A/N: Whisper: I hate filler chapters … I do … I could probably have done away with this, but I couldn't get right off to the good stuff straight away. Ducks in a row and all that crap. Now I can, though… End whisper.

I big old huge smoochie thanks for the reviews to Chapter one! I love you all for taking the time to let me know what you think …. I hope beyond all hope that you will continue to enjoy the tale I have to tell …

~~oooOOOooo~~

Three months, twenty four days, four hours, fifteen minutes and thirty three seconds … thirty four … thirty five…since the TARDIS dematerialized and took the Doctor away from her forever.

If she didn't know any better, Rose might have suggested that she had managed to take a bit of time sense from her time travelling with the Doctor. Of course, she did know better and knew that it was just the absolute planet shattering pain of his loss that allowed her to hold so tightly to the months, days, hours, minutes and seconds since she'd walked off the ship and into her old life of work, eating chips, sleeping, work.

After so much time onboard the TARDIS, experiencing everything that the universe had to offer, having to return to the mundane existence of a regular Human girl was hard and incredibly painful. Especially painful considering after all she had seen and experienced that she, once again, ended up a lowly young store assistant working the floor of a large department store.

She was better than this. She knew she was. He had taught her that. The Doctor had told her time and time again that she was special, brilliant, fantastic, and the Best. Oh. If only he worked HR for half of the employers whose reception areas she had sat in waiting for an interview that, ultimately, went awry. He would probably have made her the CEO of the company, and she wouldn't have to work the shop floor to make ends meet.

But. She made her decision to leave. She sucked it up, Buttercup, and moved on with her life, knowing that she would never hear the haunting whine and wheeze of that Beautiful TARDIS ever again. Knowing that the Doctor would never come back, that her hand would never again be held inside his, that she would never hear him tell her how wonderful she was – even when she was being a selfish and miserable git.

By God. She missed him.

Her melancholy mood wasn't helped by the fact she had been tasked with standing at a podium table folding the latest science-fiction-style T-Shirts that were black and carried the colours of the universe. She snorted at how the airbrushed imagery did absolutely no justice to the true beauty of the swirls and colours of the universe beyond Earth.

"Rubbish," she muttered under her breath. She harshly folded the garment and slapped it on top of the pile she'd already created with fifteen other identical shirts.

"'Scuse me, Miss. Do you work here?"

Rose's eyes rolled to the ceiling at the question. She allowed her mind to answer "Why no, I don't actually work here, I just saw a pile of clothing that I felt needed folding so I went about and did it," but vocalized a rather different answer.

"Yes, I do. Is there something I can assist you with today?"

"Well," the customer drawled along an American brogue. "I'm not entirely sure that I've wandered into the right department for this, but I'm currently on the search for a petite, yet deliciously curvy blond time travelling, alien loving, hypervodka drinking English girl to sate my need for one heck of a racy hug and squeal combination."

It took only a half of a nanosecond for Rose to identify the owner of the American accent. While her initial reaction was to give him the squeal and hug he had requested, she bit onto her excitement and merely gave a shrug of her shoulder.

"Unfortunately we have nothing of that nature in this store," she spoke over her shoulder. "But might I suggest that you go find yourself a…" She let up a squeak and then a sharp giggle to feel a strong set of arms circle her arms and waist from behind. She was lifted from the floor with her legs kicking playfully for escape. "Jack! Put me down!"

"Rosie," he breathed huskily in greeting against her ear. "How is the most beautiful of all time travelling beauties doing?"

She spun inside his arms as he let her feet touch the ground and squealed with delight as she bounced and threw her arms up around his neck. "Oh. God. I've missed you!"

He purred against her ear. "Mmmm," he hummed as he clutched her a little tighter against him. "Say Oh God again, will you?"

Rose laughed a laugh she hadn't been able to in months. "Oh God, Jack," she moaned in his ear.

He thundered out a laugh and then quickly grew conspiratorial. He looked over her shoulder. "We should play it cool, Rosie. If the Doc caught on, we'd both be in trouble." He looked around. "Where is that fantastic Leather wearing Gallifreyan stud?"

Rose let her hands slide down his shoulders to his chest and shook her head lightly. "He doesn't wear leather anymore," she offered quietly. "Pinstripes and Chucks are his thing now."

"Ahhh," he breathed in understanding. "The Doc went through a regeneration, right?" At her nod, he gave her a wink. "So. Tell me a racy regeneration tale. Tell me that you finally pulled that rod out of his ass and made him shove his rod…" He yelped as she slapped him against the shoulder. "Hey. That's assault you know."

"Justifiable," she countered somewhat arrogantly. "It's in the new books of the crown law that assault against one Jack Harkness is considered purely justified."

He merely laughed a series of open mouthed exhales at her. Then he dropped a kiss to her temple. "So where is our Time Lord, then? Waiting for you to knock off so he can take you up up and away in his magical blue box?"

Her body slumped against him and she shook her head. "We don't travel together anymore," she admitted softly. "I left the TARDIS Three months, twenty four days, four hours, thirty three minutes and twelve seconds ago."

"That's awfully precise," Jack said with an unsure and curious tone of voice.

She shrugged. "Clock on the wall," she offered. "Pretty easy to work it from there."

"I see," he huffed lightly. He then cupped a hand on her cheek and lifted her face up to look at him. "Mutual parting; or did one of you leave the other?"

She licked at her lip. "I left him." She looked away and closed her eyes as she tucked her hair behind her ear. "I couldn't do it anymore, Jack."

"I know you don't mean the traveling and fighting evil aliens thing," he said with a sympathetic stroke of her hair. "What did he do?"

"Nothing."

"Which is just the point, I'm guessing,' he deduced with a purse of his lips. "And being that he is a jealous old fool, I expect that he wouldn't let you get freaky with anyone else, right?"

She let herself laugh and roll her eyes. "Of course that's the be all and end all for you, isn't it?"

"It's ended many a fine relationship, Rosie, my love." He threaded his arm across her shoulder and pulled her against him. "Now let's get you out of this dive and let me take you to another one that serves alcohol and has a pool table, and you can tell me your sob story of love lost."

"I'm working," she warned lightly with a look at her wrist watch. "But I knock off in three hours, fourty three minutes and twenty one seconds, twenty, nineteen…."

"Nonsense," he growled. "A brilliant being such as yourself being held to time like that in a no-end job like this? I won't hear of it." He flicked his fingers at a woman who he assumed was the manager. "Hey you! Yeah. Black skirt." He pointed at Rose's head. "She quits."

"Jack," she squeaked as she grabbed his hand to pull it down. "Stop it."

He gave her a wink and tugged at her hand. "Come on, Sunshine. Let's get you out of here."

"I can't."

"The hell you can't, Rosie," he growled with a laugh as he hauled her up over his shoulder and made a fast paced walk to the door. "I'm not leaving you here. You're too good for this place."

~~oooOOOooo~~

Three months, twenty four days, four hours, fifteen minutes and thirty three seconds … thirty four … thirty five…since the TARDIS dematerialized and took him away from Rose forever.

It was sometimes amazing to the Doctor just how slowly time could tick away when he wanted it to go by fast. More than once he'd heard Rose complain about how time would just drag when she wasn't having fun, or was waiting for something fun to happen. More than once, he'd remarked on how they had a time machine and therefore could bridge that dragging period of time in very short order. More than once, Rose playfully slapped him on the shoulder and chided him about waiting, patience, and how it made getting to their final destination that much more exciting.

Pttthhhhbittt

Pish posh on the waiting thing. Time Lords simply did not wait. Why should they? They commanded time, they were time. So if they bloody well wanted to blast through time in order to bridge that boring gap of time then they bloody well should.

And. Oh. How he wanted to push forward the lever on his TARDIS to blast through the next two hours so he wouldn't have to continue to deal with…

"Doctor!"

He lifted his brows in what had become the most recent incarnation of a smile for the lonely Time Lord and turned to face his newest companion as she strode into the console room.

Right. That's why he hadn't been able to throw forward the lever to blast him through the next two hours. The reason for needing to survive the next two hours resided on his ship…

"Nancy," he breathed in greeting. "You're awake."

She giggled and then moaned as she stretched her arms over her head and rolled up onto her toes in a complete body stretch. The move – he noted – was made with the specific intent for her shirt to rise up just enough that her taut mid section was on prominent display over the top of terrifically low slung and loose sleep shorts, which drooped low enough to show the lacy elastic band at their top.

The Doctor captured a brief snap-shot glance at the display, but then shrugged and pointed dismissively at her uncovered stomach. "You might want to think about covering up," he advised. "She doesn't like near naked women parading around her."

Nancy flicked a perfectly manicured brow high atop her forehead and sidled over to the console of the TARDIS to stand beside him. "Who doesn't?"

He slid his eyes toward her, and then to the Time Rotor in indication of the ship, but remained fairly silent.

"Got a girlfriend hiding in here?" she asked with a husky giggle as she walked her fingers up his pinstriped arm.

The Doctor snorted with a fair shake of his head and stepped a stride to the side. "Nope," he answered with a definite pop in his P. "Don't really go in for that sort of thing." He looked to the console monitor and slid on his glasses to analyze a new series of alerts that had flashed up. "Too busy, really, to bother myself with relationships and the such."

"I see," she muttered with a thoughtful cupping of her chin in her hand. "So is that all Time Lords in general, or just you?"

"Well," he began without really looking at her. "Being that I am the last time Lord in existence, then you could say it was all Time Lords that were afflicted by this disinterest in dating. But in general…" He looked up to consider it a moment and then shrugged. "Maybe in the Academy random hookups occurred, but as part of the graduation ceremony, you get handed a spouse and are married off in fairly short order, so take that any way you please."

Nancy was intrigued. She bounced back to perch herself on the jump seat and eyed the Doctor with insidiously flaming hazel eyes. "So," she sang. "Did you hook up?"

He ignored the implication in her tone and the obvious press for him to offer up something juicy. He didn't even look back at her as he continued to speak, instead focusing on the keyboard on the console. "A hookup in the Academy wasn't a hookup like those that you Humans are so fond of." He looked up at the monitor and squinted slightly as he looked through the scrolling Gallifreyan text. "Not even remotely close to a Human-variety hookup."

She licked at her lip and nodded. "So no getting freaky in the dorms, then?"

"Not as such, no."

"What about a hookup in the TARDIS?"

The Doctor snorted. "She's too jealous for me to partake in that kind of behavior." He gave a wink to the Time Rotor. "She'd probably kick out any females that tried to get – as you say – freaky in the TARDIS with her pilot."

"You say that like she's alive."

"She is," he answered with an actual smile toward his ship. "My TARDIS is a sentient machine."

"Which means?"

"She's a living entity." He didn't feel like explaining beyond that and simply turned to look at his companion, finally. He pressed his rump against the console as he folded his arms across his chest. "So. If I were to admit to any kind of relationship at all, it would be with her, I suppose." He let one side of his mouth twitch upward in an attempt to smile. "My wife the TARDIS."

Nancy pursed her lips and let her brows knit together. "So. If I get this right. Your ship is alive, and you are in a relation-ship with her?"

"I'm pardoning the pun, and yes. I suppose that I am." He dropped his chin to his chest. "In all of my years of travel, she has been the only one that I can truly say has never, and will likely never, break my heart or leave me."

"A-ha!" Nancy shouted victoriously.

His head shot upward. "What?"

"I knew it."

He cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes to look a narrowed field through his glasses lens at her. "What did you know?"

"The guarded and emotionless Time Lord is so ice cold because he had his heart broken."

"That," he snapped in both irritation and interruption. "Is none of your business."

She bit on her thumbnail and grinned as she gnawed. "What was her name?"

"Why don't you go and get dressed," he growled. "I don't fancy sitting around in the vortex all day doing nothing when we have a whole universe out there just waiting for us to explore."

"Tell me," Nancy pressed on with a coy and teasing glint in her eye. "Tell me who it was that broke the man and turned him into you: Mr. No Smile Grumpy Lord."

"She didn't break me," he argued softly. "She made me better."

"Yes," she breathed facetiously. "I can see that. You must've been something else when the two of you met." She slid off the jump seat and adjusted the seat of her shorts with a snap of elastic. "You're barely human."

"That's because I'm not."

"Was she?"

"Please go and get dressed," he managed meekly. "We should be on the ground in a few minutes."

"Just tell me her name," she pressed. "And I'll leave it at that."

He looked pleadingly at her. "Why does it matter?"

She put her hand affectionately on his shoulder. She allowed her thumb to gently stroke against the thick fabric of his pinstriped blazer. "All joking aside, you're a good man, Doctor. I can't explain why it's so important to me to know who broke your heart. It just is, you know."

"Her name," he began with a clearing of his throat. "Her name was Rose."

"Rose," she repeated. "I expect she was as beautiful as one, too."

He raised his eyes to hers and actually smiled an almost imperceptible smile of recollection. "I speak five billion languages," he said softly. "And in all of those languages I can't find a single adjective – or even a combination of adjectives – that could in any way describe her to you and do her justice." His smile carefully emerged from within. "And, oh, she was brilliant. So very brilliant."

"Wow," she breathed wistfully. "You really loved her, didn't you?"

He cleared his throat and frowned in discomfort. "I am rather fond of her, yes."

"Present tense?" she queried on a high note. "Oh, then it must be pretty recent."

"Go and change into something more appropriate for where we're headed, please. I'd rather not continue to talk about what is an extremely private and personal matter with someone who is – for lack of a better description – still a relative stranger to me."

"A stranger who you invited to live with you on board your pretty space ship," she corrected with a light and airy chuckle. "Less than a day after we first met."

"I invited you on a trip," he corrected quickly. "One trip, that's all. To say thank you."

Nancy rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. She was by no means undeterred by the Doctor's words and tone. "Thank you for what? For loaning you my car which you wrapped around a pole less than twenty metres after you took it?"

"The Transdimensional portal was aligned vertically against that pole, and the only way for me to get it sealed and prevent a larger rip in the fabric of time was to slam the Nusoi back into the portal at high speed." He swallowed and took his glasses off his nose. He folded them and slipped them into his blazer pocket. "Your vehicle gave me the perfect means by which to do that."

"It wasn't because you just suck at driving and smashed my car."

He huffed. "I am a perfectly fine driver, thank you."

She wiped at her nose with her thumb. "So. You think it makes me feel better to know that you smooched an alien into a pole with the front end of my car."

"Makes me feel better, anyway."

Nancy actually felt somewhat disgusted by that. "So. You're saying. That. You think it's better to have deliberately smooshed a living creature with my car than to admit that you just don't know how to drive stick?"

"I think it's better to be honest, don't you?"

Her eyes widened as they rolled and she turned to walk from the console room. "Right. Okay. I'm going to get dressed, then."

"Which means makeup and hair and shower et al?"

"Yes, Doctor."

He slumped. "So an hour? Hour and a half?"

She grinned and ruffled her hair. "I have to wash, dry and straighten this, so give me a couple of hours."

"Oh-kay," he breathed along a very long suffering breath. "I'm very sure that I can keep myself entertained while I wait for you to primp and preen."

She spun in her walk to blow him a kiss across the command deck. "Thank you, Sweetie."

The Doctor let out a long huff of a breath as he dragged himself back toward the console to enter a different set of coordinates – ones that would drop them on a planet and in a time where Nancy's makeup, clothing and hair straightening efforts would be … worth the effort.

"Rose," he breathed longingly as he scrolled through his choices. "I never had to wait for you, did I?"

He paused at the coordinates that sat in position one of the TARDIS equivalent of speed dial. The Powell Estates.

He closed his eyes over his hurt. "I miss you."

Three months, twenty four days, five hours, seven minutes and twenty two seconds … Twenty three … Twenty four…since the TARDIS dematerialized and took him away from Rose forever.