Chapter 7
Rose found herself sitting on a couch while Jack went to grab food, though Rose wasn't sure what could pass for food around this Torchwood. Cautiously, she reached forward to grab a manila folder sitting on the table in front of her. Inside was a random mission report, filed by Tosh, from about two weeks ago. All it was missing was Jack's signature before it could be properly filed.
Putting the folder back, Rose sighed. She had missed this and hadn't even known to admit it to herself. The longing was bad enough that paperwork was making her nostalgic for her old job. But was it the job she was actually longing for? Or was it just the feeling of control and comfort she had while running Torchwood Three? Not that Rose was a controlling person—she tried her hardest to be fair to her team while maintaining control—it was just that Torchwood had been her last stable place to survive without constantly looking over her shoulder. She sighed again.
"You sure you're actually in this universe, Rosie?" Jack reentered the room, somehow managing to carry two plates of reheated (pizza stacked on top of each other) in his left hand and two cups of coffee in his right hand.
"Enough in this universe to know your juggling act shouldn't be possible. Did you learn telekinesis since the last time I've seen you?" Rose responded cheekily, wiping all traces of introspection off her face.
"I've always been telekinetic, I just haven't wanted to show off," Jack responded easily, taking a seat next to her after placing a plate and a mug before her.
"Now that's a lie if I've ever heard one. You'd never pass up an opportunity to show off, Captain."
The smirk on his face threw her memory back through their timeline together: Slitheen and chips and Daleks. Gas mask children and dancing to Glenn Miller next to Big Ben. But harsh reality stole her and brought her back to the present, to the dank basement feel of Torchwood. She just wanted to have one day where they could pretend nothing had ever separated them; they could spend the day being cheeky and slightly flirtatious, waiting until the Doctor walked into the room with a raised eyebrow before they would even considering acting their age. But it wasn't possible to recreate the past. As they looked at each other, they both knew it wasn't possible to recreate the past, and the smiles sliding from their faces.
Jack turned away from her, slightly hunching his shoulders forward. "I meant what I told the team earlier. I expect trouble from the rift starting soon. This will be the only chance we get to really talk for a while. I don't know what will happen if the rift starts to splinter, but it won't be good. So, Rose, any true catching up will need to be done within the next few hours."
"I don't know where to start."
"Me either." Jack sighed and leaned back, putting one arm behind his head and the other around Rose, pulling her closer. "Just tell me a fact. A random fact about your life since you last saw me, and I'll do the same. We'll go back and forth."
"My Torchwood was cleaner than yours. Though Torchwood Three in my universe hasn't been operational in years."
"I had to hide in this base when we were visiting Cardiff with the Doctor. Couldn't risk running into myself."
"I went to the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics after making sure the entire audience wasn't absorbed by a lonely alien."
"I went back to your Estate a few times in the 90s. Never said hello, just wanted to know you were safe, somewhere."
"I have a little brother in that parallel universe. Name's Tony."
"I can't die."
"I haven't aged since the last time I saw you."
"Any idea what caused that?" Jack gently prodded Rose in the shoulder. Rose knew this was coming, the serious part of the conversation they logically couldn't avoid. She turned to look at Jack, thinking his last statement over, thinking about what it meant.
"You say that like you know first-hand."
"Mainly because I've experienced it first-hand. More than a few times, Rosie. I've been through both World Wars now. When I die, there's nothing for a bit, and then I come back, fresh as I was beforehand. There isn't any recovery time after that."
Rose's eyes started filling up with tears at the way he said that, like dying was nothing to him. "Oh, Jack, I'm so sorry. I am so, so sorry."
Jack gave a little half snort. "It isn't your fault, Rose. You don't need to worry about me; I can handle myself."
Leaning forward, elbows on her knees, Rose shuddered slightly, ignoring the fact that her tear ducts had chosen this moment to start working again. She thought she had cried all the tears she had been allotted for life; even on the days that seemed like too much, Rose hadn't cried since the day she had been forced to leave her family, all those years ago. She refused to cry now.
"Don't you see, Jack? It is my fault. I did this to you!"
Jack was startled, wondering what she meant. When he died on the Gamestation, Rose Tyler was safe in London, hundreds of thousands of years away. The Doctor had said so himself—she was gone, she was safe. She wasn't involved.
He leaned forward, placing a hand on her shoulder, trying to coax her into explaining her thoughts. "Rosie, you couldn't have done that. You weren't there; the Doctor said he sent you home. You can't blame yourself just because you couldn't stop what happened."
Rose took a deep breath, though it sounded more than a bit shaky. "Yeah, he did send me away, but I had the TARDIS. And there was no way I was going to sit there, eating chips with Mickey and Mum, while you and the Doctor burned with Daleks. So I…I came up with a plan." She leaned back then, turning her face towards Jack and letting him put his arm around her shoulder again. Rose could feel tears right behind her eyes, waiting to flood down her cheeks, so she talked faster. She told Jack about seeing "Bad Wolf" written all over, how she knew she could get back to the Doctor, how she needed to get back to the Doctor. She reminded Jack of the incident they had with Margaret right here in Cardiff and about the heart of the TARDIS. She explained how Mickey's car just wasn't enough power to break open the panel, no matter how hard they tried. Finally, she got to the big yellow truck that would save the universe and how the TARDIS console opened, just enough for Rose to see into the heart…
"And that's all I remember. There's this singing filling that spot in my memory… Like something is intentionally covering up what I did. Who knows, maybe it's my own brain covering up the memories. They could be too horrid for me to want to think about."
Surprised wasn't the word Jack would use to describe how he was feeling. No, he had always known Rose would be heartbreakingly loyal to anyone she loved. But to abandon her mother and Mickey, knowing there was a good chance she wouldn't survive an encounter with the Daleks? It only proved to Jack how much the Doctor and Rose loved each other, even if they couldn't admit it to anyone. Jack was lost in that thought before it hit him: Rose had taken the vortex into her head. That had been enough power to reverse a Slitheen back into an egg and, yet, here Rose was, perfectly fine!
Jack grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. "How did you survive? Rose, you saw what the vortex did to that Slitheen! Did you even stop to consider the damage that would do to you if you tried to control it?"
The first tear escaped Rose's eye then, before she angrily swept it away. When she spoke again, she spoke quietly. "I don't think it hurt me. I think it did the opposite."
With that, Jack understood. He dropped his hold on her and fell back onto the arm of the sofa, looking at her, a deep look on concentration on his face. The time vortex: the essential backbone to everything in the universe, carrying the weight of time. Surely, if someone were to access it, practically become a part of the vortex, then that gift of time could be theirs to give. After all, that's exactly what Jack Harkness—and Rose Tyler, if what she said about not aging was correct—had. They had time, almost an unlimited amount. Jack remembered the Doctor casually remarking that life was nature's way of keeping meat fresh, how it was nothing for a nanogene to restore…
If life was nothing for a nanogene to restore, then there would be nothing in the universe stopping the vortex from bringing a man back to life. Especially if someone was controlling it, someone who loved the person who had died, someone who didn't want that person dead.
Rose couldn't stand the look on Jack's face. He hadn't said anything since her last comment, but she could tell he knew what she was implying. Rose Tyler was the one who had cursed him to never die. She was the one had forced him to die over and over again—to be shot or stabbed or electrocuted, who knows—for over one hundred years. Was there anyway Jack could not hate her for this?
"Say something, please," she pleaded with him when his blank face had become too much to look at.
"You think you did this to me, don't you?" His voice wasn't entirely steady, not like he was going to cry, but like he hadn't quite grasped the situation yet. Or maybe, Rose thought, he was just suppressing anger. This was just the calm before the storm. More tears gathered as Rose was forced to look at one of her best friends and admit that she had done this. Yes, Rose though as she nodded, I ruined your life. It was me, right here. I might be worth fighting for, but I'm not worth this much, am I, Jack?
But then Rose was suddenly wrapped in Jack's large arms; he hugged her as if she had given him a great blessing, not a great curse. He was murmuring comforting words to her against her head, assuring her that he wouldn't blame her for any of it, and can't she see how she hadn't damned him? Rose sat in the comfort of his arms for a minute, but soon it became too suffocating. Not only were Jack's arms beginning to cut off her ability to breathe easily, but his words were choking out her ability to think. His promises drowned her in her thoughts and the protective dam she had built was showing signs of stress. His words cut off her breath, as the emotions surged past the cracks in her mental barrier, flooding her subconscious.
Rose pushed Jack's arm off of her and pushed herself off the couch. Jack's arms were still up in the air, holding a Rose who wasn't there anymore, when she started pacing the room. Her steps were pounding; the pattern she was making didn't seem to follow any certain path. Jack was almost positive that Rose wasn't aware which direction she was moving, only aware that she needed to blow off steam. The emotion on her face seemed a strange mixture of hurt and anger and guilt. He watched her pace for several minutes, letting her gather her thoughts, before she turned to him and opened her mouth. It looked like she was trying to force words out, but just couldn't quite make them come.
"Rosie? It's okay, whatever it is. Just say what you need to."
"How can you forgive me so easily? Jack, you just finished telling me that you've died so many times. I'm the reason you wake up afterwards. I'm the reason that when all your comrades were falling down beside you in the trenches, you couldn't join them. I'm the one who has made your life so terribly unfair because you can't let yourself fall too hard for any one person, because they're so extremely fragile and you're not."
Jack sighed, unsure of where he should start his answer. Because she was spot on with those descriptions, about how much it had hurt over the years to lose everyone he had ever cared for. But to be mad at her? Jack couldn't even fathom it.
"Rose, I couldn't be mad at you. Don't you see? You don't remember doing this to me. You don't remember the vortex inside your head… That would mean that everything you did was on instinct. You saw me or you felt me dead, somehow, when you got to that Gamestation and you knew you didn't want me dead. Rose, you brought me back out of love, not out of malice or a desire for me to live forever. So my question is: why in the world would you still feel guilty about this?"
Rose looked at him again, looking guilty, her eyes aged beyond the rest of her face. "Oh, Jack, making you immortal isn't the only thing I did."
Jack stood, joining her in the middle of the room. "Rose, from what I can understand, you must have saved the day, because when I woke up all the Daleks were dead and the TARDIS was leaving. What else could you possibly be feeling guilty for?"
Watery eyes and a watery voice answered him. "Oh, Jack… Then I killed the Doctor."
AN: Thank you all for reviewing, following, or even just reading! The next chapter we finally see the Doctor again and all my non-Torchwood readers will again be familiar with the plot lines :) Please take a second to review... Reviews feed my muse! :)
