Pete waited for the other shoe to drop the next morning at breakfast. But Rose appeared, groggy and quietly anxious at the table, and oblivious to the furtive looks shot between her mother and Pete. He cleared his throat and quietly busied himself with his tablet, while Jackie bustled to the kitchen.
"Toast, Rose, love?"
Her mother's term of endearment caught the younger woman unaware. She watched Jackie cautiously before nodding, glancing at Pete in consternation. Clearly, while Jackie had moved on sometime after falling into bed with him last night, Rose had not. Pete's only response was to shrug and return to his tablet, glancing through his emails as he sipped at his coffee and wondered how long he'd be able to dodge Rose's proverbial bullet.
"Toast sounds good," Rose yawned, pouring coffee and fiddling with it as Jackie hustled two browned pieces of bread out to her. If her mother's over attentive behavior struck her as odd, Rose was either not aware enough to notice it or too sleepy yet to comment on it.
"Ready for today," Pete decided to venture, hoping to defer any untoward attention from the fact that Jackie was very much trying too hard to be casual.
"Sure, I guess." Rose spread strawberry jam across her toast, nibbling at a corner. "Do you know what they will have me do?"
"Show you around the place, have you take some tests, standard protocol. Just to see where your strengths lie."
"Not sure what ones of those I've got," she hummed, sipping from her mug slowly. "I mean, I studied French once, 'cause I was going to go to uni and study art. And I can draw. And I guess I'm not a total idiot. The Doctor always said I was brilliant. But I never got my A-levels, if they want that."
"Since you didn't exist in this world before three weeks ago, I think Torchwood will be flexible. Besides, you're not some girl off the streets. You've seen the universe, like you said, run with the Doctor. You got more things going for you than most."
"True," she murmured, eyes sliding to Jackie who pointedly busied herself with spreading butter as thinly on the toast as she could physically manage.
"You going to be all right with this?"
Jackie's lips pressed hard for a long moment before she turned her face up to give her daughter a tight, sad smile. "It's like you said, right? You're grown up. You feel you got to do this, okay. I'll be here, you know, if you need."
The chill that had hung between mother and daughter since yesterday morning seemed to thaw as Rose rounded the table to hug her mother. "It's just to Torchwood, Mum, it will be fine. They let Mickey work there!"
"Oh, and that reassures me, that does." She shooed her daughter away. "You two better get going, you'll be late, and no telling how long those reporters will keep you."
"She's right," Pete sighed, not thrilled with this at all. "I've got an SUV here with darkened windows, but they'll be watching."
"Let them," Rose sniffed, throwing her shoulders back in a show of bravado. "They can say whatever they want. Doesn't make it true."
Pete couldn't help but feel proud of her in that moment. "Good girl. Be in the garage in five."
Snagging the last of her toast, Rose shuffled off to finishing getting ready. Jackie watched her with a wistful smile.
"Hard to remember sometimes she's all grown up. Seems just yesterday she was a baby, all big brown eyes and nothing else."
Pete found himself wishing he could have known Rose back then. "She'll be fine, Jacks. She dead smart and Miles couldn't be more responsible."
"Oh, I know," she waved him off, gathering plates of half eaten breakfast into the kitchen. "And you two will be off all day, what am I to do with myself?"
"I'd tell you clean, but I may earn a slap," he shot back cheekily, grinning as he followed her with his own breakfast things.
"Yeah, and you may like it, too," she replied with a naughty wink that instantly made his cheeks flush and his trousers just a tad uncomfortable. Dishes clattered as he pinned Jackie against the counter, kissing the nape of her neck where her hair had been pinned up, earning a squeal out of her.
"Right, you need to be getting ready for work, don't you, and not trying to ravish me in the kitchen?"
"Where in the hell did you learn ravish from," he growled, moving instead from one side of her neck to the other, earning a gasp for his troubles.
"Since I took up reading those trashy novels, and don't change the subject." She turned, with effort to face him, and instead stopped his efforts with a sound kiss on the mouth. When she pulled back, it was with the same stern expression she'd use on Rose. "You've got to get to Torchwood and make sure Rose behaves herself."
"And what if I don't want to behave myself?"
"Save it for tonight, big boy," she patted his cheek and pushed him away. "Look at you, acting randy as a teenager."
Regretfully, he allowed, but not without a heartbroken sigh. "Can't help myself around you, I suppose." He was unapologetic as he leaned in for a quick peck on the cheek, turning to gather his things from the kitchen table. Jackie certainly didn't looked displeased by the attention. If anything, she looked the happiest she'd been since she'd arrived, glowing even. That was the Jackie Tyler he'd really, sorely, horribly missed.
Rose was thirty minutes getting to his car, in the new clothes he'd had Amanda help her procure before the interview. Despite money no longer being an object, Rose still preferred the casual styles of the young, and he noted her insistence on the comfortable trainers she had on her feet.
"Not dressing to make an impression on your new boss?"
Rose arched a dark eyebrow as he glanced from the trainer back up to Pete. "Too casual? I got something nicer, I just thought, since Miles knew me…"
"It's fine," he waved it off as he climbed inside the large SUV, eager to be off.
"Just, trainers, easier to run if you need to, you know."
No, Pete didn't know. Everything he'd ever done for Torchwood had been covert. Buttoned up suits and wing tips for him most of the time. The most danger he'd ever seen was that horrible night that Lumic tried to take over the world. Still, she at least had it reasoned out.
"I don't know if they'll have you chasing anything on your first day, you know."
"Wasn't thinking about chasing as much as running from." She smirked as he started the car and pulled out of the garage. For half a moment, Pete wondered just what sort of things her and her Doctor got up to that necessitated that sort of preparedness, but decided against asking.
"Right, so we pull out of here, there's likely cameras down the way. They'll shout and generally make a nuisance of themselves, but don't engage. They only want you to do that."
"Know your enemy," Rose murmured, straightening in the seat as Pete pulled out of the gravel drive. The manor house set back from the main road, down a private, enclosed drive. Security sat at the end and nodded towards him as he slowed, allowing them to open the gate so he could pull out onto the street that lead onto the main thoroughfare that would get them into London.
"Oi, Mr. Tyler! Hey, over here!" Almost as soon as the iron gates closed the calls began, voices that remarkably penetrated through the thick glass of his luxury car and attempted to lure him into eye contact. He grimaced as his eyes remained fixedly on the road. "They'll try to get you to look, usually say rude things. Don't bother with them."
As if on cue, somewhere behind the clamor of voices and the clicking of cameras he could hear someone shouting, "You really Pete's daughter? Not just some mistress?"
He could feel Rose tense beside him, but she didn't turn her head. Not they could see her face through the glass passenger side glass.
"What about reports saying that you're Jackie Tyler's illegitimate child?"
"Jesus," Pete swore quietly, turning despite the throng attempting to mob his car and being carefully pushed back by security. Without any hesitancy he turned, nearly clipping a paparazzi who was too slow and busy attempting to get a shot through the undarkened front windshield.
"They always like this?" Rose sounded cool and calm, but underneath it all Pete thought he could hear how unnerved she was.
"Only on days that end in 'y,'" he joked, though there wasn't a lot of humor in it. "This is pretty mild for them, but yeah. Welcome to the high life!"
"Yeah, I guess," Rose muttered, not particularly impressed. "Think I preferred being a nobody from the council estate."
"Oh, they'll want to watch every aspect of your life from now on. Where you go. Who you are with. Who you are shagging."
"Like that's any of their business," she snapped angrily as the SUV sped down the way, far from the flashing lightbulbs.
"And that's just the stand you take as well, none of their business, and they can sod off." Pete spoke from long experience on the matter. Better to say nothing and give them reason to suspect than to open your mouth and confirm it.
Rose quietly considered for long moments as he drove. He thought she'd merely drifted into her own thoughts, but her next statement made him realize just how devious and clever his new daughter could be. "So, is that the statement you going to give them when they ask if you've shagged my mother or not?"
Pete managed at least to keep the car under control...only just. He whipped his shocked expression towards Rose's impish smile, before turning back to the road just in time to avoid having a nasty run in with a hedgerow.
"You figure it out?"
"Wasn't that hard. You two disappeared for all of last night."
Pete nodded, ignoring how warm the cabin of the car had suddenly become. "You okay with this?"
"Mmmm….let's see, my mother is sleeping with my father rather than the grocer down the street, or the butcher, or the guy who delivers papers, or the strange guy she picked up at the pub who has bad breath and no job? My father, who I might add, is one of the richest men in the country, who is on all these adverts, and yet still manages to work for a secret organization that saves the world on the side?"
She made it sound so glamorous. "Did she really sleep with all those men?"
"More than that, but never for long. That bother you?"
"No," he lied. Rose saw through that.
"You were dead in our world. Mum was lonely. Twenty years is a long time."
Far longer than four. "Yeah, it kind of is."
"She never loved any of them, though, not like you. That's the reason none of them stayed."
Oddly enough that did give him some kind of twisted comfort. "It's just, I know how strange this is. I mean, she's not my wife, I'm not her husband or your father, and yet I kind of am. It's so daft, like I found her again, like I got a second chance."
"I don't think that's daft," Rose replied. "I think maybe the universe decided to reward you both for a change."
"Maybe." He wasn't sure he believed in God, or Fate, or any other cosmic entity that did or did not have it in for him. But he'd like to believe that if there was one, that this was some sort of reward.
"All I want is for her to be happy," Rose said. "If you can do that, if you can give her someone else to love and care for, give her something in her life, that would be great."
He knew what she implying. She knew her father's foibles as well as Pete did. He'd failed his Jackie. So had Pete, he'd failed his wife just as surely. This time, though, he would get it right.
"Guess it was bound to happen," he murmured, matter-of-factly.
"Bound to happen? I was shocked it didn't the first week." She snorted in laughter, much to Pete's horror.
"I knew you'd take the mickey out of me."
"Sorry, had to be done." She didn't sound the least bit apologetic.
The rest of their drive into London was cheerful enough, with Rose mostly inquiring into the differences of Torchwood in this world, the history, and of course what Pete had done with it since the rise and fall of Lumic.
"So you made these jumpers just to get to our world and stop the Cybermen?"
"Took us months to develop, some backwards engineering and use of alien tech, but we got it. Mickey was our guinea pig."
"He agreed to that?" That clearly surprised Rose. "When we were kids I couldn't get him to try curry for years."
"Different when you are trying to save your home and the people you love back there, I guess."
That subdued Rose, who went quiet after that. They made the final part of their journey through London to Torchwood Tower in silence, broken only when Pete pulled into his parking space and was met there by the object of their conversation himself and Jake, who hugged Rose hard as she got out of the car. "Can't believe I'm seeing you again!"
"Me either," she admitted, a megawatt smile pulled on the pair. "You doing all right mucking about with him?"
He hasn't managed to kill me yet," Jake jerked a thumb at Mickey, who punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Wondered if you'd get over here. Mickey said you were thinking about it."
"Miles said I could if Dad did." She glanced at Pete for reassurance. It was the first time in public she called him "dad", and she didn't even flinch at it.
"He's upstairs dealing with a situation, else he'd be down here to snag you," Jake reassured her.
Pete's interest piqued. "Nothing serious?"
"Nah, just an U-5 that got brought in," Mickey offered, grinning from ear to ear at Rose. "Wait till you see what we've been doing with all the data we've been gathering. Like a giant encyclopedia, only online, and just for Torchwood's use."
"All easily searchable from any network enabled device," Jake added, holding up his wrist. The Torchwood issued tablet watch was the favorite of many young technophiles, though not out on the market just yet. Mickey and Jake both had snagged one for their "covert" work, and Pete had long suspected they'd used them to play games with one another. However, Jake's at that very moment was beginning to flash an alarming shade of red.
"Shit," he swore, fingering the face as Mickey did the same, both young men frowning. Pete felt his own pocket buzz at the same time.
"What's up," Rose frowned, confused as Pete pulled out his tablet phone, a text alert scrolling across his screen.
"Lockdown, containment," Jake replied. "I'm guessing the U-5 got out."
"U-5, what's that?"
"Unidentifiable alien class 5, that's the dangerous class," Mickey filled in, looking to Jake. "You heading down?"
"Yeah!" Jake looked to Pete. "Get her somewhere safe for now, we'll come find you when it's all done."
"What, why?" Rose squawked, but couldn't go after them for Pete grabbing her elbow.
"Come on, coffee shop down the street, shouldn't take too long…"
"Seriously, they have a dangerous alien running about the building, and you just want to get Starbucks?"
"This is their job, Rose, and they know what they are doing," Pete insisted gently, tugging at her arm.
"We are talking about Mickey, right?"
"Come on," he urged. For half a moment he thought she'd actually follow along quietly. He should have known better. With a quick twist and jerk Rose was free from his grasp, already running in the direction of the other two, well before Pete could turn after her.
"Rose," he shouted, taking off after the streak of blonde hair, regretting that he had chosen to wear his office dress shoes and not comfortable trainers like her. He pounded the pavement and skidded into the marble foyer, nearly slamming into the glass doors as he tried to stop himself. Too late, for despite the general lockdown of the building, Rose still managed to slip through a stairwell door, her hair shining as it disappeared down a corner .
"Bloody hell," he swore, gasping as he rushed for the steps himself. Why those stairs were open during a security lockdown he didn't know, but he was grateful as he attempted to take the steps down two at a time to catch up with the girl. "Rose, stop!"
He could hear her trainers, but couldn't see her. He wasn't sure if she knew where she was going, though it was clear that she listened to Mickey and Jake when they said down. If there was an unidentified alien about, they'd be in the holding area in the basement levels. He threw himself down the next set of stairs, his thin, leather soles slipping as he grabbed the handrail and clung with one hand, throwing his other out to stop the his feet from going right out from under him.
"Damn it, Rose," he called. He knew it was futile. Muttering and righting himself, he took the stairs again, one at a time now, but no less quickly, coming to the fifth floor down where the concrete stopped. Torchwood went as far as it could down while sitting next to the Thames. Even then, he could feel the cold of the river in the walls as he stared wildly around. One steel door that should have been locked and no Rose. He tugged, feeling it pop open, an alarm already sounding on the other side.
In the middle of the chaos of burning equipment, acrid smoke, and shouting people, stood a giant, purple...well, dragon? It looked like a dragon to Pete, give the sleek head and the fact it was shoot fire out from between razor sharp teeth. And it glared wildly between two squads of Torchwood security, armed with guns bigger than they were. And amidst it all, a lone, blonde woman stood determinedly in between them.
"I said stop!" She ordered it with all the same angry fierceness Jackie might use reprimanding Mickey. Above the lizard-thing, on a deck just behind it, Pete could see Miles, several scientists, his security leader, John Gordon, and Mickey and Jake. Of them all, only Mickey and Jake didn't seemed surprised. Mickey even laughed.
"Rose," Pete hissed, finding nothing funny in this. But she ignored him as she carefully approached the alien dragon.
"It's scared," she rebuked angrily, giving the creature a sympathetic look. "You lot waving guns at it is why it keeps firing up the place."
"Who the bloody hell is this?" Gordon was a big, burly man late of The President's Own Marine Corp. No nonsense, tough as nails, and pragmatic in the face of whatever was thrown at him. Which is why Miles had hired him as Head of Security at Torchwood. However, he also took a dim view of any life form that wasn't human, and only had marginal respect for those that could speak. Anything else he usually considered little more than lab experiments.
"That is Rose Tyler," Miles replied succinctly, not any more thrilled at her presence on the floor, but at least appearing calm about it. "Can I ask, Tyler, what you're doing down there?"
"Trying to help you out," she replied, as if it were obvious. Pete couldn't help the snort that welled up, but tried to swallow it. "Do you even know what it is?"
"What the bloody hell, Connor, she's a civ on the floor. Get her out of here!"
"Stand down, Gordon," Miles replied evenly.
"That menace nearly barbecued two of my people and burned the hell out of a lab, the hell I'm going to…"
"Do you know what it is, Rose?" Miles cut Gordon off hard, regarding her below mildly.
"Yeah, it's a raperna," she replied, stepping again to the creature. No longer hissing and glaring at the Torchwood security around it, it now focused on Rose with deep, sapphire colored eyes, blinking slowly. She smiled hesitantly at it.
"A wha'," Gordon growled, but Rose didn't take her eyes off the creature. Instead, her tone and pitch took on the same tone one might take for a baby or a dog.
"A raperna", she cooed, scooting closer to one of the silvery talons gripping onto a metal crating bin. "Kind of like a dragon, except it's telepathic. It can feel people's emotions and stuff. When it senses people are a threat, it tends to get a bit hysterical."
The dragon creature seemed to sag a bit at the sound of her voice, lowering its wings as it crooned back at Rose. The sound was a bit like a cross between a bird and an over eager Basset Hound. Rose laughed. "Aren't you the cutest thing?"
"A cute thing that can kill you at the first chance," Gordon spat at Miles, who watched the entire scene thoughtfully. Pete, from his vantage point by the door, could only watch as carefully, Rose reached a hand out to it.
To the sides, he could hear Torchwood security readying their weapons.
Rose whipped around to glare at them, just as the raperna reared back and screeched again, a sound cutting across the air like torn metal. Pete clamped his hands to his ears, as Gordon held his hands up to keep his people at bay.
"Gordon, tell them to bloody stand down already," Miles ordered, glaring at the other man.
"You sure you want some girl handling this?"
"Just do it before you have to explain to Pete Tyler why is daughter was killed on her first day at work."
Gordon's head whipped up, his eyes flashing to Pete as it dawned on him that he was standing in the corner. Working his jaw in an ugly grimace, he waved at security, who immediately lowered weapons and backed off. Nearly as immediately, Rose and the raperna sighed.
"That better," she asked, as the creature crooned once more. Once again she held out her hand, only this time the creature snaked it's neck down to her, carefully nosing her tiny fingers compared to it's massive, angular head. It nearly melted as she reached up under its chin and scratched. "Who's a good girl, eh? You are!"
The beast whimpered happily as it's pointed tail thumped against the container in contentment.
It was only when Pete decided that the coast was clear that he stepped any closer to Rose. She turned to him, a smile as wide and as brilliant as he'd ever seen splitting her face. "You want to come pet her? She's harmless, mostly."
"Harmless? My people!" Gordon's protest still rang in the space, but Miles clearly had lost his patience.
"Where did you find the creature," he snapped, bringing the man up short. Gordon's scowl deepened.
"She was found in a sewage tunnel in Croydon. Smell to high hell till we hosed her down."
"No wonder she blowing fire, after that," Mickey offered dryly, eyeing the creature as Rose continued to pet it. "Why is it acting like a dog?"
"'Cause they kind of are, or at least they were in our universe," Rose supplied. She glanced over at Pete as he sidled up. "You've got to be really happy and friendly, like with dogs. They sense what you are feeling and pick up on stuff. If you are shirty around them, they don't like you."
'Explains Gordon," he smirked, as he reached gingerly to the creature. Like with Rose, it sniffed his outstretched hand, before presenting its chin for rubbing."
"That's her most sensitive spot, sort of like ears and cheeks on cats. She loves it!" Indeed, even as Rose smiled encouragingly at him the creature began to hum, something like a pur.
"So this is someone's pet, then?" Jake asked above, curious, even as Gordon still looked doubtful.
"Might have been, I guess. They are native to this one planet that didn't have any particularly advanced civilization I remember, but then people came there all the time to watch them and snag them to take home. Sort of like bringing home those big, fluffy dogs from China, I guess, people think they are cute and bring them with them, only then they get too much. Maybe this one was dumped?"
That made Rose sound sad, and indeed, even the creature moaned mournfully.
"Or it could have been someone's pet got loose and lost down here." Miles observed. "We have visitors enough, tourists who come to Earth to see the sites and try the food and lose things left and right. Least it's not a Miropean Neutronian bomb this time, some drunken student lost that off their keychain once and nearly got us in a war."
There were many, many days when Pete was thankful that Miles was his Director of Field Operations, because these were things he didn't need to know about. The fact the other man was so matter-of-fact about it awed him, as did the way he handled the formidable Gordon.
"Gordon, take your people, get them treated. Send Control down here to get this lovely into a holding area, preferably one where she can fly around a bit. Maybe get some food for her. Do you happen to know what she likes?"
This last question was directed at Rose, who only shrugged. "I don't know, I saw them only once. Like to hunt things, kind of gruesome. Maybe a goat?" She didn't sound too sure.
"Try a goat than, sheep, whatever, see if we can get that pinned down."
Gordon looked as if he knew exactly where he would like to pin a goat. He nodded in affirmation anyway, glaring at Rose as his team began to slip away and file out of the space. Miles watched briefly before turning to look down at Rose.
"You know, disobeying protocol and putting your life in danger usually isn't a great way of climbing the ladder here at Torchwood."
Rose failed utterly at the contrite look she shot up to him. "Good thing I'm not technically employed by you, yet."
Mickey snickered. Jake smacked him. Miles frown only deepened, but Pete could see the light of respect in his eyes, from one smart ass to another.
"Best get that paperwork done then before you burn the entire place down," Miles shot back, eyebrows arching over his glasses. "Think you can handle that, Ms. Tyler, without pissing off my security team any further?"
"I'll try," she replied, perhaps a touch cheekily, as she gave the dragon creature an affectionate pat. Glancing at Pete, she looked somewhat embarrassed. "Sorry for ditching you that way, just...not used to running from the trouble, I guess."
"How about you go and behave yourself for the rest of the day, and I don't tell your mother about this, yeah?" Pete scratched the raperna behind what he hoped was its ear. "And no, we don't get to take this home with us."
"What fun are you," she teased as she made her way to the metal, graded steps that led to where Miles stood above.