A/N: Don't own Doctor Who. If I did, David Tennant would not be leaving. For once I like River slightly, as her handcuffs would be very handy so that we could keep David in the TARDIS and then actually get to getting him out of there on a bath chair or whatever it was that he joked about.
Please review.
"What is it, what's happened, sweetheart? What's wrong, where did you go?" a concerned Jackie Tyler instantly asked her shaken, sobbing and almost senseless daughter, holding her welcome arms out ahead of her, for her daughter to be cradled within.
Rose could not find the words with which to voice the thoughts that were niggling at her throbbing mind, and the Doctor, slumped against the exterior of his time ship; knows better than to interrupt the heavily emotional scene unfolding before his very eyes.
After minutes filled with comforting cradling on Jackie's part, Rose, remaining extremely distressed, upset and near devastated at the day's turn of events, finally relocated her voice. "You died," she managed shakily, her words laced with the gut wrenching sobs that Jackie had not yet entirely succeeded in subsiding.
"Did I; first I've heard," came Jackie's rather unwise reply, which she uttered within the passing of a mere five seconds.
The Doctor reverted to type in the midst of the angst, stroking the TARDIS's surface carefully, cautiously, almost lovingly. "I don't think now's an appropriate time for jokes, Jackie," he muttered, not once making eye contact with the mother of his companion.
Having previously been incredibly passive with regard to the whole situation, the Doctor received an alarming scowl from Jackie for his trouble. "Shut it, you!" she bellowed, almost as she had done upon that fateful day on which the Doctor had made a grave error in believing that he had returned Rose to the Powell Estate twelve hours after having departed from it in her company; in fact, it had been twelve whole months, which had understandably been the longest twelve of Jackie's life. Mickey's too, having been cruelly victimised, scrutinized and targeted as a murder suspect.
"At least I know how to put water in a kettle…" the Doctor started, with a gentle and yet intense smirk in Jackie's direction.
Jackie's expression dropped significantly in confusion as Rose eased away from her slightly, but maintained the physical contact between the two still. "What are you babbling about?" she demanded, this time exactly as she had done when he had experienced the not so great pleasure of encountering her in 1987.
The Doctor grinned devilishly. "You put the water straight down the spout; that is very bad for your kettle, you know?" he muttered scornfully.
"How the hell do you know?" she bellowed. "You've only just materialised from Mars!" Not for the first time, Jackie Tyler's countenance was expressive of shock; she was appalled, apoplectic.
Rose allowed a slight giggle to escape her, now drawing back from Jackie completely, and taking a single backward step toward the Doctor. "Because I'm a genius," he boasted, debating for a moment poking his tongue out like a complimentary chocolate in a restaurant, only for the sole purpose of pouring added salt into the wound. He had quickly decided against this though; that'd be likely to have earned him yet another incredibly painful slap. "You on the other hand, simply cannot be," he continued, not deprived of attention. "For we have not just arrived from Mars," he told her, holding out a hand for Rose to grasp.
"Whatever," Jackie retorted promptly. "You were about to tell me why you were so upset, Rose," she proceeded to remind her daughter, her words accompanied by a gentle nudge in the elbow, after she shuffled carefully to the spot in which her daughter stood beside the time lord. "I died; how did I die exactly?"
Rose turned her attention momentarily to the Doctor, and quickly glanced up at him. "You were upgraded," she began explaining to her mother, but failed to complete her planned statement.
"Upgraded?" Jackie hissed, startled. "You mean like Windows Millennium Edition to Windows XP? Are you calling me a computer?!" she questioned loudly; the volume of her words bordering on fit to wake the dead. Her questions came in a seemingly never ending stream, another hot on the tail of the preceding one.
The Doctor carefully chose his moment to interject. "To a Cyberman," he said knowledgeably.
"A Cyberman? How can I be upgraded to a Cyberman? I'm a woman!" Jackie's incredibly high volume of words echoed from wall to wall.
The Doctor gave Rose a mischievous grin. "I wouldn't have noticed," he stated flatly, causing both time travellers to descend instantly into uncontrollable fits of laughter. "Bye, Jackie," he muttered, giving a polite tone his most competent attempt to date in his extremely long nine hundred years. Rose followed into the TARDIS in his wake, lightly pulled along by his stable yet gentle grasp upon her hand.
"OI!" "Great, I've had a sex change now," Jackie voiced furiously, only to herself.