Author Note: Another quick thank-you for all of your reading and reviews! I'm really sort of blown away with the amount of attention I've gotten in only two days; you're all just wonderful! Anyway. This one had me nervous because it's the first time I've really been able to go off script with the characters and now that we're getting into AU territory I really want to do it – and the characters – justice. So, this is what I have for you guys. I can't wait to hear what you think! :)
You're gonna be okay?
She woke up gradually, at first confused and disoriented; then she woke up all at once, awareness seeping in around her and an intense discomfort pressing against her chest. Pain radiated from so much of her body it had blended together indistinguishably, until it was one constant ache, throbbing in time with her heart.
Somewhere near her a loud beeping picked up in tempo, she screwed her eyes shut further. When the beeping only grew faster she opened her eyes instead, slowly acclimating herself to the brightness of the room.
The taupe walls and white crown molding looked odd paired with gurneys and futuristic hospital machinery, it'd been scattered with disregard all about the room. Her eyes sparked immediately in recognition.
She had been in the TARDIS infirmary before, usually for quick fixes like broken fingers or skinned knees and palms; once or twice she'd woken up here with a dull headache – and one time a broken leg and bruised ribs – and an exasperated admonishment from the Doctor about her general state of 'jeopardy friendliness' and giving him a 'hearts attack.'
Never had it been like this. Looking around (as well as she could manage without actually moving) for the source of the beeping, Rose's eyes landed on a heart monitor displaying all sorts of readings she couldn't make heads or tails of; she allowed her eyes to flutter closed again, still heavy from exhaustion.
Reaching up with her right hand to her neck, she fingered the small patch which had been stuck there, over her pulse point. The Doctor had explained this to her before; it monitored her pulse and sent the information to the machine with the annoying beeping. Her fingers brushed against something else and that toward the source, she discovered a small oxygen tube had been fixed around her eyes and rested on her cupid's bow, just below her nose.
Realizing just how uncomfortable it was now that she was aware of its presence and only half aware of her actions, Rose wrapped her right index finger around it and had begun to pull it down when a gentle hand halted her, and gruff, admonishing words invaded her ears.
"Stop that!" He veritably hissed at her; her eyes flew open in shock to find his face immediately. She hadn't even realized he was in the room with her.
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The Doctor had been sleeping restlessly, hunched over in a chair near the head of Rose's bed and dreaming of the color white. In his dream, she was alive and trapped. Out of his reach forever on the other side of the void; safe with her family. Miserable.
The dream Doctor had watched as the void closed. It took longer in his dream, he noted, for the hole to close in on itself. Rose fell just as she had, but was caught by Pete; and just before they both got sucked into hell forever, Pete engaged the dimension hopper one last time. And they were gone. She was gone. The void closed slowly in on itself.
The dream Doctor staggered toward the white wall, shock already setting in—she had promised him forever less than one Earth day ago. What sort of cosmic joke was this?!
Placing his right hand on the wall and closing his eyes, breathing deeply before drawing even closer so his whole body, cheek to toes was pressed against the flat surface, he could swear, he just knew he could feel Rose there—just on the other side. They brushed against each other but they never touched. Then the dream Doctor walked away, knowing he could spend the rest of his life pressed against that wall just to feel her… and that if he didn't leave soon he very well might do just that.
He swore he heard his dream Rose crying out, banging on the wall until her fingers and knuckles must have been bloodied from her efforts, black streaks marring her beautiful pale cheeks as she sunk in defeat to the ground.
Then all the dream Doctor heard were his heavy steps and his increasingly quickening heartbeat…
He snapped himself out of his dream quickly, his mind registering the sound of a single human heartbeat and realizing that reality had begun to invade his nightmare.
Rose's heart was beating too fast, but it was slowing again into a more natural rhythm; still in a state of partial panic from his too vivid nightmare and the way in which he'd been woken from it, when her right hand had positioned itself to remove her oxygen mask, he'd immediately placed a hand carefully over hers and spoken to her far more harshly than he'd intended… he hadn't intended to be harsh with her at all, as it were.
Rose started, her eyes flying open comically and connecting immediately with his, she attempted (poorly) to conceal a wince from the slight jostling she'd done to her body when he'd surprised her. Her heart rate picked up slightly before leveling out again, just slightly higher than it had been before.
"Sorry," the Doctor continued in a gentler voice, allowing his eyes to soften now that she was awake, and breathing, and in front of him. "You need to keep that on. You perforated your lung and this is helping you breathe more easily. Like that time – you know – on Melvin, when you got rammed in the chest by the Minotaur, remember?" She nodded weakly, muttered "What a stupid name for a planet," and closed her eyes once more in exhaustion. He brought her hand back down to her side and began the ritual of tracing the delicate circles that spelled out his name on the palette of her pale skin.
Less than a day ago when he was doing this is exact same thing he'd made a promise to himself that if they made it through this he would tell her how he felt. Now he admitted to himself that he hadn't prepared himself for the possibility that they might both actually come out of this alive and together… and ashamed of himself as he is for it, the fact is that he isn't brave enough to actually follow through on his declarations.
There is a reason he kept that little bit of his heart out of her reach before the battle, even if he forgot why in the heat of the moment, when he'd been faced with the prospect of losing her forever. There is a reason that he threw Sarah Jane and Reinette between himself and Rose like human shields. Rose, and everything she represented for him, were dangerous. He had responsibilities to the universe and to himself – and he still would, long after she had gone. He knew she understood that. After all, she had promised him her own little forever and it had come with no conditions or expectations he couldn't hope to meet.
'That's why,' thought the Doctor, watching his thumb trace its patterns, listening to her heart rate relax into sleep, 'and that's why it's better if you don't know what I feel for you. All of this is so much more tragic if we're star-crossed and standing right beside each other.'
Still holding her hand the Doctor shuffled to sit back in his chair and watch Rose's sleeping face, musing in sadness that she could see through to the core of every one of his lies, acts, and manipulations, but she couldn't see this. All they'd been through and she still knew they were just best mates—that at the very most he's fond of her. It's the only instance in the entirety of their relationship, he knows, that's she's seen exactly what he wanted her to see, instead of what actually was. 'That may be the most heartbreaking thing of all.'
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The Doctor has a plan. It's a brilliant plan, if he's being honest with himself. It's also dangerous and borderline mad. He needs to be in the console room to figure out whether it's even possible but he won't leave Rose alone. Torn between the two he eventually decides to simply cart Rose's gurney to the console room with him – 'she'd want me to if she was awake to hear my plan and I am on a bit of a tight schedule, what with the walls closing.'
That's how Rose wakes up for the second time: disoriented, she finds herself in the console room, and somewhere beyond her vision is the cheery sound of the Doctor 'whooping' in a self-congratulatory manner.
"Wha's goin' on?" She slurs with sleep.
"I found a way for you to see your mum!" The Doctor blurts out manically. He regrets his choice of words before he's even finished his sentence, silently cursing this body for its lack of tact and the need to say a thousand words when three will do. Now he has to take the hope rising in her eyes and crush it. "But this will only work once, for a few minutes. There are still a few small tears left in the skin of the universe and they're closing fast—" He hates himself when he sees her eyes go flat. "But I found the biggest one I could and we're going to send a message through it to her. The TARDIS can make a projection into Pete's world."
He waits for her anger; after all, he'd just given her hope and taken it away in one breath, or regret that she didn't stay with her mum to begin with. He even expects both when he sees tears welling in her eyes and cascading down her cheeks. But Rose is forever surprising him. "I get to see my mum?" He nods. "Thank you, Doctor." She says through her tears. She acts to sit up and hug him, gasping in pain and collapsing back onto the gurney, a small cry escaping with the impact and with a few heavy gulps of air she tries to catch her breath.
"Are you alright? Are you hurt?" The Doctor doesn't wait for her answer. He rushes over, checking the small incision marks under her bandages from where he'd cut her skin so he could remove her ribs from her lungs with the precision-instrument he'd picked up from the Terileptil. They hadn't ripped open thanks to the healing his dermal regenerator had done. He chastises himself again for how harsh his voice had come out, but admits that it's a lost cause. As personable as this regeneration typically is, it seems that when he's worried about his Rose, his nine will always come out. He took a half-step away in a show of mild annoyance and huffed at her. "You have to be more careful. This isn't like your other trips to the infirmary, Rose. You're still hurt. You are going to be hurt for a while."
Even with putting slight pressure on her broken hand the way she had, Rose shouldn't have been in as much pain as she clearly was, especially with the medicine she'd been given, and the Doctor didn't know why she seemed to be burning through it so fast.
"Sorry," was all she said, though she looked suitably chastised.
Pinching the bridge of his nose to cover a wince, the Doctor realized he was going to have to move her to a chair anyway. If this was going to be the last time Jackie ever saw her daughter, the Doctor owed it to the woman who had all but called him son-in-law (and she had done that a few times, too) – regardless of the fact that he was centuries her senior – a daughter who wasn't laying ash white on a hospital bed looking close to dead.
He explained his plan to Rose and then gave her more medicine to manage her pain before swiveling the jump seat around and carrying her to it. She asked the TARDIS for concealer and a mirror and expertly covered the bump on her head. Unfortunately, nothing could be done for her bandaged hand, but all her other injuries were coverable once she had finally been seated and made as comfortable as possible.
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Rose watched as the Doctor spun around the console, typing and sonicing, pulling at his hair and threatening the TARDIS with a mallet – but that came to an end the second time she shot sparks at him and singed his brown pinstripe suit-sleeve.
After a few more minutes of working in unison with the old girl, he turned back toward Rose with a mixture of self-import and hesitance. "Okay, I've set the TARDIS up with a power source and for the next eleven minutes or so we'll be able to access Pete's world...
"Now we need to get a message to your mum because I've no way of knowing where the crack will come out," he shuffled toward her and bent down to her eye level, extending his fingers, signifying his askance to connect with her mind. She nodded her head, 'yes' with barely a second's delay.
"Now just think about your mum," he told her as he slowly made the connection between them. Rose felt a momentary flash of panic before her mind recognized the Doctor's and accepted him, their minds embraced with a flash of warmth and reverence felt by both parties. "…and call out to her. She'll find us."
Concentrating as heavily as Rose was on the image of her mother she barely even registered the Doctor's presence in her mind or in front of her. She thought of her life growing up on the estates: her mum home from work late, exhausted – but still willing to help a seven-year-old Rose with her times tables. Her mum taking a day off work to watch Disney movies with a feverish Rose when she was nine. Her mum, who hadn't been able to afford to buy her a single present for her twelfth Christmas but had still saved and stretched every dime to purchase and then slave away over an only slightly charred Christmas dinner, big enough for Mickey (who's mum and dad had both just up and left him) and Mickey's gran, and a distraught Rita, who's cheating boyfriend had left her with a black eye and an empty savings account; and the look on her mum's face when Rose was gifted with a beautiful red bicycle with a huge pink bow, "from Santa," was all the card had said.
She filled in these memories with the repetition of the word "mum." She made it her mantra. In her desperation to do this right she paid little attention at all to the Doctor, even as he concentrated entirely on her and her memories.
Concentrating was harder for the Doctor than he thought it would be. Around Rose he always found it hard to focus – which might be why he'd made her miss a year, and might explain the old girl's turbulent flying recently – but that had all been manageable. Connecting with her mind in this way was not manageable.
This was not walking through doors as it had been with Reinette; in order for his plan to work both he and Rose had had to tear down a wall and connect through it. This was an open floor plan, albeit on the outermost edge of their minds. Rose's surface memories were his memories. He tried to concentrate on them, and shielded them both from making any of his memories hers.
Such a task really was easier said than done, however. The act of dropping the walls from one's mind willingly, for another being to enter was an intimate act on Gallifrey; typically reserved for close immediate family: parents/guardians, brothers/sisters, (maybe the occasional 'in-law'), and spouses. And the Doctor hadn't had any mental contact since Reinette. With Rose, now, he hadn't experienced this since before the Time War. Goose flesh rose all along his body as it reacted to the contract and he leaned ever closer toward her, just managing to stop himself from resting his forehead against hers.
The Doctor focused again and pushed Rose's thoughts across the void: Jackie helping with math. "Mum." Jackie cuddling with Rose during a sick day. "Mum…Mum." Jackie watching on, near tears, a huge smile on her face as Rose rode a red bicycle around the small flat singing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." "Mum…Mum…Mum…"
The TARDIS beeped in alert and the Doctor unwillingly took his fingers from Rose's head, smiling encouragingly when she looked at him questioningly and gesturing to the console room, where the old girl was replacing their surroundings with the projection of a beach.
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"Last night my mum had a dream. She heard a voice and it was calling her name. She told dad and Mickey. Anyone else would think she'd gone mad. But not those two; they believed it. Because they know me and the Doctor. So they listened to the dream. And that night, they packed up, got into dad's old Jeep and off they went. Just like her dream said. Followed the voice... across the water... kept on driving hundreds and hundreds of miles. Because her daughter was calling... Here we all are at last. And this is the story of how I died."
Rose's scrutiny over her new surroundings come to a halt as, in the middle of the beach she spots her mum standing there, waiting. Being held by a crushing grip on her mum's right is Mickey Smith, and on her left, Pete. Rose holds in a choked cry at the sight while standing behind her with hands lightly on her shoulders the Doctor winces, hoping he gave her a high enough dose to keep her most of her discomfort away for at least the next few minutes – worrying the inside of his lip, because with the speed at which her body was burning off her medicine it would be a close call.
"Where are you?" Mickey asks.
Sparing a brief glance at Mickey before turning back to her mum Rose answers. "Inside the TARDIS."
"There's one tiny little gap in the universe left, just about to close. And it takes a lot of power to send this projection, I'm in orbit around a super nova." All eyes swivel around to look at the Doctor at this confession before shock melts into either affection or understanding, and in Rose's case an emotion that frightens but does not at all surprise him. He laughs slightly, "I'm burning up a sun just to say goodbye."
"You look like a ghost," Jackie finally manages to choke out.
The Doctor pulls out his sonic and points it at something behind him. "Hold on…"
Jackie lets go of Mickey's hand and takes two steps forward, Pete still in tow. "What happened to your forehead?" She asks, before dismissing the question as unimportant with a shake of her head. She lifts her hand up to Rose's cheek but stops short of touching her when Rose's eyes well up and she shakes her own head, no.
"We're just an image. No touch."
"Can't you come through properly?" Jackie's voice trembles.
"The whole thing would fracture. Two universes would collapse."
"So?" Jackie says and both she and Rose bark out a half-hysterical chuckle. "Pete tried to use the jumper—to come back for you. But it stopped working; figured you'd done it, closed up the Void…"
The group is silent for a moment then, taking each other in. In everyone's distress no one notices just how floored the Doctor is by Jackie's last statement. His dream. It hadn't been a dream at all. He'd been seeing the unfulfilled timeline. Rose had been the temporal tipping point and she had saved herself, and the Doctor was floored.
In the alternate timeline Rose hadn't been able to get the lever back online as quickly – she had struggled and the suction of the Void had slowed down further, making it take longer to close. In reality she had pushed through her exhaustion and pain and shoved the lever back into place in almost no time at all. The Void had barely had time to lose suction before Daleks and Cybermen were once again whizzing by their heads and the Void had closed in on itself much sooner and much more quickly. Time had been kind just this once and left both Pete and Rose in the universes where they belonged, even if Rose had been injured.
But they don't have long to say goodbye, so the Doctor forces himself to stop reliving the timeline that would never be, and move the conversation along.
"Where are we? Where did the gap come out?"
"Bloody Norway." Jackie says in distaste.
"Norway. Right…"
"About fifty miles out of Bergen." Pete speaks up, even while his eyes are locked on his pseudo-daughter and the jump seat she hasn't moved from with narrowed eyes. "It's called 'Dårlig Ulv Stranden'."
"Dalek?!" Both the Doctor and Rose squeak.
"Dårl-IG," says Mickey with a smirk and a throaty chuckle. "It's Norwegian for 'bad'…this place translates as 'Bad Wolf Bay'."
The Doctor's eyes bug out like a cartoon and Rose's jaw snaps open and closes in quick succession.
"How long have we got," asks Rose, turning slightly in her seat to look at the Doctor.
"About two minutes..."
She looks back at her mum and laughs a real, disbelieving laugh. "I can't think of what to say!"
The trio laugh with her even as tears begin running down Jackie's face.
"They've still got you then, Mr. Mickey," the Doctor jokes.
"There's six of us now. Pete, Mickey, his gran, Jake... and the baby.
"You're—" Jackie nods before Rose can finish and beside her Pete preens.
The Doctor laughs gladly and Rose sadly smiles, knowing both her mum and herself made the right choices, but devastated nonetheless that she'll never see her again, will never know her sibling.
"She's three months gone. More Tyler's on the way," Pete says for Jackie, who is looking at Rose with heavy eyes.
"Mickey Smith," Rose says, finally looking to Mickey for their final good-byes. She recalls what he said to Rajesh in the sphere room not long ago. "No longer the tin-dog. 'Defender of the Earth.'"
Mickey smiles back at her and nods. "Rose Tyler. No longer a shop girl. 'Defender of the Earth.'" Their watery eyes linger on each other for another moment, but this is as close to a real good-bye as either was willing to get.
"You're dead," The Doctor starts again, his hands gesturing to Mickey and both Tyler women, because time is still winding down too quickly. "Officially, back home. So many people died that day and you've all gone missing. You're all on a list of the dead."
Rose begins to cry quietly.
"Here you are," he continues. "Living a life day after day."
"Are we ever gonna see you again?" Jackie asks the both of them, tears making snail trails down her face.
"You can't," regret drenched his words.
"I love you," Jackie chokes out to her daughter, who nods and replies in kind, in a quiet tear-choked voice. Then she looks up at the Doctor with penetrating eyes and begins to make loving, absent-minded strokes to her stomach. "And you, you plum. I love you, too. And this baby is going to grow up hearing all about you – the both of you. And how you save the whole universe. And it'll lo-love you both too…" She stopped short to exhale a ragged sob before forcing herself continue with some semblance of coherency. "I'm proud to call you family, Doctor; you—you remember th-that."
With her sobs quickly escalating into hyperventilation she looked at her daughter one final time. "I am—I am going to mis-ss you so-o much, Rose. I l—I love y-you."
And then Jackie Tyler allowed her face to crumble, gave into her tears. Rose, who's crying had also been spiraling toward hyperventilation, in devastation at first and now also in pain, sobbed for her mother. "I love you, t-too, mu-mum. And I'll never forget you a-and—I'll miss you all! I love you." Then she too, succumbed to her sobs.
The Doctor was out of time, so speaking quickly and eyes red from unshed tears of his own he let his gaze sweep across the trio before him before settling his eyes on Jackie for the very last time. "Thank-you, for everything. And, I suppose since this is my last chance to say it… Jackie Tyler, I l—" He doesn't get to finish his sentence before the Doctor and Rose find themselves back in the console room.
The Doctor quickly grabs the portable oxygen tube as well as a paper bag, (sometimes you can't beat the classics as a cure,) holding it up to the face of a now fully hyperventilating Rose; he gives her another injection for her pain, even as tears run down his own face.
As her breathing regulates and the pain in her chest subsides slightly, her eyes begin to droop, and she falls asleep with her right fist clutching his oxford, his own arms wrapped carefully around her fragile body.
He tosses the bag, makes sure the oxygen tube is adjusted on her nose and picks her up off the seat, placing her back on the gurney in the corner of the room and wiping the tear tracks off her face with his thumbs.
Behind him, he hears a loud "squeak." Spinning around quickly on his heel he puts himself between Rose and the threat, positioning his hand so he can grab his sonic screwdriver if necessary. Instead, he spots a woman in white, her hair red (he registers enviously) and her back to him.
"What?" He shouts, otherwise speechless.
The woman turns around and squeaks again at the sight of him.
"What?!" The Doctor asks again, more confused at the stowaway's apparent surprise.
"Who are you," she demands. "Where am I? What the hell is this place?" She gets increasingly agitated when all the Doctor can reply with are single word nonanswers.
"But—What?!" He sputters as she continues to yell at him. "WHAT?!"
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On a desolate beach Mickey wipes tears from his eyes and clears his throat repeatedly. Pete, whose own eyes are dry but red-rimmed just the same, consoles a Jackie Tyler who had been brought to her knees by an overwhelming sorrow.
But Jackie Tyler would be okay. She had said her piece and made her good-byes and her daughter was happy and loved; Jackie hadn't bothered wasting her last precious moments with her family as a whole with demands and promises of safety. She knew that as long as Rose was with the Doctor, she would be protected to his very last breath.
She had seen her daughter today, and she finally understood what Rose had meant when she'd said "It's a better life" that day in the chip shop when they'd thought the Doctor was going to die. Her little girl had saved the whole universe today. And some day she figured the Doctor would be too slow to save her baby, but when that day came Rose would not have any regrets. "There is a word," thinks Jackie, "missing from the English language. Something between worry, and pride."
After a few minutes, Jackie rose up from the ground. She brushed the damp sand from her knees and stood up tall. She made a silent vow as she stood there overlooking the crashing waves. Jackie Tyler would live a fantastic life, with no regrets, and she would never forget her daughter or the amazing alien devoted to her…devoted to all of them, really.
Jackie Tyler knew how that sentence was going to end.