amberfocus | You're What?: Chapter Eight

Chapter 7: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/74934.html

Change of Mind

“Changed your mind? What do you mean you’ve changed your mind?” Rose asked sharply. Her hand reached out for Jack’s and he laced his fingers through hers. Her stomach was roiling, partly from the confrontation but mostly from her morning sickness.

“I’m not sending you back to London, Rose.”

“But…why not?” she asked. “I’m nearly prepared. There’s plenty of money in that account you set up for us, and Jack and I are ready to do this.”

“I know,” he said. “But I’m not taking you back there. I’m not sending you away.”

“Well, what if I want to be sent away now?” she asked.

“Do you?” he parried.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t expected her to be stubborn about it. She had fought so hard to stay with him, to stay on the ship that it hadn’t occurred to him that she might have changed her mind now that he had changed his. He was such an idiot. Of course she no longer wanted to stay. He’d done everything in his power to make her feel unwanted, unloved. He’d been deliberately cruel, said unforgiveable things he’d never meant to drive her away from him. “Well, too bad,” he said autocratically.

“What?” she said. “Doctor--.”

“I’m not taking you back there.” He crossed his arms and glared down at the table. Rose let out a sound of frustration, stood up and walked out of the room.

“Why not?” Jack asked curiously.

“What?”

“Why not? Why aren’t you taking us back to London?” Jack’s eyes were steady and he refused to look away from the Doctor. “Something’s going on here. You were dead set on your idea before you left the TARDIS this morning. Now I’m expected to believe that you’ve changed your mind in the course of a few hours? I don’t think so. Tell me.”

“I have my reasons and they’re important ones,” the Doctor insisted.

“How can I even believe a word you say? I’ve watched you lie to Rose for weeks now. How can I believe you haven’t just changed your mind, decided you just made a mistake and you want her back? And what's to stop you from changing it again?” Jack questioned.

“I ran into Rose,” the Doctor blurted out. “Future Rose. Jack, it all went wrong for her, wrong for you.”

“What do you mean, wrong?” Jack asked.

“I mean you’re dead within six years and so is Charlie.”

“Charlie?”

“The baby. That’s what she named him.” He set the photograph of the little boy down on the table between them. “She lost everything. And for some reason when she called me, I didn’t come.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Jack said.

“Well, it does me. If I told her I’d come if she called, then I would have, even if she wasn’t mine, I would have come if she needed me enough to call. And I didn’t. And the only conclusion I can come to for that is if something had happened to me,” he explained.

“Without her here,” Jack said slowly, “you’d be reckless, careless. I already see that starting these last few weeks. You’re dead, I’m dead, Charlie’s dead, and Rose is alone, all because you made a really bad decision.”

“I’m correcting it now.”

“Rose doesn’t want to stay. You can’t make her.”

“I can’t abandon her to that,” the Doctor protested.

“But you could have abandoned her otherwise,” Jack said flatly.

“Look, I’m not expecting to pick up where I left off with Rose. I’ve done far too much damage to ever believe she’ll forgive me. But the both of you need to stay on the TARDIS. She can still lean on you, I’m not going to try to interfere or take that away.”

“Thought you said you couldn’t stand to see the two of us together like that,” Jack pressed.

“What’s the alternative? My son will be alive and Rose won’t be alone. I can keep them protected and you can be the one who…takes my place.” The last bit was said reluctantly.

Jack studied the Doctor for a long time and then glanced off in the direction Rose had gone in. He swallowed hard. “Do you still love Rose?” he asked.

“Yes,” the Doctor said without hesitation. “Always have. Just wanted what was best for her.”

“And you thought hurting her was what was best for her?”

“I was trying to protect her. Pushing her away from me, I thought it was my only option!” he snapped.

“But you love her. And do you want her back?” he pushed.

The Doctor didn’t say anything for a long time. His inner demons warred within him, but he finally raised his eyes and met Jack’s. “Yes.” The word came out hard and heavy.

“Do you want this child?” he wanted to know.

“I…I…I want to want him.”

“That’s not good enough, Doc,” Jack said.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Jack. The whole idea of having a child at this stage in my life worries me. I don’t have the lifestyle for raising young children. It’s a dangerous life. You’ve seen it,” the Doctor explained.

“So you’ll have to change how you live for a while. You’re 900, Doc, what’re fifteen or sixteen years in the course of a lifetime measured in centuries? Especially if you get to spend those years with Rose? Isn’t it worth the alteration for such a fleeting amount of time for you?”

The Doctor bowed his head. “I’m scared, Jack. I’ll muck it up. I always muck up the important things. Rose, the baby.” He shook his head sadly. “She’ll never forgive me for this. I’ve hurt her so much.” He clenched his hands into fists. “I don’t even begin to know how I’ll make this up to her and convince her I still want her in my life.” He looked down. “But I want to try, Jack. I want to try to fix things. I want to try to be a father again. I will. For her.”

Jack studied the Doctor for a long time. The inner battle he was struggling with raged across his face until he finally spoke. “I’m not quite ready to forgive you for what you did to Rose and I’m probably going to hate myself for this, Doc, but…I’m going to help you win her back, because she’s not happy like this. And she doesn’t want me. She never has. It’s always been you. As long as we’re clear that I’m doing this for Rose and not you, we’ll be fine. We have a lot of work ahead of us. It’s going to be a long time before she’s ready to forgive you,” Jack said. "And if you hurt her again, I'll regenerate you myself."

“Whatever it takes, Jack,” the Doctor said. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Rose was miserable. She’d spent most of the morning trying to keep her breakfast down and had succeeded until the Doctor had come back and made his announcement. That’s when she’d left and lost it. She’d been so weak afterwards that she’d sat on the bathroom floor for twenty minutes trying to get her strength back. Four months pregnant and she was still dealing with morning sickness.

When she’d queried the Doctor on that particular topic a week ago he’d replied with a condescending, “When my people still gave birth naturally, Gallifreyan women didn’t get morning sickness, Rose. It’s a human thing.” Which meant basically, he didn’t know if it was going to end or not. She had managed to get him to tell her how long the gestation rate was for his kind, a lovely 15 months that she was not happy about.

Of course, if it followed that she’d be ill for the first trimester and a trimester for her would be five months, then she’d only have to wait another month for it to be over. She sighed and stepped onto the scale with quivering legs. Even though her belly was just starting to round out she had actually been losing weight with the constant sickness and she was a little worried about it. It was probably a good thing she’d had a bit of spare flesh to start off with or things would be much worse than they were.

A knock at the bathroom door diverted her attention and she said, “What?”

“Are you okay, Rose?” She sighed. Jack again. Although who else would it be? It wasn’t exactly like the Doctor would be asking after her.

“I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute.” She stepped over to the sink and washed her face and brushed her teeth, then unlocked the bathroom door and gave Jack a weak smile. The smile he turned on her was dazzling and she leaned on him as he walked her down the corridor to her room.

“I’m worried about you, Rose,” Jack said as she settled down onto her bed. He sat down beside her and picked up one of her hands.

“I’m worried about me, too,” she said. “I can’t keep anything down. According to the Doctor’s scale I’ve lost 4.8 kilograms. That can’t be good for the baby.”

“8 pounds?” asked Jack with a furrowed brow. “Have you told the Doctor?”

“Please. I talk to him as little as possible. Last thing I need is him accusing me of harming the baby, like he did about falling off the cliff,” she said in annoyance.

“He didn’t actually accuse--.”

“I know what he said and I know what he meant, Jack.”

“Well, I still think you should tell him. You might need to go on a nutrient drip or something like that to get your strength back up. You were shaking like a leaf on the walk back here. I’m not sure you would have made it if I hadn’t helped you,” Jack said.

“Fine then, you tell him. The less I have to talk to him, the better.”

Chapter 9: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/76250.html