Title: Here, at the end of the world, we learn how to dance
Author: Kate's Master, aka Emma
Summery: A few of the moments, thoughts and feelings that Journey's End didn't quite get round to.

Disclaimer: I sent them a letter, explaining to the BBC just how much owning Doctor Who would mean to me. They wouldn't even put it in the Children in Need auction. So no, still not mine.

Authors Notes: Back again! UK guys, did you SEE Children in Need last night? The clip?! Roseita!?! I'm so very looking forward to Christmas.

My thanks to x-EmilyTennant-x for the review. Have a brownie!

Anyway, next up: Jack and Rose. This was one of the reunions I had been most looking forward to seeing, and I think it's fair to say it was horribley underplayed. And that's where I come in…


At any other time, Captain Jack Harkness would have dropped some comment about holding two beautiful women in his arms. But he doesn't, and that proves, if only to himself, just how serious this situation is. A part of him is morbidly fascinated – he's heard about regeneration, but, of course, never seen it – but a far bigger part of him wants to scream and rage. At the Daleks, at this whole damn mess, at the Doctor, at his absolute shit sense of timing.

It is only when he sees her hugging the Doctor a few moments later that his brain finally registers exactly who it was he had had his arm around. They (finally) break apart, and she turns her attention to him, a patented Rose Tyler beam firmly in place.

"Jack."

"Hello Rose."

"I…I thought you were dead."

It's a strange greeting, and he can't quite resist the sardonic reply that earns him a wry grin from the Doctor.

"Nah. Very hard to kill, me."

A frown plays across her face – she's not missed the irony in his tone, and he's going to have to explain this later - but for now he moves forward, pulling her into a bone-crushing hug that she gladly reciprocates. He tilts her head and kisses her, just like he did when they said goodbye, so very long ago. Except this time, to his surprise, she responds, and rewards him with a cheeky grin as he pulls away, the tip of her tongue just poking out between her teeth.

The Doctor is watching impassively, and Jack begins to realise just how much Rose Tyler has changed. It's not just the haircut and the clothes – she's older, maturer, tougher, and it's not just the mere passing of years that have wrought these changes, he knows. The old Rose would never have kissed him in front of the Doctor. The old Rose didn't know how to use a gun, never mind roam the streets of London with one.

But as she hugs him again, pulling the Doctor in too, so it's the three of them mushed up together, just like old times, back in the Tardis after a particularly narrow scrape, he realises he doesn't care. She's here and now and alive, and by god he's missed her.

Here in his arms, the two people who once meant more to him than anything else in the universe are alive and well, and, if he kids himself, just for a moment, safe. And that is enough.


And there we go. Thanks for reading - if you've a mo, click on the new green (?!!??!) button and leave me a few words. Next up: Of Martha and Realisation