Second Chances (3/8)
TITLE: Second Chances (3/8)
SPOILERS: DW S2, TW Eps 1-5 . Set between L&M and Fear Her
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, Jack, Gwen, Sarah Jane, Jackie, TARDIS
DESCRIPTION - A sequel to “Boxing Day”, which can be found under the TCI tag on T&C, with one significant change.
RATING: FRT (UK Classification 12A) - for occasional strong language
PICTURE: BBC3
Thanks to aibhinn for her wonderful beta work.
Without Prejudice. The names of all characters contained herein are the property of the BBC, as are their mannerisms, distinctive items of clothing and occasional quotable remarks. Please don't rip them off, David needs his thermal underwear. No Infringments of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
CHAPTER THREE - Divided Loyalties
“We’re children, needing other children
And yet letting our grown-up pride,
Hide all the need inside.”
(“People” - sung by Barbra Streisand, among many others)
Gwen wondered how long she could hang around The Hub after the Torchwood Christmas pub night, before Jack interpreted her presence as a blatant come-on.
Not that she would mind. She’d thought of nothing else for weeks. Sometimes she felt that if he came within six feet of her, she would spontaneously combust. He knew it, too. His reputation in that department was legendary. Apparently she was the only humanoid in the place he hadn’t had.
She wasted far too much time wondering why. She felt closer to him, in many ways, than any other person. At every point when she’d doubted her ability to function in this strange new world, he’d been there for her, with exactly the wry observation, gentle word of comfort, or encouragement she’d needed.
And those were just the bad times. There had been some good ones, too. Target practice, a successful mission, drinks and a laugh down the pub, or just the sheer adrenalin rush that came with Torchwood territory. Sometimes, after a moment like that, she’d realise he was grinning at her in that wicked way he had, or fantasise about his hands touching her flesh, the electricity of contact, secrecy and danger.
He lived in her mind, and her body’s responses, as she tossed and turned in bed at night. “You at it again?” Rhys used to say, as she trembled beside him at three in the morning. “What do they put in your tea at that place?” And at times like that, his fumbling, well-meaning presence felt like fingernails scraping on a blackboard.
“Oh, it’s nothing, just turning things over in my mind,” she’d say, and get up to put the kettle on, praying that he wouldn’t follow her into the kitchen.
She’d started playing old songs a lot. From the little that his office gave away, it seemed Jack had a thing about the 1940s. That had started her off. She browsed iTunes, not for indie bands, but for Jimmy Durante and Ella Fitzgerald.
“I’ll sing to him, sweet things to him, and worship the trousers that cling to him…….”
Oh yes, the oldies said it best. Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little.
Why don’t you just have me, Jack? Just go ahead and damn well shag me. You aren’t the kind of guy to wait around for opportunities. You’re the kind that knows how to make your own luck. But I’m not bloody throwing myself at you. I’ll not give you that satisfaction.
“Don’t you have a home to go to, Gwen?“ asked Jack, coming up behind her.
Hmm. Interesting question, that. She could go for maximum emotional impact and say, “This feels like home now,” which in several important ways - although not all of them -it did. Or she could tell another part of the truth. That Rhys had left. That there was nothing for her back at the flat apart from empty rooms and guilt. She hadn’t even bothered with a Christmas tree this year.
There had been times over the last few months when she’d envied Tosh and Owen’s city-centre apartments and jealously-guarded private lives. They weren’t the type to settle down and start families. The type she’d thought she used to be. Partying hard, working all hours, no reproachful phone calls. When are you going to be back? Where’s the filter for the tumble dryer? Those interruptions from Rhys had driven her crazy. Until they stopped.
Officially, it was a trial separation. A bit of space for her to work out what she really wanted. She could tell Jack that. But she knew that, in anyone’s book, even someone as unfathomable as him, a trial separation that left you alone over Christmas sounded serious.
What did Jack do for Christmas? Every time the subject had come up, he’d sidestepped it. And she could not think of a way to ask him. Maybe he stayed here alone. To her, that seemed terribly sad, but he wasn’t someone who invited sympathy. Most men weren’t, when you came down to it. Rhys had been the exception, always so ready to share his feelings. So lost, she knew, when she’d stopped sharing hers. The hurt in his eyes when he’d finally told her he was contemplating moving out, and she’d known he was hoping she’d ask him to stay, and she hadn’t - that wasn’t something she’d forget any time soon.
She jerked out of her reverie, realising that Jack was looking straight at her, with an expression on his face that could almost be described as puzzled. “You were miles away,” he said.
“Sorry.”
“C’mon,” he offered. “I’ll run you home.”
“Aren’t you over the limit?” she asked. It was more an attempt at stalling than a genuine query. She’d noticed that, as a general rule, he never seemed to drink much alcohol. The only time she’d seen him hitting the bottle was after Estelle had died.
“Doesn’t affect me,” he said. “Run a blood test, if you think I’m kidding.”
“And why’s that, Jack?” she asked, recklessly. “All part of the eternal life thing?”
As soon as she’d spoken, her boldness surprised her. It wasn’t something she normally referred to. Thought about it all the time, of course. But it had taken a deserted Hub, a lot of booze, and Christmas to unlock her tongue on this occasion.
He turned away, not answering. Screw it, she thought, suddenly angry with him, why the fuck did he tell me in the first place if he’s never going to talk about it? Then she remembered she’d seen him heal up after taking a bullet in the head. He’d hardly had much choice, had he?
So many things she wanted to ask him. How did it feel, to know you couldn’t die? When people hurt you, did you still feel pain? A couple of times, she’d seen him put himself deliberately in harm’s way and roll on the floor in agony before he’d healed and walked away. How much pain did a human being have to take before they reached their limit?
A human being. Maybe that wasn’t the right description. Human beings died.
But if he wasn’t human - what was he? And would she ever get a better opportunity than this to ask him?
Gwen decided to go for broke. If she didn’t, she’d only hate herself all Christmas for not doing so, and sit around imaging the different ways it could have gone. She threw police protocol out of the window. He didn’t seem even slightly drunk.
“Okay, that would be nice,” she said. “A lift home, I mean. I’ll pick my car up in the morning.”
“Fine.” His expression gave nothing away, as usual, as he pulled on his coat. “I’ll just get my keys.”
*********************************************************************
“I just can’t believe Jack would do this,” said Rose. “He loved the TARDIS. He loved us.”
The Doctor sighed. “If he’s out there, Rose, he’ll be angry. Very angry.”
“But Jack wasn’t that sort of person. He did things openly. This is so sneaky.”
“Jack was a conman,” he reminded her.
Rose almost hated him for saying that. Who was he to take the moral high ground? Wasn’t it conning someone to let them think they mattered to you, and then walk away and not come back?
“He gave all that up,” she protested. Adding, silently, “Because of you.”
“He must have been through some tough stuff since we left him. Ideals are often the first things to go.”
“Yours aren’t.”
The Doctor grunted in agreement. “There’s only two people who ever found out about the time we looked into the TARDIS. Apart from Jackie, and I trust her, even though we’ve had our differences. Whoever put a fix on us, whoever locked up those bank accounts and deleted my identity, they must have known where we were.”
“But how could Jack do that?” she asked.
“By working with someone who did.”
Rose sighed deeply. “Mickey,” she said at last. “He never forgave you for going off with Reinette and leaving us like that. It was different with me. I knew you’d come back, but he was just starting to trust you.”
“I know,” he said. “I was a fool.”
That really was quite an admission, for him. She rested her head on his shoulder in a gesture of forgiveness. His arm curved around her.
“It was a complicated time,” she said.
They’d both been like stupid, rebellious kids, acting out against the planet Earth for promising so much, then backing off. It had all looked so good, just after last Christmas. Ambassador to Earth. Press conferences. Nice little bungalow for Mum. He’d had his hair cut, bought proper shoes, and almost been prepared to settle down and make a go of it. It might well have destroyed their relationship, but it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And then, overnight, it had all fallen apart. Harriet Jones denying all knowledge of the conversation they had had, her offer off the record to propose to the UN that he become a citizen of Earth. Every story about him spiked, TV film mysteriously vanishing, poor Sarah Jane discredited. Six months later, the Chairman of the Bad Wolf Media Group, the one who’d offered a million quid for an exclusive on the Doctor and the Tylers, and then never used it, was granted a peerage. The whole business stank.
After that, for a while, they’d just thought, what the heck? We’ve got a big blue time machine, let’s just use it to check out some legendary gigs if the Earth doesn’t want to admit we exist.
And Mickey, the original conspiracy theorist, who’d been offered enough money for his story to leave the Powell Estate forever, and then let down - Mickey, who’d been furious about the Slitheen cover-up the year before, hadn’t said a word. Until out of the blue, he’d phoned and mentioned something funny going on at a nearby school.
Sarah Jane was badly hurt - she could hardly bring herself to speak to them at first. But they’d managed to work things out - just - and to deal with the Krillitanes. And then, out of the blue, Mickey had asked to come with them. Neither of them had really wanted it. There’d been an atmosphere. In fact, Rose suspected the Doctor had deliberately picked a hardship trip to get him to back off.
And then, Reinette. Wham, bam.
“If Mickey put some kind of probe on the TARDIS, it must have been months ago,” Rose reflected. “So why have they only caught up with us now?”
“They might only have limited access,” he said. “They wouldn’t be able to find us in a different universe, or on Sanctuary Base 6. Or maybe, even, while we’re travelling in time. We probably had to come home for them to get a trace on us.”
“It’s all theoretical,” Rose reminded him. “We haven’t any proof.”
“We need to get hold of his phone. Or his laptop.”
“Wait a minute,” Rose exclaimed. “His laptop’s here. Mum picked it up. Don’t you remember going round to sort her broadband out for her?”
He sat bolt upright, suddenly energised. “Rose Tyler, you’re a genius! Of course I do! Downloaded sixty four episodes of “Lost” for her in twenty minutes flat, and she never even had the decency to thank me.”
“Never mind that now,” said Rose. “I suppose you want me to go round tomorrow and come up with some convincing excuse to get the laptop off her, then?”
“Rose Tyler, you’re a genius. Wait a minute, I’ve already said that.”
“Aren’t you supposed to give me a big platonic kiss at this point?” Hopefully, she stuck her chin in the air, but the lure of jiggery-pokery had proved to be too much for him. He was already bounding across the room to do clever things with electronics.
Rose sighed. “So what am I going to tell Mum, then? That grunge is the new look on Venus?”
“No need for that. I can check out the hard disc remotely. Good job it isn’t a Mac. And that I’m reasonably broad-minded.”
He wanted her to go to sleep. He had a Great Big Problem now to get his teeth into, and that was so much easier for him that thinking about the TARDIS dying. Rose pulled both pillows behind her back and lay watching him, through half-closed eyes. She knew that to find himself suddenly living in one room with a human being was a struggle for him, even though he’d never actually said so. Now he’d closed her out - he might look cute, but everything about his eyes and body language said “Back off.” And she wasn’t going to argue with him. She wasn’t going to tell him that she longed for him to lie in bed beside her, and go to sleep in her arms, and not have all this stuff going on in his head that he would never share with her. Because that would be stupid, she’d only be asking him not to be himself. It wasn’t his fault that he only needed two weeks’ sleep a year.
So she lay there, watching him hacking into her mum’s laptop and wondering what Jackie would say if she knew. She saw his eyes widen and wondered what he’d discovered about her, and what he made of it all. It would serve him right if he found some vitriolic e-mails about himself, not that he’d be all that bothered. Seeing as he’d faced down Cybermen, murdering robots, talking cats, and the Beast From the Pit, and that was only in the last few months, she couldn’t imagine her mum’s opinions bothering him all that much.
They’d shared the TARDIS, they’d shared a life, but they’d never really shared a bed the way a normal couple would. Sleeping together was more than a euphemism for sex, she realised now. He hadn’t been there in the nights when she’d cried for Jack, cried because she wasn’t sure which was worse - the Doctor knowing he was dead and trying to shield her from the news, or the Doctor knowing he was still alive and deciding to leave him there. While she’d been crying about that, he’d been pottering around in the control room.
Just as he was now.
Rose thought back to the day after Boxing Day, when everything had changed.
***********************************************************************
It had been the very last moment when he’d told her. No, after the last moment. They had actually set off.
“Can we go back for Jack right now?” she demanded, jumping up and down with glee. “I mean, it’s a time machine, so it’s not like we’re gonna be late or anything - “
She stopped. The Doctor was staring at the controls - at least, that was what he appeared to be doing, but his expression was far away. It might have looked to someone else as if he wasn’t listening to her. But she already knew him better. He had an alertrness, a bit like an animal, making him totally focussed and aware of everything around him.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t listening to her. He was. But he was always listening to so much else.
He pulled a lever, and the TARDIS stopped.
“We can’t be there already!” Rose complained.
“We’re not.” He went over and opened the door. “Come on, get out. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Barcelona?” she asked, hopefully.
“You”ll see.”
It wasn’t Barcelona. The first thing she saw was a winter sky. An Earth sky. London. They were on a flat rooftop - some kind of office building, maybe. She could recognise landmarks. The Gherkin, Battersea Power Station, Canary Wharf. And the Doctor, standing behind the barrier around the edge, his back to her, his long coat flapping in the wind.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. They couldn’t have gone more than a few miles.
At last, he turned round. His eyes looked very old.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Nervously, she approached him. She loved this new Doctor to bits, but somehow she still didn’t feel quite safe with him. He could turn on a sixpence. She’d already seen it. Life and soul of the party, one minute, weird and broody the next. The man was a walking chameleon circuit. And sometimes - more than sometimes, to be honest, she was scared of him.
“You’re not going to take me, are you?” she said. “You’ve changed your mind. You’ve decided all this was a horrible mistake and now you’re going to dump me.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” He sat down on top of a concrete ventilation shaft and motioned for her to come over and join him. “Wouldn’t have done that any time, but especially after yesterday.”
A lot had happened yesterday. She’d been asleep for most of it. Woken up, just after midnight to find that she’d been out of it for hours, and everyone had thought for a while that she was going to die. The Time Vortex had permanently damaged her immune system, and only the TARDIS could keep her alive.
Much as she loved the Doctor’s company, that news had come as a bit of a shock. Being told she’d had a Gallifreyan blood transfusion hadn’t helped. Both of them had some adjustments to make, and it had seemed like a reasonable idea at the time to sleep together while they made them. Rose wondered now whether Doctor regarded that as being his worst decision of the day. It faced some competition.
“Then why aren’t we going anywhere?” she asked, squeezing onto the block beside him. He seemed curiously remote for someone she’d slept with last night for the first time ever.
“I think we need more time,” he said. “Funny thing, time,” and he was off again, wrinkling his eyes up in that frown that seemed to use every muscle in his face, including some she’d never thought of. “I’ve always been able to do whatever I liked with it before. I mean, there’s not much point in being a Time Lord, if you can’t handle time, really is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re going on about,” she said, bewildered.
“What’s it like to be a human?” he asked. “Having to do it all in order? Having to organise it all? Worrying about being late, never fitting it all in?”
“I dunno. Got nothing to compare it with, really,” she said, lamely.
“You’ve got me.”
“You’re not even looking at me,” she said.
It was true; he seemed to be much more interested in the people down below. “All those people,” he sighed. “All those destinies. And I could just pick them up, turn them inside out, put them down again, and they’d never know.”
Rose shivered. “You can only do your best,” she said, painfully aware of the inadequacy of her words.
“Yeah.” He turned to look at her and smiled. “It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.”
She’d heard that somewhere before, but she couldn’t place it. The romantic charge of the moment would have knocked her off her feet, if she’d been standing up. And that was before he bent and kissed her. It was no delicate peck on the cheek.
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said.
Part of her wanted the moment to last forever; but another part was frightened of those eyes, and the way that they messed with her head. She noticed that they didn’t quite work together. One of them seemed to be focussed on her, the other on eternity. A sense of foreboding went through her, one that his smile did not dispel.
She tried to laugh it off. “Right, now we’ve got the big movie thing out of the way, can we get back in the TARDIS and go and get Jack?”
When he spoke again, her whole world seemed to wobble, and then crash around her. She felt as if they’d stepped through the looking glass and they’d never be normal again. Whatever passed for normal with a slightly crazy Time Lord, anyway.
“No, Rose,” he said. “We can’t. I’ve thought about it, and the answer’s no.”
“But why? You promised………We can’t just leave him, Doctor! We’re his mates, his friends, he……..”
He looked at her then in the way he had - it had survived the regeneration, she noticed - which made her feel like a pinprick on the face of time, compared to him. “Rose, have you ever been into a war zone? Have you any idea what it’s going to be like? The Daleks don’t kill clean, you know. For every one they vapourize, there’ll be two dozen dying in agony. You’ll see things that’ll change you for ever. I can’t do that to you, Rose. I’m sorry - “
“Couldn’t you go on your own?”
“It might not be a straight there-and-back job. We’ve lost contact with him. We don’t even know if he’s dead or alive. It could take weeks. I can’t leave you here outside the TARDIS that long. You’re not well. I could lose both of you.”
I could save the world, and lose you. But she’d understand, if he was doing this to save the world. He was saying he wouldn’t save Jack, and somehow that seemed far less worthy of him.
“But……the TARDIS is a time machine, right? So you could go out there for months, and then come back and it’d be right now - “
“Theoretically, yes. And then suppose I come back with a ship full of dying people from the year 200,100, because I couldn’t leave them there, because once I’ve gone back to get Jack I’ve interfered, I’ve broken all the rules, so I might as well interfere some more?”
“We’ll deal. We always do,” she said. But her voice was faltering.
“Right. And then we go straight into a press conference, like nothing has happened in between, and we make nice with Harriet Jones? Think you can handle that, Rose? Maybe I could, but could you? You’re a human.”
“Oh, fuck the Press Conference!” she shouted, trying not to cry. “How can you care about something like that?”
He got up in a hurry and walked back to the building’s edge, frowning, his hands deep in his pockets, not looking at her. She knew he was angry with her, and it scared her. Somehow, before, she’d been able to deal with it. Challenge him. Get it all out in the open, without feeling like a stupid little kid out of her depth. But now….Maybe it was because he talked posh. Or because he wore a suit, and tie. Same Doctor? Yeah, like hell he was. Push him too far, she thought, and he could dump her. Piss off, just like that.
“It’s your stupid planet,” he said. “I’m trying to help. I’m trying to persuade them that there’s thousands of other species out there, and this is the time when everything changes. When they can’t ignore it any more. And if that means playing their games, then who are you to say I shouldn’t do it? You start by meeting people where they are. “
There it was again. You’re just a little human ape. Shut up.
“You’re just going to have to trust me, Rose. Trust me on this, okay?”
Her dad used to say that. Mum had told her. Most of the time, it had turned out to be bullshit. He was still her dad though. And, right now, she longed for him.
“Okay,” she faltered. “Press reception at Canary Wharf it is, then.”
“And we’ll never mention it again? I need that promise from you, Rose.”
Those eyes again. Boring right into her. Maybe, when they’d - if they - stayed together, she’d be able to get past them, ask him what was really going on in there, and if he really cared for her at all, or just felt guilty as hell because he’d screwed up and now she was stuck in the TARDIS for ever.
“Okay.”
“Good, thanks for that.” Bastard, he said it the exact way he did when he’d been putting down the Sycorax. All jolly and chatty, with steel underneath.
Only then, damn him, he changed again. “I’m sorry Rose,” he sighed. “I really am so very sorry.”
***********************************************************************
“Doctor?”
“Um - what? Thought you’d dropped off.” He blinked, and came back from whatever sector of cyberspace he had been wandering around in, not looking entirely pleased.
“I’ve been thinking……What if Jack thought of this as his TARDIS as well? Could he -
sort of - “
“Influence it?” He pursed up his lips as if he was sucking a particularly tasty piece of barley sugar. Ooh, shiny new problem. This is fun. “Possibly,” he acknowledged. “If the psychic link was strong enough. TARDISes were never originally designed to be operated by one person.”
“So that’s why you do so much running around?”
“No, that’s to keep warm.” The heating he’d rigged up had cut out hours ago, and she could see the goose bumps on his arms. And Time Lords were supposed to be impervious to things like cold.
“Here, borrow this.” She chucked the Buffy shirt across to him. “You can always turn it inside out.”
He turned it inside out and pulled it on.
“Would you have to be a Time Lord?” she asked.
“What, to be dumb enough to try and pull a Buffy sweatshirt on over your glasses and a scarf?” His head appeared in a tangle of trailing loops of wool, and tousled hair.
“No,” she said, stifling a giggle. “Would you have to be a Time Lord to get into the mind of a TARDIS?”
“Not necessarily. My parents both managed to do it, even though my mother was human. If the link with the controlling Time Lord’s strong enough, then it could happen. It’s unlikely to interfere drastically with the operation of the ship, but it could knock out a few back-up systems. Sort of divided loyalties. And if that escalates…….”
Rose yawned.
“It’s time to sort this out, you guys,” she said.
Chapter One - Rain
Chapter Two - Your Tiny Hand is Frozen
Coming Next: “You’re going to hate me saying this. But do you actually want to meet him?”
SPOILERS: DW S2, TW Eps 1-5 . Set between L&M and Fear Her
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, Jack, Gwen, Sarah Jane, Jackie, TARDIS
DESCRIPTION - A sequel to “Boxing Day”, which can be found under the TCI tag on T&C, with one significant change.
RATING: FRT (UK Classification 12A) - for occasional strong language
PICTURE: BBC3
Thanks to aibhinn for her wonderful beta work.
Without Prejudice. The names of all characters contained herein are the property of the BBC, as are their mannerisms, distinctive items of clothing and occasional quotable remarks. Please don't rip them off, David needs his thermal underwear. No Infringments of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
CHAPTER THREE - Divided Loyalties
“We’re children, needing other children
And yet letting our grown-up pride,
Hide all the need inside.”
(“People” - sung by Barbra Streisand, among many others)
Gwen wondered how long she could hang around The Hub after the Torchwood Christmas pub night, before Jack interpreted her presence as a blatant come-on.
Not that she would mind. She’d thought of nothing else for weeks. Sometimes she felt that if he came within six feet of her, she would spontaneously combust. He knew it, too. His reputation in that department was legendary. Apparently she was the only humanoid in the place he hadn’t had.
She wasted far too much time wondering why. She felt closer to him, in many ways, than any other person. At every point when she’d doubted her ability to function in this strange new world, he’d been there for her, with exactly the wry observation, gentle word of comfort, or encouragement she’d needed.
And those were just the bad times. There had been some good ones, too. Target practice, a successful mission, drinks and a laugh down the pub, or just the sheer adrenalin rush that came with Torchwood territory. Sometimes, after a moment like that, she’d realise he was grinning at her in that wicked way he had, or fantasise about his hands touching her flesh, the electricity of contact, secrecy and danger.
He lived in her mind, and her body’s responses, as she tossed and turned in bed at night. “You at it again?” Rhys used to say, as she trembled beside him at three in the morning. “What do they put in your tea at that place?” And at times like that, his fumbling, well-meaning presence felt like fingernails scraping on a blackboard.
“Oh, it’s nothing, just turning things over in my mind,” she’d say, and get up to put the kettle on, praying that he wouldn’t follow her into the kitchen.
She’d started playing old songs a lot. From the little that his office gave away, it seemed Jack had a thing about the 1940s. That had started her off. She browsed iTunes, not for indie bands, but for Jimmy Durante and Ella Fitzgerald.
“I’ll sing to him, sweet things to him, and worship the trousers that cling to him…….”
Oh yes, the oldies said it best. Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little.
Why don’t you just have me, Jack? Just go ahead and damn well shag me. You aren’t the kind of guy to wait around for opportunities. You’re the kind that knows how to make your own luck. But I’m not bloody throwing myself at you. I’ll not give you that satisfaction.
“Don’t you have a home to go to, Gwen?“ asked Jack, coming up behind her.
Hmm. Interesting question, that. She could go for maximum emotional impact and say, “This feels like home now,” which in several important ways - although not all of them -it did. Or she could tell another part of the truth. That Rhys had left. That there was nothing for her back at the flat apart from empty rooms and guilt. She hadn’t even bothered with a Christmas tree this year.
There had been times over the last few months when she’d envied Tosh and Owen’s city-centre apartments and jealously-guarded private lives. They weren’t the type to settle down and start families. The type she’d thought she used to be. Partying hard, working all hours, no reproachful phone calls. When are you going to be back? Where’s the filter for the tumble dryer? Those interruptions from Rhys had driven her crazy. Until they stopped.
Officially, it was a trial separation. A bit of space for her to work out what she really wanted. She could tell Jack that. But she knew that, in anyone’s book, even someone as unfathomable as him, a trial separation that left you alone over Christmas sounded serious.
What did Jack do for Christmas? Every time the subject had come up, he’d sidestepped it. And she could not think of a way to ask him. Maybe he stayed here alone. To her, that seemed terribly sad, but he wasn’t someone who invited sympathy. Most men weren’t, when you came down to it. Rhys had been the exception, always so ready to share his feelings. So lost, she knew, when she’d stopped sharing hers. The hurt in his eyes when he’d finally told her he was contemplating moving out, and she’d known he was hoping she’d ask him to stay, and she hadn’t - that wasn’t something she’d forget any time soon.
She jerked out of her reverie, realising that Jack was looking straight at her, with an expression on his face that could almost be described as puzzled. “You were miles away,” he said.
“Sorry.”
“C’mon,” he offered. “I’ll run you home.”
“Aren’t you over the limit?” she asked. It was more an attempt at stalling than a genuine query. She’d noticed that, as a general rule, he never seemed to drink much alcohol. The only time she’d seen him hitting the bottle was after Estelle had died.
“Doesn’t affect me,” he said. “Run a blood test, if you think I’m kidding.”
“And why’s that, Jack?” she asked, recklessly. “All part of the eternal life thing?”
As soon as she’d spoken, her boldness surprised her. It wasn’t something she normally referred to. Thought about it all the time, of course. But it had taken a deserted Hub, a lot of booze, and Christmas to unlock her tongue on this occasion.
He turned away, not answering. Screw it, she thought, suddenly angry with him, why the fuck did he tell me in the first place if he’s never going to talk about it? Then she remembered she’d seen him heal up after taking a bullet in the head. He’d hardly had much choice, had he?
So many things she wanted to ask him. How did it feel, to know you couldn’t die? When people hurt you, did you still feel pain? A couple of times, she’d seen him put himself deliberately in harm’s way and roll on the floor in agony before he’d healed and walked away. How much pain did a human being have to take before they reached their limit?
A human being. Maybe that wasn’t the right description. Human beings died.
But if he wasn’t human - what was he? And would she ever get a better opportunity than this to ask him?
Gwen decided to go for broke. If she didn’t, she’d only hate herself all Christmas for not doing so, and sit around imaging the different ways it could have gone. She threw police protocol out of the window. He didn’t seem even slightly drunk.
“Okay, that would be nice,” she said. “A lift home, I mean. I’ll pick my car up in the morning.”
“Fine.” His expression gave nothing away, as usual, as he pulled on his coat. “I’ll just get my keys.”
*********************************************************************
“I just can’t believe Jack would do this,” said Rose. “He loved the TARDIS. He loved us.”
The Doctor sighed. “If he’s out there, Rose, he’ll be angry. Very angry.”
“But Jack wasn’t that sort of person. He did things openly. This is so sneaky.”
“Jack was a conman,” he reminded her.
Rose almost hated him for saying that. Who was he to take the moral high ground? Wasn’t it conning someone to let them think they mattered to you, and then walk away and not come back?
“He gave all that up,” she protested. Adding, silently, “Because of you.”
“He must have been through some tough stuff since we left him. Ideals are often the first things to go.”
“Yours aren’t.”
The Doctor grunted in agreement. “There’s only two people who ever found out about the time we looked into the TARDIS. Apart from Jackie, and I trust her, even though we’ve had our differences. Whoever put a fix on us, whoever locked up those bank accounts and deleted my identity, they must have known where we were.”
“But how could Jack do that?” she asked.
“By working with someone who did.”
Rose sighed deeply. “Mickey,” she said at last. “He never forgave you for going off with Reinette and leaving us like that. It was different with me. I knew you’d come back, but he was just starting to trust you.”
“I know,” he said. “I was a fool.”
That really was quite an admission, for him. She rested her head on his shoulder in a gesture of forgiveness. His arm curved around her.
“It was a complicated time,” she said.
They’d both been like stupid, rebellious kids, acting out against the planet Earth for promising so much, then backing off. It had all looked so good, just after last Christmas. Ambassador to Earth. Press conferences. Nice little bungalow for Mum. He’d had his hair cut, bought proper shoes, and almost been prepared to settle down and make a go of it. It might well have destroyed their relationship, but it had seemed like the right thing to do at the time. And then, overnight, it had all fallen apart. Harriet Jones denying all knowledge of the conversation they had had, her offer off the record to propose to the UN that he become a citizen of Earth. Every story about him spiked, TV film mysteriously vanishing, poor Sarah Jane discredited. Six months later, the Chairman of the Bad Wolf Media Group, the one who’d offered a million quid for an exclusive on the Doctor and the Tylers, and then never used it, was granted a peerage. The whole business stank.
After that, for a while, they’d just thought, what the heck? We’ve got a big blue time machine, let’s just use it to check out some legendary gigs if the Earth doesn’t want to admit we exist.
And Mickey, the original conspiracy theorist, who’d been offered enough money for his story to leave the Powell Estate forever, and then let down - Mickey, who’d been furious about the Slitheen cover-up the year before, hadn’t said a word. Until out of the blue, he’d phoned and mentioned something funny going on at a nearby school.
Sarah Jane was badly hurt - she could hardly bring herself to speak to them at first. But they’d managed to work things out - just - and to deal with the Krillitanes. And then, out of the blue, Mickey had asked to come with them. Neither of them had really wanted it. There’d been an atmosphere. In fact, Rose suspected the Doctor had deliberately picked a hardship trip to get him to back off.
And then, Reinette. Wham, bam.
“If Mickey put some kind of probe on the TARDIS, it must have been months ago,” Rose reflected. “So why have they only caught up with us now?”
“They might only have limited access,” he said. “They wouldn’t be able to find us in a different universe, or on Sanctuary Base 6. Or maybe, even, while we’re travelling in time. We probably had to come home for them to get a trace on us.”
“It’s all theoretical,” Rose reminded him. “We haven’t any proof.”
“We need to get hold of his phone. Or his laptop.”
“Wait a minute,” Rose exclaimed. “His laptop’s here. Mum picked it up. Don’t you remember going round to sort her broadband out for her?”
He sat bolt upright, suddenly energised. “Rose Tyler, you’re a genius! Of course I do! Downloaded sixty four episodes of “Lost” for her in twenty minutes flat, and she never even had the decency to thank me.”
“Never mind that now,” said Rose. “I suppose you want me to go round tomorrow and come up with some convincing excuse to get the laptop off her, then?”
“Rose Tyler, you’re a genius. Wait a minute, I’ve already said that.”
“Aren’t you supposed to give me a big platonic kiss at this point?” Hopefully, she stuck her chin in the air, but the lure of jiggery-pokery had proved to be too much for him. He was already bounding across the room to do clever things with electronics.
Rose sighed. “So what am I going to tell Mum, then? That grunge is the new look on Venus?”
“No need for that. I can check out the hard disc remotely. Good job it isn’t a Mac. And that I’m reasonably broad-minded.”
He wanted her to go to sleep. He had a Great Big Problem now to get his teeth into, and that was so much easier for him that thinking about the TARDIS dying. Rose pulled both pillows behind her back and lay watching him, through half-closed eyes. She knew that to find himself suddenly living in one room with a human being was a struggle for him, even though he’d never actually said so. Now he’d closed her out - he might look cute, but everything about his eyes and body language said “Back off.” And she wasn’t going to argue with him. She wasn’t going to tell him that she longed for him to lie in bed beside her, and go to sleep in her arms, and not have all this stuff going on in his head that he would never share with her. Because that would be stupid, she’d only be asking him not to be himself. It wasn’t his fault that he only needed two weeks’ sleep a year.
So she lay there, watching him hacking into her mum’s laptop and wondering what Jackie would say if she knew. She saw his eyes widen and wondered what he’d discovered about her, and what he made of it all. It would serve him right if he found some vitriolic e-mails about himself, not that he’d be all that bothered. Seeing as he’d faced down Cybermen, murdering robots, talking cats, and the Beast From the Pit, and that was only in the last few months, she couldn’t imagine her mum’s opinions bothering him all that much.
They’d shared the TARDIS, they’d shared a life, but they’d never really shared a bed the way a normal couple would. Sleeping together was more than a euphemism for sex, she realised now. He hadn’t been there in the nights when she’d cried for Jack, cried because she wasn’t sure which was worse - the Doctor knowing he was dead and trying to shield her from the news, or the Doctor knowing he was still alive and deciding to leave him there. While she’d been crying about that, he’d been pottering around in the control room.
Just as he was now.
Rose thought back to the day after Boxing Day, when everything had changed.
***********************************************************************
It had been the very last moment when he’d told her. No, after the last moment. They had actually set off.
“Can we go back for Jack right now?” she demanded, jumping up and down with glee. “I mean, it’s a time machine, so it’s not like we’re gonna be late or anything - “
She stopped. The Doctor was staring at the controls - at least, that was what he appeared to be doing, but his expression was far away. It might have looked to someone else as if he wasn’t listening to her. But she already knew him better. He had an alertrness, a bit like an animal, making him totally focussed and aware of everything around him.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t listening to her. He was. But he was always listening to so much else.
He pulled a lever, and the TARDIS stopped.
“We can’t be there already!” Rose complained.
“We’re not.” He went over and opened the door. “Come on, get out. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Barcelona?” she asked, hopefully.
“You”ll see.”
It wasn’t Barcelona. The first thing she saw was a winter sky. An Earth sky. London. They were on a flat rooftop - some kind of office building, maybe. She could recognise landmarks. The Gherkin, Battersea Power Station, Canary Wharf. And the Doctor, standing behind the barrier around the edge, his back to her, his long coat flapping in the wind.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. They couldn’t have gone more than a few miles.
At last, he turned round. His eyes looked very old.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Nervously, she approached him. She loved this new Doctor to bits, but somehow she still didn’t feel quite safe with him. He could turn on a sixpence. She’d already seen it. Life and soul of the party, one minute, weird and broody the next. The man was a walking chameleon circuit. And sometimes - more than sometimes, to be honest, she was scared of him.
“You’re not going to take me, are you?” she said. “You’ve changed your mind. You’ve decided all this was a horrible mistake and now you’re going to dump me.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” He sat down on top of a concrete ventilation shaft and motioned for her to come over and join him. “Wouldn’t have done that any time, but especially after yesterday.”
A lot had happened yesterday. She’d been asleep for most of it. Woken up, just after midnight to find that she’d been out of it for hours, and everyone had thought for a while that she was going to die. The Time Vortex had permanently damaged her immune system, and only the TARDIS could keep her alive.
Much as she loved the Doctor’s company, that news had come as a bit of a shock. Being told she’d had a Gallifreyan blood transfusion hadn’t helped. Both of them had some adjustments to make, and it had seemed like a reasonable idea at the time to sleep together while they made them. Rose wondered now whether Doctor regarded that as being his worst decision of the day. It faced some competition.
“Then why aren’t we going anywhere?” she asked, squeezing onto the block beside him. He seemed curiously remote for someone she’d slept with last night for the first time ever.
“I think we need more time,” he said. “Funny thing, time,” and he was off again, wrinkling his eyes up in that frown that seemed to use every muscle in his face, including some she’d never thought of. “I’ve always been able to do whatever I liked with it before. I mean, there’s not much point in being a Time Lord, if you can’t handle time, really is it?”
“I don’t know what you’re going on about,” she said, bewildered.
“What’s it like to be a human?” he asked. “Having to do it all in order? Having to organise it all? Worrying about being late, never fitting it all in?”
“I dunno. Got nothing to compare it with, really,” she said, lamely.
“You’ve got me.”
“You’re not even looking at me,” she said.
It was true; he seemed to be much more interested in the people down below. “All those people,” he sighed. “All those destinies. And I could just pick them up, turn them inside out, put them down again, and they’d never know.”
Rose shivered. “You can only do your best,” she said, painfully aware of the inadequacy of her words.
“Yeah.” He turned to look at her and smiled. “It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.”
She’d heard that somewhere before, but she couldn’t place it. The romantic charge of the moment would have knocked her off her feet, if she’d been standing up. And that was before he bent and kissed her. It was no delicate peck on the cheek.
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said.
Part of her wanted the moment to last forever; but another part was frightened of those eyes, and the way that they messed with her head. She noticed that they didn’t quite work together. One of them seemed to be focussed on her, the other on eternity. A sense of foreboding went through her, one that his smile did not dispel.
She tried to laugh it off. “Right, now we’ve got the big movie thing out of the way, can we get back in the TARDIS and go and get Jack?”
When he spoke again, her whole world seemed to wobble, and then crash around her. She felt as if they’d stepped through the looking glass and they’d never be normal again. Whatever passed for normal with a slightly crazy Time Lord, anyway.
“No, Rose,” he said. “We can’t. I’ve thought about it, and the answer’s no.”
“But why? You promised………We can’t just leave him, Doctor! We’re his mates, his friends, he……..”
He looked at her then in the way he had - it had survived the regeneration, she noticed - which made her feel like a pinprick on the face of time, compared to him. “Rose, have you ever been into a war zone? Have you any idea what it’s going to be like? The Daleks don’t kill clean, you know. For every one they vapourize, there’ll be two dozen dying in agony. You’ll see things that’ll change you for ever. I can’t do that to you, Rose. I’m sorry - “
“Couldn’t you go on your own?”
“It might not be a straight there-and-back job. We’ve lost contact with him. We don’t even know if he’s dead or alive. It could take weeks. I can’t leave you here outside the TARDIS that long. You’re not well. I could lose both of you.”
I could save the world, and lose you. But she’d understand, if he was doing this to save the world. He was saying he wouldn’t save Jack, and somehow that seemed far less worthy of him.
“But……the TARDIS is a time machine, right? So you could go out there for months, and then come back and it’d be right now - “
“Theoretically, yes. And then suppose I come back with a ship full of dying people from the year 200,100, because I couldn’t leave them there, because once I’ve gone back to get Jack I’ve interfered, I’ve broken all the rules, so I might as well interfere some more?”
“We’ll deal. We always do,” she said. But her voice was faltering.
“Right. And then we go straight into a press conference, like nothing has happened in between, and we make nice with Harriet Jones? Think you can handle that, Rose? Maybe I could, but could you? You’re a human.”
“Oh, fuck the Press Conference!” she shouted, trying not to cry. “How can you care about something like that?”
He got up in a hurry and walked back to the building’s edge, frowning, his hands deep in his pockets, not looking at her. She knew he was angry with her, and it scared her. Somehow, before, she’d been able to deal with it. Challenge him. Get it all out in the open, without feeling like a stupid little kid out of her depth. But now….Maybe it was because he talked posh. Or because he wore a suit, and tie. Same Doctor? Yeah, like hell he was. Push him too far, she thought, and he could dump her. Piss off, just like that.
“It’s your stupid planet,” he said. “I’m trying to help. I’m trying to persuade them that there’s thousands of other species out there, and this is the time when everything changes. When they can’t ignore it any more. And if that means playing their games, then who are you to say I shouldn’t do it? You start by meeting people where they are. “
There it was again. You’re just a little human ape. Shut up.
“You’re just going to have to trust me, Rose. Trust me on this, okay?”
Her dad used to say that. Mum had told her. Most of the time, it had turned out to be bullshit. He was still her dad though. And, right now, she longed for him.
“Okay,” she faltered. “Press reception at Canary Wharf it is, then.”
“And we’ll never mention it again? I need that promise from you, Rose.”
Those eyes again. Boring right into her. Maybe, when they’d - if they - stayed together, she’d be able to get past them, ask him what was really going on in there, and if he really cared for her at all, or just felt guilty as hell because he’d screwed up and now she was stuck in the TARDIS for ever.
“Okay.”
“Good, thanks for that.” Bastard, he said it the exact way he did when he’d been putting down the Sycorax. All jolly and chatty, with steel underneath.
Only then, damn him, he changed again. “I’m sorry Rose,” he sighed. “I really am so very sorry.”
***********************************************************************
“Doctor?”
“Um - what? Thought you’d dropped off.” He blinked, and came back from whatever sector of cyberspace he had been wandering around in, not looking entirely pleased.
“I’ve been thinking……What if Jack thought of this as his TARDIS as well? Could he -
sort of - “
“Influence it?” He pursed up his lips as if he was sucking a particularly tasty piece of barley sugar. Ooh, shiny new problem. This is fun. “Possibly,” he acknowledged. “If the psychic link was strong enough. TARDISes were never originally designed to be operated by one person.”
“So that’s why you do so much running around?”
“No, that’s to keep warm.” The heating he’d rigged up had cut out hours ago, and she could see the goose bumps on his arms. And Time Lords were supposed to be impervious to things like cold.
“Here, borrow this.” She chucked the Buffy shirt across to him. “You can always turn it inside out.”
He turned it inside out and pulled it on.
“Would you have to be a Time Lord?” she asked.
“What, to be dumb enough to try and pull a Buffy sweatshirt on over your glasses and a scarf?” His head appeared in a tangle of trailing loops of wool, and tousled hair.
“No,” she said, stifling a giggle. “Would you have to be a Time Lord to get into the mind of a TARDIS?”
“Not necessarily. My parents both managed to do it, even though my mother was human. If the link with the controlling Time Lord’s strong enough, then it could happen. It’s unlikely to interfere drastically with the operation of the ship, but it could knock out a few back-up systems. Sort of divided loyalties. And if that escalates…….”
Rose yawned.
“It’s time to sort this out, you guys,” she said.
Chapter One - Rain
Chapter Two - Your Tiny Hand is Frozen
Coming Next: “You’re going to hate me saying this. But do you actually want to meet him?”