"And so you didn't remember anything of your life before?"
"No," Jackie shook her platinum head, a fat tear rolling off her heavily made up eyelash as she did so, as if on cue. Acrylic nails reached up to swipe it away, as someone from Sherrie's BBC film crew helpfully handed her a tissue. Jackie dabbed at her eyes gracefully, as she managed a watery smile. "I didn't even remember my own name, let alone my Pete. It was just too...hard, I guess, after everything."
Sherrie nodded her now black and platinum head, humming in warm sympathy. Tears sheened her own eyes as she sniffed, ever so delicately in heartbroken understanding. "It must have been so hard."
Mickey let out a snort that quickly dissolved into loud, gut-wrenching guffaws. Sherrie Wexler paused mid-sniff on the large screen in Pete's living room, as Miles turned an unamused glare over to his subordinate. Mickey only sniggered beside Rose, who mildly slapped him upside the back of his head.
"Honestly, you'd think you were twelve," she muttered, rolling her eyes as Mickey only snickered harder.
"It's just...seriously, she is eating this tosh up."
"Which is what we wanted her to do," Miles murmured in mild agitation, as on the other side of the couch, Jackie frowned at the screen.
"It's true what they say," she hummed beside Pete, frowning at the frozen image. "The telly does add ten pounds."
Mickey dissolved into a fit of giggles again, only furthering Miles irritation as he stood by the large, flat screen, looking as if the pair of them had insulted his favorite painting. And perhaps they had, for this interview with Sherrie Wexler had been the culmination of two weeks worth of preparation on Torchwood's part, the final revelation to the world that Jackie Tyler had returned.
Pete only shook his head as he glanced to Rose across the way, who finally to pity on Miles and his indignation. "It looks great. Don't you think so, Mum?"
"Well, yeah, except my face looks as big as a lorry after a drunken night out."
"Besides that, Mum." Rose punched the chortling best mate in the shoulder. "I mean, this is just part of a whole series of things, yeah? A whole campaign."
Miles at least felt on more even footing with Rose than he clearly did with Jackie, who still appeared unimpressed. "There's been leaks in the press already this week, claims of sightings. And of course, Pete, your office at Vitex has been prepped to say that they are unprepared to make a statement at this time. But I have an 'unnamed source' over there who is willing to cough up that you've been spending months away from the office on 'personal business'. You've been up to your eyeballs at Torchwood, but it plays off well. It will lend credence to the idea that you've taken time off to deal with all of this."
"Never mind the fact I was really just trying to save the world," Pete replied dryly to Miles' wry smirk.
"Sad plight of the hero, sir, like prophets you are never recognized in your own lifetime."
"When will the interview go live?"
"Have it scheduled for a week from now, let the buzz build up. Then we will let it loose and then see what happens."
"I can tell you what happens," Pete muttered, rising from beside Jackie to pace fretfully. He'd been in the eye of the press long enough to know how one of these escapades usually went. "I'll have reporters knocking about my door and following my every movie, that's what."
"You knew that was likely going to happen anyway, right?" Miles replied. And he was right, Pete did. Still, he didn't have to exactly like it. He'd never been a giant fan of the press, he'd seen them as a necessary evil before. Now, with this new Jackie and Rose, they struck him as a positive threat.
"Press at the door, coming to see me, when I look as if I'm a breakfast sausage," Jackie tisked in disbelief. "Seriously, makes you wonder what this world is coming to."
"Mumm you've not been in this world long enough to know what it even started out as."
"I'm just saying, it's a wonder they'd care about this."
Pete knew what she meant. For Jackie Tyler from the Powell Estates it had to be mind boggling that anyone, let alone the press, would care tuppence for the likes of her and her daughter.
"And you don't know the half of it, Jackie." Miles was matter-of-fact as he glanced between mother and daughter. "Your predecessor was a celebrity in her own right. The news that you are back and with a daughter no one knew about will be the talk of the year."
"Oh God," Rose breathed, grabbing a pillow to throw across her face as she fell back against the cushions.
Jackie looked as equally horrified as her daughter. "I don't want to be famous. I just...I don't know..." She looked to Pete with wide, blue eyes. "Pete, really, I mean, I agreed to letting everyone think I was your wife, but really, do I need to be...your wife?"
That phrase was so loaded with meaning it made Pete wince. Unbidden, other thoughts rose to mind, ones with a different woman in a different time, a woman who shared the same face. He cleared his throat roughly as he shrugged, looking anywhere but at Jackie's pleading expression.
"She's right, Miles. I mean, it's the only solution we got, but she and Rose didn't sign up for this. We can't stay in London, not when this breaks, it will be a field day."
"There's always abroad," the other man offered.
"Ooohh, that sounds more like it," Jackie perked up at that. "Someplace like the Bahamas would be nice."
"Think they don't have press in Naussau?" Pete shook his head.
Miles was thoughtful. "How about more secluded? A cabin somewhere, maybe on the continent?"
"I'm not roughing it," Jackie muttered in distaste.
"It wouldn't be roughing it," Miles retorted. "I mean, you know the kind of cabins he can get."
"Anything that was in a woods would be roughing it for Jackie," Mickey chimed in, earning a dark warning from Jackie and a roll of the eyes from Rose.
"He's right, Mum, you whinged and complained when my school class took an outing to Hyde Park."
"All right then, where would you suggest," her mother snapped peevishly.
Rose blinked, considering before turning to Pete. "Whatever happened to your mansion?"
Her question was simple enough, but it had turned Pete's guts into lead. Still, she had no way of knowing, nor did Mickey, really, who had been there the entire time. "Yeah, you had this big, posh house when we met you. Remember, we crashed that party?"
"Yeah," Rose grinned, sadly. "Whatever happened to it?"
"He closed it up," Miles cut in before Pete could even make a reply. "It's been sitting for nearly four years with nothing being done."
"Just hadn't put it on the market yet," Pete shot back darkly, ignoring the truth of the matter. He'd not had the heart to sell the house that his wife had loved so much. It had been his Jackie's home, much more so than his, and as much as he'd hated it, he couldn't bring himself to get rid of it either. It had been the last place they had been together. It was the last place he'd seen her alive.
"Well, it's still yours. You've been paying the taxes and the upkeep. Might as well use it, right?"
He could kick Miles at the moment...hard.
"Place hasn't been used in years. Hard telling what it's like. Last time I was there..." He trailed off. The last time he had been there was right after Lumic. The house was a disaster, the refuse of Jackie's birthday party lay about the place, dried out and rotting. There were still dead there. Everything had been too mad in the immediate aftermath and Pete had been forced to call authorities to take care of the remains. Most of them were guests to his wife's party or staff that had been hired to help. He'd paid for professional services to clean the place, and had them close it up. There it had remained as Pete attempted to move on from that tragic night.
"Still, it's a quiet place, right, just out of the city," Mickey offered. "You'd like it, Jackie, it's huge and posh."
"And empty! It's not been lived in for years," Pete retorted, uselessly he could tell. Already he could see the interest and hopefulness in Jackie's expression.
"Still, you could have someone get it ready enough for the likes of us, right? Not like we require a lot."
"She has a point, Pete." Miles spoke at his shoulder, and he resisted the urge to snap at him.
"It's huge, Miles, you've seen it. It would take weeks to get it ready to live in."
"Just the family wing, then. Wouldn't take much. Put a call into Amanda and have her arrange for a team to go set it up."
It was perfect and logical and genius. And Rose had thought of it. It was the sort of uncomplicated answer he was coming to expect from his new-found daughter. He looked to where she sat, watching him carefully.
"Right, let me give Amanda a call then, I'll see what I can have done. I want it ready before that broadcast airs, because once it does, all hell will break loose and we will never get out of here."
Jackie squealed with delight, clapping her hands together and throwing herself at rose in a whirlwind of rapturous babbling. "Can you believe it, Rose, a real mansion. What's it like?"
Pete only grimaced as he shot a sideways glare at Miles, then stalked out of the living room and down the hallway to the quiet of his office. He pulled up Amanda on his tablet phone, shooting orders to her as he tried to mentally work through everything that would need to be done to at least make the old manor house livable again. He added in a request for extra security for good measure. No doubt the minute the press got wind of what was happening, they'd figure it all out eventually. He'd just leaned back into the desk chair when the gentle rap of knuckles against his office door caused him to look up.
Rose looked considerably better than she had two weeks previously. A round of new clothing and the quick make over Torchwood PR had arranged for the television interview and she looked even better than when he had first met her all those years before at his wife's party. Nothing, not even posh new clothes and fancy make up, could remove the darkness from under her eyes, however, or the pain that lingered when she thought no one was looking. Still, it wasn't her broken heart that seemed to concern her as she flashed up a tight smile.
"Can I come in."
"By all means," he offered, pointing to one of his desk chairs. She settled inside, curling up into it, glancing around the office in much the same way that Jackie had when she'd first come in. Likewise, her eyes settled on the photo of Harriet Jones. "Is that..."
"Harriet? Yeah.' He smiled, shrugging. "Your Mum said you knew her in your world."
"Yeah. Met her when she was just an MP for Flydell North. We were trying to outrun some Slytheens."
"What?"
"Slytheens, a crime syndicate family, trying to blow up the Earth for parts. Don't know if you've encountered them here or not yet, but if you do, watch out. They like to kill large humans and use them as disguises, squeeze their bodies in."
The image made Pete feel slightly queasy. "Right. You and your Doctor run into other aliens often?"
As expected, the mention of the Doctor brought tears to the girl's eyes, but she brushed them away as she nodded gamely. "Yeah, a few. Mostly people he knew, but I didn't. He knew thousands of species, millions. And he liked to show them off. I used to think it was because he just liked proving how brilliant he was, but now...I think he was just showing me because he loved learning new things and sharing that with people. So we would go to the future and the past and see and do things, meet different aliens."
"Save the world?" Pete was no fool. He had seen her now with the Doctor twice, and had heard most of Mickey's stories on the subject. He had a feeling that trouble seemed to like to follow the Doctor, and Rose was usually in the thick of it.
"Sometimes." She couldn't fool Pete though, not with that diffident shrug. He'd seen her in action. She was smart, canny, quick on her feet, brilliant at what she did. She'd once travelled all of time and space with an alien. Holing up in his old mansion would not be the sort of life for her, not for a girl who was struggling to accept the fact that she was a universe away from her old life.
"Miles says you've been a help with the data they collected."
If the abrupt change and subject jarred her, Rose didn't show it. "It's not hard. I mean, I wasn't great shakes at school, but I know enough."
"Still, it's better than nothing. It's useful information."
"For what?" Rose wondered, without judgment, simply curious. "I mean, it's a whole other universe, not yours at all."
"Helps to see things from a different perspective, I suppose. There are events that happened in your world that never did here, like as not there are inventions that were created, other races who were discovered in your world but not in ours."
"Catalogue it all so you can use it?" She nearly sounded as dismissive as the Doctor did.
"Yes," he replied evenly, flinching only slightly at her disapproval. "If nothing else, so we can understand all of this. Protect ourselves if needs be, but better yet, make allies. We don't have a Doctor here, Rose. No ancient alien from a long gone race who can save us when we are threatened. We may not be as wise or as powerful as the Doctor, but we make do with what we can."
His words hurt her, and he was sorry for that. He had simply wanted her to understand that his Torchwood and the work they were doing was not the same as the Torchwood of her world. At least, he didn't think they were the same. He couldn't imagine making the same foolish mistake that the Yvonne Hartman in Rose's original world did.
Rather than discuss it further, to his surprise, Rose simply shifted tactics. "Your old house. Why didn't you ever go back?"
He supposed he deserved that after bringing up the Doctor. "You know why. Too many memories."
"And you are willing to bring me and Mum there?"
"Miles and Mickey are right. It's quiet enough that no one will bother us. Will allow things to calm down some. Besides, your Mum will love it."
"But will you?" She eyed him with concern. "I was there that night. I remember what happened."
"Maybe sometimes we have to face those things most painful to us if we ever hope to get over it."
He wasn't sure if he was talking about himself or Rose in that moment. He could tell she wasn't particularly sure either. They both smiled tightly at each other, a soft giggle erupting from each of them, whether out of the strangeness of their situation or the pain of facing all they had lost, he couldn't tell.
"Mum's going to be over the moon, you know, when she sees the place."
"I don't know about that. Still needs to be cleaned up. And your mum may have different tastes than my wife did."
"Is the stupid dog still about?"
"Rose?" He snorted. "You know, I haven't seen the stupid rat since that night. I always suspected she'd run away and ended up with someone else. I admit, last thing on my mind after everything."
"Pity. Poor pup." Rose ran a hand through her newly touched up hair. "I can't believe she named the dog Rose."
"Funny isn't it?"
"No," she shot back, though her broad smile and laughter belied this. "Maybe Mum needs a new dog. Something less...froofy, though, like a labrador or a collie or something."
"We haven't even gotten to the place and you are already setting me up with a dog."
"We are in your life now, remember."
Oh he knew. Pete was more than aware. She watched him with a knowing gaze.
"This is all still...strange to me, you know."
"Yeah. But this isn't some alien invasion or the end of the world or something. This is Jackie Tyler. You know her."
"Do I?"
"You would know her better once you give her a chance," she replied gently. "And who knows, this time away, at the house, maybe it will give you time to get to know her. You know, that second chance you are carrying on about. The one you asked me for?"
He knew. And still, if he admitted it to himsef, it terrified him. "She's not the same woman."
"No, she's not. Maybe she's better."
Pete studied his soon-to-be daughter. "Why you pushing this? I thought you had one foot out the door."
Rose's smile flickered, but stayed resolute. "Because she deserves to be happy, for once in her life. And frankly, I have to ask myself if you deserve it as well."
"And happy is a mansion, then, and the life of Jackie Tyler in this world?"
"I think happy is you both seeing where this goes, whatever world it is."
Wise words from a girl who technically was only twenty or twenty-one, for all that he had to fudge the date to twenty-four. "And you, Rose? Could you ever be happy here as well?"
The smile didn't fail, but the heartbreak in her eyes was real enough as he regarded him in silence. She didn't need to answer. He already knew.