When is a TARDIS Like an Empty Vase?
A/N: This was written for the Chocolate Box Exchange on AO3 as a treat for sonicshambles to their prompt for the pairing Nine/Jack/Rose that Rose ends up on a different alternate earth after The Stolen Earth where Nine and Jack are still around.
A/N2: Fair warning, the story contains a relatively brief section about Rose and Tentoo having a short dysfunctional relationship if that's a deal breaker.
When the unique sound of the TARDIS fading out of her reality on that lonely beach actually registered to Rose's ears, her heart broke into a million sharp pieces. Maybe the Doctor truly meant well, but it was the moment after which nothing seemed to go right.
Rose's knowledge from traveling with the Doctor and connection to the alternate version of her father had landed her a fairly prestigious position as an agent with Torchwood in her new universe. It was how she'd been in a position to realize it was possible to cross back over and find him again. She hadn't really planned to return afterward, but she expected to be able to call in and have someone come pick her up now that she had. Her first choice, the contact number for the main field office, rattles off an out of service message.
Giving the clone-Doctor a pained smile, she scrolled through the contacts on her phone as the wind whipped her hair about on that desolate windy beach. Rose tried additional numbers for her coworkers and her parents, but no matter who she called the only numbers that went through were answered by strangers. She hiccuped a little laugh and wanted the privacy to have a good cry; it was clearer with every wrong number the Doctor had dropped them in the wrong universe entirely. He never could steer as well as he claimed.
She feels like she's been set adrift, completely detached from reality. She's disappointed - well, no, she's pretty much crushed, but Rose Tyler is made of sterner stuff than all that. It was true before she traveled through space and time and only more true after. So she straightens up and turns to her Doctor and says brightly, "Well, c'mon then!"
She grabs his hand with her best game smile. If it's a little faked, well, so be it.
Rose still figures it can't be all bad. Even if she's left the TARDIS and her family behind in two different alternate universes, she's not alone. She's still with the Doctor. Except it had been hard for her to adjust before, even working as an agent for Torchwood, to staying in one world and one time indefinitely. Traveling with the Doctor for just the short time she did had changed Rose irrevocably. For the Doctor, who had traveled his whole life, hundreds of years more? The adjustment seemed to go a million times worse.
Her Doctor had always tended to being cranky and a little rude when something didn't go his way, but stuck in one place, this version of him is nearly unbearable. He constantly belittles his status as half human. They fight. He tears apart electronic devices and never puts them back together in any kind of working order, let alone the right one. They fight. He wants to go on trips to exotic places but is completely bored three seconds after they get there. Yet he also complains when she suggests looking for alien tech so they can at least leave Earth. They fight. He nearly gets them arrested several times because he forgets they need to have money to do things and permissions to go places. They fight. Worst of all, he's harder and stranger and just somehow subtly different than when she knew him – in the depths of her own mind where she barely admits it to herself, Rose starts to be a little less surprised his original ditched her here.
They fight, oh, do they ever fight - and the third day in a row Rose finds herself an absolute mess of angry tears, she's done. He may have all the memories, but this isn't her Doctor. She walks out of the flat they've been temporarily sharing in some city – things have been so bad she's lost track of which country they're in, let alone the city - and she never looks back.
Once she leaves him behind, Rose drifts. She looks around for any signs she might have previously missed of the existence of Torchwood in a different form, but comes up empty. She doesn't bother trying to find her way back through the universes again; what the Daleks were doing had made passage possible for only a short time. Even if that wasn't true, she'd been ditched here on purpose. A girl has to have some pride, right? She looks for more general clues to any kind of alien presence and is relieved to find a few artifacts she recognizes.
Once she knows aliens have visited this Earth and it's hopefully still possible to get off the planet, she starts looking for any signs of current activity. It's good to have a goal, even as the time stretches and it doesn't pay off as quickly as she would like. From moment to moment, she feels like she's drifting and waiting for something that may never come. Rose tells herself it doesn't matter; somehow she'll find herself a way out to the stars again.
In some ways, she still expects to turn a corner somewhere and see a big blue box sitting there, waiting to welcome her home. She thinks she's being completely daft kidding herself even thinking that - until the day it actually happens. The TARDIS is sitting in front of her, large as life and twice as blue. Rose comes to a dead stop in the middle of the foot traffic around her, barely noticing as people make huffy noises while pushing past. She blinks her eyes hard a couple times, and then slowly makes her way over to where it stands. Slowly because that's as much as her now shaking legs can manage without breaking into a dead run. Rose is afraid the whole time she's just imagining it there, or worse, that it's about to disappear on her again.
Her hand too is shaking as she pulls out her key from under her shirt, the one she's never been without since her Doctor originally gave it to her. It fits right into the lock, turning smoothly. She blows out a deep breath, causing some of her hair to fly around her face, bracing herself for whatever she might find inside. Rose pushes the door slowly open with a creak she remembers down in the depths of her bones and hears often in her dreams.
She's still trying to sort out her feelings when she gets the door open enough to see inside – and for those inside to see her in turn. She expects to see the Doctor, and maybe some other companion he's traveling with. Maybe one of the ones she just recently met that took her place after she was unwillingly pulled across the void.
What she does not expect is for it to be the version of the Doctor with the big ears and leather jacket. Nor for his companion to be handsome Captain Jack who they lost on the Game Station. At her entrance, they've both turned to stare, though before her arrival, she's sure they were tinkering with something in the console. It's a familiar scene from long ago, tools strewn all about and the two of them with their heads close together, the way they always tended to get when talking about the TARDIS' systems. For just a moment, when they're still only looking surprised, Rose wonders if some other Rose is going to come waltzing in the door behind her.
Then the moment straight out of several memories is broken by Jack's voice asking, "Doctor?"
It's clear then that she hasn't stepped back into time or gone adventuring somewhere inside her own head, because he's eyeing her up like she's a Slitheen or something. There's also a tremble to his voice she doesn't expect from the cocky charmer she knew.
"Just how did you get in here and what do you think you're doing, wearing that shape?" The Doctor asks her sharply, and Rose stops in place, only realizing as she does so that she's been slowly walking towards the center of the console room. Maybe she should back off, too, because he doesn't look at all happy to see her, but she doesn't. She also doesn't take her hand from where it's come to rest curled around the railing, anchoring her in the belief she's really here. The thrumming excitement and sorely missed familiarity she feels for the first time since she came to this universe makes her doubt its reality all the more.
Overwhelmed, and unsure quite where to start, she makes it simple. "I am Rose, just not the one properly from this universe, is all."
"Prove it." The retort comes in stereo, which takes her aback just a bit. Tough crowd, these two.
"How d'you expect me to do that?"
Neither verbally answers her, but the Doctor steps forward and waves the sonic around. From the downturn of his mouth it's clear he isn't satisfied with whatever it tells him. He keeps buzzing the device around her, and after trying several times to scan her with different settings while sporting an increasingly puzzled expression on his face, he puts the sonic away. When she glances his way, Jack is still just staring at her suspiciously.
"Well, c'mon then, you wanna prove yourself, follow me to the med bay."
Rose shrugs and follows along behind him with Jack pacing her to the rear. A little voice pipes up in the back of her head to warn that these are not the people she knows and maybe she should be a little less trusting, but she quashes it ruthlessly. Rose knows she should be more careful; but being back in the TARDIS? She just can't make herself care.
She's been to the med bay only a handful of times, and never for very long. Mostly she was just following the Doctor in and out when he remembered he'd stashed something or other in there. Although she had gone in to find something to treat the occasional scrape or bruise from one of their adventures now and then.
The Doctor silently directs her to sit on one of the beds, and Rose hops up without complaint, sitting on the edge, legs swinging. She doesn't know what half the stuff in here is, nor what any of the various gadgets he starts waving around her now are meant to tell him. As he works, still looking more perplexed and frenetic by the minute as he switches from tool to tool, Rose eyes the two of them curiously. The Doctor looks much the same as he always has when he's working a particularly stressful problem.
Jack stands back in the doorway, leaning against it with his arms crossed over his chest, trying to keep the look on his face blank and his posture casual. He may be trying, but she can see grief and worry in the lines around his eyes. There's just something about his eyes that makes Rose almost sure this Jack is so much younger than the other Jack she'd just recently learned was still alive in her own universe. It makes her wonder how different things went here. They obviously had a Rose, and from their reactions, just as obviously did not expect to see her again. At least this universe's Rose wasn't an overly-groomed dog. Well, presumably not.
Finally, the Doctor is apparently out of gadgets and steps back, looking at her with something like pain and just a dash of hope. "These readings - I made it in time there, didn't I? You survived opening the heart of the TARDIS."
It's not really a question, so Rose doesn't answer. She's not sure what she can say after the way his voice cracked on the words. She could try and tell him his Rose would have considered it worth it to save him – both of them, she mentally adds, glancing at Jack still playing at being aloof - but she's also pretty sure he already knows and doesn't want to hear it right now.
As such, she's not surprised when he gathers himself together and briskly asks something else entirely. "How did you end up here? Crossing realities is a neat trick to manage these days."
"Wait, realities? Doctor, is this really -" Jack interjects, disaffected expression dropping away and stepping forward into the room.
They're both still looking at her with those pained, hopeful looks, so Rose does the only thing she can, she explains everything. Well, mostly everything. Okay, well, maybe she just hits the most important highlights about the Doctor regenerating on her and being ditched in the wrong reality while she was distracted. She doesn't mention Jack getting resurrected and left behind to wait hundreds of years to reunite with the Doctor. Neither does she say anything about the half-human half-timelord version of the Doctor dumped here with her. So far as she's concerned, none of that has anything to do with here and now.
Jack snorts aloud at her complaint about the Doctor's driving being so bad she was dumped in the wrong reality, and makes an incredibly fake expression of innocence at the Doctor's responding glare sent in his direction. He winks one of his laughing eyes at her after the Doctor turns his attention back to Rose again.
"What'd I go and leave you for, anyway?" The Doctor asks, indignant, like he can't believe he'd do such a thing.
"Dunno," Rose replies, still a little miffed and it showing in her voice. "Maybe 'cause that you was always a bit rude?"
He looks like he's about to object, but unknown thoughts chase a series of expressions across his face before he gives a little frown and shrugs. "Fair 'nough." Then his whole demeanor changes, relaxing and really looking at her, searching her face and clearly glad at what he finds. He steps forward, speaking at the volume of a whisper – or a prayer. "Rose."
She's up off the bed she's been sitting at the edge of before she even realizes she's moving and then she's swept up in an incredibly fierce hug. No, really, breathing is going to be a bit of an issue if he doesn't let up fairly soon. Despite that, Rose doesn't care and is holding on as tight as she can manage in turn. It feels like her face is going to break from smiling so wide where it's buried in his leather jacket.
When he finally lets go, she's barely getting her breath back from being squeezed when she's twirling around in circles midair by a laughing Jack. He sets her back on her feet and she thinks he's going to let her go, but instead he swings her down into a dramatic dip and claims her mouth in a kiss he deepens when she gasps in surprise. She and the Jack in her universe never really got much further than flirting, but Rose doesn't mind a bit.
As she's recovering her breath a second time, Jack reaches out and hauls in the Doctor by the arm, who rolls his eyes but accepts a kiss that is no less exuberant or deep, and certainly looks like something familiar to the two of them. She's only a little surprised. Mainly she's trying to imagine all the scenarios Jack had to maneuver the Doctor through while she was gone to get him to do more than flirt back with more snark than interest. She'll have to try and get the stories out of Jack later – she bets there's some terribly funny ones. Or considering the way he kissed her, too, maybe it all happened while the other her was here? Her brow furrows at the thought for only a moment. It's too confusing to worry about that and not important, really, because she's the Rose who is here now.
They stand there for a long stretch of minutes after, all stood in a little circle of warmth, just smiling goofily at one another, content in the moment. If there's a sheen of tears in more than one pair of eyes, well, this isn't the kind of reunion that happens every day, yeah? Then, as if they had some kind of prearranged agreement, Jack and the Doctor break the silence almost simultaneously listing amazing places they want to know if she's visited. They're practically talking over each other in their excitement.
All she has to do is latch onto one of the listed destinations and they're off on the grandest adventure again, together, as it should be. They laugh and share stories of previous adventures, they run away from danger and then right back towards it to save the day. They see sights together that are amazing and horrible and sometimes both at the same time. They laugh, and they flirt, and they dance.
This Doctor could wind up turning into a stranger like her Doctor did. Or maybe there will be too many differences between her and their Rose like there had been too many between her original Doctor and the copy he'd stranded her with. She could die on any number of adventures, or Jack could, if this Jack can die. She doesn't think any of that will happen, but life is grand and unpredictable and part of that is the danger it could all go wrong sometime in the hazy future.
For now, though?
All of time and space is out there waiting to be explored.
Rose is homeand nothing could be more right.