Adipose Industries. Where are their offices?” They stare at her blankly, shocked, and she snaps her fingers at them. “Yes, gentlemen, I know it’s all very alarming, but your friend’s life and the lives of thousands of others very probably depend on the answer to this very simple question, so if you could just focus, just for a moment, and tell me - where can I find Adipose Industries?”
“Adipose?” the skinny friend says. His hands are shaking. “My sister works there, she - oh god - she was having trouble meeting her sales quota, so Roger bought those pills. He was doing her a favour-”
“Yes, good, excellent,” she says. “Where does your sister work?”
“Brooks Street. Only a few blocks that way,” he says, and points east. Roger’s stomach begins to move again, and he whimpers in horror.
“Fantastic.” She pops up to her feet. “I’m going to go try to save dear Roger’s life, and if I succeed I’ll expect a full, detailed apology for your behaviour this evening, signed by yourselves and witnessed by your mothers.” She turns to go, but the bobble-headed friend stops her.
“Wait!” She does, and he stares at her, young and drunk and frightened. “Is Roger going to die?”
“I hope not,” she says, and runs.
She heads east, towards Brooks Street, but soon finds her way blocked by a long procession of smiling, cooing Adipose. She slips into a side alley, and she’s deep in the shadows when a strong hand seizes her arm. Instinct kicks in and she reaches blindly for her attacker, slams him (tall and slim but solid, a staggering weight) into the brick wall behind her. She holds her arm hard against his throat, and he jerks his head back, breathing fast. Her gun is already in her hand; she lets it jut into his stomach, her thumb on the safety.
“If you were planning to mug me,” she says, “this really isn’t your night.”
He doesn’t look much like a mugger - it’s hard to tell in the half-light, but he seems to be wearing tweed, and there’s something like a slightly squished bowtie under her arm. He swallows once, his throat working against her forearm, but he doesn’t fight her. “You have a gun,” he says, sounding faintly surprised. “You have a gun, and you’re-” He looks down. “Well, now. Isn’t that interesting.”
She tips her head to one side. “Interesting? Not the word most people would choose.”
“That,” he says, “is because most people aren’t me.” He grins at her, broadly, and the light catches the eerie gleam of his teeth. “Rose Tyler. You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, would you?”
She goes still, her shoulders stiffening as if bracing for a sudden impact. She studies the man before her, breathless as she takes in his square, exaggerated features, the youth of his grin and the age she sees in his eyes. His face is friendly and deliberately unthreatening, arranged in a hapless who, me? expression that she knows far too well. She should; she’s been using it for years.
“I’m going to take my arm off your throat now,” she says, her voice surprisingly even. “If you move, I’ll shoot you.”
“Sounds fair,” he says, still grinning. Behind the grin there’s another expression altogether, a shadow too well-hidden for her to read. She steps back, releasing his throat but keeping the gun snug against his stomach. Blue shirt beneath a tweed coat, a bowtie and braces - her free hand darts into his breast pocket and for a dizzying moment her fingers grasp impossible, empty space (bigger on the inside) before pulling out a slim leather wallet. She flips it open and, for the first time since she shoved him against the wall, she looks away from his face.
Inside the wallet is a single sheet of psychic paper, and three words scrawl across the empty space in dark, curving ink: I’d almost forgotten.
The gun slips back into the holster at her waist, a single, smooth movement despite the slight tremor of her hands. She turns the psychic paper towards him and says, “Forgotten what, Doctor?”
His too-bright grin disappears; he snaps the wallet from her hand and returns it to his pocket. “None of your business.”
She laughs, surprised into a dry chuckle. “Nice.”
He steps away from the wall, straightening his bowtie. “Yes, well, rude again. What did you expect?”
“Not this,” she says. She stares at him - long hair and long face and thin, unsmiling mouth. She stares, but it isn’t this face she sees. “How did it happen?”
He looks down, and his fringe falls into his eyes “I can’t tell you that.”
Funny how regeneration changes everything but the bits that make her want to smack him. “Oh,” she says through her teeth. “Can’t you.”
“No, no, no,” he says, raising his hands as if to fend her off. “I can, I could, but I shouldn’t. You see, I’m not the me you’re looking for. Or, rather - I’m not that me anymore.” He reaches out and touches her arm, hesitantly. Pats it. “You haven’t found me yet, Rose, but you will. I promise.”
She looks down at the hand on her arm, and he lets it fall back to his side. She takes a slow, deep breath. “I assume,” she says, “you didn’t risk a paradox just to assault me in a dark alley.”
“Assault you?” he says, his voice going slightly high in his indignation. “I gave you a little tap on the shoulder; you’re the one with the-” He makes a strange chopping motion with his hands that may or may not be meant to invoke some sort of martial art, “-and the say hello to my lee-tle friend. If anyone assaulted anyone-”
An enormous spaceship passes overhead, its green light filling the sky. Her hand goes again to the gun at her hip, to its comforting weight. “So,” she says. “We should probably do something about that.”
“About what?” He looks up. “Oh. That.” He waves a dismissive hand. “No, Donna and I already took care of it. Are taking care of it. Will have taken care of it?” He wrinkles his nose. “English. Such annoying verb tenses. However you conjugate it, it’s not my problem, and it certainly isn’t yours.”
The Adipose ship glides to a stop in the sky over Brooks Street; she takes an almost unconscious step towards its light. “Then you’re here. You and Donna-”
He slips into her path, hands clasped in front of him. “Rose. You can’t.”
“Get out of my way.”
“Listen to me. It’s not the right time.”
“I don’t follow your orders,” she says. “I don’t even know you.”
His expression hardens and he leans in close, his eyes bright and far too near her own. “In case you’re slower than I remember, I’ll say it again: it is not the right time. Now, maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think I’m not who you know I am, or maybe I am who I am but I have some obscure, nefarious reason for keeping us apart, or maybe I am who I am but my obscure, nefarious reason for keeping us apart is to damn the timeline and keep you for myself, or - I really don’t know. I’ve run out of stupid human things you might be thinking.” He pauses. “It’s a bit of a strain, thinking at your level. If you can call it thought.”
“Oh, I see,” she says. She gives him a wide, deliberate grin. “I’m going to do something that will piss you off.”
He takes a step closer, crowding her, and her back hits the rough brick of the alley wall. He doesn’t move away, and he doesn’t touch her. “I am not pissed off.”
“You are. You’re furious.” She raises her chin and meets his eyes. “Did I leave you?”
“Yes. No.” He looks away, his jaw tense. “It’s complicated. Will be complicated. Can’t go into it in further detail or the world might end.”
She watches his face, the shadow and the light. The sad twist at the corner of his mouth. “Did you leave me?”
His fingers curl around her wrist, just above the cuff of her jacket. “Rose,” he says, and for the first time she can hear the pain in it. It hurts him to say her name. “I’m only here to prevent a disruption in my timeline. The TARDIS sensed a potential paradox; if I’d known it was you-” He stops, his lips pressed thin.
“If you’d known it was me,” she says, “you would’ve sent someone else.”
He meets her eyes. “Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“I can’t tell you that.” He pauses, and his fingers tighten around her wrist, his thumb sliding low over her pulse. “Amy. Her name is Amy. Amelia Pond.”
She swallows. “Good name. A little fairy tale.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Careful. I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.” She reaches up with her free hand and touches the knot of his bowtie. “I’ve been dreaming about you.”
“Well,” he says, his voice faint, “I am rather dreamy.”
“While I’m awake.”
“Not usually a good sign.” He bends his knees until his eyes are on level with hers and leans in until their noses touch. He looks into her eyes as if searching for something. “Visual and auditory hallucinations?”
“The works,” she says. “Visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile-”
“Gustatory?”
“That’s a bit personal.”
“Is it?” He pulls a long, thin contraption from his coat pocket and holds it to her temple. It whirs, glowing green, before he snaps it away again. “You can learn a lot about something by giving it a good lick. Next time you see dream-me, you ought to go right up to him and-”
“Yes,” she says. “I could taste you.”
He goes still, his eyes wide. “Oh. Right.” He turns away from her, then abruptly turns back. “You’ve been looking for me for a long time. Have I said or done anything in these hallucinations that suggests they might be anything more than simple wish fulfillment?”
She gives him a wry half-smile. “You think I’ve gone mad.”
He tucks the long contraption back into his coat pocket. “It wouldn’t surprise me, no.”
She looks away, to the night sky in the distance. Thousands of Adipose are rising through the air, toward their ship. Toward home. “You warned me about the Christmas Day crash of the Titanic,” she says. “In Donna’s universe.”
His brow furrows. “Did I tell you how to stop it?”
“No,” she says. “You told me to stay away.”
He snaps his fingers at her, grinning. “Ah, but you didn’t, did you? Rose Tyler runs toward the danger - always has, always will. You can change a lot about a person, but you can’t change that. So you decided to investigate on your own, probably saving the world in the process. Good for you. Question is, how did a hallucination-” He stops and stares into her eyes, but she can tell that he isn’t really seeing her. He’s remembering. “Donna told me. She said that London was destroyed in that universe - only London, though the crash of a ship that size should’ve wiped out all life on Earth. I knew that. I’ve known that for ages.” He moves close again, rests one large palm on the wall by her head and leans in. “Rose Tyler. Furious, gun-toting, grieving Rose Tyler. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I-”
He covers her mouth with his hand. “Do you mind? I’m still thinking.”
She knocks his hand away from her face. “If you do that again, I’ll bite you.”
“If you bite me, I’ll bite you back.” Suddenly he retreats to a respectful distance, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders held high and tense. “So, odd question but I have to ask it: Rose, this hallucination of yours - does he have one heart?”
She closes her eyes, and the memory rises in the darkness - the chill of his skin under her fingers, and the single, impossible pulse at the inside of his wrist. She takes an unsteady breath. “I don’t want to know. Whatever’s happened to him, whatever’s going to happen - I don’t want to know.”
She feels him touch her cheek, and she flinches away, her eyes flying open. His hand remains in the air, fingers outstretched. Reaching for a face that isn’t there. “Rose,” he says. “I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”
It begins to rain, a slow downpour of heavy, oily drops that cling to their clothes and darken their hair. The Adipose ship is gone, the clouded sky dark without it. She steps around him, into the middle of the alley. Turns and watches him as he watches her, rainwater beading in her eyelashes. “I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other,” she says, eventually.
He looks down at his shoes, his hair curling in the damp. “Five times I’ve said goodbye to you, Rose Tyler, and never expected to see you again.” He raises his eyes to hers. “And five times I’ve been wrong.”
“Well, maybe the sixth time’s the charm,” she says, and though she’s able to force a smile it turns brittle at the edges. She pulls the ‘verse jumper from her pocket, fumbling slightly. “I had no idea I was such a nuisance; I promise to stay out of your way after we save the multiverse. If we save it.”
“Rose-”
She turns away, twisting dials on the jumper. “You can go now, Doctor. We’re done.”
“Oh, honestly,” he says, and then he reaches for her shoulder, turning her into him. His hands are clumsy, his jacket strange and rough under her open palms, but when his mouth touches hers - just at the corner, the barest suggestion, the ellipsis of a kiss - she doesn’t push him away. His lips leave hers a breath later but he stays close, his eyed closed, his cheeks flushed. “Rose. Say something.”
“Blimey,” she says, and he laughs, a low, choked sound. He kisses the rise of her cheek, his lips dry and cool, and long fingers curl into her hair.
“I really wasn’t going to do this,” he says, and she wants to taste the smile she hears in his voice. She lifts her chin and her mouth catches his, briefly. His fingers clench, knuckles bumping against the base of her skull. “I wasn’t. I specifically forbade myself.”
“That sounds serious.”
“It is. Very.” His forehead rests against hers and he swallows hard. When he speaks again, his voice is rough. “Nothing good comes of nostalgia, Rose. It’s long past time for me to let go.”
She touches his lapel, resting her fingers over his pocket and the psychic paper inside. “To forget?”
“Maybe,” he says. “If I can.”
She nods. Steps out of his arms and looks up into his face, her eyes stinging and dry. “I’ve been looking for you so long - years longer than the time I spent travelling with you.” She reaches out and takes his hand, twining her fingers through his. The fit is wrong, but that only makes her hold tighter. “I hope you never have to say goodbye again,” she says. “I hope you forget.”
The Doctor squeezes her hand once, hard, and then they both let go.
The ‘verse jumper lies at their feet; she’d dropped it when he kissed her, dropped it with a carelessness that shocks her a little, now that she thinks of it. The Doctor bends down and picks the jumper off the asphalt, turning it over idly in his hands. He pulls the long contraption from his pocket again and holds it to the navigational control before she can protest; it whirs, glowing green. Then he tucks the sonic screwdriver back into his pocket.
“I’ve programmed your next two destinations,” he says. “You’ll leave as soon as it’s finished building its charge.” He presses the jumper into her hands. “Three minutes, at the most. Then you’ll be gone.”
She slides the jumper into her jacket pocket. “And where will I be going?”
“Let it be a surprise. One last wonderful surprise.” He folds his hands in front of him, knitting his fingers together. “Well. You may not think it’s so wonderful, but these things are a matter of perspective.”
“Most things are.”
“Most things,” the Doctor says, “are only a matter of time, and time-”
“-is only a matter of perspective. I know.” She smiles at him, her chest aching. “Three minutes left, and we spend it talking nonsense.”
“Excuse me, what’s wrong with nonsense? Nonsense is the best sort of sense there is. I never feel so sensible as when I’m talking nonsense.” He looks away. Swallows. “I should probably go. Before you-”
“Yeah,” she says, softly.
Neither of them moves. They stand silently for a long moment, his eyes everywhere but her face. Then, finally, he looks at her. “I’ll tell you, Rose. Before it’s over, I’ll tell you everything.”
“I think you know that’s not true.” She raises her hand, rests her palm against the center of his chest and feels the heavy double beat within. She looks up and meets his eyes. “I find you.”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s all I need to know.” She lowers her hand. “Goodbye, Doctor,” she says, and walks away.
He doesn’t follow.
Two blocks until she reaches the police barricade on Brooks Street, and she stops, stands among the milling crowd. The rain eases as she waits, listening silently to awed, frightened whispers of diet pills and fat babies and aliens, again, can you believe it? She knows the atmosphere well, the respite after the storm, the slow return to normalcy. The shaken, almost giddy relief of those who survive. He’ll leave now - he and Donna may already be standing together at the TARDIS console, grinning like idiots and having a laugh about diet pills and fat babies and London, again, can you believe it?
Her grip tightens on the barricade, and the wood splinters a little under her fingers.
“Listen,” a familiar, female voice says, and then Donna Noble is standing behind her, flushed and beautiful and impossibly happy. She looks at Rose with a friendly sort of blankness, without the slightest hint of recognition in her eyes.
He was right; it’s too soon. If the Doctor is with her, if he sees her now-
“Listen,” Donna says, and Rose does nothing. Says nothing. It must look like agreement, because Donna says, “There’s this woman who’s going to come along - a tall, blonde woman called Sylvia. Tell her, That bin there.” Donna points, grinning as if she’s just told a wonderful joke. “It’ll all make sense, just - that bin there.” Then Donna turns, still grinning, and runs off.
Seconds later Rose fades away, and it’s as if she was never there at all.
++