Even the most noble, the most high-minded things in life sometimes came with strings attached. For Pete Tyler, the kid from the wrong side of London, who had all the talent and ambition in the world and none of the opportunities, life had turned out strange indeed. He'd been given the golden egg once upon a time. Down on his luck, his marriage in jeopardy, he'd taken the offer laid before him, only to find out that you just can't magically make all your problems go away. He may have been rich, he may have been famous, but the thing that mattered most to him, the woman he loved, was forever lost to him. It was only when Jackie was gone that he realized what a mistake his decision had been.
Fate, or perhaps Time, had been kind to him. It had given him a second chance just when he least expected it, and in the form of a daughter he had always wanted and never had, and a madman in a blue box who sacrificed everything to save two worlds. Now, over a month on from what could have very nearly been the end of the universe as they knew it, Pete Tyler sat back in the entertainment room of the house he'd never called his own, the woman he thought lost to him curled beside him as her daughter - their daughter - slept lightly on the opposite couch. The telly droned with a movie that none of them had seen before, but Pete wasn't paying it much mind. He was far more focused on running his fingers through the platinum blonde hair of the woman beside him.
"Rose out over there?"
Judging from the girl's light snores, Pete thought she probably was. "Gordon's been running her pretty hard."
Jackie's sigh was somewhere between exasperation and resignation. "I suppose it keeps her mind off things."
"True," he murmured, fingers trailing down the side of her face as he draped his arm over her shoulders. "And you? It's been a few weeks. Missing home much?"
"Yeah, sometimes." She was honest as she turned her head slightly to look up at him, blue eyes thoughtful. "I mean, I miss silly things. The chippy down the way. The old neighbors. Miss my friends."
The last reminded Pete how very lonely it must be for Jackie now, in a world where all her ties were cut, except for the ones to her daughter and to him. "You need to get out of the house."
"To do what," she snorted, turning back to the telly. "I got no educated. Don't have any posh airs or graces. What's out there for me?"
"I don't know." In all honesty, Pete wasn't sure. His first wife had sort of made a niche for herself. "What are you interested in doing?"
She shrugged, curling tighter into him. "I don't know. Your place needs work."
He chuckled. They'd agreed to keep to the mansion rather than return to his more modest penthouse flat in the city. Rose had preferred the secluded nature of the manor house. Jackie of course had loved the poshness of it. Both women enjoyed the space it gave them to hide out from each other when they were annoyed with one another, which happened frequently. But it was old and big, far too much for one woman to keep up with by herself.
"How about this. I'll see if we can't get a staff back here at the place. Maybe a housekeeper to help run the place, a couple of ladies to clean a few times a week, some staff for the grounds. Maybe a cook?"
"You saying something about my cooking," she retorted, jerking back to glare up at him.
"No...no, I only got a little indigestion from that Shepherd's Pie the other night, wasn't anything at all."
Jackie guffawed, but relented, slapping his stomach hard, making Pete wince. "Serves you right for disparaging my cooking."
"Can we still get a cook?" His smile was all mischief as she rolled her eyes.
"Fine, a cook. But I get to choose them, yeah. Don't want someone who's going to be experimenting on us or serving us mouthfuls and calling it a meal."
"As long as you still make the tea around here, I won't complain." That placated her somewhat as she settled again. He chuckled softly, earning a giggle out of her as well. "You always were bad in the kitchen."
"You weren't great shakes either," she snorted, teasing. "So if I have this staff to take care of the place, what am I supposed to do with myself?"
"Take up gardening?"
She only laughed harder. "Never met a plant I couldn't kill!"
"Raising dogs?"
"Don't even want one!" She wrinkled her nose, and Pete decided against bringing up his last wife's pet.
"I don't know. What do you want to do?"
Jackie was pensive, quiet for long moments. "I don't know, really. I don't know anyone here. I don't know what I could do. I wasn't smart like Rose, never clever. I just liked people. You know, talking and stuff, I was good at that, just getting to know people. Not much use for something like that."
"I don't know," Pete mused softly. "I mean, a lot of what I do has to do with meeting people and talking."
"That's, what do they call it? Networking?"
"Still, all you need to do that is to smile, chat them up, make them feel comfortable. And you're good at that."
"Yeah," she sighed, vaguely.
"Could get you out there, you know. Out into society."
He might as well have suggested she lob a limb off, judging from her reaction. She twisted up, staring at him as if he'd dribbled all over himself. "Your posh friends? You want me out with them?"
"Why not?" The instant fear and rejection that met his question took him by surprise.
"Because I don't know them, that's why. Because they think they know me, and they will come up to be, and they will expect me to be able to carry on like always, and not knowing I'm a total stranger."
"The world thinks your memory is dodgy and as patchy as Swiss cheese. Why not run with your strengths?"
"Be serious," she hissed swatting his middle again, earning a grunt for her efforts and a wounded look out of him.
"I am being serious! Think about it, Jacks. No one knows that you aren't the same Jackie they knew. And frankly, the one they knew wasn't such a great person in the end." He thought sadly of his first wife and how different she had become. "Maybe you have a chance to make them see you differently. Maybe better."
"Better?" Her tone was doubtful, but he could see hope sparkling in her eyes. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, Jackie wasn't so different than her daughter. She too desired to escape the stigma of her circumstances, to be something different...better.
"Yeah," Pete affirmed, taking her hand. "You could go out there and make a real difference. Maybe take up something, a cause. Fight for single mothers, women like you who are in tight straights and feel they have no options."
"Could do." She didn't look completely turned off by the idea. "I mean, we've passed that story that we gave Rose up. Got to be other women out there who have stories. Had to give up kids or had to make hard choices just to take care of them. I know what's that's like."
"Yeah, you do. And you can maybe make a difference."
He could see the ideas taking root, at least a little, coalescing into possibilities for Jackie. Her gaze flickered over to the sleeping Rose, softening as it did.
"Yeah, I know, it's not saving the world from aliens or something, but I guess it is important, yeah?"
"Yes," he agreed, pulling her into his arms and planting a kiss firmly on the top of her head as he rested back into the cushions. She snuggled closer as well, curling up against him again, her head on his chest.
"You know, everything I ever did, it was always for her. I mean, yeah, I was rubbish at a lot of real jobs, and I may not have gotten my life together, but I always made sure my girl was taken care of."
"You were amazing," he assured her softly. "And now, you have a second chance with all of it."
"Yeah," she hummed, rolling over so she could look up at him. "A second chance for you too."
"Guess it's for both of us."
"You think we will muck it up this time?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe we are older and wiser. And the universe hasn't seen fit to give this gift to us with any strings attached. I think we're safe."
"It's all madness how this happened, you never know what next maniacal thing will be."
"I could just walk out the door and be hit by a car again tomorrow, or you could die in another horrible tragedy. Or we could live just normal, happy lives. How about that for a change?"
Jackie's troubled face spread into a wide grin. "That sounds alright, I guess."
"Good, because I quite like the idea of living a quiet life without having to save the world from insanity for a while, thank you."
"So do I!" She leaned up to kiss him soundly on the cheek. "And if I ever get a chance to see the Doctor again, I'll have to remember to thank him."
"For?"
"Being utterly insane. Else I couldn't have imagined ever getting another chance with you."
"Cheers to that," Pete agreed, punctuating his endorsement with a kiss far less chaste than Jackie's.
Whispering and giggling like schoolchildren, the pair made their way down the hall, leaving Rose to her slumbers, unwilling to wake her from much needed rest. Wrapped up in their own contentment, unbeknownst to them in an entire universe away, the only time and space ship left in the universe materialized beside a dying star. The doors of its police call box exterior opened to look upon it, and a man, the last of his kind stared out at it in sad contemplation. He watched the star glow coldly in its dense tightness, it's mass compressing so hard, it seemed ready to explode into the universe in violence and despair. Much as his own, careworn hearts.
"We'll see if this works, shall we?" He spoke to no one in particular, as there was no one their to listen. But he turned, all the same, back into his magnificent ship, and to the inside that was larger than the out, ignoring the denim jacket slung over a hand rail as he meandered to the console. Fingers flew along the screen, following a language only he knew anymore, calculating coordinates as he whispered a single name.
Rose, in her slumber on the sofa, stirred ever so slightly, and fell back to sleep.
AN: So we've come to the unexpected end of Strings Attached. I didn't realize this was going to be the end until it occurred to me that what I wanted was THREE stories and I'm looking at a series. How did that happen? I hope you have enjoyed the story of Pete and Jackie finding each other again. They've been a joy to write for, and I find I quite like Pete as a muse, and not just because I have a propensity for writing about my fellow gingers. Next week I shall start the next installment, which will be called, cheesily enough, Tangled Strings. See you then!