A/N: And so the desert adventure begins!
Though be warned that this chappy pretty much addresses something that I can't quite see Rose or even Martha ignoring... But now that it's all sorted, we can get to it!
Thanks so much for all of your comments over the past couple of days ... they've been awesome!
I hope you enjoy this chapter... I'm working on another, so maybe we will get lucky and I'll post twice!
Not guaranteeing anything though.
~~oooOOOOoo~~
When morning came, Rose expected to be roused by the musical trilling of the trunkikes and swiflier birds that nested in the trees outside her bedroom window. They were her alarm clock, and were there fore here every morning without fail. She would wake, pet the mattress behind her to seek out the coolness of her husband's body for a quick snuggle before they had to get out of bed. Maybe they'd engage in some lazy morning love making if Mark wasn't yet up – oh but weren't those opportunities few and far between.
Instead of musical trilling and singing, though, the racket that came in from outside was a raucous screech that was anything but relaxing and beautiful.
Her eyes snapped open and shifted immediately to a pinched wince of discomfort. Against her chest, her young son shifted and let out a groan of annoyance. "Make it stop," he demanded on a sleepy croaky voice.
"Okay, baby," she groaned as she lifted up to a seat and scratched at her hair in a wake up routine that included slapping her dry tongue over the roof of her mouth. She stretched her arms over her head and let out a long and shrill moan.
"Well," Jack purred from the doorway. "A beautiful woman moaning in my bed. What a shame I'm not the one making her moan like that."
Remembrance of where they were shifted into Rose's mind, and what she'd witnessed last night on the balcony, and she half smiled. "You can cause moaning of a very different kind when it comes to me, Jack."
"The moan of exasperation," he agreed with a slump in the doorway. "Way to make a man feel good about himself, Rosie."
She kissed her still waking child on his head and then slid out of the bed. Wearing only a camisole and her panties, she drew a breathy sound of approval from the man at the door. She shook her head as she passed him, kissing his cheek in friendly greeting. "Behave, Jack. Remember who I married and what he'd do to you if you thought anything other than friendly thoughts about me."
He turned to follow her with his eyes as she padded to the small room that housed the toilet. "Thoughts are fine," he corrected. "It's acting on those thoughts that will bring about the wrath of Gallifrey." He thumbed his nose cheekily. "And I think I've handled worse than a pissed off Time Lord."
She winked around the door as she closed it behind her. "How about a territorial one?"
"Is your current one any more territorial than the old boy in leather?"
"Worse," she sang out through the door.
He scratched behind his ear and winced. He looked at the door when he heard the toilet flush. "Well, that might be worth considering going forward, although it does sound like it could be a good challenge."
Rose wore a wide smile as she exited the toilet room and wandered to the bathroom to wash her hands. "Not exactly an efficient design," she remarked. "Having to use two rooms to pee and wash my hands." She looked around the doorway. "Mark," she called in Gallifreyan. "Time to get up. Use the toilet, sweetheart, and I'll take you to the TARDIS for breakfast."
Jack only understood the word TARDIS from Rose's call, and it was enough for him to shake his head. "No need to go back to the TARDIS," he assured her. "I stopped by this morning to see if there was any life in the old girl." He sighed and shook his head. "Nothing, I'm sorry."
"And the Doctor?" she ventured although she already knew the answer. The pain and discomfort in her belly and head told her he was still so far away from them.
He shook his head. "Nothing yet," he answered softly. "But I did set up a warning communicator at her doors, to let me know if he or anyone else tried to gain entrance."
Worry passed across her face. "Anyone else?"
Jack sniffed. "Something tells me he won't come alone."
Her lips curled up in a smile. "If Brax and Romana have any involvement in it, we'll have an entire battle battalion on our doorstep." She pressed her hand into the doorframe and looked toward her son, who was snuggling as deeply into the wolf's fur as he could to not have to listen to the birds screeching outside. "We're not supposed to leave Gallifrey."
"How do you mean?"
"I really don't know," she breathed honestly. "Just that for some reason, the two of them are as protective of my safety as the Doctor is. Romana set a presidential order stating that neither the Doctor or I can leave Gallifrey without her permission." Realising how that may sound to Jack, she gasped and hurried to explain. "Not that I want to leave at all. I'm so happy there."
"And if the Doctor wanted to leave, he wouldn't put up with any kind of order, presidential or not. He'd flip them the bird as he dematerialised out of there." He touched her shoulder. "I get it." He pursed his lips curiously, though. "Brax and Romana, are they friends of his, I mean the Doctor?"
She nodded. "Romana used to travel with him back in his early days. Brax is his brother."
He half gagged. "Hold on. He has a brother?" He laughed. "Two of them in the universe? I really don't know what to say about that."
Rose laughed along with him, although her humour was more sentimental than one of amusement. "Very different men, Jack. If you think Thete has his pompous moments, Brax puts him to shame with how much of a pompous git he can be at times."
"Thete?"
"The Doctor," she corrected herself.
There was a sparkle in his eyes. "His name is Thete?"
"Theta Sigma," Rose said with a wink. "And it's one of many, not his true name."
"But you know it, right?" Jack pressed with a bump of his hip against hers. "And are willing to share that information with your old friend, Jack?"
She nodded, and then shook her head. "Yes, I know it. And no, I'm not telling you what it is." She widened her eyes and scratched her hair. "You'd never be able to remember it anyway, it's a long one."
"Yeah, I heard the Time Lords have some pretty extreme length to their names."
"Only because of chapterhouse affiliations and what-not," she answered. "Their naming protocols include a hell of a lot of information about who they are."
A heavy thumping at the door broke their conversation. Both Rose and Jack looked toward the door. Jack, rather than answering it, called out instead. "Who is it?"
"John," a voice called back. "Steve told me to tell you to hurry up, he wants to get going before it gets too hot."
"Like it could get any hotter out there," he huffed to himself. He then lifted his head to call back. "Yeah, right. Tell him to give us ten minutes."
"Right," He chipped back through the door. "I'll tell him you're doing your makeup."
"Fuck off, Smith," he growled in reply. He looked apologetically to Rose. "I know you love the man, you know, when he's the Time Lord and all, but let me give you fair warning. I'm going to drown him today." He padded to the kitchen with annoyance in his frame. "Wish they had rattlesnakes here, I'd put one in his bag…"
Rose blinked with surprise. "This is Australia," she said slowly. "Much more dangerous things here than rattlesnakes."
"You're right," he chirped back with a smile. "I can put a redback in his shoe… Much more painful."
"You really don't like him, do you?"
Jack huffed out. "He gets on my nerves," he admitted. "More than he ever did as the Time Lord." He shook his head. "I don't know how I didn't suspect that man had a bit of Gallifrey in him."
"But I thought you loved the Doctor?"
He smiled and cupped her face. "I do," he whispered out. "The Doctor and his Rose Tyler." His softness fell and he thumbed to the door. "But that idiot out there…"
"Is not the Doctor," she interrupted gently. "And he can't regenerate, so no drowning him or putting dangerous creatures into his shoes."
"You are really taking the fun out of it, you know."
She shrugged. "I'm a mother now, that's my job." She watched as he moved to the fridge and started to empty it into a large plastic cooler. "Are you going somewhere?"
His eyes lifted. "We all are. Road Trip to Kalgan's Pool with some of the teachers from the high school."
She shook her head. "No, Jack. We can't. We have to stay here in case the Doctor arrives. If he finds the TARDIS, and we aren't there to meet him, he'll have a fit."
"Yes, Rose, you can," he corrected her. "Like I said, I was at the TARDIS today and have a warning system in place to alert us when he arrives." He pointed to his wrist, and a bulbous leather strap and walked around the counter toward her. "I was able to repair my vortex manipulator in the TARDIS this morning. I can have you, Mark, and your wolf back in a second." He put his hands on her shoulders. "I promise you I'll get you to him, Rose. We're only 90-mintes away anyway… and even if he gets that close and the alert doesn't come through, he'll be able to find you."
"Promise me," she demanded on a whisper.
His mouth curled up slightly in a small and affectionate smile. He cupped the back of her head in his hand and pulled her forehead to his. "You're the only person in the universe I can ever make a promise to and keep it, Rose. You have my word." He smiled then. "And anyway, why would I want to miss an opportunity to see another one of him, and then piss him off by grabbing your ass so he can see it?"
She laughed and pushed his chest with both hands. "Flirtin' with death, you are."
"Always." He flipped his hands in a shoo motion. "Now please. Get you and your boy ready. This lot outside will get antsy if leaving late means they have to wait an extra five minutes to start drinking their beer and Jim Beam cans."
~~oooOOOooo~~
Four Wheel driving was something that Rose Tyler had never done before. Even during the extensive travelling with the Doctor, the only truly bumpy part of any trip was a TARDIS landing. In other words: a one-second bump and fall packed with laughter.
This whole driving on unpaved rocky roads was something else entirely. She was pretty certain that her body would continue to feel these bumps and shudders long after the car had stopped – probably well into two years after the car stopped.
Her, Jack, Martha, Mark and the Wolf had all packed themselves into a white crew cab covered pickup truck that one of the other teachers had referred to as "the ute". John Smith had attempted to get in the vehicle with them, but with a snarl from Jack, and then a siren call from the pretty English teacher, he had shrugged and moved to another vehicle instead. In all they were a convoy of five identical trucks, all of them tough, rugged, and more than capable of handling roads inaccessible by any other type of vehicle.
Mark was completely engrossed in the journey, and many times she had to pull him back from trying to poke his head out of the window and smiling against the winds. She had lost count of the times she had to warn him that it was dangerous to put any limb outside the window. It didn't help her when Jack insisted on driving with one arm either resting along the window ledge, or handing out of the window completely.
And he certainly wasn't the only driver doing it, nor passenger for that matter. It seemed to her that it was almost a cultural thing to have some body part hanging out of a car window when driving on roads not fit for actually driving on. Twice the trip became so perilous that the car was almost sideways on the rocky road.
Mark absolutely loved it, and cheered out excitedly every time the car tipped, rocked and jolted. While he couldn't understand a word said by the youngster, Jack made all efforts to cheer on and chat to the boy.
"How're you doing back there?" Jack asked her halfway into the trip when the road got particularly rocky.
"I may need a cigarette when we're done," she muttered in reply, trying hard to get herself comfortable in her seat, whose springs kept popping and protesting the drive underneath her.
Martha laughed. "I might share one with you." She looked to Jack. "Are you taking the roughest path on purpose?"
He shook his head. "This is actually the easiest track." His eyes flashed and he quickly slowed the movement of the vehicle and let out a small "oop. You might want to hang on to the girls, ladies. This is going to get bumpy."
"Because it's been smooth this whole time?" Martha barked out incredulously as she folded her arms across her chest in preparation for this bumpy section.
"Ahhh," he huffed out with a shake in his voice from the bumps in the road. "Yeah, sorry about that. All worth it, though I promise you." He looked up to the rear view mirror at the car behind them and lifted a hand to adjust it. He let out a laugh. "Looks like Smith's not handling the trip all that well."
Rose twisted in her seat to look behind them. "He's not driving, is he?"
"Nah," Jack said with a laugh. "Back seat, just threw up out the window."
Martha looked horrified and twisted in her seat. "He did what? Is he okay? Should we stop?"
"He's the third one to lose their breakfast," he said with a shrug. "Some people just don't travel well. Especially those that got drunk last night after the carnival."
"I'm getting close myself," Rose muttered. "Are we almost there?"
"Water bottle in the back," he advised her with a look at her through the mirror. "I grabbed some anti-nausea tablets from the TARDIS, take a couple, you'll be fine." He finally put both hands on the steering wheel and drew them to a stop as the car ahead of them braked to begin navigation of a particularly treacherous section of the path. "Probably another ten minutes at least."
Rose cracked open a water bottle and dropped back a pair of pills. She was still swallowing her water as she passed the pill package and water bottle to Martha up front. "So Jack. How'd you end up here?"
"Long story," he answered on a breath.
"We've got time, apparently." She leaned back to pet her wolf's neck. "It seems strange for you to end up here."
Martha swallowed a mouthful of water and twisted in her chair to sit almost sideways to give him her full attention. "Rose is right. Of all the places to end up, how you end up here? You have a vortex manipulator, you could go anywhere, any time."
He shook his head. "Until this morning, my vortex manipulator was out of service." He sighed and looked up at Rose through the mirror. "After the game station and the Daleks, when the Doctor abandoned me…"
"Abandoned?" she asked with a frown. "No. He didn't do that. He told me that you stayed behind to help rebuild."
He looked back to the road. "No, Rose. He left me there."
"I didn't know, Jack, I'm so sorry." Her face was pained. "If I knew, I would've told him to go back."
"I know, Sweetheart," he said with a nod. "At first I was hurt, and I mean shattered by being abandoned like that."
"How'd you get off the station?"
He held up his wrist. "I had one trip left in this thing. I managed to send myself back to the 1890's. Got stuck there."
Rose looked horrified, while Martha looked incredibly confused. "But that's a century ago, Jack," Martha noted.
He didn't look to them, only ahead. "Yeah. Look good for a centurian, right?"
"Jack, how?" Rose asked worriedly.
"That's what I need to ask the Doctor," he said with slight darkness in his tone. "When we got to the game station, I was mortal. When I left, I wasn't."
"What do you mean?"
"I can't die, Rose," he answered her. "When I die, I don't stay dead. I don't age, and I don't die."
"You're not makin' any sense," Rose commented. "How can that be?"
Martha eyeballed him. "Are you a Time Lord like him?" she thumbed back over her shoulder.
"One, he's not a Time Lord right now, and two, no. I'm no anything like himt." He blew out a breath. "I'm human, just like the two of you." He rolled his eyes. "Except that I can't die."
"Are you sure?" Martha asked with a frown of disbelief.
"Quite sure," he answered. "I've died plenty of times, and have always simply woken up." Martha opened her mouth but he stopped her with a rise of the finger. "And yes, I was definitely dead, so don't ask me if I am quite sure that it was done right…"
"I wasn't going to," she replied softly. "I was just going to say that I'm sorry you have had to live through that. It mist be so lonely."
"Watching everyone you love die," Rose added with a look backward to the car behind him as she remembered the sadness in the Doctor's eyes when he spoke of watching those he loves wither and die. "I'm so sorry."
He took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles. She could tell by the shudder in his breath that wasn't from the bumpy road, that it was a topic that upset him. "You have nothing to be sorry for," he assured her. "And if my long life means that I get to see you again, Rosie, then it's all worth it." He smiled. "For a hundred years all over been doing is biding my time until I can see you and the Doctor again. Until yesterday, I thought I had to wait at least another fourteen years until our timelines matched up again."
Rose touched his shoulder. "Jack…"
"Oh look," he chirped in, telling both women that the line of conversation was officially terminated. "Here we are." He pulled to a sharp stop and was out the door before the wheels had stopped their skid on loose gravel. Rose couldn't help but notice the way that he wiped at his eye as he walked to the back of the vehicle.
She looked to Martha. "Make sure he doesn't abandon him again," she pleaded softly. "The Doctor, I mean."
"I'll make sure of it," she vowed.
