Jack was helping Mickey put the Tyler living room back to rights - including putting Jackie's original, non-homicidal Christmas tree back up - while Rose and her mother were in the kitchen, working together with a combination of warm camaraderie and mostly-good-natured bickering. The Doctor was still in the TARDIS wardrobe, which he had closed himself up in as soon as he'd shown Mickey and Jack a room in the TARDIS filled with furniture and told them to take anything they thought Jackie would like in the living room, since the destruction wrought by the rogue Christmas tree was mostly the Doctor's fault.
They'd chosen a simple but good-quality coffee table as well as a chair to replace the one Mickey had attempted to use to hold back the tree, and had lugged it all the way up the stairs and into the flat. Mickey had asked the Doctor if he could just park the TARDIS in the flat so they wouldn't have to carry the table as far, but the Doctor had muttered something technobabbley, and Mickey had given up.
Jack glanced at the clock on the living room wall. He estimated that the Doctor had been in the wardrobe room of the TARDIS for at least three quarters of an hour. He supposed that picking one's outfit was a bit more high-stakes when one wore essentially the same thing every day the way the Doctor did. He tried to imagine the Doctor's previous self in anything other than dark jeans, a dark jumper, and his beloved and battered leather jacket, but found it difficult to picture.
Once they'd cleared out all the debris and arranged the furniture to Jackie's liking, Mickey sat down on the couch and turned on the television, which was still set on the BBC. They were still running round-the-clock news, it seemed, as the reporters and anchors were discussing cleanup and recovery efforts in London as well as the government's official explanation for what had happened and the numerous conspiracy theories that had already sprung up to fill in the gaps in the government's story.
Jack headed towards the kitchen. Leaning against the doorway, he grinned at the sight of Rose with a kitschy apron tied on over her clothes, tossing a large bowl of salad greens with her hands.
"Need any help, ladies?" he asked.
"Are you finished in the lounge?" Jackie asked. "Oh, let me see." She bustled past Jack. "Stir that pot," she called over her shoulder.
"Yes ma'am," Jack replied, striding over to the stove. A pot of gravy simmered on one of the burners, a wooden spoon resting inside. He picked up the spoon and gently stirred, watching Rose and her salad. "How are you doing, honey?" he asked, voice low so as to not carry beyond the kitchen.
Rose smiled. "I'm fine, Jack. Things turned out fine. Everyone's safe, things are back to normal. Well, mostly. Normal as they get, I suppose." She sighed. "Why didn't he tell me? Why didn't you tell me?"
Jack knew without asking for clarification that she was talking about the Doctor's regeneration and the fact that they hadn't explained it to her beforehand. "At first I assumed you already knew. After that time he almost died on Karplaxia Prime, though, I realized you didn't know, 'cause you were so upset." Jack shrugged. "I asked him why he hadn't told you, and he gave me one of his glares and said there hadn't been a proper moment."
"He should have told me. You should have told me even if he wouldn't."
"I didn't want to overstep," Jack said, willing Rose to understand. "I haven't been traveling with you long, and he didn't… you were the one who wanted me here, and he was the one who accepted me being here. I didn't want to make him… stop accepting me. Because if he wanted me gone, I knew I'd be gone, and I…" he trailed off, unsure how to say what he meant.
Rose had stopped mixing the salad and was wiping her hands on her apron. "You what?" she said softly, expectantly.
"I didn't want to leave. I don't want to leave. It's been a long time since I felt like I belonged anywhere or like I belonged with anyone and… I feel like that on the TARDIS, with you and the Doctor."
"You do belong," Rose said. "The Doctor knows that as much as I do," she added dismissively, as if it were obvious to her that it was so, when it was nothing of the sort to Jack.
"Does he?" Jack asked. He thought of how the Doctor's odd pronouncement at the Game Station that if the TARDIS hadn't allowed Jack to come aboard, he wouldn't have tried to change her mind, and wished he could be as sure as Rose was. "Maybe he does now, but… that was only a few weeks after the Blitz, and I… I didn't want to risk it. So I let it go."
"Well, there's nothing to be done for it now," she said, adopting a businesslike tone. "Are there any other things I should know about, though?"
Jack shook his head. "Not as far as I know. But I'm not a Time Lord, I just read the file on them at the Time Agency."
"Hmm," Rose said. A buzzer sounded, and she walked over to the kitchen doorway and called out to her mum. "Mum! Turkey's ready!"
Jackie bustled in to the kitchen. She nudged Jack out of the way and pulled the turkey out of the oven. "How are you at carving turkeys?" she asked him speculatively.
He grinned. "Oh, I'm very good with my hands," he said, winking at Rose. She rolled her eyes, but he was pleased to see that she smiled as she did it. "So I imagine I'll do quite well with the carving of the turkey," he continued.
Jackie nodded briskly. "Right then, there's carving knives over there, get to it. Mickey!" she called out. "Do us a favor and set the table!"
"All right," Mickey called back from the living room.
"Rose," Jackie said, rounding on her daughter. "Help me take everything out to the table. And get the crackers from under the tree and put them on the table as well."
Jack stood at the counter in the kitchen, carving up the turkey and occasionally looking out at the table to watch Rose bustle around the table with her mum and Mickey getting everything set up. It was the sort of domestic scene that normally gave him itchy feet - which he imagined might be one reason why it was taking the Doctor so long to choose his new wardrobe. Having Christmas dinner was one thing, but helping lay out the spread was another entirely, Jack supposed.
Still, he thought as he realised Rose had caught him watching her and was smiling at him fondly, when you knew you had all of space and time at your disposal, it wasn't hard to stop and spend an evening being domestic with someone like Rose Tyler.
The Doctor flipped through racks of suits in the TARDIS wardrobe room, trying to find the perfect one for his new body. The last time he'd been in this situation, he'd been too shattered, too raw to do anything but reach for something dark and shielding. He'd ended up in denim and leather and it had worked for him, but this time he wanted something different. Something brighter.
Something that might make Rose look him up and down the way she did Jack?
He shook his head. Not going there, he thought. Or at least he wasn't going to admit he was going there. Just like he wasn't going to admit how much he'd thought about how he'd kissed Rose to save her from the time vortex in the relatively short time he'd spent actually conscious since doing so.
No, he was going to focus on the task at hand, which was picking the perfect suit for his new body. He'd already decided that he wanted a suit, which was a big enough decision itself when one considered the endless variety of clothing available, but Rose and Jack had both smoothed their hands over the lapels of his pajama top after hugging him and assessing his health after his fight with the Sycorax leader, and he'd rather liked it. Also he was rather skinny this time around, and he thought perhaps a suit might lend him some of the presence his lack of physical bulk wouldn't provide.
He pulled out a suit and held it in front of himself experimentally, then wrinkled his nose upon looking in the mirror. Too military, he decided. He was done looking like soldier. The Time War was over - Rose had made sure of that, and the Doctor was going to do his damndest to remember it.
A flash of brown caught his eye as he flipped past several more suits, and a smile began to creep over his face. He grabbed the suit and held it up, glancing over at the mirror to confirm his suspicion. Yes, he thought. Perfect. He looked over at the coats hanging nearby and smiled in delight at the sight of the one Janis Joplin had given him. He'd painstakingly modified the pockets to be transdimensional, which would come in quite handy, and it would go fantastically with the suit. With a manic grin, he grabbed the coat and turned on his heel. Snagging a pair of white high-top trainers on the fly, he dashed off to select a shirt and tie to finish off the look.
A short while later he was back in front of the full-length mirror, hands shoved in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels as he evaluated the finished product. He wore a crisp white shirt beneath a slim brown suit with thin pinstripes of pale blue. After considering an obscene number of ties, many of which were still hanging on the mirror, he'd chosen a brown one with rich embroidery. The long duster coat from Janis and pleasantly-worn trainers completed the outfit.
He turned sideways in one direction and then the other, trying to get a look at his back. Then he leaned forward, peering closely at his face. Freckles, he thought. That's new. He rubbed his hands over his face experimentally. I think I like it, though. He ran his tongue over his teeth. Still a little weird. He turned his head this way and that, examining it from different angles. Not bad, Doctor, he thought. Not bad at all. Maybe you're getting better at this regeneration lark in your old age after all, even if you didn't manage to be ginger.
With a sniff and a nod, he wandered off in the direction of the console room. He puttered around there for a few minutes. He told himself he was just checking to make sure that the Sycorax weren't returning (they weren't) and all the pilot fish Santas were gone (they were), but if he was being honest, he was stalling. Rose might have finally accepted that he really was still the Doctor, but that didn't mean she'd forgiven him for failing to mention regeneration before it became an issue. Plus, Jackie was no doubt organizing something wildly domestic, like Christmas dinner. Not to mention, at some point he was going to have to address the issue of Jack's immortality and the fact that Rose was responsible for it.
Yeah, that was going to go really well.
There was a time, he thought, long ago - perhaps not so long ago, even - when he might have run away rather than face such terrifyingly domestic and emotional prospects. Better to run than admit to how attached he was to a pair of humans and their tiny dramas. Better to pick up someone new, someone easier to leave behind. Now, though…
He glanced around the console room. A leather jacket of Jack's and a denim jacket of Rose's hung on the coat rack. Some of Jackie's supplies for waiting out the Sycorax were still strewn around on the grating. Rose's favorite sweater was draped over the back of the captain's bench. The Doctor picked it up, sniffed it experimentally. It smelled like Rose, with a faint hint of Jack's cologne - the last time she'd worn it, she'd spent several hours tied up with Jack in an alien prison, the Doctor remembered with a faint smile.
No, he thought. He definitely couldn't run. He didn't want to run. Not from Rose, and not even from Jack, even if it did feel strange to look at him. The TARDIS was apparently willing to let him on board, even when the Doctor was in distress, and Rose would probably have several choice words for the Doctor if he tried to kick Jack out anyway.
He set the sweater back down on the bench, made a few minor adjustments at the console (still stalling, Doctor, he thought), and then took a deep breath.
"I expect it's time for dinner," he murmured.
The table was set, the turkey was carved, and everyone was present except for the Doctor. Rose glanced at the door, then exchanged wry smiles with Jack.
"I think we can go ahead and get started without the Doctor, Mum," she said, turning to look at Jackie. "There's no telling how long he'll be."
Jackie nodded and gestured at the table. "Then sit down, you three. Christmas dinner won't eat itself!"
Rose slid into a chair across from the one Mickey had plopped into as soon as Jackie had started speaking. Jack took one of the spots next to Rose, and Jackie chose to leave the other seat next to her for the Doctor, which Rose thought was rather generous of her, all things considered.
"Right, no ceremony here," Jackie said when no one moved to take any food. "Dig in!"
With smiles on their faces and meaningless chatter on their lips, they began to serve themselves. They passed dishes across the table, passed serving utensils when the platters were too heavy to make the rounds, and Rose found herself feeling truly happy for the first time in what felt like days.
The sound of the front door opening and closing interrupted the jovial scene, and Rose looked up towards the hall, fork arrested halfway to her mouth. The Doctor was standing a few feet away, and she gave his new clothes a quick once-over before looking up at his face to find him gazing intently at her and Jack. She smiled, tentatively at first but then wider, bigger. Because he was the Doctor, her Doctor, and he was alive and he was whole and he was here. For Christmas dinner. An answering grin broke out over his face. Rose patted the chair next to her.
"Sit," she said. "We're just getting started, everything's still hot."
"The food and the company," Jack added. Rose elbowed him, though she also didn't trouble to hide her grin.
The Doctor took his seat, still smiling.
"Help yourself," Rose said. She nodded towards the food at the center of the table. "We'll eat, and then do the crackers."
"Sounds lovely," the Doctor said. Rose narrowed her eyes slightly, searching his new face for the slightest hint that he might be being sarcastic, but his smile appeared genuine and the gleam in his eyes happy rather than sardonic.
The meal passed uneventfully, which for Rose was rather a relief given the way the last few days had gone. By the time they were scraping their plates clean and Jackie was fretting about leftovers, they all had paper crowns on their heads - Jack's was blue, the Doctor's red, and Rose's pink - and they were pleasantly full of turkey and all the fixings. Rose glanced over at the television, which Mickey had once again left on with the volume muted, and caught sight of Harriet Jones.
"Look," she said, "it's Harriet Jones!"
They all shifted to get a better look. While Mickey turned up the volume, Rose saw the Doctor pull a pair of spectacles with thick black plastic frames out of his pocket and slip them on. Well, she thought. That's new. And… a little bit foxy. She glanced at Jack and waggled her eyebrows. He winked and nodded.
On the news, Harriet was fielding questions at a press conference. "Can you tell us anything about the lasers?"
Harriet smiled. "Some sort of fancy light show, I assume," she said. "A celebration, no doubt. To borrow from the great Agatha Christie, I suppose they do it with mirrors." There was a buzz as the group of reporters all vied for the chance to ask the next question. "Yes, George," Harriet said, pointing to someone in the front row.
"During your address earlier today, you spoke to someone called the Doctor. Is that a codename?"
The phone rang, and with a frustrated noise, Jackie bustled in to the kitchen to answer it whilst the rest of the group stayed glued to the BBC to hear Harriet's answer.
"Well, George, if it were a codename I wouldn't say so on national news now, would I?" she smiled again, and there was a wave of laughter amongst the gathered reporters. "The Doctor," Harriet said after the laughter died down, "is a friend. A friend to me and a friend to us all."
Jackie came back into the living room. "It's Beth," she said, gesturing with the phone. "She says go and look outside."
"Why?" Rose asked, glancing back at her mum curiously. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor remove his glasses and put them back in his pocket and felt curiously disappointed.
"I don't know," Jackie said, sounding slightly exasperated. "Just go outside and look. Come on, shift!"
With a sigh, Rose got to her feet and headed towards the front door of the flat, the boys trailing behind her. They all made their way down into the courtyard of the Powell Estate, where it seemed like at least half the residents were also gathered, chatting and laughing. Although Rose could see stars - and perhaps meteors? - in the sky, it seemed to be snowing.
"Oh, that's beautiful," she said with a smile. She turned to the Doctor. "What are they, meteors?"
The Doctor's face, in contrast to the general gaiety around them, was somewhat grim. "It's the spaceship breaking up in the atmosphere," he said quietly. "And this is isn't snow," he added, "it's ash."
Rose grimaced. "Okay, not so beautiful."
Jack squeezed Rose's shoulder comfortingly. "Still kind of beautiful. You have to find beauty even in terrible things, or you won't be able to do what we do for long."
"I suppose," she said.
"This is a brand new planet Earth," the Doctor declared, as if he hadn't been listening to his companions at all. "No denying the existence of aliens now… everyone saw it." He turned to face Jack and Rose. "Everything's new," he added, grinning. "Now that's beautiful."
Okay, Rose thought, maybe he was listening. "And what about you?" she asked, somewhat tentatively. "What are you gonna do next?" Almost unconsciously, she reached for Jack, who was still standing slightly behind her. His hand slid reassuringly into hers.
"Well," the Doctor said slowly, "back in the TARDIS… same old life…"
Rose took a deep breath. "On your own?"
For his part, the Doctor looked somewhat taken aback at her question, then nervous. "Why? Don't you want to come?" He looked back and forth between Rose and Jack's faces.
"Well, yeah," Rose said, without even glancing at Jack.
"Do you, though?"
"Of course," Jack affirmed. "Of course we do."
The Doctor shuffled his feet a little. "I just thought…" he looked up and met Rose's gaze. "'Cos I'd changed…"
"Yeah," Rose mumbled. "I… I thought 'cos you'd changed…" She glanced at Jack briefly then looked back to the Doctor. "I thought you might not want me… us… around anymore."
The Doctor's worried look dissolved into a happy grin. "Oh, I'd love you to come!" Rose could hear the sincerity in his tone, and she squeezed Jack's hand and grinned at him to share her happiness with him.
"You're never gonna stay, are you?" Mickey said from behind them. Rose and Jack both twisted to look over their shoulders at Mickey, finding him staring at the ground, kicking softly at pebbles.
"There's just so much out there," Rose said gently. "So much to see." She met Jack's eyes briefly before looking back at Mickey, who was now looking up at them. "I've just got to, Mick," she finished.
Mickey smiled sadly. "Yeah," he said softly. "I reckon you do."
Jackie made a pfft noise and rolled her eyes. "Well I reckon you're mad, all three of you." She gestured widely so as to include the Doctor, Rose, and Jack in her declaration. "It's like you go looking for trouble!"
The Doctor grinned again, sidled up to Jackie, and bumped her shoulder companionably. "Ah, trouble's just the bits in between!" He slid his arm around her shoulders and looked up at the sky, causing her to do the same. "It's all waiting out there, Jackie." He pointed up to the stars. "It's brand new to me." He brought his arm back down and shoved it into his pocket. "All those planets… creatures and horizons… I haven't seen them yet! Not with these eyes!"
With a final grin at Jackie - she shook her head and rolled her eyes in response - the Doctor hop-stepped over to where Rose and Jack still stood hand-in-hand. He stepped up next to Rose's free hand and looked down at her face, smiling broadly. "And it is gonna be… fantastic."
Rose smiled at the sound of his former self's favorite word gracing his new self's lips. Then he held out his hand - the hand he'd grown in front of her eyes just a few hours earlier. With a wry grin, she pointed at it. "That hand of yours still gives me the creeps," she said.
Saying nothing, the Doctor wiggled his fingers and smiled wider. Without any further hesitation, Rose reached out and slipped her hand into his. As she stood in the courtyard, the TARDIS close by, holding hands with the two men she loved most in the universe, Rose thought that even with the whole aliens-almost-taking-over-the-planet thing, this might be the best Christmas she'd ever had.
"So," she said, tugging on Jack and the Doctor's hands to bring them both closer to her, "where are we gonna go first?"
The Doctor glanced at her and then at Jack, then looked up at the sky, a look of consideration on his face. "Umm… that way." He pointed up at the sky. "No, hold on…" He adjusted the direction he was pointing ever so slightly to the right. "That way."
"That way?" Rose asked.
The Doctor made an indistinct interrogatory sound and looked back and forth between Rose and Jack, obviously waiting for their approval.
Jack smiled warmly. "Looks good to me," he said.
"Yeah," Rose said, looking up at the Doctor with a soft smile. "That way."
Author's Note: And that's the end! I hope y'all enjoyed it; please let me know what you thought and if you'd like to see more S2 episode rewrites with Jack added to the mix :D