Just a one-shot I had lying around that I've finished. I really need to start working on endings more, because this has a good opening and then descends into nothing much at all. Never mind.
Crouched in front of the plaque he felt the rain trickle down his back. He wasn't sure how long it had been raining. He'd been sat there so long he'd lost all sense of time. At least the weather gave him an excuse for the dampness of his cheeks as his fingers traced the engraving on the wall.
It had taken little time for the plaque to arrive. It was like the government felt guilty for what they had unleashed upon the world. Torchwood was, after all, funded by them. And part of him felt that they should feel guilty; they'd opened the doors and just let them all walk through as they meddled with things way beyond what they could understand. But he knew deep down that if Torchwood hadn't have opened up and let them in, then they would have found another way through. It was all just a matter of time.
But the plaque was their way of apologising. It was large, six feet tall and covering two sides of the tower. At the top of each column of names was an engraving of a rose with the words "We'll remember always".
Damn right you will, he thought, the familiar anger coming again. This wasn't the first time he'd been here, and he knew it wouldn't be the last, but still the same old emotions tore him apart. Anger, betrayal, grief, guilt.
Her name was hidden away. Three from the bottom five columns across on the second side of the tower, there it was. Rose Marion Tyler. That was it, no dates, nothing about who she was. Just a name scratched into cold marble on a damp London building. Then onto the next person, too many people. Too many people had died that day. But he only really cared about her.
People looked at him, this strange man almost sitting on the ground, dressed in a pinstripe suit without even a waterproof jacket. His brown hair was plastered to his head and his beige jacket was trailing in the muddy puddles at his feet. But no one questioned it. They didn't question much these days; life on this planet had changed forever that day and it could never go back again. So many people had lost a loved one; practically everyone knew someone who had gone missing that day and never returned. So he wasn't strange anymore; he was just another grief-stricken man.
He let out a long sigh and rubbed his hands over his eyes before standing up. He turned round and promptly bumped straight into someone.
"Sorry," the other man said, but he barely even looked at the Doctor. But the Doctor did a double take. That accent. That build.
"Jack?" he said, his voice low and broken.
Jack turned back to him, frowning slightly. "Who's asking?" Then he looked in the Doctor's eyes. And he knew. "I heard about this… I… I wondered…"
The Doctor dropped his eyes to the pavement. "She's gone."
Jack turned round and scanned the wall, not daring to believe what he was saying until he saw it for himself. He ran his hand down the plaque until he found her name. And then he gave what would have been a howl of despair if he could have got the sound past the lump in his throat. He stood up again and faced the Doctor, clenching his fists. The Doctor remembered how quick Jack's temper always was and instinctively stepped away from the ex-Time Agent.
"What happened?" Jack demanded. He wasn't really angry, just upset and confused, and this was the only way he knew how to deal with it. Behind that tough guy exterior, the Doctor knew there were sobs just waiting to break out.
And so he explained it to him, in as few words as possible. How she wasn't really dead, but that she might as well be. How she'd gone down fighting. How she'd saved the universe again, but that no one would ever know. How she wasn't coming back.
Jack listened in silence, his usually cheerful face darkened and drawn. After the Doctor had finished explaining they stood in silence for a long time, looking at the plaque but not seeing anything.
"Is she on her own?" Jack asked eventually.
"No." The Doctor shook his head. "She's got her mum. And Mickey."
Jack snorted. "Fat lot of good he'll do."
The Doctor smiled weakly. "He wasn't so bad, not in the end. She could do worse."
"She could do a lot better." Jack looked across at him. "I… I never got a chance to thank her for what she did."
"She didn't know."
"What?"
"I never told her."
Jack stared at him. "Why?"
The Doctor wasn't sure why. She deserved congratulating for her bravery, her ingenuity. Her love. She'd come back for him the only way she knew how, and he'd never even said thank you to her. He'd never even acknowledged what had happened. At first he wasn't even sure if she knew, then gradually he saw realisation dawning. She knew. But they never spoke about it. There was never a chance to mention Jack.
But even if there had been, he wouldn't have. He knew that. He was too selfish, when it came down to it. If he'd have told her about Jack, she'd have wanted to go back and get him, bring him back on board, be the three musketeers again. He didn't want that. He only wanted her, and it was agony having to explain this to the man in front of him now. He'd let them both down.
"I didn't want to share her," he said eventually, his voice heavy with guilt. He braced himself for what he was sure would come, the thump between the eyes. But it didn't. Jack just looked up at the tower.
At length, the other man scuffed the ground with his shoes. He let out a long sigh. "What are you going to do?" he asked.
The Doctor shrugged. "Same old life. With the TARDIS."
"On your own?"
The Doctor looked sideways at Jack, uneasy to answer. He'd told Rose categorically that he'd travel on alone, but since then he'd seen his life stretched out ahead of him, with no one by his side. It wasn't that easy.
Jack thrust his hands into his pockets. "Don't go it alone," he said finally. "Find someone. She'd want you to."
"You think?"
"She loves you."
"I know, she told me."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "You needed her to tell you?" There was a mocking tone in his voice.
The Doctor smiled sadly and shook his head. He'd known. He'd known from the second her hand slipped into his. It had been inevitable. Sometimes when he thought about it, he felt a bit bad about that. He'd known she'd fall for him and still he took her along.
Jack produced a hip flask and drank deeply from it. He offered it to the Doctor.
The Doctor looked at it dubiously. "What is it?"
"Just drink it." Jack rolled his eyes.
"What are we drinking to?" Like he had to ask.
Jack took another long swig. "To Rose Tyler."
The Doctor held the flask aloft before taking a drink. "Rose Tyler."