A/N The Doctor nears a turning point, but their next challenge is about to be faced.

Chapter 15

Jackie followed after Rose to where she had fled to the safe and familiar comfort of her old room. Upon entering, she found Rose sitting on the edge of the bed, wiping the tears from her cheeks that were trailing down. Jackie sat down beside her and draped a comforting arm around her shoulder as Rose leaned into her mum's embrace. Jackie knew the atmosphere between the Doctor and Rose had been visibly strained since they had arrived, so she wasn't entirely surprised by Rose's question when it came.

"Can I stay here tonight, Mum?" Rose asked in an unsteady voice. "I just...I feel so confused by everything and I don't know what to do right now. I just want to be here."

"Of course you can, sweetheart," Jackie soothed. "But tell me what's really wrong between the two of you. It's not just the way those people brought this about, is it? There's something more, but what?"

Rose took in a shaky breath, then released it along with the words that were breaking her heart. "Oh, Mum. The Doctor doesn't want the baby. He just doesn't! This is the last thing he ever would have wanted, and now it's pushing us apart. S'like...like it hurts him to even look at me now."

Jackie shook her head and tried to reason with Rose's broken words as she pulled back and looked at her. "How could that possibly be, love? He's a right nutter and a puzzle to figure out, I'll give him that. but I don't see the Doctor as bein' the type not to want his own child. Alien as he may be, I think I understand him well enough to know that much at least. I know I said he was lookin' like he regretted this, but I was just tryin' to get to the real heart of the issue, because I know he can't feel that way...not really. I'm sure he's still shocked by how this happened, but I don't think he's a man who wouldn't love his own child, Rose."

Rose lowered her eyes. "It isn't that he won't love the baby; it's that he will, and that's what he's afraid of in all this."

Now Jackie was more confused than ever and was beginning to think maybe Rose's hormones were starting to play a role here. "Rose, sweetheart, how could him loving the baby be a problem?" she asked, genuinely puzzled.

When Rose replied, she sounded even more broken. "Because one day he'll lose us both, and he can't bear that; he said so. The baby's part-human physiology means it will age like a human. It won't regenerate and live on like the Doctor."

Jackie knit her brows together and shook her head slightly. "But...but that wouldn't happen for years," she reasoned.

Rose sniffed and swiped at her cheeks. "But it will still happen. One day he'll be alone again. He knew he would have to eventually face that when he allowed himself to love me, but now that pain he'll one day feel is gonna be doubled."

"And so he's makin' you feel miserable over it in the meantime," Jackie concluded indignantly. "Oh, that great big STUPID alien!"

"Oh, Mum," Rose cried softly, "how can we get through this? I've been trying to see it from his side...to understand how he must be feeling, but this hurts so much! How can he ever be happy about this baby? Every day of our lives from the minute the baby's born, when I see our child as growing up each day, he'll just see it as growing old. If this is how he's letting himself see it, how can we live like that?"

Jackie didn't yet have an answer for Rose. She wasn't quite sure just how to get the Doctor to see sense, but she knew one thing: she would snap him out of this if it took putting him on the receiving end of the hardest slap she'd ever given in her life.

-:-:-:-

The Doctor stood outside in solitude, leaning his forearms on the balcony railing with his eyes fixed ahead. He stared vacantly out into the darkened grounds of the Powell Estate as his mind continued its tumultuous churning. From behind him, a light shone briefly across the dim space as the door to the flat opened. Pete stepped out and came over to stand beside him.

Pete didn't speak. He just stood beside the Doctor gazing out into the night. He sensed the Doctor needed time to gather his thoughts first, but his presence let the man beside him know he was there to listen when the Doctor was ready to talk about this.

Finally, the Doctor did speak, not turning but keeping his eyes focused blankly ahead. "I'm going to lose them, Pete. Both of them, one day. The baby will age like Rose, and I'll have to watch as they both slip away from me with each day that passes."

There was a time when Pete would have said that he'd never heard a man sound as broken as the Doctor when he spoke, but that wasn't true now. He heard his own self reflected in the Doctor's pained voice because he had once been at a similar place in his life. Unlike the Doctor, Pete hadn't lived with the foreknowledge that his loss would come, but he had lived through loss none the less. He was able to relate to what the Doctor was feeling, having once lost his wife. When he found the Jackie of this universe, he had the fear of letting her into his life because he might lose her too, and he didn't know if he could bear that again. When that fear caught up to him on his wedding day, it had been the Doctor's words that had given him the reassurance he had needed to overcome his fear of loss and take hold of the love he could have here and now.

Pete leaned forward on the railing next to the Doctor, mirroring his position and looking ahead as he spoke. "Do you remember what you said to me the day I married Jackie? I was having doubts because I was afraid I might lose her too, just like my first wife. I thought that maybe it would be easier not having her in my life at all than to have her and lose her all over again. I didn't want to ever again feel that kind of pain." He turned his head and looked at the Doctor, who was still staring ahead but listening intently to Pete's words. "But then you reminded me that we shouldn't let our fear of losing the people we love keep us from opening ourselves to loving them in the first place. I remember you said that we can't control our losses in life, but that we can choose to take hold of the miracles that come our way and not let them slip past."

The Doctor briefly closed his eyes as he recalled those words and felt the truth of them trying to sink into his hearts. "This baby you and Rose created is a miracle, Doctor," Pete continued. "Don't let that slip away from you. You'd fought past those fears to allow yourself to embrace the life you now have with Rose, and now this has brought all that back to the front of your mind. I understand that, believe me I do. But don't allow the joy of today to be stolen from you because of your fears of the future."

The Doctor was silent for another few moments before speaking in a low, uncertain voice. "I just don't know if I can live through losing my family all over again, Pete. How can I possibly face that again?"

"I'm not saying it's an easy thing, Doctor. Love never is. But maybe instead of thinking about the things you'll one day lose, you should focus on what it is you will never lose. However much time you have with them, that will never be lost to you. Never. No one can take that from you. It will be with you forever – just like the time I had with my first wife will always be with me. Regardless of how long you live on after them, the love they bring into your life will never fade, as long as you allow yourself that love in the first place. If there's just one piece of advice I could give you it would be to let yourself have this gift and cherish it each moment."

There were a few minutes of contemplative silence between the two before the door behind them opened once again and Jackie stepped out.

"I'd like to talk with him, Pete." Her voice was calm and even, but the look in her eyes said she'd come to speak her mind and would not be deterred.

Pete nodded as he moved back towards the door. "Be easy on him, love," he said with a small smile as he brushed her arm with his hand and walked past. "I'll go check on Rose."

Jackie wasn't going to make any promises of going easy and she wasn't going to mince words as she stared the Doctor squarely on and got right down to it.

"Answer me this, Doctor," she spoke directly. "Do you want this baby?" Turning to face her, the Doctor opened his mouth to give a reply beyond a simple yes or no answer, but she spoke again, rephrasing the question so it was even more pointed. "Oh, I know you don't want to lose the baby, but do you want to have it? However much time you'll have, do you want that time?"

The Doctor's hands were shoved firmly in his pockets, his stance guarded as he finally replied without quite meeting her eyes. "Of course I do." In all of this it was the losing he didn't want, not the having.

"Then for heaven's sake tell Rose that," she said sternly. "Doctor, pregnancy is hard enough as it is, then add in the shock of how this happened, only to now be made to feel like you don't even want this child. It's too much for Rose. She's strong, but there's only so much she can take here." Jackie took a step closer. "I don't care how this pregnancy was made possible – it happened, so deal with it. This is also your responsibility, you know. Don't act like you didn't have a hand in this, too." She paused. "It was significantly more than just your hand, actually," she added dryly. "You are the father of this baby, Doctor; but have you even allowed yourself to call it yours?"

The Doctor stiffened. Those words hit him squarely because he knew the truth behind them. When he let the veracity of it fully sink in, he realized he had been fighting to remain detached from the very thought of this as his child. He hadn't referred to the baby as his because he'd tried to maintain a protective distance. He had called it an occurrence engineered by others, thought of it as a weight crushing his soul, but never given it the intimate, precious title of his child.

Jackie continued, giving him a firm ultimatum. "If you're gonna keep on like this, making Rose feel this way and actin' like you don't even want your baby that she's carrying then you can just leave now."

The Doctor had been avoiding her sharp gaze, but that brought his eyes quickly back to hers. "What?"

"Oh, you heard me. Rose already asked if she could stay here in her old room tonight because she didn't feel like she could even be with you. If you're gonna make her and the baby feel like you resent them for the rest of their lives then you can just get your skinny alien backside into that box of yours and go now. You won't be welcome here. Pete and I will be here for them and love them if you won't."

The Doctor gaped at her. She couldn't be serious. "Jackie, I am not going anywhere – at least not without Rose," he stated firmly. "I can promise you I have no plans to...to abandon her or the baby. That will never happen. And I am not trying to make her feel this way." His voice lowered along with his eyes. "Do you think it doesn't kill me to know that she's hurting?"

"Then start acting like you actually care!"

The Doctor turned away for a brief second, then swiftly back towards her as he ran an agitated hand through his hair. "It's not that I don't care, Jackie. It's...it's that–"

"Yeah, I know what your problem is," she cut in. "You're afraid. Afraid of losing them. But do you know how long it could be before that happened?"

"And you think that makes it alright?" he retorted. "Jackie, you couldn't possibly understand this."

"Oh, you think?" she challenged. "You don't have a monopoly on grief and loss, you know. It's not just Time Lords with some...billion-year lifespan who experience losing the people they love. That's the risk everybody takes in loving someone. I know you've already lost people you love and I know that it hurts because I've been through it, too. You think I don't know what it's like to lose someone I love – and all too soon?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you know how long I was married to Pete, my first husband, before he died? Barely two years. I had such a short amount of time with him and spent the next twenty years without him. And I can tell you I have missed him every day since he died. But in all this time I've been without him I wouldn't have traded that time we had together for anything. Do you know why? Because it was worth it. Because He was Worth it."

That effectively silenced him. Jackie stared him down hard. "Now it's up to you to decide, Doctor. Are they worth it?"

Jackie's sharp yet truthful words got his attention more than a slap ever could. If he had felt guilty before for how he had been making Rose feel then that guilt had just been multiplied. Everything Jackie and Pete had said to him was true. He had also known this for himself in the back of his mind all along and it had been fighting to break free. Maybe he just needed to be hit 'round the head with it to begin to open his eyes to what he had been missing in all this.

The Doctor's focus was finally beginning to shift off himself and on to Rose. She was the love of his life, his reason to endure and the one he would give his lives to keep from ever being hurt, and yet he had been the one to cause her pain because he had been such a coward in this.

The Doctor found himself wishing he could go back in time, paradox or no, and relive the past two days over again, and this time maybe make things right. He couldn't go back but he could go forward. And forward was leading him right to Rose's side to somehow begin making amends.

He would not be given that chance, though.

As he had been fighting this struggle within himself, an unforeseen danger, the guilt of which would plague him for not realizing its possibility sooner, was overtaking Rose. It arose without warning, blindsiding him with the intensity as he was suddenly overcome with the sensation of tremendous pain in his mind, but it wasn't his own pain he was feeling. It was an echo of hers resonating through him, intense and searing like an inferno blazing a path through his cerebrum.

Burning. Rose was burning. Her mind was being consumed within his own.

In his barely-coherent state overtaken by the sudden firestorm, all the Doctor knew was he had to reach Rose quickly before it was too late. Gripping his head, the Doctor stumbled forward just as Pete called out from inside the open door of the flat.

"Doctor! Doctor, you need to come quick! It's Rose!"