The second Rose disappeared again, Pete realized he should have known that the Doctor's plan wouldn't work.

Without hesitation, he reached for the jumper around Jackie's neck and ripped it off before she could get any bright ideas herself. Just as he expected, she shrieked, panic on her face as she grabbed for it. "But I've got to go back!"

There was no way in this universe or any other he was letting that happen again. "The Doctor said every time we use one of these, it damages the barrier between worlds. Now that's it!"

He hadn't meant it as coldly as it sounded. But he couldn't risk it, not for his world, not for the people he promised to protect. Not even for her.

"She's your daughter," Jackie insisted, angrily.

"She's your daughter, not mine," he spit back, regretting it almost as soon as the words came out. "Now that's an order!"

Jackie flinched in disbelief, raging brewing like an icy fire, and only belatedly did Pete remember that Jackie wasn't one of his Torchwood operatives and had never, ever taken orders from anyone well. Still, he took Mickey's jumper before Jackie could convince the gullible, half-in-love pup to go back for Rose.

"Mickey, tell him," Jackie grabbed at the boy's arm. He looked shamefaced between them, even as Jackie kept insisting he convince Pete.

"Jackie, he's right. Those things are dangerous, and we don't know what another jump will do."

Jackie pulled back in dismay, disgust clearly writing itself across her face as she glared between them. "No pair of bollocks between the two of you?"

"Jacks," Pete sighed, stern anger giving way to placation. But she held up her hand, as if physically stopping any words he might have to say.

"Maybe she's not your daughter, yeah? But she is mine. And she is my Pete Tyler's. And if the world is being destroyed like you say, you are willing to let her die? Her Pete wouldn't do nothing like that. Not ever. He'd die before he'd let that happen. He did die." Great, fat tears welled on the edges of her black eyelashes, as she turned cold fury on Mickey.

"And you! You who were her best friend from the time you were babies. You'd just let her die?"

She might as well have slapped Mickey for all the effect it had. "She's with the Doctor. He'd never left anything hurt her. It's what she wanted!"

"Yeah, and she says that now, but what's going to happen when she realizes that all her family is on one side of the universe and she's on the other? She's all alone with just the Doctor. You know his story, he don't age, Mickey, he just changes his face. And what's going to happen in fifty years? What's he going to do, dump her somewhere and find another Rose?"

"It's her decision, Jackie," Pete tried to reason, knowing it was no good. He tried reaching for her, to at least hug her and make her understand.

"Get away from me." She simply ducked away from him, her voice hard. And Pete thought of all those nights, of all those arguments, all those years ago in their tiny flat in the estates. She'd done that then. And he knew now, even as he knew then, that there was a truth to Jackie's words, and she wouldn't be pleased, not till she got what she wanted. And right now, she wanted her daughter.

"What's one more crack in the universe," Pete muttered, slipping the jumper he still had in hand around his neck. "Mickey, keep her here. Don't let her follow me. Tell Miles I'll be back as soon as I can."

Before either Mickey or Jackie could say anything, he jumped, that horrible squeezing sensation tightening his chest till he thought his ribs would crack. Even as he reappeared, however, he knew something was wrong. Something tugged at him even before he felt himself whole again. And when he popped into the separate reality, something came flying right at him.

Rose!

It was instinct, really, knowing that the girl flying through the air needed catching. It all played in slow motion, even if it took barely the space between one heartbeat and the next. He felt barely solid himself before Rose hit him full on, his arms wrapping around her protectively. He only had time to look up to the Doctor, holding on for dear life as his anguish screams rang in Pete's ears, the terror and the heartbreak clear in his dark eyes, before Pete pushed the button of the jumper. The winds of the void never had a chance to snag him as he and Rose moved back through it, towards the mirror image of this room, of this world.

When they broke through again, she fell into a graceless heap at his feet.

"Rose," Jackie gasped, still in the same place he'd left her, rushing forward to her daughter.

But Rose jumped up, grabbing for the button around Pete's neck. "I have to get back!"

"Rose!" He tried to stop her. But her fingers quashing on the button did nothing. Startled, they both stared at it, the plastic clicking uselessly in between her fingers. Rose squeezed again. Again, there was nothing.

"No," she murmured, yanking at it, jamming it with both hands, hysteria lacing the edges of her voice. "No, no, no…"

"Rose," Jackie tried to pull her off, but Rose simply shook away from her mother's grasp. She stared wildly at the device, then Pete, before throwing herself away, and towards the wall that was the exact replica of the one in her world, the one where the opening to the Void had been. "No, no, no, I've got to get back!"

Her hands pounded on the wall, as if she hoped there would be a weakness that would break through and let her pass. But nothing moved, nothing gave.

"Take me back," she sobbed, her voice breaking as she cried against the wall. "Take me back!"

Pete stared at the device in hand, then back at Mickey and Jackie. Both looked at him helplessly as he tried again. Nothing worked.

"It's stopped working," he murmured, relieved, but also heartbroken for the girl crying against the wall. "He did it. He closed the breach."

They were all still alive.

"No," Rose cried, pressing her cheek against the wall, thick, black mascara tears smearing heedlessly against the white paint. Perhaps she hoped she could reach him that way, hear him, sense him. Maybe she did. Who knew? She was now on one side of the universal divide. The Doctor was on the other. She had chosen him over her mother. She had chosen him, she said, because he needed her. What she hadn't said, and what was only now too clear, was that she'd done that because she loved him.

And Pete had a horrible feeling he had loved her too.

"Rose," Jackie murmured in that way only mother's had, going to her daughter's side as the girl immediately wrapped her arms around her waist and sobbed, horrible, wracking, heartbroken cries. The sort of sound that Pete remembered crying outside of Ricky's grandmother's apartment as he lay curled up on the dirty pavement, only to be found by Mickey hours later. He turned to the said boy, who watched Rose with pained sadness.

"I need to check in with Jake and Miles."

"Yeah," Mickey murmured, not even bothering to look at him. Pete clapped the boy on the shoulder, knowing he was leaving Rose and Jackie in capable hands for the moment, moving out of the scene regretfully. Rose's heartbroken cries echoed hollowly behind him as he left to the elevator, her cracked voice pleading for a way to get back.

He ignored the tightness in his throat and the film of tears that briefly blinded him.

The elevator doors opened on a command center buzzing, Miles already expecting him as he stepped off, shoving a tablet in front of his nose. "We have monitors looking for the hole. It's disappeared."

Pete stopped, swallowing hard, half in elation, half in trepidation. He thought of the mournful cries upstairs. "You're sure."

"Singh's calculations say so." Miles nodded to the scientist who was working feverishly in a corner of the command center. "The minute you popped back the last time, it closed. Sealed tight, as if it was never there."

Pete ignored the mental image of a zipper in the sky, the portal between worlds, sliding shut. "And our team?"

"Jake got everyone out. All present and accounted for. He's debriefing them now. And they came complete with those."

On black counter along the far wall, stacks of hard drives sat, piled on top of and beside it, some with wires and cables still trailing behind.

"All the hard drives they could carry or swipe, a plethora of the knowledge of the other Torchwood. The alien races they knew of, the technology, what they were using it for. A century and a half's worth of archives of another universe, all at our fingertips."

Pete tried not to feel the twinge of guilt, as if they were stealing something. Honestly, from what he saw behind them in the other Torchwood, there weren't many left who would feel outraged at the loss. "Get me Jake's report as soon as possible. And then start Tech in on those things, yeah? Have them talk to Mickey if they need any help with the other world's technology."

Miles, ever efficient, noted it quickly, before turning a curious gaze at Pete. "The Cybermen. What happened to them on the other side?"

"Gone," Pete replied firmly. He wasn't certain, of course, but he assumed as much. "Sucked into the Void, disappeared. Like as not they are all dead."

"There will be an outcry over this. People will be upset that their loved ones disappeared."

"Well, fat lot they could have done. Their loved ones died long ago, as far as I'm concerned." Pete couldn't bring himself to care in that moment. Not after everything he'd seen that day,. Cybermen. Daleks, whatever they were. All were death and destruction. Their disappearance was a blessing. "We need to report everything to Harriet Jones when we get half a chance. If she gets wind of this and we haven't told her…"

"I'll make sure a redacted file gets to her people before the day is out."

"Right," Pete sighed, feeling suddenly very exhausted. And still, he had the situation upstairs to face. Of Jackie...and Rose. And they were now both trapped in this world. "I'll need you to do one last thing. I need your covert team to work on how to create some identities. Well, create at least one identity, possibly two."

"For?"

"Jackie and Rose Tyler."

Miles stopped his frantic typing on his tablet to stare at Pete over the top of his dark frames. "What?"

"You heard me."

"I heard you. I am just having trouble processing that you did something that monumentally mad."

"Don't start with me, Miles, not today."

"What do you want me to say, sir?" There was no deference in the final word as he straightened, scowling. "You seriously brought the other Jackie Tyler here?"

"Yeah, I did, else she'd have been killed in there along with everyone else."

"Maybe that was her fate!"

"Well, now it's not, 'cause she's alive, and she's here, and now we will have to figure this out."

Arguing was useless now. Miles knew that just as well as Pete did. The breach was closed. Even if they'd wanted to, they couldn't send Jackie and Rose home. And God knew that Rose wanted to go home...back to her Doctor.

"Rose is upstairs now. She's...pretty upset." Pete scrubbed at his face. "I want to give her some time. Her and the Doctor…" He shrugged. He couldn't explain it. He didn't even understand all of it. Thankfully, Miles grasped it, even if he hadn't met either the girl or the mysterious alien.

"I'll see if I can start working up some possibilities tonight. Till then, you have to keep the pair of them hidden, away from the tabs and media. If they catch wind of this before we're ready…"

"Yeah, I know." Pete understood the implications all too well. "Just do what you can, Miles. Give me the reports. I've got to go see to Jackie and her daughter."

Miles said nothing as he turned and made his way to the elevator, not back up to the white room, where Rose sat crying brokenly, but to his office. Even his assistant Amanda was gone as he let himself inside, stumbled to his desk, and fell into his leather chair, pulling out the Scotch. But he didn't pour any into the crystal tumbler. Instead, he stared out at London, at a completely different world than the one he had just left behind. And upstairs, two women sat, out of their universe and everything they had ever known. Now both his responsibility. And one had the misfortune of looking and acting nearly exactly like his dead wife.

"Bloody hell," he sighed, scrubbing his face and burying his head in his hands.