1.11 Boom Town

"How's Mickey?"

"He's okay. He's gone."

"Do you want to go and find him? We'll wait."

"No need. He deserves better."

Rose felt absolutely wretched.

The day had started so well. She'd had such a lovely time sharing a meal with Jack, the Doctor, and Mickey. The Doctor had been on his best behavior, barely needling Mickey at all as they all swapped stories and shared banter. Mickey had integrated into their little team like he'd been there all along, syncing phones and monitoring exit paths as they chased down Margaret, the final Slitheen who had escaped them what felt like lifetimes ago.

When it was just Mickey and Rose, though, she'd just made mistake after mistake. She'd behaved so absurdly, first promising to share a hotel room with Mickey and then acting like a jealous child when she'd found out he was seeing someone new. She barely recognized herself. It was like she'd slipped back into the skin of the girl she'd been before she'd started traveling with the Doctor, taking such a myopic view of things. She hated it.

She'd known for ages that she and Mickey were over. She'd said as much. She'd certainly acted like it, flirting with Adam and Jack, and then seducing the Doctor. More than that, falling in love with the Doctor. And yet she hadn't had the guts to tell Mickey so, to let him go. She'd liked having that tie to home, the idea of someone waiting for her back on Earth who would be there to catch her if the dream she'd been living fell apart.

It was so selfish. Mickey had been there for her, as a friend and then as a boyfriend, for so many years, and she'd treated him as disposable. Sure, he didn't have a spaceship or a tragic backstory or stormy eyes that broke her heart with their depth of emotion, but he was a good bloke. A good friend. He'd been right to yell at her. He'd been right to move on. He really did deserve better.

And then the Doctor. Oh, the Doctor. How he'd changed in the short months since they'd brought Jack aboard; since they'd silently acknowledged their need for one another and expressed through their bodies what they hadn't been able to in words. Once upon a time, he'd have been in a state for days after watching her go off with Mickey. But today, he'd been understanding. She could tell from his voice that he was aware of what Mickey had asked, of what she'd offered. But he didn't fume or pout; he knew where he stood, and was there to support her as she dealt with the repercussions of taking too long to make a choice.

Rose hadn't realized she'd just been hovering inside the TARDIS doors looking lost until she felt Jack's hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, Rosie," he asked her gently, "you okay?"

Rose let out a sigh. "Yeah. Sorry. It's just… I feel like a right cow, you know? I don't know what I was thinking, leaving him there like that, never bothering to tell him it was over. I should've done it ages ago. Now he hates me, and I've lost my oldest friend. It hurts, and it's my fault."

Jack pulled her into a hug, and Rose buried her head in his shoulder.

"Oh, Rose," he told her on a sigh. "It's just growing pains. You haven't lost him, I'm sure of it. He'll forgive you. He loves you."

Rose sniffled. "He shouldn't. I don't know why he does."

Jack laughed. "Who wouldn't? People can't help themselves. You're like a magnetic force; no one can resist. I know I couldn't," he finished, pulling back and giving her a roguish wink.

Rose laughed tearily as the Doctor walked up to them, wiping grease off his hands with a rag.

"Watch it, Harkness," he warned with an unconvincing scowl, "Hands off the blonde."

"Well you won't let me put them on you!" Jack countered. Pointing at the Doctor and Rose in turn, he continued playfully, "Honestly, the two of you should learn to share." The Doctor rolled his eyes and Rose giggled.

"No, but seriously, Rose," Jack continued, "Could you have handled things better? Probably, yeah. But that doesn't make you a bad person. You didn't want to hurt him, so you avoided the problem, hoping it would go away on its own. You're far from the first person to use that tactic, and you won't be the last."

"I shoulda told him, though," Rose rebutted.

"When?" the Doctor asked her. "When you first ran off with only a second's thought, or when I brought you back a year later and everyone thought he murdered you? Were you supposed to break his heart over the phone while asking him to fire missiles to blow up Downing Street?"

"I guess not," Rose hedged, "but still. I wasn't fair to him today."

"No, you weren't," the Doctor agreed, taking her shoulders and looking her in the eye, "but we all do stupid things when we get jealous, sometimes."

Rose took a deep breath and nodded, putting one of her hands over his in thanks.

"So!" the Doctor started, releasing her and backing toward the console while grinning at his two companions, "We need to get Baby Blon here back to Raxacoricofallapatorius, and then I think we've earned a little R&R. How do you feel about Japan?"

"Japan sounds lovely," Rose smiled, wiping her eyes. Jack grinned cheekily and made a bawdy joke that she didn't register, trying to get herself back together and pick up the threads of the contented life she'd been living just a day before.

"Fantastic," the Doctor responded with another grin, and he and Jack began pulling levers and pushing buttons in tandem as they moved the TARDIS back into the vortex.

Rose didn't go to the Doctor's bedroom that night. She needed some time to wallow in her feelings around the official dissolution of her relationship with Mickey, and to think about her ever decreasing ties to the place she had called home for the first nineteen years of her life. She knew the Doctor would understand. She would make it up to him later.