A/N: This is my first Doctor Who fanfiction, so bear with me. This takes place after the Doctor's message on Bad Wolf Bay for Rose. I'm not sure whether I want to continue this or not, I like the story enough, but I suppose it depends on how much response you guys give me ^^ I don't apreciate flames, but constructive criticism is always welcome!

Warning: I know most of my little theories don't make much sense or are otherwise clearly impossible (as my sister has already pointed out), but bear in mind that this is fanfiction and not a canon-fic at that. It's a babyfic, so don't like, don't read! This hasn't been beta-ed so any mistakes are mine!

Enjoy the chapter!

It had been five months since the doctor's message on Bad Wolf Bay. For a while, it had been very hard for Rose to move on, to do something with her life again. But working at Torchwood really had given her a purpose, she helped people, saved lives. Still… Life without the doctor… it was barely worth living.

Mom and dad were living the good life in the mansion, impatiently awaiting their little girl.

Rose visited as often as she could, of course, but sometimes seeing them was just too much. She would never be able to have that anymore. As much as she might've tried dating again, and as much as she liked her new friends, she just couldn't. She loved the doctor, plain and simple.

Mickey and Jake had joined Torchwood and were on Rose's team, though the powers that be (aka the people in charge) had been a little reluctant at first. The rest of the team consisted of two guys; Glen and Derek, and one girl; Laura.

They were currently on an assignment to stop another alien apocalypse from happening, in London this time. It wasn't their usual 'kick alien arse fast and get out before something explodes' kind of thing, Rose was actually undercover. Some key-making company had drawn Torchwood's attention and they wanted Rose's team to figure it out.

She already knew the guy from personnel was a sleazy moron, but apparently he was in the thick of it, so Rose let him flirt with her, disgusting as it was. The whole thing was becoming a drag, really. She'd joined Torchwood because she wanted a little bit of adventure in her life. That and she wanted to help people, like the doctor had done.

Every morning she'd get up, shower, head to work, the idiot would hand her a cup of coffee, she'd work, lunch break, work, go home to her temporary apartment (courtesy of Torchwood), update her equally bored team and go to sleep. The only thing she'd figured out so far was that there was some sort of secret underground floor to the building, one that wasn't on the official maps, but she hadn't been able to steal the key to get in there.

That was her sole objective today, even if she'd have to get fired over it. Rose knew Lance had one (probably the only one), but she didn't know where. She'd already had Mickey and Jake break into his house to search it, but that had come up empty. Rose figured it had to be in his office, unfortunately, that was guarded for some reason. ('I mean, really, he's from personnel for God's sake!').

The plan was to sneak Mickey into the building and have him knock out the guards, so Rose could poke around the office.

She hadn't actually thought she'd find something, though, but there it was: a small key labelled 'lift'. The idiot had only kept it in a locked drawer that she'd had no trouble picking.

Quickly, Rose pressed it into some kind of foamy booklet that Glen'd given her, to get the imprint of the key. Glen would be able to manufacture a duplicate.

Glen was their resident thief; he'd taught Rose how to pickpocket and how to pick a lock. The ptb had been a little hesitant to make him part of the team, but Glen was smart and talented and he'd saved all their hides more than once before.

Nevertheless, Rose wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. Putting the key back into the drawer, she dashed outside. Mickey immediately fell in step beside her. "You got it?" he whispered.

"We'll be able to see what's down there tonight," Rose replied, guiding him to the back entrance.

Pressing the foamy key-copier into his hand, she pushed him out the door. "Go! We meet at my place tonight. Bring the armoury!" she said, shutting the door.

Rose leaned against the glass for a second before squaring her shoulders and striding purposefully down the hall.

She was lost in thought as she rounded the corner, which caused her to walk into the person she least wanted to see. "Rose!" he said, sounding genuinely surprised as he steadied her.

"Lance? What are you doing here?" Rose asked, trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice. She was fairly sure Mickey and her had hid the unconscious bodies well enough, but Lance would wonder why they weren't at their posts. She couldn't let him find out, or the whole operation was in danger.

"On my way to my office, but I could ask you the same thing. I thought your break was over 5 minutes ago?" he asked, eyes slightly narrowed.

'The doctor would've been much better at talking his way out of situations like these,' Rose thought a little bitterly.

Some womanly charm would be needed, she decided. "Actually, I was looking for you," she said huskily, stepping closer and resting her hands on his chest. Lance responded immediately: his face relaxed and his hand went to rest on her hip. Disgusting.

"Oh, really, and why might you be doing such a thing?"

Inwardly, Rose rolled her eyes. No one spoke like that. 'Think, think, think! I need an excuse, fast!' she thought frantically, though on the outside, she remained completely calm. That was a trick Laura had taught her when she'd first joined Torchwood.

Rose leaned in closer, whispering in his ear. "That's for me to know and for you to find out…" she stepped back and continued down the hall, swaying her hips a little more than was strictly necessary. Luckily, the work floor was pretty close, so it soon became too busy in the hall for him to try anything.

Rose felt sick. All she wanted to do was go home and shower and never come back to that place. With a bit of luck, she wouldn't have to after that night.

/*/

Rose had sat at her desk and pretended to work for the rest of the day, and then went home at 5, like all the other secretaries. The team had been waiting for her when she got home. They got any equipment they might need ready while Rose changed into something a little less conspicuous than the skirt and blouse she wore for work.

"Ready?" Laura asked when Mickey had parked the van in the shadows, close to the H.C. Clements building.

"Let's get this over with, I can't wait to quit my job," Rose joked half-heartedly, and got out of the car.

Getting into the building and the elevator proved to be easier than they had thought. As soon as Mickey had disabled the cameras and alarm system, Glen had no trouble getting the rest of them in.

"Okay guys, from now on you're on your own. But remember, I can still hear and see anything you can," Mickey said through the ear pieces. "Good hunting."

Once inside the elevator, Rose pulled her gun and checked the chamber. "We don't even know what's down there," Laura commented, eyeing the gun.

"Exactly."

Derek was the weapons specialist and he'd taught Rose how to use several firearms back at HQ. Usually, the teams didn't carry them, though since she'd asked for the armoury, the armoury was what she'd been given. As opposed to the general rule, Rose never went anywhere without her own gun.

Not since the doctor's message.

It had only occurred to her then that he wouldn't be there to protect her anymore. She had never fired it at a person, though, and she seriously doubted she ever would. She'd never even used it on an alien before. She let Jake or Derek have that pleasure, usually.

"So what's the plan? Recon and report back to HQ or shut the place down?" Jake asked casually, drawing his own weapon.

"Depends: if it's dangerous we blow it up, if it's not… well, we can still blow it up," Rose replied. Derek and Jake cracked a grin while Laura just rolled her eyes.

The doors tinged open and the group stepped into a dripping, dank, empty hallway.

"Which way?" Laura asked, peering into the semi-darkness on their left.

"Right, there's a door over there," Derek pointed. Glen opened it to reveal a tight crawlspace with bars that formed a ladder. Rose pointed a flashlight to the top, but she couldn't reach it.

"I'll go first, Derek, you're with me. Jake and Laura, wait down here," Rose instructed as she holstered my gun and started climbing. They'd learned a while ago not to question her.

Turned out they were below the Thames Barrier, and that this was probably an abandoned Torchwood facility. Those suspicions were confirmed as they entered a lab with all kinds of strange science-y things. "Take a sample of those fluids, I want to know what they are," Rose told Laura; she was the smart one after all.

"What's down there?" Derek pointed at the only other door in the room.

"Don't know, let's check it out," Rose replied, leading the way. Laura made up the back when she'd pocketed a sample.

The team entered huge room with an enormous hole in the ground. From Jake's pack, Rose took one of those light bars you had to crack and threw it in there. It went on forever.

Derek whistled. "Deep."

"Talk to me, people," Mickey said through the earpieces.

While Laura reported, Rose stared at the bottomless pit. The light wasn't even visible anymore. A chill crept down my back. "Something's down there," she whispered.

"What? Did you say something, Rose?" Jake asked, coming to stand by her shoulder. She turned to face him and the rest of the team. "Something's down there," she repeated louder.

Laura frowned and looked into the hole. "How could you possibly know that?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is, I don't think it's awake…"

"You think it's an alien of some kind." It wasn't a question.

"Yes… Blow it up," Rose said, wanting to get rid of the strange feeling that made her skin crawl.

Derek stared. "You can't be serious. You want to blow this thing up because you have a gut feeling? We don't even know yet what's in that lab."

"You know what, I don't care what we do, I just want to get out of here. We're moving out. Mickey, did you get everything?" Rose asked, already heading for the exit.

"Yeah, I think so. Don't worry, Rose, we can always blow the damn thing later."

They went the rest of the way in silence. Rose knew my team was wary of speaking to her about what had just happened. She'd be too. Though she was the team leader, Rose had been known to give a strange order because of a feeling she'd had. She guessed she'd picked up that sixth sense from travelling with the doctor.

Luckily Mickey and Jake had always backed her up, but they couldn't hide the doubt they felt. She knew her team thought she was crazy sometimes, that they were a little fed up with her mood swings, but she couldn't help it.

She wasn't the cheerful Rose she was when she travelled with the doctor anymore. She was Rose Tyler, daughter of the Pete Tyler, owner of Torchwood, she was the leader of my own Torchwood team and she was a mum.

About that: she hadn't technically lied to the doctor at Bad Wolf Bay; she'd told him her mum was pregnant, and she really was. She just hadn't mentioned that Rose's own daughter was in the car with her dad.

Her little Cassiopeia, Cassie for short, had come into her life only two months before the doctor's message. She'd named her after a constellation, since the doctor had actually taken her to a planet inside it.

She was Rose's everything, though she couldn't share her with the world. For one; Cassie had two hearts, like her father, and second; she grew faster than any human child ever could. Even now, at seven months old, she looked like a two-year-old. Sometimes it hurt Rose to look at her since she looked so much like the doctor: she'd look at her and see everything that she'd lost… but also everything that she'd gained.

She'd be lying in her bed at her grandma and granddad's right now, hopefully not having a nightmare. Unfortunately, she had those most nights, but Rose could always calm her down, and she was sure mum and dad would be able to as well. It wouldn't be the first time she'd left her with her parents.

As the team stepped into the elevator, Rose pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind, she had better things to do than dwell in the past right now.

Once again, they were on the ground floor and were making their way to the front of the building. Hopefully she'd be home soon, so she could see Cassie again.

"Guys, someone's entering through the main doors! Go 'round back! Quickly!" Mickey had warned them in the nick of time. They were close to the main work area, which was the last thing to cross to get to the main entrance.

The group stopped dead in their tracks. Rose signalled the team to keep quiet and stay where they were as she peered around the corner cautiously. Of course, it had to be Lance. Rose swore silently as she saw he was headed to the security office to the left of the hall.

She back away from the corner and ran as quietly as she could toward the back entrance, her team following her. "Mickey," she whispered, "how are those cameras?"

"Still deactivated, why?"

"I need you to activate them, now!" Rose ordered, ignoring his question. "Show him the feed from an hour ago, before we were here, can you do that?"

"I can try, how much time do I have?"

"Less than three minutes," she warned as she dashed through the back entrance.

"This is never going to work," Rose heard Derek mumble. She ignored him and got into the van.

"Let's move, I don't want to be here when he figures out we've seen the lab."

/*/

"She's in the kitchen with Pete, Rose. But I do wonder if she should be eating so many bananas?" mum was saying as she let Rose in.

"That's okay, she gets it from her dad," Rose said, ignoring the stab to her heart. "Cassie, sweetheart?" she called, entering the much-too-large-for-only-two-people kitchen.

"Mommy!" a high voice shouted when a blur of yellow and pink collided with her. Rose staggered back a few paces, but held on to her daughter for dear life. She hadn't seen her little star all week.

"Did you have fun with granddad and grandma?" Rose asked, settling the little whirlwind on her hip. Dad grinned at her in greeting and followed his wife into the living room so Rose could have some private time with her daughter.

The girl nodded vigorously. "Granddad and I made you a cake!" she said excitedly.

Rose frowned. "How did you know I was coming? I didn't even know I'd be coming till last night."

Cassie shrugged. "I don't know. A voice in my head tells me," she explained. She sounded much too smart for someone who looked like she was two years old.

"Really? And what else does this voice tell you?" Rose asked as she sat down at the kitchen table, taking in the mess that Cassie and dad had made to bake that cake.

"That you miss daddy and that you think I grow so fast because you had the yellow thingies from the blue box in you," she said matter-of-factly, putting her small index finger on Rose's temple.

Rose gaped. My seven month old was referring to the time vortex she had never told her about. Damn her Time Lord abilities.

"Cassie, I need you to listen to me very carefully. You can never mention that to anyone, understand? Not even to grandma or granddad. Can you do that for mummy?" Rose asked, looking her directly in the eyes.

Cassie nodded and buried her head in her mother's hair. Rose sighed and combed her fingers through Cassie's light brown locks until the phone rang.

"Yeah?" she said tiredly as she picked it up.

"Rose!" Laura sounded frantic. "You have to come to Torchwood NOW! That liquid we saw? Those were huon particles, the same strange particles I found in your bloodwork last month. If those things activate-"

The scientist never got to finish her sentence as Rose and Cassie disappeared, holding onto each other tightly and leaving the phone to shatter on the kitchen floor.

/*/

When Rose opened her eyes, her breath stuck in her throat. All the familiar lights and colours surrounded her again. Rose was standing in the TARDIS, she was home.

A/N: So what do you think? Should I continue this or not? Review!

-Anne