Title: Gingerbread Houses
Authors: Gillian Taylor
Rating: PG
Characters: Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler
Summary: The past is full of temptations, just like gingerbread houses.
Spoilers: Utopia
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.
A/N: Thanks to my lovely beta NNWest. Inspired by Jack's comment from Utopia regarding Rose.
"Gingerbread Houses"
by Gillian Taylor
It starts innocently enough. Just a glimpse, Jack tells himself. It can't hurt, can it? Just a look at what was, another means to torment himself, but it doesn't matter. That can't matter because it's her.
His feet take him along semi-familiar streets as the ghostly memories of a leather-clad Doctor and a brilliant, laughing Rose follow beside him. When he reaches the Powell Estates, he hides in the shadows, eying the buildings with a combination of sorrow and anticipation.
There's a sound like a crash and he stops, watching as a laughing pair of children shoot past, their smiles and laughter brighter than anything he's seen in the decades he's been stuck here. That it's Rose isn't a question. Even now, so much younger than the version who left him behind, her smile hasn't changed.
Part of him longs to step out of the darkness, to cling to her as he wishes he once did, but he holds himself still. She's so young now. So untainted by the perils she'll see at the Doctor's and his side. The entire universe is before her.
Whereas for him, it's behind. He tells himself that this is the last time as he turns to go, though he pauses just once to see a glimmer of that smile. He'll cherish this memory, he knows, but he can't live in the past much as he wishes he could.
Especially not in hers.
He didn't plan this, of course. At least, he tries to convince himself of this particular fact, as he finds his path taking him closer to the Powell Estates. There was a Weevil sighting nearby, and by nearby it's more along the lines of ten miles away, but he wants to reassure himself that she's fine.
Logic tells him she is. After all, if she wasn't, he wouldn't remember her and he wouldn't even be here. He doesn't even know if he'd even be alive without her. So much life, so much blame, to rest on her slender shoulders but he can't help himself. Between her and the Doctor, he changed.
Then he was left behind and he changed again. Sometimes he wonders if it's for the better. Most of the time he thinks not. But it's survival and that's all he can do, all that's possible for one such as he.
Immortal, yes. Unchanging, no. He still looks good, still has that same smile, the same ability to attract others, but he can still detect the subtle signs of age creeping up on him. He doesn't want to consider what it might mean in the end. Then again, there's a lot he doesn't want to know but does. He doesn't want to know what it's like to get shot in the head and survive. He doesn't want to know what it's like to get a javelin through his heart and watch as it's pulled from his chest.
He doesn't want to know what it's like to watch people he cares for, people he loves, die before him. But he does.
Perhaps that's why he's stealing this glance, stealing this ever so brief sighting of Rose Tyler. Here, she's alive. Here and in his memories, she survives.
When he spots her, it's all that he can do to prevent himself from running forward, from gathering her into his arms. Not because it's what he wants to do – and he does. God knows he does. – but because she looks like she needs it.
The tears are pouring freely down her face - a few years older, mid-teens, he thinks. Her mascara is running and she looks miserable as she sits, huddled beneath the awning of a bus stop. He moves forward carefully, not wanting to, yet paradoxically wanting to, intrude.
She straightens when she spots him, rubbing at her eyes and smearing her makeup even more. "Sorry, sorry," she murmurs.
Shit. He didn't want her to see him, but the damage is done. He can always retcon her later, he reasons, but he knows he won't. He can be careful.
He smiles at her, though he wants to do more. "It's all right. We all need a good cry now and then." Careful, careful, he urges himself. There's a fine, fine line that he's walking now and he worries that he may cross it. So many terrible things might happen if the past is changed because now it's as much his past as it is hers.
"Even you?" she asks and he wonders what she sees. A weary man in a great coat, dirt and who knows what else on his face? Or does she see beyond that, to the man he once was? He always wondered what it was Rose saw in him that first time, why she trusted him.
Suddenly he wonders if he's discovered the reason why. "Yeah," he replies with a brief laugh. "Even me." He gives her a cheeky wink and turns his head away from her.
"I should go back home," she says softly. "Jimmy's gone an' that's that. Mum was right."
His heart clenches painfully as he suddenly understands what happened. Rose told him about Jimmy Stones one late night on the TARDIS. So he remains quiet as she starts telling him the story again, only this time the pain is fresh rather than sealed over by time.
"…An' I don't even know your name. I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me," she says, apparently mortified. "You don't want to hear 'bout my problems. You're jus' waiting for the bus, not wanting to…I'm sorry. I'm Rose. An' you are?"
God, this isn't what he wanted. He isn't sure what he wanted originally. But this isn't it. "A friend," he replies and regrets it the instant that he sees the flash of hurt in her eyes. He can't do this. Making a show of glancing at his 'watch', he stands and smiles at her. "Take care of yourself, Rose," he says softly and stops himself in time to prevent saying her last name.
He knows she will.
As he walks away from Rose Tyler, he swears to himself that this is the last time. That was too close. Absolutely too close. He doesn't want this to be his last memory of her, but it has to be. No more.
What was the phrase from the Academy? Ah, yes. 'The past is full of temptations, just like gingerbread houses. All you want to do is enjoy them, to indulge yourself, but you can't. The smallest nibble and the house will fall.'
This is the last time, he reminds himself. His last glimpse of this particular gingerbread house.
Rose Tyler will live on in his past. That has to be enough.
He was wrong. So very, very wrong. This wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to be this close. He turned a corner and there they were. His Doctor, his Rose. Just standing there, middle of the crowd, though they could've been the only two people in the world for all they paid attention to their surroundings.
So familiar, so wrong.
He ducks out of the way, hiding himself in the shade of a doorway, and closes his eyes against the tears. Even now, after so many years, the sight of the two of them together hurts. God he misses them.
The last time, he reminds himself, but he sneaks another look nevertheless.
He's waited so long now. For Rose to grow up, for her to find the Doctor, for the time to be right for their time frame to correspond with his. He thinks he finds the time at Christmas, but Torchwood has its demands and he can't escape to search for the Doctor and Rose.
When the hand comes in along with the sword, the latest batch of alien artefacts to come in after the fight with the Sycorax, he quietly hides the hand amongst his own things. He knows what it is, what it represents.
His gingerbread house is the future now, and it's going to have to wait.
He reads the name again, mouthing the syllables in disbelief. Impossible, he tells himself. Impossible. She can't-
He wouldn't-
But the reality is there, staring at him in harsh, cold black and white. It's just a name, a single name, but its power over him is just as strong as it was a century ago, a decade, an hour.
Rose Tyler is dead.
'The past is full of temptations, just like gingerbread houses. All you want to do is enjoy them, to indulge yourself, but you can't. The smallest nibble and the house will fall.'
It's too late. The house has fallen and he's left with nothing but his memories. Closing his eyes, he pictures them as they were that day on the street, the Doctor and Rose, as they once were.
That's the problem with gingerbread houses. They never last.
END