Chapter 3

Rose still lay on the couch the next morning. She woke up in her clothing from yesterday. Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn't even eaten dinner. She walked into the kitchen and noticed the frozen dinner sitting on the counter completely thawed. It smelled of wet cardboard, and she tossed it in the trash. Her stomach churned. She decided it was more upset than it was hungry so she just made herself a cup of tea. She called the office, and told them she would be working remotely if they needed her. She went into the bedroom and changed her clothes. She pulled back the covers of the bed, ruffled the sheets, and walked back to the living room. She sat down on the couch with her mobile and dialed her mum.

"Hi Rose!" Jackie answered.

"Hi mum, listen there is something you need to know," said Rose before her mother launched into a story.

"What is it?" asked Jackie. Rose told her what happened yesterday and why she had done it. To her surprise, her mother didn't interrupt or ask her a lot of questions. When Rose was finished Jackie simply said "I'm surprised, Rose. After everything you've been through with that man."

"What?" asked Rose. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Her mother frequently got angry with the Doctor. She expected her to be angry with him now. Your mother was supposed to be angry when someone hurt you, but instead her mother was acting as though she was disappointed.

"You think it was easy for me and your dad?" asked Jackie. "I know you think of him as your dad, Rose." Rose balled her hands into fists but said nothing. "He'd been dead for about 18 years," continued Jackie, "from his perspective I'd been dead for months and was divorcing him. Still we fell back in love with each other, because there was so much that was the same. Now we have Tony and you Rose. You think of him as your dad, and he thinks of you as his daughter."

"But this is different. The Doctor's not dead. He's alive, and he tricked me. Don't you get it! He tricked me mum!" Rose screamed into the phone.

"He's an alien who lives forever, Rose. Of course he tricked you. But don't you see? He did it so you would be happy. How many girls before you have fallen in love with that man? Hmmm? How many got their wish to spend their life with him?"

"I know he misses me and every time I look at his clone I can see him missing me. Traveling the universe while I'm stuck here."

"Rose, you said it was never about the traveling and the aliens. You said it was about making a difference. Taking a stand for what was right. You do that now at Torchwood and I'm so proud of you! The Doctor could help. You know he could help. He loves you and you just let him go."

"He's not him. That man's just not the Doctor," said Rose.

"Whatever, you should have seen how he was with Tony yesterday. That man is going to make a great father!" said Jackie.

Rose ripped out the ear piece and threw it across the room while her mum was still on the line. As an afterthought she pressed the button on her phone to hang up. She pulled her knees up to her chest and sobbed. By the time she gained control over herself her tea was cold. She dumped it and made another cup. Her stomach knotted itself up worse than a botched game of cat's cradle. She made herself some toast and sat down at the desk in the corner of the living room.

Rose nibbled at the toast and took a sip of tea. She read some emails and did her best to answer them, but mostly she just sat there feeling sorry for herself. The first time she had been trapped in this universe it had been an accident. She lost her grip on the lever and would have been pulled into the Void if her father from this parallel world had not rescued her at the last second. Being alive in this universe without the Doctor was still better than being sucked into the Void with a bunch of daleks and cybermen. They would have certainly killed her, if the nothingness of the Void didn't kill her first. She had felt devastated being separated from the Doctor, but she turned that devastation into determination to live in a way that would make him proud. She joined Torchwood almost immediately because she hoped to make a difference.

After a major incident with a group of imprisoned cybermen, much of Torchwood had been destroyed and only a few team members had been left alive. She was the highest ranking leader of organization and she rebuilt Torchwood the way the Doctor would have wanted it. She learned recently that her friend Captain Jack Harkness, another traveling companion of the Doctor, had done something similar in her old universe. It made her happy to know that she wasn't alone.

Rose's Torchwood was larger than Jack's, 15 people total, but its function was much the same. Torchwood was primarily a scientific institute dedicated to learning more about the universe, through the use of alien technology. Its secondary function was to defend the Earth against alien threats. She poured her heart and soul into it. She had imagined the Doctor would be proud of her if he could see all that she had accomplished. She had often pictured him giving her a ridiculous grin.

When the stars started to vanish from the sky, her team built the dimension cannon to transport through to parallel worlds. The walls between the universes were breaking down. Rose left to find and warn the Doctor. For a few brief hours Rose got her wish when she traveled back to her own universe. She stood once more on the TARDIS. The Doctor had given her a huge grin, but it had all went wrong after that. She expected to stay with him, but he accidentally cloned himself, creating a human-Time Lord hybrid that would grow old and never regenerate. She thought it was what she wanted, but she was wrong. She didn't want a copy. She wanted the real Doctor because that was the man she loved.

Rose blinked a few times. She realized she'd been staring blankly at her computer for several minutes. She clicked the next email and committed herself to picking away at the back log. When the Doctor returned them to this universe he dropped them off in Norway. It took days to return to London and in that time the emails piled up. Even though it had been over a week since they returned, she still hadn't found the time to get caught up. Working from home provided her the perfect opportunity, and by noon she had finished responding to the important ones. Once that was complete, she worked with pattern recognition software to scan the internet for recently posted skeleton photos. She hoped to find some clue to all the animal skeletons, and two infant ones that were reported recently. She tried to care about what she was doing. The infant deaths did bother her, but the grief of her own loss overshadowed them. It felt like just going through the motions.

When the program finished, she discovered all of the skeletons appeared within the same eight city blocks, and all of them except the bookshop murder had been found outdoors. She shook her head. What did that really tell her? That the murder lived nearby, or that he liked that area? All she knew for certain was she needed to keep watch on that section of the city. She forwarded the information to Angie Webber and told her to cross check the news for any unusual activity in the area.

Rose looked at the time display on her computer. It read "3:30 PM." She clicked once more on her email, but finding nothing new she sighed. There was nothing left to take her mind off it. She removed her ear piece and went to the toilet. She ignored the clean room as best as she could but the scent of apple grass drove her mad. Where did he find a cleaner that smelt like the grass on New Earth? It was one of their earliest adventures with his new face. It was almost like he did it on purpose to torture her.

When she returned to her desk, a light flashed on her phone indicating a message. She clicked the icon and saw that it was from Angie. She smiled, hoping Angie had found more information about the skeletons, or any news at all that would help her take her mind off things. She put it on speaker phone because she didn't feel like putting in the ear piece and pressed play.

"Hi Rose. I found everything on the Doctor's list. He should be able to build a sonic screwdriver now. I know how anxious he is to make one so I thought you should know."

Rose groaned and dragged both hands down her face in frustration. She picked her mobile up off the desk and raised her arm as if to hurl it across the room, but her rage suddenly turned to tears. She let the phone slip from her hand. It tumbled and landed with a thud on the floor. She decided she was done for the day. She went to the kitchen and heated up a frozen dinner. She realized she had completely forgotten to eat lunch. The chicken parmesan tasted like most things that came out of a cardboard box bland, soggy, but eatable. She ate it, but it didn't satisfy her. Next she grabbed a half-eaten container of ice cream out of the freezer and a spoon. She rationalized this as perfectly acceptable behavior since she barely ate anything all day. She sat in front of the telly mindlessly flipping the channels trying and failing to not think about the Doctor, or the conversation with her mother.

At 5:30, someone knocked on the door causing Rose to jump. She walked slowly and anxiously over to it. She grabbed the gift card that was still lying on the floor from last night and braced herself as she peered through the peep hole. Her mother stood on the other side of the door, but she wasn't sure if she was relieved or upset. She had geared herself up for another confrontation with the clone Doctor. She wasn't prepared at all for another confrontation with her mother. She opened the door anyway, and her mother pulled her into a hug without saying a word.

Rose let herself collapse into her mother's arms. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have hung up on you," she said.

"I'm sorry too. I was just trying to help, sweetheart. I just know how much you love him, but it wasn't my place. Your right, it's different than me and your dad. I didn't have to watch one version of him leave me. I can't imagine how that feels," said Jackie.

For at least the third time today Rose broke down and cried. "He's not him," said Rose after she gained control over herself, "I look at that other man and all I can think is how he's out there still missing me. I tried to make it work. I tried to love him. I tried to look after him for the Doctor, but it's just too hard, mum," Rose said thickly.

The two of them sat down on the sofa. Jackie rubbed her daughter's back. "It will get better. I know it doesn't feel like it right now but it will," said Jackie, "I'm here for you. Your family is here for you."

They sat in silence for a while until Rose's tears stopped. She needed to take her mind off it. Rose tried to talk about other things like how fast Tony was growing up, and the fancy new pizza place that turned out to not be very good. They talked about how zeppelins seemed normal now. They talked about how people were starting to switch back to phones instead of downloading information directly. It had taken a massive scare with the cybermen, and several years of campaigning, but people were starting to get the message. Not everyone gave it up but even people who did wear the ear pieces didn't do so all the time anymore.

"The Doctor would be happy about that!" Rose said to her mum "Oh everything reminds me of him!" Rose didn't want to be alone and her mother knew that so they talked well into the night. When her mother finally went home she didn't feel any better about the Doctor, but she was thankful for her mother. The Doctor had at least gotten one thing right. He made sure Rose stayed with her mother. She was grateful for that. She had her family here in this universe. While the Doctor continued on alone.