Back at the penthouse, Alba was relieved to have the cuffs, blindfold and headphones all removed together. Jack's expression was still overly apologetic as he sat down on the bed beside her.
"So now what?" she asked.
"Now? You're free to do what you want. The Doctor will be back from New London in about five or six hours. I'll hang out here in the library though, so I'll be around if you need me," he said.
"Well...maybe we could all have dinner together. When he gets back. I could cook for all of us," Alba suggested, thinking of ways she could potentially keep Jack around for longer, as a buffer. She was nervous the Doctor would know right away something was up if it was just the two of them.
He smiled again, apologetically. "Sorry kiddo, but I'm afraid I've already got late dinner arrangements with my boyfriend Alonso when he gets out of work. I'm sure you'll be fine. Really. I've already suggested to the Doc that he ought to lay off the sauce if he didn't want to alienate you completely. Maybe have some wine with dinner, just keep him away from the hard stuff and you should be fine. Besides, you're a charming and vivacious young girl, I'm sure you can think of other ways to entertain each other that don't involve tequila and regret."
"I suppose you're right," she replied, trying to return his smile with a tentative one of her own.
"When it comes to stuff like this, I usually am," he told her with a wink.
"Oh? And what sort of 'stuff' would this be?" she asked him, raising her eyebrows.
"The Doctor. I've known him a long time, I kind of get how he ticks. Also, matchmaking and seduction, other things that I'm usually really great with," he said lightly.
"You forgot to mention modesty. Also something you're really great at," she said, rolling her eyes at him good naturedly.
"I just thought that one went without saying," he said, blowing a kiss at her over his shoulder as he bowed out the door.
Alone in the privacy of the Bedroom Formerly Known As Prison (as she was thinking of it in her head; when she got hysterical, those were the sorts of stupid things that popped into her mind), she had a moment to reflect on how skeeved out she was to have gone to a wedding dress fitting without having bathed. The patina of grime on her may have been mostly invisible, but it felt several layers thick, and she was quite literally itching to scrub it off her body. She didn't have anything sufficiently scrubby in the bathroom, so she ransacked the kitchen to make her own. He had a lot of fancy accoutrements and high end products; almost nothing in the cabinets was store brand, or any brand she recognized at all, honestly. It occurred to her then that she might possibly be in another country, not just another city.
She gathered her ingredients, and studied the labels on each carefully for any clue as to where they might have been purchased. Something that might help to identify where she was, but it seemed most of the ingredients were imports: muscovado sugar from the coast of the Republic of Africa, blood orange olive oil and kaffir limes from Constantinople 3, and vanilla bean paste from Mexico. Which was curious. It was just from Mexico. Not New New Mexico, or the Benevolent Commune of Former South America...just Mexico. As in Earth Mexico, the one that had existed on the planet that her home planet had been designed to mimic, at least in some ways. She opened the jar though, and the paste smelled fresh and not millions of years stale and expired, so she figured it probably was some kind of printing error. The labels were surprisingly nondescript otherwise. No dice on that front.
Pressing down, she rolled the lime vigorously under her palm to release the juices and oils in it. She had heard about kaffir limes and their fragrant leaves, but had never actually used them before due to the fact that they were significantly more expensive than whatever sad pedestrian limes they had sold at the Tesco Express in between the shop and her flat back home in New London. The juice and flesh were too bitter for culinary preparations, but supposedly excellent for cosmetics. She sliced the lime and squeezed it over a scoop of sugar, splashed it with the blood orange olive oil, threw a small spoonful of the vanilla bean paste on top, and mixed it all together with her hands as she walked back to her room. It kind of smelled like dessert, and her stomach rumbled. She actually felt a bit hungry, which was a refreshing change from the nausea and stomach knots she had been having since the slave exchange..
She wiped the sugary scrub off on the tops of her thighs, but her fingers were still oily and she had to use a towel as a grip to turn on the faucet. Standing in the tub, she scrubbed herself down until the sugar mixture had all been used up, and then she used the plastic container she'd mixed it in to splash herself with clean water from the faucet. Once she was sure both dirt and sugar had dissolved down the drain, she put the stop in and sat back to soak as the water level rose, thinking about the strangeness of that particular day, and knowing that the strangest days yet were probably still to come for her. She continued her bathing routine on autopilot, thinking about what Jack had said earlier about the Doctor's wife. She wondered what line of work he could have been in at nineteen that was so dangerous that someone had taken a hit out on him, and how could it have ended up killing his wife and daughter instead of him? She was morbidly curious, but of course she couldn't exactly ask him out right about it and Jack had told her all he was comfortable divulging, she was pretty sure.
iCuriouser and curiouser…/i she thought to herself, and then next of the Doctor's Cheshire cat grin by association. She realized part of what distressed her so much about him was that she felt drawn to him and really wanted to like him, but she also felt that internal sense of revulsion that most people would feel towards a person who had essentially kidnapped them. Of course it was absurd, but a part of her couldn't help but feel that liking the Doctor would almost be a betrayal to her mother, who had to be suffering without Alba there to provide either financial or emotional support. Still, she had read once in a book that holding hate in your heart was like drinking poison and expecting the object of your loathing to die in your stead. There was no point in hating the Doctor she decided, she had nothing to gain from it. Without hate, and not sure if she could bring herself to like him, she wasn't sure what that actually left her with other than a hollow feeling inside.
"Rose, what the hell? You didn't answer the door when I knocked and...shit, did you severe a vein or something!?"
The sound of Jack's slightly panicked voice snapped her out of her thoughts and she looked down to see blood pouring down the back of her calf. Somehow she had nicked herself something fierce shaving, and she'd been so out of it that she hadn't even felt it! Suddenly though, the sight of her blood bright red and swirling away from her made her feel a bit woozy, and the razor slipped out of her hand and fell onto the tile outside of the tub with a clatter. She stood up to retrieve it and her vision swam, and then she felt Jack catching her under the arms when she slipped on the surface of the tub, still slick from the olive oil.
It might've been awkward, her wet and naked body pressed against him, but she was still bleeding everywhere and feeling dizzy. Jack deposited her gently on the toilet, and fished through the drawers until he found what he was looking for: individual disposable styptic wipes.
"I won't even lie...this will hurt like hell. All the damn technology we have, and they haven't designed a no-sting hemostatic yet. Sometimes the old-fashioned way works best, I guess."
Alba swore and nearly kicked him in the face when he pressed the wipe against the cut on her calf. For his part, Jack didn't even seem insulted by this. He was kneeling on the floor, pressing the styptic against her calf and staring at her toes.
"What's wrong?" she asked him. He was still staring down, refusing to meet her gaze.
"Nothing, Rose. It's just from down here, I'm about eye level with your...anyway, yeah. I'm trying to be a gentleman, that's all," he said, and his voice was thick.
"Oh. Yeah right, right, of course you are," she said, feeling embarrassed. He got up and grabbed her towel, and threw it at her. She caught it and draped it loosely around her body, using her arms to hold it pressed against her sides. Jack stayed across the room, leaning stiffly against the counter, and even from her vantage point she could tell that his posture wasn't the only part of him that was stiff at the moment. A stupid, wistful part of her almost wished it had been Jack who'd kidnapped her then, because at least he was kind to her and explained things and seemed to get her. She couldn't say she wasn't attracted to him either, and she swallowed hard, on the verge of doing something that was definitely stupid.
"Are you okay?" he asked, breaking the silence.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she said, getting up off the toilet and letting the towel fall away from her body. That time, Jack didn't look away as she approached him. She pressed her breasts against his chest and reached between them to stroke him through his trousers. "But what about you?"
"Rose…" he groaned into her mouth as she pressed her lips against him. "This isn't just a bad idea, it's single-handedly the worst of the decade, probably also the century, possibly the millennium."
"You said yourself the Doctor would be gone for hours. Don't you want me, Jack?" she purred against him.
"Of course I do, any hot blooded man would...but Rose, you are seriously forbidden fruit," Jack said shakily, gently prising her off of him. 'And besides, I have a boyfriend. Alonso, remember?"
Jack didn't look nearly as sure of himself as he sounded when he said this.
"And I have a fiance, apparently, but I quite think I like you better. You're kind and handsome and you make me feel good without terrifying me. Why can't we just disappear somewhere together, away from here?" she pleaded.
"Rose...please. The Doctor is like a brother to me. I can't. That, and we don't have enough money to disappear from him. If the Doctor wants to find you...believe me, he will. If circumstances were different...the things I would do to you," he said, his breath catching in his throat. "But they aren't. It is what it is."
Alba was deflated. "I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking, doing that to you. I'm just out of my head still with all of this."
Sensing her embarrassment and guilt, Jack smiled devilishly in an attempt to diffuse it. "Well, in your defense, I am all kinds of irresistible. Can't blame a girl for tryin'."
"Shut up, you chav!" she said, snapping her towel at him.
"Takes one to know one, doll."
Jack had already left for his dinner date by the time the Doctor came home. Alba had done a lot of things to keep her mind busy: she'd finished shaving her legs (uneventful), she'd put curlers in her hair (disastrous; it was too humid and they looked more like waves than curls), she'd primped and poked and moisturized and toned and done everything in the world to take her mind off of the things Jack had told her and the embarrassment of being rebuffed when she'd thrown herself at him. Even after all the primping she'd still had time to kill, so she had started making beef stew and reading in the kitchen. She was perched on a stool, a mug of tea in one hand and book in the other when the Doctor came walking into the room. He leaned in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, and the two of them stared uncomfortably at each other for what felt like an eternity and couldn't have been more than a minute.
"What are you reading?" he finally asked, coming into the kitchen and pouring himself a mug of tea from the kettle.
"It's called "Words of Passion, Words of Love: the Best Love Poems Written by Women"," she said, turning a page. "They're all older, though, all from Earth. They certainly don't write them like this anymore. Sometimes I wish I grew up on that world...they just seemed so full of love and longing. It was more romantic. Here, it's all dirty text messages and...well, other stuff," she said, thinking that 'slave exchanges' probably fell quite neatly into that descriptive category of 'other stuff'..
"Do you want to be romanced, Rose?" he asked, coming to stand behind her so he could trail his fingers across the back of her neck. She shivered. She had missed his touch, how electric it felt to her.
"Doesn't every woman?" she asked in response, leaning against him and nuzzling the underside of his chin with the top of her head.
"That's a non-answer. I asked what you wanted, not what everyone else wants. You..Alba Prentice. Rose Tyler. What is it that you want? Do you want to be romanced and courted?" he asked, stepping around her so that they were face to face.
"Well...what do you mean?" she asked, thinking she probably knew what he meant, but almost afraid to answer the question she thought he was asking.
"I mean when you're awake late at night, staring up at the ceiling, thinking of the mistakes you've made in the past and how you might avoid them in the future, thinking about the things you want and need, what does that picture look like? Do you want your own career? True love? Money? Power? Passion? What?" he asked, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes with fierce intensity.
"Why are you asking me this now?" she asked him, confused.
"Because," he said, as if that were all the answer she required. Biting her lip, she looked back at him and knew that not answering was not an option.
So she decided to take a shot at being truthful, instead. "I want to fall in love, and have it be worth it. I want to be with someone whom I trust completely, who understands me perfectly and still loves me anyway. I want someone who will make love to me when I can't fall asleep, and hold me when I'm cold and dance with me in the rain. I want someone who will make me smile through the tears. I want someone who I can't breathe without, who is such a part of me that he is essential to my existence. I want to be so consumed by him that I can't tell where I end and he begins, and I want him to feel the same way about me. I want to fall in love with a person that I could make a life and family of my own with, because I never had one growing up. That's what I want, John," she said, choosing to use his name instead of his presumed title. She held her breath, waiting for any sort of reaction from him at all.
She certainly wasn't expecting him to do what he actually did, which was to take the book from her, and start flipping through it. Really? You're doing that now? she thought.
He seemed to find what he was looking for though, as he stopped flipping, adjusted his glasses, cleared his throat, and began to read:
"We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free."
He unfolded his glasses and tucked them into his pocket, and set the book down on the counter. The air was so still, you could've heard a penny drop, but all Alba could hear was the nervous thump of her heart inside her chest and her breathing, which had quickened noticeably.
"Miss Angelou was a lot more eloquent than I could ever hope to be," he said softly, and now their faces were so close together that she could feel her eyelashes brushing against his skin.
"Why me?" she asked.
"Why you for a wife? Or why you from the slave exchange, out of all the other girls there?" he asked, cupping her face in the palm of his hand.
"Isn't the answer the same?" she asked.
He chuckled to himself, as though she had unknowingly uttered the punchline to a rather amusing private joke. "I suppose you're right, to a point. Why you out all the other girls there? Because when I talked to you, you were fiery and clever and passionate. The fight, the spark of life, it was still bright in you. So many of those other girls...they were beautiful to look at it, but they were essentially just flesh bags, already dead on the inside. You...reminded me of someone I cared for a great deal a very long time ago."
Alba tried not to seem too interested by that last remark, although knowing what she did about him of course it sparked her curiosity, wondering if he was talking about his wife or some other woman he had loved.
"And as a wife…?"
"Well, you said it. The answers are practically the same."
"Oh," she nodded nervously, swallowing. The atmosphere in the room had changed, and it felt as though something were about to happen. "Well, quid pro quo, Doctor. I told you what I want. Now you...tell me what you really want?"
"I think I might have already found it," he replied, pulling her to him and kissing her with the urgency and fervor of a man returning from war.
