Therapy 3/? (still at least 8)

[wendymr]

Story: Therapy
Author: WMR
Rated: NC17/M
Characters: Nine, Rose, Jack
Summary: She didn't get the label of being the most jeopardy-friendly companion for nothing... But it's the aftermath that's the worst.

Many thanks to dark_aegis and nnwest for BRing.

Author's note: The next couple of sections are very Jack/Rose-centric. Have patience: the Doctor will have a major role a little later.

Chapter 1: Attack
Chapter 2: Survivor



Chapter 3: Trauma

He jack-knifes into a fully upright position, jerking his arm away from her. Stares at her, the words she’s just said echoing in his head. She wants that?

Now? After what she’s been through today?

Is she insane? Is this some after-effect of trauma?

He really should have gone and got the Doctor. Got him to give her some sort of relaxant.

And then he realises that she’s watching him, her expression wary. A little... hurt.

“Rose. Sweetheart.” He takes her face between his hands. “Not that I’m not very flattered... but why?”

“What?” She gives him a raised-eyebrow look. “The legendary intergalactic playboy, Captain Jack, asks questions first?”

“When it’s you, I do,” he tells her, kindly but firmly.

“Well, if you don’t want me...”

And, completely unlike the Rose he knows, she sounds sulky. She pulls away from his hold.

He sighs. “You know that’s not true. Rose, you have to know I find you very attractive. Nothing’s changed since I danced with you on top of my ship. Except that now I like you too. I like you a lot. I care about you. That means I could never treat you like a casual...” He trails off, not quite sure how to describe what he means.

“A casual fuck, you mean?” She says it a little scornfully.

“Guess so, yeah.”

She shrugs. “What if I tell you I want to be a casual fuck for you? Just for tonight?”

Now he has to get to the bottom of this. Because that’s just not Rose. She’s no innocent, no naïve, blushing virgin. He remembers the young woman who danced with him, after all, the coyly seductive looks she gave him, the way she willingly nestled into his body, didn’t shy away from the blatantly sexual way he danced with her. Wasn’t shocked when he ground his hips against her, ensuring that she felt his arousal.

But, at the same time, she’s not like him. She’s no slut. She doesn’t go out at night looking for willing partners. As far as he knows, she hasn’t slept with anybody at least since he joined the TARDIS. And probably not for a while before that.

Okay, she sort of has a boyfriend, but from what he’s managed to piece together it’s more an off-relationship than an on one right now. He knows that she and the Doctor aren’t... even though he also knows the Doctor would very much like to, and he’s pretty sure that Rose would too.

He’s heard about someone called Adam, who was apparently briefly her boyfriend, though she denies it and claims that the Doctor’s just saying it to wind her up. He suspects that she might have kissed this Adam, but is sure that she didn’t sleep with him.

If this had happened on any other night, he’d think that she was probably just horny. Starved of sex for a long time, seeing him as a potentially willing partner and one who could probably give her a damn good time. As he could. He’s not modest about his abilities in bed; has no reason to be.

But this isn’t any other night. She’s not just horny.

He might have an idea of what she’s up to... But he will not accuse. He’ll let her explain it to him herself.

“Rose, you’re nobody’s casual fuck.”

In a way, he’s always known that. He wasn’t joking when he told the Doctor that he never stood a chance after he saved her from death by barrage balloon. There is just something about Rose that defies anyone to classify her as ordinary, as forgettable. She is unique. She is bold, daring, courageous, funny, sparky, belligerent, stubborn, beautiful and sexy. She has an innocence, too, that all of her experience, all that she has survived and explored with the Doctor, has not erased.

Even in the beginning, she would not have been a casual fuck. She can never be that now.

She’s not giving up. “Okay, well, I didn’t want to be just a fuck for you anyway.” She touches him, trails a finger across his forehead, dips down to wander along the bridge of his nose. “I like you too. You’re my friend. I want to make love with you.”

“Just for tonight?” he asks, his tone deliberately light. “Or more? For as long as we want it?”

She shrugs. “Why not?” But her gaze has slid away from him.

“Because it’s not what you really want, Rose.” His voice is firm now, caring but insistent. “I know you. You don’t do this. You don’t sleep with guys just because you’ve got an itch you want to scratch. If you’d wanted me, we’d have done it before now.”

“I want this.” Her tone is flat, determined. And she starts to slide her hand down his chest, over his stomach, lower...

He grabs her hand and pulls it away from him. “Rose. Stop that.”

What is she thinking ? That all she has to do is crawl into his bed, make a few advances and he’ll be all hers? That he’s totally ruled by his libido, with no scruples at all and certainly no finer feelings for the partner he’s with? That it wouldn’t even occur to him to consider what she’s been through today, or that he might actually feel too much respect for her to treat her as a casual bed-partner?

“Why?” She glares at him. “What’s wrong with me, Jack? You don’t fancy me now or something?”

“Rose, you know that’s not true.” It’s so far from the truth... “If your hand had gone a couple of inches lower, you’d have known for yourself,” he admits, unable to resist a sly grin at her.

She shifts her lower body, bringing their hips into contact. “Mmmm. You sleep naked,” she comments.

She’s switching from coy pleading to anger to sultry seduction. This isn’t Rose. And this isn’t plain lust or desire.

He’s pretty sure he knows what it is, but he needs her to tell him.

“Come on, Rose. What’s really going on here?” He shifts, puts some distance between them and catches both of her hands in his. “We both know you’re not suddenly overcome with lust for me. Tell me what you really want.”

“Told you what I want.” And now she just sounds lost. He can hear the lump in her throat, and her face begins to crumple.

“Oh, come here,” he murmurs, and tugs her into his arms, cradling her against him, rocking her as he kisses her hair.

She’s crying at last. And that’s a good thing. She needs this.

And, while he’s still amazed that she’s come to him and not the Doctor, he won’t let her down. He’ll be what she needs, hold her while she cries, mop her tears afterwards and help to set her on the road to healing.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he says softly. “Let it out. I’m here for you.”

*********

The Doctor is pacing.

Tonight, he’s not tinkering at the console, or pretending that he might sleep until he gives up, gets dressed and does something else.

He’s in a little-visited part of the TARDIS - little visited by this him, anyway, though it was a favourite part of one or two of his previous incarnations. His Fifth, in particular, had been very fond of the Cloisters.

He’s here because he won’t be disturbed. Neither Jack nor Rose know this place exists, because he’s never shown them and the TARDIS is good at keeping his - and her - secrets. Of course, it’s mainly Jack he’s hiding from. He knows the other man wanted to talk to him. But he doesn’t want that conversation.

He told Jack he doesn’t blame him. But that’s not true. He blames Jack. He blames the bastards who assaulted, almost raped, Rose. And he blames himself.

He told Jack he doesn’t blame him because he recognised in the former Time Agent’s eyes what he knows is in his own. Guilt, eating away at him inside. He didn’t - doesn’t - want to add to that. But, all the same, Jack was supposed to have been looking after her. Making sure that she came to no harm in that time-period, where muggings and assaults and murders were commonplace. Where women were not held in any kind of respect, unless they were of a certain class, and even then the respect was limited.

Jack knows Rose’s chronic ability to wander off. He should have been more observant. Of course, he was eying up the available talent again. Flirting. As he always does.

He blames Jack for that, and is avoiding him because he knows that if Jack finds him tonight he will say so. He will lose his temper, in a way that Jack has never seen so far; in a way Rose has only seen once and he never wants her to see again. And Jack will find himself the victim of a Time Lord turned violent, will end up either injured or being kicked out of the TARDIS.

And that would be wrong and unfair, because his real anger does not lie with Jack. It doesn’t even lie with himself, though he’s furious with himself too, for trusting Jack with her safety, for not warning her more explicitly about the dangers. He’d known that she was under the impression that the English Regency period is all like those TV plays she’s seen, the dramatisations of Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. All elegant manners, beautiful costumes and chivalry.

He should have warned her about the seamy side.

But he hadn’t expected anything like this.

It isn’t as if he was being complacent. Hundreds of years of time- and space-travel, dozens of companions, and nothing like this has ever happened to one of his people before. Ever. So it’s not as if rape was a possibility that would’ve been at the forefront of his mind.

Getting killed, yes. That’s happened before. And as for almost getting killed... well, it wouldn’t be a normal week in the TARDIS if one of them didn’t barely escape with their life from some escapade or other.

Rape is different. Feels different. Even though it could be argued that it’s not as bad as being killed. The difference is that it’s all about power and domination and humiliation. What stronger members of a species do to weaker ones. And you’re left alive to remember it, suffer from it, be haunted by it.

Rose is strong - perhaps the strongest woman he’s known, with the exception of extraordinary women like Romana and Leela. Certainly the strongest human woman. What will her near-rape, an act designed to weaken, to degrade,  do to her? He is worried about how it might change her. How it has already changed her. Whether she will be able to trust men again. If she'll be awkward around them - around him - afraid to touch, to seek comfort or just give and receive a spontaneous hug. Whether she’ll recover from it and whether she needs more help than he - and Jack, of course - can give her.

And so his real anger is reserved for the bastards who did this to her. But they’re not here. He can’t take it out on them now. Earlier, when he and Jack had rescued Rose, they’d been more concerned with freeing her and getting her out of there than dealing with her attackers, so he hadn’t been able to give them the good kicking they deserved.

Seeing Rose curled up in a fragile ball on that bed, then treating her bruises back in the TARDIS, the shadows in her eyes ever since, the way she’d avoided looking directly at him - or Jack - all evening... all of that made him wish that Jack’s blaster hadn’t been set to stun. He, notorious hater of weapons.

Part of him hates himself for that.

But he hates himself most of all for not being able to rid his mind of one image. Just one. And it’s not the horrific one of that bastard on top of her, raping her. It’s the one after that.

Rose, naked on the bed. Her body exposed to his gaze.

So he’s hiding. Mostly from Jack, who he is using, unfairly, as the target of his rage, but also from Rose. Because he can’t see her right now. Can’t face her. Not when he feels complicit in her humiliation. Because he feels almost as bad as the lowlife scum who were raping her - because he saw her naked and now can’t forget the sight. Can’t get out of his mind the idea of touching her, caressing those parts of her that are normally well-covered and not his, or anyone’s, to see.

The female body isn’t new to him, of course, nor in particular the human female body. But Rose’s is. And he likes what he saw too much. Even though her face was battered and bruised and bloody, which should have made him sickened and angry on her behalf. Had made him sickened and angry... but he still can’t forget her body, bared to his gaze.

Damn.

Cursed Rassilon! How can he even begin to think that way about her in the circumstances?

Not that he’s never thought about her that way before today... but never with such vivid images.

Sick.

He leans against the Cloister wall, tilting back his head, and closes his eyes. Inhale. Exhale. Focus. Concentrate on everything he knows, everything he is. He is a Time Lord. Not a frail, weak human male. He is not ruled by his body; never has been. His mind is far more powerful than any of these pathetic little humans could ever conceive of.

Humans are a mere blink in time compared to him. Rose is a fleeting presence in his life. Just as the many companions who went before her were.

He cares about her, is angry beyond what he can express at what she suffered today, but that is all.

Time Lords do not become involved. They are in the universe, but not truly a part of it, can never be truly a part of it. And this, above all, is what he needs to remember. Will remember.

Finally, he opens his eyes. Feels the inner calm return.

And he turns, leaves the Cloisters and makes his way back to the console room. In case Rose has trouble sleeping and comes looking for him.

**********

He’s being noble.

She expected it; he wouldn’t be Jack if he wasn’t. The longer he’s with them, the more his noble side shows. She sometimes wonders what he was like before: before the Time Agency stole his memories, before he became a conman. Was he, then, the good and decent man he started to become within days of joining them? Was he funny and flirty and noble and a great motivator and everything else he is now, but without the moments of darkness, of insecurity, that he tries to hide but bleed out every so often?

But, at the same time, he is Jack. Jack the flirt. Jack the walking, talking sex machine. She can wear him down. She will wear him down. Because this is too important to her.

So she lets him hold her and dry her tears and she tries not to show that she’s embarrassed at having cried. And then, when she knows he thinks that she’s given up on the idea and she’ll let him just hold her while she sleeps, she tries again.

Turning in his arms, she slides so that she’s lying on top of him. Full-length; she can feel every inch of him, and he’s even more impressive than she’d imagined. And she reaches for his lips, kissing him hard, driving her tongue into his mouth.

And then his hands are gripping her, not hard enough to hurt but firmly enough that she can’t fight him, and he’s pushing her off him, back down to the bed.

“What’s wrong with me?” she demands, angry now, hurt that he’s pushing her away so easily, that he’s able to resist her. This is I-Shag-Anything-Sentient Jack, after all.

“You tell me,” he says, and he sounds angry too.

“You said you think I’m attractive, but you keep pushing me away.”

“God!” he exclaims, and turns on his side to face her. His expression is taut, strained, but his eyes show deep concern. “Of course I do. Do you really think that after what you’ve been through today I’d take advantage of you like that?”

“ ‘S not taking advantage. I’m asking.”

He sighs. “Tell me why. Tell me, Rose,” he adds as she avoids his gaze. “I want to understand. God, don’t you know I’d do anything to help you through this? Anything at all. But I don’t think this is what you need.”

“You don’t know what I need, Jack!” Frustrated with his refusal, hurt, near to tears again, she stares at him.

“Rose, sweetheart, don’t look at me as if I betrayed you or something,” he groans. “Why don’t you just tell me what this is all about?”

“I want you. That’s what it’s about.”

She watches him shake his head. “No, you don’t. Not really. Rose, I know you. We’ve been living together in close quarters for a month now. I know you - and the Doctor - better than I can remember knowing anyone in a damn long time. I know you don’t do this.”

She just looks at him and waits.

“Rose, you were almost raped today!”

And he still doesn’t understand?

“That’s why I want it.”

“Why?” He reaches out a hand and strokes her hair lightly. “I don’t get it, Rose.”

He should get it. Jack’s not stupid. And he understands women better than the Doctor does - but then, the Doctor’s problem is that he often fails to understand humans, male or female. His mind’s on higher species.

She takes a deep breath and begins to explain. And once she starts the words come pouring out.

“Cause right now I feel like a victim. An’ I’m not a victim! I refuse to be! But I close my eyes and I just feel myself being held down and being forced. Hurt! An’ I don’t want to remember that. I don’t want to be afraid of having sex ever again because I just remember it hurting. I want to make love and I want it to be good so it blocks out the bad stuff inside my head. I want to remember sex being good. An’ something I choose to do, not something I was forced into.”

She meets his gaze, holding his sympathetic dark blue eyes with her own. “Now do you see?”

*********

God.

Sex as therapy.

It makes a twisted sort of sense.

But why does it have to be him?

Oh, he can give her what she wants. A good time - a damn good time. But she’s not her normal self at the moment. She’s damaged. And what she says she wants right now isn’t necessarily still going to be what she wants later. If she wakes up in the morning, say, and regrets it.

And then hates him for taking advantage of her.

She means too much to him - he can never risk her hating him.

She’s waiting for an answer. He’s got to say something.

And he’s not going to lie to her. She deserves better than that.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I understand. Believe me, I do. But...” He sighs. “Where do I even start?”

Her hand steals out and presses flat against his chest. “I usually find somethin’ like this works quite well,” she tells him, sliding her index finger back and forth over his nipple.

A sharp intake of breath escapes him. “No, Rose, don’t.” He covers her hand, drawing it away from his body, holding it in hers. “Look, for a start, what if you feel differently later? In the morning?”

“How could I?” She meets his gaze without flinching, and he’s giving her one of his best interrogative looks. “Jack, I know this is what I need. I spent enough time thinking about it before I came to you. I won’t regret it. And I won’t even think about blaming you.”

“You can’t be sure about that.” She doesn’t answer. He moves on. “Why me, anyway?”

“Why not you?”

“You know what I mean. The Doctor...”

“What?” She actually looks shocked. “You think I could go to him an’ ask him to... to have sex with me...”

“I know you’d prefer to do it with him.” He smiles at her, taking the sting out of his words. “I know how you feel about him.”

He’s always known, from the moment Rose introduced him to the Doctor, that he didn’t stand a chance with her. Not because the Doctor made it very clear, but because Rose’s feelings were so obvious. And one of his cardinal rules is to avoid partners who are in love with someone else. Way too messy.

“Whether I do or not, that’s beside the point,” Rose says. “He wouldn’t... and I couldn’t ask him. Just... couldn’t.”

He has to stifle a grin as he wonders which of them would be more embarrassed by it if Rose did ask. The Doctor might flirt, but very definitely shies away from any hint of more. For some reason, he seems to have categorised both of his companions as out of bounds.

“So I’m second-best, is that it?” He teases Rose a little, hoping that maybe he’ll be able to divert her.

“Don’t be stupid.” She leans closer to him and brushes a kiss against his cheek. “Love you too. Not just him.”

Ah. Her first admission that she loves the Doctor. But she loves him?

Him, the conman, the worthless flirt, who’d almost got her killed in London, who’d come on to her because he wanted to sell her a heap of useless junk?

He doesn’t deserve this.

“I’m not worth it, Rose.”

“Are so.”

She’s just saying it to get him to agree to what she wants. Or so he thinks. But then he meets her gaze again, and he sees that she’s not lying.

“Ah, hell. I love you, too. But I am so not worth it.”

“You are to me. An’ I want you to do this for me, Jack. I need it. Please. I’ve got to get past this crap. I hate what’s inside my head. I want to take control again. To do it cause I want to, not because someone’s forcing me. Please!”

He can hear the near-tears in her voice. And he wishes he knew how to handle this. How to persuade her that she doesn’t need to sleep with someone else to take control of her life, her sexuality again. That she is strong and courageous and beautiful and sexy, that she is herself and not an object, not just a body for someone to paw and hurt and invade.

But he can’t think of another way.

Except to give her something of what she wants.

And so he dips his head and kisses her, gently, with love, showing her with his lips and his hands as he cups her face that she is beautiful and brave and special.

That she is Rose, and she is a survivor and that she will survive this too.

**********

tbc

x-posted to better_with_3