And here we find out why Jen is reluctant to take Rose along, yet we still really don't know who she is.

Bwahahahahahaaaaa!

Chapter Five

"How do you know that she isn't his wife?" Jackie Tyler said as she pulled a squirming Lilly up into her lap. She and Pete sat side-by-side on their couch, facing their older daughter as she went over the entire encounter with Jen with them later that night.

Rose rolled her eyes and ran her hand through her hair. "Unless marriage customs on their home planet are really weird, I doubt she'd even be considering taking me along if she was his wife," Rose pointed out sardonically.

Pete shot her a warning glance and stepped between the two Tyler women before sparks could fly. "You're probably right about that," he agreed with Rose. "But your mother has a good point; how do you know that you can trust this woman? You don't even know how she knows the Doctor. How do you know that she's not an enemy of his?"

Truth be told, nothing that her parents had said was anything that hadn't already crossed her mind. "I don't know that," she replied, honestly. "But I'm willing to take the chance." She leaned forward to speak earnestly to the both of them. "For eighteen months, I've been living but not. I feel like part of me – and important part of me – is missing. If I have a chance, even the slightest chance, of seeing him again, then I'm willing to risk whatever I have to if it means that I can be with him in the end."

"You know," a voice floated over from the doorway, "when you say things like that, you make it nearly impossible to make an objective decision on this." Jen stepped into the room, a thick pair of green, square-framed glasses on her pert, freckled nose. Removing the glasses, she strolled into the room. "And no, I'm not his wife," she said pointedly to Jackie. "Nor an enemy or would-be-assassin," she added, grinning at Pete. Casually, she flopped on the couch next to Rose. "And you're talking like I've decided you could go with me," she said to the other woman, pointedly. "Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren't we?"

"Why wouldn't you want to take her?" Pete asked, unable to stand his daughter's crushed expression. "She's experienced in time and space travel."

"I don't doubt her experience, or her desire," Jen replied. She offered Rose a smile. "And I'm completely sympathetic. If it were a simpler situation, I'd tell you to pack your bags right now."

"Then what's stopping you?!" Rose cried, exasperated and desperate.

Jen gazed at her for several long moments. Rose could see within her deep, emerald eyes the conflict and debate. Finally, Jen spoke, her voice soft. "Rose," she began, sighing. "I saw, through your mind, what happened in your last encounter. And do you know what I saw in that scene?" Rose could only shake her head. "As hard as he tried to fight it, he was as crushed and devastated by the situation as you were." Jen smiled, softly. "He tried to keep up a good front, but he would. Rose… Losing you crushed him." She sighed again and gazed out the window. "I can take you back to him now, and the two of you could be happy – for a while." She reached over and rested a hand on Rose's. "But no matter what you do, or anyone does, one day he's going to lose you again. What happens when he does?"

Leaning back against the back of the couch, Jen rested her head back and closed her eyes. "I've often said that our people were given two hearts so that when one breaks, you still have one to keep beating while the broken one heals." She shook her head. "But I think that there are some things that are too much even for a Time Lord." She opened her eyes and glanced at Rose. "So you see the dilemma that I'm in. I can take you with me, and give you both a happy reunion. But one day he's going to lose you again, and I'll have to be there to pick up the pieces."

Rose was silent for several moments as she turned over Jen's speech in her mind. None of what Jen had said was new to her. In fact, her mind immediately jolted back to a similar conversation that she'd had with the Doctor once before…

"How many of us have there been traveling with you?" She had stormed out of the café after him late one night during one of the rare rows they'd had.

"Does it matter?" he retorted, refusing to turn around or break his stride.

"Yeah, it does if I'm just the latest in a long line," she replied, annoyed.

"As opposed to what?" He finally stopped and spun around to face her, his expression a strange mix of anger and defiance.

"I thought you and me were… But I obviously got it wrong," Rose replied, stunned by his cold reaction. " I've been to the year five billion, right? But this… This is really seeing the future, you just leave us behind. Is that what you're going to do to me?"

The Doctor's reaction to her tirade was to simply let her go on, refusing to meet her eyes. Only when she suggested that she would one day meet the same fate as Sarah Jane did he react. "No! Not to you…"

"But Sarah Jane… You were that close to her once. And now… You never even mention her! Why not?"

"I don't age," he finally burst out, angrily. " I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither, and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you—" He broke off suddenly, unwilling or unable to finish his statement.

"What Doctor?"

"You can spend the rest of your life with me. But I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That's the curse of the Time Lord."

"The Curse of the Time Lord," Rose echoed softly, toying with a necklace around her neck. That moment had been one of those rare glimpses that he'd given her of the pain and loneliness that he felt and dealt with on a daily basis for most of his nine hundred years.

"Then I see he's spoken to you about it," Jen said, softly.

Rose looked at her, her expression earnest. "Isn't it better to have a little bit of happiness for a little while than centuries with nothing at all?"

Jen remained silent, only shrugging noncommittally.

"I think," Pete spoke up softly from the other side of the room, "that you really should consider what the Doctor would want you to do, Jen. Don't think of what's best for him. Think of what he'd want."

Jen's brow furrowed slightly for a moment as she thought that over. Suddenly she chuckled to herself and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"What?" Rose asked, eyeing her curiously.

"I was just imagining the lecture that I'm going to get about not meddling with time, and responsible travel within alternate dimensions," she replied, amused. "Not that he'd be one to talk." Sighing, she threw her hands in the air and grinned at Rose. "Well, if I'm going to be lectured let's make it one hell of a good one. Rose," she said, "if you're truly sure that you want to go, then pack your bags."

Rose's eyes lit up. "Seriously?" she asked, almost afraid to hope.

"I might as well," Jen conceded. Her pixie-like face bowed up into an impish grin. "Seriously, if I showed up on his doorstep without you, and he'd found out that I'd seen you, I don't think I'd live to tell the tale. Now," she continued, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "That does still leave the problem of how we're going to get there…"