Rose Tyler: Earth Defense

2/?


They gave her a few days to adjust before Pete came home with a piece of alien tech that looked familiar to Rose and she took it from his hands, twirling around with it in her hands before he could really comprehend that it was gone. Pete grinned at her, following as she put it on the kitchen table before running her fingers lightly on the ridges, making it sing like a choir of angels. "I remember this one, it's a musical instrument."

"That's m'girl." Pete said, patting her back gently. "None of the boys down at the center could figure it out. So."

"No." Rose answered, taking her hands away from the alien tech, shoving them into her deep pockets on the side of her leg, the short hems of pants raising a little bit more. The fashion trends here were different and Rose found herself just a little bit off as she were still a few years behind. "Not yet. I've got to get used the world, it's so...different."

"How?" Pete asked, picking the alien device back up and putting it in his pocket after an inquisitive stroke across the chords, letting the chimes sound in the silence created by her refusal. Rose gripped the back of the chair in front of her, fishing for words desperately as she tried to find the right order of them so as not to offend.

"I dunno, just-sort of...different." Rose said, scuffing her bare foot on the wooden floors, sun warmed from the day. "The clothes are all weird. Too short, or too long. And the dirigibles."

"Of course." Pete said, giving her a clap on the shoulder as he passed her out the door, smiling as he played the ridges gently. Pete shook his head, bemused. "Music. It produces music!"

Rose smiled, getting a glass of water and making herself a sandwich before leaving the kitchen, amused at the childish joy of Pete as he discovered new technology. She was forced to the wall and raised the water and sandwich out of the way as Mickey barreled down the hallway, stopping only to cup her head in his hands and kiss the top of her head before shouting, "Music!"

"What are they on about?" Jackie asked, following after Mickey, staring after the apparent man gone mad, as he pushed his way out the doors. "Pete just ran in, shouted about music and then Mickey ran out after. It was like a show on the telly! I didn't know what to do! Rose! What should I do?"

"Calm down, mum." Rose laughed, peeling herself off the wall and letting her glass of water down. "I just told 'em that the alien tech was a musical instrument."

"Blimey!" Jackie said, "'Ow did you know?"

"Seen it before." Rose took a drink from the glass of water she smuggled out from the kitchen. "Doctor and I came back ahead of our time and we met up with a collector. He had it and the Doctor showed me later after he took it."

"He took it, Oo does he think he is?" Jackie asked, crossing her arms. "Bit pretentious, innit?"

"He is the Doctor." Rose smiled sadly. "He probably invented the word pretentious."

"Eat in the kitchen, Rose." Jackie said, taking the sandwich from Rose to take a bite. She loked down at the sandwich in surprise, wiping the side of her mouth with the heel of her hand. "Ooo well done, good egg banjo."

"Well, it was my sandwich." Rose sighed, going back into the kitchen, with her glass of water and now empty plate. "I guess I'll make another."

With that, Pete's campaign to get her to work at Torchwood began, escalating to leaving his notes about the mansion in unlikely places about unexplainable astronomical phenomena, and bits of broken alien tech for her to figure out. Occasionally, Jackie found them first which was how the charter of the ten nations of Alderbaran ended up being lost behind the refrigerator for a few weeks, almost inciting an intergalactic incident when the Alderbaran hit squad came after their precious artifact only to be told that it had been lost in storage months ago as Pete had listed it, and really, there was no finding it now. Rose had used her finely tuned Jackie sensor to figure out which common place that Jackie lost things was being utilized in this instance. Rose had admonished her mother to stop touching things once again, but it didn't work and she found herself on the constant prowl to get to the alien tech before her mother did, and ended up killing herself. The astronomical phenomena were easier, her mother just piled those up in a corner and forbade the maid to touch them, which meant that they gathered dust until Rose got up the gumption and was bored enough to look at them.

"Star exploding, 78.6 billion miles away. Averted in Parallel Universe. Likely to be occuring now." Her memory had become exceptional after the year 3000 and she could remember every detail of the worlds they visited. She knew that the Doctor never thought she was listening, but the truth was, she wrote it all down in a book and carried it in her pocket afterward. She liked him thinking of her as slow, it meant he prattled on more because he thought she wasn't listening and she learned more than he probably thought to teach any sort of a descendant from an ape. When a stack of pictures of deep space telemetry found ther way to the living room foot rest, Rose sorted them into piles of correct, lens refraction error, and other human telescope error 'cause its so buggering far away. It was the Doctor's favorite game on a slow day on the TARDIS, and Rose had to conclude it was to show her how far advanced that his race was from hers as he never did stop insulting species. Rose was now able to identify the tell tale signs of a mistaken telescope, all the way up to ultraviolet telemetry and down to radio waves.

"So, me mates down at the office are dying to meet this mysterious informant see, the secret expert that Pete has hidden away in his boudoir." Mickey twiddled his fingers to fully represent the mystery of the boudoir. He looked like a twat and Rose had to stifle a giggle behind her hand as she did her best to be seen as nonchalant. Mickey lowered his wiggling spirit fingers in order to cross his arms and look serious."See, I gotta theory, about the similarities between our world an theirs. I think that sometimes things kind of echo between our world and theirs."

"What are you on about, Mickey?" Rose asked, tolerantly amused. She was currently reorganizing the dishes in the cupboard, restacking the china to repair the damage done by her mother only moments ago after Jackie tried to do the dishes haphazardly.

"They call you the Bad Wolf, Rose." Crashing porcelain was the only sound that could be heard in the silence and Mickey danced around, dodging flying china as they fell out of Rose's numb hands. "Oh my god, Rose. Watch it!"

Rose ignored him, her fingers suddenly nerveless, as she stared at him with her mouth open. She mouthed 'Bad Wolf' back to herself, amazed to hear the words on this side of the barrier, completely shaken out of her day to day to hear those words echo in her ears. Two words that herald the end of the world, and the thing she had become by taking the whole of time and space into her head. It, she, had said that she created herself, by spreading the word of her existence around the Universe, but it possibly did so in this Universe as well, knowing that in the future, she would be here. Rose drew in a shaky breath, leaning down to pick up the broken pieces to throw them in the bin. They were words that she never thought she would hear again, and to have them leap out at her from so unexpected of a source was shocking to the core.

"I thought it would surprise you, but I've seen other things echo here." Mickey said, flaunting his superior knowledge of the parallel Universe. He was constantly on edge because of situations such as the "Bad Wolf" phenomenon in which words he'd spoken earlier echoed back, prickling down his spine in a tingle of remembrance. It was an eerie case of deja vu that hadn't happened in this time line as other people spoke your words or came up with your ideas before you even had them. "I jumped when I heard it too."

"You're lyin'" Rose said, wiping off her hands after a quick rinse in the sink. "Quit havin' me on, Mickey. It isn't funny."

"'M not takin' the piss, I swear." Mickey protested. He then began to wheedle her as he wiggled the paperwork in her face. Rose batted at it, to get it out of her face as Mickey danced around. "Come to Torchwood, get them to stop calling you that if you want."

"Mickey, stop it." Rose said, rubbing her forehead with her thumb. "I'm fine here. I'm happy makin' sure that Mum doesn't make this look like our flat by killin' off the maids."

"Happy? Happy sittin' here, day after day doing nuffin but starin' at the walls and hoping for Pete to bring you home a scrap o' work because you're too scared to go out and get it!" Mickey shouted,

reaching out to Rose's shoulders and shake her furiously. He had seen her going almost stir crazy over the past few weeks, and doing his best to remain out of her way had been difficult. "You're going barmy here, Rose. Just come to work for a little while. Check the place out. Get a feel for it. You'll love Selina and Johnson. You'll hate Jacobs, but we all hate Jacobs."

"Mickey." Rose warned, brushing off Mickey's hands to turn away. "I just- dunno. I'm not ready."

"Just think about it, yeah?" Mickey said, reaching out to touch her hand lightly before grabbing a sandwich and leaving for his room in a far wing of the mansion. "Get back to me."

"I will." Rose said, tucking her straggling hair behind her ears, eying Mickey as he left as if he were about to leap at her and attack at a moments notice. He left the notes behind and she flipped them open to the last page, the one she hadn't finished yet before burying her head in her hands, leaning on the sink. She rocked back and forth, biting on her lower lip with her hands clenched behind her neck, as she tried to deny the fact that he was right to herself and failed because he was right. She was more annoyed because of it, because when Mickey the idiot was right, there was something wrong with the situation.

That night at dinner, they were eating the meal made by the cook, slightly singed meat due to Jackie distracting the chef with talk of health and safety in a kitchen, during which the chicken burned. They kept all comments on the over done state of the chicken to themselves though Rose kept mostly to her salad and poked at the meat with her knife, inhaling sharply when the edges flaked off. She discretely sniffed her butter roll and, finding it satisfactorily fluffy and buttered, she ripped it open with relish, chewing while getting herself some more beans. Rose let the rumbling sound of Jackie and Pete bickering amiably carry her away as she sipped the wine on the table and watched the maids bustle about, tending to her every need. When she crossed her arms over her stomach she felt the slight squishiness of soft living and no need to keep running. If nothing else, it was her own swelling body weight that drove her final decision.

"Rose, why aren't you eating the chicken? Are you turning vegetation?" Jackie asked, concerned for her daughter's welfare. Rose stopped pushing her food around her plate and took a long pull of her wine beside her plate, drinking deeply and silencing her reply. Her mother continued. "Do you have vegetarians here? You've been putting on weight but it's no use givin' up meat for it."

"Jackie!" Both Pete and Mickey shouted, watching as Rose merely sat calmly, clenching her wine glass so hard that her knuckles turned with with force and her joints creaked.

"I want to join Torchwood." Rose didn't look up, resuming pushing her beans around her plate with her fork as she spoke. Pete stopped talking with Jackie about inconsequential meanderings and turned to Rose, his daughter by his other self and grinned at her with a paternal joy. She was good at identifying everything his teams couldn't because of her travels and his people desperately needed someone of her knowledge. Plus with that statement, no one would notice that she did not eat the chicken as she was entirely afraid of the fact that it was burned to a crisp the whole way through.

"So I was right, eh?" Mickey crowed gleefully, banging on the table with a clenched fist.

"Absolutely, any time." Pete answered. He rubbed his hands together happily, pleased to have her as an expert on his team. He would be able to stop making up excuses for bringing his work home with him, especially the artifacts that were getting harder to sneak out. They were starting to take a closer look at the discrepancies between the items in storage and the items in the labs. His man on the inside, Mickey, was helping him out by saying that whenever he had to come up with a reason of where the artifacts are, Mickey would claim that they were in his division. "You can start tomorrow. I'll get your paperwork right away."

"What do you want to do that for?" Jackie asked, her voice accusing. "Don't you want to stay here, Rose? Are you not happy here?"

"Mum, I love bein' here, with you, but I need a purpose, somethin' to do!" Rose cried, angry that she had to break her mother's heart by getting back involved with the aliens and outer space. The world that faced danger and dear friends getting hurt every day as they fought to protect everything that they love and the sanctity of their world, free from alien influences. And running from Death as it tripped along behind their heels, chasing their every move, going back into the world of the Doctor which the world of Torchwood seemed to mimic on this world. "I told you before Mum, I can't just sit about, eatin' chips all day, watching after you. I need action, adventure."

"Watching after me? That's a bit rich!" Pete laid a gentle hand on Jackie's arm and she seemed to settle under his attention. "Rose, I just want you safe, here at home. The Doctor took you for so long, and now I finally have you back and you're saying you want to go again?"

"I'll be here at night, it'll just be like I have a job at the shop!" Rose exclaimed, finally putting her wine glass down to stop distracting herself. She knew it was going to be a battle with her mother in order to reconcile her with the idea that she couldn't cocoon her daughter in a blanket of safety.

"Your last job at a shop almost blew you up!" Jackie shouted, shaking off Pete's hand as she recalled Rose's job at Henricks. She'd had many, many sleepless nights in the lost year of Rose's life in which "Can you tell me that you won't die? Can you promise me that?"

"No!" Rose shouted as Pete and Mickey tried to slouch in their chairs and pretend that they weren't even in the room. They should have been used to this as Jackie and Rose had no problems airing their dirty laundry to the world as they shouted their arguments in full view of company. "But I can't promise I won't get run over by a cabbie tomorrow! You can't keep me here forever through guilt an' shame that I left you."

"Yeah, I know, but I can try to keep you safe, Rose." Jackie said, settling back down, knowing that she had lost this battle. She then turned on the two men in the house. She shook with rage as she confronted them. "You put this idea in her head, especially you, Mickey. You just watched as she ran away with a man who almost got her killed in the other universe, why should I think it would be different this time?"

"Oi, that's a bit unfair." Mickey protested. "She's goin' mad, locked up in here. She put herself in, but we need her out there. She's good at what she does, Jackie."

"Mum, I won't do it if you say no, but please." Rose started to tear up, her mascara smudging around her eyes.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous. If it's what you really want, then I can't stop you." Jackie said, defeated. She then turned to her husband. "Don't think I don't know you had a hand in this, you did. We'll talk abou' that later. In the mean time, you figure out what to tell people about her and where she came from. She's my daughter, and she's yours too, in another Universe. I won't have you hide her away like a piece of trash."

"We'll figure something out." Pete assured, rubbing Jackie's arm lightly to calm her. "Donalds, down in Retcon has a few ideas that we've been tossing around as soon as we realized they would be needed."

"Well, what is it then?" Jackie demanded, crossing her arms petulantly. "C'mon, tell me. Is it drugs? Mind control? Hypnosis? You just going to go in and muck about and think everything is going to be okay?"

"Could tell everyone you had a bike." Mickey mumbled, waving a hand at Jackie, recalling what Rickey's friend had said to him when they'd been hypothesizing about Mickey's existence. Jackie gave Mickey a look, one that she knew Mickey was used to because of the missing years as Mickey rolled his eyes. "I was just sayin'"

"She's legitimate or we both move out." Jackie said firmly, crossing her arms.

"Jacks, it's going to be taken care of." Pete assured her, taking her hand in his. He kissed the back as he smiled up at her. "Everything will be fine. The press probably won't even catch wind of her at all, Torchwood is very secure."

"To Torchwood I go." Rose said, raising her glass.

"To Torchwood." The rest of them said, except for Jackie who just sighed and downed the rest of her wine.


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