Jake was always asking for stories about the Doctor.
It became a tradition with them, every Saturday night, to refrain from going to the pub and instead set themselves up in opposing recliners with a few bottles of wine, talking about an impossibly wide range of topics. One thing you could say about Rose Tyler: she told a damn good story. She painted pictures of Earth five million years hence, of a planet called Barcelona where dogs had no noses, of a telepathic alien race called the Ood whose only purpose in life was to serve. Her words would hang in the air after they left her mouth, and sometimes, when she stopped speaking to stare back at one of her memories, he wouldn't notice for several minutes because he was so caught up in the borrowed vision.
Sometimes he'd tell stories too – ones that were boring and mundane in comparison, but she asked for them. He'd talk about the Preachers a lot, because that was what she was most interested in: how they formed; their tracing and tracking of Cybus Industries; the lengths they'd gone to, once they realized the danger, to cut themselves off from the rest of society. "If things had gone any differently, I'd say we should all have been locked up in the nuthouse," was a phrase he was becoming quite fond of.
They spent far too much time talking. It wasn't unusual, actually, to hear the alarms shrilling from their bedrooms in the middle of a tale, the tinny voices shrieking that it was time to get ready for work. Jake would grimace and heave himself upright, offer Rose a sweeping bow (if he wasn't too drunk) and a hand to help her back to her feet. She'd stand, digging an elbow into his ribs as she made some comment about putting a time limit on their conversation, then go off to shower while he tried to measure out a preemptive dose of painkillers directly proportional to the amount of alcohol circulating through his veins.
He never took enough.
Pete would look at them in that quietly calculating way of his when they walked in, taking note of the bags under their eyes and the weariness translated through their steps. He never seemed to be able to make up his mind about whether he found Jake endearing or aggravating.
"It's because he thinks we're dating," Rose points out one evening while flipping through a magazine with only passing interest, barely registering the contents of the pages. "You don't exactly scream 'gay', and he's not the most observant man out there. Maybe you should snog Mick in front of him tomorrow or something, just to get the point across."
Jake raises his eyebrows without turning away from the pasta sauce bubbling on the stove. "Somehow I don't think Mickey'd appreciate being outed as much as I would." From the corner of his eye, he sees the tip of Rose's tongue poke from between her teeth. "Don't give me that look. He'd die of shame."
"No he wouldn't. Nothing to be ashamed of." Rose's magazine flickes up, hiding her face. "You do it enough when he comes over here and he's fine then."
"You're not his boss. Did we say we were making a salad?"
"I'll get it." Slipping down from her stool at the counter, she steps around him to rummage in the fridge for lettuce and dressing. "And I am Mickey's boss – yours too. I'm head of the dimension cannon project. So… nice try there."
After scanning the countertop for a moment, Jake reaches over to snag the colander from in front of her and sets it in the sink. He spins it in a circle with one finger as he speaks. "Fine, but you're still his good-friend, ex-girlfriend, whatever. Pete's in charge of all of Torchwood. He's a little more intimidating, and he's… we're not like that. Get the big bowl – in the top cupboard."
"Wot is the absolute worst that Pete can do to you? He's hardly going to give ya the boot for getting' rid of his fears."
"No, it'll be 'improper workplace conduct'. Just drop it; he's not even that bad… but why doesn't he just ask Jackie, if he's so worried? She knows." Jake's brow wrinkles. "I think she does anyway."
"He's a man. You men are bloody awful about asking after things like that, and you don't make it obvious, especially since you don't, you know… flaunt it. Learn to cook something more sophisticated than pasta; maybe he'll figure it out. Or…I dunno, do something gay."
He doesn't even bother trying to disguise his derisive snort. "Yes; I think I'll turn up in a dress tomorrow, just so he won't think I'm sleeping with his… you're not even his daughter! Bollocks. He can worry until his ears fall off, just so long as he doesn't outright accuse me of anything." Shifting the pot off the stove, over the colander, he tips it at an angle, letting the pasta slide out and producing a cloud of steam that quickly engulfs his head. "Pass that bowl over – thanks. See you in front of the tele in a minute."
…
She will never tell Jake just how much it amuses her to watch him and Mickey together. True enough, in public, they have to be one of the least physically-affectionate couples Rose has ever seen – a situation that she has yet to puzzle out the logic of. But whenever Mickey comes over to watch movies – Rose likes either of the armchairs; Mickey and Jake sprawl across the couch – they always end up with one of them falling asleep against the other, using him as a pillow, and nine out of ten times they'll be holding hands. And whenever Rose threatens to take a picture of them and frame it, the camera will have conveniently disappeared, resurfacing only after Mickey is safely out the door.
It was almost painful to watch them sometimes.
Once, for no particular, while reading over mechanical reports, she looked up at the doorway to the kitchen. Inside were Jake and Mickey, talking about something in hushed voices. Rose had been just about to return to her work when Jake reached out and pulled Mickey to him, dropping his head onto the other man's shoulder and closing his eyes. She was too far away to accurately tell whether the hands locked around Mickey's torso were trembling.
Whatever was wrong, it hadn't been evident when they emerged a few minutes later. Jake was even cheerful enough to snatch away her reports, playfully beating her over the head until she agreed to come to the pub with them.
Moments like then always produced nostalgia for the Doctor: quietly sorrowful one minute, then cheerful and bouncing the next, all pain barricaded away in his head. And that was another thing Rose would never admit – Jake didn't need to know how Doctor-like he acted sometimes. It would be better for his sanity, and Rose might have been imagining it all anyways.
She was sure she was making at least half of it up, actually.
And he'd been getting better – if less Doctor-ish could be counted as 'better' – since he'd started dating Mickey.
And the Doctor didn't have anyone like Mickey to turn to.
The Doctor was alone.
Oh, those had better not be tears stabbing needles into her eyes.
"Don't bother fighting 'em; I knew you'd cry before we were halfway through. This bit always gets you." Mickey jerks his chin at the screen – at the woman being pulled away from the fence surrounding the refugee camp, and the man on the other side, screaming for his son. "No shame in it."
Biting her lip, Rose swipes at her eyes and plays along. "Yeah, well, what can I say? Soft heart. Is he out already?"
Mickey's gaze flickers downwards; Jake is half-lying on him, head reclined back against his shoulder, one of Mickey's arms holding him in place. True to form, the fingers on the end of that arm are entangled with Jake's. "Doubt it. Give him a bit. He's just faking for now."
Eyes still closed, Jake slides his free hand up to Mickey's jaw, catching it and tugging his chin down. His lids snap open then, mouth twitching into a smile. "And here I was hoping you two would have an intimate conversation I could eavesdrop on and blackmail you for later."
There's a smile on Mickey's face when he says "Sorry we disappointed you."
Rose turns away once Jake presses his lips to Mickey's. It's not the jealousy of what they have, or the daydreaming – so she tells herself – it's the roommate-kissing-your-ex-boyfriend factor. It's not the unfair way that they can be happy and know (roughly) where the other is at all times and whether they're safe. It's just the roommate-and-ex-boyfriend factor – that's all. She plants her chin on a jumper-covered fist and stares resolutely at the screen, not seeing a single atom of it.
"Right." Jake's voice is a good deal softer when he nudges Mickey back. "Now you watch your tele, and don't wake me up again."
"You were never asleep in the first place."
"Irrelevant. Shut it." Letting himself slump against Mickey's chest once more, Jake flexes the hand that's being held, then tightens his grip. Within seconds, his eyes are closed again, but as his breathing slows and the muscles of his face relax, it's apparent that he won't be opening them anytime soon.
Rose thinks of a shadowy shop basement, a pack of animated mannequins, a hand suddenly clasped around hers, and an exclamation of "Run!" She wonders if the Doctor has found someone else to hold his hand yet.
…
"I'm starting to think bringing her into Torchwood might not have been the best idea."
"What're you, mad? It makes her happy, and she's useful there. You said so yourself. Why not have her?"
"It's just…" Pete's voice wavers and drops almost out of hearing range. "She's getting a touch… obsessed."
Rose wraps her foot around one of the chair legs and runs a hand through her hair while she strains her ears to listen. The kitchen is empty; Pete and Jackie are talking in the bedroom, and baby Tony is with them. Mickey got lassoed into going to a dinner with his gran and her friends and Jake's catching up on paperwork back at the flat. And Rose no longer remembers why she came here in the first place.
There's a strong urge to leave, but curiosity holds her down. It's not often that she gets to eavesdrop on a conversation where she is the topic of discussion.
Pete continues: "…she's pulling incredibly long hours and taking home stacks of paper almost every night. It can't be healthy, Jacks. I know Rose isn't my daughter, and I know she looks happy, but I'm thinking of asking her to go on leave for a fortnight – maybe more. This –"
"Two years she's been here, and you barely know her at all." It sounds like Jackie can't decide whether to be amused or irritated. "Did you even hear her back in Torchwood? Our Torchwood, not yours," she says, and that note of difference strikes a chord. Jackie's, Rose's, Mickey's, the Doctor's – ours. "He's a great bloody stupid alien, and he can go and save half the universe without batting an eye, but he needs someone like her. It's not just her bein' infatuated with the travel and the time and all that – she loves him, but he needs her."
"Jacks… he's admitted that travel between dimensions is impossi-"
"How'd they get through the first time, then? How'd you all come back? And what's all the noise with the dimension cannon, then? Impossible, my arse. You're not even her father!"
The words clearly sting; there is silence for almost a minute. In the kitchen, the refrigerator hums to life and the air conditioning huffs, as if annoyed by these humans and their petty squabbles. Eventually Pete finds his voice again. "I'm just worried about her. It would be so easy for her to get hurt, or trapped somewhere once they actually get the thing built. What will you say if I come back one night and tell you we launched your daughter into the Void? You're so good at remembering what people said – remember what the Doctor told us about the Void? No light, no dark, no air, no dirt. No amount of anything. Hell. What if she gets trapped there?"
Jackie sniffs, and Rose can imagine her spine straightening and shoulders stiffening before she answers. "She won't."
"She might."
"She won't."
"How do you know that?"
"She's my daughter, that's how. Now enough of this – the dog needs walking."
Rose untangles her legs from the chair and jumps up as the bedroom door clicks open. Slipping from the house as quickly and quietly as possible, she is at a dead run halfway down the street by the time Jackie has entered the kitchen. At the corner she stops, deliberates for a moment, then keeps running. London in the summertime gets in the way of the urge to sprint until her legs give out and bile rises in her throat; as soon as she gets out of the residential neighborhood there are people everywhere, standing, talking, shopping, slowing her down. Forced to a walk, Rose looks around and groans in frustration. Everywhere she looks, there are swarms of people. She won't be running anywhere else tonight.
The taxi drops her off in front of the flat just before ten.
She waits until its taillights vanish into the darkness, then laps the block three times to satisfy herself before charging up three floors, taking all six flights of stairs at top speed. By the time she jams her key into the lock and shoves the door open, her knees are trembling.
There is utter silence. Jake is sitting in one of the armchairs, a sheaf of papers on the table beside him. He stares at the heaving, sweating, shivering figure in the doorway and does not speak.
But he stands and holds out a hand, and that's enough.
Rose doesn't bother with formalities – she grabs twin handfuls of Jake's shirt and pulls herself against his chest. And she does not cry. He wraps his arms around her, brushes a hand over her hair repeatedly, says nothing. His heart taps out a fast-paced number against her ear. Her mouth pulls itself into a bitter smile.
The only salt water on Rose Tyler's face is from her sweat glands.
…
Jackie pours herself another glass of wine and looks hard at Rose.
They're sitting on the front balcony, where the sound of a bell tolling nine o'clock just barely reaches their ears. In the near distance, the lights of London throw the night back into the hands of the stars. It's just them tonight; Pete's been called out to 10 Downing Street, and seeing how it was Harriet Jones herself who signed the invitation, he'd hardly had much hope of declining.
Rose takes a cautious sip from her own glass (it's Sauvignon Blanc) before hastily setting it back down. "Still not much for white wine," she says, and Jackie chuckles.
"I'd rather have a shot of Scotch, myself, but it's not good to be getting smashed on a weeknight. Sets a bad example for the baby." She brushes Toby's cheek with a gentle hand while he burbles and grabs at her fingers. Clutching one of the digits, he appears startled for a moment before a delighted, toothless grin splits his face and begins to coo in that way that babies are wont to. Jackie can't help but smile back.
Off to the side, Rose watches them with only the slightest upward curve to her lips. Even that trace of happiness dematerializes when she speaks. "Pete's given me a month of leave. Starting tomorrow."
Jackie's cheerfulness curdles into a scowl and complaint: "Dammit, I told him…" Abruptly cutting herself off, she shoots a wary glance at Rose. Her daughter's expression all but shouts that, yes, that particular conversation had been overheard. Jackie swallows. "What did you say to him?"
"That I'd see him tomorrow morning." Rose picks up her wine glass, sniffs it warily, replaces it on the balcony railing. "I said I'd see him tomorrow morning," she repeats without emotion.
Because Jackie doesn't have any words anymore, she simply reaches over to give Rose's shoulder a gentle squeeze. She hasn't felt so distant from her daughter since they first arrived here, and they're sitting less than a meter apart. And when she does speak, the words are pitiful; meaningless. "He doesn't want you to hurt yourself." But then she recoils from those syllables with their lack of comprehension. "Pete doesn't understand… He's only doing what he thinks is right. And if I didn't know the Doctor…" Cupping a hand over Tony's skull, Jackie's thumb strokes the fair hair that's growing there. "I dare say I might agree with him."
…
The bed is empty when he awakens. The empty space next to him – where Jake was – feels like a solid presence in the darkness. Sitting up, Mickey squints into the surrounding blackness and tries to force his eyes to adjust faster. Eventually, once his pupils start cooperating, he can make out the faded, blurred form peering out around the blinds at the street below.
"Jake?" His voice, startlingly loud against the silence, makes Jake jump, head snapping around and shoulders rolling back as his hands come up.
He recovers smoothly enough, once he realizes the lack of danger, and lets the blind fall back into place as he turns away. "I didn't mean to wake you up."
"No, I… what's out there?"
"Rose is back," Jake says. "Four hours after leaving Jackie's." He looks at the bedroom door speculatively, then shakes his head and steps back over to the bed. "It's late. We can figure out what's wrong in the morning." His weight sinks down onto the mattress, hands tugging the duvet back away from Mickey as he slips under it.
Mickey waits for him to settle down before speaking. "Do you think…?"
"This has something to do with you becoming head of the dimension cannon project? 'Course it does. Probably transferred her to another department or something. Maybe sent her off overseas for a bit." Jake yawns to end the sentence.
"We're going to go back in there and get Rose her job back tomorrow, aren't we?"
"I expect she'll guilt or blackmail or coerce us into something of the sort. Or tell Pete that we can't work without her. Hell, I dunno. Come here."
Shifting so he's nose-to-nose with Jake, close enough to make out the vague contours of his face, Mickey can't bring himself to shut his eyes again. "Do you think it's a good idea? Pete trying to send her away?"
The front door opens and closes again: Rose. Her footsteps ramble past the door to Jake's room, off to parts unknown.
"I don't know." Jake's voice is soft with thought and exhaustion. "I can't make up my mind right now – I'm just going to ignore this until the morning. It's too… I don't know. It's all a big mess with dimensions and people and… I just don't know." Lapsing into silence, he lets his head drop onto Mickey's shoulder. When his chest moves, there's an exaggerated pause between breaths; making himself retain a semblance of calm. He's thinking about it, exhaustion and contradictory claims aside.
The words tip a balance in Mickey's brain. He curls one arm around Jake before speaking. "Would you take Ricky back? If you could?"
A shiver runs through Jake. "It's been five years," he says. "So much has happened… I get tired of being in charge all the time." It's an excuse, really; a coward's way of answering that question. But Mickey doesn't really want to know the answer anyway. The shade of Ricky Smith still hovers in the back of his mind and he catches himself thinking of shoeboxes filled with parking tickets.
A door slams somewhere else in the flat as Jake resettles against him, but neither of them speaks.
"I get tired of being in charge all the time" is Jake standing down and saying he's fallible and human in the only way his pride will allow, but the sheer fact that he does cuts to the bone. It means too much to talk about.
"Everybody wants to help and heal Rose," Mickey says instead. "But I don't think any of us actually knows how." He lets the irony creep into his tone. "Guess that's what we need the Doctor for."
…
Jake has to commend Rose for how utterly unsurprised she is to see him waiting for her when she walks into the kitchen shortly after sunrise. He watches her pour water from the kettle into a mug and rummage through the tea bags without saying a word, but as soon as she picks one out to steep he can't resist the urge to open his mouth.
And she beats him to it: "You know what I'm going to ask, and I can guess at what you're going to say." A wary, speculative eye is cast in his direction before Rose comes to sit across from him. "I need to do this."
Blowing out a breath, Jake scrubs a hand through his hair. "Give me a logical reasoning. I'll give you an answer."
Her hands go up and the skin around her eyes tightens like she can't believe what just came out of his mouth. "Jake."
"Rose," he says back. "You could kill yourself doing this. And not just jumpin' from world to world – though hell knows that's dangerous enough – but before we even get the cannon up and running. I mean… you come back here with stacks of paper centimeters thick, and pour over them like the Holy Bible…"
She's slipping away – he can see it – tuning him out, switching to autopilot, because she's heard this too many times from others.
Jake slams his hand down on the table hard enough for the sound to echo back off the ceiling. "You sleep and you eat and you hold conversations like a normal human being. But there's always the Doctor in your head, all the time, starin' at you, making you wonder and worry about him. All the time. And nevermind that you've just pulled a ten-hour work shift, you'll sift through fifty pages of reports in one night to find some little clue that'll get you back to him the tiniest bit faster. What use are you if, when you find him, your mind's so worn down and exhausted that you don't even recognize him when you pass on the street? What good does that do?"
Never before has Rose looked at him like this: it's like he's crushing her childhood fantasies in front of her eyes. "I will always know him. Always." And there is no hint of wavering in her voice. She bites her lip, eyes hardening, glaring. "And you know that getting in contact with him, if nothing else, is important to this entire universe, not just me. Maybe even to the whole multiverse."
"Why." Jake's tone is so flat that there's not even a question mark in his voice.
Leaning forward across the table, hands dragged into half-claws, Rose speaks quietly and with impossible certainty: "I traveled with him for more than two years. In that time, I saw him save humanity, or vital parts of it, dozens of times. He saved the Queen of England from becoming a werewolf, and Madame de Pompadour from having her brain used to power an alien spaceship. He stopped an epidemic of physical injuries during the Blitz that could have spread across the whole planet-"
"That's your world, Rose, not ours. He's never been here."
The revelation gives her less than a second's pause. Then: "Jake" and her tone sends knives dragging down his spine. "The stars are going out."
He lets his mouth twist into a bitter smile. "So they are. But we've blundered along without the Doctor's help for quite a while, as I said." He doesn't say that this time feels different – more ominous than anything he's seen in five years at Torchwood. And there are the rumors that float on the wind. But that's not the point right now; the point is that Rose might kill herself from trying so damn hard to get back. "What will an hour's or a day's difference make?"
Rose glowers at him. "What if, the first time we came through, we'd been a week later, and Lumic had already set everything into motion, and Cybermen had been halfway through taking over the world?"
Folding his arms over his chest, Jake meets her stare for stare. "What if you'd been a day earlier, and your ship had charged up, and you'd been off again before anything ever started? You always seem to come through at exactly the right time."
They sit, eyes locked, at an impasse.
Then something flickers behind Rose's gaze and she is grinning in a way that says she has the answer and is going to trample all over him. "We wouldn't leave early. Mickey would've still gone after his gran, and you'd still have found him, and we'd have had an extra day to get ready for the invasion, if we didn't stop it before it ever began." Her tongue pokes from the corner of her mouth. "Any other questions?"
Jake looks at her for a long moment. "I'll make you a deal," he says quietly, waiting.
The grin vanishes. Still, Rose gives a cautious nod.
"Me n' Mickey come with you to argue your case with Pete. You get your job back. You stop bringing home two dozen reports a night and find some other way to occupy your time."
Silence. A furrowed brow. "Ten."
"Three."
"Half a dozen."
"Five."
Another pause. "Fine. Deal."
He doesn't think his facial muscles will be able to contort themselves into a proper smile; his wiring is too fried after their lovely early-morning debate, and there is now the not-so-insignificant task of getting Pete Tyler to agree with them to deal with. Still, he manages a complimentary little nod before they both turn to look at Mickey, who is standing in the doorway and may or may not have been eavesdropping the entire time.
Clearing his throat as he looks between the two people at the table, Mickey lets his eyebrows arch. "So what's the plan?"
"Oh, you know, we're going to do the impossible today – get Rose her job back – so we can keep building a machine to do something else that's impossible – hop between universe – in the hope that it will allow us to find one life form out of trillions – the Doctor – the odds of which are so low that it is, essentially, impossible." The words set Rose to laughing, and Jake feels his mouth creakily bend back into the beginnings of a smile even as he says them.
Dear, wonderful Mickey, who should be pointing out the utter pointlessness of these various impossible acts, offers no more criticism than a shrug of the shoulders. "Alright then," he says. "I'll just follow your lead."
…
Mickey's positive attitude is considerably less prevalent several hours later, when they're getting ready to head off. It is not appreciated.
"This isn't going to work."
"Well of course it won't if you keep saying it won't," is Jake's response. "Hush up and stop being so pessimistic."
"But-"
"Mickey." Rose's head snaps around when she speaks, short and sharp, shooting him a direct look that's not quite a glare. "Would you stop? I'm just asking… you don't have to come." Behind her, she can feel Jake straighten up, and she knows the look on his face probably says something very different.
Without Mickey, their argument loses a vital leg, so it's a relief when his expression clears and he forces a grin. "Nah, I'm coming. Just being a pessimist, you know."
"Right, well… try not to be one in front of Pete." Shifting her backpack so it rests more comfortably across her shoulders, Rose turns to give Jake a final, appraising look, nods, and brushes past him into the hallway. She pauses just outside, long enough for the two men to share a private glance, then moves onwards, jaw set, hands clenched into fists, almost disregarding their presences on her flanks.
They are standing outside Torchwood Tower after what feels like an abnormally short commute, but then again, apprehension does that sometimes. Rose will be nervous about something, and before she knows it, the minute hand is spinning around like a hamster's wheel and she's staring down the barrel of the gun, with the time for deliberations and planning having long since passed.
She clears her throat. One last thing to say before they face the firing squad. "Thanks for coming." A pause. "Both of you."
Mickey half-laughs and sets a hand on her shoulder. "Just doing our job, boss."
Though Jake says nothing, he does offer up a reassuring smile when Rose glances at him, before nodding at the twin glass doors, inviting her to go first. She manages one of her trademarked grins back at him, slaps his chest lightly, and, wrapping a determinedly-steady hand around the handle of the nearest door, pulls it open to step across the threshold.
Pete, standing in the lobby with arms folded across his chest, doesn't look remotely surprised to see her.