A/N: Slight tissue warning for bitter sweetness and slight grieving situations. My first Nine/Rose fic! Yay! Experimenting! Hope you enjoy it….. Review! Please! Thank you! Re-watched Parting of Ways/Bad Wolf w/ family members, felt inspired, cried a bit at the end, cursed the writers for making her not able to remember the epic end, and… wrote this. Set when the Doctor and Jack believed Rose dead (due to the vaporization and all that jazz) and are sitting in their cell….
Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who Rose and the Doctor would have gotten married and the Doctor would have been able to keep Arthur the horse from GitFP. Unfortunately….
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, let it all fall away. Maybes and what ifs, swirling in his eyes, dust to dust.
Sitting in that cell, tortured by whispers; You, lost, Rose. Wishing more than anything, to hold her in your arms again; never, ever, again…
The dimly lit cell contained three people. Three, singular, people. One was a girl, Lynda with a y, who never wanted anything but to make people smile. The second was a man, plagued by a past, he can, not, remember. The last was a man, his head in his hands, staring into nothing. Nothing was all that was left.
"Jack," the leather jacket man whispers, "Jack I forgot."
The voice of the man in the leather jacket is so quiet, so shallow you would think it was that of a child. The man without a past, Jack, stares at him,
"What Doctor?" Jack's voice is hollow with grief for a friend he knew he could have saved. A sister he would have died for. Who he would never see again, never, ever.
"I forgot to tell Rose," the Doctor said, letting a tear slide down his cheek. Jack glanced back to the wall,
"We all did," Jack whispered, gently taking the Doctor's hand as well as Lynda's, "She died how she wanted to, she saved us."
"Not that, not thank you," the Doctor said, his eyes filled with pain and unspoken words, "Jack, I never told her I loved her."
The confession rang pure and true in the depths and caverns of the holding cell. The words were so pained and so regretful…. Jack nodded, sadly. He had known for ages now, seen the way they looked at each other. He had tried to help push them together. Two stubborn souls, young and old in their own ways.
"Sometimes I wonder," Jack began, pushing back the tears threatening to overpower him, "Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if you knew. If you knew someone was going to die. God, I can't even…" a strangled sob escaped him, "What on earth do we tell Jackie. And Mickey, oh God, what do we tell him? Jackie… she's lost so much. Her husband, now Rose…."
"Jack," the Doctor gazed at his young companion, putting one gentle hand on his shoulders, "Jack, we will win this battle. We will win it for her. I promise."
Jack nodded, hurriedly wiping remnant tears from his eyes. Lynda began to cry, shaking with sobs,
"W… Was it m….My fault?" Lynda sobbed, "If I had gone faster….."
The Doctor shook his head firmly, meeting Lynda's eyes,
"She knew the risks, she knew what she was getting herself into," he whispered, turning away from the others and letting his tears fall, "I killed her. It was my fault. If I hadn't taken her with me, if I had just let her go on with her life, then maybe… She was nineteen Jack. Only nineteen, Jack, and I let her die," his eyes blazed, "I did this."
"No, you didn't," Jack told him sharply, shaking his friend roughly, "You did not do this, alright Doc?"
The Doctor shook his head, memories flashing before his eyes…. Yes, it was his fault.
"We were here," the Doctor cleared his throat, "Rose and I, we came here before. With one of her new boyfriends, Adam, hated that Adam. Tried to download all of the information from this era, the blithering idiot…. We put him back on Earth. Only one Rose Tyler, I told him. Now there is no Rose."
Jack flipped open his phone, glancing at the guards. The guards were watching them, their eyes full of guilt. Now they can see what they've done. Pressing the voice mails, he turned up his volume and let them play.
"Jack?" Rose's familiar, cockney accent flowed out of the phone, causing the Doctor to freeze, "Hi it's Rose. The Doctor needs you to buy a new hammer. He broke his- again. Remember what happens we he gets mad? He's currently shaving and insulting a species called the Grefas, whatever those are," in the distance of the phone you could hear shouting, "IM COMING DOCTA! Gotta go; get back quick before he cuts his nose off."
The message ended, and a new one started, this one from the Doctor:
"Jack, would you mind finding Rose? I've lost her and I have an inkling that she's in trouble. Jeopardy friendly and all. Call me if you need help."
One from Rose,
"Jack? Could you…. Come to the library or somethin'? The Doctor's in a mood and I need to talk… Thought you might understand…. I dunno…. Um, bye," the message ended and the guards stepped in to begin the interrogation.
A few hours later, Jack began an experiment. Placing Lynda in a strategic place, he fired the gun that killed Rose at her, turning her into dust. The Doctor looked horrified, but Jack remained calm. Firing the gun again, Lynda suddenly appeared. Hope filled the Doctor up, and Jack smiled wider than ever before,
"Doctor, Rose is alive!" Jack whooped, crowing. The Doctor laughed in relief, not dead, not dead.
Maybe he would have the guts to finally tell her.
A/N: A bittersweet ending, don't you think? Set during Parting of Ways/Bad Wolf. The idea is, he never could tell her he loved her because he was too busy dying….. Sounds much sadder on paper, trust me. Actually, that's pretty depressing. Crap. Anyways reviews are like Fireworks…. If you got that reference, here, have a TARDIS shaped cookie. If not… CLICK ON MY NAME! CLICK IT! Then click that beautiful blue review button. HUGS….