In All the Ways that Matter Most (1/2)

[amberfocus]

Title:  In All the Ways that Matter Most
Author:  amberfocus
Characters/Pairings:  Ten2/Rose, Jackie
Genre:  Romance, Smut, Humor, Smidgeon of Hurt/Comfort and Angst but primarily happy
Rating:  Adult
Beta:  amyo67
Summary:  Rose comes to the conclusion that the human Doctor is the Doctor in all the ways that are important, and even more importantly he's also different in all the ways that matter most.  Post Journey's End fic.
Author's Notes:  This fic is the last of my support Stacie incentive for bidding fics.  It's for chisselwho has waited very patiently for my muses to get off their sorry butts and do their jobs.  Hence it's quite a bit longer than the others to make up for the wait.

Chapter One

 

 

The TARDIS faded away into the distance and the Doctor closed the gap between himself and Rose and took her hand. They turned to look at each other, her face a mask of not quite hidden pain. It was hard for him to read her expression. She’d always been so good at hiding her true emotions when she didn’t want them showing.  Nearly as good as he had been. “Well,” said the Doctor, “this really bites.”  Apparently he had no problem with summing them up, though.

 

Rose’s eyes narrowed and he realized she might be taking that entirely the wrong way. “Not the being left alone with you part. The being left alone with you part is absolutely brilliant. No, it’s the being left on this bloody beach by that arrogant twat without being asked what we want and him not having the courage to even say good-bye. Prat.”

 

The corner of Rose’s mouth curved up just a bit. “How much of Donna is in you?” she asked pointedly.

 

“Enough that I wouldn’t have done that to you. Leave you on this stinking beach without telling you he loves you for a second time? Git.” The Doctor kicked at the sand. “Coward. Tosser.”

 

Rose giggled and a smile suddenly lit the Doctor’s face. “You just gonna keep going down the list of insults, then?” Rose asked stepping a bit closer to him and hugging his arm with her free one.

 

“Until I feel better,” the Doctor said. “Until you feel better, too.” Rose smiled. “He stole my TARDIS. Stole it right out from under me. The nerve of the man. Not so much as a by your leave,” he complained. “I had as much right to her as he did.”

 

“But he gave you that, that chicken leggy thing,” Rose said. “Donna said you could shatter fly—.”

 

“Shatterfry, yeah, but you know how long that’ll take? The new ship still won’t be ready for ten years and we’ll probably have babies by then and you can’t take preadolescent children on a time ship without some very, very, very special modifications that I’m not even sure I could make in this universe, brilliant as I am, and…” He stopped at the expression on her face.

 

“That’s assuming you even want babies,” he backpedaled. “Children. A family. With me.”

 

“He assumed it, didn’t he?” Rose said. She couldn’t quite mask the bitter edge to her voice. “That’s why he dumped us here.”

 

“Well, yeah because he wanted it. Just never thought he had the right to ask. Idiot.”

 

“What do you want?” she asked.

 

“I want my ship back,” he said, ignoring her true question. “I can’t believe he just nicked it. And the sonic screwdriver. And the—.” He stopped in the process of patting his pockets down. “I got the psychic paper!” he crowed fishing it out. “Ooooh, he’s not gonna like that. Hee. Okay, what else?” He rummaged about a bit more. “Oh, look, Rose, the good specs, the wind up mousey, our favorite yo-yo—that’ll annoy him no end. Jelly babies? What are those doing in here? I haven’t eaten those in years.” He slipped one into his mouth. Pah!” He spat it back out. “Gone a bit stale, I’m afraid and, yes!”

 

“What?”

 

“Sonic pen. It’s not the sonic screwdriver but with it I can make one. Oh, that’s brilliant. Might have taken me a couple years to collect the parts otherwise, even with free run of your Torchwood and who knows if Pete’s even willing to let me in there. Probably cause more trouble than he wants to deal with. Probably cause more trouble than I want to deal with. And a toothbrush, which is good because,” he paused and huffed into his hand, “I think I might have bad breath in this body. Did I have bad breath when we kissed? I’d hate to think that beautiful kiss was ruined by halitosis.”

 

“That beautiful kiss was ruined by nothing, not even your idiot other self running off on us like that,” Rose said with determination.

 

“But that doesn’t answer the bad breath question. Do I? Have it?” he asked seriously. He looked like the outcome of the survival of the universe hung on the answer to that question and she couldn’t help smiling again. How she’d missed this.

 

“Nope. Not at the moment anyway. What are we gonna do, Doctor?” she asked.

 

“Well,” he said, “if you don’t mind, I’d quite like to kiss you again.”

 

“Um,” said Rose. She glanced over at her mum who was studiously looking out to sea. “Okay.” It didn’t take more than his asking to convince her. The memory of the last one was still burned on their lips.

 

He pulled her around for what had to be the most brilliant of all the most brilliant kisses in the history of brilliant kisses and if he thought that last one had been good, he’d been missing out on the concept of what good really was. Really, he could stand on that beach kissing Rose Tyler all day and never get tired of it. Adrenaline and testosterone fired through his system and he pushed his hips against hers, holding her firmly by the waist. Rose’s hands were sunk fully into his hair and he made a growling noise as one of his legs slipped between hers and she rubbed up against him.

 

“Oh, for the love of—are you two gonna shag right here on the beach in front of me?” came the semi-amused, semi-horrified voice of Jackie Tyler. “Because there’s a hotel only a short walk from here and I think a nice, crisply made bed instead of a sandy beach with your mum watching might be more what the doctor, a regular physician type one, not you, Doctor, ordered.”

 

Rose and the Doctor jumped apart as if they’d been burned. “Jackie, forgot you were there.”

 

“Obviously,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

 

Reluctant to get too far apart the Doctor tucked Rose under his arm and hers slunk across his waist, gripping him firmly. It was as if by some mutual understanding they knew that merely holding hands would keep them further apart than they were willing to be right now. It made walking quickly across the sand and rocks difficult but neither one of them cared. Rose didn’t want to let him out of her sight, let alone reach, and the feeling was more than mutual.

 

“Anything else in those pockets of yours?” Rose asked as her hip bumped his leg.

 

“Oh, yes. The blue suit has a rather large capacity in comparison to the brown because I tended to wear it on hotter planets when I didn’t take my—oh that wanker! He has my coat!” the Doctor nearly shouted. “I loved that coat! Janis Joplin gave me that coat.”

  

“Bit of a mouth on him, this time around isn’t there?” Jackie commented to the air as she continued to walk ahead of them. “You can’t talk that way around Tony.”

 

“Always had a gob,” the Doctor fired back. “Don’t appear to have any censors though,” he mused. “Usually not quite that much of a disconnect between what I think and what I say. Could be the first blush of…not regeneration, exactly. Generation? Could be Donna. She tended to speak with no regard to the consequences. Maybe a bit of both. Should settle down in a day or two, either way.”

 

“How’s that work, the bit with Donna, anyway?” Rose asked.

 

“Little bit of the personality imprinted on me. I’m definitely me, but I think a bit more randomly, with parts of her thought patterns thrown in. Bit like before when I changed with you.”

 

“So she’s not like your mother?”

 

“No!” he said sounding horrified. “No. It was like when you touched that Dalek in Utah or when Mickey triggered the Genesis Ark. It started the process going, but no. Just a bit of a personality transfer and enough DNA to make me half human, but not…not like a mother. A distant cousin, maybe.”

 

“You saying you got a bit of my personality last time?” she asked.

 

“Not exactly. Influences of it, certainly. Still have it. With Donna, she tended to speak her mind and not pull any punches. And she was really good with the insults. And the nicknames. Space man, Martian, alien boy. I’ll miss her,” he said. “Still, I think I got the better end of the deal. I got you. Rather live without anything else than lose you again.”

 

The arm about her shoulders squeezed and Rose stopped walking and turned into him. She kissed him again, a full on snog that nearly took them both down to the sand, and it took her mother several minutes to realize they were no longer following her and backtrack to get them. “Will you two quit it?” she said with annoyance. “I was almost to the hotel when I realized I was talking to myself.”

 

Reluctantly they broke apart and when the Doctor reached for Rose’s hand again Jackie said, “Oh, no. I’m walking between the two of you or we’re never going to get there.” She looped her arm through Rose’s and steadily ignored the glare being directed at her by the Doctor. “Faster we get going the sooner you can have her back,” Jackie said. She started laughing as the Doctor began jogging towards the hotel.

 

 

 

Jackie arranged rooms for them while they sat in the restaurant and waited for her. They’d ordered food and drinks for all three of them and the appetizers had arrived by the time Rose’s mother reappeared. She plopped down at the table with a weary sigh. “What a day.” She scooped up one of the prawns and popped it into her mouth, chewing steadily until she swallowed.

 

“I got us two rooms. Both suites. I didn’t know, though I had a pretty good guess, what the two of you wanted to do. So Rose can either be in mine or the two of you can share. One’s a two bedroom, though I doubt that second bed will see any use.”

 

“Mum!” Rose said blushing.

 

“You barely made it off the beach,” Jackie said rolling her eyes. “If you think I’m going to believe that you really want to leave each other alone long enough to sleep in separate beds…”

 

“She’s right, Rose,” the Doctor said as he dug into the seafood platter in the middle of the table with his left hand. His right was firmly gripping Rose’s. “Right now, I don’t want to be in a different room from you. Spent too long being in a different universe. Now I just want to be as close as I can get.” He chewed thoughtfully. “What is this?” he asked.

 

“Bit like calamari,” Jackie said. “Only the creature here has ten legs. It’s called a…what’s it called again, Rose?”

 

“Squirf,” Rose said.

 

“Squirf? You’re making that up.”

 

“Am not,” she replied with a smile. “Quite a bit of variation on the animal and insect life here. Well, the mammals appear normal enough, but some of the things that were extinct over there, are still here. And Nessie’s not just a legend here. She’s real. You can go up to the loch and see her and her mate and their babies for a nominal fee. Several other dinosaurs still exist, too, in Africa. The asteroid that hit this Earth burned up a lot more before it struck the ground. Destruction wasn’t nearly as total.”

 

“Nessie was real where we came from,” the Doctor said. “She was just a really good hider.” Jackie eyed him like she didn’t believe him, but he just continued to shovel food into his mouth. “Blimey, I don’t remember ever being so hungry before.”

 

“You put away plenty after your last regeneration,” Jackie reminded him. “Thought you were going to devour the entire Christmas feast on your own there for a bit.”

 

“Regeneration takes a lot out of a man. Obviously so does springing fully formed from a severed hand,” he said in a voice quiet enough not to be overheard.

 

“Ew,” said Jackie. “Is that really what happened?”

 

“Yep,” he said popping the P with great relish.  “I had to funnel all the excess energy into it. It’s the one from the Sycorax invasion,” he said.

 

“The one you lost at Christmas?” asked Jackie.

 

“Jack was keeping it in a jar.”

 

“Double ew,” said Jackie.

 

“I took it from him when I found out. He’s not quite right in the head anymore. Being immortal can do that to a man. Good thing he had it though, or I wouldn’t be here, he’d have totally regenerated and you still likely would have ended up back here with him running like a wussy little sissy boy from his emotions,” he said. “You know, I think I might be twice as rude as before.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Still not ginger though. Never gonna be now.”

 

“Do you really think that?” Rose asked. “About him, I mean.” She was biting her lip and trying to hold back the sudden tears.

 

“Oh, Rose,” he said seeing her on the verge of them. “I’m sorry. I just…I can’t believe I was ever that big of an idiot about you. Never acting on what we both felt, what we both wanted, because of your age and your humanity and your,” he glanced at Jackie, “mother’s death threats.” Jackie grinned over her margarita. “Plus, he was a bit of an uptight prude when it came to sex.”

 

“Shush,” said Jackie, her smile fading as other patrons turned to look at him.

 

“Most of them probably don’t even understand English,” he said but he lowered his voice.

 

“Most of them probably watch imported telly with subtitles,” she said in a low voice. “They know the word sex.”

 

“Did he? Did he even love me?” Rose asked ignoring Jackie and steering the conversation back on track.

 

“Of course he did. I wouldn’t if he hadn’t. I am him just…better able to go after what I want and ten times brighter when it comes to love.”

 

“He couldn’t even talk about it.”

 

“I know. Does it need saying? I mean come on! I wanted to smack him and I lived inside that brain for 1300 years. Of course it needs saying. Just because you can know something bone deep, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it out loud.”

 

Rose frowned. “I thought you were 900 something. It hasn’t been that long for you, has it?” she asked with horror. “Since we were separated?”

 

“Erm…no. I may have shaved a few centuries off my age when we first met,” he admitted.

 

“And you thought the alternate of my mum was vain for saying she was 39 when she was 40!” Rose crowed.

 

“Well…was trying to impress you. Didn’t want you thinking I was too old for you.”

 

“You were too old for her.”

 

“Was not,” he and Rose said in unison. Jackie just rolled her eyes. That probably wasn’t a battle she was willing to try and win.

 

“How long has it been then?” Rose asked.

 

“Since I lost you?” he replied softly.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Two years, one month, three weeks, five days, 17 hours, 7 minutes and 38 seconds from the time I lost you to the time I saw you on that street running toward me,” he said. Jackie looked at him in astonishment. “Time Lord, Jackie. Honestly. I am a bit clued into it.” He turned back to Rose who had tears in her eyes.

 

“I’m glad it wasn’t so long for you.”

 

“How long was it for you?” he asked, but Rose was too choked up now to speak.

 

“It’s been…what? Tony’s four and a half now. A bit over five years,” Jackie said.

 

“Oh, Rose,” the Doctor said ignoring all sense of propriety and pulling Rose off her chair and right into his lap. He wiped away her tears and she nestled her head against his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I am. I did try to find a way but…I guess only one of us was capable of doing the impossible and that’s you, my brilliant girl.” He kissed the top of her head and rocked her gently, ignoring the looks of the other patrons in the restaurant.

 

Her sniffles subsided, but she stayed snuggled into him on his lap until the food came and then with a regretful sigh she slipped back into her own chair and wiped her face on her linen dinner napkin. “I thought you might be mad about that,” Rose said softly. “Because you said it would destroy two universes, but we figured it out. The problems with the cracks in the universe weren’t caused on this side. We had so many safeguards in place. The problem was caused on your Torchwood’s end. Yvonne Hartman didn’t use any of the safety protocols that we did. She left things running too long and too often. We were much more limited in how often we could use it and adhered to a strict schedule. It allowed us to push through and then gave reality a chance to heal itself between each visit.”

 

“Each visit? You mean that wasn’t your first time through?”

 

“No. I had to wait a month between visits to allow the natural healing process to occur. I’ve been trying to find you with the dimension canon for the last year and a bit.  This was my fourteenth attempt. We could only leave the window open for 24 hours. It didn’t give me much time to look and so much of it was hit or miss. The things I saw…” Her voice trailed off and her eyes went distant.

 

It took her a moment to come back to herself. “Still…I don’t hate the end result. I’m mad at him, I am, but…you want to be with me. And that’s more than enough because my heart gets that you’re the best part of him, even though my head keeps thinking it’s terribly weird.”

 

“It is terribly weird,” he said. “But I am the Doctor in all the ways that matter.”

 

“I know.” She looked like she truly believed what he was saying and that was important to him. He didn’t want to be her second choice, the sacrificial lamb left behind because the Time Lord version of himself didn’t know any other way to cope with the two of them.  Moron.

 

The fish and chips finally arrived and the Doctor ate far more of them than he probably should have. He didn't have a super fast metabolism anymore and judging from the pressure building in his stomach some of his internal organs had altered as well to less efficient structures. He turned away the offer of any dessert when before he’d have been the person diving headfirst into the sugary concoctions. He begged off as being tired when Rose asked him if he was all right when he turned it down.

 

“I think maybe we all ought to head to bed,” Jackie said. “I don’t know about Rose but I’ve been up for 32 hours straight and I’m knackered.”

 

“Close to 40 for me,” she replied with a yawn.

 

“I’ve been up since I was born,” said the Doctor. “Which isn’t quite as long as that.”

 

“Then the question is, who sleeps where?” Jackie asked. “Do you two want to be in the same suite?”

 

She directed the question to Rose and they both turned to look at her, waiting for an answer. “I do,” she said.

 

The Doctor smiled and Jackie handed them the keys to the larger room. “All right. Do try to keep it down. I’m in the next room and I don’t want to be kept awake by the headboard bouncing into the wall.”

 

“Mum!” Rose said.

 

Jackie smiled and leaned forward and kissed her daughter good-night. “You may not have been like that before, but your bloke is human now, with the needs and desires of any human male. And I’ve seen the way he’s been looking at you since we stepped out onto that beach. So don’t Mum me, Rose Tyler.  And you haven't exactly been subtle yourself in that department.  So here.” She pressed a small box into Rose’s hand.

 

Rose stared down at it dumbfounded and then shoved it into her pocket before the Doctor could see what it was. “Where’d you get those?” she asked.

 

“Gift shop,” said her mum. “I popped in there after registering. Thought they might come in handy.” She turned to the Doctor. “Night, Doctor,” she said and surprisingly she hugged him and laid a kiss on his cheek as well. “See you two in the morning. Do try to get some sleep.”

 

And with that she was off. They walked more slowly to their own room and Rose opened it with the key her mum had given her. It was a beautiful room, everything done in a lovely pale blue and cream. It wasn’t anything she’d ever pick out for herself, but it was restful and tasteful and well done.

 

“What did your mum give you?” he asked and Rose dug in her pocket and tossed him the box.

 

He looked at it curiously, his mind taking a moment to decipher the Norwegian words without the help of the TARDIS. He still had his facility for languages, but it took longer to access it. “Condoms?” he asked.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Then I guess the question is, Rose Tyler, do you want to sleep with me?”

Ch. 2:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/287709.html