Chapter 3

Rose didn't like John being on painkillers all the time, but it didn't seem to dull his personality or intelligence as expected. Rather, his work only continued to develop as he and his department at Torchwood designed an entirely new and improved system for tracking and managing rift activity and dimensional pathways. Actually Pete confided proudly to Rose that John really didn't have a department; more like, he ran one department and was slowly increasing in his management of all the rest, too! Besides that, he was of course running tests in their basement at home to determine what was causing him pain.

It seemed to Rose that he was becoming more and more like the actual Time Lord Doctor, and although that wasn't necessarily bad it still scared her. She didn't know what kind of a connection his shift in personality could have with the pain in his head, but she couldn't help but wonder if there was one. John tried to set her fears to rest with the results from his testing, but frankly everything he came up with was so flippin' complicated she didn't know what to think of it.

"Yea, that's lovely, but what does that mean? What're we supposed to do?" she pressured him, after he came upstairs one evening with a whole analysis of the intricacies of brain chemical balances and synaptic response time.

"Well, I'm still getting to that," he dodged the question, rubbing the back of his neck as he pretended to busily examine the data.

She rolled her eyes, but he didn't notice. "Well, are you ready for dinner, then? It's about to get cold."

"Aw, Rose, I'm right on the edge of a breakthrough! Give me just a minute, will you?"

"I been doin' that for weeks, John," she snapped. "Now get up here and eat your dinner. You can't live off those painkillers, you know, though sometimes I wonder if you try."

"Wot?! Rose, that isn't true!" he exclaimed, offended. Jackie had looked up from her toy farmhouse in the family room when she heard it was time for dinner, but when she saw them getting angry she watched, wide-eyed, for a few moments and went back to what she was doing. "I thought you wanted me workin' on this, anyway!"

"I wanted you takin' care of yourself!"

"I'm trying to! It's not like I can just figure stuff out in a few minutes anymore; I'm not the actual Doctor. Do you expect me to be?!" his voice started getting louder.

"But you're becomin' more and more like him and it's scarin' me!" Rose almost shouted. "You hardly ever play with the kids anymore! You never call me Rosie anymore! You can't keep your mouth shut for five minutes and it's all about work, work, work, and strings of numbers and technical whatever-it-is you talk about—"

"I played with the kids just last night, and I don't talk half as much as I did when I was the Doctor! You're picking and choosing what you remember to pick on me, Rose—Rosie, I—"

"Well, it was only 'cause I was watching you. You don't play with them 'cause YOU like it, not anymore." she accused.

"Well, that's a fair way to judge!" sarcasm dripped from his words.

"And it's more than that," she continued to shout, ignoring the baby's cries that had started for no reason in the background, "You're hidin' something from me, I can tell. No one, not even the Doctor, can talk that much about a bunch of rubbish and not even care to bother explainin' it to me unless they were tryin' to hide somethin'. I wanna know what is it you found, what's wrong with you, why you're actin' like this, and what we gotta do to fix it!"

"You know, at this point, I could just about say the same about you!" he exploded, pointing his finger at her.

"Well, I'm just tryin' to be a good wife, and you're makin' it awfully hard!"

"Well, I'm just trying to figure out who the heck I am, 'cause I'm your husband, and a father, and part Time Lord, and part human, and a normal guy with a job, and a genius who's building a Tardis in his basement, and the son-in-law of a—health-drink tycoon, and a nine-hundred and nine-year-old time traveler who's watched universes burn and races die, and lost his own race on top of it along with Donna after the metacrisis, and it's kind of hard to figure out how to do all that—to BE all that—PERFECTLY to suit you!"

"Well, I'm SORRY!" Rose started to cry, cursing herself for it all the while, and John, ending his speech gasping for breath, wound up sitting on the floor holding his head before he got up, spun around, and ran back into the basement without looking at her.

"John!" she shouted after him, but it was no use.

She wanted to go curl up in a chair with a cup of tea and cry about the injustices done to her while calling up her Mum or Marie for advice, but such a thing was not to be heard of in a houseful of screaming baby noises with dinner boiling over on the stove and little plastic farm animals and construction paper migrating over the floor from the family room to the kitchen.

"Alright for you, mate, you can just run to the basement while I clean this mess up, by myself," she sobbed under her breath, hoping that Jackie didn't hear her or know what she meant. Still wiping tears away that refused to stop falling, for some reason; she scooped up the baby, yelled in a crackly voice to Jackie to pick up her toys, and shoved the pot off the stove, nearly burning her thumb in the process. A few exhausting minutes later, the three of them were sitting down to peas and potatoes and fish that hadn't been microwaved quite long enough. Jackie ate her peas with surprisingly little fuss, and came over partway through the meal to give Mama a little comforting pat on the arm.

"Eat your dinner, Jackie," she snapped at the little girl, before she could stop herself. Seeing her daughter's innocent little face wrinkle up as she scurried back to her seat made her feel like she was the worst mom that ever lived. EVERYTHING was falling apart, and she wished one of her friends would just magically show up at the front door and take care of the kids and the dinner table and—put on a cup of tea—but no one came, of course, because no one knew she was having such a horrible day.

It was a miserably quiet dinner and bathtime, and Rose didn't bother making Jackie clean up her toys before bed. She just bundled up Alex in his crib and sent Jackie to sleep without a bedtime story (which made her mad), threw on her pajamas, and went down to see if John had come back up from the basement yet. Downstairs was empty when she got there, and she tried curling up in a chair for a few minutes, but something told her she should go downstairs and attempt to make up, so she hauled herself up and flopped her way to the basement in her slippers.

The light was on and his papers and gadgets he'd been working on, some of them for several years, were scattered everywhere; on the floor, in boxes and file cabinets, and all over the desk. John was facedown on the carpet, sleeping or just resting, she couldn't tell. She smiled a little when she saw him, wondering if she should wake him up or not.

"John?" she murmured softly, moving toward him. She knelt down beside him and ran her hand through his hair. His head felt warm under her hand. He must've worked up a sweat while he was so busy. Rose felt a corner of her mouth go up. Now that the heat of the moment had passed, a sense of peace washed over her, and she felt bad for fighting with him earlier, especially when he was probably feeling pretty awful, and had been for so long.

With a sigh, she finally shook his shoulder to wake him. He'd be really sore if he slept down here all night.

John didn't wake up right away. When he finally rolled over and opened his eyes, he started gasping like he was in pain.

"John, you alright?"

He lay flat on his back, clutching at his head. "You thought I was asleep?" he managed, clearly in pain.

Rose grew alarmed. "Well?"

"I had a breakthrough, Rose! I had a breakthrough and that's what it was! I should've listened to you!" his voice sounded almost panicked.

"John, you took your painkillers this morning, right?" she demanded, feeling her heart jump into her throat.

"'Course I did! It's not that, Rose—Rosie! I've got to remember to call you Rosie!" his voice was much louder now, fearful, and he kept on gasping like he couldn't get his breath. He moaned in pain and grabbed her knee so tightly it turned white.

"Doctor, what do I do?!" she exclaimed, not sure if she should be calling 999, Torchwood; or invading the medicine cabinet.

"Don't call me Doctor! Don't ever, ever call me Doctor again!" he shouted in a panicked voice.

"Why not?!" Rose tried to understand.

"That's what it is!" he gasped, trying to hold back a scream of pain. "Rose, just listen! –Rosie!"

"I'm right here!" her chest grew tight with fear. She'd seen him like this once before. Right after regeneration; it was just like this. Everything had been fine in the end, hadn't it? Wouldn't everything be fine now?

"It's the metacrisis," he managed between gasps. "I wasn't sleeping. I passed out. It hurt so much—when I figured it out!"

"What about the metacrisis?" Rose now knew they were in deep trouble.

"My brain's part human. Can't—can't handle all the information. It was fine for awhile but now—" he groaned, "it's starting to fill up. It's trying to burn me up. Everything I am—that's why I haven't called you Rosie. Why I've been working all the time at Torchwood. It thinks I'm the Doctor—my brain thinks I'm a Time Lord and I don't have any room left to fight it!"

"I won't let it take you!" Rose shouted instantly. "I won't let it hurt you! John, tell me what I can do! I'll go and find out myself if I have to, I will!"

John stopped to stare at her, eyes wild in pain and desperation for a few moments. He was trying to think, trying not to think, trying not to say what he knew was the answer, which was, "NOTHING."

"Hold me, please!" he finally whimpered, at a loss for any solution.

Rose immediately complied, as he knew she would, holding his sweaty, throbbing head in her lap. She ran her fingers along his forehead. "We need to get help," she whispered as he began to relax, just slightly.

"No," he moaned softly, "in the morning. I hafta stop thinking—" he writhed to one side as the pain began again— "I hafta stop before it kills me! I hafta think about you—and Jackie, and Alex, and your confounded mum—and just be John Smith—why can't I just be John Smith? The Doctor never leaves me alone!"

As they lay, both gasping for breath, in each other's arms, Rose felt his skin actually begin to cool under her hands. "That's it," she choked out, "You think about that. It'll make you well again—now we know!"

He frowned deeply, even as the pain lessened and he got his breath. "But I can't keep secrets from you, Rose—Rosie. That's what the Doctor does, not me. Not John Smith. That's who I am, right Rose?"

"'Course it is!" she tried to smile down at him, in the dim light from his work lamps. "And it's Rosie! You call me Rosie, you hear?"

"'Cause this is my secret. It won't work," he told her, as if it were a fact. "I'll hold on a long time, 'cause you're here, and I'll fight for you. But, Rosie, I'm gonna die!"

She hugged him. "No, you're not."

"I don't want to die," he confessed.

"You won't," she said firmly.

"I didn't keep a secret," he pointed out, apparently pleased with himself.

"No, you didn't. Um, thank you." Rose felt as though she was talking to one of the children now.

He started to sit up, groaning as he did so. "We should probably go to bed now."

"It's okay. I can stay up, if it helps you."

"No, I need to go to bed too. It's okay, Rose, I can walk now. I'm fine, long as I'm John Smith."

She helped him stand up anyway, and it was a good thing, because he seemed a little wobbly when he got to his feet. "Yeh. You stay that way, you wonderful D—you wonderful man you."

He swallowed hard, looking at her.

"And it's Rosie."