Long Journey Home (2/?)

Title: Long Journey Home

Author: Gail R. Delaney

Series: The Unseen and In Between

Setting: Series 3 and 4 through “Journey’s End”. Each section will indicate which episode the particular scene revolves around either before – during – or after – as reference. This is immediately after The Runaway Bride and before Smith and Jones

Genre: Reunion Fic/Fix-It Fic

Rating: PG-13 overall

Disclaimer: Not mine. If I owned Doctor Who, Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant would be my own private little playmates.

Summary: More than once, the Doctor told Rose something was ‘impossible’, just to later prove himself wrong. She no longer believed in impossible because of him. Then he told her that she could never see him again – that the walls were closed forever. Yeah, well… he also said they couldn’t do something else, and she had to prove one theory wrong to show he was wrong on both.

A/N: This is not Journey’s End compliant, but I think that parts of it are a heck of a lot closer to ‘canon’ than the actual episode. In fact, in some ways it’s not Season 3 and 4 compliant. There are copious references back to other stories in the Unseen and In Between series, so many that I can’t point them all out. So, if you haven’t read the series – or it’s been awhile – you may read some things that you don’t remember. Probably a reference back. For me, it’s one long, unending loop of a story so I fall back on these facts as if they were canon.





He wanted to stay, wanted to drown himself in the love that overflowed in the Campbell home. Here, he could allow himself to feel it, enjoy it, and devour it. She was his blood, his descendent, and her children were his great grandchildren.


Great Grandchildren… Rose would have loved to tease…


She slipped easily into his thoughts. In the great scheme of the universe, Rose Tyler had been pulled from him decades before. But, sometimes, time did move in a straight line and at a painfully slow pace. And he had only lost her a few days before. The scent of her shampoo still lingered in the control room, if he listened very carefully, he could hear her laughter echoing through the TARDIS harmonics.


Susan begged to see the TARDIS, the place she had once called home. The place where she grew up. And he could deny her no more than he could ever deny Rose. The Doctor felt the intense rush of glee from the TARDIS when they stepped inside, and the engine piston flashed a brighter white-blue, its hum vibrating through the air.


“She’s so different,” Susan whispered reverently as she climbed the ramp to the console. She balanced her youngest child — an infant she’d named Conrad — against her shoulder as she tipped her head back to take in the cavernous expanse of the console room ceiling.


When Susan had been with him, the TARDIS had been stark and white. She had spent so long forgotten and neglected that her desire to look like anything more than a ship – a machine – had faded into nothingness. It had taken hundreds of years for the TARDIS to recover, and come back to the warm home he’d remembered as a boy. He had always wished this was the TARDIS Susan had known.


Susan laid her hand on the console and smiled. “I still feel her.”


“Of course you do.” The Doctor stepped behind Susan, and slid Conrad from her arms, holding his great-grandson against his chest. “She’s happy you’re here.”


“Hello,” Susan whispered. “I missed you.” She looked to the Doctor, tears brimming in her eyes. “I’ve missed you, too, Grandfather.” She shook her head and chuckled softly, wiping away a stray tear. “I always imagined that if I saw you again, you’d still be…”


“Old and cranky?”


Susan laughed. “Well, I didn’t expect you to look younger than me.”


The Doctor sat on the jump seat, bracing his feet against the edge of the console so he could lay Conrad against his legs and look at the boy. He was still tiny, only a few months old, but his eyes were curious and he took in his surroundings with awe. Susan had refused to bring Ian, or her oldest child Maureen, because they were older and she couldn’t have them telling their friends of police call boxes with an entire universe inside. Conrad would never remember…


Looking at his inquisitive face, the Doctor smiled, and suspected Susan’s boy would remember far more than she imagined.


“Grandfather,” Susan said softly, drawing his attention. He looked up, and smiled at the simple pleasure of seeing his girl on the TARDIS again. She studied him, almost the same way Conrad studied the console room ceiling, and the Doctor suspected she saw far more than he wanted her to see. “You seem so sad.”


He opened his mouth to make an excuse, or to deny, but in his nine-hundred or so years he had met just a handful of people he neither wanted to or was able to lie to. Well, at least most of the time. And he didn’t have the strength to say nothing was wrong.


“I lost someone.”


“Who?”


He couldn’t look at her when he answered, so he focused on Conrad. The Doctor dug into his suit pocket and found a bauble that was safe enough for the boy to gum, and without too much pocket lint, and smiled when the widget went directly into the boy’s mouth. Gallifreyan… Human… Tuluvian… there wasn’t a planet that the infants didn’t stick things in their mouths.


Susan waited silently for his answer.


He swallowed, the lump in his throat a rock. “The only woman I’ve ever loved other than your grandmother.”


She walked around the console, her hand trailing over the coral, and climbed into the jump seat beside him, curling her legs beneath her so she could sit close to his side. He extended his arm along the back of the seat and she curled against him just as she had when she was very small and still afraid of the darkness beyond the console room. She rubbed her cheek against his jacket and hummed.


“I’ve missed the sound of two hearts,” she sighed.


The Doctor kissed her hair and closed his eyes. For a few moments, he was seven-hundred years younger and the giggle of a little girl’s laughter — other than the TARDIS — echoed off the high ceilings.


“Grandfather. Come find me!”


“Don’t be so foolish, child. Come in here and pay attention to what I’m telling you. You will never know how to navigate the Trans-dimensional thrust buffers if you don’t practice.”


“But, Grandfather, I want to play! Can you take me to that planet with the water slides and those giant ice cream cones?”


“The last time I took you there, you were ill for two days.”


“I know. Wasn’t it glorious?”


He’d sighed, acting indignant, and reset the temporal wave balance stream with a flick of his wrist. Susan hopped up and down, clapping her hands in glee.


“Oh, thank you, Grandfather! I love you!”


“What was her name?”


Susan’s softly asked question broke the memory, and the Doctor blinked his eyes open… not at all surprised by the hot moisture that burned his vision. He snuffed his nose and cleared his throat, looking down at the top of her head when he answered.


“Rose Marion Tyler,” he said with a smile, realizing he could smile when he said her name. “She’s from right here in London. Well… about one-hundred-and-seventy years ago, that is.”


“And you loved her?”


“I still love her.”


Susan moved away from him, sitting sideways with her toes tucked beneath his leg so she could face him, her arms wrapped around her knees. Conrad sighed so deeply his body shuddered with it, and his thumb had replaced the toy the Doctor had given him. His eyes blinked slowly, and a soft, ruddy glow blossomed in his cheeks. The Doctor lifted him to his chest, curling the little boy against his shoulder and immediately Conrad’s head nestled into the curve of his neck.


Susan smiled. “You’re very good with him.”


“I’ve done this before.” He tried to sound indignant. “Three children and six grandchildren.”


Susan rubbed Conrad’s back as the Doctor rubbed his cheek against the boy’s soft hair. The fuzz clung to his rough whiskers, and he realized he must look like he hadn’t shaved in a couple days.


“I’m happy, Grandfather.”


He looked sideways at her, not taking his cheek from Conrad’s head. “I knew you would be. I worried you would be angry at me.”


She nodded, her eyebrows arched. “Oh, I was. For a very long time I was furious with you. It was probably a good thing you didn’t come back, because I would have given you a piece of my mind for leaving me like that without asking.”


“I get that a lot…” he said absently.


“But, I’m not angry anymore. David and I are very happy, and I know that if you hadn’t done what you did — because you loved me — then I wouldn’t have Maureen, Ian and Conrad. So, I’m grateful. Thank you.”


“I don’t think anyone has ever thanked me for leaving them behind.”


“How often do you see them again for them to do that?” she asked with a lopsided grin he almost recognized.


“Not often enough, I suppose.”


Conrad squirmed, curling his legs up under him as he turned his face into his great-grandfather’s neck. The warmth of his breath spread through the Doctor like a healing balm.


“Did you ever think about doing it again?”


“Doing what?”


“Being a father again.”


“What? Me? Susan, I’m nine-hundred years old—“


“Not even middle aged for a Time Lord.”


He could have blown off her question, but once again, the Doctor didn’t have the will or the desire to lie… or even fib to save himself the pain of answering with the truth.


“Not once since the day your grandmother died,” he finally answered. “Until I met Rose.” Susan sat watching him… waiting for him to finish. He swallowed and focused on the toes of his trainers. “We couldn’t. Rose and I. Even if she wasn’t gone…” He shook his head. “We just couldn’t.”


“Why? You said she was human, yeah?”


He nodded, and wondered just how much he could explain without telling Susan that her home was gone… everyone was gone. He couldn’t do that, wouldn’t be able to stand the look in her eyes when he told her he did it. Couldn’t show up in her life after so long, drop that in her lap, and then disappear again.


“When I regenerated… not this last time, but the time before… it was bad. Very bad. I almost didn’t, in fact. The TARDIS saved me.” He looked up at the engine piston, and it glowed just slightly brighter. He doubted Susan would even see the shift in color. “But… I was damaged.”


“Oh…” Susan said softly, and the Doctor glanced at her to see bright color rise in her cheeks.


“No, not that!” he immediately corrected. “I wasn’t that damaged… and I can’t believe I’m actually discussing with my granddaughter my ability to have sex!”


Susan laughed, tipping her head back, so the sound echoed around them from the high ceiling. Conrad stirred, huffed, and went still again. And surprising to even himself, the Doctor found himself laughing with her.


All too quickly, the laughter died and he drew in another breath. Why hadn’t he ever just told her? He’d been vague and danced around the words. Would it have been that hard? I’m sterile, Rose. It’s not you, it’s me. Me and my stupid war has truly left me to be the last of the Time Lords.


“Tell me about her,” Susan asked with a gently voice, reaching out to touch his cheek. The touch was so familiar and comforting, he both needed it and felt the urge to push it away at the same time. “Tell me about Rose Marion Tyler.”


The Doctor smiled. He couldn’t help himself. The ache was still there, sitting in the hollow space between his hearts, but he could tell Susan. Of anyone in the Universe, she might be the closest to understanding.


“She’s beautiful. And intelligent. Not like you and me intelligent, but she understands everything that’s important. She’s so young. I couldn’t imagine why such a young, beautiful creature would want to be with me.”


“You’re not exactly hard on the eyes, Grandfather. And I’m allowed to say that, you know…” she added with a grin.


“You didn’t see my last face.” The Doctor shook his head and made a face. “Big ears. Big nose. Awful hair. No fashion sense. I wore black all the time. But… she loved me anyway. And she stayed when I changed.”


“She must have been wonderful.”


“She is, Susan. She is. She wasn’t anything… she is. She’s still alive. She’s just gone… trapped… and I can’t get her back. Ever.”

---

Pete’s World
Seven Months since Canary Warf


When Rose stood on the beach in Norway and told the Doctor she wasn’t carrying his child, she hadn’t lied. She just hadn’t realized. Hadn’t known.


Living in the TARDIS made something as mundane as a 28-day cycle unimportant. After more than two years with him, she’d stopped trying to calculate such things. And after coming to this alternate and wrong world, she hadn’t thought about it until her mother announced her own pregnancy.


Even then, she’d passed it off as nothing because living in the TARDIS had set her system off kilter. Or maybe it was the stress of losing him and finding herself trapped in this world where Rose Tyler didn’t exist.


Besides… he’d said… he’d told her that they couldn’t have a child together. He hadn’t said the work impossible, but it still sat between them – breaking her heart. Until then, Rose hadn’t thought so far ahead, about children and that kind of future. Some part of her had just assumed all that would come… someday.


Now, they had no ‘someday’, and the impossible had happened once again.


Seven months she’d been without him. Seven months that the possibility of being pregnant hadn’t even dawned on her. Perhaps it was because he told her it never could. Perhaps because the idea of having his child here — where their baby would belong no more than she did — was terrifying and heartbreaking at the same time.


She stared at the white plastic stick in her hand, stared at the undeniable ‘plus’ sign. Then at the half-dozen other similar tests — all different brands and types — lined up along the lavatory counter. Every one said the same thing.


Rose stood and faced herself in the mirror. She turned sideways and pulled up her pyjama top, pushing the elastic waistband of the bottoms down her hips.


There was only the slightest change. She remembered complaining to her mother the week before that her favorite denims didn’t fit quite right, and Mickey’d made a comment about laying off the chips.


Two years… The Doctor had told her his mother had carried him for two years because she was human and his father was a Time Lord. But, what did that mean for a human mother and a Time Lord with human DNA? And he told her the TARDIS had helped guide the pregnancy… and the TARDIS was in another universe now.


“So, basically…” she said to the empty room. “I haven’t a clue when you’re coming out, little one. But I promise you this…” She met her own gaze in the mirror. “I’m going to do everything in my power — even if it means collapsin’ two universes — to get us back to your dad.”


She laid her palm against her waist, pressing slightly to test for any change she might feel. The only difference was the slightest swell. Rose blinked hot tears, sniffing loudly.


“I promise.”


Jackie Tyler knocked three times and called Rose’s name before she opened the bathroom door, not waiting for Rose’s “Hang on a minute”.


“Sweetheart, you’re going to be late. Mickey’s been waiting downstairs in the kitchen for ten minutes, says at this rate you’ll never make….”


It was pointless to try and hide the plethora of tests spread out on the counter, and Rose stood still, holding her breath with her hand on her stomach, as Jackie’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Her dark outlined eyes shifted from the sink to Rose, and a nervous twitter knotted in Rose’s stomach — just like every time she’d been caught doing something wrong as a kid.


“Mum—“


“Not a word,” Jackie snapped out, and picked up one of the tests. Her hand shook as she stared at it. “Oh, dear god.”


“Mum—“


“I’m going to kill that Mickey Smith! All that talk about you and him bein’ mates, movin’ into this house… why? So he can do this? Just like a bloke, jumpin’ in when he knew you were vulnerable—“


“Mum!!!”


Jackie stopped short, her attention shifting back to Rose, staring at her in a silent demand to know why she’d been interrupted in the middle of a perfectly good rant. Rose closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath.


“It’s not Mickey’s baby, Mum.”


“Then who the hell’s is it?”


Her mother’s shrill voice echoed off the porcelain tile, cutting deep into Rose’s head. She hadn’t felt any morning sickness, and thankfully remembered the Doctor saying his mother’s pregnancy had been relatively easy in comparison to most human pregnancies. Perhaps the longer gestation was easier on the body.


“Rose? Who the hell is it?”


“The Doctor, Mum. Who else would I be with?”


“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Jackie snapped.


“I’m not.” Rose couldn’t bring herself to raise her voice. This wasn’t something to fight about. “It’s the Doctor’s baby. Our baby, mine and his. It just took me this long to realize.”


“Sweetheart, it doesn’t take someone seven months to figure out they’re pregnant. And besides, you’d be showing and half-popped if it were his baby!”


Rose curled her palm across her forehead, and took a step back to sit on the closed lid of the toilet. Okay, so maybe not nausea… but this sure would explain why she’d been so tired. “It does take seven months, Mum, when your baby is only part human.”


Jackie gasped and stepped back herself, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, her own extended stomach making the position awkward. Rose understood her mother’s surprise, because more than once along the way Rose had managed to forget just how ‘not’ human the Doctor was. They sat there, silent for several minutes. Rose had only had a few moments to digest the reality of her situation before her mother had barreled in, forcing her to not only accept it but explain it.


“What does this mean?” Jackie finally asked.


“I don’t know.” And it was the truth. Rose really didn’t know. She was just playing it by ear, and dealing with each new step as it came.


“Can this happen?”


“Obviously it can, Mum.”


“No, I mean… “ The strain in her mother’s voice made Rose look up, and the softening of Jackie’s expression made some of Rose’s tension slip away. “Can you have this baby? He’s not human… Oh, I sound thick,” Jackie huffed.


“S’ok, Mum. I understand. Yeah, it can happen. Time Lords have…” She stumbled for a moment, wondering how much she should tell and how much she had to tell. These were his secrets, secrets he’d shared with her but never intended for anyone else to know, especially her mother. “Time Lords have had children with humans before.”


“So he knew this could happen?” her mother shrilled.


“Don’t…” Rose took a deep breath, closing her eyes for just a moment to school her response. “Don’t get mad at him, Mum. He thought it couldn’t… for us. Not for us. I don’t know why — he never told me — he just said that we couldn’t.”


Jackie didn’t say anything for several minutes, and that made Rose more nervous than if she started screaming and ranting. A screaming, ranting Jackie Tyler Rose could handle. A silent one was dangerous.


“Sweetheart.” The softness in Jackie’s tone made Rose look up and meet her mother’s gaze. Tears glistened in her blue eyes, threatening to run the black eyeliner. Jackie swallowed before speaking. “Did you want to have this baby?”


The sob that ripped from Rose’s chest took her completely by surprise, leaving her choking and gasping for air. She curled forward, covering her face with her hands with her forehead resting on her knees as the cries shook her. She felt her mother’s comforting hands on her back, soothing and rubbing as she softly cooed and cajoled, kissing Rose’s hair. But it wasn’t enough.


Reality had just set in. The vicious cruelty of the entire situation. She hadn’t realized she’d wanted a baby with the Doctor until he told her he couldn’t, and it had broken her heart. He didn’t say it, but she knew he hurt in the same way. But, she had tamped down the sadness because she had him.


Now, he was gone and she couldn’t share this with him.


Rose shook her head within the cradle of her hands. No. NO! She would find a way. Impossible was just improbable, and the Doctor himself was an improbability.


For now, she just cried. These would be the only tears she shed, because she’d fix this. Damn it, she’d fix this.