A/N: The sequel to "A Long History". This story has many parts, every one related to every other one, even if they may seem disjointed at first glance. Bring your thinking caps and don't forget to let me know if you have questions. For those just tuning in: I do not support the "Lungbarrow" hypothesis. Don't forget to check my profile page for new and exciting information. Special thanks, once again, to the fantastic Olfactory_Ventriloquism for the help, the listening, and the beta-reading.

Chapter 4: Smith and Tyler

They invaded Hope Memorial as a team from Torchwood, looking everywhere, scanning everything, not even bothering to try for stealth with the energy build-up increasing so rapidly. They hadn't had even one iota of luck when someone started yelling about the rain falling up.

And then, they were on the moon. Panic ensued, as panic will, and the team from Torchwood found themselves as the highest authorities on the premises.

Then, the ugly great space rhinos turned up and suddenly, Rose Tyler seemed to rise from the dead. Her eyes lit up and she grinned and charged through the crowd to meet the rhinos, standing there just as happily as you please in the face of such utter strangeness. "Judoon!" she exclaimed. "Brilliant, you used the water, didn't you?"

The Judoon flashed a light in her face and Mickey jumped forward, but Rose held out a hand. The thing made a lot of long 'o' noises and then said, "Earth language, English, assimilated."

"Can I have one of those?" Rose asked. "Please? It will be very useful."

Even Mickey could tell that the space rhino had never seen her like before in its entire life. "Who are you?" the Judoon demanded.

"I'm Agent Rose. I work for Torchwood and, in this case, that gives me the authority to speak for the humans here. You know you can't really go around collecting hospitals from Level Five planets. It's rude. Hospitals are a place of rest for people to get well."

"We are seeking a fugitive from justice."

"Yes," said Rose, calmly. "I know what you do, and I understand your mission. You'll have to work with me, though, so these people don't get hurt."

"You have no jurisdiction here."

Rose shook her head. "Neither have you. Shadow Proclamation, I know. But I have jurisdiction over the people who are here and the property that is here. You only have jurisdiction over the suspect who is here. We'll help you find that person if we can conclude this quickly. Before the oxygen runs out, please."

In this situation, suddenly, Rose was back in a way Mickey had hardly seen her. He'd suspected something like this when she'd turned up on her own at Canary Wharf, looked a Dalek in the eye, and told it she'd killed its Emperor. She was on her top form, here, giving orders, calming people, asking questions. She bullied the doctors, she bullied he and Jake, she bullied the hospital administration. She even bullied the Judoon.

"Yes, I'm human. It's time-travel radiation. You really need to up the level of your scans, if it's confusing you. He's got it too, if you need a comparison." She gestured at Mickey and he got a light in the face for her pains. The aliens compared the scans and, though they continued to seem quite suspicious, Rose distracted them again.

"Why can't you just do a high level scan for the type of alien you're trying to find?" Then, she grinned again, that fake but insane Doctor grin she seemed so proud of, and snapped her fingers. "I've got it. What you're looking for can disguise itself. Like a chameleon or something. You are definitely going to have to use a higher scan level, then, because I'm not letting you off every 'might not be human' in the building. There could be some perfectly harmless aliens here, too, you know, evolutionary resonance in this Galaxy making just about everyone look about the same on the outside."

They trooped up through the hospital, the leader of the Judoon talking only to Rose and its troops, and Mickey could tell it was completely fascinated with her. "Look, next time you have a fugitive on Earth, how about calling me first, all right? These people are scared to death. That poor girl in there thinks she can't possibly be breathing, and I swear if you don't put that gun away, you're gonna hurt someone and I'm gonna get difficult."

She decided to look for suspicious medical histories and nearly exploded at the Judoon who followed her while its troops searched the floor they currently occupied. "You wiped the records! You're looking for a non-human in a human hospital, that was thick! Mickey, see what you can do with it."

They finally found the suspect by tracking, not the non-human traces or the two bodies they had found, but the sudden build-up of energy in MRI. He and Jake deactivated the medical machine turned weapon while Rose threatened the Judoon with complaining about them to someone if they didn't return the hospital and its contents to the Earth immediately. The air was getting thin, very thin, and they were getting desperate.

They all blacked out, as far as Mickey knew, but they all woke up to find a hospital full of people, scared half to death but blessedly alive.

Mickey knew where he would find Rose, but he hesitated to intrude. In fact, only a direct order from Pete, given in person, finally sent him to "Rose's Room" at the top of the tower. Mickey let himself in silently, reluctant to disturb his friend in her only sanctuary.

Rose stood against that terrible wall, her back to the door, her body slumped as if in defeat. Mickey watched her for several long, heavy-hearted moments before he realized she was speaking.

"Everybody lived," Rose murmured. "Nearly everybody, anyway, and that's all right, I suppose. They nabbed the bad guy an' Mickey an' Jake saved the world. You're right, though. Really can't say anything bad about having a day like this, when it's so rare."

Mickey didn't dare move or even breathe. Rose had found catharsis in that wall, the one that she'd once wanted to tear down with her bare hands. He turned just as quietly as he had entered and left her with her conversation with a man who could neither reply nor even hear her.

"That's it, I guess," said Rose over coffee the next day. "This Earth knows it has alien problems as well as human ones. Everything changes."

"Nope," said Mickey. "They're writing it off as hallucinations."

"You are so kidding me," she replied, thunderstruck.

"Nope. And do you know why?"

"Never mind why, how can they possibly?"

"Because the hospital didn't lose power."

She gaped at him and then, to Mickey's everlasting, if secret, amusement, she shook her head and muttered, "Stupid apes."

So it went on like this for months. Rose spent long hours in the top of the tower, trying to solve, apparently, the mysteries of the Universe. She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes; she laughed, but it sounded hollow. It was only when there were alien encounters to work through or alien tech to play with that she seemed truly alive. Mickey would bet, though, that he was the only one who knew that, after every alien encounter, whether it went right or wrong, she went to the top of the tower and leaned on the wall until the terror inside her was put to bed.

Everyone else thought she was fearless. Mickey began to believe that she was trying too hard to convince herself she was. He also suspected that she wasn't afraid of dying. She wasn't truly suicidal, but she counted herself no loss.

He wanted to talk to her about it, but he hadn't found the nerve. Then, ten months after her arrival in "Pete's World", they encountered something more vicious and deadly than all the Slitheen, Sycorax, and Weevils they had ever encountered, put together: Jackie Tyler in labor.

"I expect there are men on planets we've never heard of who are sorry for your Dad right now," said Mickey.

"Her Dad?" asked Owen Harper, the Torchwood doctor who would be tending to Jackie. For some reason, Rose's mum absolutely adored the sarcastic little prick.

"He said, 'the new dad,'" Rose corrected. "He mumbles a lot. And aren't you supposed to be delivering a baby?"

"Do you ever get time off, Agent Rose?" asked Dr. Harper.

"No, I don't," she said. "Now go deliver that baby before those planets feel sorrier for you than the Executive."

Harper finally went in and Rose leaned against the wall. "I feel like I'm living in some kind of secret agent film. 'The Executive' indeed." She snickered.

"Sorry," Mickey apologized.

"Don't worry about it. But Mickey, he really isn't my dad. He's a great man and I like him, but he's my step-dad and he's going to have to stay that way. I saw my dad die too many times to mix it up, even if I did want to know what he and my father had in common. I think... you know, that first time we came here? I think it was more the shock of finding out they had everything they ever wanted because I was never born. I used to think it was my fault he died, sometimes. And then to find out that it was? God."

"It was not your fault," Mickey told her coldly.

Rose shook her head. "Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the first time. I dunno."

"What do you mean, 'the first time'?" he asked.

"Never mind," she answered, and pulled out her mobile to answer her email.

When the baby was finally born, and the small, strange, blended family finally had some privacy, Rose and Mickey got to meet Rose's baby brother at last.

"Can you believe it?" Jackie asked tiredly. "We really did have a boy. I was so sure..."

"All the ultrasounds said he was a boy, Mum," Rose reminded her.

"I know that, but Jackie and Pete and a baby, shouldn't it have been you, again?"

Rose shook her head. "Time's not a straight line, Mum. It's... never mind, just different circumstances give a different result. Have you decided on a name for him?"

Jackie looked at Pete, who shrugged at her. Jackie sighed and nodded, looking exhausted but resigned. Mickey wondered why she seemed so distressed, but then she spoke and he knew. "Well, Rose... what's the Doctor's name? We really think we should call him after the man who brought us together." Jackie hadn't mentioned the Doctor to Rose once in all the entire time they had been here, and even on the drive to Norway had referred to him as "that alien." She'd seemed determined all this time to put him as out of mind as he was out of sight.

Rose shook her head and her whole face went very strange and very, very shuttered. "It's... not human," she said. "It won't work."

"Well, we can't call him Doctor," Jackie complained, annoyed.

"So call him Jason," Rose said. "Means healer. Or call him John, the Doctor sometimes goes by that."

"Call him God," Mickey suggested darkly. "That's who the Doctor thinks he is."

Rose snickered, then started to laugh. Mickey hadn't heard the sound in so long that it took him a moment to realize that it was her real laugh, genuine and like bells. He grinned too, a little proud of himself.

Jackie was not to be thwarted. "We still have to come up with a name for the baby," she reminded Rose, over her sudden levity. She was obviously exhausted, or she might have encouraged her daughter's happiness. Then again, maybe she hadn't realized, as concentrated as she had been on her pregnancy, that this was such a rare miracle these days. Jackie was intent, instead, to make Rose name the baby, her way, Mickey thought, to convince Rose that the baby and the new Tyler family were still her family.

"I know," Rose said, smiling an honest smile for the first time in ages. "Don't call him after the Doctor. Call him after someone else. Like Granddad Prentice or Mickey or someone."

"Anthony?" Pete questioned Jackie, taking the Granddad Prentice suggestion to heart.

"That's perfect," Jackie decided. "Anthony John Tyler. We'll call him Tony." She drifted slowly off to sleep at last, content that she had succeeded in her mission to bind Rose to Tony in this small way.

Pete, who was holding the baby, looked softly at Rose. Mickey knew he loved Rose, had actually loved the idea of her before she even left this world for the first time, even though Rose scared him to death. That was actually how Pete and the Preachers had joined forces in the first place: Pete had hunted them down to question Mickey about Rose. What he'd told the man who could have been her father had made Pete only want Rose for a daughter even more, and in the end it was that that Mickey had used to persuade Pete to jump the Universe Divide one last time, to snatch her from the jaws of death.

"Just make sure she's safe," Mickey had said, "and if she is, come right back and at least we'll know."

"Do you want to hold your brother?" Pete offered, his way of making sure that Rose knew that she was part of his new family as well.

Rose smiled happily, her eyes lighting up and sparkling with true, complete joy. She walked over to look at the baby, laughing softly. "Anthony John Tyler," she murmured. "So pleased to finally meet you." She took one more step.

Somewhere between shifting her weight and moving forward, Rose Tyler disappeared.