Notes: Maybe I ought to mention that my only background knowledge for Doctor Who comes from what I’ve seen on TV, in the new series. I’ve read a few fics that mention ‘Looms of Gallifrey’ and stuff, and that all made me wonder whether my story was possible or not, but hey - this is an AU, and I’m going on what I know. Just thought I’d say that in case anyone else is well clued-up on their Who history and wants to tell me off. :)

This chappie is sans beta again. Naughty me.

The days from then on passed slowly and painfully, and Rose spent them in what could only be called a state of apathy. This wasn’t like the Rose that Jackie knew at all, though, so it all quickly became an irritant to her. It therefore wasn’t long until, one morning, Jackie confronted her daughter head on and said, “You need to sort your life out, sweetheart. This has gone on long enough.”

Rose looked up at her mother from where she was slouched on the sofa in her dressing gown, watching the presenters on some lifestyle show on the telly talk about bikini diets. She was quite certain that she had nothing to live for anymore, however; she very well knew that she needed to do something, rather than sit here wasting her life away, but how could she…? How could one follow up living in a time machine with a Time Lord? How was she supposed to pick up the pieces and start over?

“Captain Jack’s moved on a little,” Jackie continued. “You can too.”

Rose rolled her eyes and regarded her mother with disbelief. “Jack used to be a Time Agent,” she said. “He’s a professional, mum, and… well, he’s probably better at coping with this sorta thing. He lost two years of his memory once. If he can deal with that, he can deal with anythin‘.”

“Then I’m sure you can have a go, too. This isn’t like you, Rose.”

Rose ignored her mum for the moment whilst she flicked the channel on the TV and found a gardening programme on BBC1, which was a little more interesting than the bikini people. “It’s not that easy,” she quietly protested before she cast the TV remote aside and exhaled deeply.

In the past few weeks that both she and the Captain had been ‘home’, here in London 2006, Jack (with his usual flirtatious gusto) had gotten to know a young man who lived upstairs very well, a pretty-boy named Eugene. In fact, so well had he gotten to know him that their friendship had become a relationship and the Captain had since moved in. On top of that, and with Eugene’s help, Jack had also secured a small job at a local petrol station, serving behind the counter, and the station claimed that, since his appointment, business had increased threefold! Jack knew that it wasn’t much, especially compared to what he had been doing before, and he hardly liked living in the twenty-first century, but it was something; it was a life. And, besides, he couldn’t do much else right now, could he?

To be honest, Rose wasn’t quite sure how Jack had managed to pick up his feet and ‘carry on’; she guessed that he must simply be a much more adaptable person than she was, and that he was a natural survivor. Jack gave off the impression that he could be thrown into any era of time and, no matter what, would always manage to blend in sooner than you could say Raxacoricofallapatorious. But she just couldn’t carry on like he could. Everything came down to comparisons for her; she was always thinking of what she should be doing rather than what she could. For instance, she often thought that she should be helping the Doctor fight his war in the future, but forgot the fact that she couldn’t, and she thought that she should be back in the TARDIS, travelling by the Doctor’s side again, but failed to face the fact that she simply couldn’t… This was all that occupied her mind, day and night, and though it wasn’t healthy, she couldn’t help but think that way. Her mum kept trying desperately to drag her to the Job Centre, but Rose just couldn’t do it; she was stuck in a rut that only she could get herself out of it… and it didn’t look like she would be climbing out any time soon.

“Well you can’t stay on the dole forever,” Jackie also consistently reminded her. “You’re better than that, Rose.”

After this usual morning chitchat, Jackie then departed to do some shopping in town (Marks and Sparks had a good sale on, apparently) and Rose was left alone with the people on the telly who were planting trees and installing mini water fountains. She indulged herself with a deep sigh before she reached again for the remote and was about to flick the channel when she suddenly felt her stomach lurch and the bile come rushing up her throat. Swearing, she leapt from her seat and rushed into the bathroom, where she subsequently hurled down the toilet.

After the unexpected surge seemed to stop, Rose then slumped next to the sink and wiped her suddenly sweaty forehead. That was twice in two days she had been sick, now. It did her head in.

Casting this aside, she clambered back to her feet and decided to go back to bed.

----

A couple of days later, Rose’s illness seemed to have gotten worse, and it wasn’t long until Jackie noticed the recurring vomiting sessions. “Well, if you can’t get yourself down to that Job Centre, then I’ll be damned if you can’t get yourself to the doctors’ and get that sorted,” she said another morning as the people on the lifestyle show had moved on to chatting about seafood diets.

Rose glared blearily at the plates of clams and lobsters that were flashing across the TV screen and had to suppress the need to heave again. “I’m fine, mum,” she grumbled. “It’s probably a withdrawal effect from time-travelling or summit.”

Jackie looked less than convinced. “Oh, I see. Has your Captain friend been chucking-up daily, too?”

Rose gave her mum a dark stare then returned her eyes to the telly and pretended to be interested in the shrimp cocktails. “No, but he’s a --”

“‘Professional’,” Jackie interceded. “Yes, I know. Don’t see why that excuses him from any side-effects, though. From what I can tell, you’re lovesick and you need to snap out of it and come back into the real world.”

The dangerous subject had been breached and Rose couldn’t be bothered to talk about it. Conversations with her mum about the Doctor never went very well - so she got up and just went back to bed again.

----

Another few days later the sickness was still there and Rose looked the worse for wear. It was Jack who was sitting in the lounge of the Tylers’ flat this morning with a rather pasty-faced Rose, and they were both watching (with varying degrees of attention) the people on the lifestyle show argue about the effectiveness of a protein diet.

“What a load of rubbish,” Jack chuckled after a while, before he flicked the channel over to the BBC gardening programme and turned to Rose. “So, Roseykins, heard you’re not doin’ too well?”

Rose, again in her dressing gown, stared daggers at him from her slumped position on the sofa. “Don’t you dare call me ‘Roseykins’, Jack-Flash.”

“Look, who is Jack-Flash?”

Rose wafted a hand at him, and turned her eyes back to the telly. “You got a day off work, then?” she asked a moment later.

“Yup. And Eugene’s gone down to Southampton to see his mom for a few days, so I’m all alone.”

“Poor Jack.”

“It’s tragic, isn’t it?”

They both smiled and watched a man plant a rhododendron on the gardening show.

“Where’s your mom got to, whilst we’re on the subject?” the Captain continued.

Rose sighed and shifted into a more comfortable slouch. “Dunno… might hav’ gone out with Colleen from downstairs.” Rose glanced at Jack. “Colleen’s a good mate of hers, and she’s expecting her first baby soon. Mum probably wants to help her get all the baby’s stuff or summit. She loves interfering, my mum.”

Jack smiled widely again. “I can believe it.”

Rose looked back to the gardening show and then found herself rubbing her temples as a slight headache began to emerge.

“Rose, I’m worried about you,” Jack suddenly said in his most brotherly of tones. “You’re not well. You stay home most days, you don’t do anything, and you keep vomiting, which isn’t good no matter which way you look at it.”

“Jack…” she sighed.

“I just want you to be all right. I know things have been tough, and, gee, they still ain’t easy for me, despite what you might think… but we can get through this. Let me and your mom help you, Rosey, because you’re not helping yourself.”

Rose took another deep breath before she reluctantly turned her eyes once again onto Jack. “Okay, I’ll go to the doctors’, I’ll try to find a job, you name it - but you’ve gotta promise me one thing.”

“Name it, girl.”

“That you never call me ‘Rosey’, ‘Roseykins’, or any other stupid variation of ‘Rose’ ever again.”

Jack grinned. “Aww…. You not the pet-name-type?”

“Promise.”

He tittered and threw her a wink. “Captain’s honour.”

----

Rose managed to squeeze herself into the chockablock list of appointments at her local surgery the following morning, so she couldn’t stay home to see what diets were fashionable on today’s lifestyle show, or tune in for any tips on trimming her evergreens. She did feel depressingly normal, though, when she sat in that waiting room amongst the squealing children, coughing old men and expectant mothers; here she was, back with the rest of the ‘stupid apes’ that made up the human race, and there was nothing she could do about it…

God, why couldn’t she escape this funk…?

She stared at the door which led through to the rest of the surgery, at which a GP or nurse would appear every few minutes to call the next patient through. “Mr. C. Lawrenson”, “Mrs. P. Taylor”, “Mr. J. Smith” (there was quite a commotion at this when three Mr. J. Smiths claimed the slot) and then, finally, “Miss. R. Tyler?”

‘That’s me’ Rose thought as she looked up and saw a portly female doctor stood in the doorway, a woman who had a bundle of red hair tied back into a bun and an abundance of freckles upon her pleasant countenance. Dragging herself off her seat and toward the lady, Rose was then led down a corridor, past a man walking on crutches and a couple of kids with ball-bearings up their nostrils, before then being shown into Room 6 and offered a seat.

“Nice morning isn’t it?” the doctor said amiably whilst she looked through Rose’s medical records on her desk.

“Yes,” Rose nodded, glancing about herself at the various posters on the white walls, some about flu jabs and others concerning the signs of meningitis; suddenly she felt extremely self-conscious - she wasn’t quite sure what she was going to say now she was here, and even worse, she feared what it was that she might be diagnosed with. ‘Time-travelling withdrawal’ wasn’t something she was sure these doctors were taught to recognise, if it indeed existed at all.

“My name’s Doctor Fletcher,” the woman said after a moment, giving Rose another kind look. “I notice that we haven’t seen you for a while. A healthy girl, I presume?”

“I like to think so.”

Doctor Fletcher smiled in a way that Rose could only call maternal. “Excellent, excellent,” she said. “And what is it that we can do for you today?”

Rose dithered and began fidgeting. “I’m… not sure. Well, the thing is, I keep being sick. Like every day.”

“Do you bring up blood?”

“No.”

“Does it happen regularly?”

“Usually once or twice in the morning.”

The doctor typed away at her computer, nodding. “Any other symptoms?”

Rose tried to think. “I don’t know, really… My mum thinks I’m a lot moodier, but then she would say that. I haven’t been back home for long.”

“Ah, been away at university?”

“No, I’ve been--” Rose paused. “Travelling.”

“Wonderful. Been to see the world?”

“Yeah,” Rose nodded. (‘And then some’ she thought.)

Doctor Fletcher went on to talk amicably to her about a holiday she’d had to Egypt several years ago whilst she checked Rose’s blood pressure, her weight and height, and then asked her about her diet, her lifestyle and her menstrual cycles. She then just sat and typed a few more things up on her computer. “Well you do seem to be a very healthy young woman,” she said with a smile, “and I see little reason for this to be anything of too much concern. No disease or infection, at least.” She then turned to face Rose head on, and Rose thought that perhaps it was some kind time-travel withdrawal thing after all, something that these GPs couldn’t detect… until Doctor Fletcher asked, “There isn’t any chance you might be pregnant, is there?”

Rose’s face dropped. There was a word on the tip of her tongue that began with ‘S’ that begged to be said, but she quickly reformed it into, “Sugar…” as her face flushed red and her stomach made a terrified lurch. Now that she thought about it, the puzzle pieces for that equation did seem to fit…

The doctor was as calm as ever, though, and Rose was certain she must have to deal with stuff like this every day. “Shall we do a blood test?” she asked with a smile.