Archive of Our Own

"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy, you must have somebody to divide it with." --Mark Twain

Rose's eye tried to make sense of the odd pair of buildings--or was it a single building?--before her. "This one, too? Doesn't look like any telescope I've ever seen," she said.

The Doctor stepped up beside her and slipped an arm around her waist, drawing her close as he followed her line of sight. She leaned against the wiry strength of him. "That one's to look at the sun. Largest solar telescope on Earth right now."

Looking at the sun. She thought of telescopes as being for stars . . . and it had been a long time since stars were just lights in the sky to any of them.

Jack sounded almost wistful as he said, "We spend so much time focused on aliens, sometimes I forget we look at the sky for other reasons."

Rose laughed. "Was just thinkin' that. But if we didn't keep lookin' at the stars--including ours--I guess we wouldn't have got to 'em by the time you're born."

"It's that human propensity for looking outward," the Doctor said, rocking lightly from foot to foot and swaying her with him. She wrapped her arm around his ribs in self-defence. "You're always pushing up toward the sky, pointing, investigating. Poking your noses in where they don't belong, out into things you can't even see sometimes. Probing, trying, going out, doing. Amazing, really, even when it's more than a bit terrifying."

Jack draped his arm over the Doctor's shoulders, the rough wool of his greatcoat brushing the backs of her fingers. "Come on, Doc--you, of all people, ought to know that doing's so much more fun than just watching." Out of Jack's mouth, the words dripped innuendo. Rose snickered and looked determinedly at the array of white telescope buildings that Jack and the Doctor had just managed to make into phallic symbols, between them.

Caught between his two particular humans, the Doctor sighed. "I should have expected that. I really should."

"Three thousand years old and it still looks good," Jack said cheerfully as he looked around the vast space of the domed building.

It was a bit cheeky, coming from a bloke who hadn't aged a day in over a hundred years. Rose elbowed him. "We should all be so lucky," she said. Beside her, he stilled. She winced: Jack's immortality had been a comfort to her for long enough, she still forgot its darker side from moment to moment, like it hadn't entirely sunk in. "Sorry. Still getting used to it. Forgive me?" She bumped his hip with hers and looked up at him until his face broke into a smile and he bent to kiss her.

"Amazing construction for its time," the Doctor commented. "They actually constructed it with a heavier concretion at the bottom than the top. That's part of what's kept it standing for so long."

Rose managed not to giggle. With a final nip at Jack's lower lip, she straightened up and let him draw her back against him, rubbing his hands up and down her shoulders. She found her gaze drawn up the vast shaft of sunlight falling across the floor to the perfectly round hole in a ceiling built long before cranes and aerial views. "It's been a while since my last history exam. What's the special name for that kind of hole in the roof?"

"It's an oculus," the Doctor said. "Latin for 'eye.'"

"So the gods could look down on you," Jack said. "We'll be imitating this kind of architecture on and off for thousands of years into the future, too. Kind of creepy."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Doesn't seem like it to me. Look--it's the only light in the room. Lets the sun in. Rain, too, I suppose. 's nice, in a way--like the Romans wanted to build a temple without cuttin' themselves off from everything."

The Doctor finally lit beside them, still bouncing a little on the toes of his trainers. "I'm with Rose on this one, Jack." He sounded thoughtful. "It's more about letting things in than being under some all-seeing microscope. Humans are good at letting things in. Receptive. That's how you come to be only ninety-eight percent human, after all."

Jack purred, "You say that like it's a bad thing." Rose didn't have to see the smirk on his face to know it was there. He took his hand off her left arm and shifted a little behind her. She rather expected it wound up on the Doctor's bum.

The Doctor's silence was more eloquent than any frenetic string of words could have been. "I just lost another one," he complained. "That's the second time in two days."

Rose looked sideways at him, grinning, and offered her hand. "He's still good at that, yeah?" she observed as he twined his fingers through hers like they'd never been parted.

Jack chuckled. "Don't worry, Doc--I won't claim a forfeit till later."

The Doctor spent what was, for him, an inordinate amount of time--at least five minutes!--fine-tuning their position while Rose and Jack shared the captain's chair and made guesses.

"Pleasure planet?" Jack teased.

The Doctor didn't reply. Rose asked, "Is it warm down in that gutter your mind's in?"

He chuckled and nibbled at her ear. "No, but the company's good."

"Fascinating historical person," Rose tried.

"Nope," the Doctor said cheerfully, dancing around to the other side of the console.

"Planet where the clouds are made of candy floss and intelligent fish rule the world?" she said.

He grinned. "Now you're being silly." He made another small adjustment. "Clouds in a vaporous atmosphere are also vaporous--candy floss would just fall down."

"The mile-high floating cathedrals of Tiraleth VII?" Jack asked.

"Hah!" the Doctor said triumphantly. "No no no. No architecture. No engineering. Nothing made by the hand of man--or anybody else." He gestured grandly toward the TARDIS's doors. "Well, go on, then."

Rose raised her eyebrows. She slid out of Jack's lap and walked down the ramp, the Doctor nearly bouncing with anticipation as Jack got up and followed her. She looked over her shoulder at them both. The Doctor grinned. Jack shrugged. She pushed open the wooden doors she'd missed so much and gasped.

A great sprawl of stars all but filled their field of vision, each successive arm of light spiraling out around the glow of its heavy central bar like a lover. Jack took a silent half-step up beside her, staring. The Doctor put his arms around them both, gazing out between them at the galaxy.

It was Jack who found words first. "Is it ours?" he asked.

The Doctor understood. "The Milky Way," he said. "Home of the Earth, among many, many other things. Took some fiddling to get far enough out to see it, but in so close that it's still brilliant, and not just another speck in the sky."

"That's . . . wow." All the age in his voice, which could cut so deep from moment to moment, was gone, and he just sounded like their Jack again. "Just--wow." Rose found herself smiling ear to ear.

"Not such a bad honeymoon?" the Doctor asked, a note in his voice that was both smug and, somehow, fragile.

"It's brilliant," Rose agreed.

"Of course, honeymoons are usually spent mostly in bed . . . " Jack said suggestively.

"What? With this on our doorstep!" the Doctor said.

"Honeymoons are mostly spent recoverin' from the wedding, if Mum's was an example," Rose said. Her heart still hurt when she thought about her mum. It would for a long time. Five years was enough time to change, and even she hadn't known for sure what she'd choose until she chose, again, to stay with the Doctor and Jack. But Mum had never doubted it--had, in the end, just kissed her goodbye and told the blokes they'd better take care of her daughter, or she'd find a way back to their universe just to give them a piece of her mind.

Some things, Rose thought, you could just see better from the outside.

The Doctor squeezed her tight. When she blinked and looked up, Jack bent close to kiss her. "Could do all three," the Doctor suggested softly. "Plenty of blankets and duvets around. We could make a bed right here. Room with a view."

Jack smirked as he drew away enough to look at his partners. "I do appreciate a good view," he said. Rose smiled faintly.

The Doctor pulled a face. "I'm not going to start with you. I refuse to go another round on your home ground."

Jack grinned. "Then you shouldn't have started on about thrusting into the universe and human receptive principles. Or parked us next to such a fantastic cosmic generative symbol." The Doctor made a pained noise. Rose giggled, in spite of herself. "And you still haven't paid my forfeit."

"Honeymoon," Rose reminded firmly. "Kiss and make up, and let's bring up some blankets. I'm sure the Milky Way won't mind if it doesn't have our undivided attention."

- fin -

A/N: For those who are curious, locations are the McMath-Pierce Telescope at Kitt Peak, the Pantheon, and just outside the Milky Way.