Title: No Regrets
Author: emily64cooper
Rating: Pg-13
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose
Summary: "The baby, Jackie," he snaps. His voice drops to a pained whisper. "We lost the baby."
Author's Note: As much as I loved it, there were too many 'Let's have Rose and The Doctor have a kid' fics. So I decided to spin the idea a bit. Un-Beta'd, as it's my first Who fic, so I hope it's not too unreadable...

"Do you want to go home for a while?"

Rose nods, unable to trust her voice, and curls further into herself.

The Doctor watches her for a moment, then nods to himself. "Right," he chokes out.

Mindlessly, he sets the coordinates to the Powell Estate, 2006. He suppresses the memory of the last time they visited Jackie, of how happy they were.

"We're here," he announces unnecessarily.

Rose had already begun unfolding herself from the captain's chair.

He offers her a hand. She grabs it, but stares at it a while, expression unreadable.

When they exit the TARDIS in the middle of her mother's flat, Jackie's already prepared to hug her daughter.

"Rose!" she calls. Rose smiles meekly and accepts the embrace.

"How are you sweetheart? Is he feeding you right?" Jackie asks, pulling away slightly. "I don't know about that alien, Rose. He doesn't understand that us humans need to eat. You look skinny. My god-"

"Mum, he feeds me."

"Good, he better."

Both the Doctor and Rose expect her to ask about it, but it isn't any less painful when she does.

"And the baby? How is my little grandson or granddaughter? You're in your fourth month now, yeah?"

Rose says nothing, but as the Doctor steps closer, she pulls herself to him by the lapels of his jacket. Tears leak from her eyes and she buries her face into his chest, seeking comfort. He kisses the top of her hair.

"Why don't you go lay down, Rose?" he mumbles.

She nods and walks away, leaving a confused Jackie Tyler behind her.

"Doctor?" Jackie questions. "What's wrong with my daughter?"

The Doctor can both hear and feel her worry as he takes his hands away from his face.

"Jackie, why don't we go sit down?"

"No! I want to know what's wrong with my baby!" He cringes, something that does not go unnoticed by Rose's mother.

"Please, Jackie?" he asks again, gesturing toward the couch.

Jackie concedes. But whether it's because of the look on his face, or the tone of his voice, she isn't sure.

Wordlessly, she leads the Doctor to her couch and sits. Whatever's happened was evidently hard on both him and Rose.

The Doctor sits, then repositions himself.

Then again.

And again.

And again.

And again, until he finally ends up with his hands clasped firmly together and his elbows propped up on the top of his legs.

"Jackie..." he begins. He unsuccessfully tries to steel himself off. "We lost it."

"What? Who?"

God he still remembers this day, so, so clearly. And it's no less painful now than it was then.

"The baby, Jackie," he snaps. His voice drops to a pained whisper. "We lost the baby."

The Doctor watches, saying nothing, as a hand flies to her mouth and tears spring to her eyes. When she speaks, it's more calmly than he expected.

"What happened?"

And he tells her everything.

"I was working, fixing something on the TARDIS. The lights flashed, back and forth, red and white. Usually that means an intruder, but this time..."

The Doctor jumped from his spot on the console floor.

"TARDIS?" he asked. Something was different, wrong. And was that blood he smelled?

"Rose," the ship answered in his head.

He took off, moving to their shared room as fast as his feet would take him.

"Rose?" he questioned semi-frantically.

She wasn't in the room, but definitely in the near vicinity. Which meant either the baby's room or their bathroom.

"Here," she called back.

The bathroom, definitely.

He followed her voice, noting the anguish laced in it, his concern increasing by the millisecond.

"Rose?" The Doctor questioned, moving into the room.

The scene before him made him freeze on the spot. There was blood all over: on the floor, the tub, the loo. But, most prominently, on Rose's pants. She was clutching her stomach with one arm and wiping her eyes with the other.

"Rose, what - oh."

It took a second to register in the Doctor's mind. When it did, he clutched the door frame and slowly slid to the floor.

"Oh, Rose, no," he pleaded, tears dampening his eyes.

"Yeah," she said, her voice breaking with tears. She choked back a sob. "S'pose you were right."

He looked up before moving to join her on the side of the tub. "Oh, Rose. I didn't want to be right. I didn't..."

He ran his hand in circles on her back as the sobs leaked through. Rose' nodded as she buried herself in his embrace. He murmured comforting words in her ear as she sobbed, his own tears gently mingling with her hair. When the shear exhaustion finally won Rose, the Doctor cleaned her up the best he could, putting her in her favorite, most comfortable pair of pyjamas. He laid her in their bed and spooned himself into her back, liberating sobs of his own...

By the time he's finished, a few errant tears have escaped his eyes.

"Oh Doctor," Jackie moans.

He can see the exact moment anger overtakes the sorrow. He'd been expecting it.

"You stupid alien!" She yells softly, smacking his face hard enough to leave marks. "Why didn't you tell my baby girl? You could have... You should have... you..." but she trails off.

The intense grief on the Doctor's face is almost too much for her to bear.

When he looks up at her, with new tears rolling down his eyes, replacing the old tear tracks, she feels instant regret.

"It was my baby too, Jackie."

"Oh Doctor, I'm so sorry," she says.

Because what else can she say? She can't say it's going to be alright when she knows it's not. Instead, Jackie decides to get him a cuppa, prepared the way she knows he likes.

While she's away, The Doctor sneaks off to Rose's room. He stands in her doorway for a moment before moving to join her in bed. For a while, he just lays there.

Thinking.

Suddenly, an idea pops into his mind. It's a longshot, but right now, he's willing to try anything, and he's pretty sure Rose is too.

The Doctor knows what he has to do. He has to break one of his own rules, meddle in his own past. He'll make himself take Rose to a nurturing planet, one that knows how to deal with these kinds of pregnancies.

Because he's already broken one of his most important rules - keep Rose happy at all times - so what's one more gonna hurt? With a kiss to Rose's forehead, he slips out to the TARDIS...

5 Months Later...

It's check-out time at the hospital where Rose has been staying. As the Doctor returns to the room, he pauses in the doorway, watching Rose. She stands with her back to him, looking out the window.

"We shoulda had a baby today," she says quietly, not turning around.

"Yeah," The Doctor nods. "We should have."

He sees her breathe deeply. Then she turns to him and they make their way out of the room, hand in hand.

"We did everything right," The Doctor assures. "It wasn't your fault, Rose."

"I know." And the Doctor knows what she really means is: It is too my fault, stop trying to tell me it's not.

Three hallways lay in front of them, each labeled with their end destination. The Doctor and Rose take the hall on the left and walk down it until they reach the door labeled 326. They gather their things and travel back to the hallway, this time taking the hall in the middle. They walk out the hospital doors and Rose waits while the Doctor runs off to get the TARDIS. It materializes before her and she steps in, breathing in the unique smell. It smells of time and home and The Doctor, and that's one scent Rose never wants to be without.

"Coming?" The Doctor asks from his place at the console.

Rose nods and closes the TARDIS doors behind her as the Doctor takes their things to the captain's chair. She watches, grin on her face, as the Doctor delicately straps their son to captain's chair. He fiddles around for moment before deciding the boy's safe enough, then turns back to Rose, his grin matching her's.

Maybe they were supposed to have a baby on this very day. But, like the timelord he was - half-timelord, technically - little Jack got impatient and decided to pop out a couple months early. And neither the Doctor nor Rose would have changed it for the universe.

Someday, the Doctor thinks, when Jack's much, much older, he'll tell Rose how they almost lost their baby boy. And he'll make sure to tell her what he decides again and again, every time he sees his son:

He doesn't regret a thing.