NEW: Eyes Forced Open (1/2)

[tkel_paris]

Title: Eyes Forced Open

Rating: T

Series: Sequel to bas_math_girl's “ Back to Base.” Since her Muse apparently wasn't enthusiastic about writing certain things that a sequel might've called for...

Dedication: bas_math_girlbas_math_girlbas_math_girl, in honor of her birthday. Here's some Rose-bashing for you! Sorry no D/D love, but I hope you'll like this. And to the numerous readers who suggested this...bas_math_girl

Summary: The Doctor wants Donna back after “Back to Base,” and he'll gladly welcome Andy and their children. But Rose isn't keen on it. Especially when they run into someone the Doctor thought lost forever...

Disclaimer: I don't even know anyone who owns Doctor Who. Furthermore: every Whovian has at least one companion that they just can't stand - for whatever reasons. Rose has become that one to me, and I know BMG feels the same. Consider this fic therapy for our feelings - and turn back without comment right now if that bothers you.

Author's Note: If BMG gives me permission, I'll finish this in a certain way. We'll see what her Muse is up for...


EYES FORCED OPEN

The Doctor stormed out the TARDIS, the biggest headache he'd ever experienced in full force. He tried to tune out Rose's rant behind him. When she got back from visiting her family just yesterday, she appeared to have let go of the anger that had prodded the break in the first place. It made for an almost pleasant evening...

Until he mentioned visiting Donna and Andy. He was stunned by the ferocity of her reaction. Questions along the lines of “why would you bother” forced him to remember how jealous she'd been of Sarah Jane Smith - and that reaction made no sense by any of his knowledge about human relationships! And also how unhappy she'd been about Mickey joining them, even though he was technically still her boyfriend...

And then that night, she came into his room... Which he'd never let her into, because he wasn't thinking along the lines she was... He'd nearly turned into the Oncoming Storm on her, screaming at her over “invading my privacy!”

It wasn't the first time Rose had tried to persuade him to “take things to the next level,” but it was like Rose didn't understand that he at first wanted to just go back to having fun across the universe like they'd done before. He'd never really had a relationship before, so he needed to take things slowly to not muck it up.

Like he had with Donna...

Only, in the bright light of this morning as the TARDIS dropped them at a random location, now the Doctor was starting to catalog all the annoying traits Rose was exhibiting on a nearly daily basis. A selfishness that was unique to adolescents... Enjoying thrills that he knew Donna would've blown a basket over... and discouraged in him - and, more to the point, that he'd listen to Donna! A jealousy that went too far, that assumed too much... And those were just the worst ones...

It was becoming painfully obvious that he'd noticed all those things before, but he'd chosen to ignore them. Either because he didn't want to think ill of the girl who'd saved his life (even if she'd endangered it even more often with her own brand of recklessness), or because he didn't want to be alone again and so put on blinders the majority of the time.

He'd never had to worry about that with Donna. Yes, he had to worry about her safety, but he didn't have to keep an extra eye on her since she had a more level head - which actually kept them out of some of the trouble he'd get into with Rose.

Blimey, he missed her sense, her compassion, her bossing him around... He needed her back! He'd do anything! Childproof the TARDIS, endure what he could detect from that physical bond she shared with Andy (and he didn't want to examine how much he envied Andy for that...), and - and this might be the easiest part - play the part of the doting uncle as far as Donna and Andy - and the children - would let him. As much as he wished things had played out differently, he didn't regret the existence of Mikey and his unborn sibling; they were Donna's children, and - given that Andy was, in many ways, him - would be as close as he would likely come to being a father again.

The question was what to do about Rose. Having made the decisions he did, what was the best thing he could do now? He didn't like dumping someone off somewhere (bad memories of Sarah Jane's expressions fluttered through his conscious mind), but he had to do something. His family - for that was what Donna and Andy and the children were to him, no matter how complicated things were - had to be on the TARDIS. They belonged there!

Rose, based on what little he was tuned in to of her rant (and when had he started tuning her out on a regular basis...?), didn't sound keen on toddlers joining them. He hadn't even broached the subject yet, and was trying to figure out when would be a good time. It was looking like, as Donna had observed, you had to just rip the bandage off right away to let things air.

He was delaying. Pure and simple. A time of reckoning was approaching, and he couldn't see how things would work out...

“Doctor, have you heard one thing I just said?!” Rose's voice crashed through his thoughts. She was getting harder to fool with his old trick of changing the subject and walking away when things got too personal for him. Either she was wiser, or she was just more stubbornly pursuing what she wanted from him.

Huh... Donna had only wanted to see the wonders of the universe. And to stop him from going too far. For the first time, he really saw that Rose hadn't tamed him at all; he was still an extremely reckless man. Donna had calmed the fires of Gallifrey within him, and might've completely put them out... had he not been convinced he had to rekindle the past... His ginger was right; if you didn't move on, you were doomed to repeat your old mistakes.

Then some movement caught his eye in the micro-seconds it took him to think the previous thoughts. A blond head of hair, pulled back in a ponytail, on a woman's head. A young woman, if her frame was any indication, who was carrying a backpack and had some bags hanging from her shoulders. And then... his mind suddenly felt hers. Which shouldn't be possible -

But his thoughts were cut off, as if she could feel him. She whipped around, and they both froze. “It can't be,” he whispered in shock, not believing his senses.

“What can't be?!” Rose was really getting irritated with being put off like this? What did he think she was?!

But the blond's face beamed in an all-too familiar way. Dad, she screamed in his mind as she ran to him.

The voice... There were a lot of tricks in the universe, but that couldn't be faked! Jenny, he shouted back with a manic grin as he rushed to meet her - leaving Rose so shocked she couldn't push words through her angry throat...

Jenny jumped into his embrace, dropping her bags at their feet, and he picked her off the ground, twirling her around as though he didn't have a care in the universe. And at that moment, he didn't. Only the increasingly clear knowledge that his youngest had somehow come back from the dead and was safely in his arms - after who knew how long a separation from her perspective - mattered. Oh, and soon letting Donna know! Oh, and Martha; she had to know, too.

Those concerns didn't last long in his mind. He could feel the excited chattering of her mind, running as fast as his own thoughts could, of how good it was to see him again. It was almost incoherent. “How did you come back,” he whispered, finally pushing words through his throat. “I saw you die and couldn't feel regeneration energy building in you...”

Jenny pulled back, forcing him to put her down. She beamed at him. “Don't know. Just woke up. I think I'm as restless as you can be; I didn't stick around. Stole a shuttle and starting traveling to save people and places.” Then she frowned. “But I had a bunch of bad experiences, and wished you'd stuck around.”

He face-palmed himself. “I thought you were gone forever. I couldn't bear to see the reminder...” Stopping himself from digging a bigger hole, he just asked, “How long...?”

She shrugged. “No one told me, Dad. It's been about a year for me since then. Anyway, I've been searching for a Vortex Manipulator so I could find my way back to you and to Mum.”

“Who is this?!” Rose's shout broke their concentration, and the Doctor felt his insides freeze as Jenny's eyes narrowed at a person who - if he could read her face and her thoughts correctly - seemed an intruder. “Why is she calling you 'Dad'?! And who's her Mum?!”

Jenny scowled. She'd been looking forward to a lovely reunion with her father and with Donna Noble. So what was this... human... doing here? “I could ask you the same first question,” she tightly replied, “but I'm more interested in him answering this one: Where's Mum?”

The Doctor had more than enough sense of self-preservation to know that things could - and would - get ugly fast if he didn't act. “Let's take this to the TARDIS,” he snapped, at the end of his patience. “I'm not about to air my... dirty laundry in public.” He grabbed a couple of the bags, Jenny instinctively went for the rest, and then he forced them to the Old Girl - who chose to open her doors for him without his snapping his fingers. “Thanks,” he told her as he closed the doors behind them.

The answer was a rush of cold air, a sign she wasn't happy with him. Not that that was anything new... What was a surprise was when he felt the Old Girl reach out to Jenny, but practically box his own ears so he wasn't privy to their conversation. Or how Jenny put down her bags next to the main console and slowly ran her hands over the surfaces, acquainting herself with them. It looked like the TARDIS was teaching her, bonding with her...

It was more than he'd dreamed back before she'd died...

An angry huff at his side reminded him of where and when he was. Sighing, he rubbed his neck and tried to summarize Messaline and that awful day. He kept having to tell Rose to “let me finish!” And what should've taken only a few minutes became almost half an hour.

Half an hour where Jenny had been silent, ignoring them in her communing with the TARDIS.

Jenny, however, wasn't ignoring them. She heard every word, but was more interested in what the Old Girl had to tell her about Rose... And Donna... And nothing about the former was pleasing her, whereas she found more and more to like about the woman who - as the Doctor admitted to Rose - had every right to be called her mother.

Rose's sputtering reaction when he finished reminded the Doctor - vividly - of Donna's smirking thought of Rose being faced with being called a grandmother. He then realized that he'd never told Rose about his family. And that he'd never felt comfortable enough to do so. But with Donna... it just spilled out because of the circumstances, and he didn't feel awful about admitting to the truth. His ginger had never thought poorly of him for being less than ideal - whereas Rose was having trouble accepting him as something other than whatever pedestal she'd placed him on... The only coherent thing Rose could say? “You mean you have a daughter who's effectively my age?!”

Jenny snorted, sounding a lot like Donna - proving to the Doctor that she'd imprinted on the ginger. From the speculative grin on his daughter's face, he guessed that the TARDIS had let her in on his family history. Yeah, he probably shouldn't mention that he'd traveled with his granddaughter...

But Jenny had had enough. She was determined to show her dad how mature she was, and how Rose was proving to be quite the opposite. “The TARDIS explained a lot to me just now. Let me see if I've got this right. And you,” she pointed at Rose, “keep your mouth shut!” The shocked expressions on both faces of her audience satisfied her that she could speak without interruption.

“This is the girl who kept getting in trouble because she'd wander off in search of some... shiny thing or person.” She figured her dad was smart enough to recall Jack Harkness, among others. “A girl who brought reapers down on Earth because she tried to save her late father. A girl who just dropped her boyfriend and her mother to travel with you, and didn't really consider their feelings. Who didn't even ask the TARDIS if she could look inside her to save you. Who the TARDIS didn't trust with the information that could've helped you recover more quickly from your regeneration. Who got you both banned because she encouraged you to act a fool in front of someone you really should've behaved more circumspectly around. Who got jealous because you didn't tell her about your past...”

She trailed off, knowing when he paled that he was thinking about the rest of his family from Gallifrey. “Who didn't want Mickey - who was still her boyfriend - coming between the two of you... Who thought nothing of abandoning her mother to be alone in Pete's World with just Pete and Mickey. And who thought nothing of what that Dimension Cannon might do to the universe! She could've just sent you a message with it, but no! She had to go find you, and the hell with the rest of the universe!”

A glare kept Rose from talking. The Doctor noted that Jenny was quickly inspiring fear in her, and he was actually getting nervous about what his daughter might be capable of. She was certainly angry enough at him...

“And then we have Donna Noble. A woman you didn't hate for slapping you and bossing you around when you'd... just lost a friend. A woman you sensed was special even without her mysteriously beaming aboard the TARDIS. A woman whose refusal to travel with you regretted more than anything... A woman who changed her mind because she wanted to do something worthwhile with her life because it was going nowhere. A woman who helped you save a million lives, and then wanted to go with you because she knew you need someone to stop you. A woman who shared your burden... Who helped you free the Ood - a people that Compassion over there couldn't see as beings with her Earth-Centric views.”

Rose turned red, but her brain couldn't produce sounds. She was, however, shaking with anger and shock.

And Jenny wasn't done. “A woman who found answers where no one else looked. A woman who saved Earth with you whispering over a cell phone. The woman who made you see that I really am your daughter, who named me! Who helped you solve a murder and save Agatha Christie - and your own life, yet again! A woman you were terrified had died because you'd tried to send her to safety! A woman who just held your hand and was there for you when you needed someone! The woman who overcame a member of the Trickster's Brigade and proceeded to save all of Creation! And you just dumped her on Earth with your twin because you hadn't let go of the past?!”

The Doctor flinched as she screamed the last bit at him. Hearing the two compared in such a way, and clearly showing the TARDIS' opinions on the two, made his choices... look like trying to shag a Dalek. In other words, like a bunch of really bad ideas...

Not giving either one of them a chance to speak, Jenny turned and started sending the TARDIS into the Vortex. She silently thanked the Old Girl for the quick flying lesson. “I'm disappointed in you, Doctor. I don't want to be around you if you prefer the company of this... child to the woman you had at your side. So I'm going to see Mum and the man I'll hereafter call Dad. There I'll be happy, and you'll be free to act as stupid as you want.”

More sputtering at his side. Not that the Doctor heard it very well. He'd just regained his daughter... only for her to spurn him over his treatment of her mother.

He couldn't blame her... But he didn't want to lose her... And yet it was looking like he was going to have to choose between Rose, and his family... And yet Jenny wasn't making him choose, since she spoke like she didn't expect him to change his mind... Donna had made it clear that Rose had to be okay for them to come aboard. So it was all up to how Rose behaved when she met Donna's young family...

The next few hours were going to be the ugliest of his just over nine centuries long life...

Part Two