Sorry for the wait, dears! Here's chapter six - there's some coarse language in here, so if you're not comfortable with that...sorry?

They'd made so many advances on the dimension canon. One month in, they'd learned how to identify where Rose had landed without her having to tell them. Five months in, she'd landed briefly in the right universe for her allotted two minutes, though on the wrong planet, which had resulted in a very long night of celebrating for all members of Torchwood.

Which was why today, she was sitting in her office rather than working down in the lab, with her blinds closed, drinking her third cup of coffee since the hour that she had been at work to help swallow the ibuprofen.

So when Paler walked into her office and switched the light on, decidedly confused and significantly less hung over than her, she groaned and hit her eyes in her hands. He shot her a bemused look and turned the light back off and moved to her desk. She uncovered her eyes and raised her eyebrows at him. His shot up in response and he chuckled, walking back out of her office for only a moment before coming back with a large glass of water. He put in down in front of her and pulled back her cup of coffee.

"You want hydration over caffeine." He told her softly.

Rose groaned again. "I think I want caffeine over hydration." She muttered, but she drank from the glass anyway, wincing slightly when the cold water hit her throat. When she finished, she looked up at Paler. "What've you got for me?"

"Pardon?"

"You're in my office." Rose said blankly.

"I can't just say hi?" He said with a small smile on his face, reaching forward to brush a lock of hair out of her face. She recoiled slightly, not expecting his hand in her face.

"You can." She admitted, "but you don't."

"Rose –" he started.

"Richard." She responded in the same tone. His first name felt funny on her lips.

He sighed and sat lightly in the chair facing her desk. "Fine. It is good news though. We've found a way for you to have more time in the other universes." At this, Rose sat up in her chair, still hugging her cup of coffee. "Not indefinite time, and we will still be able to pull you back if we feel it's necessary, but yeah. We're working on an addition to your watch, a way for you to signal to us when you're fine, and when you're ready to come back."

Rose's mouth had popped open. She clamped it closed and stood up, pushing her chair back. "What are we waiting for, then? Let's go." She spoke too loud, making her wince and rub her forehead. He tried to hide his smirk and was unsuccessful.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her gently back into her chair. "Maybe you should just sit for a while."

Rose sighed but stood back up. "If I can sit here I can run through dimensions. Actually, I'd rather run through dimensions. It'll help pass the headache." With determination, she made her way to the door. Paler chuckled and followed her out.

"What the hell?" Rose muttered. She'd travelled through dimensions and landed in some sort of…hub…office…thing. She looked around in confusion.

"WHAT THE HELL." She heard from behind her. She whipped around and saw a young man with red-ish hair and a stern face. She gave an unsure smile and wave of her fingers.

The man ran to a button on the wall and slammed his hand on it. Huge metal doors slammed shut, locking them into the room. Red lights flashed and a robotic voice spoke.

"BREACH, BREACH."

An image popped up on the wall and a familiar face spoke. "Owen, what the hell is going on?" Rose felt excitement bubble in her chest.

"This girl just appeared out of nowhere!" The one called Owen shouted.

Jack's face searched through what she assumed was the camera on his phone to find the intruder. She made it easier for him, stepping into the image. "Jack?" She said excitedly.

Jack's face lit up when he saw her. "ROSE!" His eyes found Owen again. "Shut down the alarm, I'll be there as soon as I can."

Rose was sitting awkwardly in an uncomfortable chair, being stared at by Owen. It was twenty minutes before the door opened and Jack ran. She'd signaled to her coworkers in the other universe that she was alright using her time-zone watch.

Rose jumped up from her seat and ran to her old friend, feeling relief and joy when he caught her in his arms, hugging her tight and spinning her around. He laughed loudly and kissed her cheek. "You're alive! I thought you were dead!" He put her down, keeping his arms around her waist.

"Not dead. Lost in the wrong universe."

"Lost?" His eyebrows shot up. He removed his arms from her waist but grabbed her hand. "Do tell."

They moved to Jack's office, still hand in hand. "Do you remember the invasion of the Cybermen?" Rose asked him, feeling Owen's eyes on her back.

Jack chuckled, though not with humor. "Something like that is hard to forget."

Rose acknowledged that with a tsk. "The Doctor and I were in Torchwood." She looked around, "not this Torchwood. We used these levers to open a doorway into the void - the space between universes – and it sucked up anything with void stuff on them. Anyone who had travelled between universes had void stuff on them, including me and The Doctor and all the Cybermen and Daleks." Jack was hanging on her words, sitting behind his desk with her sitting across from him, their hands still clasped together. "We had to pull up these levers and then hang onto clamps that were on the walls. It's…hard to explain." She closed her eyes. "But my lever didn't lock into place. It started to close the window, or door, and the Cybermen and Daleks weren't being sucked in anymore. So I let go of my clamp." Jack's hands tightened around hers. "I pulled the lever back up and it locked into place. But I couldn't –" Rose's breath caught in her chest. Jack stood and came to her side, kneeling next to her. He ran his hand over her hair. "I couldn't hang on. I fell and I was getting tugged into the void. And then my dad – my dad from the other universe – appeared out of nowhere, using this dimension hopper-thing. And he brought me to his universe, but then the walls between the worlds closed and I was stuck. I was stranded over there."

"Oh, Rose." Jack stood and pulled Rose into a hug that was awkward only because he was standing and she was sitting. "How long has it been since you saw him?"

Rose took a breath. "Two years."

Jack let out a huff of air and hugged her tighter.

After a couple minutes of just hugging each other, Jack pulled away suddenly. "I have news for you, too." Rose stared up at him with wide eyes. "Rose, I'm a fixed point in time. I can't die."

Rose didn't break eye contact for several moments. "The…the game station. Bad Wolf." It was a question, one she almost didn't want the answer to. "I did this to you." She began to shake.

"Rose!" Jack pulled her back in for another hug. "It's okay. It's fine, Rose. You're always forgiven."

Suddenly the tingling started. She knew exactly what it meant – her time in this universe was ending. "Jack, listen. I'll find you again. I swear. I'll find The Doctor and I'll find you." She was disappearing, and Jack watched with wide, horrified eyes as Rose dissolved before his eyes.

And then she was gone. Jack closed his eyes and bit back tears, forcing himself not to cry. She'd find him again. She promised.

"No." Rose moaned. "Why did you bring me back?" She'd been with Jack, her friend who hadn't died at the game station, who was alive and well in her universe, who worked for Torchwood, just like her.

"We couldn't see you. We had no idea where you were. If we couldn't see you, we couldn't tell if maybe you'd lost signal on your watch or communicator." Robert put her hands on her shoulders and searched her face, finding only frustration. He pulled her in for a tight hug. It was a moment before Rose responded in kind, hugging him back nowhere near as tightly as he hugged her.

Rose gave a frustrated sigh and pushed away from him, giving him a slight nod. She said nothing to anyone else and started to make her way out of the lab. "Miss Tyler, you can make one more jump today," a young woman called after her.

Rose stopped for a moment, considering, but then shook her head and continued to walk, head down.

Paler found her sitting on the top step again.

"Wose!" The sound of small feet running across hardwood floors was the first thing that caught Rose's attention when she walked through the door to her parents' house. Her little brother crashed into her legs and Rose braced herself against the wall so she wouldn't fall over.

"Tony!" Rose replied with a laugh, picking him up in her arms. He was two years old and getting almost too heavy for her to carry. She made her way to the kitchen, where Jackie was making a salad.

"Hey, mum." Rose said, dropping the carrots she'd brought with her onto the counter next to the sink and kissing her mother's cheek.

"Hello, sweetheart," Jackie said with a smile towards her daughter. She chuckled at the sight of Rose carrying Tony around and the bright smile on his face. "He misses you all week, you know." She said, pointing her elbow at her son.

"I miss him, too." Rose pinched her brother's nose, making him giggle happily.

Jackie brought the salad bowl to the dinner table and placed it in the center. "Chicken's in the oven. It'll be done in a jiff." Jackie told Rose before turning her attention to Tony. "Why don't you show Rose your new fire truck, Tony?"

Rose gasped and looked at her little brother with wide eyes. "You have a new fire truck and you didn't tell me?"

He gave her a wide smile and he pointed towards his room. Rose carried him off, leaving Jackie to finish the dinner.

"So, your dad tells me you found someone you knew this week." Jackie started over dinner. Rose's jaw clenched and she lowered her gaze to her food. "That must have been exciting, right Sweetheart?" Jackie tried again. Rose lifted bitter eyes to her mother and gave a curt nod. "Well, maybe you're getting closer."

"Just hope we get this done before all the stars go out." She muttered, pushing her chair away from the table and standing. She grabbed her plate and carried it to the kitchen.

"Fuckin' Christ," Rose gasped as she dodged a sort of grenade that seemed to contain a weird sort of smoke It missed her by mere inches, and she stumbled to the ground. Ahead of her, the fog hit another alien and in seconds, he had disintegrated into dust.

Her watch had been lost upon arrival when she'd been taken into some sort of prisoner of war camp on the alien planet on another dimension. The planet, called Baclodaina, was being invaded by the Eknodine, a race looking for a new home after the destruction of their own in the Time War. The aliens being invaded, who already didn't like her simply because she was human, were called Silurians, and they looked upon her with distain. They were struggling in the war, being as they couldn't get close enough to the invaders to do much damage.

They'd provided her with armor – it was thin but apparently near indestructible, and felt like a diving suit. However, the gas (or whatever it was) seemed to seep through any opening, and the moment it touch skin it could kill anyone.

She'd been fighting for only a few hours – she hoped desperately that the Torchwood team would get off their asses and get her out of there, but until then she had no choice but to join the Silurians in the fight, using their strange guns and armor to fight their enemies.

She was very glad for her Torchwood training – to many people, landing in this situation would have been a death sentence. She had been able to talk with the war leader of the Silurians and explain her situation, and when he'd insisted she join the army and be useful, she bowed her head in consent and followed one of the strange reptilians to their storage.

So now she was on the front line, shooting the gun with deadly accuracy and desperately avoiding the gas.

It was probably the only time in her life she'd wished for the Bad Wolf.

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