Rose walked into Torchwood with her usual cup of morning coffee, yawning. She waved good morning to Jake, who had returned from France with Mickey the previous week. He smiled and then returned to whatever report he had to write up about the cyber factories there.

Jackie and Pete were standing in the main room, arguing in hushed voices. Still, Jackie had never been good about keeping her voice down—Rose heard it before she even entered the room, and her steps slowed. Were they fighting already? A frown tugged down at the corners of her lips. She had thought her mum would be too thrilled to have Pete back—riches and everything—to start anything. She was flashing back to the day of the wedding when she had witnessed their fighting, right before he died.

"—telling you, Jacks. We can't just keep it a secret. I mean, how are we—"

"No, I am telling you, Pete Tyler. You saw what Rose was like after he left, and we are not giving her any false hope. That isn't him, you've seen the Doctor. It's some weird—"

She broke off when she spotted Rose loitering at the door. For a moment her face looked stressed, and then she was across the room with open arms, hugging Rose tightly.

"Rose, darling, I called and told you to sleep in. What are you doing here?" Rose's confusion grew, and she pulled back.

"Yeah, I was sleeping until you called, and then I figured I might as well come in, since I was awake." She couldn't just sit around all day. It wasn't what the Doctor would want her to do, and she could not physically do it, despite her mother wanting her to do so. There had been a week where she'd been too paralyzed by the pain of losing the Doctor to do anything, and then she had to be busy. It was a physical need, just as important as water and food. "Something wrong?"

"There's um—" Pete broke off, glancing at Jackie, who returned his look with a glare. "Nothing. Nothing new."

Rose nodded, setting her coffee cup on her work station. "You sure? It sounded like you two were fighting about something."

"Oh, I keep telling him we need to find new house staff. I can't clean that whole house by myself, and I don't want to, either. He's just too busy with the cybermen to care."

"Right, and I'll get right on staff. As soon as possible."

Something was definitely off. She sat down in front of her computer and logged in, scanning through the email she had created. It was for anyone who needed help with the cybermen, aliens, whomever. Pete had advised against it, said there was no way she could keep up with all the people who thought they were seeing aliens, but Rose persisted onwards with it.

"Okay."

"You haven't, you know, seen anyone you thought you recognized lately, have you, Rose?" Jackie asked after a pause.

"No, mum. This is an alternate Earth, and anyone I might've known probably got converted into a cyberman." She replied distractedly. Once Jackie was gone, she'd have to poke around and figure out what she was hiding. Until then, there was work to get done.

"Right. Of course. Just checking. You know, I did run into Cheryl, mind you, she barely even recognized me, since we haven't lived in that old flat since your father got rich and…" Jackie's words faded into background noise as Rose scrolled through the emails detailing everything from newly discovered cyberman factories to someone's dog or cat that went missing. She nodded every once in a while as Jackie continued on, and Pete disappeared.

Eventually, Jackie left to head home, and possibly put out an ad for house staff for the house. She and Torchwood didn't quite click, probably because Jackie's experiences with adventure constituted of worrying about whether Rose would make it out alive. Now she had to worry about Pete and Mickey too.

The moment her mother disappeared, Rose left the computer and walked over to the records computer. Everything that entered and exited Torchwood that was of alien nature was catalogued on the computer. Biting her lip, she scrolled through several records of random alien machinery, debris from some space craft crash.

There was nothing interesting, except one of the entries was blocked. There weren't a lot of those.

ALIEN LIFE FORM UNKNOWN ORIGIN

The details couldn't be accessed without a password, and Rose's didn't have the clearance to view details.

"You saw what Rose was like when he left. We are not giving her any false hope."

Her heart rate sped up. Could it be?

Suddenly, she was certain. It was him. It was the Doctor, he'd somehow found his way through the dimensions and he was in Torchwood somewhere. He'd found her.

She left the monitor and walked across to the security monitors. Each one showed a different room of Torchwood. Rose skimmed through each one, clicking through each individual video feed with increasing quickness.

Where was he?

He had to be there. There was no one else her mum could have been talking about. No one else that she would have wanted to keep secret from Rose.

The fuzzy image of the alien holding cells came up, and she hesitated. Through one of the glass cells there was a tall figure. His features were blurred out by lack of quality. Rose leaned in closer, trying to make them out.

"Whatcha looking at?"

She flinched backwards guiltily and spun to look at Pete, who looked both uncomfortable and uneasy.

"That's—that's, is that him? That's the Doctor, isn't it?" She jabbed a finger at the screen. Pete's expression intensified.

"Rose—"

"Oh my God, it is." Her eyes were starting to fill with tears.

"Rose, it's…" Pete looked at the display. "Your mum'll kill me if she finds out I'm telling you this, so you didn't hear it from me, yeah?"

She waited for him to speak.

"We found him after we got a call. And it looks like him, it does. I know. But when you talk with him, you know." He lapsed into silence and Rose's frustration grew.

"You know what? That's either the Doctor, or it's not. Which is it?"

Right when she was getting ready to scream, Pete found his words again. "Just leave it be, Rose. We'll take care of things."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She asked in a raised voice, glancing back at the screen, where the figure was pacing around.

But Pete was already beating a retreat for the door, obviously avoiding the subject.