Time is Still A-Flying

by chocolatequeen

Part 3 of Being to Timelessness. With a bond and a promise of forever, the Doctor and Rose have managed to escape the trap set for them in Torchwood, but Time is not yet done with them. The Master is still in London and Election Day draws ever closer. He's tried to separate them once; will they survive a second attempt? Sequel to To Make Much of Time

5. Lost and Found

AN: A certain immortal finally makes an appearance.

I've been hanging onto some of the explanations in this chapter for a long time. You may remember that back in chapter 23 of TMMOT, the Doctor had the thought that complete intimacy between telepaths didn't allow for big secrets. Now that all the cards are on the table, there's nothing keeping their relationship from moving forward.

Chapter 5: Lost and Found

"I want to go through the flat," Rose said during breakfast the day after Christmas. She'd been putting it off, taking advantage of the fact that with the TARDIS, they could go back to the day after Canary Wharf at any time.

"Are you sure you're ready for that?" the Doctor asked. "You just said goodbye to her three days ago."

"That's part of why I want to do it. Now that I've said goodbye, I need to… I can't have it hanging over my head, constantly dreading it. I want to get it over and done with so we can move on. Besides, the council will want to let the flat to someone else, and there are things I wanna keep."

"We do have a time machine, Rose," he reminded her gently. "This doesn't have to be done right now."

"But it does," she told him, looking him in the eyes. "Because until I do it, the flat will always be there, a place that belongs to us even though Mum isn't here anymore."

The Doctor nodded and set the coordinates. "I'll land us in the living room, so we can avoid any questions you don't want to answer."

Stepping out into the living room was one of the hardest things Rose had ever done. She'd lived in this flat her entire life. So many things had happened in this room, and now she was here to pack it up.

She looked around, at a complete loss as to where to start. There were pictures, and mementos, and a lot of things she just didn't care about.

"We don't need to do this all in one day," the Doctor said. "We can pay six months' worth of rent on the flat and take our time going through everything."

Rose raised an eyebrow. "Where are you going to come up with six months' rent?"

He shuffled his feet on the carpet. "Remember how I said I used to work for UNIT?"

It took Rose a minute, since their encounter with the Slitheen had been over three years ago, but she found the memory and nodded.

"Well, my salary went into a bank account that I never really touched."

"Are you saying you're rich, but you've been making me pay for chips all this time?"

"It's not like I carry a bank card or anything!" he protested, and she loved the high pitched squeak in his voice. "I mean, I can use the sonic for the same thing…"

"I love the idea," Rose said, interrupting the oncoming babble. "I guess this time I'll just go through and get the personal things that I only left here so my room would still feel like mine, and to keep Mum from complaining about me leaving."

"Anything I can do to help?"

Rose handed him a bin bag. "You can clean out the kitchen. Get everything out of the fridge and freezer. Anything that hasn't spoiled, take into the galley. Pitch everything else. Oh, and go through the cabinets too. Just… get all the food out of the kitchen."

The Doctor walked into the kitchen and looked around, wondering where to start. Remembering the bag in his hand, he opened the refrigerator and pulled everything out, setting it on the table so he could sort what to keep and what to pitch.

Sorting through the food took longer than the Doctor thought it would, though it might have gone faster if he hadn't kept shooting glances at the door, half his attention focused on Rose. Her determination to tackle all the difficult things at once worried him—Christmas the day before, and cleaning out the flat today.

But Christmas went just fine, he reminded himself as he started tossing the spoiled food, container and all. After a quiet dinner, they'd gone back to the library and Rose had told him some of her favourite stories from Christmases while she was growing up. She'd teared up once or twice, but mostly, it had been a nice day.

After getting rid of everything they wouldn't want, he rummaged around in the drawers and found shopping bags. He packed up the remaining perishables and carried them into the TARDIS, allowing himself a little sample of the raspberry jam as he put it away.

The Doctor gradually became aware of a melancholy overtone creeping into Rose's emotional state. Leaving the rest of the kitchen work undone, he went to check on her.

She was in Jackie's room, holding her parents' wedding picture. "Doctor… I don't understand…"

He sat down beside her. "What don't you understand?"

"Yesterday, we saved Donna's life. We save people's lives all the time. So why…"

"Why did saving your dad's life cause such a paradox."

Rose nodded.

"You're thinking that if your dad here had been alive, you mum wouldn't have gone to… the parallel world," he said, barely managing to avoid their private name for that world.

"Well, yeah," she said, raising her eyebrows.

"That doesn't automatically follow, though, Rose," he pointed out. "He could have died in any number of ways between 1987 and now. If they'd both been here, maybe they would have still been at the flat instead of with us at Torchwood, and they could both have died here. You're playing a what-if game, love, and that'll drive you mad."

She scowled at him. "Still doesn't answer my original question."

He sighed; he'd been hoping she wouldn't catch that. The answer was likely to lead to something he knew he needed to tell her, but despite recognising that months ago, he wasn't any more ready than he had been then.

The Doctor pulled one of her hands from the frame and laced her fingers through his. "First and foremost, for you to save his life broke the laws of Time. You changed something in your own personal history. When we save someone, their families and friends don't have memories of them being dead."

"Oh," Rose said, her voice small. "So this is like why I couldn't touch baby me, right? Because then there would have been two versions of me? Little baby Rose who grew up with a dad, and the me who didn't?"

"Not exactly. When you touched baby Rose, you triggered the Blintovich Limitation Effect. If an individual crosses their own timeline, time will attempt to correct itself to prevent them from changing anything in their past." The Doctor rubbed at his forehead. "Which I realise sounds like exactly what we're talking about here, so just trust me when I say there is a slight difference. This is more… your memories would have rearranged to include a life with your father, but since you're a time traveller, you would have remembered both versions. Since you didn't possess time senses then, your lack of natural ability to handle two conflicting sets of memories created a vulnerable point in time."

"Okay then." Rose blinked twice, then nodded slowly. "You said that was the first reason. What else?"

"Pete—erasing your dad's death caused a paradox because growing up without a father played a huge role in shaping who you would become," he told her.

Rose tilted her head and frowned. "What difference does that make?"

The Doctor took a deep breath. "Your life would have been totally different if you'd had a dad, Rose. So different that… you probably wouldn't have quit school. You'd have finished, gotten your A-levels because you're brilliant, and then you would have gone to uni."

She drew herself up and her chin jutted out. "Wait, so saving his life caused a paradox because Time needed me to be a chav from the estates? Excuse me, but Time can just—"

The Doctor put his finger over her mouth before she could finish that sentence. "You wouldn't have been working at Henrik's."

He saw the moment that sank in, and he saw the choice in her eyes. It was the same choice she'd made months ago when she refused to leave with her mother, and it was the same choice she'd reiterated more than once since then.

"I never would've travelled with you," she breathed.

He nodded, suppressing a shudder at the grim possibility. "And that would have been a huge paradox, because if you hadn't travelled with me, you couldn't have gone back and saved your father."

Rose nodded slowly. "It wasn't just Dad not dying that was the paradox," she realised. "It was me saving him."

"That's it."

They sat quietly for a few minutes, and then Rose turned slightly on the bed so she was looking directly at him. "Doctor, a few minutes ago, when you mentioned Henrik's…"

The Doctor swallowed hard.

She took his hand. "Tell me."

It was time, whether he felt ready or not. "Let's go to the kitchen," he suggested. "I haven't taken the tea to the TARDIS yet."

Thankfully, Rose allowed him time to gather his thoughts. She let him make the tea this time, and he called upon his memory to follow Jackie's procedure exactly. Her smile when she took a sip was all the reward he needed.

"So, Doctor…"

"I never should have taken you to 1987," he said abruptly, jumping into the explanation from the very beginning. "I should have known it was a temporal tipping point and explained it to you, but I didn't."

"Why didn't you?"

"Well, partly I wanted to make you happy, but also…" It hurt his pride to admit the next part. "After the war, my time senses were dulled. You know what it's like when you're too close to an explosion, and you can't hear for a while?" Rose nodded. "Well, the Time War was the biggest temporal explosion possible. I had some of my senses still, like the ability to feel the turn of the earth, but time was… hard to see."

"That must've been awful," Rose said, taking his hand.

"It wasn't fun, I can tell you." The Doctor shook his head and took a few slow breaths to ease the pain the memories stirred. "So there I was, a Time Lord with no time senses, with nobody in my head, and all the guilt of having ended two races."

He felt a shift in Rose's emotions, and squeezed her hand before pulling his back. "It made me reckless," he said. "I went looking for danger, and I found it at Henrik's that night. Remember what I told you when I sent you away from the store?"

The Doctor saw her wrinkle her nose out of the corner of his eye. "You were gonna go up to the roof and blow up their whatsit. You said…" Her voice faltered. "You said you might die in the process."

The Doctor gripped his mug tightly between his hands and stared down at the tea. "It was a fitting way to die, I thought. Saving the Earth one last time." He puffed his cheeks out. "But then I met a human girl who'd stood her ground even though she was terrified, who'd come up with a logical theory about what had happened."

"Doctor."

Rose's voice trembled, and he chanced a glance at her. He was too much of a mess to interpret her tear-filled eyes, though, so he lowered his gaze back to the table.

"I still had to stop the Autons, but when I got up to the roof to lay the charges, I made sure I gave myself an exit route. I didn't know why, but I knew I had to see you again."

A thought occurred to him. "You know, I think that was probably my time senses returning," he said. "The first timeline I sensed after being blind for weeks, and of course it was yours."

He heard her suck in a breath and quickly pushed on with the rest of his story, wanting to get it all out before he lost his courage.

"I might very well have died there that night if I hadn't met you," he told her, his voice raspy. "You were meant to be there, and I was meant to meet you."

Rose didn't say anything for a long time, and the longer she stayed silent, the more nervous the Doctor became. He'd essentially just told his bond mate that her father had died because he'd needed her in his life.

Her emotions surged over the bond, washing through him. He'd been trying to ignore them, not wanting to know how his confession made her feel. But he couldn't mistake her compassion for anything else.

"I wasn't supposed to be the one to take the lottery money down that day. In fact, I almost forgot to do it," she told him. "But one of the other girls had a date and asked if I'd do it for her. I've been thankful for that so many times… now I'm even more grateful."

The Doctor drew his eyebrows together. "Rose… are you… why aren't you upset?"

"Why would I be?"

"Because… all your life… this is… How can you choose me over your dad like that?"

Her eyes softened. "That's not a real choice, Doctor," she pointed out. "S'not like you put two boxes in front of me and said I could only have you or my dad. I lost Dad long before I met you."

"Yes but—"

Rose shook her head. She wouldn't let him once again take the blame for something that was not his fault. "You just told me not to play what-if games, Doctor."

A knock at the door startled them both. "I guess I'd better see who that is," Rose said reluctantly. "They've probably seen the light under the door and know someone's here. If I don't open up, they'll call the police about a break-in."

"I don't think it's one of your neighbours, Rose," the Doctor said as he stood up.

Rose stopped in the doorway and turned around. "Who else would it be?"

"Do you feel anything… off, or wrong?"

Rose knew he meant in her time senses, and she focused inward. There was… something. A point that refused to be moved.

She frowned up at him. "What is that?"

The Doctor grimaced. "That is Captain Jack Harkness."

There was a prickly feeling in Rose's mind that was demanding she get away from the source of the distortion to Time, but she set her jaw and walked toward the door. Wrong or not, Jack was still her friend.

He'd already started to walk away, but he turned around when he heard the door open. "Jack!" she said, enjoying the shock on his face.

"Rosie!" he squealed, then ran to her and caught her up in a hug.

Rose laughed at his enthusiasm and forced down the headache. "D'you want to come inside?" she asked once he put her down.

"You bet! I never expected to see you here. In fact, I didn't know if…"

His sentence died out when he saw the TARDIS in the middle of the living room. "The Doctor's here with you then?" he asked, and Rose didn't miss the hint of resentment in his voice.

"Right here, Jack."

Rose watched as the two men looked at each other for the first time since the Game Station.

"You left me," Jack said coldly. "I woke up on the floor of that station and heard the TARDIS engines going. I ran, but I got to Floor 500 just in time to see the TARDIS disappear."

The Doctor stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at the floor. "I'm sorry," he said, and Rose beamed at him. "Do you know… have you figured out…"

"Do you mean, have I figured out I can't die? Yeah, I started to work that one out when I got in a fight in Ellis Island. A man shot me through the heart. Then I woke up."

Rose covered her mouth with her hands. Oh, Jack.

The Doctor's response was a little less sympathetic. "Jack," he said, and she could hear the warning in his voice.

If Jack heard it, he ignored it. "I thought it was kind of strange. But then it never stopped. Fell off a cliff, trampled by horses, World War One, World War Two, poison, starvation, a stray javelin. In the end, I got the message. I'm the man who can never die."

"Jack, stop," the Doctor ordered.

Rose's sob broke the uncomfortable silence in the room. Jack turned toward her. "Don't worry, Rosie," he said. "At least if I can't die, you don't have to worry about ever saying goodbye—not that your designated driver ever takes the time to say goodbye anyway."

"Jack Harkness, shut up!"

"Or what, Doc?" Jack retorted. "There's nothing you can threaten me with, remember?"

Rose spun around and ran down the hall to her childhood bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

"What was that about?" Jack asked, staring down the hallway.

The Doctor gripped the doorframe with both hands, trying to restrain himself from striking Jack. Any compassion he'd felt for Jack, any guilt at the way they'd left him, those had all disappeared when he'd made Rose cry. Her guilt pulsed over their bond, and he ground his teeth together.

"Why can't you ever just listen?" he growled. "I tried to tell you to shut up, but you just kept going on and on. Rose is in her bedroom crying because she thinks it's her fault you're like this."

A furrow appeared on Jack's forehead. "Why would she think that?"

The Doctor took a deep breath, then pointed at the couch. "Sit," he ordered. The former Time Agent stared at him, but apparently something in his expression told him he'd been pushed as far as he could go today.

"What's the last thing you remember?" the Doctor asked. "Before waking up and hearing the TARDIS."

"I was facing three Daleks. Death by extermination. And then I came back to life." He looked at the Doctor. "Do you know what happened to me, Doc?"

"Rose."

"I thought you'd sent her back home."

"She came back," the Doctor said reverently, still unable to believe how far his precious girl had been willing to go to get back to him. "Opened the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed the Time Vortex itself."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean, exactly?"

The Doctor focused on what Bad Wolf had meant for Jack. The rest of it was Rose's story to tell, if she wanted. "No one's ever mean to have that power. If a Time Lord did that, he'd become a god. A vengeful god. But she was human. Everything she did was so human," he said proudly. Then he looked at Jack, finally coming to the core of the explanation. "She brought you back to life, but she couldn't control it. She brought you back forever." He shrugged. "That's something, I suppose. The final act of the Time War was life."

Jack's gaze darted down the hallway. "But she feels guilty."

"Well, you didn't exactly help with your tirade against me," the Doctor said, some of his earlier anger coming back. "I told you to stop, Jack. I told you more than once, and you kept going."

"I was angry." Jack rubbed at his jaw. "I wanted you to know what the last 150 years have been like for me." He glanced ruefully up at the Doctor. "I should have recognised your 'protect Rose' look."

The Doctor didn't even pretend to be surprised he had such an expression. "You should have."

"I should go in there and apologise, huh?"

"She's been crying," the Doctor repeated. "I would have kicked you out without another word, except I knew she would want a chance to apologise to you, for doing this to you." He looked at the former Time Agent fiercely. "Don't you dare let her think this was her fault."

To his credit, Jack looked offended at the suggestion. "I won't," he promised, then got up and walked to Rose's door.

Rose rolled over and sat up on her bed when she heard the knock at her door. "Come in, Jack," she said wearily, knowing by the feeling in her head that it wasn't her Doctor at the door.

He pushed the door open slowly and Rose was surprised to see remorse in his eyes when he walked inside. "Rosie, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know… I was angry at the Doctor for just leaving me there, and I let my mouth run away from me."

Rose sighed and shoved her hair out of her face. "You don't have to apologise for being angry, Jack," she said tiredly. "After all, it's my fault you can't die." She winced when she remembered the list of ways he'd said he'd died.

Jack sat down next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Not your fault," he corrected. "That implies I blame you for it."

His wrongness felt worse when he was this close, but Rose wouldn't hurt him further by moving away from him. "You blamed the Doctor until you knew it was me."

"I blamed the Doctor for abandoning me. I thought I could guilt him into an apology if I told him… all of that."

Rose wasn't sure she believed him, but she was ready to move on. "Did he tell you why he left you there?"

"No, he was too busy telling me why I'd been a complete ass."

"You should ask him. Let him explain." Jack stiffened, and she rushed to explain. "I'm not saying it was right, and you can bet I let him have it when I found out. But… well, it wasn't the way you think it was, Jack."

"I'll go back out there if you come with me."

Rose looked at his outstretched hand, then into his eyes. She knew she was being manipulated, but truthfully, she wanted to be there when the Doctor explained. She took his hand and let him pull her up, then she opened the door to her room and followed him back out into the living room.

The Doctor was standing near the kitchen door, and judging by the way his hair was standing up, he'd been running his hands through it the way he did when he was anxious about something. Rose felt his question in her mind when he saw her. She hesitated for a moment then settled on the telepathic equivalent of a noncommittal shrug.

The skin around his mouth tightened, and Rose quickly turned to Jack. Their friend was watching them with a strange look on his face, and she knew he'd picked up on the changes to her relationship with the Doctor.

"I told Jack that he'd need to ask you to explain why we left him on the Game Station," she said, trying to steer the conversation where she wanted it to go.

The Doctor sighed and pushed himself off the wall. "Let's sit down," he suggested, settling on the sofa with his arm around Rose and letting Jack take the chair.

There was a speculative gleam in the former conman's eyes, and the Doctor knew he wanted to ask about his relationship with Rose. He shook his head subtly and Jack nodded.

"So what was it, Doc?" he asked. "I've been asking myself for 150 years, and I still don't understand why you left me there."

"When Rose brought you back, she did something that I didn't even know was possible. She made you… You're a fixed point in time and space. You're a fact. That's never meant to happen."

"What do you mean?"

The Doctor tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling while he tried to find a way to explain. "You know what a fixed point is, right?" he asked, assuming a former Time Agent would be familiar with the concept.

"Yeah, it's something that must always happen, that can't be changed."

"Most of time is a continual flow," the Doctor said, slipping into his rapid lecture voice. "Time is… time is the current that carries us all along. And within time, if you're a time traveller, you can make changes, redirect the current. But when time reaches a fixed point, it will always correct its course so that event happens."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Well, most sentient beings are affected by time. Things happen to us. But you, Jack… Time can't change you. You… you're simply here. Always. No matter what time does. And that just feels wrong." The Doctor looked at his friend. "That's why I left you behind. It's not easy even just looking at you, Jack, because you're wrong."

"Thanks," Jack said sarcastically, at the same time as Rose sent the Doctor a mild reproof.

He sighed. "I just explained it. Time Lords are trained to avoid fixed points. Fixed points in time I can handle, even though they make my time sense flash a constant mauve alert at me. But a living fixed point? That's just…" He blew out a breath. "You felt wrong, and I was already dying. I didn't know if I could handle…"

Jack's eyes shifted from the Doctor to Rose, then back again. "Could she change me back?"

Rose's guilt surged again, and the Doctor glared at Jack. "She can't," he said in a clipped voice. "The power was killing her, so I took it out of her."

"But if the Vortex was killing her, then… Oh." Comprehension dawned on Jack's face. "That's when you regenerated. You took it out of her, and it killed you instead."

The Doctor nodded. "I shouldn't have left you behind. I knew that then, but I was too weak to do the right thing."

"Wait a minute!" Rose turned to look at the Doctor. "How come Jack knew about regeneration?"

"I didn't tell him, Rose," the Doctor assured her.

"When I worked for the Time Agency, there were all these rumours about Time Lords—almost myths, really," Jack said. "According to one of them, they had the ability to survive death by changing every aspect of their appearance. So, when he identified himself as the Doctor earlier, I knew that myth must be true."

The three friends sat in silence for a long moment, then Jack grinned. "Moving on to happier topics, how long's this been going on?" he asked, pointing at the two of them.

The Doctor groaned. "Jack…"

"What? I worked hard to get you two together; I think I deserve to know what finally made it happen."

Do you want to tell him all of it?

No. Rose trusted Jack, but she was tired—so tired. Thinking about the Game Station always made her tense; no matter what the Doctor said, she still felt a little bit guilty for making him regenerate. She didn't have the energy right now to go into the whole story of how Bad Wolf had changed her.

"Let's just say I came to my senses," the Doctor said, leaving out the story of Bad Wolf and Rose's telepathy and how it had actually taken him three whole months to come to said senses.

Rose laughed and leaned into him, letting his love and support buoy her. "Where are you living these days, Jack?" she asked. "We've had the TARDIS looking for you for months, but her scan hasn't turned up any results yet."

"Well, she must have wanted it to happen like this," Jack said. "I have a hard time believing your ship couldn't find me in Cardiff."

"Cardiff!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Yeah. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could find you again, and the most logical answer was to stay someplace I knew you would come back to. The rift is still the best place in the galaxy to fuel up, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"So when I woke up and realised you were gone, I used my vortex manipulator to go back to Cardiff. I was aiming for the early 21st century, but I ended up in 1869 instead—with a burned out piece of tech. I hung around the neighbourhood though, waiting for you to come back. I never expected to run into you in London."

"So why did you come to the flat today?"

Jack leaned forward and looked down at the floor. "I don't know how long ago it was for you, but the Battle of Canary Wharf was just a few days ago," he said quietly. "I know the two of you were right in the middle of it, but I didn't know… I wasn't sure if you'd made it. I thought your mum might know, Rose."

Rose blinked back tears. "Mum's gone, Jack. That's why we're here today—to start cleaning out the flat."

"Oh God, Rosie. I am so sorry."

"Not like that," Rose said hurriedly, realising what Jack thought. "The battle… the Cybermen came from a parallel universe, one where my dad is still alive. She went through to be with him."

There was a long silence before Jack cleared his throat. "So, outside of handling the odd Dalek invasion, what have you two been up to? And please, be as detailed in your answer as you want."

"Jack…"

Jack held up his hands. "Hey, I left the amount of detail up to you."

Rose's guilt finally ebbed away, though it didn't disappear entirely. "Well, we killed Satan," she said nonchalantly.

"Oh sure," the Doctor grumbled. "Start with the most impressive story. You're supposed to work up to that, Rose."

For the next few hours, the three friends swapped stories of their adventures since they'd seen each other last. Rose pulled a hidden box of biscuits out of the kitchen, along with fresh tea, and Jack told them a little about the friends and family he'd made over the years.

It was mid afternoon when Jack set his cup down and pushed himself to his feet. "I hate to say goodbye, but I'm in town on business and I've got to get back to work. I shouldn't have stayed away this long, actually."

Rose walked him to the door, with the Doctor following a few paces behind them. "Do you have a mobile number, Jack?" she asked. "Next time we're fuelling up, we'll give you a ring." He nodded, so she opened the contacts on her own phone and handed it to Jack.

"I guess I can get rid of my Doctor detector," he mused as he typed his information in.

"Your what?" the Doctor asked.

"The hand you lost last Christmas," Jack said.

"Ergh, Jack!" Rose wrinkled her nose. "You've been carrying a hand around with you?"

Jack hesitated, then pulled the pack off his back. "Got it right here," he said.

"Give me that," the Doctor demanded. "Honestly, do you know what kind of damage could be done if my biological code fell into the wrong hands?"

"Actually, I do," Jack shot back. "Which is why I liberated it from the wrong hands."

The Doctor grunted. "Well, thank you for that."

Jack put his hand on the doorknob, then looked at the Doctor. "And what about me? Can you fix that? Will I ever be able to die?"

Rose looked at the Doctor hopefully, but he shook his head. "Nothing I can do. You're an impossible thing, Jack."

Somehow, Jack managed a laugh. "Been called that before." He stepped into the Doctor's personal space and kissed him on the cheek, then bent down over Rose and repeated the gesture. "You take care of him," he ordered. Mischief glinted in his eyes. "And if you need any help with that, just give me a call."

The Doctor put his hand on the door. "Goodbye, Jack," he said with a long-suffering sigh, closing the door on their friend's laughter.