"Anything— oh, wait. Wow."
Rose blinked a few times, stunned to be facing the other Torchwood agent again. "What did you say?" She finally managed to ask, although she only half-listened for an answer.
"Nothing," said Sterling. "You just zoned out for a few seconds, and then… you really didn't like those shoes, did you?"
"Hmm?" She was having a bit of trouble processing anything he said, her mind racing as it was. Was it possible she'd imagined the whole thing?
"Your shoes," he repeated, pointing downward. "They changed. Didn't know you liked maroon." Rose followed his gaze, finding that her shoes had indeed been replaced with the ones she'd borrowed from Gwen. "Is that what it does, then? Changes your clothes for you? And hair, apparently. Never seen it down before, I like it."
It can't have been a hallucination, then, she thought, running a hand through the blonde hair she'd forgotten she'd unpinned from her usual twist. But if it really happened, then why am I back here?
"No," she murmured. "Not when I'm so close!" She punctuated her words with a sharp shake of the device. "Do it again!"
"Er… Rose?" Sterling looked confused and more than a little worried by her change in attitude. "Is everything all right?"
"Just fine," Rose hissed through clenched teeth, still focused intently on the object in her hands.
"Are you sure?" He rested a hand on her shoulder; she knew it was meant to be reassuring, but in her frantic state, it proved only to exasperate her. "Sometimes interaction with the artifacts is a little unnerving, but don't worry, it passes. Usually." He smiled, looking at her in such a way to indicate he was joking, trying to lift her spirits, but she was having none of it.
"Sterling, this isn't really the time," she sighed. "I've got to get this going again, otherwise they'll be wondering where I've gone."
"'They?' Who's 'they?'" He asked. "What's going on? What happened?"
"I was gone," said Rose, doing her best to explain even though she was still at a loss for words herself. There was no way she could simply launch into talk of parallel universes and time travel, but without it, she wasn't quite sure she could verbalize what had just occurred. "It took me somewhere I haven't been in a long time. I mean, a really long time. Somewhere I thought I'd never go again. I don't know, it was like a teleport, or a transmat, or something—"
"Rose," Sterling interrupted, "you didn't go anywhere. I've been watching you the whole time. We were talking about Cardiff, and then you got lost in thought for a moment, and then you looked up. See? Here all along."
"You don't understand!" Rose exclaimed. "I was there! It was too real to have just been a memory."
"Who knows?" He shrugged. "It may have amplified your memories, like virtual reality or something. Not everything in here's a weapon or a tool; some of it's just for entertainment."
"But what about the shoes?" Rose shot back. "I've got Gwen's shoes. That's more than any virtual reality I've ever seen."
"…Who's Gwen?" Was all Sterling could think to say.
"That doesn't matter!" Rose groaned. "I've just got to get this working, okay?" He didn't look happy— on the contrary, he appeared quite agitated— but at the determined look on Rose's face, sighed in resignation and nodded his support. "They said something about energy readings," she said, examining the object once more. "Like it was charging, or something."
"Did 'they' have any idea what kind of energy it was absorbing?" Asked Sterling.
"Not specifically what kind," she replied, choosing to ignore the somewhat skeptical intonation he'd employed. "Just that it jumped when in close proximity to people."
"Hmm," he muttered, thinking for a moment. "Sounds like it's reacting to electromagnetic fields. Most living things generate a weak one. A stronger source of electromagnetic energy shouldn't be too hard to find in here; we've got a couple of artifacts that produce it."
"It changed its absorption rate based on the person near it," she remembered suddenly. "Any idea what that means?"
"Haven't the foggiest," said Sterling. "Sorry."
"Damn," Rose muttered with a jerk of her head. "Well, no matter. You were saying, electromagnetic energy?"
"What? Oh, yeah." He gestured vaguely in one direction. "A couple of things were registering it, but I really don't— hey!" Rose, clearly on a mission, had breezed past him at the word 'registering,' and was already hunting the shelves for anything that might aid her.
"What am I looking for, exactly?" She asked without looking up.
"It's in the next aisle, two shelves up," he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Come on, I'll show you." Rose smiled at him in thanks, but he simply led the way to her quarry.
He was getting cold again, she finally noticed, the same stiffness that had surfaced after the last time they'd been in the Blue Room together. Just for a moment, she considered putting the artifact back on the shelf and continuing to let him impress her, like she had been; it would be easy enough to brush off what she'd seen and done, call it virtual reality or plain wishful thinking, and go on with her life. She had a good job, and a family, not to mention a date that night; couldn't that be enough? No need to recount old memories and play alien-hunter in another universe when she could do the same here, right?
Except…
Rose hadn't wanted to think about it when she first realized where she'd ended up; in fact, she'd forced herself not to. There was no way, however, to keep herself from it forever, the thought that setting foot in her home universe had sparked the hope that a certain old memory just might not have to stay that way. So she hefted the device under one arm, took a deep, steadying breath, and followed Sterling into the next aisle.
"We call it a crybaby," he said, grunting as he lifted the heavy object off its shelf. "It's essentially a high-tech decoy, faking life signs on a scan by generating the electromagnetic fields and heat signatures that would normally indicate life. It's a little too unwieldy for standardized use, but it should suit your purposes pretty nicely."
"How do I work it?" She asked, kneeling down beside it.
"Just pull the lever on the side— yeah, that one— toward you."
"And it'll just give me the energy like that?"
"It should," he nodded.
Rose cupped a hand under his chin, gently forcing him to look into her eyes. Thanks," she said. "I mean, really, thank you." She bent over, pulling the lever on the crybaby. As soon as it turned on, she could feel a difference in the artifact, almost as if it came alive. The lights blinked on, earning a brief whoop of success from Rose. She grinned widely, looking up at Sterling with a triumphant gleam in her eyes. The pained look on his face, however, somewhat dampened her joy of victory.
"Don't do this, Rose," he blurted out, his expression more serious than she'd ever seen it. "Please, just think about it first. If this really does what you think it does, then the implications are…" He trailed off, clearly recognizing a losing battle if he ever saw one, but resolving to try anyway. "Please."
Rose slowly shook her head, sparing him a look of silent apology before she felt the sensation of inter-universal travel pull her away.
There weren't any guns this time, Rose noted gladly after she and the artifact were unceremoniously deposited back in the Hub. Instead, she was greeted with a few slightly confused smiles of welcome and a quick once-over with Tosh's scanner.
"How long has it been?" She asked, glancing around. By the looks of it, it couldn't have been too long; everyone was still wearing the same clothing, the pizza Ianto had ordered was sitting on the table and looked to only be about half-eaten, and unless she was mistaken, the earlier readings from the device were still on Gwen's workstation screen.
"About half an hour," said Tosh, "give or take a few minutes."
"Where did you end up?" Gwen asked.
"Back in the Blue Room," replied Rose with a roll of her eyes. "Didn't take long to get back, once I found a proper power source."
"But if you got home," observed Owen, "why would you need to come back?"
"Who said I was trying to get back there?" Rose asked sharply, toeing the floor. "Besides, there's no way I'd leave without giving back Gwen's trainers first. When dealing with space-time travel, mistakes happen, but shoe theft is unforgivable." Her quip earned a soft, awkward chuckle from those around, but it was soon overtaken by an uncomfortable silence she couldn't quite explain.
Before re-activating the artifact, she'd almost felt like Jack's team liked her. They reminded her of what she'd always expected field work to be: freewheeling, seat-of-your-pants excitement, all about improvisation and holding on tight when adventure took you. As she'd experienced it in Pete's universe, however, there was a lot more paperwork than that, but Jack's Torchwood was making it look like it could be that unbridled and fun after all.
Only now they were all looking at her with that look again, that apprehensive appraisal usually reserved for regarding alien life, and in her experience, that look rarely went hand-in-hand with friendship. When, exactly, had she become a creature to be studied?
"Rose," said the Captain abruptly, "we need to talk. Think we could step aside for a bit?" Rose nodded, swallowing thickly as she followed him into his office.
"Are these what I think they are?" She asked with an amused quirk of a smile, plucking a pair of 3-D glasses off the lamp on which they were hanging and slipping them over her face.
"They most certainly are," said Jack. "I managed to sneak them off the scene at Canary Wharf." She nodded absently at his words as she wiggled her fingers in front of her face, watching the particles of Void stuff float and shift. Owen's scans had been right; she was positively drenched in it. Jack watched her for a moment, smiling idly; looking up, she caught him staring and blushed, dropping her hand back down by her side. "Don't stop on my part," he remarked with a grin, making her already-pink cheeks deepen. "Really though," he continued, "we need to discuss a few things, because I think there's been a misunderstanding of what we're doing."
"What do you think we're doing?" Rose asked.
"I thought we were trying to send you home."
"Home?" She looked incredulous. "Jack, my home is here, in this universe. What makes you think I'd want to go back there now that I've made it back here?"
"It actually wouldn't surprise me," he remarked. "You have friends there, family, your father…"
"Matty," Rose offered, staring vacantly at the desk before her. "My little brother."
"There, see?" Jack raised his eyebrows. "Not to mention you're apparently soaring through the Torchwood ranks. I just think you should consider everything before you give that up."
"Who says I'm giving it up?" Rose's voice raised in pitch, but whether it was out of agitation at how wrong he was or how right he was, she wasn't sure. "We've seen that I can jump back and forth fairly easily."
"But don't you see how dangerous that is?" Jack exclaimed. "The cracks between the universes were sealed, the Doctor made sure of that; this device of yours could be causing more damage than we could ever possibly imagine."
"So I shouldn't risk jumping back!" Rose retorted. "I could stay here. Mum and Mickey knew I'd jump at any chance to come back, and Matty's too young to remember me properly, so he won't be too sad after a while, and Dad— I mean, Pete, I mean, bugger, I don't know what I mean— he'll be a little disappointed, sure, but we're not all that close, really, so—"
"Rose, do you hear what you're saying?" Jack looked utterly stunned. "You're talking about your family, people who love you, not minding too much that you've disappeared without at least saying goodbye? Never mind what you expect here; awfully hard to find a job, with you being legally dead and all that."
"I can work here," said Rose. "I know my way around a Torchwood base, I can help. Hell, I'll just make the coffee, free Ianto up. I'm telling you, you're wasting a valuable asset, not using him as a full field agent."
There was silence for a few moments, an uncomfortable sort of chasm between them, until he finally spoke.
"Just say it, Rose. Say why you really want to stay here."
"What do you mean?"
"You think I don't know?" Jack's smile was a slightly bitter one. "I've done the research, met the others. He leaves us all behind, making up excuses all the way, or letting us believe it's our own decision to go. We companions all have our stories, but they all end that same way, except for you. Rose, you may be the one person he would never have willingly left behind, and you know that. You'd be mad to find yourself back and not think of that immediately."
Rose bit her lip, blinking back the stinging sensation of tears brimming in her eyes. "I just want to see him," she whispered. "I don't need him to sweep me off my feet and back into the TARDIS, happily ever after; I'm not that naïve. I just want to talk, make sure he's doing okay, and let him know I am. He told me to have a fantastic life, and I want to show him I have, that I didn't freeze in place with nothing but my memories to keep me company. Then I'll go back, I promise, okay?"
"That's the thing, though, Rose," said Jack. "I can't let you see him."