"You didn't tell him."
Rose hardly hears the words. Not because she's loud, she stopped crying hours ago. She forgets to exist as Rose Tyler.
After a long silence, she finally whispers, "I couldn't, Mum." Her throat catches the words, like it was trying to stop her from speaking. It doesn't want to.
Her mother once again wraps arms around her and holds her. She feels like a child again, needing her mother to hold her because she scraped a knee. Only she doesn't have a scraped knee, and instead she's mourning the love of her life, who is still alive. "I know, sweetheart."
"Do you, though, Mum?" Rose yanks herself away from her mother's grasp. "Do you really think that you know how it feels? I mean, I know you lost Dad, and that was hard, but this is so different." She ran her fingers through her hair and turned away from her mother. "Because the Doctor is so different, and we never had even a thought of settling down. I was going to travel with him and his TARDIS for the rest of my life. And then everything happens so fast, and I find myself here, and I have to learn to live without him. Just as an extra kicker, I find out I'm having a baby, and I just so happen to get to say goodbye."
Jackie hesitates, perhaps for the first time in her life, to comment.
"And he tells me to my face that he's burning up a sun to say goodbye. He's speeding up the destruction of a star because he wants to talk to me, and do you think he'd really stay there and sit back if I told him that he was going to have a baby he can never ever meet?"
"Oh, Rose." Her mother comes back to her side, but this time didn't try to hug or comfort her. "I think you did the right thing. Cause what's worrying him going to do?"
"Do you think that makes it any better?" Rose gets up from where she'd been sitting, wiping away the tears from her cheeks. "The last thing I did to the love of my life was lie, right to his face, and waste time so he couldn't actually tell me how he felt."
Rather than wait for her mother to say anything else, she storms towards the door and follows the path of the hallways outside. On the porch, she finds the hammock they'd set up there. She sits down in it, only to find her stomach churning again. She hurries over the railing and vomits into the flowerbed. She's internally thankful that she hadn't eaten because all that comes out is disgusting-tasting water.
Finally settled into the hammock, she lets it gently swing back and forth. At first, she tries to sleep. It never comes, so instead she just lies there. One of her hands goes over her abdomen, and she tries to imagine herself with a baby. She'd spent two years only imagining traveling through the stars, on distant worlds and all throughout history.
Now her future includes naptime, warming up bottles, and getting her dad to babysit while she does advisory work for Torchwood. Or more than advisory, depending on how the next phase of research works. Her future also includes doctor visits (with a medical professional, not her Doctor) and paying bills.
"What d'you think?" she asks, quietly, out loud. Then she scoffs at herself. "I'm asking my unborn baby if they want to be born. This is what you do to me, Doctor."
The only answer she gets is the gentle tink-tink of the wind chimes.
"I think that you're enjoying causing problems. Not even born and giving your mother a heart attack." She kicks her foot a few times to get the hammock to swing. "If you're anything like your father, you're not going to stop causing problems ever in your life. You'll get all the brains from him too, and finish your secondary school with good marks."
Her monologue is interrupted by the door of the house opening. She hears footsteps coming out and sits up to see who it is.
It's her mother. Again.
"Sorry." She doesn't really mean it, but she settles back into the hammock.
"No, I'm the one who's sorry." Jackie walks over and leans against the railing. "I shouldn't have pushed. I know this is hard."
"Hardest thing I've ever done."
"You know, finding out I was pregnant with you wasn't easy either." She leans back a bit and turns her head to look at the lawn in front of the house. "Blimey, that's a smell. Did something-" But she interrupts herself a moment later when her head bobs over the railing.
"Didn't have time to run to the toilet," Rose says.
"You know what, let's get you a proper cup of tea. Inside you go, come on." Without waiting for an answer, Jackie helps Rose up from where she's sitting and guides her inside, where she all but falls onto the couch.
"Like I was saying, it wasn't easy when I got pregnant with you. Pete and I had been married less than a year, and he didn't exactly have a consistent job." Noises in the kitchen sounded like she was finding mugs and a kettle for tea. "So I start getting sick, and I grab a test when I'm around at the shop. I didn't really believe it, I don't think, not until I went to the doctor and got a proper test."
"How is this supposed to make me feel better?" Rose calls out from her pit on the couch, sinking into it as far as she can, curled up in a ball.
"I'm getting to it!" her mother calls back. "So a few months later, I'm telling my family, letting everybody know the big news, and my mum, your granny Miriam, asks to come over for tea. I say sure and make her a nice cup. She comes in, and she tells me, 'Jackie, there's a lot of things in life you just have to deal with. But your kid always has to be more important than anything else. You sit them down, and you love them like you've never loved anyone else in your whole life.' I didn't expect to hear that, not from her. But she's right. You put them before anything else, and you love them like you've never loved anyone."
Rose finds herself stunned. She doesn't even know what to say, and she stays that way until her mother shoves a cup of herbal tea into her hands. She sips at it, trying not to burn her tongue. "Thanks, mum."
"Anytime."