Title: Into the Woods (4/20)
Pairing: TenII/Rose
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance, drama, action/adventure (eventually)
Spoilers: Just to be safe let's say everything up to JE.
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I make no money off of them (if anything it's the other way around)
Summary: After being left on the beach the Doctor, Rose and Jackie are forced to stay overnight in a small Norway village until they can get home, but something strange is happening in the quiet town.

Authors Note: Inclimate weather = no school which does nothing to help my boredom. I will warn you that the next 3 chapters (including this one) involve more drama but after that we get to go back to action/adventure (huzzah!)

Thank you to my amazing beta mik109 and you're talent for building bridges.

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Jackie happily made her way up the narrow staircase towards her room, eager to fall into the bed and curl up under the covers. She utterly refused to be bothered with another important thought until sometime the next day, and late into it if she had any choice in the matter. As she neared the top of the staircase, she saw her daughter standing in front of what she assumed was her room, staring at the door to what she again assumed was the Doctor's room.

Well, there went her plan about not thinking.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?" she asked softly, not wanting to startle Rose with her sudden appearance. Sure the stairs creaked something awful as she walked up them, but Rose was in a whole other universe, and Jackie was fairly certain she knew which one.

"D'you ever feel guilty about it?" Rose asked without turning away from the Doctor's door. "About being with Pete?"

"Whatchya mean?"

"I mean..." She said turning to look at her mother, her eyes a little glossy but Jackie couldn't tell if that was from being tired or something else. "He lost his wife, and you lost Dad...an' now you're together. You ever feel guilty 'bout bein' with him 'cause he's not Dad, but he is." She explained leaning back against the door to her room. "It's like...it's like you're cheating on him somehow, that you're settlin' for second best because the real thing isn't here."

Jackie nodded a little. She knew exactly where this was coming from and she had asked the same questions herself when she had first been stranded in a parallel world with a man who was, but wasn't, the one she was in love with. "No. I don't feel guilty 'bout it, 'cause I'm not settling for second best." She said with far more certainty than she had felt when she had first made that decision. "Your Dad died a long time ago and I knew I would never love anyone else the way I loved him, an' you know what? I was right."

"But don't you ever feel like it's wrong?"

"Your Dad would've wanted me to be happy, and he would be thrilled to know the only man who can make me happy is him...even if it's a parallel world version of him." She explained as Rose looked away from her. "But you don't think that, I know we aren't talkin' about me. Rose, what happened with me an' Pete...it's different than what's happened with you an' the Doctor."

"Pete isn't your father. He looks like him and he talks like him and he can act like him, but he isn't. Pete isn't the man I married and he's not your Dad. He isn't the man who forgot my name at our wedding, or the one who almost fainted when I told him I was pregnant, or the one I argued with for hours because I refused to let him name you after his great Aunt Beatrix because that's just a horrible name," she said as Rose laughed slightly, "and he's not the man who ran out of the church that day just to get hit by a car to save the world. But you know what? The man who stayed with you on the beach today, that is the Doctor."

Rose shook her head, eyes falling to the floor. "But he's still out there...in another world, all by himself."

Jackie took a moment to appraise her daughter, to take a long hard look at her. It was her job as a mother to comfort her, to help her make the difficult decisions, at least the ones she asked for help on, but she had no idea what to tell her at that moment. This went way beyond anything she ever had to deal with when she was Rose's age and, while she did have a bit of experience thanks to her relationship with Pete, it really wasn't the same. So Jackie did the only thing she could think of and she told her daughter exactly what she would have wanted to hear, exactly what her Mum thought.

"That was always gonna happen Rose, even if you went with him. It's part of what living for hundreds of years means I'd imagine. You find people you care about and, eventually, they leave."

"Mum, I don't know what to do." She said meekly.

"Rose, far as I can tell the only difference between this him and that him, other than the color of their suits, is that this one can spend forever with you." She started, happy to see Rose look up at her again. "It's not easy. It isn't going to be. You just have to realize you fell in love with the man he is, and he's still that man. You're never gonna stop loving the him in another universe, just like I never stopped lovin' your dad, but it gets better. Trust me, I know. It takes time and you just have to take it slow, but, eventually, you're going to fine. Both of you will be."

Rose nodded a little, eyes slightly glazed over in thought.

Her daughter was obviously miles away again so Jackie decided to take matters into her own hands. With a deep breath, she affected the best fake yawn she could muster, which just-so-happened to turn into a real yawn halfway through. "Well, I'm knackered." She said with more emphasis on the word I'm than she had originally intended. "How 'bout we turn in? Just finished saving all of reality so you know the world will be here when we wake up." She said with a smile towards her daughters departing back. "Sleep well, sweetheart, and remember jus'…jus' take things slow. Everything will turn out."

Rose bit her lip a little, glancing over her shoulder at her mother. "Yeah, thanks, Mum."

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The Doctor shut the door behind him as softly as he could while simultaneously trying to close it as quickly as possible.

"What was that?!" he groaned out quietly to himself, wincing at how ridiculous he had just been.

Goodnight? Really?! That's how he chose to finish that particular…whatever that was that he was doing. Oh, what had he been doing? Was he baring his soul to her, his brand new one that shared a whole lot in common with his old one, or just the old one because the new one was so new it didn't need any baring?

Either way ending a bit of a speech about who he was, who he really was, whether soul baring or not, to the woman he loved and lost and then got back should never have been ended with, 'Goodnight' and him…in effect…running away.

He hoped all of this was the human hormones playing tricks with his mind, and by playing tricks, he meant making it turn off completely for long periods of time which allowed his mouth to just go off and say anything it felt needed saying. Verbal diarrhea was not a good look for him, not when it didn't involve saving the universe with complex equations or sharing with others interesting historical and or extraterrestrial facts.

What he really hoped though, more than being able to wave everything off tomorrow or possibly in a few days (please, oh please let it be tomorrow) as being him getting used to his new body, was that he iwould/i get used to it. He honestly wasn't sure he'd be able to live with himself if he continued making a fool of himself like he had been, especially if he was going to continue on like this forever.

He stomped further into his room, flipping on the lamp that decorated the end table. He glanced around the room quickly, and then did a double take to fully note the very beastly wallpaper of the room he was in. He had been in his fair share of motel rooms, and none of them ever had very nice wallpaper, but this might have taken it to a new level.

At least the rest of the room wasn't as ghastly. In fact, it was rather nice. Cozy even. The whole motel, save the aforementioned wallpaper, gave off a rather cozy feel, he thought as he continued his inner interior decorator interlude. He was in no way trying to ignore anything else more pressing, especially not the little impulse in the back of his mind to go next door and tell Rose he was oh so very sorry for effectively shattering any sort of comfortable camaraderie they had begun to build up by being so bloody awkward just now.

He groaned again, closing his eyes against his ridiculously overactive thoughts, and the wallpaper obviously, and turned to hit his head against the wall.

Oh, life was easier on the TARDIS, he mused. He could just muck about with whatever system happened to not be working correctly at the moment, or at least gone for a long walk to clear his head. Instead he was stuck there, in one miserably small room…no escape…no TARDIS, ever.

He leaned back against the wall and wondered, and not for the first time that day, if the other him had really thought it would be that easy? That just dropping him off in Pete's World with Rose would make any problems he might face just disappear. Or maybe he thought he wouldn't mind them as much because she was there.

He was a brand new man who had just had this whole life pulled out from under him in a matter of seconds. He didn't even know how he felt about it, let alone if he was going to be okay with it.

Did he even want to keep living that life? One adventure after another didn't really leave room for that human life he'd always been curious about and even desperately wanted when he had been traveling with Rose.

He knew he'd never live a normal human life. He'd get bored within the first week, no doubt. But he did wonder if he wouldn't like being able to settle down in the sense that he stayed in one place for the rest of his life, at least relatively. Besides, Rose worked at Torchwood, so could he too and that was bound to give him enough excitement for the rest of his now human length life.

He also wondered if the other him honestly thought he didn't know what was happening to Donna. He knew what having all of the thoughts of a Time Lord would do to Donna's mind, and he knew what he would do if he was faced with the same dilemma.

Poor Donna. She didn't deserve that.

He was also fairly certain that if he ever did tell Rose just what happened to Donna once the two of them had gotten back to their own universe she would never forgive him. Either of him. Which left him in a very uncomfortable position. He could go on lying to her for the rest of their lives, or he could tell her the truth.

Neither option seemed like a very good choice, but disclosing that wee anecdote right in the middle, after allowing them time to adjust to their new lives before bringing up the subject, seemed like an even worse choice. No, that particular conversation would have to be done quickly, like pulling off a bandaid, or not done at all.

Unfortunately, choosing to not tell her at all would probably lead to him blurting it out at some completely inconvenient moment like in the middle of saving the universe, or while they were sharing a quiet moment over tea.

He just wasn't sure he could handle her hating him right now, especially after what he had done.

Yes, the Daleks would have destroyed the galaxy, reality bomb or no, that many of them could have easily taken over the entire universe, all of reality if they tried hard enough. They'd already proven, time and time again, the only thing they were ever content with doing was destroying everything. Which really just begs the question why destroy all of reality if all you like doing is exterminating people? Wouldn't you get bored?

In the end, he had done what he had too so the universe could be safe again. So why did it feel so wrong?

The other him left him in this world because he couldn't be trusted, because he had committed genocide. He knew this was the other him's way of trying to convince himself and Rose that he had to be there, just like he knew he wasn't the same as he had been after the Time War.

He wasn't too far off though.

There was a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it didn't seem to be going anywhere any time soon. He was fairly certain this feeling was guilt, and it was all Dalek Cann's fault. All those years ago, when the Time Lords had sent him back to destroy the Daleks before they could ever become a threat and he had failed on purpose, he had done so because of Daleks like him.

They were a brilliant race, if a bit violent even before the Time War, but he couldn't hold that against them. He never held it against humans. He saw so much potential in them back then, potential they still had…and he had just destroyed them all. Again.

He was torn at the moment. He felt guilty for what he'd done to the Daleks because they had proven, at least a few of them had, that they could learn and change, and he had wiped them out of existence with a few flipped switches. He felt angry because a fully Time Lord version of himself had dumped him in a parallel world because he didn't trust him, and he felt even more guilty about being left here because he had just been handed the life he'd always wanted on a silver platter.

On top of all of that, he was confused because his brain and the rest of this body didn't seem to want to work together, and he was annoyed at himself for acting like a bit of a moron all evening. The biggest problem was that he just didn't know what he should do about Rose, and that bothered him the most.

Should he pluck up some of that legendary Time Lord courage and go next door to finish the conversation he had started in the hallway, only this time end it the right way? Most important of all should he tell her about Donna or should he leave it alone because it wasn't his story to share with her, not anymore at least.

He gave his head another little whack against the wall and desperately wished everything would just make sense again.

~TBC

(AN2: Secret confession? I like the blue suit.)