Rose Tyler Earth Defense
(10/ God knows any more...)
Disclaimer: I own my words? Sometimes?
It was quite an ordinary morning, well, ordinarily enough for a captain of a Torchwood team. The toaster threatened to self destruct emphatically, stating it's demands in its strange digitized voice. Her toast burnt to a cinder as she forgot the sonic setting was to the far left instead of the toast beyond all recognition setting that she usually spun to. All before she tried to grab her coat and ended up cracking the vial of hydrochloric acid based spit she'd forgotten was in her coat pocket that they'd taken from the Teloreeene assassin they had caught last week, to have it burn tiny droplet sized holes in the purple leather. Rose stood for a moment, trying to fight tears as that had been her favorite coat, given to her by Pete and Mum for Christmas. Perhaps she should just move back into the mansion, it had been nice to have maids to make her breakfast and clean her room, though she desperately reminded herself the independence was well worth it.
Her last day at home was when she found her mother sneaking around in her room trying out all the little bits and bobs of the gadgets she brought home to tinker with. Her mother was about to burn herself by connecting the charges to the wrong polarities, and Rose vowed never to return until her mother could wise up and stop touching things. According to Pete's harried morning monologues, this had yet to happen. All of this weighed heavily on her mind as she left her apartment complex, so she could be forgiven for her momentary moment of distraction from immediate recognition when a decorated world war two army jacket, ridiculously out of place even in the middle of the fashion district of London, brushed by her.
Rose froze, standing quite still on the busy street as the people surged around her, shooting dirty looks as they were forced to detour around the woman who had turned to stone on the sidewalk. She was staring at the jacket that was topped with spiky brown hair and an American accent that was revealed as it apologized for having clipped her elbow with his coat. Rose whispered in disbelief, "Jack?"
He continued on, not hearing her in the murmuring thunder that was the busy streets of London, and she broke the hold her shock had on her to dash after him, thrusting people out of her way when they didn't move fast enough. The yells at her impertinence attracted the man's attention and he turned, scoping out the situation with the trained eye of a professional. The oh so familiar eyes perpetually stuck in a bedroom smirk cased the sidewalk, identifying the source of the disturbance easily. Rose began to tear up as he turned back around, about to continue on his way, because the people wouldn't move and she was stuck in a crowd and the astronomical odds of him being at the right place and the right time as she was walking out of her apartment had to be a gift from the gods and she was damned if she was going to let it get away. She shouted louder, putting all of her desperation and frustration into it, making it a conduit for which her longing for a friendly face, familiar arms and a lovely cocky smirk that had charmed her in the middle of a bombing raid during the second world war on an invisible space ship, could stream through. "Jack!"
She shoved people desperately now, right and left, as they didn't move fast enough for her to catch him before he vanished in that particular way of his that made you feel as though you had just missed a brilliantly funny dirty joke. "Jack, wait!"
He stood still, his eyes scanning the crowd with arms crossed as she broke out of the crush, breathless and heaving, staring at him in disbelief of her own senses as he appeared in front of her, every bit the handsome protogod that she remembered. She reached out a trembling hand to touch him, as if she couldn't quite trust her eyes and ears and nose as she inhaled his particular scent of honey, cinnamon, cloves and a really good shag.
"I think that's far enough, lady." He said, gripping her wrist before it could touch him. Under his sleeve, she could see the vortex manipulator peeking out as if to mock her. It seemed he was the same, the same old Jack, defending the time stream one case at a time but this was a Jack that didn't know her, didn't care, didn't love her and the Doctor with a fierce devotion that got him killed.
"Oh god, I didn't think-" Rose swallowed her tears of joy at the fact that he was alive and here in front of her and then suddenly her eyes went dry because she only had a few seconds to prove that she wasn't touching him as some sort of strange bag lady. He oozed sexual attraction like the secretion of pheromones of a Cassius that had drove her entire complex mad last week when they all tried to bang each other silly. "I didn't think I'd find you here. In this Universe. In this time."
"Look, I'm running a bit behind as it is, and I really don't know you." He let go of her wrist gently, giving her a pat on the back of her hand as he released it, just as Jack had always done before telling her something terrible. She knew to batten down the hatches, such as the time when he'd told her that she just didn't look good in pink and that he had burned all of her clothes that had that color. "Why don't you go home, take a nap. Your eyes are probably just tired and then you can go find this other guy that you're looking for."
"You're a time agent." Rose blurted, ignoring the secrecy rules of Torchwood for the first time in her life as she spoke in the middle of a crowded London street, talking about things that could be easily used to put her in a sanitarium for the rest of her life. "You work for the Time Agency to repair rifts in time and space."
"How do you know that? How could you know that?" Jack asked, blinking in disbelief. He glanced around, and then grabbed her arm to drag her into a deserted alley, off the main street. If it were any other man, she would be terrified of what they were going to do next but, seeing as it was Jack, even if he were to try anything she would probably enjoy it because he was that good. He threw her against the wall and leaned in, intimidating her with his bulk. But this was Jack, her Jack, and she didn't believe him for a moment. Even so, she'd learned a lot about not trusting familiar people in this strange place, and she leaned farther back to feel the reassuring pressure of her gun in it's holster underneath her arm. Just in case. He snapped, "Talk, and make it good. You have thirty seconds to explain why you are in 21st century Earth, but you know about the Time Agency."
"Because I've met you before." Rose said defiantly, staring him straight in the eyes as his own widened in disbelief and denial. She shook her head. "Not here, though. I come from a parallel Universe where you and I traveled with a man called the Doctor to save everyone, time and space."
"A likely story." Jack said, shaking his head.
"You come from an island called the Boeshane Penninsula." Rose rambled, feverishly trying to recall all that he had told her stories of when they were traveling in the TARDIS. "You lost your younger brother, Grey, in an alien invasion. You let go of his hand."
"My younger brother almost died in an alien invasion." Jack thundered, drawing himself up as he debated her facts. Rose shrunk against the wall, staring as he terrified her. She crossed her arms over her chest, slipping a hand under her short jacket to grasp the hilt of her pistol, getting ready to pull it out and shoot Jack. If he tried to attack her then he wasn't anything like her Jack and she would have no qualms about shooting him. She didn't think he was immortal in this world, but even if he was, bullets would slow him down so she could to save herself. The world needed her. He continued on, disgruntled. "I saved him. I held his hand"
"Well, in my world, you didn't." Rose said simply, tightening her grip on the handle of her gun as he seemed to tense. When he finally relaxed, she relaxed her fingers on her pistol. "A lot of the details are different between the two Universes, but think, how could I have known even that if I didn't know you?"
"You could have researched the archives." Jack said, clearly still suspicious of her, even if the battlements of his argument were crumbling under the force of her superior logic. "They are free to the public."
"You once told me that I reek of the 21st century, all of steel and oil and fossil fuels." Rose challenged, raising her head to glare at him defiantly. "Is that any different now?"
"No," He admitted, leaning forward to take a whiff of her just to be sure. Abruptly, she was glad that she'd taken a moment to squirt on just a bit of her favorite perfume. A gift from him actually, kept in a vial in a pocket always, because you never knew when you were going somewhere you wanted to dab it under your nose to block out a smell. He sniffed deeper and confirmed, "No, you are from here."
"Then please, Jack. Take five minutes. Just five minutes and believe me." Rose pleaded, staring up at him in a way that his alternate self had once confessed made him a little soft on the inside towards his favorite 21st century Earthling. She had no idea if it were that, or the vehement urgency of her voice as she whispered, "Just believe me for five bloody minutes."
"All right." He conceded, pulling in his intimidating presence to let her sag against the wall. "Five minutes. Make them good."
"Oh, thank you!" Rose, so used to his face and missing his arms as they tightened around her, did the natural and utterly unthinkable, throwing her arms around Jack to pull him into a tight hug. Jack froze, finding himself comfortably restrained by his own feelings of strange happiness and a distinct feeling of deja vu. "Oh, you are not going to regret this, I swear."
"I already am." Jack sighed, pressing a button on his vortex manipulator, briefly stalling whatever was beeping for them to have a conversation. "Talk and do it fast."
Words poured out of Rose and she desperately tried to tether Jack to the here and the now that she was forced to occupy with words and well known stories. She wrapped them around Jack, telling him of a better time in which she and he would have easily shared the same space for weeks on end. She chained him down with platitudes that he uttered, calming words he had said and hugs that he had given her on dark nights when the shadows terrified her down to her bones.
She told him of galaxies, of supernovas and the Medusa cascade. She babbled about their travels to the suns, to the moons, and black holes and white holes. Of hot fusion and cold fusion and radioactive suns. Of aliens with tentacles, ridges, spines, feelers, spikes, shells, wings, flippers, no forms, many forms and colors. She told him of alien civilizations, towns, planets, empires, and the millennium of human's rule in the cosmos.
She told him of a man who wore trainers with his suits in a rather pathetic attempt to relive his glory days when he wore a decorative vegetable many hundred's of years ago. A man who saw people running away and ran the opposite direction to satisfy his curiosity and boredom after living for far too long. A man who had built a sonic screwdriver so he could put up a lot of cabinets in the dressing room of the Tardis one night and then decided that it was brilliant and so built on it ever since.
"All right. I understand that you believe all this happened with another me." Jack asked, sidling closer until his gray army jacket brushed the front of her crossed arms where they held in on herself. "I have one last question. When is my birthday?"
Her face went blank as she tried to recall. The had celebrated it once, with cake and singing and dancing around the TARDIS to strange alien songs before finding a world with a decent pint and ending up having to run for their lives as some alien dictator got angry at them stopping him from taking over that world. They had celebrated it, but she had no idea when it was, as days all seemed to meld together when you were on the TARDIS with no sun, no rotation of any heavenly body to anchor you to a specific point in time. A day ended when you went to sleep and started when you woke up so you could theoretically have as long of days as possible for you to stay awake. On the flip side, you could restart the day with a nap in the afternoon. She wasn't even certain that time did pass in the TARDIS and if you didn't leave, if you would never age.
"I don't know." Rose answered honestly, truly worried that the one question that she never thought to remember would cause him to slip away. She felt close. He'd said five minutes, but she'd now been speaking for twenty. "I don't think I ever thought to ask."
"All right." Jack said, his sexy smile slinking across his face like a lover out the back door after a secret tryst. "I believe you."
"Wot." Rose asked, staring at him in disbelief. Rejection, she was prepared for, hoped for even maybe just a little bit because that would mean that she had closure and could go cry in peace. Affirmation was unexpected.
"If you are brave enough to take a chance and say you don't know, then I should be brave enough to stick around and see what the 21st century is all about." Jack said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "And, you're cute and I might get lucky. What's your name, anyway?"
"My name is Rose. Rose Tyler." She said, grinning as her good old Jack resurfaced, flirting with anything that moved and willing to have sex with anything that stopped for a chat and some he chatted on the run. He appeared to have some decently high standards, but what they were, no one was really sure, not even him. He drifted vaguely toward her as her lips curled upward.
"Well, Rose, Rose Tyler. Got a boy waiting for you that you're eager to get home to?" Jack asked, stepping into her personal space with wild abandon. "Or would you like to help me on this case I'm working?"
"What?" Rose asked, aghast. She was a bit taken off guard, as she wasn't used to the constant flirtation and innuendo of the handsome Captain. No one even flirted with her anymore beyond Saxon's ingrained need to invade her personal space, they were all too scared of her. She didn't count Jacobs.
"So you don't have a boyfriend." Jack asked, raising an eyebrow to sweep his eyes from head to toe, sliding over every curve slowly and dipping into her shadowy valleys with a single minded determination of a 30th century man who thinks he'd like to get lucky even in this dingy alleyway.
"I didn't say that." Rose said, narrowing her eyes at him, for the first time, feeling quite violated as his eyes seemed to peel back her clothing and lay her bare before him with very discerning eyes.
"The words I'm thinking are available." He smiled at her, his lips curling sinfully. "And very."
"Oh god, Jack, you've just met me!" Rose said, giving a little hysterical laugh as he wiggled his brows at her. "Do you ever change?"
"I was just saying hello." He said, winking at her. He raised his hand to wave at her. "Hello!"
"Oh, now you've said it twice. Very thorough. Hello to you too!" Rose giggled, delighted at the turnabout fair play. Of course Jack just let his smile slip into confused as she remembered that brain scrambling fall through a tractor beam. She knew that it was going to be difficult separating her Jack from this one, the one that didn't know her, and didn't rescue her from a barrage balloon. She didn't have much of anything to weigh him down, to keep him there but she was so desperate to as he was a familiar, such a dear, familiar face that she had cared for and she so wanted to have him by her side. Not even thinking of the tactical advantage of having a Time Agent at Torchwood. Rose crossed her arms and leaned away from Jack, a smile curling like a cat that just spotted the canary and was plotting the best avenue of attack. "Tell you what. I'll make you a deal."
"A deal?" Jack asked, his voice dropping low and husky. "How promising."
"Thing is, we need someone that knows what's what." Rose said, brushing her hair away from her face with careless fingers. She opened her eyes wide to beguile the man in front of her, making him think she were harmless. Her head began to burn and she took off a moment to rub at her brow line with the pad of her thumb. "'Sides what little I can do. Tell you what. I impress you out on this little jaunt of yours and you stick around 'till you get bored."
"Little Jaunt?" Jack repeated back to her, his well groomed brows inching upward. "This time agency business is serious."
"Trust me on this, Jack." Rose confronted, crossing her arms. "If it were so serious, you wouldn't have taken the time to speak with me. You know that the 21st century is when everything changes. Don't you want to be there to see it?"
"Quite the tempting offer." Jack said, taking a moment to run to backs of his fingers up her arms. "I always liked history. Best subject in school. Always got straight A's."
"Slept with the teacher?" Rose teased, not expecting the answer to be yes.
"She had three sets." He waved towards his front, retaining a modicum of decency by not naming female parts on a crowded street. He flashed that boyish grin that she had known and loved to pieces. "How could I resist?"
"You're right naughty, you are." Rose gave Jack a punch on the shoulder and he took it with aplomb, looking rather flattered as he shifted his weight so that he dodged easily, training evident in every movement. She'd forgotten what that was like, the Doctor and she had relaxed him to the point where not every movement was a trained exercise. It scared her a little to miss the giggling, sparkling Jack that she knew was under the wary soldier that the Time Agency feared into him. There were flashes of him even when he didn't know her, didn't trust her, but hopefully she could count on his attraction to 20th century blondes who knew just a little too much for this epoch to keep him around long enough for her to wave how much fun he could have here in his face and convince him to stick around. "Well, you going to take it or not?"
"What the hell, you only live once, right?" Jack asked, taking her hand in his and kissing the knuckles before smiling captivatingly up at her. Rose felt her heart jump in her chest because that is what hearts did around Jack and she ignored it. "Show me what you can do."
Jack would never tell Rose this, but really, she had him at hello.
AN: Yes, I know. The first phrase on everyone's mind is FINALLY to which I can reply yeah...I know. I'm sorry. But look! Jack! And he's shiny! *distracts you with the shiny and runs off before she can get stoned...* I have finally caught up with myself with the large chunks that i had written, however, I still have bits written. I have no idea where I am going or what I'm doing to get there but I hope that you stay along for the ride!