Corrections and retractions: I had it in my head Pete's house was brick. It's either stone or stucco on the outside, but it's indeed white. Sometimes the memory is tricky.
The news of Jackie Tyler's return to the world of the living broke with all of the shock and awe of bad, telly soap opera. The press began eating it up. Immediately the tabloid papers and shows began staking out Pete's London home and his offices at Vitex, while down the road, security kept a tight reign on who was and wasn't allowed near the Tyler mansion. Not that this stopped them, as three photographers had been caught on the edge of the grounds trying to sneak in a back way, while overhead there was the occasional hum of helicopter wings beating against the gloomy, gray spring sky. Rose and Jackie stood in the upstairs sitting room watching one such meander past through the gauze of the curtains, Jackie utterly fascinated, Rose mildly frustrated.
"I put a call into the President's office to see if they can get them to lay off," Pete called casually as he strolled into the room, helping himself to the coffee Jackie had brewed and eyed the fry up she'd managed for breakfast. "This the pork sausage then?"
Jackie appeared only to half hear him as she continued to stare out of the window. "I guess, it's whatever was in the fridge. There's cereal down there if you'd like."
"This is marvelous," he replied, happily snagging a link to gnosh on as he wandered over to where they stood. "They still going at it?"
"It's been three hours. Woke me up." Rose grimaced as she turned, coffee mug in hand. "Seriously, think they would have better things to do than to stare at the back garden all day hoping we come out."
"This lot? Not really." Pete sighed, recalling all too many unpleasant run ins with the paparazzi over the years. "Once had them sit outside the men's loo at a football match just to get a glimpse of me adjusting my fly."
"All this because they think I'm your dead wife?" Jackie marveled out loud, clearly puzzled by all the reaction. She knew, of course, on a fundamental level his wife had been more than just a celebrity wife. She'd been her own sort of star, loved by the public, perhaps far more than he was for all that he was known for selling vitamin water. But when faced by the reality, Jackie simply couldn't wrap her head around it.
"Well, you have to admit, not every day a woman comes back from the dead. I mean, you and Lazarus, sort of makes you famous."
Jackie at least snorted, turning to smack him lightly on the arm. "It all just seems ridiculous, you know. Being famous for something I didn't do."
"I'm famous for making fizzy drinks and calling them health tonics. Didn't say the public wasn't mad." He laughed as he wandered back to the coffee table spread with breakfast. Rose had curled up on the damask covered couch, lost in thoughts all in her own world. He studied her as he helped himself to eggs and toast, worried about the frown he saw creasing her brow as drew a finger around the rim of her coffee cup.
"You all right there?" Already he was beginning to read Rose's moods. Not nearly as forthcoming as Jackie, she still had some of the same tells her mother did when she was worried, like the crease just above the bridge of her nose and the way she nibbled on the corner of her lip. The quiet, however, was more like him. And that was what worried him the most.
She shook herself at his question, slapping up a smile that didn't quite reach her warm, brown eyes. "Yeah, just...thinking this is madness. I mean, helicopters stalking the grounds?"
"More than that, but yeah." Pete had known it would be madness the minute the story broke. He was so used to this silly type of things that it hadn't occurred to him how strange it would be for Jackie and her daughter. His world was alien enough, now this.
"How bad will it get?"
Pete considered, chewing slowly on toast as he perused the table for jam. "Well, I imagine it will be the hot, sensational story for the next few weeks, and then someone will get drunk and embarrass themself in public and it will die down for a bit."
"And what are they saying out there about it? About me and my Mum?"
That was really what was bugging her then? Pete sighed. There was no avoiding it, really. All he could do was have Miles and the PR team try to put a story out there, but once it took off, it had a life of its own. Already there were reports speculating about the validity of the story, about the truth of what happened to Jackie, but most especially they sensationalized the story about the beautiful young woman claiming to be Pete and Jackie Tyler's long lost daughter. Who was she? Was she who she claimed to be, or was it part of some conspiracy, some plot, someone trying to hoodwink good, old Pete? He had seen the headlines calling Rose everything from a mystery to a fortune hunter. And as much as he was trying to shield the pair of them, he knew Rose had seen them too.
"We put the story out there about you being raised by others," he deflected casually, finishing his toast and reaching for another. "Torchwood dug up some 'cousins' who raised you when Jacks and I were so poor, and we've put out the story we allowed them to bring you up to give you a stable home away from all the cameras and publicity."
"Wonderful," Rose snorted, running and agitated hand through her hair as she flopped back on the fine fabric. "Makes you and Mum sound like the most selfish parents ever."
"Well, yeah, but then again, it's a story. You know it, she knows it, I know it. And you know your Mum was far from that."
"It's not the point, is it?" She glowered at nothing in particular on the ceiling. "And then they say I'm an imposter, in it for the money."
"You knew that was going to come, though, people speculating. I mean it is a mad story."
"Still," she muttered, balancing her empty cup on her stomach. "I mean, I don't care about that, you know."
"I know," he assured her, but it didn't soothe her as she restlessly threw herself up again, setting her cup on the table.
"I mean, I don't care about your money or any of it. The mansion is nice, but so far all we've been is prisoners in it. What's something posh if I can't go nowhere because people are storming about trying to get my picture?"
Jackie turned from the window, watching her daughter in concern as Rose continued. "I mean, it's not that I'm not grateful and all, it's just...I wouldn't be here if I'd held on for just a few seconds more."
Her words cracked at the end, fraying, as she cleared her throat roughly and suddenly became rather fixated on her manicured nails. "I mean, I didn't want to be here. I'm not here to live off someone else, or steal your money. I just wanted to…"
She trailed off, quietly, ducking her head as Pete politely pretended he didn't see her wiping at her cheeks. She rose, squaring her shoulders and pretended that tears didn't continue to trail down her face as she attempted a wobbly smile. "Maybe I will go for a run for a bit, yeah. Down in the work-out room downstairs, nice indoor track, take my mind off things."
With that she rushed out, her trainers squeaking on the hardwood. Pete watched her go, a mouthful of toast still uneaten in his surprise. He looked to Jackie as to what to do.
"Leave her," she murmured, heartbreak clear on her face as she sighed. "She'll be fine. Just is hard for her."
Pete could only nod. "I knew they'd get ugly out there, but I didn't think about how she'd take it."
"Yeah. Guess it's hard to know." Jackie moved to the seat Rose vacated, refilling her own cup of coffee as she glanced in the direction her daughter went. "Never knew her to like exercise much as a kid. Now she seems to like that running. Seems to be all she wants to do now."
Pete had a feeling Jackie wasn't just talking about Rose on the indoor track downstairs. "Bit like me, I guess. I never liked being still either."
"I remember," she smiled, sadly. "I don't know. I thought, once she'd been here for a bit, she'd get used to the idea, right? I mean, yeah, it's not seeing the universe, or crazy aliens, or hanging with Napoleon, but we could be together. A proper family for once."
A proper family. The idea gave Pete pause as he stared at Jackie across the table. She flushed under his scrutiny, realizing only then what she had said, beginning to stammer as she fiddled with her cup. "I mean, it's the first time in her life there's been a Pete. And while you aren't her father, I mean...you're as good as. She could get to know you."
Pete was still stuck on the idea of a "proper family". The last three weeks had been lost in a whirlwind of simply trying to find a place for Jackie and her daughter to fit in this world. He hadn't had time to consider where they would go from there. What role would Jackie and Rose play in Pete Tyler's life now they seemed to have a permanent place in it?
"What do you want to do, Jackie?" The question tumbled out before he could even check it. It surprised him and clearly her as well, as she blinked at him, slightly stunned.
"What do you mean by that?"
Pete shrugged. "I mean, now that the world thinks you are Jackie Tyler, which you are, what do you want to do?"
Unsurprisingly, she didn't seem to have much of an answer for that. "I don't know. I mean, back home I just tried to make due. Did hair, mostly, odd jobs here and there, nothing fancy."
"You never had any grand ambition to be anything, do anything?"
"Me? No, not really." The idea seemed to puzzle her, even as she shrugged sadly. "I mean, maybe when I was a kid, I wanted to do one of those silly things like get on TV or be famous, but more than anything I just wanted to be...safe."
Safe. It was a word that had so much meaning for Jackie. His wife had been that way too, once. It was why she'd always harped on things like money and steady work, because underneath it all lay that fear of what could happen if they weren't there. Pete, more footloose and carefree in his youth, hadn't ever thought of those things. That had always been the tension between the two of them.
"Well, you are as safe as you are ever going to be, now." He smiled broadly, waving a hand around the large room. "Nice place. Can even decorate it if you want."
"You mean you'd let me do that?"
"If you are here, might as well. I mean, not like I'm doing a lot with the place as is. And it could use a bit of a facelift after everything."
She eyed the furniture briefly before shooting him a grin. "I hate to say it, and I don't like speaking ill of the dead, but your wife had piss poor taste."
At a different point in time Pete might have bristled from a comment like that from anyone other than Miles. But something about this being Jackie, the woman his wife might have become had circumstances been different, made the comment hysterically funny. Tears formed as he laughed, nearly choking on toast and coffee, a full belly guffaw that left Jackie slightly concerned and Pete snickering harder every time he looked at her.
"It's just...you are here and you're not, and the furniture!" He continued into a fresh peel of laughter, holding his side with one hand as he wiped at his face with the other. "I've always hated this blasted furniture."
Jackie could only stare at him as if he'd gone barking. "Well, it's all pretentious and stuff. Not homey. Couldn't feel comfortable here."
That only served to make Pete howl all the harder.
"I don't see what's so funny." Jackie frowned, disgruntled. "It's true. You don't even like living in this place."
That served to sober him up, if only just. He still giggled, rubbing at his eyes, his sides aching. "I know! I never liked it here. Hated the place."
"Then why you laughing at me?"
"I'm not, Jacks, really I'm not." He snorted, trying to breath again. "It's just...oh lord, it's so mad. Like everything that I wished my wife Jackie to be, there you are."
"Oh!" Jackie looked far less put out with that comment. Blushing, she smiled softly. "I guess that's good?"
"Good, it's bloody brilliant." He was getting carried away, he knew it. Perhaps the months of stress with the hole between worlds coupled with the absurdity of the last few weeks were finally catching up to him. "No pretension, not being caught up in image and yourself, just being honest to goodness you."
"But I am just me, Pete," she replied. "But I'm also not her."
"No, you're not. You are you...just you. And that's the person I've been looking for for a long time."
Pete hadn't realized what he said till the words had already left his mouth. They seemed to hang there in the air between himself and the stunned Jackie, as if waiting for him to take them back. Except, he found, he really didn't want to.
"I…" Jackie opened her mouth, but stopped, stared at him, blue eyes round in a face suddenly pale. She closed her mouth with a snap.
That was when the regret set in.
"Jacks," he began, but even as he spoke, she pushed herself up, in a gesture that nearly mirrored Rose's earlier.
"Look, Pete, I don't...I can't...I know you miss your wife, and I miss my Pete, and all of this just sort of happened, but I'm not some substitute for a dead woman."
"Jackie, you aren't…"
"I have her face, don't I? And now I have her life and her house?" She waved a wild hand in the direction of the helicopter still circling outside. "I'm me, Pete, I've had a whole life, and it hasn't been filled with silks and ugly furniture, and...I'm not just stepping in because you're lonely."
"I didn't intend for you to…"
"And another thing, I mean it's nice and all you are helping Rose and I out, but don't think that means you get to assume anything about me and...us."
"I wasn't assuming anything."
Jackie paused in her tirade, eyes narrowed. "You aren't?"
He shouldn't have said anything, he really shouldn't have. Regret turned his stomach. "I just...I know who you are, Jackie. And I wasn't presuming on...I don't need a replacement for my wife. I really don't. I loved her, yes, I did. But who she was at the end...that person I don't want in my life."
She wasn't convinced. "You can't tell me that you haven't missed her every day for the last few years. I know I missed my Pete."
"I did, I won't lie. Do you think I was happy letting her die. I loved her, but…"
When Pete admitted it to himself, who he missed and what he missed was the "what might have been". He missed the Jackie before Torchwood and Vitex, before wealth and fame. He missed what they could have been if it all had been different. He wanted a chance to have that Jackie. "You can't tell me that there are days you wish you had your Pete back. But not the gormless dreamer you married, one who actually took up his responsibilities."
"My Pete was a good man," Jackie retorted with surprising anger. "He wasn't perfect, but he wasn't gormless either."
Pete would have argued. He remembered all too well what he was like back then. "Fine, he wasn't. The point is, this is a new chance, for both of us, Jacks. Maybe this time, with us having gone through different experiences, different things, maybe...maybe this time things will be better?"
"A do over?" She sneered the word, crossing arms around herself. "That's what I am then, a do over for how you got it wrong with your Jackie, then?"
That wasn't the reaction he'd expected at all.
"Jackie, not really, but maybe a second chance…"
"Look, I am grateful for all you are doing, yeah? But I'm not some fill in for a woman long dead. I'm me, and you're you, and we aren't our dead spouses, and I'm not throwing myself into anything just because I miss my Pete."
Too surprised by the vehemence of her words, all Pete could do was watch her stalk out of the room and down the hall, where, he wasn't sure. He tried to call for her, but found his words failed as he fiddled with the toast in hand, his appetite was already gone. He tossed it on the plate, and considered the lot. Pity he hadn't asked for at least one staff member to clean up at moments like this. Perhaps they could clean up his life too. Hell, how did he bollocks that one up so quickly. Three weeks in and he'd managed only in further upsetting Rose and alienating Jackie. And now, according to the world, she was his wife. If he were going for the situation as it was when his wife died, he was spot on. But he had hoped…
He hadn't really considered what Jackie might have wanted in all this, had he?
"Well, bloody hell," he muttered, glaring out the window to the helicopter still hovering, beating incessantly against the sky, echoing the slow pounding forming behind his eyes.