A/N: Yes, you read that right. She updated ;)

Also, this is indeed chapter 14 (not counting the prologue). I'm not going to put chapter 13 here, because ninety percent of it is pure smut, the rest Nine and Rose talking, and I'm much to busy to write a non-explicit version. Knowledge of chapter 13 is not necessary for the further plot of this story. If you want to read it anyway, you can find the link to my Teaspoon account in my user profile.

Chapter Fourteen

The Doctor should have seen it coming weeks ago; heck, he should have seen it coming directly after Skaro, but he hadn't. He had seen that Donna was still trying to come to terms with what had happened on Skaro, but she hadn't said anything, and he had done what he always did and changed the topic. Well, not so much changed, more like forgotten about it. The TARDIS had still been severely damaged, and the short trip to bring her near the camp had short-circuited a part of the auto-gravity system he hadn't been able to replace easily.

After finally making it off planet they had floated in the Vortex for a week or so, while he had conducted necessary repairs and the TARDIS had begun to heal herself. Then he had brought them to Oloxos Three where he'd tried to buy a new converter for the auto-gravity system and they'd promptly got involved in a full-blown revolution. After that had come Irelene Seven, where he had hoped to acquire a replacement for a new dynamorphic generator, or at least something he could rig up accordingly. Unfortunately they'd run into a king who thought it a deadly offense if another man wore trousers in his presence, followed by the inevitable running for their lives.

All that had taken time, and now Donna was standing in front of him, arms on her hips, and yelling so loudly that she could have given Jackie Tyler a run for her money.

"Three months? You're telling me it has been three months?" she screeched and glared at him accusingly. "I've been travelling with you for three months without as much as talking to my folks? Let alone visiting! Oh my god, they probably think I'm dead or have been abducted by an alien! Wait! I have been abducted by an alien!"

Eventually she had to pause in her tirade for a second to catch some air and he used the opportunity to cut her off. "You might have noticed that we were a bit busy in the last couple of weeks. And like I said before: I don't make a habit of reading people's thoughts, so excuse me if I didn't know what was going on in that head of yours. If you wanted to go home you only had to say the word."

That was only to be expected, he thought. Of course she would want to go home, especially after what he had almost done on Skaro. He sighed inwardly and turned to the console, asking over his shoulder, "Where do you want me to drop you off?"

Donna looked at him as if he had just grown a second head. "Oh, you're a dumbo! I don't want to go home. Just see my family sometime, or just talk to them!"

This time it was his turn to look at Donna as if she had turned lilac all of a sudden. "Humans! Sometimes I wonder what's going on in that brain of yours. Ever heard of the concept of telling somebody something that's bothering you? Someone stole your speech centre? No, can't be, last week you managed to talk us even deeper in trouble than we were already in."

"Oi! How was I to know that commenting on the colour of the king's trousers was implying that I wanted to be a member of his harem? You're supposed to be the tour guide! And you were the one that got us arrested in the first place."

"Damaged ship, remember? We can count ourselves lucky that we made to Irelene Seven, let alone a time period where I could find a replacement for the dynamorphic generator. Without that we might have been stranded anywhere in the universe, so excuse me if my priorities differ from yours."

"That's exactly the point, Doctor: the entire time you were like 'if I don't repair the ship, the entire universe is gonna collapse'. I didn't want to interrupt."

"Donna, you phoning your folks does not exactly stop me from repairing the TARDIS. If I could survive Rose forcing me to tell Jackie that I would fix her dishwasher while I was in the midst of calibrating the navigation system, I can survive overhearing you telling your mum the latest developments in NewEastEnders."

Donna looked confused. "Who's Jackie? And what's NewEastEnders? Wait, this box has a phone?"

"Donna, this is a dimensionally transcendent time ship that looks like a telephone box from the nineteen-fifties gallivanting through time and space. Of course she has a phone!"

"And why wasn't that information part of the info packet?"

"Well, it's not as if I had many people to call, is it?"

"Oh, I knew you were lying when you said you had friends!"

"Oi! I do have friends. I just don't make a habit of handing out my phone number willy-nilly." He trusted that the TARDIS would bring him wherever he was needed without someone having to call him, and he certainly wasn't going to dangle on anyone's string, especially not the people who ran UNIT these days.

"And what does that mean? You've got a phone, but you won't let me use it because someone might get a hold of your number?"

He could almost hear the oncoming slap behind Donna's words. "You've got a mobile, don't you?"

"And what's that to do with the price of tea? A mobile's bloody useless in space. I checked, you know."

He sighed. "Donna, I travel through time and space in a ship that looks like a blue box. One'd think I'd be able to rig up your phone for intergalactial and intertemporal roaming."

"You can rig up my phone for what?"

"Donna phone home," he said, indicating quotation marks with his fingers.

"Oi! I'm not stupid!"

"Well, you asked. So, do you want to call your family or not?" he said, extending his hand.

"And who tells me it's still gonna work afterwards?" Donna asked suspiciously. "I mean, you're still repairing the TARDIS, and it's been months since we crashed."

"One, the TARDIS is old; two, it's not like I could make a pit-stop at the next repair shop. Which reminds me. We should go to Cardiff. Soon."

"Cardiff," she said incredulously. "What are we're going to do in Cardiff?"

"What I intended to do before we crashed. Refuel."

"And you can't do a pit-stop somewhere more interesting? Paris? Or maybe Rome? Or a shopping planet?"

"Unless they recently acquired a rift through time and space, nope." He paused briefly. "Last chance. Do you want me to rig up your phone or not?"

"As long as I get free roaming, too. And I expect a visit to a shopping planet after Cardiff."

The Doctor sighed. The things he did for companions.

~o~o~o~

"Sir? Something strange is happening on the Plass," Ianto Jones announced, a slight strain in his voice. For Ianto that equalled almost an emotional outburst.

Captain Jack Harkness hurried over to the line of monitors Ianto was referring to. "What do you mean, something is happening?"

His team member simply pointed at one of the screens.

Jack stared at the monitor disbelievingly for a couple of seconds, unable to look away from the blue box materialising in front of the fountain. Then he spun into action.

"Monitor the blue box," he advised Ianto while he snatched his greatcoat from the railing, where he had deposited it after their last mission, and ignored the questions of his team members. Then he activated the lift that would take him directly to the Plass.

The motion of the lift gave him some time to think. The Doctor. But which one? During the years he had spent on Earth he had seen various versions of him, including an incarnation he was certain was from the future. Hair gel and pinstripes. The very no-nonsense, leather and jeans version he had known would be horrified, he had thought amusedly.

He had always kept his distance. After hearing Rose's story about the Reapers he had decided that he could do without that particular experience. But there was more to it. Whenever he accidently ran into an incarnation of the Doctor and didn't maintain a certain distance, the Doctor retreated himself, as if he was repelled by a very large magnet of identical charge.

After what seemed a much longer ascent than normal, the lift reached the Plass and he stood on the stone for a few brief seconds, protected from any prying eyes by the perception filter. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see a red-headed woman crossing the Plass. As always, it amazed him that the groups of tourists filling the area completely ignored the blue box parked in front of the Water Tower.

His gaze returned to the TARDIS and he wondered what incarnation would leave the ship. His question was answered when the door opened and a tall man in a black leather jacket appeared.

Seeing this incarnation again brought it all back. The last exchange of words with the Daleks, the brief flash of green before everything went black, the rasping pain in his lungs that came with the first breath after he had regained consciousness, the TARDIS dematerialising in front of his eyes, the countless deaths since then. And the anger at the man who had left him there.

The Doctor leant against the doors, his arms folded, his legs crossed at the ankles. The soldier in Jack immediately noticed the tension radiating from the figure in front of him, although to someone who didn't know him quite as well the Doctor would present a picture of nonchalance.

He wondered where Rose was. He was certain that this was after Satellite Five for the Doctor, but was it after Canary Wharf? He had seen her name on the lists, had heard the rumours that the Doctor had been there, but he hadn't looked at the CCTV evidence, although he had access to it. He had thought he couldn't bear to see her, see them again, the family he had had for such a short time, and then watch her die. Yet another death the Doctor was responsible for.

Jack took a deep breath and stepped forward, leaving the protection of the perception filter. With a few quick steps he crossed the distance between the lift and the TARDIS and stopped abruptly about three yards from him.

The Doctor gave him a curt nod. "Jack."

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't introduce my fist to your face," he said through gritted teeth.

The Doctor took a step in his direction and shrugged. "Do whatever you think you have to do. I probably deserve it. But if you want the reason why I left you on Satellite Five, you're wrong."

"Oh, because I'm just a stupid ape who couldn't possibly understand why you left me behind? Or are you going to tell me I was hallucinating when I saw the TARDIS disappearing in front of my eyes?" Jack remarked scathingly.

The blue eyes showed regret and sympathy. "No, Jack. You're Wrong."

This time he could hear the capitalised letter. Despite his inclination to stay angry his curiosity got the better of him and he asked, "What do you mean, Wrong?"

"You're immortal," the Doctor stated.

"Oh, really? I hadn't noticed. I've only been killed, like, a dozen times during the last hundred forty years, by almost anything you could imagine, including a bloody javelin!" Jack shouted.

The Doctor winced at the sarcasm, then sighed, apparently having reached a decision he didn't like but would carry through regardless. "Jack, I'm not just someone travelling through space and time in a slightly unusual looking ship. I'm a Time Lord. I can see time, literally everything that is, was and ever could be. If I want to I can even manipulate it, to a certain degree. For me, time is always in flux. I see possibilities being born and extinguished in seconds. But you, you are a fact. Permanent. Even looking at you is hard for me. I won't lie to you, Jack. When I left you on Satellite Five I had no intention of ever coming back. Every instinct is telling me to run, as fast as I can."

The admission hurt. He had thought they'd been friends, and now the Doctor told him that he couldn't even bear to look at him? "Then why don't you?"

"Because it's not fair to you. It's not your fault."

"Then whose fault is it?" He had spent so many nights wondering why this had happened to him, cursing his fate and the person who had inflicted it upon him. He simply didn't have the patience to wait for an answer anymore.

The answer he got was not the one he expected. "I tried to trick Rose when I sent her home from Satellite Five." The Doctor's lips twitched with humour. "Not one of my wisest moves. I should've known she wouldn't do what I told her. Somehow she persuaded my frankly magnificent and incredibly stubborn time ship to help her."

Even if the Doctor hadn't told him everything yet, what he had said was enough for Jack to reach a conclusion. "Rose did that? But how?"

"She looked into the Time Vortex. For a couple of minutes a single human being had all of time and space at her fingertips, and she used it to rescue us. She wiped out the entire Dalek fleet with a sweep of her hand. Literally. She simply turned them into dust. In all my lives I've never seen anything like this before, Jack." He had a far off look on his face, as if a whole universe of possibilities was being born in front of him.

"A Time Lord with that sort of power would have become a vengeful god, but she was only human. She just couldn't stand you being dead. With another wink of her hand she resurrected you. Even with the power of the Time Vortex at her disposal, everything she did was so human. The only thing she wanted was to keep us safe."

"Us?"

"Jack, you're the brother she never had," the Doctor replied impatiently. "What do you think she would have done? Leave you to rot?" He stared at him like he'd just dribbled on his coat. "But she couldn't control it. She brought you back permanently. The last act of the Time War: Life."

If somebody else had told him he wouldn't have believed it. "Does she know?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I almost lost her that day. Had she given up the power only seconds later she would have died. Even so, she nearly did. The power was almost too much for her heart. I couldn't deal with that and with what you had become. Not at the same time. I'm a coward, Jack, and I was selfish, and so I lied. I told her you were busy rebuilding the Earth." He gave him a wry grin. "Rose is going to kill me for running from you if she ever finds out that I abandoned you."

Jack considered the man in front of him. The Doctor looked different. He couldn't put his finger on it but it was there. He still thought it was after Canary Wharf, and having seen the lists he would have expected the Doctor to be devastated. He clearly wasn't, but he could also sense that there was something else going on, something the Doctor hadn't told him yet.

"Can she change me back?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Jack could read sympathy in his eyes and knew the Time Lord meant it. He was talking to one of the very few beings in the universe who could truly understand what a curse an immortal life could be.

"Where is she?" he asked finally. He really didn't want to dance around the topic of Canary Wharf the entire time.

"You didn't see the lists?"

"Canary Wharf?"

"Yeah." The Doctor's voice sounded surprisingly calm.

"Was she..." Oh gods, please, don't let her have been cyberised. He didn't know if he could stand that. But if she was dead the Doctor would be devastated, like he had been on the Gamestation, during those moments when he'd thought that Rose was dead.

"She's not dead, Jack."

He closed his eyes briefly, thanking gods he had stopped believing in ages ago for their kindness. "Then what happened?"

"Your employer in their unfathomable wisdom decided that it would be a good idea to punch even more holes into the already damaged walls of the Void and let the Cybermen in. Mind you, not the Cybermen from this universe, which would have been bad enough; no, they opened a passage to a parallel world. Not to mention that they had a Void Ship containing the Cult of Skaro and a prison ship full of Daleks tucked away in one of their labs," the Doctor replied sarcastically. "To get rid of them I had to open the Void again. She got sucked into a parallel universe."

"Hey, I had nothing to do with what happened at Canary Wharf," Jack protested. "I didn't even want to see the reports."

"You didn't?"

Jack shook his head. "No Torchwood reports, no CCTV footage, nothing. Not after I had seen her name on the lists. She is the little sister I never had. I've lost so many people I love. I just couldn't bear it. Knowing that she was dead was enough, I didn't need to watch it happen."

The Doctor nodded slowly.

"Why are you here, Doc?" Jack asked eventually.

"I suppose, telling you that I wanted to see you isn't going to work?"

"No." Jack crossed his arms.

"Thought so." The Doctor looked slightly uncomfortable and sighed before he spoke again. "I need your help."

Jack wasn't stupid. There was only one possible reason why the Doctor would show up out of the blue, almost apologise for abandoning him, allow him to hit him and admit that he needed help.

"Let me see if I got this straight: You abandon me on Satellite Five because you want Rose to yourself and now you want my help to get her back?" Jack guessed.

"Pretty much sums it up, yeah," the Doctor agreed.

"And why would I want to do that?"

"Because you're a romantic at heart who can't bear to see two lovers separated by the Void?" the Doctor asked casually.

It took a moment for the words to sink in, then Jack grinned. "You finally got it together!" he shouted gleefully.

"So are you gonna help me?" the Doctor asked grumpily.

"Of course. But only because it's my only chance to find out how you're in bed."

"What?" The look on the Doctor's face was priceless.

Jack laughed. "Don't worry, Doc. I don't wanna get into your pants. Mostly because Rose would probably kill me. And it's much easier if I simply ask her."

~o~o~o~

"Please, Rose, for me?"

Rose could still hear her mum asking her if she would attend this Vitex party. Jackie had been nagging her for weeks, and eventually she had given in. She understood that her mum wanted her to be there, to celebrate Pete's and her anniversary. To everyone else this was the foundation day of the Vitex Trust, but she was one of the five people in this universe who knew what the real occasion for the party was, and her mum had told her that she wanted the family to spend the day together, 'family' including Mickey and Jake.

Unfortunately that had led to another bout of motherly advice, or rather, meddling, at the breakfast table.

"You still need a dress, Rose. You can't wear the one with the golden embroidery again, you know that. You're a person of public interest, and people will think you're wearing out last year's fashion, or in this case, things that were in two years ago."

"Mum, I like that dress, and I really don't see why I should stuff my wardrobe with dresses I don't wear anyway." After her last few experiences with paparazzi following Mickey, Jake, and her all over London when they'd wanted nothing else than a few drinks in one of the hip clubs, she'd practically given up on going out, apart from an occasional pint or two in the pub most Torchwood agents visited after wrapping up assignments. Besides, she had the feeling that when she left this universe it would be with nothing but the things she wore at the time, and it would be for good. So stocking her wardrobe with dresses she'd never wear again seemed like a waste of time and money.

"Rose, please. People will talk. They're already asking questions about you never going to Vitex parties. You're supposed to be the Vitex heiress, you've got to act like that!"

"I've never wanted to be the Vitex heiress, mum. If you'd listened to me, I'd just have been a distant cousin or something, and nobody would have been interested in me after a few weeks."

"But you're my daughter, Rose!"

"I know, mum, and I love you. But this isn't who I am, and I don't want to pretend." Keeping up the appearance that she was content with the life she led was hard enough at times; she didn't need to be playing a high society girl on top of that.

Jackie took her hand. "Love, I know you miss the Doctor, and don't think I didn't know that you're still looking for a way back to him. I don't have to like it, because I don't want to lose you; but I know you'll find him one day, or maybe he'll find you. But don't you think he'd want you to live a life in the meantime?"

Rose stared at her for a moment. Could it be that she had forgotten the promise she'd given herself? To have a fantastic life? She'd buried herself in work and her studies, hidden away in the archives, looking for anything that might help her to get back to the Doctor. And somehow along the way she apparently had stopped living. How long since she had stopped to watch one of the street artists in front of the County Hall? How long since she had dropped onto a park bench to listen to a bird or watch a sunset?

She took a deep breath. "What do you think of a shopping trip after work tomorrow?"

~o~o~o~

Standing on the staircase and nursing a glass of champagne, Rose observed the guests who had gathered again in small groups after dinner and remembered the last time she had worn a scarlet dress.

After they'd become lovers the Doctor had asked her for a proper date, much to her astonishment, and even promised an evening without running. She hadn't expected him to do something this domestic and had joked that they seemed to be doing it wrong: living together, eventually becoming lovers and then having a proper date, but he had insisted and told her to go to the wardrobe room.

When she had got there, the TARDIS had already laid out a dress: scarlet silk, knee-long with trumpet sleeves and a deep neckline, and with something Rose could only describe as a merry flicker the ship had directed her attention towards the matching ballerina shoes that would allow her to run. She had laughed and donned the dress. Back in the console room, the Doctor had looked at her for a full minute without being able to say something. Then he had taken her arm and led her outside.

He had actually booked a table in a very nice restaurant on Augusta Prime, but unfortunately they'd had an infestation of Treluvian Fireflies who'd tried to take over the entire gastronomy industry on the planet. Of course they'd had to run before they'd even got to the first course. Afterwards he'd tried to apologise, but she'd told him that it wouldn't have been them if there hadn't been any running involved. That night he had finally made love to her without a sign of the desperation that had driven him the times before.

A jostle by a rather large woman she had never seen before brought her out of her reverie.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I was looking for the restrooms." She pressed a hand against her body. "It seems I can't stomach the oysters."

"I know the feeling," Rose said sympathetically. "Go back to the main entrance, then turn into the corridor on the right. It's the first door on the right hand."

"Thank you." Her relief was palpable.

"You're welcome."

Rose let her gaze drift over the guests once more, until she finally discovered the familiar faces of Mickey and Jake, the two other 'family members' Jackie had invited. Since this was supposed to be a formal Vitex dinner, they hadn't been seated at the main table, much to Rose's disappointment, and she had lost them in the crowd afterwards. She observed Mickey talking to one of Pete's business partners, and the man vanished in the direction of the main entrance.

She left her position on the staircase and made her way over to Mickey and Jake, intent on persuading one of them to dance with her. Having brought a new dress for the occasion meant it had to be taken out for a spin, didn't it? And since she was here she might as well have fun.

In coming nearer, she saw yet another man turning to Jake for advice; and if she had seen correctly, he was directed towards the entrance, then right. It stuck her briefly as odd, but she shook the feeling off. When she had reached them she raised an eyebrow at Jake questioningly.

Jake shrugged. "Maybe something wrong with the oysters? This was the third person asking us for the restrooms."

"No," Mickey said. "I had them, too, and I'm feeling well."

Rose grinned. "That could be because you basically eat anything, Mick, including pickled eggs."

Jake mocked vomiting, but then became serious again. "No, seriously, Rose. I saw your mum having oysters, too, and she's fine."

Rose slowly came to the conclusion that something wasn't right. She didn't know what it was, not yet anyway, but something was definitely wrong here. "Jake, have any of the persons you sent to the restrooms come out yet?"

Jake shook his head. "Now you're asking: None of them. Odd."

Slowly the pieces began to form a picture – and Rose got a suspicion. "Mick, can you charm Mrs Jamison out of two or three bottles of vinegar?"

"Sure. But why?"

"Because what's happening here sounds like the Raxacoricofallapatorians all over again."

Mickey and Jake looked at her questioningly. "The what?" they asked in unison.

"Remember the day you hacked into the weapons control of a submarine and fired a cruise missile at 10, Downing Street, Mick?"

Mickey grinned. "Sure. You're thinking it's the aliens with zippers on their heads?"

"I dunno why, but it reminds me of them, yeah."

"And what are we gonna do, Rose?" Jake asked.

"Wanna cause a scandal, Jake?"

"Oh, why not." He grinned at her.