Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, or Torchwood

Last time…

But then, the Doctor looked up… and saw the logo on the window of the room upstairs…

"Torchwood," he practically growled under his breath.

Chapter 4

"So, Jack," the Doctor began in a dangerously calm voice, "You work for Torchwood now."

It wasn't so much a question, as a statement. But still, Jack felt a compulsion to confirm what he was beginning to suspect were the Doctor's fears. "Yeah, I do. What's that gotta do with anything?"

"I been to Torchwood before you know," the Doctor said, in a voice that although it sounded light-hearted, had a sinister undertone to it that none of the Torchwood team liked the sound of. "The Torchwood in London. And it seems that this institution has the funniest attitude when it comes to the rights of aliens, did you know that? Well… I say funny, but really I mean non-existent. To Torchwood, aliens merely exist for the purpose of making 'the British empire great'. I believe their motto was—'If it's alien, it's ours'." The Doctor practically spat this last part.

By now, Jack had a sickening, sinking feeling in his stomach. He'd hoped that should the Doctor ever turn up in Cardiff, that he'd approve of what he was doing at Torchwood. And that the Doctor would be impressed that Jack was still trying to help save the world, even without him. But the twisted leader of Torchwood London, Yvonne Hartman, had ruined all that… with their stupid motto, and no doubt with their treatment of the Doctor, who in their eyes was an alien and therefore the enemy. Jack had briefly spoken over the phone with staff at Torchwood London before, and had been thoroughly pissed off by their attitudes. How could he convince the Doctor that things were different here in Cardiff?

"You know about the battle of Canary Wharf, don't you?" the Doctor continued, his light-hearted manner completely gone. "If it hadn't been for BLOODY TORCHWOOD, THEN NONE OF THAT WOULD'VE HAPPENED! THE CYBERMEN WOULDN'T HAVE INVADED, THOUSANDS WOULDN'T HAVE DIED, TWO WHOLE UNIVERSES WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ENDANGERED, AND ROSE WOULD STILL BE HERE!"

As soon as he mentioned Rose, the Doctor stopped yelling. The look of rage on his face disappeared, and was replaced by pain, grief, and something that looked a lot like hopelessness.

So that was it, Jack realised. That was why the Doctor hated Torchwood so much, they'd taken Rose away from him. But how? Surely Rose couldn't be… She had to be ok!

However, seeing the Doctor's entirely defeated demeanour at that moment, Jack wasn't willingly to claim that it couldn't be true, and that there was no possibility that Rose was dead.

"Doctor?" he asked insistently, "Where's Rose?"

But the Doctor didn't answer. He glanced around at Gwen, Owen, Toshiko and Ianto, who were all listening to their conversation. Then he turned back to Jack. "Is there anywhere else we could talk about this?"

Nodding, Jack led the way to his office, the Doctor following him. Inside, Jack sat down. But the Doctor wandered around for a minute, looking at the things in the office. Jack knew that the Time Lord had noticed the beginnings of a TARDIS growing on his desk, and knew what it was,but uncharacteristically, the Doctor said nothing about it.

"Doctor. Tell me," Jack prompted, "Tell me what happened to Rose."

The Doctor spoke slowly, "We were at Torchwood London. At the battle of Canary Wharf. The Daleks and the Cybermen were taking over everywhere. It would've been the end of the world, the end of the human race, but there was one thing that I could do…"

Here, the Doctor took a deep breath, and sounding much more like himself, and speaking at his normal pace, he continued, "You see, there are millions of other worlds, Jack. Parallel worlds, all stacked up one against the other. But in between, there's the void, and anything that travels through the void gets covered in what I call, 'void stuff'. It's a kind of radiation —harmless— but it's there. And you see, the Daleks and the Cybermen had all come through the void, so they were covered with the stuff. So in order to save this world yet again, I opened the rift in reverse, and it sucked them all in."

"Ok, but what—"

"But, all the people from the other world, and me, Mickey and Rose. We'd all be through the void too. So, before I opened the rift, they all went back to the other world. That way, when I opened the rift on this side, they'd all be safe on that side. But Rose…"

"What, Doctor?" Jack asked, needing to know what had happened.

"Rose wouldn't leave me," the Doctor explained, "She had the opportunity to live in the other world with her Mum, her Dad and Mickey-the-idiot. But she said that she'd never leave me, and that she was staying…But in the end, it didn't matter what either of us wanted."

The Doctor looked up at Jack, "We thought that it was going to be ok. We opened the void, and we had these things that cancelled our mass, so that we could hang on and not be sucked in ourselves. The Cybermen and Daleks were all being pulled screaming back into the void. But then… the void began to close too soon. There were still thousands of Daleks and Cybermen on this side. And Rose wasn't about to let that happen. You know how she was."

With his last question to Jack, the Doctor flashed a grin at him, but it wasn't a grin of joy. A tear made it's way down the Doctor's face, "She let go, and reopened the void. But she couldn't hang on to the lever… She was sucked towards the void, and for a second… I thought that she was going to die, Jack. And there was nothing that I could've done. She would've been pulled straight into hell, but just in time, Pete took her back to their world with these teleport things they'd created… and then the void closed for the final time."

"She'd not dead?" Jack asked, hardly daring to hope that it was true.

"No," the Doctor replied, a ghost of a grin on his face, "She's alive. She's so very alive. And she's safe, and with her family. But to us, she'd dead. There's no way that we can reach her now that the breach between our worlds has been sealed. There was one last crack open for just long enough for me to say goodbye to her… but now, that's it."

"So… we're never going to see her again?" Jack asked desperately, his voice breaking, and tears welling up in his eyes.

"We can't," the Doctor replied, clearly just as broken by losing Rose, but better at not showing it, "Trying to travel through the void would cause both worlds to collapse," he explained.

"So?" Jack countered.

A small sad smile crossed the Doctor's lips, "That's exactly what she said."

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A/N: another really short chapter I'm afraid.. but I hope you all liked it anyway!

I'm afraid I couldn't remember what those things were called that the Doctor and Rose used in Doomsday (those black things handle thingies that cancel mass), so pretend that the Doctor knew and just couldn't be bothered to say it or something…

Anyway, there's going to be at least one more chapter for this story, because Jack still hasn't mentioned his immortality! I was going to put it in this chapter, but in the end, I wanted this chapter to be all about Rose. Phew! So much for this just being a one-shot!

Pretty please review and tell me what you thought, and anything that you want to happen, or be said in the next chapter!