Jackie flew out the door, and slammed it behind her.
"Mom," Rose shouted. She was caught off guard at the abrupt appearance of her mother.
Jackie grabbed her daughter's arm, and started pulling her down the walk, towards the stairs.
"Just takin' my daughter for a bit of shoppin'," Jackie called over her. The Doctor stood there, frozen. He was quite certain that Jackie's hasty appearance and subsequent departure meant a face slap. Not only was he surprised that he was wrong about the slap, but his wife was just whisked away from him.
The two women walked out of the courtyard and headed down the path towards the shops, leaving The Doctor standing outside of Jackie Tyler's flat.
~*~
"Mom, where are we going?"
"Shoppin'. I told you." Jackie's reply was said as a matter of fact, almost curious as to why there would be any doubt.
"But why? We just arrived. Thought we were gonna do dinner an' all."
"Just need to get a few things," Jackie reassured her daughter. "'Sides, that Doctor of yours, he dinnit want to sit and have tea and chat. Now he can go do what 'e likes while you and I catch up. Yeah?" Jackie was persistent. Rose couldn't argue.
"Mom, I wanted the three of us to talk." Rose stopped walking, and stood on sidewalk, as her mother continued to take a few steps.
"We will Rose," Jackie replied as she turned back to look at her daughter. Once she saw her face, she stopped. "You're pregnant aren't you," Jackie said it more of a statement than a question.
"Mom," was the beginning of Rose's argument.
"You are, aren't you?" As the words came out of her mouth, she started plowing back toward the courtyard of the Powell Estates. Jackie's eye grew wide and her nostrils flared. Had The Doctor seen her, he would have commented how she resembled a mother gorilla protecting her young. Instead, Jackie was on the attack, and her target was a leather clad Time Lord.
"We got married," Rose shouted after her mother. Jackie stopped in her tracks. Rose held out her left hand, to show the gorgeous ring given to her by the Time Lord.
Jackie turned, and cautiously approached Rose. She stayed an arms length away, as if the ring on her daughters hand was some alien, flesh-eating bacteria. Even at that distance though, she could see the impressive stones.
"Married," Jackie repeated. She said it like it was an alien term, enunciating each syllable, to make sure she was saying it properly.
"Yes," Rose replied. "About three weeks ago." Rose paused, looking for some sort of glimmer of recognition from her mother's eyes. "He asked, I said yes. We got married and went on our honeymoon straight away. Only time I've ever spent with The Doctor where we weren't runnin' for our lives." Rose thought the comment was pretty funny, despite being true, but when she looked at her mum, she realized that she could have phrased it a little better.
"Three weeks ago," Jackie repeated. It worried Rose that her mother wasn't saying anything, just repeating what she'd been told. Rose looked at her mother as a mixture of emotions ran through her: anxiety, fear, dread, hope, happiness and peace. She was so mixed. She loved The Doctor, and her mother. How would she be able to reconcile these two foreign issues?
As Rose stood, worried about how her mother was processing all of this, her mobile rang. Rose rolled her eyes as she pulled it from her pocket; anticipating the screen to tell her is was a call from Mickey. What she saw confused her. It said Mum.
Rose looked at her mother across from her, still frozen, in what she took as shock.
"Ello," she asked, answering the phone.
"Rose," The Doctor shouted over the phone. "Where are you? Are you all right? "
"I'm on the corner talking to my mum, I just told her about," she was cut off mid sentence.
"That's not your mum," he shouted. "When you two left so quickly, it didn't feel quite right. So I took out my sonic and noticed some, inconsistencies. So I went into your mum's flat, and found her tied up on the bed. Rose, I don't know who you're with, but it's not your mum."
"You want us to come back and let you in then," Rose said calmly. "We're on our way."
The Doctor was impressed. He knew that Rose Tyler was smart, but it amazed him how consistently she was able to catch him off-guard. The Doctor ran towards his wife, and what looked like Jackie Tyler, but wasn't.
"Rose, love. I missed you!" The Doctor grabbed his wife and snogged her right in front of not-Jackie. Nothing. No slap. No shout. No rude comment. Now Rose was scared, and The Doctor could sense it.
"I missed you," The Doctor said, more domestic than he'd ever been outside the TARDIS.
"I missed you too," Rose replied.
"Well I missed you too my angel, but I was talking to Jackie. Been weeks since we seen 'er last. How you been Jackie?"
"How you been," Jackie repeated. Rose clung onto The Doctors arm a bit more.
"Just one tick, gotta tie my shoe," The Doctor announced. He bent down, and while he gestured to tie shoes, shoes that didn't have laces, he took out his sonic screwdriver. He shot up, standing almost at attention, a pointed it at the not-Jackie.
"What," The Doctor asked in awe. He changed settings on the screwdriver, and with a short pulse, not-Jackie exploded landing all over the married couple.
"What on Earth was that," Rose shouted. She started to be disgusted, attempting to pull pieces of her not-Mum off her, when she saw it was gelatin. Dessert. A fake mum made out of dessert, and by the smell of it, cherry.
"This, was not your mum," The Doctor stated confidently.
"Yeah, got that," his wife retorted.
The Doctor, choosing to be happy, rather than be smug, decided his best course of action was to take Rose to her real mum, and not lecture his wife on the similarities of gelatin desserts to the human composition.
The two walked up to flat door, and The Doctor opened it for his wife.
"Mum" Rose half-shouted. She ran through the flat to the living room, where her mother sat on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket. "You alright? I was so worried."
"'M fine, thanks to that husband of yours," Jackie replied casually.
"Hmm," the two replied, seeing it was the only reply either Rose or The Doctor could make.
"You didn't think I would notice that the man my daughter spends her life with is now wearin' a wedding band?"
The Doctor now had the same feeling of awe for Jackie Tyler that he does for her daughter. The Doctor then looked down at his hands, took his right hand and traced the ring on his left. He smiled. He looked up at Jackie, and saw that she had seen the smile.
"You ain't so tough are you," Jackie commented. "Rose softened you up a bit, she has."
"Mom, I, we," Rose tried to comment, but got stuck on the nouns.
"You don't have to explain to me. I've seen it coming for a while now, I have."
Jackie paused, looking at The Doctor, standing in front of the coffee table, and then looked to her daughter, seated next to her on the sofa.
"Just tell me one thing though," Jackie told the two of them. "Did you get married before or after you found out?"
"Found what out," The Doctor inquired.
"Mum," Rose said with a warning. "Not right now."
"Not right now, what," her husbanded said, with more urgency than he realized.
"Your husband, The Doctor, doesn't know yet," Jackie inquired, and the grin on her face grew from ear to ear.
"Not now," Rose said again, but with greater volume.
"What, not now," her husband demanded. The volume had risen in his voice, not out of anger, but concern.
"Rose is …."
"MUM," Rose shouted. She grabbed her mother's arm, and pulled her from the sofa, dragging her into the kitchen.
"What," The Doctor shouted after them.
"He doesn't know," Jackie whispered to her daughter, suppressing giggles.
"I just found out today," Rose replied. "How did you know?"
"It's woman's intuition, I suppose," Jackie stated. "I just looked at you, and could tell something was different. Didn't take me long to realize."
"I need to tell him, Mum. Not you. I need to be the one to let him know he's not the last of the Time Lords." Rose's sentence, for the second time today, was capped off by a loud thud from outside the kitchen.