#meta!10

Quickly, she crossed to her son’s side, mindful of the phone the Doctor was presumably using to film the situation. Crouching just to the left of him, Rose watched as Gideon gave her a big grin, before peeling one hand away from the chair to take a shaky step towards her.

“Oh, clever boy!” the Doctor crowed happily, as Rose found herself voicing a similar sentiment.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Rose encouraged, holding her arms out to the toddler.

Moments later, Gideon has pulled his other hand away from the chair, completely standing on his own, before taking another shaky step towards his mum.

He tumbled and fell, only to be caught by Rose and quickly swept onto her lap.

“Who’s our clever boy, eh?” she cooed at the baby on her lap as the Doctor finally finished recording and crossed to her side. “Did you get it all on camera?”

The Doctor nodded. “Yep!” he beamed. “Every second of it!

Except for today.

At the dining table, six and a half year old Tony sat slouching in his chair and pouting at his older sister, pieces of paper and pencils scattered across the table.

“What’s going on here, then?” the Doctor asked then, forcing a smile as he crossed to the table.

“Maths homework,” Rose responded, giving him a small smile.

The Doctor made a sympathetic noise at that, pressing a brief kiss to his wife’s lips before turning his attention to Tony’s homework.

“I was doing it right,” Tony piped up suddenly, wide-eyed as he stared up at the Doctor. “But Rose says I’m doing it wrong.”

One glance at Rose told him that this argument had been going on for a while. Instead of answering Tony, the Doctor gently prompted Rose to stand.

“Why don’t you go get yourself a cuppa, love,” he murmured to her, before dropping into her vacated seat and raising his voice. “Now, why don’t us two take a look at this homework?”

Rose watched in silence from the kitchen area as the Doctor slowly began to talk Tony through his homework. Finally, the kettle boiled and Tony was slowly beginning to make a start on his homework without arguing about it first.

The Doctor tousled the boy’s hair before getting up and heading over to Rose in the kitchen, grabbing the milk for their tea as he passed the fridge.

“Thanks for that,” Rose murmured, glancing briefly at her brother. “No matter how many times I explained it to him, he couldn’t get it. He’s usually quite good at dividing, from what Mum was saying, but I think they’ve thrown him by giving him word problems.”

“How long was he insisting he was doing it right for?” the Doctor asked as Rose fished the tea bags out of their mugs.

With a sigh, she glanced at the clock. “Nearly twenty minutes.”

The Doctor grimaced. “How about we get takeaway tonight? Saves either of us having to cook. Maybe we can do a movie night with your brother, or something.”

Before Rose could answer, Tony was calling across the room to her, insisting he needed help with his homework again.

She let out another sigh, but smiled at her husband. “Sounds perfect.”

She pressed a kiss to his lips, grabbed her tea, and headed off to help her brother.

For those asking why Jackie is working at Earth Defence/ what makes her qualified to do so: the same thing that makes Pete qualified to control Torchwood. The same thing that made Mickey and Rose qualified to be field agents for Torchwood. Experience. Just because she’s Rose’s mum doesn’t mean she can’t defend the Earth too. Pete, before the series 2 finale, was only a businessman. A successful one, but still a businessman. He had no experience with diplomacy (besides being friends with the President), he hadn’t encountered aliens or anything, and his claim to fame was a health drink. But he later proved more than capable of taking control of Torchwood, working with Jake and Mickey to go across the world shutting down Cybus factories. So yeah, maybe Jackie was a single mum from a council estate who worked as a mobile hairdresser, but as the last sentence of Flight Into Hull! says, she’s not the same woman any more.

I had much the same reaction as virtually everyone else re. the ‘half-hearted replacement’ thing, but when I read it back I think we maybe misunderstood? Because it says Jackie Tyler’s lost a friend, and the Doctor is a ‘half-hearted replacement for him’. We all took it literally, thinking it was a jab at him having one less heart than the Time Lord Doctor. But Flight Into Hull! follows on from the events of The Seige of Big Ben, so maybe when things go wrong (like it’s alluded to in the description) someone Jackie work with and is good friends with, dies. Or, don’t forget, in Love and Monsters Jackie refers to Mickey as a mate, and then she loses him again when he remains on their original Earth at the end of Journey’s End. So maybe it’s about the metacrisis Doctor stepping into Mickey’s shoes for once. Particularly with the idea that Earth Defence is the new Torchwood, that could make more sense than Jackie just attacking him for not being the Time Lord Doctor.

Another point is that I read the stuff for The Seige of Big Ben (about Jackie and the new Scientific Adviser being the only ones who can do anything) as being about Jackie and the Doctor. The Doctor was a scientific adviser for UNIT too, so it’s possibly talking about what happens at work. Which means Pete and Rose might work in a different department, or Torchwood might still exist, etc. and it’s what happens at work that the story is about. AKA I doubt even if they work together that the Doctor and Rose follow each other around constantly, so that could be why Rose isn’t in the description.

Now, though, in the zeppelin, he couldn’t help but think something was wrong. Jackie kept giving Rose worried glances from across the aisle, Rose kept reaching for her right leg before catching his gaze and pulling her hand away. Had she maybe been injured before she’d reached him and Donna in the street?

“Rose?” he finally managed, voice sounding surprisingly broken and vulnerable even to himself.

Her head shot up, and Jackie’s head swivelled to stare at him.

“I’m fine,” Rose told him, forcing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes as she pre-empted his question.

“Are you?” he countered.

Across the aisle, Jackie looked away uncomfortably. The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. They were hiding something from him.

“Yeah,” Rose said, and she sounded a little more certain, a little more confident. “Just a little tired, ‘s all. Achy. It’s been a long day.”

The Doctor, however, wasn’t convinced. “Is that it?” he asked, sparing another brief glance at Jackie, who was pointedly ignoring them.

Rose, instead of answering, shifted uncomfortably in her chair. There was a long silence, before suddenly Jackie pushed herself to her feet, muttering something about needing tea, before rushing off towards the bar at the back of the first class area. The Doctor and Rose watched her go, both a little perplexed, before the Doctor turned his attention back to Rose.

“Rose? Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

Rose blinked at him, maintaining his gaze for several long moments before she glanced away.

“No,” she said at last. “There’s... There’s something I need to tell you. I have a confession.”

~0~0~

The Doctor blinked.

“Doctor?” Rose prompted worriedly from her seat opposite him.

He blinked again, pulling his gaze from her leg to her face. “You were hurt.”

Rose smiled gently at him. “Yeah,” she agreed quietly. “But I’m alright. I survived. Dad was hurt too, but we both made full recoveries.” She stared down at her prosthetic leg, the leg of her trousers still pushed up to reveal the carbon fibre prosthetic beneath. “Well, almost.”

She gave him another smile, but instead the Doctor’s face darkened.

“Did Pete know that you would be injured?” he asked, and his voice was suddenly low and as dark as his face. The Oncoming Storm, Rose knew. “Did he know that he could have killed you?”

Rose’s face dropped. “He... He knew that it was a risk,” she admitted slowly. “Torchwood had a one person per hopper policy, it’s why Mickey hadn’t taken me away when we were trapped in the lever room. He... He suggested sending me to Pete’s World, but said it could only carry one. When Dad came back for me, he didn’t realise just how bad it would be, though. He thought it was some health and safety thing the tech guys had insisted on; that it was just a precaution and would mean it would just be a bit rougher than usual. It wasn’t... It wasn’t until we were back here and the breach was closed that he realised just how dangerous it was.”

The Doctor’s jaw clenched. “So he could have killed you because he wouldn’t listen to instructions.” He scoffed. “I thought he was supposed to be the head of Torchwood? What kind of leadership is that?”

Rose frowned at him then, taking in the tense body language and angry eyes of the man opposite her. “Doctor, if Dad hadn’t done anything, I’d have fallen into the Void. Yeah, I was hurt, but at least I’m here! At least I’m alive!”

Her words seemed to soften him somewhat, the anger giving way to worry in his eyes, but Rose still watched him carefully.

“He still left you physically disabled, Rose. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad he was there to stop you from falling into the Void, but you were still hurt.”

“Yeah,” Rose nodded, “and so was Dad. Not quite as badly as me, but still bad. And he regrets what he thinks he did to me every day, Doctor. So don’t you dare take it out on him when we get back to London. If you’d been in his position, if it had been a choice between losing me forever, or saving me and possibly hurting me, which would you choose?”

The Doctor hung his head then, and his response was so quiet that Rose barely heard it. But she did, just about. “I’d save you.”

After another long moment, Rose sighed, pushing herself to her feet to instead take up the seat beside the Doctor. When they’d boarded the zeppelin, Rose had wanted to be able to see him at all times, had been wanting to be sure he was really there, so she’d chosen to sit opposite him. But now she wanted to be as close as possible to him, to be able to hold his hand, cuddle into his side.

He seemed to want the same thing, as he immediately put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer.

“I’m alright, Doctor, I promise,” she told him softly, angling herself so she could look up at him. “I still built the Dimension Cannon, and found you, and work for Torchwood. I still did all those things, an’ it didn’t hold me back.” She paused. “It hurts sometimes, like now. Bit of an ache. And it’s rubbed a bit. I probably overdid it, with all the runnin’ and the fighting Daleks an’ everything.” She gave him a smile. “But I’m fine.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked quietly, brow furrowed slightly. “When I said goodbye to you on the beach, years ago. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Rose shrugged. “Because it wouldn’t have done any good. I mean, telling you what had happened would’ve just made you feel bad, an’ I’m alright. I mean, I’ve come to terms with it, an’ I knew pretty much immediately that amputation was the only option. So telling you wouldn’t have done anything but upset you.”

The Doctor had no response.

~0~0~

By the time they’d reached London, Jackie had somewhat sheepishly returned to her seat after spending an unreasonable amount of time ‘getting tea’ at the bar. The Doctor and Rose remained sat next to each other, and disembarked the zeppelin hand in hand upon arrival.

Pete was waiting beside a sleek black Lexus to take them back to the mansion, a blonde-haired toddler in his arms who couldn’t be much more than one blinking at them with big brown eyes.

“Doctor,” Pete greeted, holding his hand out to the other man as he drew near.

The Doctor glanced at Pete’s outstretched hand, before glancing at Rose, who nudged him. After a somewhat awkward pause, the Doctor shook the other man’s hand, but said nothing.

Pete shifted awkwardly. “Rose, uh, told you then.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. It was the only possible reason why the Doctor would be acting so cold towards him.

“I did,” Rose agreed quietly, watching as Jackie took her baby brother in her arms, cooing gently to him. “I explained everything, Dad.”

Pete nodded then, watching the other man carefully. “You know I wouldn’t willingly put Rose in danger, Doctor?”

There was another long pause, and the Doctor gave him a hard stare. “I’d hope not.”

Suddenly, Jackie was forcing a big smile, herding everyone towards the car. “You know what I could do with, Pete? A nice hot meal! Feels like ages since I’ve had a hot meal. How does takeaway sound? Doctor? What about Chinese?”

Before any of them really knew what had happened, Jackie had somehow herded them into the car, Tony was strapped into his car seat, and Rose was wedged between her baby brother and the Doctor in the backseat while Jackie and Pete were in the front.

“Don’t you have your own place?” the Doctor whispered to Rose, looking a little desperate.

She gave him a sympathetic smile. “No. I still live with Mum and Dad. Was thinking of maybe getting my own place, but Mum liked me being nearby, what with my leg and all. Even after working on Project Nova and the Dimension Cannon, she preferred me to stay at home.” She paused, glanced over at her little brother, who was babbling to himself in his car seat. “And then I wasn’t expecting to come back here after the Dimension Cannon started up, and, well...” She shrugged, trailing off.

“So I’ve got to spend the night at your parents’ place,” the Doctor murmured, looking a little worried at the thought.

Rose grinned then, the tongue-touched smile reserved only for him. Oh, how he’d missed that smile.

“Afraid so,” she told him softly, stealing a glance at her parents and accidentally catching her mum’s eye in the rear view mirror. The two Tyler women shared a smile. “But if you want, we’ll start looking for somewhere for the two of us, yeah? I get enough working for Torchwood, even when they had me stuck behind a desk.”

“You on a desk job?” the Doctor echoed, smiling for the first time possibly since the beach. “I’d have liked to see that.”

“Oh, shut up!” Rose snorted. “I wasn’t any worse than you’d have been!”

The Doctor tilted his head to the side at that. “Well,” he said after a long moment, “maybe not. But I’d still have liked to see it.”

~0~0~

“I thought I was doing the right thing.”

The Doctor blinked, and looked down at Rose, who was leaning against his chest. Jackie and Pete were upstairs putting Tony to bed, and he and Rose were alone in the sitting room. The telly was on, but neither of them were really watching it, and Rose had instead leaned back against the Doctor’s chest and closed her eyes. She’d taken her prosthetic off after dinner, and the Doctor had assumed she’d fallen asleep. But apparently not.

“By not telling you,” she clarified at his pause. “I thought I was doing the right thing not telling you about the accident. And, I suppose, I didn’t want to admit it. That admitting it to you would be admitting it to myself.”

“But you said you’d come to terms with it,” the Doctor reminded her in confusion. “You said you were alright with it.”

“Yeah,” Rose nodded, “but that doesn’t mean that in my head I wasn’t expecting to return to you and everything be how it was before. And telling you about my leg would mean things would change, and that maybe you’d think I couldn’t travel with you anymore, that I wouldn’t be able to keep up, or that I’d... I dunno, that I’d be a liability.”

The Doctor watched as she picked at a loose thread on her t-shirt rather than look round at him. She didn’t want to see his reaction, he realised. She was scared of what he might say.

“Rose,” he said finally, “I’d never think you’re a liability. And yes, things would change; they’d have to change, at least a bit. But that wouldn’t have meant I wouldn’t want you travelling with me. Besides, you’ve worked for Torchwood, you travelled dimensions. You more than proved yourself.”

She made a small noise, but he couldn’t tell if she was agreeing or not.

“Dad didn’t want me on a field team,” she told him quietly, suddenly. “Was worried I’d get hurt, or that it would be too much and my prosthetic would constantly rub, or something. He only put me on Project Nova because they needed the help. If the stars hadn’t started going out, he’d have left me on my desk job.” She paused. “He wouldn’t even give me the chance to prove I was still capable, that I could still cope and that I could handle being on a field team. By the time I did the first dimension jump, I was terrified. I’d been out of action for so long, an’ I was worried it would all go wrong.”

The Doctor sighed at that, rubbing her arm gently. “You needed to prove your capabilities to yourself, as well as Pete and Jackie,” he said knowingly. “You needed to take the risk, take a leap of faith and see if you were still the same person as you were before.”

Rose nodded, turning her head slightly but still not fully looking at him. “I’m not, though, Doctor. I’m not the same person. The previous me, the old me, wouldn’t have been scared about doing those dimension jumps. I’d have just done it. But every time I landed, I was terrified of where I was, of what might happen. And every time I jumped I had this... This panic that it was going to go wrong, an’ that I was going to get hurt again.”

He pressed a kiss to her cheek. “But you didn’t.”

“No,” she agreed quietly. “But I could have.” She turned fully then, twisting her legs round and beneath her so she could turn and look at him, kneeling on her knees. “Are we actually doing this?”

The Doctor frowned in confusion, a portion of his mind taken up more with concern about whether or not the position she was in was good for her stump or not. She seemed comfortable enough, but he couldn’t be certain her sitting like that was a good idea, and desperately tried to recall distant medical training. A larger portion of his brain eventually latched onto Rose’s words and processed them.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“Us,” Rose told him. “Me and you. Being together. Getting a place together. Being a couple.”

“Oh,” he blinked. “Don’t you want to?” His heart sank.

“I do!” Rose responded quickly, wide-eyed. “I really do! It’s just... I don’t know. If we’re actually doing this, being together and in a relationship, I need to talk to you about my job.”

The Doctor blinked again.

“I don’t know if I want to carry it on. I mean, I love it, don’t get me wrong, but the dimension jumps. They, well, they really scared me. Not the places I ended up, not really, but the actual physical jumps. Actually having to do them scared me.”

“Well, they would,” the Doctor agreed slowly. “You were injured, doing a dimension jump. It’s only reasonable that you’d be anxious about them after that.” He paused, studied her carefully. “But do you really want to give up Torchwood for that reason? You won’t ever have to do another dimension jump again, Rose. Your dimension hopping days are over. And I don’t want you to give up a job you love because of something you won’t ever have to go through again. Being on a field team won’t require you to do anything like that. And if you don’t even want to do field work, then go back to your desk job. If you don’t feel like you can do field work, and you don’t want to do desk work, then I fully support you leaving that job. But don’t quit because of something you never have to do again, alright?”

At some point while he was speaking, he belatedly realised, Rose had begun to cry. But she was smiling too, and looking so relieved, and he realised that it was something that had clearly been weighing heavily on her mind since she’d realised she would remain in Pete’s World. The anxieties had scared her so much about the dimension jumps had clearly left their mark, and they would remain for some time, whether she worked for Torchwood or not. But, hopefully, Rose wouldn’t make any rash decisions solely on those anxieties now that he was with her and more than willing to help.

“I’ll think about it,” she said at last, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve not even said anything to Dad. I mean, I don’t really know what I wanna do, I don’t think. Today’s been... A lot to take in.”

“It has,” the Doctor agreed gently, pulling her closer. “But take your time, and think it through. I’m sure your dad can wait a few days while you make your decision.”

Rose nodded, and twisted back round to sit down again, before letting her head fall back against his chest.

~0~0~

It was quarter to three in the morning and the Doctor couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t that he wasn’t tired, he just couldn’t seem to manage it.

Maybe it was his newly-human body. Maybe it was his still-Time Lord brain, unaccustomed with needing so much rest. Maybe it was everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, still whirring about in his bigger-on-the-inside brain. Being created by Donna, telling Rose how he felt about her on the beach, the zeppelin ride home when Rose had confessed she’d kept a monumental secret from him. The first meeting with Pete after finding out he had (accidentally) caused Rose’s injuries, the tense dinner that had subsequently followed, and Rose’s wide-eyed baby brother staring curiously at him before bursting into tears the moment the Doctor tried to speak to him. Then, the conversation in the sitting room with Rose, where she confessed to being so scared her disability would mean he would no longer see her as the same person, that he might not want her, and that her injuries had changed her. That the dimension jumps she’d performed while searching for him had all been their own unique kind of hell for Rose, still terrified of history repeating itself and her being injured on another jump. Of Rose confessing that the initial jump to Pete’s World just over two years previously had left her questioning if she wanted to work for Torchwood at all.

Lying in bed was doing him no good, so he quietly and carefully extracted himself from Rose’s bed and headed downstairs. Perhaps a glass of water, or cup of tea was needed. Or, worst came to worst, he’d read yesterday’s newspaper.

But when he reached the kitchen, the Doctor found someone else was already there. Sat in the dark room, at the breakfast table, was the silhouette of a man.

“Hello, Doctor,” Pete said in the dark. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No,” the Doctor responded, his newly-human eyes taking a little longer to adjust to the lack of light. But then they did, and he could just make out Pete’s voice as his feet carried him across the room to the table.

Pete gestured for him to pull out a chair, and he did. The two men sat opposite each other, just staring.

“I know you probably hate me right now,” Pete said after a long moment. “And I can’t say I blame you.”

The Doctor said nothing.

“You know I’d have never deliberately endangered Rose’s life, Doctor? I would never have risked her life. But Jackie was distraught, and I’ve seen what those Cybermen can do. You know that. I watched them take my wife, and turn her into one of them. And all I could think was, if your plan failed, if for whatever reason it didn’t work, the same would happen to Rose. And I couldn’t let that happen. So I made a decision, in the heat of the moment, and I didn’t think it through, and Rose was hurt because of it. And I regret that every day, Doctor. But she’s alive. She’s alive, and she’s safe, and she’s been so amazing. She’s worked so hard at everything. At Torchwood, at her physio to get herself back on her feet, at everything.”

The Doctor sniffed, and sat back in his chair. “But you were aware there were risks.”

Pete’s jaw clenched. “Yes. But as I said, I couldn’t just do nothing. Wouldn’t you have done the same, Doctor? If it was a choice between knowingly endangering Rose but ultimately getting her out alive, or doing nothing and seeing her die, wouldn’t you have done the same?”

The Doctor swallowed at that. Pete was unknowingly echoing Rose’s question on the zeppelin the day before, and his answer was the same as he’d told Rose.

But he wouldn’t tell Pete. Not yet.

“I would have had a plan,” he managed through grit teeth. “I wouldn’t have just used a hopper knowing that there were explicit instructions that it could only carry one person. Everyone with you had a hopper- Mickey, Jackie, Jake! Why not take one of theirs?” His voice had risen as he spoke, rising almost to a shout, and he was vaguely aware that he was breathing heavily, the anger building up inside him, but he didn’t care. He wanted Pete’s answers.

“There wasn’t time,” Pete responded, and he was calm. Calculated. “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself the same questions these past two years or so? Don’t you think I’ve gone through every little thing I’d done wrong, every little step I’d taken that resulted in Rose losing a leg? Don’t you think that I’ve thought about all this? About how if I hadn’t panicked so much, I could have grabbed another hopper? That if I’d taken another hopper, I could have grabbed Rose, thrust it into her hands, and pulled us both back across the Void safely? Don’t you think I sometimes lay awake at night and watch Jaqs asleep next to me, wondering how she could possibly love me after I did that to our daughter?” He paused, looked away for a moment, before looking back and meeting the Doctor’s eyes. “There’s nothing you can say to me that I haven’t already thought of, Doctor. And I’m not surprised that you hate me for the choices I made. Sometimes I hate me too.”

There was a heavy silence then, the two men at some sort of stalemate, and eventually the Doctor got to his feet. There was nothing more to say. Everything that could be said had been said, and anything else would just have them going round in circles.

But as he reached the kitchen door, the Doctor realised that there was one last thing left to be said, one that Pete had possibly heard before, from Jackie, and Rose, and Mickey, and Jake. But not from him. And he had a feeling that Pete needed to hear it from him.

“Pete?”

The other man looked up. “Yes?”

“Is it the stories?” he questioned, still watching her in concern. “I just thought it’d pass the time, you know. We’ve still got a few hours till we reach London, and, well...” He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “I don’t have to talk if you don’t want me to.”

Rose sighed a little at that, and sat forward in her chair. “It’s not that, Doctor,” she told him, and her eyes were on their conjoined hands rather than his face. “Honestly, I’ve loved hearing about stuff you got up to. An’ I’m glad you had Martha and Donna to keep you company... It’s just, hearing you talk about what happened to you while I was gone made me realise, there’s a lot I need to catch you up on too.”

The Doctor nodded in understanding then. “It’s been a long day,” he said suddenly, though his voice was still soft. “Whatever you want to tell me, it can wait. It can wait till we’re back in London, or until tomorrow, or even next week. I’m not going anywhere, Rose.”

She gave him a soft smile then, looking relieved. He beamed back.

“Go on,” he told her softly, lifting her hand to press a soft kiss to her knuckles before letting her go, “get some sleep.”

~0~0~

Once in London, the Doctor and Rose made the decision to go straight to Rose’s posh apartment rather than heading to the Tyler Mansion, although Jackie made them swear that they would go round to the mansion the next day. They hailed a cab outside the zeppelin port, earning themselves some odd looks from the taxi driver when they explained they had no luggage (the cabbie looked even more perplexed as he seemed to recognise Rose, and she quickly tugged the Doctor into the back of the cab to avoid awkward questions).

Rose’s apartment was actually a modern-build in an old converted factory in east London. Close enough to Canary Wharf for Torchwood work but not too close, and distanced from the hustle and bustle of central London. The interior of the flat was decorated tastefully, although sparsely.

“Wasn’t expecting to still be here,” Rose admitted sheepishly once she’d let the Doctor into the apartment and he’d had a few minutes to look around. “Suppose we’ll have to think about redecorating now.”

The Doctor couldn’t help but beam at that. She’d said ‘we’.  Rose grinned back at him.

“Look at you,” she teased as she padded, barefoot to the kitchen-diner, “going all domestic!”

He knew she was teasing him, so didn’t dignify it with a response. Instead, he followed her through to the kitchen-diner and sat at the kitchen island while she made tea.

“So,” Rose spoke up while the kettle boiled, “from what you were saying earlier, sounds like you and Martha were travelling together for a while.”

“A few months,” the Doctor responded, suddenly becoming much more interested in her fruit bowl.

Rose frowned. “Only a few months?” she asked in confusion.

He shrugged. “More or less. It’s... Complicated,” he admitted slowly. “There was this... Thing. We lived through an entire year before it was reversed, so while I remember it, I’m not really sure it counted.”

Suddenly, Rose was beside his barstool, hands on his face as she gently encouraged him to face her. “Want to talk about it?” she asked gently.

The Doctor sniffed. “Nah,” he dismissed. “Not now. I’ll tell you about it, but not tonight. It’s... It’s sort of a long story.”

Rose nodded, but didn’t look convinced.

“Anyway, Rose Tyler, what about you?” he asked, forcing a sudden grin. “How is it being the Vitex Heiress?”

At that, Rose rolled her eyes. She crossed back to the kettle and finished off making the tea, her back to the Doctor even as she responded to his question.

“I suppose it’s not too bad most of the time,” she admitted slowly. “I mean, I have to attend posh parties sometimes, and Vitex events, but they’re not too often. And of course, there are incidents like the taxi driver earlier.” She glanced over her shoulder at him then. “But it’s not too bad.” She fished the tea bags out of the mugs and crossed over to the kitchen island, taking a seat beside the Doctor. “I mean, the worst thing is if and when magazines and that run articles on me. You know the sort, they get one photo of me while I’m out shopping and somehow it’s news.”

The Doctor’s brow furrowed at that. “They’ve not been hounding you, have they?”

Rose shook her head. “Like I said, it’s not too bad. But every now and then they’ll write an article about how I don’t seem to be seeing anyone, or why don’t I have a boyfriend. Or, worse, they catch a glimpse of me out with Jake, or Mickey, or someone from Torchwood and then start rumours that we’re dating.”

The Doctor blinked at her then. “And are you telling me that in, what, four years of being in Pete’s World you’ve not been on a single date?”

Rose flushed a little then, and studied her mug intently. The Doctor smirked a little. While he wasn’t too sure how he felt about Rose dating other men, clearly none of them had stuck around and thus weren’t a threat. And also, he had always liked it when she got embarrassed.

“A few,” she admitted. “But most were set up by Mum. She only set me up with about three people though, and when they didn’t work out, she left me alone. She understood what I was going through, I suppose, with her losing Dad- I mean, my original Dad-, so she didn’t push after that. An’ all the people she set me up with were nice enough, and they were, like, sons of Dad’s friends for years, but it just didn’t work out.” She paused. “Then there were two others, both from Torchwood. But that didn’t exactly work out either.”

“How long ago?” the Doctor asked, and he surprised even himself with that- he wasn’t jealous, he was just concerned. While it was clear Rose hadn’t wanted to be with anyone other than him, there was a hint of loneliness in her tone.

“The last one was nearly two and a half years ago,” Rose admitted softly. “The first three were all in the first year, and then the two from Torchwood were soon after.”

“And did any of the relationships last very long?” the Doctor asked, and yes, he did sound a little jealous then.

“Never got past a second date,” Rose told him, shaking her head. “The three that Mum set me up with never got past the first date. The only one I felt particularly drawn to was-”

She trailed off suddenly, ducked her head once more, and flushed. The Doctor frowned.

“Rose?”

She bit her lip, met his gaze hesitantly. “Promise me you won’t, I dunno, freak out or something?” she asked, her voice small.

“Promise,” he said, though his voice wavered.

“Ok.” She took a breath. “The last person I, well, went on any dates with, was a colleague from Torchwood. Her name was Tara.”

The Doctor blinked.

“I dated a girl, Doctor. I’m, well, I guess I’m bisexual.”

The Doctor blinked again. “Oh,” he said after a moment. “Ok.”

Then, Rose blinked. “Is that it?” she asked him, and she actually sort of sounded relieved.

He shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked her. “It doesn’t change who you are, Rose. And clearly you still love me, so... Why did you think I’d freak out?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I dunno,” she sighed. “It’s just, it took Mum and Dad a while to get their heads around it, and Mickey, too. I mean, they were supportive and everything, just... They still had to process it, you know? And I just assumed it would be the same with you, that you’d need a day or two to process the information.”

The Doctor just smiled and tapped the side of his head. “Still Time Lord up here, Rose. 900 years of time and space, and you being bisexual isn’t remotely a problem.”

Rose nodded mutely at that, staring at him. “I feel silly now,” she admitted slowly. “After all that panicking on the zeppelin back, and you’re not remotely bothered-”

“Wait, that’s why you kept fidgeting?” the Doctor asked, perplexed.

She nodded, biting her lip. “Well, yeah. You were tellin’ me all this stuff that had happened to you, an’ I realised we both had a lot of stuff to catch each other up on, and my dating Tara was one of them. I mean, we never got past a second date, ‘cause Tara could see that my heart wasn’t really in it, but we’re still friends, and I wanted to tell you before you found out from someone else. Like Jake, or Mum and Dad, or someone from Torchwood, an’ I just started panicking. ‘Cause I knew I had to tell you, an’ soon, but I didn’t know how. I mean, I never even realised I was bisexual before Tara asked me out, you know? Sure, Shareen and Keisha and I used to mess about rating girls at school and stuff, and I found some of them attractive, but I never really thought anything of it-”

Suddenly, her mug was pulled from her grasp and set on the kitchen worktop, then the Doctor’s hands were on her shoulders.

“Rose, calm down. It’s fine, ok? It’s all fine. Like I said, it doesn’t change who you are, and it certainly doesn’t change how I feel about you. You’re still Rose Tyler, ok?”

Rose nodded meekly at that, staring at him wide-eyed. Once she’d calmed down enough, she finished off her tea, and then the Doctor took her mug from her to put it with hers in the sink.

“I’ll deal with them in the morning,” he told her. “It’s getting late.” Indeed, the sky out of the kitchen windows was already a dark blue, punctuated by the street lights outside. “And I think that’s enough catching up for tonight. How about we get to bed?”

The twins seemed more than placated by that, and within a few minutes, they were rushing off to begin planning the designs for their rocket ships. The Doctor watched them go, and straightened with a sigh.

“You’re not upset, are you?” he asked quietly as he crossed to Rose’s side.

She gave him a soft smile. “A little,” she admitted softly after a moment. “I know it was my decision to continue working after the twins were born, and I know you wanted to be at home with them. And I wouldn’t change this for the world. What we’ve got- you being a stay-at-home dad and me working at Torchwood-, it works for us. And I know the twins love me. It’s just hard, when they say they’d want me to go away on a business trip rather than you.”

The Doctor smiled gently at that, and hugged her close. “I know. And it’s my own fault, really. They’re not used to me not being around. But I bet, once I leave the house tomorrow morning, they wouldn’t trade you for anything. I know I wouldn’t.”

Rose smiled against his chest.

~0~0~

The next morning, the twins were less than calm. They’d been up since six am, and by the time Jake arrived to collect the Doctor at half nine, Rose felt like she’d been through the ringer. Toys were strewn across the sitting room and out into the kitchen diner, neither child had quite finished their breakfast, apple juice had been spilt across the kitchen floor leaving it sticky underfoot. And somehow, Olyesti had got into Rose’s makeup that morning and had used her very expensive lipstick as eye shadow.

“Been playing with Mummy’s makeup, Oly?” Jake noted with a grin as he stepped into the house.

The little girl nodded sagely, her blonde pigtails bobbing as she did so. “I look just like Mummy,” she told him seriously.

Jake stifled a laugh at that and Rose glared at him. The Doctor arrived downstairs then, suitcase packed and a tired smile on his face.

“Right,” he told the twins, dropping to his knees for a cuddle, “you two be good for Mummy, and I’ll be back Monday.”

He hugged and kissed the pair of them in turn then, first Arcadia, then Olyesti, taking a moment to bury his nose in their blonde hair and just breathe them in. He eventually let them go, and the pair of them scampered off to carry on playing, not noticing the dampness in their daddy’s eyes. He took a deep breath, straightened, and drew Rose in for a hug.

“We’ll be fine,” she told him gently. “I’ll phone you every evening. I’ve got a few days off work, and me and the kids will find something to do. I’m actually kinda looking forward to it, spending time just me and the kids. I’ll miss you, of course, but it’ll be nice for me to do something with the twins, like you do every day.”

He nodded, and instead of responding, ducked down for a kiss.

And then, there was a shattering noise from the kitchen. Abruptly, the Doctor and Rose pulled away.

“What are you two up to?” the Doctor called warily.

They got no response, but the twins suddenly scampered past them to run upstairs.

“Arc?” Rose asked her son slowly. “What was that noise?”

“It was Oly,” he said quickly, and ran off upstairs as his sister complained after him.

The Doctor and Rose watched them go.

“Still looking forward to it?” the Doctor asked suddenly with a smirk.

Rose watched him carefully, still clinging to his shirt-front. “Just... Promise me you’ll come back safe, Doctor.”

He kissed her again, before pulling away. “I will,” he promised, and picked up his suitcase.

He and Jake headed to the door then, Rose following to wave them off. The Doctor had just stepped out of the house when there was a crash from upstairs. Jake snickered and the Doctor quirked his eyebrow.

“Promise you’ll come back safe, Doctor,” Rose said again, pulling him in for one last peck on the lips. She pulled away and met his eyes. “Because you’re sure as hell not leaving me alone with these kids for more than five days.”

The Doctor grinned, kissed her on the nose, and walked away towards Jake’s car.

~0~0~

Surprisingly, the first day without the Doctor around didn’t go too badly. Despite the broken plate in the kitchen, and the bookcase the twins managed to topple in the study, they managed to have a somewhat enjoyable day. The weather wasn’t too great, so they ended up staying in and Rose taught them how to make rocket ships from the old washing up liquid bottles like she’d promised.

They had lunch while the papier mache dried off, and spent the afternoon painting the rockets and getting paint pretty much everywhere. Rose had saved much of the kitchen worktop by putting old newspapers down, but hadn’t taken into account that her kids would get paint everywhere. Once the rockets had been painted and were drying on top of the newspaper-covered kitchen island, Rose surveyed her two three year olds warily.

“Time for a bath before dinner, I think,” she told them as she took in their paint-covered appearance.

Thanking her lucky stars that they had a big bathtub in their (frankly too big) bathroom, Rose saved time by dumping both children into the bath together. Not that they minded in the slightest. Arcadia and Olyesti happily played with their bath toys while Rose scrubbed their skin and washed their hair, trying to get any and all traces of paint off them.

“How did you get paint behind your ear?” Rose mumbled to her daughter as she started on the girl’s long blonde locks.

The girl just shrugged; too engrossed in the game she was playing with her twin brother. So Rose scrubbed diligently at her daughter’s hair, getting all traces of neon green and bright pink paint from the girl’s hair, and listened with a small smile as her two children chattered and played.

Apparently, the game of the week involved aliens. Really, she supposed she shouldn’t expect anything else from hers and the Doctor’s kids.

This was the sort of thing she missed, Rose mused, when she was working late at Torchwood filling out paperwork, or out in the field on a case. And just like she’d told the Doctor yesterday, she wouldn’t change it for the world; she couldn’t not work, couldn’t stay at home all day even with the children, but the Doctor relished it because he’d never expected to get a human life, or another family. The Doctor adored their two children, he loved being a stay-at-home dad and looking after them, and he fully supported Rose’s need to work. But she missed things like this, bath time with her two children, and doing arts and crafts with them, and just generally spending time with them.

The game had descended into growling and thrashing and splashing then, as Rose finally managed to scrub both children clean of paint.

“How about pizza for dinner?” Rose asked with a grin as she pulled the plug to drain the bathwater.

“Can we?” Olyesti asked, wide-eyed and excited.

“Mmm,” Rose hummed happily, “as a treat. And maybe, maybe if you two get out the bath and get dressed nicely for me, we can have it on the sofa during a movie.”

The children’s eyes widened excitedly at that, and half an hour later they were on the sofa eating pizza in front of a Pixar film.

~0~0~

The second day started with both children crawling into her bed at just gone half past six.

“What are we doing today?” Arcadia asked even as Rose tried to burrow back beneath the duvet.

Rose squinted at her little boy. “What do you two want to do.”

“Park?” Olyesti suggested as she crawled over to snuggle up beside her mum.

“We can go to the park,” Rose agreed, “but only if the weather’s nice.”

The weather was nice, so Rose took the twins to the park. They had ice creams, even though it wasn’t particularly warm enough for it, and the kids spent ages playing in the play park while Rose watched from a bench. She’d called the Doctor last night; let the twins take turns telling him about the rocket ships they’d made and had even sent him a photo. It had been strange, once the kids were in bed, having no one there to talk to, and Rose had even been tempted to call her mum but she’d stuck it out. It was only a few days, and then the Doctor would be back. Was this how the Doctor had felt, all those times she’d gone away overnight for Torchwood work? Rose hoped not.

“Mummy,” Arcadia asked on the way home, “can we have pizza again tonight?”

“No, sweetheart,” Rose responded calmly, “that was just a treat for yesterday, remember?”

They were halfway home from the park, in a busy London street with people hurrying past them in all directions. Rose watched, faintly amused then, as her three year old son pouted at her, brow furrowed in a scowl beneath his blonde hair.

“I want pizza!”

“Arcadia,” Rose told him, coming to a stop in the middle of the pavement and crouching beside her son, being sure to keep hold of Olyesti at the same time, “we’re not having pizza again tonight, we’re having something different.”

The boy stamped his foot. Rose raised an eyebrow.

“Do you need to go in timeout when we get home?” she asked.

He glared, but said nothing.

“You can’t live off pizza, sweetheart,” Rose continued as her little boy folded his arms across his chest. Her mum always said he was the spit of her when he did that. “So we’re going to go home and choose something else for dinner- not pizza, but something else you and Olyesti would like.”

“Can we have pasta?” Olyesti piped up from beside Rose.

Rose opened her mouth to respond, but Arcadia was already bellowing in protest.

“I don’t want that!”

“But I do!” Olyesti argued back. “Mummy, please!”

Rose was torn then. With both children protesting and stamping their feet she didn’t really know what to do. While she’d been on her own with the twins plenty of times before, of course, usually the Doctor was just waiting at home for them. This time, even when she managed to get them home she’d have no one there to help her. No back-up.

“You both need to calm down,” she told them with a calm she didn’t feel. Thank god for Torchwood field training. “Like I said, we’re going to go home and we’re going to choose something we all want for dinner, alright?”

She ended up having to carry both twins home as they wriggled and bellowed in her arms. By the time they’d both served their three minutes’ timeout (and that was a miracle in itself), they had both tired themselves out so Rose snuggled up with them on the sofa.

“When’s Daddy coming home?” Olyesti asked tiredly from where she was snuggled into her mum’s side.

“Another few days yet sweetheart,” Rose told her, pressing a kiss to her brow.

By the time dinner rolled around, the one thing they could all agree on was chips.

~0~0~

The third day was Saturday, and so Rose took the twins to her parents’ mansion for the promised barbecue. The weather was bright enough and warm enough that the twins and Tony could play in the garden, while Rose and Jackie sat at the patio table and watched Pete set up the barbecue.

“How are you finding it?” Jackie asked her daughter after a long while. “First time without the Doctor around since before you had the twins.”

“I think yesterday was a disaster,” Rose grimaced. “The kids had a meltdown on the way home from the park about what they’d have for dinner.” She sighed. “I managed to get them home and give them a timeout, but... I’ve never had to do that before, Mum. Not with knowing that it’s going to be more than a few hours before the Doctor gets home. Usually when I’ve got the kids on my own for the day, he’s at least home by evening, and if the twins are still being difficult we can deal with them together. But yesterday...”

“You had no back-up,” Jackie said knowingly.

Rose said nothing, and stared out across the garden to where the twins were chasing each other.

“Am I a bad mum?”

Jackie blinked, and looked over at her daughter. “Why would you say that, sweetheart?” Jackie asked. “Just look at the twins- do they look like you’ve not done a good job of raising them? Do they look like they’re unhappy?”

Rose focused her gaze on her glass of lemonade. “That’s the Doctor’s doing, not mine.”

“Parenting’s a team effort, Rose,” her mum responded gently. “Both you and the Doctor put everything into raising those two kids, and they love you to bits.”

Rose swallowed. “But yesterday-”

“Yesterday you had a bad day,” Jackie interrupted. “We all have them.” She let out a weak chuckle. “If you knew how many times when you were growing up that I had days like you did yesterday, thinking I was a terrible mum, thinking I was failing you-”

“You didn’t, Mum,” Rose broke in, head shooting up to meet Jackie’s gaze.

Jackie smiled back gently. “And that’s my point. I still have days like that with your brother, even with your dad here to help. But then I look at you, and I see how you are with the twins, and I decide that I can’t have done that bad a job raising you.”

Pete appeared then, taking a seat at the table. “I’ll just let the barbecue heat up, then I’ll get started on dinner,” he told them. “What were you two talking about.”

Rose flushed red and said nothing, but Jackie clearly had no qualms about sharing their discussion with him.

“Rose is worried because she thinks she’s a bad mum,” Jackie told him. “Which she’s not.” The last was said pointedly to Rose, who focused her gaze once more on her kids rather than look at her mum.

“Finding it difficult without the Doctor around?” Pete asked knowingly.

Rose hummed softly in agreement. “Something like that,” she admitted. “I just constantly feel like my being at work all the time means I don’t know how to be a good mum. I mean, the Doctor makes it look so easy when he’s with them, an’ I’ve never heard him complain they’ve played up for him when I’ve been away on work. Yet less than two days after he goes away they’ve already both had tantrums. In public.”

At that, Jackie and Pete shared a look.

“What?” Rose asked, frowning in confusion.

“That doesn’t make you a bad mum, Rose,” Pete told his daughter gently. “And I think you’ll find the Doctor can find it just as difficult when you’re away.”

She blinked. “He’s never said anything,” Rose told them. “How would you know.”

Again, Jackie and Pete shared a look. “He phones sometimes,” Jackie admitted after several moments, “when you’re away for work. He loves the kids to bits, but when you’re not around he doesn’t really have any other adults to talk to.”

“So he phones you,” Rose stated, torn between being baffled and amused that the Doctor phoned her mother for chats.

Jackie shrugged. “Yeah,” she nodded as Pete got up to return to the barbecue. “Like I said, without you around he doesn’t really have any other adult to talk to when he’s at home. And he finds it difficult when the twins act up. Not even your Doctor can be in two places at once.

Rose turned her gaze back to the twins across the garden.

~0~0~

That night, she phoned the Doctor twice. Once at the usual time for the twins to tell him about their day, and once after she’s read the kids a bedtime story and put them down for the night.

“Two phone calls in one night,” the Doctor teased when he answered her second call. “Aren’t I lucky?”

“Damn right you are,” Rose responded, feeling her lips quirking up into a smirk. “I talked to Mum and Dad today.”

“Well, you would. You were at their place.”

“Yeah,” Rose nodded even though he couldn’t see her. “I was... I was worried, because of yesterday. The whole tantrum thing. Thought maybe me struggling with the twins after only two days on my own with them meant I was a bad mum.”

“Oh, Rose,” he sighed from the other end of the phone. “It doesn’t make you a bad mum. You’re a fantastic mum. Our kids couldn’t have a better mum.”

Rose said nothing, and instead curled up a little tighter on the sofa.

“Even I have bad days with them, Rose,” he told her calmly. “Days when you’re away for a Torchwood mission and nothing I do seems to be right for the kids. Days when they won’t listen to me, when Arcadia constantly asks when you’ll be home, when Olyesti cries because she wanted you to read her a bedtime story and I’m not doing the voices right... Believe me when I say I completely understand, Rose. But it doesn’t make you a bad mum.”

“But-” she began, but was cut off abruptly.

“If I said there were days when I thought I was a bad dad, what would you say?”

Rose blinked. “But you’re a great dad,” she tells him, and the confusion is there in her voice.

“Sometimes I don’t feel like it, though.”

There’s a pause then, a silence that hangs between them.

“Mum says you phone her sometimes when I’m away,” Rose admitted after a long while.

“Yeah,” he replied, and there’s no embarrassment in his tone. “Sometimes I want to talk to another adult, and particularly if the day’s been bad... If I’m feeling how you probably felt last night, I don’t want to call you and burden you with that. But your mum understands.”

“That’s why I didn’t say last night,” Rose told him carefully. “I thought you’d panic, or somethin’. I didn’t want to make you worry.”

“Rose Tyler, I never worry when our kids are with you,” he told her, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “They’re in the safest of hands.”

~0~0~

Day four was filled with heavy rain, so Rose once more kept the twins inside. They played with Lego, did more painting (and more scrubbing and playing in the bath), baked some cupcakes and watched films.

Rose read the children a bedtime story, the two of them in their pyjamas as they cuddled up on her lap and she read aloud from a brightly-coloured book. They dozed off on her too, and it was too sweet an opportunity to miss, so Rose snapped a quick photo and sent it off to the Doctor before taking the kids up to bed.

Jackie phoned after that, enquiring how the day had gone, wanting to know how Rose was feeling and whether she’d spoken to the Doctor at all.

“Yeah, we talked,” Rose admitted, her phone in one hand and a bottle of lager in the other. “An’ I feel better now. Doesn’t change the fact I felt so lost, but findin’ out the Doctor feels the same too sometimes helped a bit.”

She told her mum about the day then, about how she and the kids had done some baking and painting and playing. And before she knew it, it was almost eleven at night and Jackie was talking about turning in for the night.

The bed still felt strangely empty without the Doctor there to share it with her, so when Arcadia woke at just gone two, crying from a nightmare and consequently waking his sister, Rose bundled both children into bed with her.

~0~0~

Day five dawned bright and damp, and somehow the children were both still awake at gone seven. Rose used that to her advantage to cuddle up with her kids a little more before the day started and they were jumping around.

But she must have dozed off, because not long later she could swear she could hear the Doctor’s voice talking in hushed tones.

“Don’t wake Mummy.”

There was giggling then, and scampering feet, and Rose cracked open an eye to check on the twins. The bed was empty, but there was a warm weight at the end of the bed.

“Arc?” Rose called out, her voice croaky with sleep. “Oly? What’re you two up to?”

More giggling, and with a sigh Rose hauled herself into a sitting position. The kids were sat on the end of the bed, playing with bits of Lego and doing drawings. And sitting in between them, cross-legged and grinning, was the Doctor.

“Hello, love.”

Rose blinked. “I thought you wouldn’t be back until this afternoon?” she managed after a long moment.

He shrugged. “Jake and the team no longer needed me around, so I got an early flight back, and got a taxi from the airport.”

“Bit of a surprise,” Rose said as Olyesti thrust a drawing at her.

“Good surprise or bad surprise?” the Doctor asked, a little nervously.

Rose grinned. “Oh, definitely good surprise!”

He grinned back. “The kids have been telling me what’s been happening while I was away, haven’t you?” Arcadia and Olyesti nodded happily. “And they’ve been telling me about all the fun they’ve had.”

“Yeah!” Olyesti shouted, grinning from ear to ear.

“Bet you hardly missed me,” the Doctor teased.

The twins shared a look. “Well,” Arcadia admitted after a while, “we were busy, Daddy, having loads of fun with Mummy.”

“Oh, I see,” the Doctor told them, mock-affronted. “You were so busy having fun with Mummy that you didn’t have time to miss me, did you?” He turned to Rose. “You missed me, didn’t you?”

Rose grinned at him, and glanced at the kids. “Eh,” she shrugged teasingly after a moment, “maybe a little.”

“Only a little?” the Doctor echoed. “I’ve been gone nearly five days and you only missed me a little? What can I do to make you say otherwise?”

Between them, the twins were giggling, and Rose smirked at the Doctor.

“Oh, I dunno,” she told him. “You’re gonna have to do something pretty spectacular. Me and the kids have been having tonnes of fun without you. We’ve had a great time.”

The Doctor grinned back, before leaning across the bed and kissing her gently on the lips.

“How about,” he said quietly as he pulled away, “I cook us all breakfast? How does a full English sound?”

Rose grinned as the twins cheered excitedly and bounded off the bed.

“Now you’re talking!” Rose beamed at him.