Jack sat quietly, for once, looking between the two. They continued to argue, ignoring his presence, and he couldn't believe how foolish they were.
Ever since he'd met Rose, and before he met the Doctor, he had been able to see that she was in love with someone. Then when he did meet the Doctor, he could see that it was him. She was in love with him, and even though it had taken a while to see it, he finally realized that the Doctor was in love with her too. But they didn't see it in each other.
There had been plenty of times when Jack knew the moment would have been perfect. When the truth coming out would have been the most excellent thing possible, but it never actually happened.
So Jack stayed silent, and listened to them.
They had been out on an adventure, when one of Rose's favorite shirts got ruined. Then when they'd gotten back, she'd blamed him for it. But he argued right back saying she should have been smarter than wear her favorite shirt on an adventure.
"It was supposed to be a peaceful, always-sunny kind of planet! How did I know that it would rain and I'd end up all muddy? You should have at least known the weatherbefore we left here!"
"No, you should have been prepared for the worst. After all it's never my fault when our trips go wrong…weeell not usually…weeell sometimes it is." He paused for a second, thinking, before finally relenting. "Okay it is my fault most of the time, but that wasn't the case this time! You should have dressed more wisely; it's your own fault that you didn't dress right."
"Excuse me? What's wrong with the way I dressed?" She demanded, and Jack smiled, wondering how the doctor would handle this.
He watched as the doctor sputtered, knowing he'd put himself in a bad place, and that the wrong words would probably earn him a slap. After a moment, he spoke again, this time more cautiously. "There's nothing wrong with the way you dressed, but sometimes you don't choose your clothes very wisely for the situation. Besides, you look good in whatever you wear." He said, smiling slightly, trying to turn the conversation onto a more pleasant note, but he'd already made a mistake.
But Rose had only paid attention to the first sentence, at which point she'd looked outraged, not that the Doctor noticed. "Don't choose wisely?" She demanded, and the Doctor paled at her tone. His cheek practically tingled with the memory of a slap he'd once received from Jackie Tyler, and he could only imagine how much damage Rose could do in a fit of anger. "So you want to talk about choosing wisely, do you? Then let's talk." Her emotions were running on high, and now that she'd gotten started, she wasn't likely to stop until it all came pouring out.
"Was it wise when you nearly blew yourself up in the department store? Was it wise when you nearly got yourself killed in Van Staten's museum? Was it wise when you almost got yourself infected in World War II? Was it even remotely wise when you decided to send me back from satellite 5, forcing me to absorb the TARDIS to return, and in the end causing you to regenerate?" Tears had formed in the corners of her eyes, and Jack wondered how long this had been coming. How long had she been bottling up all of her feelings, just waiting for a reason to let them go? "Do you have any idea how much you've scared me in the past, how many times I nearly lost you? Do you even know how many times I thought I'd lost you, and lost the man I lo-." She stopped herself, just when Jack thought that she would finally and fully admit how she felt. After a moment, she continued, "lost the man I…I can barely live without." The tears ran down her face in a steady stream, and she wondered what was wrong with her. Where had all of that come from? Of course she'd spent plenty of nights crying over a near loss of him, but she'd never let him see her true feelings.
Panic burned through her, leaving her bitter and uncertain, causing her to turn and run. She was out of their sight before the Doctor could respond.
The Doctor wouldn't have answered right away anyhow. He was shocked at her outburst, and he simply stood there, speechless.
"For someone who's seen every corner of the universe, you really are narrow sighted." Jack said suddenly, causing the Doctor to jump in surprise. He'd forgotten Jack was even on the ship, let alone in the same room.
The Doctor grabbed his glasses, and put them away in his coat pocket. "What are you talking about?" He asked in a monotone, as though uncaring, and turned away from him.
"She's hurting, Doctor, and you can't even see that. Hell, it's not as though you two ever really talked after you regenerated. You just assumed that she would be okay with it. What would you do if one day she changed her face, and everything about herself? It would take you a long time to trust her again, let alone believe it was really even her."
The Doctor was silent, unsure of what to say to that, and kept fiddling meaninglessly with the console. Then he realized that no, he couldn't imagine it, not for a second. His Rose was a brilliant pink and yellow human he'd come to know, and in time love, and he couldn't picture her in any other form. If she suddenly changed, then he knew that he wouldn't be able to easily accept it, even if he tried for a hundred years. Even if she prepared him for her change beforehand, he still wouldn't accept, but the notion of it would have helped to transition over. He hadn't even given her that, and regret seared through him. The way he would feel was obvious, but he could only guess how much more Rose had gone through when it all first happened.
"Every time she looks at you, I can see it plain as day. She misses the old you, but at the same time she can't wait to see more of the new you." Jack pressed, giving him a slightly different train of thought.
Looking back, he could see what it all meant. Every strange and out of character glance, unusual gesture, and uncomfortable silence was her way of waiting for him. She had been waiting the entire time since his regeneration for him to start talking, and to explain everything. Likely he'd do it with his usual complicated manner, using words and phrases that she wouldn't understand, but at least he would try. He could have at least given her that much. But he hadn't. Instead he had taken everything at face value, and hadn't bothered to look deeper into the subject of her adjustment.
An incredible sadness filled his heart, one that he hadn't felt since the fall of his people, and this time it was somehow even more powerful. She had helped him to get over all of his pain, and loss, and loneliness. But they returned now with a new force.
He had been broken for a long time, destined not to recover, but when she came into his life he had started to heal. She had helped to repair the damage that had been dealt to him, and even the scars had started to fade. Now new wounds had opened, and they weren't his, but he was most certainly the cause. That reality alone made him feel as though he'd been punched in the gut.
He turned half away from the console, and caught Jack staring at him. It was obvious that he was straining not to say more. To push on and brutally scold the Doctor for everything he'd done wrong concerning Rose's feelings. But he held back, and looking into his eyes, he could see the war that raged in the Time Lord's mind.
"She's needed you plenty of times before, when she was hurt or scared, but she needs you right now more than ever." Jack said, and a new found courage rose in the Doctor's chest.
He nodded, and without another word, he walked quickly out of the console room.
As he left, he would have sworn he heard Jack whistling happily from next to the console, smug as ever at having accomplished something amazing.
Rose's bedroom door came into view a minute later, and he hesitated for a second. But then he remembered everything that he'd come to know, and everything that Jack had said, and he moved closer to it.
When he opened the door, he found her curled up on her bed. The lights in the room were dimmed, no doubt thanks to the forever watching TARDIS. Her shoulders shook slightly, and when she sat up, he could see the wetness that covered her cheeks. "What do you want?" She asked, and it physically pained him to see her like this. Looking and sounding so despaired and vulnerable.
"I'm sorry." He proclaimed, and despite his best efforts, his voice cracked on the last syllable.
"What?" She questioned him, disbelief resonating in her voice.
"I-I never meant for any of this to happen, and I'm so sorry Rose." He stepped inside, closing the door behind him, and took a second to try and better compose himself. "I'm sure that seeing me regenerate was difficult for you, and I won't pretend to know how that must have made you feel. But I do think that I understand it to a certain extent." He smiled slightly, "Believe it or not, Jack helped, and not in the making-constantly-thoughtful-but-dirty jokes kind of way."
The corner of her mouth lifted slightly at this, but only by a fraction, and only for a split second. "Why are you here?" She asked, and he could almost feel the pain radiating off of her.
Going over, he sat down slowly on the bed, and looked her in the eye. "I know that it must have been hard, with me suddenly different, and with no real explanation of what was happening. Also, I know now that it must have been difficult for you to just pick up with me where we'd left off, as though nothing had happened, and I'm sorry for that too. But sometimes I forget that you're not as well versed with the universe as I am, and I just want you to have fun. I want to show you things that I can't even describe with words, so for the next few days, I think we'll stop. We can just float in the vortex for a while, and work on getting ourselves back on the right track. What do you think?"
She was quiet for a long time, taking everything in, before she finally smiled. "I would like that."
"Good. Now, I can tell you're tired, so why don't you get some rest? We'll talk in the morning." He said, noticing the way her eyelids drooped. She nodded, and he gave her time to get cleaned up and changed before coming back into the room and tucking her into bed. The lights almost completely went out as he left the room.
That night, when he lay down in his own bed for one of his rare spells of sleep, he realized that he felt more whole that he had in a long time. It was as if that magical Rose Tyler had filled holes that he didn't even know existed, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
-_-_-_-Two weeks later.
The Doctor and Rose had gone on a sort of dinner date a few nights after they started to fix their relationship. It didn't take long for him to sneak her a few kisses, and only yesterday, he'd finally said it. They had watched the re-release of Titanic in 3D, and at the very end, he leaned in and whispered it in her ear. "I love you." She immediately said it back, and they shared a deep, gentle and loving kiss.
They were sitting in kitchen, eating dinner, when Rose suddenly remembered something she'd been meaning to tell Jack. Glancing up, he immediately noticed that she was looking at him. "Did you need something, beautiful?" He'd said things like that several times over the last week, just to bother the Doctor, and now the Time Lord held an almost constant glare at Jack.
"Yeah, I just want you to know something. Jack, you're like a professional match maker." Rose said, chuckling softly, and the Doctor looked at her warmly, squeezing her hand.
"No." He murmured, smiling. "You two were already a match made; you just needed a little push to see that."