***Second Chapter re-write! If you haven't seen my new first chapter posted read that first.
Rose gives birth on the twenty-sixth of June, to a little girl. She and John had picked out the names Eloise or Eliza or Annabeth before, but holding her even weight in her arms, Rose looks at her tiny rosy cheeked daughter, and suddenly there is only one name that will fit.
"Junior," Rose says suddenly, as John lovingly stokes the pale wispy gold curls about the girl's forehead. Honestly, how is it all her children have turned out blondes?
"Hmm?"
"Let's name her Junior, Junior Marion Tyler-Noble-Smith. The Junior Doctor." Rose says simply. John stiffens at the last bit, but Rose can bring herself to care. It fits her so well, Rose can practically see it, the name settle around her baby like armor.
"Our daughter John, lookit our beautiful little girl." She whispers and hands the baby to her husband.
His shoulders loosen and her smiles warmly, lovingly, amazedly at them both. "Yes, alright," He coddles the girl close. "Our little Juni."
Jackie, Pete, Tony, James and Johnny are the only ones around for the birth besides the few Doctors Rose and John actually trust. Jackie is a mess of joy, Pete is proud, and Tony scrunches his nose and proclaims the girl to weird looking for words. James stands over his sister like a guard dog, and Johnny, well Johnny holds her like she is the most precious thing in the world.
Rose and John have their baby, and their boys, nothing has felt more right in the world than this. But nothing can be more wrong. Doctor Martha Jones- she knows nothing about the Doctor, or John in this world, she is just a right proper Doctor with the character and integrity they need to protect Juni and Rose form the tabloids- tells them quietly that their baby suffers from a strange deformity she has never before seen: Their baby has two hearts.
Rose and John are torn. Something in them tells them this was always supposed to happen, but it makes no sense as to how a human female and her mostly human husband could produce and alien baby. Doctor Jones assures them that all the tests came back negative for disease and disorders and that the DNA tests reveal nothing abnormal, yet the abnormally of the situation glares out at them. Junior has two hearts, both properly beating, and a circulatory at least sevenfold more complex than a human's.
No one knows what to say, so no one says anything. They go on. Finally there is a baby for the nursery, a house louder with crying and play things and telly. A house filled with love and laughter, so long as they could all pretend that there was nothing wrong.
But everything is wrong, Juni grows up as all little girls should. She starts talking at a normal age, but not the normal amount. She strings words together and says something new every day and it's only a matter of time before her fingers begin writing numbers and equations, or turning the pages of old books, when she shouldn't even read yet. She starts crawling, and from there it's running and big observing eyes and clever smiles. They put her into primary school early pretending she's older than she is, and by five Juni is a tall sprout for her age, but dwarfed by the heights of the eight year olds around her.
John keeps a log on her, on his own daughter, almost as if she's a test subject and it scares Rose, but she doesn't say anything because as scared as she is she needs to know too. He comes up one day, when James and Johnny have taken the girl to the Zoo, up from his workshop ashen faced and grey-ing severely at the temples.
He sits at the kitchen table with her, and stares. "What?" she asks bothered as she finished writing checks for the bills.
"You haven't noticed?"
"'Course I noticed, you're being a bloody nuisance with your staring." Rose mutters.
"Not that Rose," He swallows. "You haven't noticed how young you look?"
Rose snorts and looks up at him a bit coyly. "You know if you're in the mood, you don't have to be-"
"Damnit Rose!" John shouts slamming a fist on the table. "Listen to me." He gets up and walks over to her dragging her towards a mirror. "Look Rose, look, you look so damnably young. Younger and younger ever since Juni was born. Ever since we found you were pregnant."
"John what are you trying to imply?" She asks furiously.
"I'm not implying anything!" He shouted. "This is serious Rose, don't tell me you haven't noticed."
Rose jerks back from him and glances again at the mirror. She has noticed. She's just ignored it until now, passed it off as better makeup or just better diet.
"John I, I just." She looks at him, the man she's built her life with over the past years, and suddenly she is terrified. How will she ever get by without him? How can she? He looks so old now, gray and fined lined. She's terrified of him. Of him leaving her, one way or another.
"What's happening to me?"
John's face falls, he loses all sense of anger of determination, his shoulder slump and he rubs his eyes warily. "I don't know Rose, I don't know."
"Is it….is it Bad Wolf?"
"I-no." John says furiously. "No it can't be," and there's anger in his eyes at the very mention of the words Bad Wolf but Rose can't decide why. Bad Wolf saved them, saved the universe.
He storms away and misses Juni when the boys bring her home. Rose opens her arms and sits the girl on her lap and smoothes her wild golden curls, and listens as Juni rattles the facts verbatim from the plaques outside the animal cages.
She tries to pretend that her daughter's encyclopedia like mind is normal, but after her talk with John nothing looks normal anymore. Rose holds her daughter closer. James and Johnny notice.
A week later work at Torchwood spikes suddenly, and all thoughts of Juni's abnormalities are put aside for a moment. John seems to go greyer with every passing day, the boys are hardly home, and for the first time in Rose's life her home is and empty cold place. Juni is the only bright thing there, but even she seems to be dulling with the loss of her brothers and fathers.
Thursday night as she tucks the girl in, Rose decided it cannot go on any longer, but she doesn't realize that her boys have thought that too. They wait for her in the kitchen, all somber faced and worried.
"The universe is cracking." John says immediately.
"What do you mean-"
"Parts of Space and Time that never should have touched Rose, the Universe is cracking apart and in the middle of it, everything is being erased."
Rose freezes and immediately gravitates closer to their sons, grown as they are, they are her children, and she owns that fact like nothing else.
"What does that mean for us?"
"You'll have to leave. You Jackie, Pete, Tony the boys and Juni." John says rubbing his eyes. "We've arranged everything already, we'll just have to get you packed."
Rose stares at him, then at her sons. James is straight-faced and unrelenting, Johnny at least has the decency to look mildly abashed.
"So you've decided for me have you? You've decided without even asking. You didn't even tell me."
John looks up at her surprised. "I knew you would have agreed anyway, I mean, given the circumstances-"
"Damn it John!" Rose hisses. "It's not about the circumstances, we've been married for ages now, you and I have been through everything, you are supposed to trust me!"
"Rose, I trust you-"
"Not enough to tell me from the beginning, not enough to trust me to make the right decision, not enough to trust me with my own fate! You're just like him!"
John's face becomes stony as he stands. "Just like who?"
"The Doctor." Rose says biting back tears. "He never gave me the choice either, always sending me away, choosing what was best for me, leaving me without because he decided I was best for you-"
"Oh, so now you've never wanted to be with me then?" John asks coldly, his eyes ablaze.
"Don't even, John, I love you and you damn well know it, but you know you knew from the beginning I love him too. You are my Doctor as much as he is. Don't pretend like there wasn't a long list of girls before me."
"Mother-"
"And don't you start either!" Rose turned on James, "Don't you think you can decide things for me either, you're my son, not my keeper." With one last shake of her head, Rose blinked back her tears and straightened. "I'm going to bed, tomorrow we're going to discuss this, and you're going to tell me all about what you have or haven't figured out about Juni and I."
And with that she climbs up the stairs, gets ready for bed, and for the first time ever, locks her bedroom door.