Chapter 7: In which we come full circle and all loose ends are tied up.
- - -
Mickey, it seemed, was none the worse for the wear.
He had awoken after several hours of sleep, still groggy, with an appetite that overrode all other concerns at the moment regarding their situation. He sat in the living room of the flat in the corner chair, wolfing down slice after slice of cold pizza, silently regarding Jackson and Miranda.
Miranda, on the other hand, had not been so lucky. Though she'd hosted the creature for a fraction of the time that Mickey had, she had been profoundly affected by the experience. The joie de vivre, so apparent about her before, was gone. She had awoken looking numb, deadened, with a haunted look in her eyes; eyes that darted about, refusing to meet anyone else's.
Rose remembered Mickey's words earlier. "Something about her was just never quite right.. It's like even when she was there, there was something missing…she'd hold me or hug me and she was cold. Hollow. Never felt like it was complete. Never really satisfying."
This was the woman Mickey had spoken of, Rose realised. One glance over at Mickey's face as he watched Jackson help Miranda to her feet, and she could tell that he was thinking the same thing.
Jackson fixed her some tea and sat her down at the kitchen table as the Doctor emerged from the bedroom, having made some last-minute adjustments on Jackson's device that would now contain the creature for the foreseeable future.
"We've got 100 percent containment," the Doctor informed him. "I've made some adjustments to boost the strength of the restraint regulator. The creature won't be able to get away, so long as the resonance ratio stays above 63 percent. Your power supply is up and running, and you've got a battery backup that should last you a good week or so in case of emergency."
"Thanks," Jackson acknowledged.
The Doctor glanced round the flat. "What will you do now?" he asked.
"Stay," Jackson replied, his tone one of peaceful resignation. "Take care of her." He indicated Miranda, who was sipping her tea, looking off into the distance with a vacant expression. "I've got nothing to go home to, and she'll need someone to look after her."
"You know, she's not likely to recover," cautioned the Doctor. "She'll never be the same again."
"It's my fault," explained Jackson. "This never would've happened to her if it hadn't been for me." Before the Doctor could object, he added, "and I love her. I'm not leaving her."
The Doctor accepted this with a nod. "Well, then. Sounds like you've found your calling." He scratched his neck thoughtfully. "More than most of us can say. Best of luck to you."
Rose and Mickey arose from their seats and joined the Doctor by the door. Rose threw her arms around Jackson in farewell, as she whispered into his ear, "I'm sorry."
Jackson acknowledged her words with a nod and turned to shake Mickey's hand.
Mickey was looking back at him with a pained, incredibly intent expression, like he was simultaneously trying to absorb every detail about Jackson - his father, Rose reminded herself, whilst fighting the urge to launch into a litany of emotional angst.
"Come on, Mickey," Rose tugged at his arm, gently urging him along as she and the Doctor headed out the door.
Mickey started to follow, but paused for a moment and turned back to Jackson. "Lock the attic," he said cryptically.
And with that, he turned back and followed Rose and the Doctor out the door.
- - -
"What I don't understand," Rose said a short time later as the three of them approached the TARDIS, "is how Jackson knew that the creature would affect Miranda like that."
"Maybe he didn't," the Doctor speculated with a shrug. "He might've just been trying to protect her. He'd already seen his wife and child killed by that thing, he probably just couldn't stand the thought of losing someone else."
"He knew," Mickey interjected bluntly.
Rose and the Doctor both looked at him questioningly.
"He knew, or he had a good idea, anyway," Mickey elaborated.
"How?" Rose asked.
"She's pregnant," he revealed, as they reached the blue box and the door squeaked open.
Rose gaped at Mickey in surprise as they entered the TARDIS and he headed down the hallway towards his room. She threw a glance over at the Doctor, who had donned his glasses and was starting to examine the mess of wires that were still on the console room floor.
He nodded in the direction Mickey had gone. "That'd explain it, yeah," he said as he descended down into his alcove and started work.
Rose threw a glance down at him where he sat hunched over as he worked, his back turned towards her. She knew that he was avoiding her, would continue to avoid discussing the day's events, and she knew that she would have to force the issue with him.
But first, she had Mickey to deal with. She passed through the console room, headed down the corridor towards Mickey's room andrapped gently onthe door. "Mickey? It's me," she said.
"Come in," came his voice from inside.
She entered and found him sitting on the floor next to the bed, staring at a picture in his hands. Rose sat down beside him, and he handed her the picture. It showed Jackson, Miranda and a youngster, presumably Mickey who appeared to be about two years old, smiling happily round a table laden with birthday cake, ice cream and candles.
"February 9th," she reflected. "Your birthday. That'd mean she's two months gone already. I hadn't worked it out till now."
Mickey was closely examining his shoelace and did not reply.
"She was beautiful," she commented. "And Jackson really loved her." She sighed. "Mickey, I know how hard this must be for you, but at least now you know it wasn't your fault she left. Your Gran was telling the truth – she really couldn't cope."
"But it was my fault," he said miserably. "I'm the one who insisted on going to see her. If we hadn't meddled – "
Rose cut him off. "If we hadn't meddled, I wouldn't have stopped Jackson from catching the creature back there in the basement. If this is anyone's fault, it's mine."
"You were just trying to help," Mickey brushed her off. "You were trying to save someone's life. Me, I was just in it for myself."
"You had questions," Rose justified. "It's perfectly normal. And between you and me, I've caused a mess or two myself travelling back in time to see family. It's dangerous, that's all there is to it."
They sat in silence, Rose grasping his hand tightly as he continued to look everywhere but directly at her.
"Mickey, you can't do this to yourself," Rose insisted.
"You don't know the whole story," he said, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. "It gets worse."
"Mickey, no," Rose objected.
"It does, though," he insisted. "It's not just Mum. It's my fault he left as well."
"How could it be – " Rose protested.
"It was the trap," he explained. "I'd forgotten about it till now. He used to keep it in the attic. I wasn't allowed to go up there on my own, but one morning, I must've been about three, I woke up before them and I went exploring and I found it up there. So many lights and switches, so fascinating when you're a little kid…" He choked back a sob and closed his eyes, sitting motionless as he tried to regain composure enough to continue. "Dad was nearly senseless when he found me, I never understood what the big deal was, all I knew, next day he was gone."
"Oh, God Mickey," Rose consoled.
"I must've released the creature," Mickey elaborated. "He must've gone off hunting it again." He paused, letting it sink in. "So you see, my fault. All of it."
"Mickey, you were only a kid," Rose offered.
"Three years old, and I touch one wrong thing and my Dad leaves home," he said bitterly. "I suppose that's why I ended up so useless now, always afraid of doing the wrong thing again."
"Mickey, you are not useless," Rose insisted.
"I am, though," he replied, turning to look at her. "What am I supposed to do now?" he asked helplessly.
"You forgive yourself," Rose instructed. "And you go on, and you try to make a difference. You find something worth fighting for, and you keep fighting."
Mickey buried his head in his arms and did not reply. Rose, seeing that he needed to be alone, stood up and with an affectionate pat on his shoulder, she left the room.
- - -
She emerged a few minutes later into the console room to find the Doctor sitting on the floor, still surrounded by heaps of wires. He met her gaze for a moment with a perfunctory grin, then plunged back down into the mess in front of him that he was sorting through; next to the biggest group of wires, there were five smaller piles, each colour-coded.
"Not quite ready to make the grand exit we'd have liked, I'm afraid," he indicated. "Got a bit diverted when I picked up on the radiation from that trap of Jackson's, never got round to finishing these repairs. I'd guess two, maybe three more hours to finish it all up. The phase stabiliser is all fixed, but the connection array wasn't sequenced properly so we've got some bad wires and everything needs to be re-scanned and sorted properly."
She noticed that he was speaking even faster than usual.
"Four hours, tops," he continued, rummaging through a bin of parts. "I really should double check everything before we take off, wouldn't want another mishap like before – sorry about that, by the way. Don't know how I could've made such an error. Anyway, should be enough time for you and Mickey to pop out to the chip shop if you want. Go do some shopping. Or the arcade. Or the cinema if you like."
He stopped talking as he removed a device from the bin, and Rose knew full well that his silence was involuntary, due only to the fact that his work required his full attention. But she was determined to seize the opportunity, however it came. "Doctor, I wanted to…" she began.
He looked up at her expectantly and the words slipped away. She took a deep breath and tried another tactic. "Where we off to next, then?" she asked.
He looked down again and pointed the sonic screwdriver at a device, examining it intently as he spoke. "Anywhere you like," he replied, sounding just a little too casual. He picked up a green wire and absentmindedly placed it in the pile of white ones, all the while not looking her way.
He looked so old, she thought. Even from her vantage point aside of him, hunched over as he was, Rose could see the gravity of his words weighing him down with the unspoken question that was buried amidst them. He sat there staring at the floor, completely still, awaiting her response.
She remembered his words earlier. "She guides my way through the dark labyrinth," he had said. "…the song will end one day, long, long before I'm ready, and so I push her away and put up barriers…"
And now she understood. Sarah Jane, Mickey, Reinette, everything he'd said and done that she'd been selfish enough to take personally. It wasn't because he didn't care; it was because he cared too much. He'd been steeling himself against the Curse of the Time Lords; the knowledge that one day she'd be gone and he'd be on his own again. Bracing himself for the impact, as it were. Pushing her away sooner rather than later.
Or trying to, at any rate. Not very successfully, it would seem.
"The voice led him to safety."
And so she resolved, if they couldn't have forever, that she could at least do this for him in the time that they had. She could stay with him and not give up on him, and hope that when she's done, he – and the universe – would be in a better state than how she found them.
Really, that's all anyone can do, she thought.
She came over to the spot where he was seated, knelt down next to him and grabbed him by the wrist as he looked up in surprise. "What was that you said before about low-gravity rock climbing?" she asked him, fixing his gaze determinedly.
He was silent for a moment as he processed her response, absorbing her declaration that she'd no intention of leaving, and then she glimpsed the relief in his eyes as if something tightly wound within him had released. Neither of them moved but there was a perceptible shift, as if a window had opened letting in a breeze of fresh sea air.
And then the corners of his mouth turned upwards, and he was back, all charm and playful grins.
"Ballybran," he reminded her, springing to his feet and bounding across the room as he lifted up a section of flooring, revealing a portion of the TARDIS' inner workings. "Simply incredible cliffs fifteen-thousand feet high, and with the low gravity you'll scale them like a spider on a wall. Fantastic views too, particularly if we can catch it on a double-sunset day." He reached under the floor panel and flicked a switch. "Mind you, the view in the Northern province suffered greatly after the Governor erected that dreadful, positively enormous statue of himself, I swear the man's head looked just like aradish. Still, the Western province is mostly unspoilt."
His eyes twinkled as he came back over to the alcove. Rose watched him, bemused, as he selected a green wire and a brown one from the pile, examined them carefully with some sort of scanning device, and proceeded to sprawl out on the floor on his stomach and reach under a floor panel in an effort to place the wires in their proper connections.
Rose's mind was momentarily occupied with trying to envision an alien with the head of a radish, when the Doctor's voice brought her back to reality. "So not going home, then?" he asked, his voice quiet and intense and a little breathless.
She made her way over and crouched down head-to-head with him. "Never," she confirmed.
He looked up with a smile that was radiant and playful and warmed her like a favourite old quilt on a cold day.
She ran her tongue over her teeth with a teasing grin and added, "'Cept to visit my Mum every so often, of course."
He rolled his eyes and bent back over his work. "Jackie Tyler, the bane of my existence," he snorted, as he tried to balance a mass of wires and gadgets in his grasp as he worked. She wasn't surprised when, with a loud yelp, he poked himself in the eye.
"Can I help?" she offered.
"Good idea," he agreed, pushing himself up into a sitting position. He grabbed a few items, and the next thing she knew, he was sitting behind her on the floor, straddling her and pushing a wire into one of her hands, a device that looked much like a Gameboy into the other. "Here," he instructed. "You scan the wires and sort them so I can connect them in the proper sequence." He showed her how to use the scanner, guiding her hands at every step.
The device clicked and Rose read the output out loud, "Five-nine-three-stroke-A-seven."
"Good," he nodded. "Now try the next one, and make sure you sort them by K-factor first, then A-factor."
He let go of her hands, allowing her to work on her own, whilst continuing to watch over her shoulder. She felt his hair tickle against her ear, and then felt a hand on her shoulder. She sighed contentedly and continued to work through the rather daunting pile of wires.
She noticed that he wasn't exactly hurrying to get back to his part of the work; he seemed content to sit and watch her toil away.
"So how's Mr. Mickey, then?" he asked.
Rose could feel his fingers as they started to move about the exposed skin of her neck, gently tracing patterns up and down. "He's had better days," she replied.
He sighed and fingered her hair thoughtfully as he spoke. "I was worried he'd – "
"It wasn't your fault," Rose interjected.
His hand resting on her arm tightened, and the other in her hair stilled. "You were singing quite a different tune earlier," the Doctor reminded her darkly.
"I was wrong," she stated definitively. "If it weren't for you he would've been killed."
"Maybe." He resumed his caresses, moving down to her arm, sending goose bumps along its length. "Still, you were right about some things," he added.
He spoke thoughtfully, his chin resting on her shoulder, as Rose paused, waiting for him to continue, her thoughts racing, speculating as to what this was about.
"I shouldn't have – " he trailed off and for a moment, he was somewhere else altogether.
And then Rose knew what he meant to say, and knew that this was the closest to an apology that she was going to get. And it didn't matter. It was enough. It was more than enough.
She grinned and finished his sentence teasingly, "You shouldn't have eaten that garlic bread, is what you shouldn't have done. Your breath is positively frightful."
Despite her words, he made no attempt to move away. "Ah, but for garlic, it's worth it," he smiled back. "Not many things in this universe as useful as garlic; it's good for the hearts, it's delicious, and it repels vampires. And mosquitoes. And, if I'm very, very lucky, perhaps your mother as well."
Rose chuckled and they both fell silent as she savoured the warmth of him encircling her, his touch on her neck, lightly tracing lines up into her hair and down again, the sound of his breathing, so close against her ear, as she continued to work away at sorting and ordering the wires.
"So you need to connect them up, yeah?" she asked finally, indicating the work that he wasn't doing, not certain she wanted to be reminding him of it.
"Mmm-hm," he confirmed, making no move to get up and start on it.
"Doctor,?" she repeated more pointedly this time. "Don't they need to be re-attached?"
"Yeah," he replied dreamily, a finger tracing the outer edge of her ear. "It's nicer here, though."
Rose reached over to touch his hand resting on her arm. She gently stroked it, feeling the peaks and valleys of his knuckles and his veins pulsing away under the skin. She leant her head back on his shoulder, pressing more of her weight against his chest, which she could feel rising and falling steadily with each breath. "I'm rather forced to agree," she teased gently.
Suddenlythe spell was broken with a crash that came from across the room. They jumped apart as they both saw Mickey approaching. He bent over to pick up the assortment of tools that he'd knocked on the floor and then wandered over towards the two of them.
"So we off then?" he asked, looking round the console room in a daze, as if he'd just woken up from a fitful sleep.
The Doctor had sprawled himself out again out on the floor and was reaching under the panels to work on the re-connections. "Not for a couple hours," he replied through grunts as he stretched.
"Can I help?" he offered.
Rose, sensing his need for a distraction, indicated the mass of wires she was working her way through. "You can help me sort through these," she said, handing him one.
"K-factor first, then A-factor," the Doctor reminded them emphatically. "Make sure. Miss one and I'll have to re-sequence them all over again. The stabiliser array's got to be spot-on, or there's no telling what might happen when we reach the Vortex."
Mickey held up a bundle of green colour-coded wires. "What're the green ones for, then?" he asked, suddenly interested in the inner workings of the TARDIS.
"Green. Frequency trace," replied the Doctor. "Lower hull integrity. Mix up those connections and you'll have some serious issues with hull breaches on the lower decks." He nodded toward Rose. "Much like what happened on Mersaia."
Rose burst out laughing and Mickey looked inquisitively between the two of them "What happened there, then?" he asked.
Rose spoke between giggles. "The Doctor's entire stash of Jelly Babies got dumped as we landed on the planet," she explained. "Right on top of the parade going on in the city centre."
The Doctor looked sheepish, which only piqued Mickey's curiosity further. "So what?" he asked, prodding her to continue.
"Sugar is a narcotic on Mersaia," the Doctor offered as he rose to a sitting position on the floor and reached for another group of wires.
Now Mickey was beginning to get the joke, and chuckled along. "What did they do to you?" he asked.
"You're looking at a convicted drug dealer," Rose added nodding towards the Doctor. "Sentenced to a year's service in the penitentiary, put to work polishing their ridiculously vast collection of religious artefacts and cleaning the cathedral toilets."
The Doctor crinkled his nose. "Nasty polish they've got there," he said disdainfully. "Smells worse than a skunk who's been living in a rubbish heap full of rotten eggs. Dries out the skin too. And it makes your hair curl."
"And we all know what a disaster that would be," Rose sniggered.
"How'd you get away?" Mickey asked.
"That, my friend," replied the Doctor, "is a particularly spellbinding story involving a blue fedora, an eggbeater, and a pair of insurance executives. It all started with…"
Rose listened contentedly as the Doctor related the tale, all the while studying Mickey carefully. She could sense a palpable change about him; his grief was still there, but under it was a sense of determination, a bit of fire to him that hadn't been there before.
She could sense it, deep down in her gut.He was going to be just fine.
The Trouble With Mickey is over.
