The dinner rush had cycled through the shop, leaving only Rose and Jack sitting quietly at the back. Rose leaned back and blew out a hot breath.
"All righ'. Well, first I have to give you some background information. When I got stuck over in the other universe, Mickey, Pete (he's my dad in the alternate universe) an' Jake (you don't know him but he was fantastic) had been fightin' the Cybermen for a while but there wasn't really an organized force."
"When I got there, we got together and formed up our own version of Torchwood. Built it up from the ground with the support of the president, Harriet Jones." Her lips quirked up and, at the mention of the name, Jack cocked an eyebrow but didn't interrupt.
Rose continued, "People were pretty keen on joinin' 'cause the Cybermen had been so bad. We built ourselves an organization, gathered a lot of smart, brave people around us and started to venture out into the stars. It took a few years, but pretty soon we were well-trained, well-equipped an' well-funded. Mickey, Jake an' I were all part of the first field ops team."
She smiled fondly at the memory of the three of them, the Three Musketeers, they had called themselves (cliche, she'd thought but Mickey was set on "classic"). Her mum hadn't liked it, the three of them being in so much danger, and had begged and pleaded with both her and Pete to rethink it but really they were the obvious choice. Already had experience with aliens, able to deal easily with threatening situations and, of course, excellent at running.
And Rose needed something to keep her from thinking about the Doctor.
"Thought it would be a bit like travellin' with the Doctor but it wasn't, not really. Tech wasn't nearly as good an' it was a lot harder, a lot bloodier. Still though, we made a difference. Saved some people, saved the universe a fair few times, had a lot of really close shaves, did a lot of runnin'," There was sadness and pride mixed into her voice, a voice that spoke with a heaviness of knowledge behind its years.
Jack nodded at the thought. His world had become a lot bloodier and more violent since he'd left the Doctor as well. And it explained why Rose now moved with the authority of a soldier. She was one. Or had been.
"We got a call from a planet called Iriganus requesting for us to come and help with some peace talks between two rival clans. We'd built up a pretty good reputation with that sor' of thing. Learned a lot more from the Doctor's gob than I thought," she said, smiling at memories of trying to babble aliens into submission as he had. Sometimes it had even worked.
"It'd been a nasty war, goin' on for years and they had finally reached the point where they couldn't take it anymore. Resources were runnin' out and the body count was too high on both sides. My team went an' Pete came, too."
"It was goin' real well until some idiot group decided that peace wasn' really what they wanted an' even if they did, they didn't appreciate some foreigners comin' in to tell 'em how to do it, anyway. They blew up our ship and charged in, tryin' to assassinate both leaders." She took a deep, steadying breath, steadying herself for the next bit.
"Pete knocked one down and I jumped for the other but I was a bit too late. They'd already fired so I took the bolt meant for him and that was it. It hurt like hell an' I could hear commotion around me, people shoutin' and beatin' on my chest. Pete was yellin' an' Mickey was cryin'. Shots. But I couldn't hold on. It was too much. I died."
Tears filled her eyes as the memory came back, re-living the pain and the noise and seeing Mickey distraught over her body. She pressed a hand over her heart, remembering the burning of the blaster bolt and Jack watched with misty eyes.
"Everything else Mickey told me later. The attack on peaceful arbitrators was enough to bring both sides together, so they stopped the fightin' and gathered up the rebels. Suppose that turned out all right in the end, then."
"They were pretty primitive and didn't have tech capable of gettin' us back, so Mickey and Jake were going to have to scrounge around and fix our ship with bits and bobs. We were stuck there until they could. Well, they were. I was dead. Since we couldn't get home, the Irigani offered to have a traditional memorial service for me, honoring me for 'the sacrifice I made to bring them peace', calling me 'The Valiant Child'," she said, giving the name a weight that Jack didn't understand.
"Pete agreed as long as he could take my body back when Jake and Mickey got the ship fixed. It took about three days to set up the service. According to Mickey it was a big deal...banners, costumes, songs written about me, the whole nine yards. They put me in some sor' of glass box, a bit like a coffin...very Snow White, and put it up front so people could file past and look at me. Bit embarassin' now, to think about it."
"Yes, very Eva Peron," Jack said, laughing.
Rose crinckled her nose at him. "Who?" she asked. Jack smiled at her. Never big on history, his Rosie. He'd had an...encounter with Ms. Peron when he'd been stuck on Earth waiting for the Doctor. He grinned again, wolfishly, more to himself than to her. It never got boring, seducing famous historical figures. He'd have to tell her about the time he met Elton John sometime.
"Anyway, sometime in the middle of the service, the casket started to glow golden and then Mickey said it exploded, right in the middle of a song extolling my virtue or something ridiculous like that. Jake said he reckons I timed it on purpose so no one would have to listen to that song any longer. Once everything cleared, I just sat up, berated Mickey for letting them put me in such a ridiculous dress, asked Pete for some chips and then passed out."
Jack laughed at the picture. "Of course! You wake up from the dead with a massive explosion in the middle of your own memorial service and the first thing you think about is clothes and food," he snorted.
"Well, in case you didn't remember, I always was one for flash," Rose responded, sticking her tongue between her teeth and kicking him lightly under the table. It felt so good to be with him, comfortable and safe. Laughing and feeling joy hadn't been a part of her life for a while and she relished in it now. In her experience it wouldn't last long so she wanted to grab it while she could.
"I couldn't remember much, only light and singin' when I woke up. I was really confused and had a hard time sortin' through Pete an' Jake an' Mickey's thoughts all crowded in on my own. Didn't know what to do with all the noise in there. Eventually Pete gave me a really heavy sedative and bundled me back to Earth as soon as Mickey and Jake fixed the ship. He swore the Irigani to secrecy and left the part about me dyin' outta all the Torchwood reports."
"He and the team told everybody that I'd been hurt really bad and needed to recover at home with private doctors and special care due to the "alien nature" of my injuries. Our team's doctor, Martha Jones, couldn't find anything wrong with me 'cept in my head. Body-wise I was fine, great even...what?" Rose stopped because Jack sputtered over the name.
"Did you say Martha Jones?" he asked, shocked.
"Yeah. She was our medical officer. Great gal, very pretty. One of my best friends, actually. Married Mickey later," Rose responded. At the last statement, Jack actually spit his water out on the table and Rose looked at him, curiosity spilling out. "Why, is it important?"
"No, not important," Jack responded weakly, wiping water from his mouth and the table. Well, alternate universe after all. When the Doctor had filled him in on the other universe's Cybermen, he told Jack that there had been two Mickeys. He wondered idly if there was another version of him there. That would be fun. "Keep going with your story."
Rose didn't believe the "not important" part but she was eager to get this story time over with. It was hard to go back and re-live parts of her life, especially when she had to talk about people that were now long gone. 'But humans decay; you wither and you die'...the words echoed through her memory, distant and haunting. Especially people who were gone because of her.
"That's when Pete got me off-world for trainin', telling people that I was recovering from my injuries in a Physical Therapy Spa in Quadrent 4. When I got back, I was even more useful, although we had to be very careful with the "improvements" since people were pretty jumpy about anything alien on Earth."
"It wasn't too hard to keep people from figuring out the weird stuff since Mickey, Jake and I ranked so high and Pete was director. And we were daft enough to think that since we were doing a good things, saving people an' stuff that it was enough."
"Then we figured out that I had stopped aging. Couldn't keep people from noticing that, so Pete had to send me off-world again. Officially, I was listed as an ambassador and I had my own ship. It was excitin' at first. Able to go anywhere I wanted in the universe, make my own decisions. I travelled places, did missions, helped people," she stretched out, putting her feet up on the booth across from her, next to Jack's legs.
"I kept as busy as I could but I was lonely. I missed Mickey and Pete and Mum and my little brother...I missed him growing up because I could barely ever go back. Too risky. There were some people at Torchwood gettin' nosy. I saw 'em occasionally...snuck back to Earth, met Mickey in crummy space bars, shopped on TalaniaI VI with Martha, but they all had lives of their own that went on without me and all I could do was watch."
Her eyes were distant now, far-away and filled with a pain Jack could almost understand. He'd had years of experience now, watching people he met come and go, live and die. And now that he had surrounded himself with people he really cared about, a surrogate family that he would have to watch pass by eventually, he felt her pain.
He also understood Rose. Rose felt deeper than he did, deeper than anyone else he had ever known. She had always been so compassionate, so full of love even for people they had met in passing on nameless planets thousands of years separated from her own time, fighting for them as fiercely as she fought for herself, rejoicing when they rejoiced, crying for them and with them when they mourned.
It was one of the things Jack loved most about her and one of the things ol' big ears had once shared with Jack had brought him back from the darkness of the Time War. These people had been her family, her everything. Everything except the Doctor, who he understood she thought she had lost to another kind of permanence.
"Tony's daughter didn't even recognize me at her fifth birthday party," she said quietly.
"I started to get more reckless, taking dangerous missions, not caring what happened to me on them. My body would heal itself anyway so what was a little extra pain? I managed not to die again but I got captured a lot. Getting away became a sort of catharsis for me, a challenge, somethin' to remind me I was alive." The words came out as if they were a calm confession, merely an assessment of a life gone past, but there was a fine line of bitterness underneath it all. Bitterness and pain and guilt.
"Only...once I couldn't get away. It was a bad situation to start with...lots of stuff went wrong and I lost Pete. But then it got worse. So much worse," her voice had grown so quiet that Jack struggled to hear her and the deep pain shining through made him hurt, too. It was clear to him that he wasn't going to get the full story now and would have to piece together what she offered him. Maybe it would help him understand her fear of Torchwood. "I was so angry at the time. I thought I didn't have anything to lose. But I was wrong. Terribly wrong. I killed him, Jack." Dark, fathomless orbs of brown regarded him with a terrifying depth.
Jack hadn't even realized that he had crossed the distance between them as he moved to sit beside her on her bench. "Killed who, Rose? What do you mean?" he asked quieter still.
She looked away from him, staring straight ahead into nothing. He deserved the whole story but she couldn't live it all again now.
"Mickey. I killed Mickey. Torchwood mounted a rescue and he demanded to come along. He'd been out of the field for years but he came along anyway. He didn't make it back. He died to save me. To save me from my own stupidity. Stupid, arrogant, useless ape that I am, I couldn't get away and he paid the price. He was a year from retirement. Two kids in college. He'd been leading a fantastic life and he threw it away for me."
Her voice was hollow, her tears long ago spent. She barely noticed when Jack moved to hold her awkwardly on the padded bench of the booth. She didn't return his embrace, just merely let him hold her, trying to offer her comfort where none was deserved.
Mickey's death and Pete's, not to mention the ones she had caused even more directly, always out of necessity but by her hand nonetheless, had caused her to think that perhaps she deserved what Torchwood had done next and in the subsequent years of hell.
Jack simply held her against his chest, her body rigid and unforgiving in his arms. He didn't know how long they sat there in the booth, chips wrappers long forgotten in cares long beyond this universe.
She was broken. His precious Rosie was broken and she needed more than just him. She needed the Doctor. But for now, he would have to do.
