Laszlo hadn't let go of Tallulah's hand the whole time he'd been leading the Doctor through the sewers, but the Doctor wasn't about to suggest separating them, not after they'd just found each other.
And he was trying very hard not to make comparisons about a different blonde and her alien as he followed behind the pair.
Several times they had been forced to double back and avoid groups of the pig-men roaming through the sewer system, but eventually, they could hear voices that weren't the squealing of pig-men or the mechanical tones of the Daleks.
Slowly, and moving carefully so that their footsteps didn't echo off the stone, they crept towards the sounds. Pressing close to the tunnel walls to avoid being seen, and letting Laszlo carefully peer around each corner before they continued onwards.
After a few minutes, they came to a T-junction, and after checking around the corner, Laszlo used the hand that wasn't clasped in Tallulah's to beckon the Doctor forward.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted Martha and Frank, alive and well, but they stood with two dozen other people, penned in by pig-men.
"What're they doing? What's wrong?" the Doctor heard Frank ask as the pig-men suddenly began shifting and squealing in either agitation or excitement.
"Silence! Silence!" came the voice of a Dalek, and the Doctor hissed softly, reeling back around the corner, Laszlo and Tallulah following his example.
"What the hell is that?" The Doctor heard Martha exclaim and swallowed back the bile in his throat as he edged forward again, just enough to be able to see what was going on.
"You will form a line. Move! Move!"
"Just do what it says, everyone, okay? Just... obey—"
"The female is wise. Obey!"
The Doctor felt an odd mix of pride in the way Martha was trying to keep everyone safe, and fear as the Dalek expressed its enthusiasm for its captive's compliance.
A second Dalek appeared, and the Doctor's half-constructed plans on how to get Martha out safely shattered as his chances of success plummeted.
He released a shaky breath, reluctantly beginning to wonder just how many Daleks were hidden down in the sewers of Manhattan.
"Report," the second Dalek ordered, and the first turned its eyestalk on its comrade.
"These are strong specimens. They will help the Dalek cause."
The Doctor spotted the flash of recognition on Martha's face as the Dalek identified itself, and ground his teeth together, wishing he could reassure her.
But even if he'd been right beside her, he knew reassurance right now wasn't possible.
"What is the status of the Final Experiment?" one of them asked.
"The Dalekanium is in place. The energy conductr is now complete."
"Then I will extract prisoners for selection."
The pig-men moved to hold the first man in line still as the Dalek approached, its sucker attachment lifting to align with the man's face while the Doctor held his breath.
There were multiple uses for each part of the Dalek's arsenal, so when the monster from his nightmares only initiated an intelligence scan, he couldn't help but sigh softly in relief.
"Reading brain waves. Low intelligence," the Dalek announced a moment later, and while the man demanded to know what the creature before him meant, the Doctor was focussed instead on the Daleks.
"Silence! This one will become a pig slave. Next!"
It moved on and started the process on the next prisoner, and the Doctor leant back again so he could catch Laszlo's eyes for an explanation, but the man just sighed, looking even more despondent than before.
"They're divided into two groups. High intelligence and low intelligence. The low intelligence are taken to become pig slaves, like me," Laszlo quietly explained. The Doctor started to ask the obvious question but was forced to spin to Tallulah when she decided to exuberantly, and loudly, protest the Dalek's evaluation of her boyfriend.
"Well that's not fair!" She reeled back a little as both Laszlo and the Doctor shushed her, but continued in a near whisper, only partially deterred from her defence, "You're the smartest guy I ever dated."
The Doctor shook his head, torn between amusement and exasperation before he turned back to Laszlo.
"And the others?" He asked, already knowing where they were going to place Martha.
"They're taken to the laboratory."
"Why? What for?" the Doctor asked, but Laszlo just shook his head.
"I don't know. The masters only call it the Final Experiment."
The Doctor nodded, before leaning around the corner again to see how far through the lineup the Daleks had gotten. As he watched they finished scanning Frank, announcing him to be of superior intelligence, and the Doctor held his breath as Martha was dragged forward.
Even knowing that all they were doing was an intelligence scan, seeing his friend that close to a Dalek sent tremors of fear down the Doctor's spine.
"Intelligence Scan. Initiate... Superior intelligence. This one will become part of the Final Experiment," the Dalek declare and Martha's terror finally got the better of her as she started yelling.
"You can't just experiment on people! It's insane! It's inhuman!"
The Doctor winced at her choice of words even as the Dalek halted its movements, and spun its eyestalk back around to stare at her as coldly as the metal encasing it.
"We. Are not. Human," it declared slowly, as though doubting its scan, and believing her to be the height of stupidity.
Martha seemed to have no answer to give in response to its simple acceptance of her statement and fell silent.
"Humans of high intelligence will be taken to the transgenic laboratory," the Dalek declared, before it turned and began to lead the way through the tunnels, the pig-men escorting the nor sorted humans to ensure that none of them tried to flee.
"Look out, they're moving," the Doctor warned as they began to head towards them, and as he leant back again Laszlo began pulling Tallulah down the tunnel they'd arrived through.
The Doctor hesitated though, fragments of plans settling into his head. He still needed to get Martha out and find out what the Dalek's plan was. What, exactly, the 'final experiment' entailed, and why they needed humans for it.
Pressing himself back against the brickwork, and lamenting the filth that was attaching itself to his coat, he relied once again on the Dalek's narrow field of view to stay hidden.
"Doctor," Laszlo called, his voice a whisper, and the Time Lord steeled himself before turning to meet the man's eyes.
"Doctor, quickly—"
"I'm not coming," he hissed back, "I've got an idea. You go," he encouraged, waving Laszlo off as he listened for the approach of the Dalek led convoy. It was a crazy idea, but it was the best he had. He couldn't lose sight of Martha again.
"Laszlo, come on," Tallulah encouraged, tugging at the man's hand, and the Doctor turned away, returning his attention to the Dalek and its prisoners, tuning out the pair's whispered conversation.
He heard Tallulah's heels move back down the tunnel, so he was surprised when Laszlo returned to his side and spared the man a grateful glance for his silent support, but that was all he could offer as the Dalek rolled past the opening they were hiding in.
As before, every nerve in the Doctor's body stilled, and she stopped breathing until he was sure that he hadn't been seen, but when he spotted Martha he took one large step into the line behind her, Laszlo right beside him, and whispered to her quickly.
"Keep walking," he warned as her head whipped around, and she quickly spun back to face the front. The Doctor watched her shoulders as she drew in a shuddering breath of relief, before redirecting his eyes to the Dalek at the head of the procession. He couldn't let it see him.
"Oh, I am so glad to see you," she whispered, her voice shaking, and the Doctor pressed his lips together. Wondering, not for the first time, if his companion's faith in him wasn't entirely misplaced.
"Yeah, well. You can kiss me later," he muttered, before remembering the soft glances she often shot him when she thought he couldn't see. He cleared his throat and raised his voice just a fraction to make sure the teen walking behind him could hear, before adding, "You too, Frank. If you want."
He could hear the muffled laughter his words dragged from the teen, and some of his own panic fell away.
It wasn't a long walk through the tunnels until they came to an area that looked suspiciously like the foundations of a building. It had been fitted out with an expensive array of lab equipment, and the Doctor let his eyes rake over everything.
He sought out anything that might be used against the Daleks but found nothing more interesting than the black, smoking Dalek in the centre of the room.
"Report!" The Dalek that had led them into the room demanded.
"Dalek Sex is in the final stage of evolution," came the response and the Doctor froze. Body tensed, and eyes blazing with fury as he realised that these weren't just any Daleks. They were the cult of Skaro. They had escaped the battle of Canary Wharf. They'd gotten out, while Rose—"
"Scan him. Prepare for birth."
The Dalek's orders pulled the Doctor's focus back to the present problem, and his frown deepened.
"Evolution? Birth?" he muttered softly, and Marth turned to stare up at him.
"What's wrong with old Charlie boy, over there?" she whispered, but the Doctor shook his head, wondering exactly the same thing.
"Ask them," he told her, and her eyes widened as fear flooded her system, adding to the already potent chemical mixture floating around in the air.
"What? Me? Don't be daft," she hissed, almost angry, and the Doctor sighed.
"I don't exactly want to get noticed," he hissed back, eyes still watching the Daleks movements while they argued, and he saw Martha's jaw drop out of the corner of his eye.
"You think I do?" she snapped, and the Doctor risked turning his attention from the Daleks to shoot her a glare. It had only been one day since he'd told her about the war, his planet, and she ducked her head, suddenly seeming to realise what she'd said.
"Ask them what's going on," he repeated, softly, "They won't see a human as a threat. They'll see no reason not to answer," he reassured her, and after a moment Martha drew in a trembling breath and took a couple of steps forward
The Doctor moved slightly, placing Frank between himself and the Daleks, blocking their view of him, but he watched Martha carefully.
He was prepared to pull her out of harm's way at a moment's notice, but he hadn't lied to her. The Daleks needed the humans for something, and they were unlikely to kill her if they still needed her.
He wouldn't let her get hurt if he could help it, but he needed answers now, and looking at Dalek Sec, the Doctor suspected those answers were needed urgently.
"Daleks!" Martha shouted, and all three that had been surrounding Dalek Sec turned their eyestalks on her, "I demand to be told. What is this... Final Experiment?"
One of them approached her slowly, and the Doctor saw her panic as she shouted for the Dalek to give its report and as it slid to stop before her it began to answer her questions.
The Doctor wished he was able to stand close enough to feed Martha the right questions, but he pushed the thought aside and focussed on whatever information she could pull from them.
"You will bear witness!" The Dalek said and Martha frowned, shaking her head in confusion.
"To what?"
"This is the dawn of a new age!"
Martha began to turn her head to look at the Doctor, and he felt his breath catch in his throat. He couldn't help her, and he couldn't be seen, but she seemed to catch herself the movement stopping quickly.
When she spoke again, her voice was shaking, and a lush of pride for the medical student rose in his chest.
"What does that mean?" Martha asked, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.
"We are the only four Daleks in existence," the Dalek explained, and the Doctor felt his breath catch again, but this time with hope. Hope that the nightmare that had followed him since Skaro, since Davros, since the Time War might be nearly over.
"The species must evolve a life outside the shell. The children of Skaro must walk again."
Having said its piece, the Dalek reversed away from Martha and rejoined its fellows as they spread themselves out evenly around the black Dalek who slowly stopped shaking, smoke hissing out from its casing.
Martha backed away, and as soon as she was in reach, the Doctor let his fingers wrap around her upper arm, a gentle gesture of thanks, of reassurance, but his attention was on Dalek Sec.
The light inside the eyestalk glimmered, before dying, and the Doctor let his eyes narrow in consideration. The smoke was dissipating slowly, and there was a low whine as the mechanical components seemed to shut down.
The front casing hissed as it unsealed, and slowly began peeling bak, revealing the Dalek inside, but what the Doctor saw made his stomach roil with fresh hope and renewed fear.
Martha stepped back again, her back pressing against him as she instinctively sought safety, and the Doctor swallowed at having to let her down again.
"What... is it?" she whispered, but no matter how many times he tried to speak past the lump in his throat, the Doctor found that, for once, he was truly speechless.
A moment later, it didn't matter, because the new creature now pulling itself out of the casing to stand before them had heard her, and it answered her question with a level of certainty and candidness that simply compounded the terror rising throughout the room.
"I am a human Dalek. I am your future."
"Rose!"
Jack's voice rang through the halls of the hub as he hunted down the elusive blonde.
After they'd returned to the hub from giving Jasmine to the faeries, Rose had disappeared while the rest of the team finalised paperwork and went home.
Now that everyone had logged out but him, he was determined to find her.
"Rose?" he called again, heading down the hall towards her room, and heaving a heavy sigh of relief when her head appeared around the edge of the doorframe, the welcoming smile on her face reassuring him more than he'd like to admit.
"Where have you been? I was worried," he admitted, trying hard not to scold her like a child. The way she'd slipped away quietly had worried him though, and he let his eyes skim over her quickly.
"Hiding," she said simply, before ducking back into her room. She'd left the door open for him though, so Jack quickly followed her inside.
She sat on the bed with her back against the wall, and as Jack stepped through the doorway Rose offered him the armchair in the corner with a casual wave of her hand before her arms curled back around her bent knees, hugging them loosely.
Something was nagging at her, he could tell, and he paced across what used to be a small storage room, and tugged the chair closer to the edge of her bed.
"Hiding from what, Rosie?" he asked, his throat tightening at the quiet huff of amusement she let loose.
"Don't pretend you don't know, Jack," she chastised, but when he just held her gaze she sighed and shook her head. "It's fine, Jack. I understand why they're angry."
Ah. Hiding from the team then, he realised. Giving them space probably, but she hadn't hidden from him and he struggled to keep that relief off his face as she continued to explain.
"This isn't the first decision I've had to make that's pissed off my team. It's just that, usually, I have the advantage of being team leader and being able to pull rank," she said, before shrugging. "I figured I'd stay out of their way for a while. Let them cool off and think about it before having to see me."
Jack nodded slowly, but as she finished he narrowed his eyes in consideration.
She'd said she was fine, but Rose was notorious for hiding that things were bothering her. He wanted to prod and poke and make sure, but despite her reassurance that she hadn't left him on Satellite Five, there was still a part of Jack that was terrified of losing her again.
He didn't want his questions to push her away, but she held his gaze, the corners of her mouth turning up into a patient smile, and he finally summoned the strength to ask.
"Are you though? Fine, I mean."
Her reassuring smile faded and her gaze dropped to her knees but she wasn't avoiding him, he realised quickly. She was thinking about it. That alone was enough to reassure him.
"Maybe?" She offered eventually, the word half a question and Jack relaxed with a sigh, sitting back in the chair. There would have been something drastically wrong with her if she was fine after the last few days they'd had.
The bruises on her jaw and ribs alone should have garnered a 'maybe' from the young woman but she was a stronger Rose than he'd parted from on Satellite Five, and Jack was still coming to terms with that.
"I'm not sure how I feel, if I'm being honest Jack," Rose continued, words spilling out of her now as though a dam had been opened.
"It's not like we had a lot of time to consider the situation but... she was their child. Not that they had laid a claim on her like we'd assumed, but I mean right down to her species. I'd lay money that any DNA taken and tested after her eighth birthday would have shown structural changes, and changes to her genetics—"
Jack smothered a wince at the flood of science talk, and he raised his hands, silently begging her to stop and Rose's words cut off quickly, leaving an embarrassed silence in their wake.
"Okay, not everyone's a science geek," he teased, "I don't need the technical theories."
"Sorry," she offered, a sheepish grin creeping onto her face and making her eyes glimmer as she continued.
"What I'm getting at is... She belonged with them. And yet, that doesn't make what they did to Estelle right. Or that bloke you tracked down, or Jasmine's step-father. It doesn't stop her surrogate mum's pain at the loss of both her husband and her daughter. So... Did we do the right thing? I don't know," Rose admitted, shrugging as her arms tightened around her knees again.
"I don't know," she repeated, "but I do know we chose the best possible solution from the options we had available," she added, her voice firm as she held his gaze, and Jack nodded again.
"I agree," he said simply. He paused then, chewing on the words in his mind, debating whether to confront her or not, but he trusted her to be honest, so he shook his head, teeth clenching for a moment before he added, "That's why I let you take Jasmine but... but then you bargained with her for Estelle's life."
He frowned and watched Rose swallow hard, nerves rising in her eyes as she anticipated his question. "I don't understand that, Rosie, because that's not like you at all."
She lowered her eyes back to her knees for a long moment, fingers curling around her elbows as she pulled her knees up to her chest but he waited. He let her sort it out in her own mind, trusting her to tell him in her own time now that he'd asked.
Slowly, her honey-brown eyes lifted back to meet his, and she stared at him with such a haunted shadow in her gaze, studying him as she considered her words, her choices, her explanations or excuses, that his breath caught in his throat.
But Jack trusted her so he said nothing, let her stare, and said nothing.
Eventually, Rose let her eyes slip closed and she sighed, tilting her head back to rest against the wall behind her.
"You gave me the idea, actually" she began, and Jack felt his frame tense in surprise and shock, his heart beating just a little harder, wondering which of his disastrous decisions had inspired her choices that day, but the blonde rushed to clarify what she had meant.
"When you said that they travelled through time," she added quickly and Jack hid a sigh of relief, before nodding for her to continue as he tried to slow his still racing heart.
"That night, when they killed Estelle. That's when I made the deal, only I didn't know what the deal was because, for me, it hadn't happened yet."
Jack frowned as he untangled the web of time travel, and Rose started to clarify but she stopped when Jack shook his head.
"Hang on. Give me a moment," he said, running her explanation through his head one more time. "It's been a long time since I worked in the fourth dimension."
It took him longer than it should have to realise that what she was explaining was nothing more than a simple causal loop, but as soon as that puzzle piece fell into place, so did the reason she was hiding from the rest of the team. Trying to explain time travel to someone who hadn't experienced it could be more problematic than helpful.
"So... you asked them to bring her back, and because they did you knew that you would offer them something they wanted?" he confirmed, and Rose nodded.
"But the only thing they wanted was Jasmine. We all know they could have taken her, and they knew that I planned to hand her over. Restoring Estelle was..." Rose paused, and hummed softly to herself, carefully choosing her words, and Jack watched the slight frown on her features as she struggled to put the faeries actions into words.
"It was an apology and an act of good faith. Not an exchange, not really. Once I pointed out the causal loop, they didn't have much of a choice."
"If they'd gone back on their word and not restored Estelle, you may not have believed the child belonged with them," Jack realised aloud, but he was still frowning as he tried to fit the final pieces together.
"What I don't understand though, Rosie, is why they listened to you. Why did your opinion matter to them so much? They could have killed us all and taken the child. Why didn't they?"
Rose hesitated then, and when she eventually answered him, her words were slow, reluctant, and had just an edge of fear.
"Honestly... That was a gamble on my part," she admitted softly and Jack raised an eyebrow, forcing himself to be patient. To wait for Rose to gather her nerves and continue.
"You remember how I told you that I tore open the Tardis and looked into her heart?" Rose asked and Jack felt his heart clench in his chest. He remembered the discussion they'd had after dealing with Lisa the Cyberman.
He also remembered what the heart of the Tardis had done to Blon Fel Fotch, and how the Doctor had admitted to not knowing how powerful it was, but he forced down the questions he knew Rose didn't have the answers to and nodded.
"Do you also remember those two words we kept seeing an' hearing everywhere?" she asked him.
"Yeah. Bad Wolf," Jack answered, shaking his head as he tried to follow where she was leading. "The Doctor said they were following us."
A shadow of a smile passed over her face, but the nerves he could see in her eyes quickly squashed it and she moistened her lips nervously before shaking her head and continuing.
"They weren't following us, they were already there," she muttered, clearing her throat and seeming to force herself to continue, but her eyes were fixed on her knees, still pulled up to her chest. "It was a message that told me I could get back to the Doctor. When he sent me back home, it was everywhere. Grafitti'd on every wall, drawn out in chalk on the local playground, printed on posters and pasted all over the Estate. It helped me realise that I could get back, that there was a way. A link between me and the Doctor. It was telling me I could get back. 'Bad Wolf' was why I didn't give up. It kept me fighting."
As the words poured out of her, like a burden she'd been carrying around, her shoulders relaxed, and slowly her gaze lifted to his. While Jack could see the nerves still in her eyes, her fight was coming back too. A quiet confidence that she'd always had buried in her core, but that age and time, and apparently Bad Wolf, had brought to the surface like cream rising.
And now that she'd started opening up, she kept going.
"I don't remember what happened after I looked into the heart of the Tardis, not clearly. I told you, most of it's just fragments in dreams, but... there's one piece that— Well, it makes sense. I figured out it was a message before I looked into her heart, so when I dream about it sometimes I can hear myself. 'I take the words, and I scatter them in time and space'. Bad Wolf was a message to lead myself back to the Doctor."
Jack tried not to let his fear for the woman in front of him creep onto his face. If it was true, if the words they'd discovered everywhere had truly been her, while under the influence of the Tardis' heart, then what else had happened?
He was starting to get some new theories about why he couldn't die, but he desperately didn't want to place that burden on Rose's shoulders, so he heaved a sigh and rubbed his hands over his face, pushing those concerns to the back of his mind and trying to focus on exactly what she was telling him.
"Okay so, you're the source of 'Bad Wolf'?" he asked, crossing his arms, "The phrase all over the universe is your influence?" he asked, and Rose shrugged.
"It still crops up often enough for me to think so," she told him. "I mean... look at the alias we set up for me here. Truly random, right?"
Jack raised an eyebrow. Once he knew she was staying he'd been determined not to let her feel out of place and like she didn't belong. Rose had arrived with nothing more than the rucksack that had been strapped to her back and the clothes she'd been wearing, and she couldn't go back to her old life because she'd been declared dead at Canary Wharf.
He'd employed her, officially, and after handing his favourite blonde her first wage packet in cash as a surprise, they'd spent the evening with pizza and beer creating a new identity for her. An alias that she could use out in the world beyond the Torchwood Hub.
They'd had fun with it. Got drunk, blindfolded each other and thrown darts at the whiteboard covered in letters from the alphabet. Together they'd used that jumble of letters to make a name.
Truly random, as Rose had just said, but she had a small, cynical smile on her lips that told Jack it probably wasn't as random as he'd believed but he still nodded, slowly.
"Yeah?"
"Mal Lupin," Rose murmured the name they're created for her, weary amusement colouring her voice. "In Latin, that name means 'bad pertaining to the wolf'."
Various alien curses spun through his mind then, and he could feel the urge to protect Rose rise to the surface. How powerful had she been, he wondered, wielding the Tardis' heart. Creating ripples that spread through time and could influence the throw of a dart at a whiteboard full of letters.
Shock, fear, concern for the blonde before him, all made him swallow down words he knew she wouldn't appreciate. Questions her faulty memory couldn't answer, protective demands she would chafe under.
It took him a moment to get his reactions under control, but he focussed on the faeries, and managed to force his concern for her to the back of his mind because if looking into the heart of the Tardis had let her scatter a message throughout time, and change Blon Fel Fotch into an egg, what the hell else had it done?
"Okay," Jack muttered, "we can... come back to that. But what does 'Bad Wolf' have to do with the faeries?" he forced out, and Rose sighed, her amusement fading quickly.
"Time," Rose almost breathed out, before her voice hardened. "I gambled. I took a risk that creatures of time would recognise the words 'Bad Wolf', so I claimed the name. I called myself Bad Wolf as Mal Lupin, so I did it again."
She hesitated then, her gaze suddenly darting away from him, and flickering around the room. Buying herself time, but Jack waited her out and eventually, she let eyes settle on him once again, letting him see the fear she'd buried there.
"I don't know what I expected, really," she admitted quietly, and along with the fear in her eyes, he could hear a tiny tremor in her voice. "Their fear though... that, I didn't expect.
He couldn't have stopped himself going to her then if he'd wanted to. Jack rose from the chair, and quickly settled on the bed beside her, pulling his favourite blonde into his side with one arm curled around her shoulders.
He understood, more than he wished he did. She'd invoked a name or title that had made something fear her, and the fear of what that made her was almost palpable, so he let his chin rest against the top of her head, and his hand run soothingly along her arm, scrambling for a way, or for words, that would let her forgive herself.
"Rose," he breathed gently, "just because they feared what you might have done... that doesn't mean you would have been capable of actually doing it," he promised her, shifting until he could press a gentle kiss to the top of her head, as she curled against him.
"You've got a heart of gold, Rosie, and a soul to match." His words were muffled in her hair, and he sighed softly. Everything about her was golden. From her yellow hair, to her honey eyes, to her glimmering soul.
No one before Rose had seen anything in him worth saving, and as much as he loved and admired the Doctor, he held no illusions that it had been Rose's influence that had saved him from an exploding Chula warship.
She didn't answer his soft reassurances, and that alone told Jack that she only half-believed them, so with another smothered sigh he shifted on the bed, tugging her along with him gently.
"Come here," he insisted, moving himself and her unresisting form until they were both lying back on her bed, and he could wrap her up in a proper hug.
She let him, and that reassured him. She might not believe his words, but she was letting him comfort her and it healed some of the rifts torn through his heart after he'd believed himself abandoned on Satellite Five.
She hadn't abandoned him though, that had been the Doctor, and Jack found himself wracking his mind for something that would convince the woman in his arms that she wasn't a monster to be feared.
"The Daleks fear the Doctor," Jack started slowly, stroking his fingers through her hair and feeling her relax into his side, her head pillowed on his shoulder.
"Imagine that for a moment. A whole race, genetically engineered to only feel hate, and the Doctor can make them fear him. Does that mean he's not a good person, Rosie?" he asked, feeling her sigh as she considered his words.
"See," Jack continued, "if the dangerous things in the universe are worried about what repercussions their actions will reap... then, whatever they're worried about, has to be a good thing," he offered.
He didn't know what else to tell her. If a murderer feared the executioners' axe, that didn't make the executioner wrong. If the Daleks feared the Doctor that didn't make the Doctor the villain. If the faeries feared Bad Wolf, that didn't make Rose a monster.
He hoped she understood, but more than that he hoped she believed him, and he felt a tiny knot of anxiety loosen when her arm tensed around his waist, the pressure just a slightly stronger hug.
"Thank you, Jack," she whispered against his chest, and Jack sent out a quiet prayer of thanks to the universe.
Jack made no move to get up or leave, and Rose made no move to pull back from him so he let her soak up whatever reassurance he could give. It didn't take him long to realise that the woman had fallen asleep when her breathing deepened, and the arm across his waist turned heavy, but he still stayed.
Fingers combing soothingly through her hair, he guarded her dreams against any nightmares that might stalk her, and let the sound of her breathing reassure himself that she was safe and relatively unharmed.
He had no doubt that looking into the heart of the Tardis could have killed her. Probably should have. Rose had mentioned that the Doctor had regenerated, and Jack had some theories about the cause of that too, but he kept them to himself.
He'd save those questions for the Time Lord in question, along with all the others he'd got on a mental list, but the priority was reuniting the stupid alien with Rose.
Neither of them did well without the other, and while Jack knew his presence was helping her, he caught her sometimes staring out at the stars, sadness hanging around her like a cloak.
Just before dawn, he let himself close his eyes, and think of the Doctor, wondering where he was and just how long he and Rose would have to wait for their answers.