Title: Badland
Rating: PG
Characters: Jack/Ten/Martha/Mentions of Rose…
Author: Atheniandream
A/N: Post Doomsday, Throughout Season 3 up until the Finale in some form (Spoilers)
'You know, it's amazing when you think of everything that Martha may or may not know. And Jack too…"
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How do you tell someone who means a little, about the person who meant… more than most?
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"So?"
"So.. What? What?"
"You're remembering something she said aren't you?"
"…No."
Ah. The frown.
Martha rolled her eyes at him. The Doctor. The Nine Hundred Year old 'Not actually a Doctor' Doctor. The Doctor who thinks that his eyes don't betray his face…
She'd been asking for months now, without hearing him answer. Rose… who was Rose? A companion, yes. But what was she like? Did you come here with her, did you go there with her? Is that what she said? The illusive companion that seemed to haunt the TARDIS and stalk the tracks of the Doctor with mentions of the Bad Wolf, Rose, and the mysteries that had surrounded her popping up at every corner that they treaded together.
She'd almost grown comfortable and protective over her place in the TARDIS; so different from her arrival, her want to get back to studying and graduating in her own life, to her burning need to follow the strange 900-year old 'Time Lord who was the last of his kind'. Comforted by his eventual acceptance of her permanent presence, teamed with her almost acceptance of their timed and seemingly plutonic relationship, they existed.
Quite simply, and harmonious.
Until the day she'd met someone who knew Rose as well.
It wasn't that she wanted to intrude, or that she was nosy - although 'overly inquisitive' had been a chosen phrase used by the Doctor on many occasions - it was more a case of having to 'make nice' with a subject that wasn't allowed to be discussed. Like being a blossoming teenager; hating the difficult discussions of relationships and sex that parents would make their children suffer through, and yet snogging the local paper boy on the corner because he said 'I really fancy you'.
Since Martha had been introduced so quickly to their current addition, Captain Jack Harkness, and the Doctor was keeping quiet of late, she knew it was her job to quiz the stranger on events she hadn't been apart of.
"So you travelled with the Doc and…"
"Rose, yea. For a short time. Why do you ask?"
"He never mentioned you so.."
"WHAT? He's never mentioned me?" A 'mock' whinge of disappointment laced his tone.
"Ah...no, Sorry. Just Rose."
"Oh Re'heally? Well that's gotta hurt." Jack laughed, running his hands through his hair. "But they were tight so, it figures. So he actually talks about Rose then? I couldn't get more than two words out of him earlier, and that was easy compared to his last incarnation."
"What was he like.. Before?"
"Gruff, too serious, Stubborn… and 'head over' for her. If that guy had even half an idea that the two o' the them 'danced' around each other, then he'd never let on. They were inseparable, and believe me I tried to get in there…" He laughed once more.
"He doesn't talk about Rose…not properly anyway. Just says that they were together…and now she's with her family. He always seems a little...'touchy' when I ask."
"Yea…well I'm not surprised, I mean if you saw those two, back then anyway. I thought nothing would tear them apart. Ever. It has to be a good reason why she's not here. Heck, I miss her." He said matter-of-factly.
"What was she like?"
His face brightened. "She was a spark plug…smart…she was confident and sure of herself for someone so young. Like you, she didn't let the Doctor boss her round either. And yet, she could be…naïve and soft at times. Always caring of others. And she would always stand by him."
"Yea, in my experience, people have a habit of doing that."
"You too, huh?"
She blushed at his asking. It seemed the Doctor had a repeated behaviour, whether it was his matching future companions to Rose, of a trend that had started from the beginning she couldn't be sure of…
He returned a warm, knowing smile. "The Doctor gives people faith, and people have faith in 'the Doctor'." "I'm so glad he got rid of the big ears and moody temper of his last regeneration…"
"Big Ears?" Martha thought 'Now that is a picture…'
In the midst of a break in their discussion, yours truly had entered the room with a chipper spring in his step and the slight smirk on his face until till he sensed that feeling he'd walked into a conversation too early…
"What are you two chatting about?"
"…Nothing."
"Rose..."
The more brazen of the two answers had slipped out of Jack's mouth, seeing Martha cringe out of the corner of his eye as he surveyed the Doctor's immediate re-paint of expression; emotion draining into a worn-in frown "What about her?" Came a defensive questioning.
"Why don't you tell us Doctor?"
Jack Brave man.
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'Why don't you tell us Doctor?'
That was it.
He could handle Martha asking. Fobbing her off with looks of misunderstanding and vague replies. But Jack knew him. Albeit the old him, but still the essence him. Knew about him and Rose, had travelled with them, to him he couldn't lie or divert the conversation like he'd done with Martha. Didn't change the harshness of his tone, however which still hung on every one of the articulated answers that left his mouth.
He moved to sit beside them.
"Okay,"
"What happened with Rose?"
The Doctor sighed.
The age old question. There were of course older ones, but not many held as much fix with the Doctor like this one had. Not only was Martha unaware of the events that had led to his losing Rose, but so was Jack. And even worse, right up to being brought back to life, he had no idea what had really happened. A Wound on the heart too early made could not dare to be opened even after healing…
"Where do I start…" He held his head in his hands for a moment, trying to piece together the events that had moved so quickly and yet stayed so long…
"Wherever you want to buddy,"
For Martha, the beginning would be easier…
"It was the Future. The Daleks had survived, again same old story. Like they do, every time without fail…even after the Time War. I had no way of fighting them, I'd given up, was about to be executed in a Control room at Satellite 5 Space Station. I'd sent Rose away, back home, to save her. I didn't want her to die at their hands of Daleks, like so many had. It thought my time had come. My last stand against them. But before I knew it, the TARDIS appeared, and then I saw her, saw that she'd absorbed the Time Vortex, the life force of the TARDIS. See, no one's supposed to do that… it should tear a human apart. But it didn't. She was the 'Bad Wolf'; throughout time and space she'd scattered messages, to remind herself, so that at that very point in time she'd know what to do. That was when she brought you back Jack, turned the Dalek emperor and his followers to dust, and then it took her over. She couldn't stop. So I absorbed it to save her. It damaged my body beyond repair, causing me to regenerate as I am now. And from there, we continued… travelling together. Unfortunately leaving you behind." He motioned to Jack will a level of regret, an almost apology. "I had no idea, neither of us, that she'd brought you back."
"Don't worry about it Doc. We all had a job to do. It was weird though, I thought I'd never.. Death is calm." The Degree of frankness the Doctor had always remembered in Jack Harkness, caused him to smile slightly.
"Time passed until one day, not long after her boyfriend Mickey… 'Mickey the Idiot' joined us. The TARDIS almost perished in a mechanical failure, and we ended up in an alternate reality, seemingly similar in most ways, accept that Rose's dead Father was very much alive, and still married to her barmy mother, Jackie. But Rose, she had never existed, she was never born there. Her father had his hand in all the pies, rich tycoon of health foods. Unfortunately the rich - including Rose's Mother - in that reality were to suffer an awful fate at the hands of Cybermen; an army of human brains trapped in metal casings, with an emotional inhibitor attached."
"Why an emotional inhibiter?"
"Rose asked the same thing… and because It hurts, being trapped in a cold metal body. Anyway, we survived, but Mickey stayed behind to fight. We managed back to our own reality. And again continued on. Until we came back to find.. It happening all over again…"
"Lemme guess, Cybermen?"
The Doctor held up a hand to silence the Captain, before continuing.
" And Daleks. After learning from Jackie, her mother that something odd had been going on whilst we'd been crossing the universe, the TARDIS, including the three of us, was locked onto by Torchwood, the queens defence and emerged in Torchwood Tower, publicly known as Canary Wharf."
"Torchwood?"
In seeing Martha's brow furrow, he helped to fill in the blanks as far as Torchwood were concerned. "In the Past, they got a little wrapped up in the affairs of Queen Victoria, when she transported a diamond given to her by her husband on it's annual pilgrimage. The Doctor and Rose caused a little Who-ha when they met her and destroyed a werewolf that was being hidden, and she in turn banished them from Earth and created the Torchwood institute named after the house they stayed in, to monitor all supernatural and alien activity, as well as the mysterious Doctor."
"You may remember Martha, the ghosts all over the country?" she nodded, leading him to continue. "They were Cybermen, they'd survived in the alternate reality, and emerged through a rift in space, being maintained by the Torchwood institute. Your cousin Adeola was there," He indicated to Martha once more. "Helping to manipulate the Ghost Shift. Before it was too late, they came through properly. They already taken over both your cousin and other members of the team, and through with them came a sphere. Inside the sphere, Cult of Skaro, the secret order that we encountered in Hooverville, 1930's New York. More trouble, more war. Only they had with them, a surprise. A prison ship filled with millions upon millions of Daleks. The only way to destroy them would be to send them into the void. Banish them into nothingness, both The Daleks and the Cybermen. Meanwhile Pete Tyler, Rose's father had come through with our Mickey and a rogue assembly of Torchwood, to jump through the parallels to our time. Knowing what I had to do, I tried to send Rose away, back to the alternate reality with her mother, her father and Mickey. But she came back through. We opened the void, but before we'd sucked the Daleks and Cybermen into the void, the controls faltered, and Rose began to lose grip, she fell towards the void, it all happened so fast, too fast…"
Martha's breath caught in her chest "But you said-"
"Pete Tyler caught her, taking her back with him through to his world. Safe. With her family."
"If the Cybermen emerged from that reality in the first, how do you know she's safe?" Being told second hand where his lost friend was, didn't instil in him the confidence to think that Rose Tyler was ever out of harms way, no matter how much he trusted the Time Lord.
"It was months later, I managed to contact her and get her to meet me. The rift came out in Norway, a place called 'Bad Wolf Bay'.
Jack chuckled softly, understanding the connection.
"We said our goodbyes, and to my knowledge, she's with her family, alive and well." Drifting into a timeless daze.
Neither Jack nor Martha dared to say what they were thinking…
He misses her… Still now. Still after time and companions had come and gone and feeling had grown over to form new hardened emotional skin. After the seemingly long time in Martha's mind that they had shared adventures together, he still longed for young girl who had burnt in his mind and stolen a piece of him. In that, it made him almost more human, more susceptible to life and love and loss like she had been.
"I'd burnt up a sun… just to say goodbye."
Now that was the most devastatingly romantic thing Martha had ever heard…
"Maybe one day, you'll be able to find your way back to her?" Saying the only comforting thing she could say…
"No. It's impossible to travel between parallel worlds. I made sure of it when I closed the breach the first time."
"Doctor," Jack's expression changed, drawing attention to focus on him. "That's not entirely true."
"What?"
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The Sirens blared, causing the young woman to sit upright in the chair she had slumped into no less than an hour before. Yawning briefly, she wiped the dried saliva from her face and ruffled her hair before reacting to the loud 'warning' coming out of the overhead console, as she made for the corridor.
"What's going on in 'ere?" She asked.
"Glad you could join us Rose," Mickey shot her a side-ways grin as she walked up to where him and fellow officers stood giving him a playful knock with her elbow. "You almost missed it."
"What is that?" She asked, placing her hands on her hips and gazing at the rippled wave against the wall in front of her.
"The Breach. We found it."
Her eyes widened.
Right. She thought. It was time.
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Cut off my head,
and look inside,
What once lay dormant,
determines lies,
around our black mouths
and in the dark,
The bad wolf leaves it's severed mark.
I am the bad wolf. I create myself..
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Sorry it was a bit of a lengthy one with too much explaining. I got a little lost.. LOL :D