A month after the Doctor had vanished for the last time, Rose was making good progress in her new life. Remembering the Doctor's words to her ("Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth" still echoed in her dreams of gold light and TARDIS noises), she took Mickey to his word and joined this world's version of Torchwood to try and get any information she could about the Doctor. She started off as a secretary in the weapons department, where Mickey had managed to make a name for himself and become head of department – she had to note the irony of Mickey being her superior – but after casually remarking to a passing techie that he was holding the gun upside-down, she was hauled in to give her 'expert' opinions on some of the other examples of alien technology they'd managed to obtain.

Of course, her knowledge was still fairly limited – she could only identify about a third of the items in storage, and she could only name the planets of origin of about half of those – but even this made her a valuable asset to Torchwood. She had never planned on becoming such a rising star in the company, but all the evidence seemed to be pointing that way, especially with Pete (she had to learn to stop calling him that – he'd insisted she call him 'Dad' now) as Head of Torchwood. If she was honest, Rose was perfectly happy where she was.

Any spare moment she had, Rose was searching the Torchwood archives trying desperately to find something – anything – that might give her a glimmer of hope. If she could just find a file, a photograph, anything, then she might be able to track him down. She'd nearly had a heart attack a fortnight previously, when she'd found a photograph of him taken from some CCTV footage, but she hadn't been able to trace it back any further than the last time she'd been here with him. She supposed it was the CCTV footage from their confrontation with Cyber-Lumic. Undaunted, she printed off a copy of it and kept it hidden, in a side pocket of her handbag, as her little secret. It made her feel closer to him in some way.

"Rose?" yelled an inquiring voice. Jake's, she assumed – she didn't think there were many Torchwood workers with Geordie accents.

"Yeah?" she yelled back, walking over to the doorway and peering round. She was not surprised to find Jake holding a large gun rather tentatively at arms' length. She was surprised at the hundreds of thread-like wires that were starting to wind their way up Jake's arms slowly but threateningly.

"Any idea how to get this stuff off me?" he said conversationally. Rose walked over and studied the gun carefully.

"When did this start happening?" she said, peering intently down the barrel of the gun.

"About two seconds before I yelled for help."

"And which button did you press on the gun?"

"I didn't press anything. I was just cleaning it." He nodded towards a damp cloth on the floor. "I dropped that when the gun started attacking me."

"In self-defence," Rose pointed out. Jake frowned confusedly at her.

"It's alive?" he asked incredulously. Rose shook her head.

"Not as such." She walked over to a nearby sink and picked up a couple of dry paper towels. "This gun is from the planet Haustus. It's a desert planet, just sand and rocks everywhere. The people there evolved so that they wouldn't need water, and their technology was developed the same way." Rose rubbed at the gun with the paper towels and to Jake's obvious surprise the wires retracted back into the handle of the gun. "It's allergic to water." Jake gaped in amazement. "Next time, use a dry cloth," Rose advised with a slight smile as she strode out of the room and back to her desk.

Returning to her computer, Rose wiggled the mouse to get rid of the Torchwood logo screensaver and her screen was once again filled with various files and windows. Just before Jake had distracted her, she had been following a hunch she'd had about how to find the Doctor. If the Doctor had been the reason Torchwood was set up, surely there should be some information about him in the files concerning the birth of Torchwood? It had not taken her long to dig up the right file, and now her heart was racing as she scanned a transcript of the original documents about how Torchwood was created. This was what she lived for now – the thrill of the chase. For years she and the Doctor had been running here, there and everywhere, chasing the bad guys. Now it was the Doctor who was being chased. Near the end of a particularly long file, written in a very flowery way, Rose held her breath as she glimpsed a mention of a werewolf …



Excerpt from Torchwood file 'Inception1879'

and so, in the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy nine, the last monarch of the United Kingdom, Her Royal Highness Queen Victoria, died under tragic and unusual circumstances. Her Royal Highness had arranged to take her annual trip to Balmoral to have the Royal Jewel, the Koh-I-Noor, recut. This was in accordance of her late husband, Prince Albert's, wishes. The Royal Party was ambushed in its stay at the home of Sir Robert MacLeish, son of the late Sir Thomas MacLeish, a great friend of Prince Albert, and a wolf of monstrous size and strength was sent in an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria herself. The wolf was a prisoner of the monks of the Glen of St Catherine, and they later confessed to the wolf being a man who changed into a wolf by the light of the moon. The attempt was thwarted by the bravery of Sir Robert, who sacrificed his life to use the Royal Jewel as part of an elaborate contraption built by Sir Thomas. The Queen, however, was determined not to let this werewolf infect her and inhabit her, as it promised it would (this information was recalled by one of the household maids, Flora, who was held captive by the monks with the rest of the staff). Instead, she recited the Lord's Prayer and took her own life.

Thus the monarchy was dissolved, as the rest of the Royal family fled the Empire fearing similar assassination attempts. Lady Isobel, Sir Robert's widow, pledged to set up an institute to investigate the cause of this tragedy and to establish a means of protecting the Empire from other such strange occurrences. It was to be named the Torchwood Institute, after the name of the home of Lady Isobel. The then Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, was appointed the United Kingdom's first President, and the legacy of Torchwood was born.


"So'd you find anything?" Mickey asked later, placing half a shandy in front of Rose and settling down on the rickety pub chair next to her with his own pint of lager. Rose stared sullenly at her drink for a few moments before reaching over, grabbing Mickey's drink and gulping it down quickly with a grimace. Mickey blinked.

"Bad news, then?"

"Bad enough to make me want something stronger than lager. Gimme a shot."

"Rose …" began Mickey tentatively, but the rest of his sentence was lost under Rose's strong glare. Mickey knew that glare well. That glare said 'I'm going to get drunk and you're not going to stop me'. Sighing inwardly, he sidled back over to the bar and leaned on the counter.

"Two vodkas, please," he asked the barmaid. Hell, if Rose was going to get drunk, he may as well join her.

Three hours and several shots later, Rose had abandoned her stony looks and was instead giggling inanely. Mickey laughed along with her without quite knowing why, feeling it was better to let her forget whatever bad news she'd found that day.

"Arthur!" she exclaimed drunkenly between giggles. "I still can't believe he called a horse Arthur!" She rested her head on the table and banged it with her fist, her shoulders shaking with mirth. "I mean, normally horses have really stupid names, like A Spoonful Of Sugar, or … I dunno … Tea For Two … or something." She hiccoughed loudly, which made her giggle even more. "But not Arthur!"

"I take it you're talkin' about the Doctor, yeah?" Mickey slurred. Rose nodded, holding onto the table for support in case she fell off her chair. She lapsed into a drunken, hiccoughing silence for a few moments as Mickey downed another shot.

"Oi, Mickey …" she said suddenly. "Y'know how, in this world, when you an' me an' the Doctor first came here?"

"Yeah."

"And I found out I didn't exist here? I was never born or nothing?"

"Yeah."

"D'you know what I found today?"

"What?"

"The Doctor's the same." She giggled again, and this time Mickey didn't join in. "The Doctor doesn't exist in this world, Mickey. He's never coming back." Her giggles dissolved into tiny, heartbroken sobs, and Mickey was at her side in a flash, putting an arm round her shoulders and holding her tightly.

"S'ok, babes," he muttered. "I know how you feel."

"No, you don't," Rose said thickly, her head buried in his T-shirt. It was times like this Rose could pretend he wasn't Mickey at all, but the Doctor. They smelled the same, a comforting mix of Lynx and some smell that boys just seemed to have. Eau de Boy. Whatever it was, it made her feel safe.

"Believe me, babes, I do." Rose sniffed and looked up at him, frowning at him slightly. She saw a deep, intense sadness in his eyes and she was reminded forcefully of the Doctor. She didn't like it at all.

"Mickey, you … you didn't … know … about the Doctor not being here, did you?" she said accusingly. Mickey looked away. "Tell me you didn't." He couldn't meet her eye and Rose stiffened slightly in his arms. "Mickey, tell me you didn't know the Doctor didn't exist here," she pleaded, desperation etched in her face and her voice.

"I'm sorry, Rose," he muttered, pulling his arm away from her. He stood up shakily and pulled his jacket on slowly.

"No," said Rose, shaking her head unbelievingly, "because if you knew, you'd've told me, Mickey, you would've told me, Mickey, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you? Mickey, wouldn't you have told me?" Tears started to fall again but she ignored them, concentrating instead on Mickey's crestfallen face and hunched shoulder. She followed him out of the pub, her voice becoming louder and shriller as she begged and pleaded him to answer her. "Mickey, you'd've told me! Mickey! Mickey, why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to be the one who told you," he muttered mutinously as he strode down the dark street. "You'd've killed me." Rose stopped dead in her tracks and sobered up immediately.

"What makes you think that?" she asked incredulously.

"You love him," he replied bluntly, still walking away.

"What's your point?" Rose yelled at his retreating back. Mickey stopped, and for a moment Rose wondered if she'd gone too far. When he turned around to face her, she knew for a fact that she had.

"My point?" he spat bitterly. "My point, Rose, is that you can't bear to be without your precious Doctor. You can't stand the fact that he's gone and he's never coming back. That's why you keep that photo in your handbag, isn't it?" Off Rose's look, Mickey chuckled darkly. "Yeah, I know about that. An' you know what? That's what you can't stand the most. You can't stand the fact that I know stuff about the Doctor that you don't. You can't stand the fact that I was right. An' now you're just gonna go back home and feel sorry for yourself 'cause you're still here with me instead of savin' the universe with him." He was shouting now, screaming at Rose with tears of his own rolling down his cheeks, but he didn't care. "You hate me cause I'm not him, don't you? Well, guess what – I'm not him. I'm not him an' I never will be."

"Yeah, I know that, you idiot –"Rose began, and wished she hadn't. She was cut off by a harsh laugh from Mickey, who was slowly walking over towards her now.

"That's right," he said. "That's what I am. I'm Mickey the Idiot. Mickey the Idiot, who fell in love with Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, and hasn't been able to let go of her. Mickey the Idiot, that's me! I was born an idiot, I'll die an idiot, and I'll always be an idiot because I still love you. That's why I'm an idiot, Rose. Not because of all the stupid stuff I've done. Not because I broke Jake's heart when I told him I couldn't replace Ricky. Not because I didn't tell you about the Doctor. I'm an idiot because, despite everything you've put me through, all the stuff you've thrown at me, using me and tossing me aside … I still love you. I love you and I always will." They were almost nose to nose now, Mickey looking at Rose with a mixture of pity and anger on his face and Rose just staring blankly. Both of them were crying, and neither of them cared. "That's why I'm an idiot, Rose." After a very pregnant pause, Rose nodded grimly.

"That's why you did it, isn't it?" she asked. "You didn't tell me because you wanted the upper hand. You knew something I didn't, and it made you feel big and powerful. Good old Mickey with his big alien guns, running around saving the world. Mickey Smith, from zero to hero. You enjoy being my boss, don't you? You just love the fact that you get to tell me what to do, not the other way around. I bet you get a kick out of it, don't you? It turns you on that you get to order me about. It makes you all hot under the collar, doesn't it Mickey? Knowing that you can tell me to do something and I'll do it, no questions asked –"

And that was when Mickey kissed her.

It wasn't a gentle kiss, by any standards. On the contrary, it was a harsh, bruising kiss that would have knocked Rose off her feet if he hadn't been gripping onto her upper arms as if she were an escaping prisoner. It was a kiss that claimed her, that made her aware she was being shut up by force. If Mickey had been a more violent man, he would have slapped her across the face to make her listen to him. Rose understood that this was how Mickey's mind worked now. Well, two could play at that game.

Mickey had expected Rose to be shocked by his kiss. He hadn't expected her to kiss back. She responded with a force to rival his own, gripping his head in her hands and digging the nails into his scalp. When she bit on his lip, Mickey gripped her arms tighter before pushing her away so hard she stumbled and nearly fell over. There was a heat and passion in her eyes, a fire that burned in her. He wasn't quite sure what was fuelling it.

"I know I'm not him," Mickey began, panting slightly. "But nobody knows what you've been through better than me. You know you'll always be able to talk to me about stuff. About the Doctor, the TARDIS, the different planets, all that stuff. No-one understands better than me." He licked his lips nervously, feeling the line where Rose's teeth had made their mark. There were no blood, but he knew there could have been if Rose had been any angrier. "I know I don't deserve a second chance, or even a third chance … but we could be happy together. Even if you don't love me like you love him, that's fine. I don't care, Rose. I just want to make you happy."

"It's me who doesn't deserve a second chance," Rose said weakly, shivering slightly in the cold air. She studied Mickey's face for a second before staring resolutely at him. She'd made up her mind. She walked over to Mickey and slipped her hand in his, interlocking their fingers just like she used to do with the Doctor. New New Doctor, he'd once said. Well, this was New New Rose. No more pining, no more hoping, no more wishing, no more wanting. She had a future and she was determined to make the best of it. She and Mickey walked back to her house silently as the Doctor's words echoed in her mind.

Have a good life. Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life.

…TBC…