Author's Note: Thank you for all who have read, reviewed, saved to favorites and are following this story. I appreciate it and hope 'Should I Stay' continues to hold your interest. The response for the last chapter was amazing. I honestly didn't think it would be because it was typed up at the last minute. So there I was, drugged on cold medicine and expecting the worse. But was pleasantly surprised. Thank you. You all are FANTASTIC! In this chapter it will be told in Amy's POV. I thought it would be best since she and Rory will be learning some of Rose's history with the Doctor.

Happy reading and I hope you enjoy it!

~Valerie~

Chapter 10: A Former Companions Story

There were times when Amy wanted nothing more than to throttle the Doctor. This was one of them. As she sat in the captain's chair, watching her best friend practically tower over Rose, the two of them eye-locked in some kind of silent battle, she wondered about the things she just heard. Like, who is Jack Harkness? Why was the Doctor refusing to take Rose to him? What things was the former companion withholding? What did 'back to this universe' mean? Why was Rose so angry with the Doctor? And what was the significance about her looking the same as the last time he saw her.

Did she not age?

Was she not human?

Beside her Amy could sense her husband's curiosity. She also noticed how his hand was settled on her forearm, as though that would be enough to stop her from butting in. Which wasn't what she was going to do. At least not yet. So she chose to be patient. The Doctor and Rose were already slipping things out in the heat of their anger. But her silence wouldn't last long though. Not at all. It wasn't in Amy's nature. Sooner or later she was going to ask questions or say something if they didn't. Already she was getting agitated by their lack of verbose. She wondered if it would be sooner than she thought as the silence lagged on.

Then Rose turned her head and stepped away from the Doctor with a resigned sigh. On her face was weariness. It didn't belong on someone as young as her.

"Doctor, just take me to Jack." There was pleading in Rose's voice. She desperately wanted this.

"Why won't you tell me everything?"

"Why?" The Doctor looked baffled by her question. "You wiped your hands of me. I don't need to tell ya' anything."

"That's not what I did."

"Yes it was, but 'S okay Doctor. I accepted it a long time ago."

"But it's not. I gave you a happy ending." The laughter that erupted from Rose was one filled with bitterness and left Amy wondering what had happened to the woman to make her this way.

"Is tha' whatcha really think?"

"You and handy…"

"Don't call him that!" Rose snapped startling them all. "His name was Jonathan Noble; Jon for short," she finished on a softer note.

"I apologize." The Doctor paused then smiled sadly. "Fitting, taking Donna's last name."

"Yes it was," Rose agreed.

There was a short pause of silence. "Was?" the Doctor asked.

"What?"

"You said was not is. Both times." Amy realized he was right, she did, which suggested whoever this man was, he was no longer around. "What's happened to him?"

"So let me make sure I get this straight," Rose began, "you'll take me to Jack if I tell you everything. Is that right?" Amy could see that was the last thing the Doctor wanted to do but he nodded, reluctantly. Surprisingly Rose then turned to face her and Rory.

Was she going to ask them to leave?

Amy wouldn't accept that, so she hoped not. Right now her daughter was foremost on her mind. She could be wrong but she had a feeling that the outcome of whatever happened here would affect River and her marriage to the Doctor. Her daughter loved the Time Lord, had told Amy that regardless of all the bad she'd had to endure, she wouldn't change a thing of their history. But what if she wasn't given a choice? Technically the two were married in an alternate timeline; one that no longer existed. So was it really binding?

"Nineteen years," Rose began as she walked over and leaned against the console in front of her and Rory, "was how old I was when I met the Doctor." A smile filled with fondness formed on her lips. "He looked different then, had a Northern accent. He was all dark-cropped hair, big ears, wore a leather jacket and had these intense blue-gray eyes I'd ever seen. When he looked at me I felt like the most important person in his life. He took me away in his magical blue box and showed me the universe. Traveling with him was all I ever wanted to do."

"I know the feeling," Amy said. A look of understanding passed between the two of them.

"With him I felt safe. Trusted him completely. He thought of my safety above all else and had to remind him that he couldn't always do that. I knew the dangers. I accepted 'em when I begin traveling with him. But regardless, I loved that he thought of me first, ya know. Then came the Game Station and my Doctor disappeared to be replaced by a different looking man."

"He regenerated?" Rory asked.

"Yeah." She beamed with approval. "Glad you know 'bout that 'cos I hadn't a clue. He just went and changed in front of me."

"That must've been a shock." Rory surmised.

"Oh, it was. Suddenly he had a full head of brown hair, brown eyes and a London accent. My first Doctor would've called him a pretty boy." Rose snickered. From behind Amy saw the Doctor nodding his head in agreement, a smile on his face. "This new Doctor was bouncy, happy, flirty and very handsy. But then the Sycorax Invasion happened and I saw that underneath the new changes, he was still the same daft Time Lord."

"No matter what form I take, I'm always me in the end," the Doctor said as he stared at Rose's back.

"But you weren't," she replied without looking at him. "He wasn't," Rose reiterated as she looked at Amy. "This new Doctor pushed me away, kep' me at arm length 'cos he feared how I made him feel. There were times that I thought he wished I wasn' there. Then he abandoned me and my best mate Mickey on a ship three thousand years in the future with no way back."

"He what!" Amy yelped in surprise as the Doctor loudly denied it, "I didn't abandon you."

"My Raggedy Doctor wouldn't do that," Amy defended.

"Maybe he wouldn't abandon you but with me and others he had no problems."

The Doctor huffed in annoyance. "The whole of Versailles was at risk, I had…"

"Course it was, not denying that," Rose interrupted. "He will swear up and down that he did what needed to be done. And that may be true. But I knew that wasn' the whole reason. See, we had run into one of his former companions, Sarah Jane, a lovely woman." Regret flashed across Rose's face. "I acted like a jealous girlfriend, something I regret. The Doctor was over 900 years old. I should've known there were others he traveled with, that I wasn' the first. It was foolish of me to think otherwise. But we both got over it and Sarah Jane finally got the closure she needed from him."

"Closure?" Rory asked. Amy got a bad feeling.

"He dropped her off in Aberdeen," she shook her head, "was suppose to be Croydon. She waited but he never came back."

"You abandoned her?" Amy asked; disappointment in her voice. Her husband grabbed her hand.

The Doctor had his head down; his eyes closed and his shoulders slumped. "He doesn' like to see us age," Rose answered when he didn't. "So I asked him if he was going to do the same to me. And he said, and I quote, 'No, not to you'." Rose looked at her. "Sound familiar?"

The others, they're not you.

It did, and Amy didn't like that one bit.

"Why are you telling us all of this?" she demanded harshly, not liking the chaos and doubt Rose was creating.

"'Cos I was you once." She glanced at Rory then back at her. "Both of you have the right to know who I am. And 'cos the only way the Doctor's gonna let me leave is when I tell him what he wants to know. But before I do, I wanna tell you two my story leading up to it first."

Amy could understand that. She nodded. "You said he was pushing you away," she urged her to continue.

"After meeting Sarah Jane and confronting the Doctor about her, he almost declared his feelings for me but of course he stopped when he realized what he was 'bout to say. Still, it was there between us and I was filled with quiet happiness." Rose paused and shook her head. "Should've known better; should've known he would do what he could to muck things up. When my ex-boyfriend asked to travel with us the Doctor agreed. Thought him and me would give it another go, ya know."

"But it didn' happen," Rory guessed.

"Nope. So he did the next best thing. He fell for another woman. There I stood knowing what was happening but unable to do anything about it, all the while my ex was gleefully yappin 'I told you so' in my ear. I watched as the Doctor swanned off to save her with no way back. Could've lived the slow path with her."

"I came back Rose," the Doctor's voice was soft.

"But ya didn' know you could when you jumped. If it weren't for her moving the original fireplace you wouldn've come back five and a half hours later." The Doctor said nothing to this, proving what Rose was saying was true. "Then when he does come back he turns back around to bring her aboard." Amy could see how hurtful that was to Rose. "But time moved differently on the other side, when he went back she had already died. And I watched him mourn her. Not once did he ever notice my pain. We never talked 'bout it, just swept it aside like everything else. Continued on as though nothing happened. Thought about leaving him then." She admitted.

The Doctor's eyes widened in surprise. "I had no idea."

"You were too busy mourning over another woman. But I didn't leave and for awhile it was jus' the two of us again, things were good, and then…."

"Torchwood happened," the Doctor finished when she couldn't. "Rose got trapped in a different universe. The breach closed and I couldn't bring her back."

"How did you get trapped?" Rory asked. Rose couldn't seem to answer the question.

The Doctor explained about Canary Wharf. About the Daleks and the Cybermen and how he opened the void to suck them in. Of the time the TARDIS fell into a different universe and how those who've crossed the void were now saturated in it. How anything with it would be sucked in. Amy gasped realizing where this story was headed. And she was right. The Doctor explained how Rose's lever slipped prompting her to sacrifice her hold on the magnetic clamps to reset it. In doing so she slipped too, hurdling towards the void. Her father from the alternate universe appeared and caught her, transporting her back with him with no way back.

"I worked at the Torchwood there," Rose took over, her voice thick with emotions. "Day and night I worked hard to build a dimension cannon that would bring me back. And suddenly I was able to travel between universes but my celebratory was short lived when we realized it was 'cos the breach was weakening again. As I jumped from universe to universe in search of mine, I noticed the stars were disappearing. Something was wrong and I knew I had to get to the Doctor and warn him."

"And she did just that," there was pride in the Doctor's voice. "Rose Tyler; defender of Earth, found her way back to me."

"Then why wasn't she still traveling with you?" Rory asked before Amy could.

"I was shot by a Dalek. Instead of regenerating I used the energy to heal myself then poured the rest of it in my spare hand. I didn't change. My previous self liked that body too much. Wasn't ready to part with it."

"Spare hand?" Amy asked with a raised brow.

"Lost my hand in a duel with the Sycorax leader - I was in my jim-jams. That was quite a story, even found a Satsuma in the dressing gown - anyways, story for another day. Where was I? Ah yes, my hand. So, I was still within the first fifteen hours of my regeneration cycle, had enough residual cellular energy to grow another one."

"Oh wow." Her husband was staring at the hand the Doctor was wiggling.

"So what happened then?" Amy asked, intrigued by this.

"Donna Noble, his companion at the time, touched it, their cells merged, thus the Doctor's meta-crisis was born," Rose answered. "Looked like him, sounded like him but was part Time Lord, part human. Had only one heart."

"So basically he would grow old and die," Rory stated matter-of-factly.

Instantly Amy's posture stiffened, knowing exactly what the Doctor had done. "Oh, tell me you didn' Doctor. Tell me you didn' leave her with him."

"Not just that," Rose began before the Doctor could answer, "but back in the other universe."

"Doctor!" Amy exclaimed in anger. "How could you?"

"Because he could grow old with her, live the one life, the one adventure I couldn't."

Anger filled Rose at that. She spun to face the Doctor and Amy was so very thankful she wasn't him at the moment. "You are a DAMN liar!" The Time Lord's eyes widened and he took a step back. "Jon told me the real reason you abandoned me Doctor."

"There was no other reason Rose," he argued.

"Really? Then tell me this Doctor." Amy felt dread as Rose slowly stalked up to him. "What about your wife?" The Doctor stiffened, his eyes rounding in shock.

Guilt clearly written on his face.

He looked like a man who was just caught with another woman and Amy didn't like that one bit. This was her daughter they were talking about. And based on the Doctor's reaction, it was like he was cheating on Rose and not the other way around. She wanted to step in and say something to protect River. Remind him that his obligation was to his wife and not this former companion of his. But Amy didn't say anything. No matter how much she wanted to. Just sat there clinging to Rory's hand. But then the silence was broken, and it was not by any of the four of them.

"Hello sweetie." Amy groaned.

As if things weren't uncomfortable enough.

Author's Note: Comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcomed. Chapter 11 will be posted soon.