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Jack checked his vortex manipulator for what had to be the twelfth time in the last hour. He kept hoping to find an explanation for why there were zeppelins in the sky over Cardiff.
He’d put off returning here for as long as possible. Cardiff bore too many memories; memories of Tosh and Owen, and of course Ianto. And Stephen. The thought of either of them still made him want to jump on the next passing space ship and get out of dodge again, but he’d run for as long as he could. And he had a feeling that the Doctor wasn’t going to be around as much anymore, after his last mysterious visit, to play matchmaker with Alonzo.
He had gone back to the site of the Torchwood hub to see if there was anything worth salvaging out of the wreckage, but his search had proved fruitless. He’d found one gadget still intact, having been kept in the archive boxes, but he’d had to get out quickly after that because part of what was left of the wreckage was teetering precariously above him, and fell shortly after he left. He tried the gadget as he exited the building, towards the water, but nothing happened when he turned the switch except for a low buzzing noise and a flash of light.
Now he was starting to think maybe something had happened, after all. It wasn’t just the zeppelins, there were subtle differences everywhere. The street names were different, the restaurants and shops had slightly different names and there were memorials to people he’d never heard of.
Whatever was different, his vortex manipulator wasn’t picking up on it, and that worried him. He had a feeling that whatever the gadget he’d found had done, it had somehow sent him through the rift. And if he’d been transported to a different time or planet, the vortex manipulator would have picked up on it.
"Alternate universe. That’s just great…" he muttered, kicking a rock on the sidewalk as he walked past a cemetery full of nothing but mausoleums. He found himself compelled to enter, noting that it looked oddly like the old cemeteries in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He knew this cemetery from his own universe. Because Tosh and Ianto were buried there. And it certainly had never looked like this.
He wandered aimlessly, gazing at the tombs as he passed, until he turned a corner and found a clearing. Across the clearing was a very large mausoleum, ornately carved with stone flowers and the name “Tyler.” It was surrounded by a well kept garden with a sitting area, in which sat a lone person. A young woman, with light blonde hair, gazing down at a placard upon which a bouquet of flowers was resting.
He considered walking away, but something about her looked familiar. He couldn’t see her face from where he was, so he approached, taking the path around the clearing so he approached her from the side. As he got closer, his heart rate increased. It looked like….
"Rose?" he said, before he could stop himself. He mentally kicked himself. Alternate universe, what were the chances that it could be hers?
She looked up, quickly wiping her eyes and looking fearful before she recognized him. “Jack?” she asked, incredulously, getting up to approach him.
"It’s me." he said, grinning, as he picked up his pace to meet her halfway and engulf her in a hug.
"Oh, Jack! What are you doing here?" she said, pulling back slightly.
"Well, when did you last see me?" he asked, fearing their timelines might be off.
"When the Doctor dropped you off with Martha and Mickey. You?"
"Same! Funny story, they ended up getting married."
"What? Wow. Good for him. For both of them, I mean. But that doesn’t answer my question."
"I wanted to make sure we were in synch, first. Wanted to make sure that had already happened for you. As for your question, I don’t really know. I was in my Cardiff, and I think I got pulled through the rift and ended up in Zeppelin City, here. Glad I did, though. You look like you could use some company."
"You have no idea." she muttered, tucking her face into his shoulder.
He wrapped his arms around her, taking in the mausoleum again. “So, you wanna talk about it?”
"Yeah, but not here. Can we go somewhere else?"
"Lead the way." he said, taking her hand.
She gave the placard one last look. Jack could see that it read ‘Jacqueline Tyler’ with a set of years engraved below it, before she pulled him away. “Come on, we can go back to my flat.”
***
Rose’s flat was at the top of a posh building, taking up the entire floor. It was well decorated, but didn’t look like she lived in it.
"Can I get you anything?" she asked, setting her keys in a bowl by the door.
"Think I could use a drink, if you’ve got anything."
"Yeah, come on."
She led him to a sitting room, with plush sofas and a stone fireplace. She gestured for him to sit before walking to a cabinet in the back and pouring them each a glass of what looked like whiskey. She sat next to him and handed him the drink.
"So….where do we start?" she asked, giving a tired laugh.
"Well, what happened after the Doctor left us? I’ve seen him since then, but you weren’t with him so I assumed you’d come back here with your mum."
"Yeah, well, didn’t have much of a choice in that. He brought us all back here, and told me I needed to stay with the other Doctor. Made some argument about him needing to be taken care of, as if John would ever have hurt anyone. It was a bloody excuse to get me to leave him and stay with my family, and with John, the life he thought I should have. Didn’t get much of a say in the matter. He left without saying goodbye, without ever having a proper conversation with me, without even checking to see if I…nevermind. He did the right thing, of course. For the most part. But he was always doing that, always sending me away to what he thought was best for me, without consulting me."
"So where is….John, was he called?"
"Yeah. John. It was one of the names he used to go by back in the other universe. But he’s gone now."
"Gone? What, he left you?" Jack replied, growing angry.
"No, well yes. In a sense. But he didn’t want to. He died, several years ago now."
"Oh…"
"Yeah. There were a lot of alien attacks, a string of them, one after the other. It wouldn’t stop, for years. We couldn’t figure out what was drawing them here. Well, we hadn’t figured it out yet. I mean, I hadn’t figured it out yet. We were working for Torchwood, our Torchwood, and we were on a mission in Scotland. One of them, he never did say what it was called, anyway one of them scratched him. Just a small thing, no bigger than a coin really. But it was poisonous. Kept saying if we could get to Bag’ryn we could get the antidote. Just a small fruit they have would have fixed him. But of course Bag’ryn’s in a different galaxy and we were pretty well stuck on Earth."
She took a long sip of her drink, nearly draining it. “I didn’t know what to do. He insisted he’d be fine to come back here, but he could hardly walk by the time I’d managed to neutralize the threat. So we ended up in a small cottage I was able to rent. He said not to bother with a hospital, it would only confuse them and he’d die anyway and he’d rather spend his time there, with me. So that’s what we did. It was a slow acting poison, made him sick more than anything at first. Was like he was constantly getting sick. But he had his good days. And we spent about three weeks there, together. He died in his sleep.” She finished her drink. “Mind you, he was 56 when he died. So we got about twenty years together.”
Jack nearly spit out his drink. “What?”
"Oh yeah, didn’t I say? I’m about 73 years old, give or take. Time traveling does that. Don’t I look good?"
"But how is that possible?"
"How are you possible, Jack?" she asked quietly. "We never did get to have this conversation the last time I saw you. But I saw you die on that ship, and then there you were alive again. Guessing that’s not an ability you had when we traveled together, or you wouldn’t have been so happy to see us when we rescued you from that bomb."
He shifted, uncomfortable with having to explain it to her.
"Don’t worry. John explained it to me. And I’m really sorry, Jack." she said, dropping her head into her hand.
"I don’t blame you, Rose. I’ve never been angry with you about it. Angry with him, yes. But never with you."
"Angry with him? But I was the one who…"
"Yes," he interrupted, "but he was the one who chose to leave me there."
"What? He never told me that…I just assumed he’d thought you were dead…oh my god, Jack!"
Jack laughed. “Kinda figured he wouldn’t tell you. And that’s okay. I waited a long time to get my answers, but eventually I did, and I accepted it and I was able to move on. But what about you? Did the same thing happen to you?”
She sighed, getting up to refill her drink. “We don’t really know exactly what happened to me. I’ve never died and come back, like you, and neither one of us felt like testing it. But around my 28th birthday we were starting to notice that I hadn’t aged at all. Mum made a joke about it, which I laughed off until I got home and took a good look in the mirror. Which wasn’t too big of a deal. John was aging, but his body was older than mine…in a sense? Anyway, it wasn’t until after my 30th birthday that we started to get concerned. John had his sonic, and the equipment at Torchwood, and checked me over. My cells were constantly regenerating themselves, a bit like those nanogenes you had in World War 2, remember? Basically they were re-writing themselves over and over again to match what they remembered from when I first changed. Well, that was my take on it. His was a lot more complex and difficult to understand, but you know how he is. Anyway, it meant I couldn’t age. Or get injured. Or have children. Basically, John thought that when I’d merged with the Tardis, she’d re-written my DNA to help me stay with the Doctor longer. And God, did he ever brood over that. Honestly, he was angrier than I was at his other self. I got to have him, but he thought I’d gotten the raw end of the deal. And maybe he was right, but I wouldn’t trade that time with him for anything. We were really, properly happy. Every day. I’d never want to give that up.”
She had sat down next to him again, and didn’t continue.
"Rose, I’m so sorry."
"For what?"
"That you’ve been alone, that you’ve had to go through all of this."
"Yeah, but I wasn’t alone. I mean, I am now. But I still had Mum. And Pete, and Tony. For a while, anyway. Pete died first, heart attack. That was about ten years ago. Mum, well that was about a month ago. She didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave me. But, well, you can’t hold out forever and she was 96. Tony’s still around. We’re a bit estranged, he hates that he has a sister that looks like his daughter. I know he loves me, but it’s hard. I get that. But he’s happy. Got a wife, three kids and a granddaughter on the way."
"And what about you?"
"Well, I’ve got my work. I have to do a lot of it on my own, but I’m still contracted with Torchwood. The contract gets renewed under a different alias every ten years or so. Pete wrote that in a long time ago. And it’s not exactly the life I’d imagined for myself, but it’s something. Saving the world. Bit easier now that we figured out what was causing the alien attacks."
"What was it?"
"Well, you see, this universe never had a Rose Tyler. Or a Doctor. And it set it off balance when we came here. It got worse as time went on, like a big shining beacon across the galaxy, leading them here. It got better, after he died. Like it was dimmed, but not gone. I managed to interrogate one of the ones that spoke English, he said it was the energy of the other universe. Specifically the energy of time, of the vortex from the other universe. I’m the only one left who’s got it, but thankfully we were able to cloak it with this ring." she showed him the ring on her wedding finger. "They were able to implant a cloaking device in my wedding ring, so I’m not sending out anymore signals to the universe. Things have been a lot quieter since then. Bit too quiet for my taste, but it means things are safe and that’s what’s important."
"Yeah." he smiled, sadly. "So what are you gonna do now?"
"I dunno. Same old. Work for Torchwood. Sort out disturbances in time and space The usual. Speaking of which, we really need to figure out if we can get you home. Should probably take you into the office, as much as I hate going there. They have the good equipment."
"I don’t know if that’s going to be necessary. I found this," he said, pulling the device out of his pocket, "back at my old hub. That’s where I was when I went through the rift. I think this is what sent me here and I think it might be able to get me back. And I think, that is if you want to, it could probably take you with me. If you wanted to go back. We’re a bit out of synch, time wise. You’d be going back to 2010. I think this universe runs a lot faster than ours. But, if you want to go back…" he trailed off, watching her.
"I…I dunno. I mean, what have I got to go back to?"
"You’ve got me. And you’ve got the Doctor. He’s there, somewhere. But, you should probably know, I think he…"
"Regenerated, yeah. John felt it when it happened. But I think that’s for the best. I had John for 20 years, then I lost him. I don’t think I could bear seeing him again, as he was, as though nothing had happened. But…I don’t know. What if I couldn’t find him?"
"Then you could stay with me. Our Torchwood’s a little out of service these days, but you and I could still make a go of it. And we’ll wait. It’s not like either one of us is getting any older." he grinned.
She let out a snort of laughter. “Yeah, time is on our side.” She stood up, then, looking around the flat as though she wouldn’t see it again. “All right then. Let’s go. Nothing keeping me here. I’ve got a letter for Tony. I guess some part of me always hoped the Doctor would find me again and I’d go back. So I’ve always been prepared, since John died. Everything else…well, if I don’t check in to Torchwood for two months, they know what to do with everything.”
"Are you sure?" he asked, reaching for her hands.
"Yeah. I’d like to go with you, Jack. Even if we can’t find him, I like the sound of not being the only immortal in the universe. But if you get sick of me, it’s your own fault for bringing me with you." she teased, giving him her trademark tongue-touched grin.
"Oh, we can take a break from each other every hundred years or so." he said, pulling her in for a hug, which quickly turned into a brief kiss.
"Sounds good to me."
***
The device Jack had found was able to get them back to their original universe, but shorted out as they arrived.
"Well, guess we’re stuck here now." he said, tossing it out into the water.
"That’s all right." she said quietly, looking around. "Weird, yeah? Not seeing the zeppelins. Took me about ten years but then they were just so common I didn’t notice ‘em anymore."
"Well, you’ll stop not noticing them a lot faster, I’m sure. Come on, we need to find a place to stay."
"Don’t you have a place?" she asked, confused.
"I’ve been a bit….absent lately. Jumped a space ship and took a break from Earth for a while. I’d only been back a couple of months before I found you. And I was staying anywhere but here. Too many bad memories."
"Anything you want to share?"
"Yeah, but I’d rather get out of here first. London okay? Or do you need to avoid it, since you’re supposed to be dead."
"Yeah, best not to. How about America?" she asked with a grin.
"Oh, sure…we’ll just teleport on over, right now." he said, rolling his eyes.
"I didn’t mean now. I meant…I dunno, next. For a while. Until we figure out what we want to do after that."
"Sure. I haven’t been to New York since the 20’s. But for now, I do NOT want to be in Cardiff any longer than I have to, so let’s hit the road and we’ll find a place to stay while we sort it all out."
They ended up in London anyway. Rose decided she wanted to see it, even if she had to lay low. Along the way, Jack filled her in on the events of the last few years. She cried with him, when he spoke of Ianto and Stephen, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms in the bed of the hotel room they ended up in. In the morning, Jack took her to the Powell Estate. Just to have a look around.
"I took care of your mother’s flat." he said, quietly. "After Canary Wharf, after I thought you had died. If you want, we can go back to Cardiff. I had everything shipped there."
"Maybe. Some day." she said, gazing out at her old stomping grounds. "Wait, how did you know where I lived?"
"Wellll, I could have looked it up, couldn’t I? But no. Well, I mean, I did. But long before that. I looked in on you, a couple of times, when I was stuck here. When you were growing up. I couldn’t speak to you, or have you see me. But….well, I missed you. And I wanted to make sure you were happy. I saw the Doctor, that sneaky bastard, bringing you a bicycle when you were 12. Did you know about that?"
She laughed. “Yeah, he told me right before we saved you from that bomb. I always thought he made it up on the fly, then went back while we were asleep that night to make sure it was true.”
"Yeah, he did. I was awake, that’s how I knew he’d be there." he laughed. "It was good to see him again, our first Doctor. Saw him one more time after that. Well, saw us, really. That time we stopped in Cardiff, my hub was RIGHT below where the Tardis parked! I had to lock my entire staff in the hub all day, couldn’t even let them near the monitors!"
"Oh my gosh, Jack! That’s awful!" she said, but through a laugh.
"Oh, it wasn’t so bad. Got to see the two of you again. And laugh at the Doctor being a blind, jealous idiot, as usual." he shot her a wink.
"Yeah, he always was a bit thick." she giggled. When they’d stopped laughing, she sighed. "Come on, let’s go. I’ve seen enough."
***
They left for New York two days later. Jack rented them a flat in a nice part of town, overlooking the park. They were there for 10 months. Rose had never seen this New York, and he hadn’t seen it since he left Angelo there, nearly eighty years prior. So they explored the city together, making plans for what they wanted to do next. Jack spent a lot of his time erasing all evidence of Torchwood from every computer data base he could access. They’d taken a short trip back to Cardiff to bomb the remains of the hub, so no one accidentally came across anything that may have survived. They’d visited the storage center as well, Rose took what she wanted from her old flat, and then Jack had arranged to have the rest shipped to the dump, and the names changed on the other lots.
They’d been back in New York for about a month when it happened. They were walking through the park when they came across a familiar blue box. Jack was reading a message he’d just received on his phone when he ran into Rose, who had stopped walking just ahead of him.
"Jack, look!" she cried, pointing unnecessarily.
"I see it, but where is he?" he asked, looking around.
Rose beat him to it. “There.” she said, quietly, pointing down the path to where a man sat, alone on a bench, reading a piece of paper. He looked different, younger, but the sadness in his face was all Rose needed to see to know it was him.
"Go." Jack said, quietly.
"Aren’t you coming with me?" she asked, looking up at him.
"You need some time alone. And I’ve got all the time in the world to wait for you. So go. I’ve got to go to D.C., anyway. Looks like someone at the CIA is taking a bit too much interest in Torchwood and I think it’s time I paid a visit to their archives. You come find me when you two have sorted it all out. Or, if you need to find me before then, you know where I’ll be." he finished, with a small smile.
"Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you alone."
"I’ll be fine, and I owe it to Gwen to take care of this. Go on." he urged, pushing her slightly.
She turned back towards him and pulled him in for a quick kiss. “I’ll be back for you, Jack Harkness.” she said, grinning, before walking towards the man on the bench.
"You better be." he called after her, then turned and walked back the way they’d come.
Rose approached the Doctor slowly, unsure how to proceed. He was crying as he read the paper in his hands, and she wasn’t sure if she should approach him yet. She’d just decided to go wait by the Tardis when he sensed her, and looked up.
"Rose?" he asked in a quiet, disbelieving voice.
"It’s me, Doctor. I’m home."