Chapter Text
Try (Infinity's Child)
Part 1
by PR Chung
This is Earth. This is the Earth where Rose Tyler, her mother, Jackie, and her ex-boyfriend, Mickey Smith, now live, but not the Earth where they were born. This is not the Earth where Rose met the Doctor the first time or saw him for the last.
It’s been nearly two years; Rose has a new little sister, Veronica, but Ronnie seems to have stuck. Rose’s consultant status at Torchwood gives her access. Freedom. And she’s used her status to search for ways back; she pursued leads and contributed her input for the development team monitoring the Cardiff rift, but nothing ever came of any of it, at least not yet.
There are distractions both pleasant and common in her life, but when it’s late and very quiet, and Rose is alone, she thinks about the Doctor. She cries as much as she smiles at the memories, and she is sometimes concerned about her own state of mind. She’s depressed, she knows, and wonders if what she feels is mourning or if it’s unreasonable hope.
“Rose, look at this one!” Jackie delightedly held up yet another lacy white sweater, beaming.
Jackie Tyler wanted for nothing; Pete Tyler, this Earth’s Pete Tyler, was the businessman and entrepreneur that Rose’s father always wanted to be, and he provided well for his Jacks. Still, Jackie adored the secondhand shops in the old sections of town, and Rose knew it was a familiar way for Jackie. Coming to the secondhand shops helped Jackie to feel connected to the life she knew before.
“It looks like all the others.” Rose said and gestured at the stack Jackie had collected on the handle of Ronnie’s stroller.
Jackie sulked a moment, and then pointed at the sweater’s front, saying, “but this one’s got little flowers on either side.”
“So does that one, and this one, too.” Rose began shifting through the garments, pointing similarities out to her mother.
“You’re no fun at all, you know,” Jackie finally said. “Maybe this would be more interesting if we were shopping for you.”
“Don’t need anything, mum.”
“I didn’t mean for you. I meant, well, you know…” Jackie trailed off with a shrug.
“I know what?” Rose questioned.
“A little one of your own, Rose.”
She gaped. “Mum, you basically just had Ronnie,” Rose declared. “Thinking about grandchildren right now is probably not—“
“Not just grandchildren,” Jackie explained, “but you having a child. One of your own, Rose.”
“We’re not having this conversation,” Rose said, shaking her head.
Rose just didn’t need this right now; she had enough trouble focusing on herself let alone a child. And besides, her mother seemed to conveniently forget the fact that she didn’t get pregnant with Ronnie by herself. Rose had gone on a few dates, but there were no relationships she had the desire to pursue let alone foster into a bond that would produce a child.
A moment passed before Jackie spoke, her tone saddened. “I wish you’d try Rose.”
“What? Try to have a baby--?”
“No.” Jackie shook her head and refolded the garment in her hands.
“What then?” Rose urged her mother to tell her but felt a sense of dread about what she already suspected her mother would say.
Jackie looked up at Rose and offered a kind smile. “I wish you’d try to get over him.”
Rose felt a knot tighten up in her chest. Damn, she’d been doing so well. If she could just be left in peace about it maybe she could ‘get over him’ as her mother enigmatically touched on the subject.
Rose smiled thinly. “I am trying. It’s just a little hard when you keep reminding me that I’m not over him.”
“I know how hard it can be, Rose,” Jackie earnestly said, “I really do, sweetheart.”
“But you got dad back, mum. I won’t get a second chance.” Rose reminded her and regretted the bitterness tingeing her tone.
Mickey got his gran back, and Jackie and Pete got each other. Rose just got left behind with an empty pain twisting inside her that just never seemed to let go. On this Earth she didn’t belong and had never existed, and she felt like a jagged edge while everything around her was seamless.
She voiced none of the bitter thoughts that plagued her and felt ultimately guilty instead when the soft sound of Ronnie’s chatter floated up from the stroller and filled the uncomfortable space between her and Jackie.
Her mother’s life had become everything wonderful that it should have been when she and Pete came together here. It was something she deserved and needed, and not anything she should be made to feel guilty about. But Rose’s words hung in the air, an implication, but in no way intentional.
Rose looked away from her mother’s hurt gaze. “I’m sorry,” she apologized quietly.
A moment passed as Jackie looked down and brushed at the sweater’s soft fabric abstractly. With a sigh she finally spoke up, resolutely, “You know, I think you’re right.”
The comment took Rose off guard. “What?”
Jackie looked around at her with a tilt of her head. “All of these do look alike.” She took the pile of clothes and put them on a nearby display table. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We’ll go to the Bull and Bush.”
Rose closed her eyes, relieved by the purposeful change in subject and unspoken forgiveness of her mother doing so. Still, she wasn’t about to go into a pub with a baby in tow. “Mum, we are not taking Ronnie into a pub.”
“It’s a tavern,” Jackie countered as she threaded the stroller through the narrow arrangement of clothes racks and headed for the door.
“It’s a pub.”
“It perfectly fine, if people can take a dog in, then I can take my baby.”
“What… Mum, no,” Rose refused the idea, refused to even acknowledge the fact that her just likened her baby sister to a pet. “We’ll go across the way to that coffee shop.”
“All right, then. Do you think they have that new Chai tea? Like the place near where Henricks used to be? I liked that. Did you get the same thing…” Jackie paused and looked back when she realized Rose wasn’t beside her. She’d hesitated to look back at something in the store. “What is it? See something you like?”
“Uh, no,” Rose said distractedly, and shook her head. “Nothing, it wasn’t anything.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| @ |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The proposal to install a permanent monitoring facility at the Cardiff rift was matchless, Rose. I can’t imagine why you’re concerned. It’s not like they’re going to fire you.”
She looked up over the rim of her cup at the man sitting across the table from her. He flashed her a broad smile, and Rose quickly turned her gaze back down. It was sometimes difficult to look at him, especially when he smiled the way he did just then. She didn’t bother trying to ignore his resemblance to the Doctor, her first doctor with the daft old face.
Although Brett Jones had the blue eyes, prominent nose, and a striking grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes, he had a businessman sophistication and proper upbringing that set him apart from the manic unpredictability of the Doctor.
Yet, he did those little things that nudged her memory and made Rose feel ultimately uncomfortable around him. He liked her, she knew, it was only so obvious when a bloke took a liking to a woman, but she knew she needed to be careful. Rose knew she could become interested in turn for all the wrong reasons.
“No, I s’pose I won’t,” Rose replied and set her cup down. She looked around the restaurant, absently eyeing the lunch hour patrons packing the tables and lunch counter. “But somehow I don’t think it would make such a big difference if I did.”
“That’s nonsense…”
“No, not really,” she interrupted him, shaking her head in thought. She gestured around the room, saying, “They just carry on, even after what happened, they just go swanning on with their lives until the next disaster comes along.”
Brett glanced around, thoughtful. “That’s the human way, isn’t it? Overcoming by forgetting and distracting themselves with the triviality of everyday life?”
Rose hated it too when he talked like that. He agreed with her and talked about the world in a way that made it seem as though he was extracting himself from the equation. He was right though; he always seemed to be right. “They have no idea how fragile all this is. How it could all just go away in an instant.”
Brett leaned forward to look closer at Rose. She turned and straightened immediately, unsettled by his move. “That’s why there’s telly and matches and pubs and shopping, Rose.” A slow smile spread across his broad mouth. “And that’s why there’s people like you and me and everyone else at Torchwood, keeping things in order so all these people can enjoy their miserable lives, until the next alien threat wipes out the lot of them. I don’t know why we even bother, do you?”
Rose stared at him for a long moment, weighing his words and tone. “You’re putting me on, right?”
“Of course,” he replied and straightened, looking satisfied with himself. “How else am I going to make you look at things in the proper perspective?”
“If you’re going to be like this I’m not taking lunch with you anymore.”
“So, you’ve told me before.” He pulled out his wallet, causally laying out money on the table for the bill before standing. “Come on, there’s a world waiting to be protected from their own stupidity.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” Rose said with a sigh.
“I’ll stop talking like that when you stop thinking like that.”
“You have no idea what I think about, Mr. Jones.” She informed him, more playful than she’d intended.
He grinned and flicked his brows. “And neither do you of me, Ms. Tyler.”
Rose smiled in spite of herself and inwardly coursed him for being so infuriatingly and distractingly charming.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| @ |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Distractions.
There were enough of them Rose found as she drove through the afternoon congestion; her mobile ringing, the driver ahead repeatedly tapping his brakes, the messenger on the cycle that kept coming into her lane. She didn’t know why she’d bothered to start driving, riding the bus and walking got her around just fine once, but there were the meetings and places she had to get to that she couldn’t rely on public transport for most days.
She blew her breath out and propped her elbow on the door, exasperated with traffic. The next opportunity to pull off the main road she took without hesitation and began threading her way down side streets. Generally, when she tried something like this she got herself lost, but she knew this area rather well from all the times she and Jackie came shopping here.
Row after row of little shops she passed without thought and then slowed as she noticed one in particular coming up. Worn Well was the shop she and mum had been in just that past weekend, and where she thought she’d seen… Rose pressed down on the accelerator and passed the shop by.
It hadn’t been anything; she told herself again. It wasn’t anything at all. A specter in her peripheral vision, just her imagination working overtime, that’s all.
It simply wasn’t what she thought.
So then why was she even considering it? Why was she going back around the block and looking for a parking space? Why was she going back to the shop for a look? She needed simply to ease her mind. She needed to prove to herself that she was being ridiculous.
Rose stepped into the shop and paused tentatively with her hand on the door. She thought she should turn back around, leave and forget this completely—
“Good afternoon,” the woman behind the counter called affably. Rose smiled and nodded as she took a step further into the store. “Anything special you’re looking for today, Miss?”
“Just browsin’ really,” Rose replied.
“All right, dear, but if you need any help let me know.”
Rose tucked her hair behind an ear and smiled politely. “Yes, I will, thanks,” she said, and began casually looking over items arranged over the display tables until the curious clerk turned back to her work behind the counter.
Without an audience Rose finally looked to the far wall of the store and took a breath to try and still the anticipation creeping up inside her. She walked slowly to the rack of clothes that lined the wall, her gaze drifting over the castoffs arranged from light to dark regardless of long or short sleeved.
She stilled when she saw it. Just what she’d believed she’d seen the first time when she was leaving the store with her mother. It was a moment before she could bring herself to move, to reach out and part the garments before her.
Her forehead creased in question and disbelief as she stared at the solitary leather jacket that swung slightly before her. A deep chocolate brown, so dark it nearly looked black except for the mottled patches of wear… It just looks like it, she thought and stared for a long-frozen moment.
Compelled, she reached forward slowly, warily, as if it would disappear if she touched it. It very well could have, considering all the probability of it being really there. But it was.
Her fingers ran over the coolness of the leather, tracing the collar down the lapel and over the buttons, mesmerized.
It was shed long ago, on another Earth, she reminded herself. It was put away and left behind, as everything else was when she’d come here to this Earth. It just wasn’t even remotely possible, was it? She wondered as she pulled it down from the rack and drew it up to her face to inhale its scent. Leather and that smell, faint but there, like the electric engine of a toy train, an oily mechanical…
A numbness rolled down Rose’s arms and legs and her heart rate surged in pace with the sudden race of thoughts going through her mind. Anxiously she checked the jacket pockets inside and out, and then over again, only to feel bits of grit that looked like metal shavings in the bottom of them.
She fumbled for the tag hanging from the left sleeve, her breath quickening with her pulse as she searched it for a date or any clue that might prove the insane thought pounding at her brain that this was…
Rose turned and rushed across the store to the counter. “Do you know where this came from?” She asked and urgently held the jacket up for the clerk to see.
The woman seemed taken aback by Rose’s suddenness but recovered with a pleasant smile. “I can assure you that all of the garments in this store are all clean and well taken care of by the previous ow—“
“I don’t care ‘bout that, I just need to know how this jacket got here. Can you tell me?”
The clerk’s brow knitted a little. “Possibly,” she answered, her tone somewhere between offense and confusion. “Let me take a look at the price tag.”
“This string of numbers,” Rose questioned, as the woman looked at the tag, “is it a date code or some type of record number?”
“Yes,” the woman answered patiently. “This is a donated item.”
"Where did it come from? Who brought this in?" Rose urgently rifled questions at the clerk.
"I don't know who..."
"But you can tell when it was brought in, right?"
"Yes, the date in the code here is when it was tagged, that was about six-- no," she paused and scrunched up her nose, "more like eight weeks ago."
"How long does it take to tag the donations?" Rose asked, her frustration mounting. "How long before they go up for sale, do you know?"
"No, but it's summer now and a jacket like that wouldn't sell very..." Rose was shaking her head and the clerk looked at her with a frown. "Dear, I can discount the jacket--"
"No, it’s not that," Rose shook her head and pulled out her credit card case. "Here, I'll buy the jacket right now, just help me find out where it came from, please."
The clerk straightened and took Rose's credit card. "We receive donations from many places, but I don't have that information stored here. The owner would have that information for taxation purposes."
"Is the owner here?"
The woman shook her head. "No," she said and took another look at the jacket tag. "I'll take ten percent off, will that help?"
"I don't care about the cost, I'll buy everything in this shop if you'll just get the owner on the phone," Rose declared, and hauled in a steadying breath and tried to stifle the tears beginning to burn at the back of her eyes. "I need to find out how this got here," she told the clerk in a shaky voice. “Please…”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| @ |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rose bought the jacket, which went without question, but the clerk assured her it wasn't necessary to purchase anything more just to receive the information she needed. Taking the tag from the jacket and Rose's cell phone number, the clerk promised to contact her with the information just as soon as she could get it. But for Rose the news would not-- could not come soon enough.
Feeling as if a current was running through her body Rose began walking, leaving her car behind as she absently boarded a bus. She sat with the familiar jacket clutched, her thoughts disjointed and racing.
Trying to rationalize the possibilities Rose went over everything that had transpired, wavering in and out of emotions shaken awake by the memories, trying to thread logic through the pandemonium of her thoughts.
It was after he’d changed that the Doctor had put them down in the Council Estate and then collapsed at Jackie and Mickey's feet. They'd moved him to the flat, where the coat was shed and left in the closet of her old room. With a strange possessiveness she'd purposely left it there and warned her mother not to toss it. Mum's flat was always an anchor it seemed; a place she'd always go back to, and where she knew anything material and of any importance to her would always be safe.
That had been a laughably false sense of security she realized, especially now. They'd crossed into a different world leaving everything behind, material and sentimental, the replaceable and the painfully irreplaceable, and everything that had once seemed so safe and immutable was gone, just a distant memory.
Before she realized where she was going Rose found herself home, standing at the gates of the Tyler estate. She couldn't go into the house, not with the jacket in her hands and no idea how to explain it, so instead she went around to the back through the carport and into the garden.
Settling on a bench Rose stared at the jacket in disbelief and brushed her fingers over the leather, but it released none of its mystery to her.
The harder she tried to reason away its existence the memory of it clarified in her mind; the sigh of leather against leather as he moved, the coolness beneath her hands and against her cheek, the muted cast of amber and green light from the console room...
Rose gulped hard and closed her eyes, tears slipping down her cheeks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| @ |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Pete Tyler returned home he found Jackie sitting on the floor with Ronnie in the game room. They were playing a made-up game that only mothers and babies knew the rules.
“Another tough day I see,” he teased Jackie as he greeted them both with affectionate pecks.
“You have no idea,” Jackie declared with a bright smile, “our daughter’s a demanding audience. The usual patty-cake just won’t do.”
“What’s happened to Rose’s car?” he asked, frowning as he looked out into the garden.
“Nothing I know of, why?” Jackie asked, puzzled by his question.
“Well, she’s here, but her car isn’t, Jacks.”
“What do you mean she’s here…?” Jackie twisted around and followed Pete’s gaze out the back windows that faced the garden patio. “I didn’t know she was home.”
“She all right?” Pete went to the French doors for a closer look.
Boosting Ronnie onto her hip, Jackie joined Pete at the window and looked out at Rose for only a moment before she opened the door and started out. The closer she came Jackie realized her daughter was sobbing.
“What is it, Rose?” Jackie called as she hurried up to her.
Rose looked up as if she’d been startled by her mother’s voice, not even seeing her until she was directly in front of her. Rose shook her head before lowering it, crying into her hand.
“It’s his,” Rose sobbed so that Jackie wasn’t sure she understood.
She glanced around and handed Ronnie off to Pete who’d followed her out. “Rose, please, what is it, sweetheart?”
Rose shook the jacket in her lap. “Look, it’s his—I know it.”
Jackie knelt down slowly, looking confusedly at the jacket across her daughter’s legs. “Rose… what are you talking about?”
Rose looked up at her mother, and that was when Jackie realized that she wasn’t mournfully sobbing but weeping in joy.
She laughed, her breath hitching as she searched her mother’s face. “The Doctor.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| @ |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TBC