Jackie knew her daughter well. Rose's reaction was less than enthusiastic.
"What's the point," she challenged the minute Pete had finished explaining. They sat in his the dining area, cups of Jackie's fabulous tea in front of them. Mickey shot both Pete and Jackie an "I told you so" look, and ducked his head at Jackie's venomous glare, choosing to busy himself with one of the fancy biscuits Pete had unearthed from some cupboard.
"What do you mean 'what's the point', the point is starting a new life for the two of you over here," Pete replied, knowing the instant he did it he had said the wrong thing. Rose's brown eyes flashed angrily, her jaw jutting out just as his did when he was upset.
"Why would we have to do that? The Doctor will come and get us, take us back home."
There was an uncomfortable silence as Pete, Jackie, and Mickey all eyed each other sideways, and tried hard not to look dubious in front of Rose's face. They needn't bother hiding it, she noticed anyway.
"None of you think he's coming back, do you?" She glared first at her mother, then at Mickey, and avoided Pete altogether.
"Sweetheart, it's not that we don't think he wouldn't come back," Jackie began, looking to Mickey for support. "It's just...well, we don't know when that will be."
"It was hard enough us getting over there, and we were lucky," Mickey offered by way of some sort of feeble explanation.
"Yeah, but you aren't Time Lords, or geniuses, and you aren't nearly a thousand years old either." Rose's anger was hot as she lashed out between her mother and best mate. "His people did this all the time, remember. They could do things that humans couldn't even imagine."
"Yeah, but his people are all dead," Mickey replied somberly beside her. Rose whipped around to glareat him, but he didn't flinch. "He said it himself, when his people were alive, they used to be able to do those things. But then the war happened. And they are all gone. We only fell through that one time on accident. But he's sealed everything. Maybe he can't get back."
For one, breathless moment, Rose stared at her childhood friend with a look of complete and utter brokenness. But then it shifted.
"Maybe you just don't want him to," she snarled, throwing herself up to tower over a startled Mickey. "You're jealous of him because he took me away from you, and you think this will get us back together. But I don't want to marry you, Mickey, don't want to settle down and have babies and do nothing with my life."
Poor Mickey was too startled to answer her, his eyes wide and white in his dark face, fumbling as to what to say. But before he could manage anything, Rose had turned on her mother, her face livid with anger and tears.
"And you, all you've ever did was complain because I wasn't staying with you. As if you couldn't care about what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't want to stay in the estates. I want so much more. And now you're happy, because I can't go anywhere. I'm stuck right where I began, on one planet, in one time, eating beans on toast and watching shit telly, while I listen to you complain about whatever the neighbor down the way has been doing with their life. And I'll just be stuck...stuck in nothing, just like you."
Pete was far too shocked by the display to bother being outraged on either Mickey or Jackie's behalf. But he knew Rose's words hit home with Jackie as her face turned a milky color. Rose's fury wasn't to be abated, however, as she turned on Pete.
"Well, at least you don't have to worry about someone taking care of you, Mum. You have ready made Dad here, ready to step in with money enough to smooth it all over and make it all better. Which was what you always wanted out of him, right?" She flickered a scornful glance at her mother. "Dad was no good when he was alive, but now that you found one who made something of himself in another world, everything is perfect. Course, I didn't exist in this world. Maybe that's why he was a success. Maybe that's why now you can have everything."
Her snide shot hit uncomfortably close to home for Pete. He had wondered about the difference between this world and the other, one in which he'd succeeded without a Rose in it, and the other where she existed but he'd failed. Frankly, it was all a matter of Torchwood, but to a irate Rose, that didn't seem to matter.
"You aren't my father, you know," she murmured, voice hard as she wrapped her arms around herself. "I offered. I gave you the chance. And you ran away. My father, he didn't run away."
Her words were ironic, considering the very next second she turned and made for the door of Pete's apartment, Jackie heartbroken cry following the girl close behind.
"What's she doing? She doesn't know it out there," Jackie wailed, beseeching Pete to do something.
"She's been here before and gotten around fine. It's not that different, this London," Pete reassured her, wondering if maybe he shouldn't call Miles to put a tail on her all the same.
"I know where's she's gone," Mickey murmured quietly, looking devastated over his unfinished tea and broken biscuit. When Jackie and Pete turned to him, he jerked his chin upwards.
"Rose always went to the roof of the estates. Was always quiet, no one went up there."
"I was always yelling at her to get down, thought she'd kill herself." Jackie sniffed, wiping at streaming eyes. "Maybe I should go to her."
"No," Mickey stood, shoving hands deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. "I should go."
Pete had a feeling both of them were the last people Rose wanted to see at the moment, especially when she came to herself and remembered what she had said to them. "How about I go, instead."
They both turned to stare at him.
"Look, she's obviously angry at all of us, the world, the situation, the Doctor even. But I'm the one with the least bone to pick, right? Let me go and chat with her."
Jackie didn't look so certain. MIckey, nowever, nodded.
"Besides," Pete gave Jackie a crooked smile. "She may have your temper, but she's right. She gave me a chance to be her dad, and I ran away. Maybe I should start making that up."
Fresh tears trailed down Jackie's cheek as he patted her shoulder and made for the front door. The rooftop access was hard to find, but not impossible. Not surprisingly, he found the door ajar. He climbed the last three flights to the top, stepping out to the cool, breezy grayness of the afternoon.
Rose stood on the front edge of the building, overlooking the posh neighborhood he had lived in since he'd last seen her. Her blonde hair was ruffled by the chilly breeze as she stood with her arms wrapped around her blue hoodie. He rounded the ventilation unit to where she stood, tears streaming down her face already smeared with worn mascara.
"If you are thinking about jumping, won't do you a ton of good. There's a tarp there over the front that will catch your fall."
Rose snorted, something of a laugh burbling out beyond the tears. "I would never."
"I know," he nodded, smiling as he gently nudged her shoulder with his own. "Wouldn't occur to you to do that. Too much like your mum to do something that foolish."
Rose was quiet for several moments, sniffing softly.
"Did you...think about that. When your Jackie…"
"For half a bit, yeah." He was honest. He thought of hanging over the exploding building with her clinging for dear life just above him. "When Lumic fell, I thought about it. And then again, later, after you'd left. Laid in the street outside of Mickey's Gran's house, wanted to die."
Rose nodded softly, still not looking at him. "Why didn't you?"
"Mickey found me and talked some sense into me," he replied, glancing at her sideways. "He's not an idiot, you know. He can be smart in his own way."
"I know," she whispered, her full mouth twisting with a new onslaught of tears. "I didn't mean to be so horrid down there, I just…"
"Hurt so badly you can't believe you are even breathing?"
"Yeah," she squeaked behind a sob, as he reached for her finally. She turned into his embrace, burying her head into his chest, sobbing in utter brokenness. Pete held her tightly, remembering that horrible day in front of Rita Mae's house, and remembering just how painful that heartache felt.
"It's all right," he whispered into her hair, and for a moment wondered what it would have been like to do this for her when she was growing up, and had come home with her heart broken. Regret for a life that wasn't his own flared, as he briefly brushed a soft kiss against her golden hair.
If Rose felt it strange or odd, she didn't mention it. She simply cried until Pete's jumper was damp with it, and even when she had settled down, she stayed in his arms as he rocked her gently back and forth, murmuring reassuring nothings. When she did finally pull away, her eyes remained fixed somewhere at his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her lips swollen and nose red and blotchy as she tried to wipe ineffectually at his chest. "I made you all snotty."
"It's okay. If I missed out on the soiled nappies and spit up, I can live with a little snot on my jumper."
Rose laughed, rubbing at her eyes. "You know, technically, you aren't my father."
"DNA test would say otherwise."
"True," she sighed, sniffing again, leaning against the wall of the ledge. "But you didn't raise me."
"Neither did your real father. Maybe this is a second chance for both of us."
"Maybe," she whispered, staring at her trainers. "You don't think he's coming back, do you? The Doctor?"
Pete wasn't sure whether he could give a definitive answer to that question. "Honestly...I don't know."
Rose glanced up at him, a hint of hope in her woebegone expression. Pete was careful to temper it, however.
"I honestly don't know if it's possible. The Doctor said that the only reason any of this was happening were cracks in the universe, cracks we kept making worse jumping between the two. He was trying to seal them up, before both our worlds collapsed. He might be able to get back here, Rose, but would he? I don't think he'd jeopardize two universes and all of existence for that."
"You mean for me?" She looked so young and hurt when she said that. Pete ached for her.
"Rose, if he could come to get you, he would. I know he would. The minute Jake brought him here, the first thought he had was to get back to you and your mother. You were his top priority."
"Yeah, so much of a priority he tricked me long enough so you could put one of those jumpers around my neck. Fat lot of concern there! Whisk Rose out of the way so she won't be a problem anymore."
Pete sighed. No one liked being made a fool, and the Doctor certainly had that way of pulling the "I know better than you do what's best" card. He had a feeling that if Rose was anything like either himself or Jackie, she liked that about as much as cats liked swimming pools.
"He wanted you safe, Rose." He knew in the very fiber of his being that's what had motivated the Doctor. More than saving the universe, even, he wanted to ensure that she was safe.
Rose only shook her head, jutting her chin in anger. "You know he did this once before. Tricked me into the TARDIS, had her take me back to my time, so he could save the universe. That time I came back, though."
Somehow, that didn't surprise Pete, given how little he knew of Rose and Mickey's stories about her. Rose seemed to think that impossible was a subjective sort of descriptive. "How did you manage that?"
"I don't remember," Rose shrugged, rubbing her elbows through her jacket. "I mean, there's something about Bad Wolf. I destroyed the Daleks. I think...it's all a dream, really." Her eyes misted as she tried to remember. "All I know is that there was this singing...and when I came back to being me, the Doctor changed his face. He changed everything."
It wasn't the first time Pete had heard about this miraculous ability this Doctor had in changing his face. "If I could get you through, back to him, with the technology we have, I would. But none of it is working now."
"I know," she mumbled, tucking one flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. "We were just there. I thought we were winning. And my fingers slipped, and I began getting sucked in. And I could hear him screaming, over all that howling wind, you know. Screaming my name. I've never heard him sound so scared."
The fleeting image of the look of utter terror on the Doctor's face as Pete had wrapped his arms around Rose floated to life, and he shuddered. "He loved you. You know that, right?"
Dolefully the girl shook her head, painfully turning to look out over the city. "We weren't like that, me and him."
"Just because you 'weren't like that' doesn't make it any less true. Love's not all about raging hormones and sweaty sex in some alley somewhere."
The image worked. A laugh snorted out of Rose, eye swollen eyes wide in horrified amusement as he looked at him. "Oh my God, you didn't just…"
"What?" He couldn't help the laugh that turned the corners of his mouth up mischievously. "Don't think I know what that's about?"
Defenseless, Rose held up her hands as a weak barrier. "God, no, just…I don't even want to think…"
"I mean, in a way, I'm just like your father, and obviously he made you."
"Oh, please, let's not go there."
"I'm just saying."
"Yeah, well...we can just not discuss you, or your wife, or my mother and father, and...sex. Ever." She shuddered, shoulders hunching before she burst out laughing at him. "Really, you just...throw that out there?"
"Made you laugh, didn't it?"
"Yeah," she conceded, snickering. "It did."
For a long moment they stood there, Pete with hands in pockets, Rose with her arms wrapped around her, staring off into the coolness of London spring. It was so strange, Pete mused, glancing sideways at the girl beside him, studying her. She could have been his daughter, had things been different. She could have had a father growing up. They both had spent a lifetime longing for the other, in their fashion.
"Rose," he finally murmured gruffly into the stillness. "I know I'm not your real dad. He...was a different man. And a good one, if he was anything like me."
His quip drew a tight smile from her as she slid her gaze to watch him carefully.
"I screwed up that night. I was...scared. Overwhelmed. Frightened. Heartbroken. You name it, I was all those things. You calling me 'dad' that night was just one more thing, and I couldn't handle it. And I can't say I haven't regretted my response since."
"It's all right," she shrugged, sadly. "I mean, it was stupid of me to push myself on you like that. I mean, honestly, a daughter from another universe,? No wonder!"
"True. But I handled it badly. And the truth was, I always wanted a daughter. Always did. And if I had one with my Jackie, I'd hope she was half as brave as you."
A blush flushed across Rose's tear and makeup stained face. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," he smiled softly. "If this plan of ours is to work, I have to tell the world I'm your dad. And all the DNA tests will say it. And it's going to come with a lot of expectations, now, the long lost daughter of Pete and Jackie Tyler. But there are some rewards, to. I mean, I'd make sure you'd not want for anything."
"I don't care about that," she sniffed, but he cut her off, continuing.
"I do, and your dad would. I am not your Pete Tyler. But I'm close enough, aren't I?"
Rose watched him for a long moment, before nodding carefully.
"I mean, I'm not asking you to call me 'dad'. You can if you want, but if you rather not…"
"No," Rose jumped it, smiling nervously. "I mean...Dad. I don't know, it's just too confusing, you look just like him, and I think of you like him, and I guess you could be a twin, but…Dad's fine."
"Okay." Unlike the last time, the term warmed him, touching emotions he didn't think he had. "I don't mind. But my point is, I just hope you will come to trust me. Let me help you and your mum while you're here."
That all important word, "while". In implied an impermanence, a transitory state. Hope flared to life in Rose's cinnamon eyes as they turned, unerringly, towards the sky above.
"He could come back, you know. If there's anyone who can, it's him."
Pete didn't have the heart to tell her he thought that it was unlikely. Besides, she was right, if anyone could, it would be the mad alien she had somehow found herself with.
"If he can, Rose, he will. He may do something mad to do it, but I think he will find a way to
get to you."
"If it's the Doctor, it's usually mad." Her gaze never wavered from the gray gloom above.