They'd insisted she take a vacation. From work, from home, from them. Her reluctance was part worry for her mum, since Jackie was due any day, and part fear of her own mind. She'd been doing okay at keeping her mind in the present by focusing on work and family. To ask her no, demand of her to leave her distractions was tantamount to destroying the little comfort zone she'd created for herself over the past six months. She could hold her own with Pete, and Mickey she could just bully. Her mum, on the other hand...

"You're goin', Rose, an' that's that." Jackie Tyler on a typical day was an argumentative force to be reckoned with. Jackie Tyler, days from labor for the first time in almost two decades, worried about her daughter, and brimming with determination to help whether it was wanted or not Rose realized she didn't stand a spaceship's chance in a supernova.

"But Mum, the baby..." Her mother cut her off with the ease of long practice.

"Rose, you get yourself out of here and go someplace to relax or I swear I'll stay pregnant for another year just to make it hard on you!" That made Rose chuckle, which in turn fueled Jackie's already blazing temper. "You just see if I don't! I've had enough of your mopin' about and hidin' in Torchwood. You need to get a grip, and since you're not doin' it on your own, it's my job to send you somewhere so you can get on with it!"

Somewhere in the middle of this classically typical Tyler women discussion, Pete and Mickey had slipped out of the room, and most likely were out of the house and headed to the pub to watch the game in peace, leaving Rose no moral support in this. Gee, thanks, she thought. You're both such great mates. And she realized she would never win this fight, so she decided to surrender Tyler style.

"Okay, I get that I'm in the way and you don't want me here now. I'm guessing my vacation has already been reported at Torchwood. Do I even get to pick my own destination, or was that decided too?" The acid in her tone wasn't entirely fake, as she felt like everyone was conspiring against her. Normally that tone would throw her Mum off track a bit, but this time Jackie barely flinched.

"Go where you want, Rose. Just don't come back until you're a whole person again." With that, Jackie heaved her bulk out of the chair. "If your dad asks, I'm in the loo. Forgot how much time you spend in there when you're carrying."

Rose recognized a dismissal when she heard one. She left her half-empty cup on the table and headed to her room to grab the duffel bag she'd never unpacked the spare she'd always had ready just in case she'd lost hers on a distant moon or something. And, still burning with betrayal and bitterness, she left. There was only one place she could go, would go. But whether she would come back whole, as Jackie wished, or shatter completely had yet to be seen.

Hearing the door click shut, Jackie sat down on the closed toilet seat and cried.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"...you kissed me." Martha's drolly amused tone rankled, though he refused to show it. Leave it to a human to imply more meaning than needed to a pointless action. Not that she wasn't pretty, beautiful even. She just wasn't Rose. The fact that in kissing her he'd saved an entire constituent of hospital staff and patients from death by either plasmavore or suffocation (neither of which would have been pleasant) didn't seem to make as much of an impression as he'd thought it would have. And he hadn't even put anything into the kiss, no thought, no effort. Sighing silently, he set about trying to live solely in the present for now an unusual thing for a Time Lord, true, but if the choice was between losing his mind through grief or blocking the pain and existing for now, he'd better take sanity.

Unbidden, a last protest railed through his soul. Just because I have two hearts doesn't mean I can stand having them both broken, his mind cried out. I need to be whole, complete! But the loss of his home, coupled with the loss of she who had created a new home just by being there, had splintered his very core, and he knew that he may never be whole again.

Turning his attention back to Martha, he chose sanity. For now.