When Jackie Tyler opened the door to see her daughter stood there with a handsome stranger, and both of them with red eyes and drawn faces, she didn’t know what to think. She thought that it was best not to think for the moment, though - all the questions and explanations could wait. The most important thing was that her daughter was home, and that she was safe - so she simply opened her arms and embraced Rose.

Rose leant into the hug in turn and clutched onto her mother tightly. Her mind was still a mass of loose ends, one confused metropolis of unanswered questions and dreadful fears, and a shoulder to cry on was what she needed right now; she knew that she would never be able to ground her thoughts and think clearly until her tears were ousted. Her whole world had just been pulled from beneath her feet, after all…

“Thank God,” Jackie sighed after a long, contented hug, whilst Jack hung about a little awkwardly in the rear. “It’s been weeks, Rose, weeks and weeks… I worry so much.”

Rose finally pulled away from her mum and wiped her eyes, and mother and daughter then just stared hard at one another.

“What is it?” Jackie asked. “What’s happened?”

Rose swallowed and shook her head. “I don’t know…” she murmured candidly.

Jackie only made a short nod in return; it was clear that a certain man in a battered leather jacket was absent, though, and that, coupled with Rose’s tears could only be significant. She quickly ushered Rose and the stranger inside, then closed the door after them.

“Are you going to introduce your friend, then, Rose?” Jackie asked as she looked at the unknown man once more, who, she noted with great curiosity, seemed to be inspecting the flat as if he had never seen anything like it before.

Captain Jack gave Rose’s mother an apologetic look and, fighting down his current despondency, quickly recalled his courtesy and offered her his hand; “Forgive me - I’m Captain Jack Harkness.”

Jackie rose an eyebrow at him before she hesitantly placed her hand in his and gave it a shake. “Is he another one of your aliens?” she then asked Rose.

Rose half-heartedly shook her head. “No… he’s human, just from the a fifty-first century.”

Jackie wasn’t sure whether or not to be surprised by this, though it was difficult to treat it with as cool a disregard as Rose had shown. She decided to just flash the Captain a nervous smile in the end.

“You must be Rose’s mom,” Jack continued, giving her hand another firm shake. “Nice to meet you, Mrs…?”

She wafted a hand at him and suddenly realised how handsome he was. “Call me Jackie,” she said.

He nodded. “Very well, nice to meet you, Jackie.”

Jackie gave her daughter another significant look before she then turned and led them both into the lounge. “Well, as you can see,” she said, picking up the Heat magazines from the sofa and collecting a pair of used mugs from the coffee table, “I’m completely unprepared for your visit. Can’t you give me a ring to let me know when you’re coming next time?”

Rose sighed, her mother’s routine manner serving to irritate her to high heaven. She kept her cool, though, despite the circumstances, and ignoring her mother, offered Jack an armchair. “Sit down,” she said.

Jack gave her a nod of thanks and lowered himself into the seat, whilst Jackie walked off into the kitchen and began rinsing the mugs out beneath the tap. “Do you and your Captain want a drink, then?” she asked.

Rose slumped onto the sofa and looked to Jack, who made a resigned shrug in return. “Might as well,” he said. “I need waking up.”

“Yeah, sure mum,” Rose called back.

Jackie didn’t say anything in return; the despondency in both Rose and this Jack’s manner was as tangible to her as the flat they now stood in, and it frightened her a little. She was curious to hear about what had happened to them, but so far the two of them seemed very reluctant to even begin to touch upon the topic…

Jackie cast this aside for a moment and soon returned with a cup of coffee for each of them, before she took a seat in the free armchair and waited for the start of an explanation to arise.

Nothing but a tense silence ensued, however, and Jackie found her eyes darting between her daughter and the fifty-first century man. Neither of them seemed to have any inclination to speak; they just stared point-blank at their mugs in complete silence, wrapped up in their own little worlds.

Jackie at last shook her head, feeling utterly exasperated. “Well, then, where is he? Where’s that Doctor of yours?”

Rose looked up and met her mother’s eyes; her mind was still buzzing over recent events and she didn’t know where to start, nor how to start. She couldn’t even think straight.

“Well?” Jackie pushed on. “What’s happened?”

Rose looked away and suddenly felt like she was burning up from inside, and her anxiety began to boil over into a rather savage rage; “Well he’s obviously not ‘ere, is he, mum?” she snapped, though a little more aggressively than she’d quite intended.

Jackie rolled her eyes. “Don’t you go throwing your hormones round at me. The hours I’ve spent sitting here, waiting for you to come back, hoping that you’re okay, and--”

Rose ran her fingers through her hair. “All right, mum, I’m sorry,” she interrupted. “It’s just… Well…” She had to stop there, though - it was all too much to take in, and she just dropped her head into her hands.

Jackie glanced at Captain Jack, but he only offered her a rather miserable look in return, so she paced over to her daughter and held her in her arms, stroking her hair and trying to soothe her. “For God’s sake” she said. “What’s happened?”

Jack exhaled slowly as he tried to collect his thoughts, and leant forwards upon his knees, his hands clasped before him. For some reason, seeing Rose in such a state of hysteria, and quite clearly not herself, really unnerved him - it just showed how bad things must have become…

“It’s hard to explain,” he said at last, “But to cut to the chase, young Rose there was captured by a race of aliens called the Daleks. Turned out these creatures had been shaping the human race for hundreds of years, moulding them to it’s will, but I digress… They captured Rose so that they could use her as ransom against the Doctor. The bargain was Rose for his time machine. Now the Doc’ cares for Rose and there was no way he was gonna let her come to harm, but he couldn’t just agree to their demands because that looked likely to mean that the whole human race would be wiped out.”

Jackie was just staring at Captain Jack in utter incredulity - perhaps more because she could hardly get her head round what he was saying rather than the fact she was appalled by the account.

“So the Doc’ went about saving Rose…” Jack continued, “but his plan failed, and he had to make a choice. Last thing Rose and I knew, he had agreed to give up his time machine, but only on the account that we were to be kept safe and sent away through time. And so, here we are now, a long way from him and without a clue of what he was planning to do.” Jack shook his head and stared at the floor. “We don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

“But you’re safe,” Jackie whispered at length. “He kept you safe. Oh thank God he sent you back to me.”

Jack watched as Jackie hugged her daughter again, as tightly as she could; he wished that the lady was right and that he could tell her they were all safe, but considering the fact that the Daleks might have gotten their hypothetical hands on the Doctor’s time machine meant that they were far from safe. It would only be a matter of time…

----

The rest of the day was spent in an unglamorous fashion as both Rose and the Captain tried to come to terms with their loss, and with their being suddenly marooned back in the year 2006. When the evening finally came, Jack was offered the sofa for the night whilst Rose retired to her pink room with the pink duvet and the pink curtains, and was reminded, unwillingly, about her life before the Doctor.

As she climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling through the dark, Rose found that she simply could not sleep. Her mind was fraught with thoughts and images and, as tired as she admittedly was, she just couldn’t rest. Just knowing that the Doctor was out there in the future, all alone, and that she was back here, lying in bed and doing nothing, made her feel so useless and so inadequate that she just wanted to scream.

And it wasn’t long until it all came rolling back in flashbacks, every images and memory from her recent misadventure: the Anne Droid, the people being ‘disintegrated’, the swarms of Daleks, the Doctor…

Rose snuggled a little further beneath her covers as if this might offer her some respite. Oh God, the Doctor… Was he still alive? Was he okay? Would she ever even see him again…? That terrible thought brought a tear to her eye and made her spine tingle in dread. Had their night in the cell truly been their last ever encounter?

She swallowed; her and the Doctor, laid naked in each other’s arms; his eyes on her face, his hands on her body, his lips on her skin. Her and the Doctor, finally showing their love for one another. The last thing she could remember was settling by his side and laying her head atop his chest as she drifted into a bittersweet slumber.

No wait… she could recall something else. As the haze of sleep had cast itself over her, she was certain that she had heard the Doctor’s voice whisper down to her, “Have a good life, Rose. Have a fantastic life.” It had almost been a farewell…

But had he really said that, or had she dreamt it? She wasn’t sure, but she treasured the words anyway (even if she would like to go back now and tell him that she would have no life if he wasn’t to be a part of it).

Now that sounded corny she thought a second later. The Doctor would probably flash her one of his great grins, chuckle a little and ask her what she’d done with Rose Tyler if she told him that.

She thus almost smiled, but she just couldn’t permit it, so ended up heaving another great sigh and rolling over several times before she realised she wasn’t going to be able to get to sleep anytime soon. She eventually opted to throw her duvet off her body and lurch across to the window, where she leant on the sill and stared out into the night sky. Everything was so normal, it almost affronted her, from the flickering street lamps to the whining of distant police sirens, and from the dog barking nearby to the sound of a young couple downstairs having a row. It was just… not enough. Not anymore.

And then, leaping from out of her mire of memories like a beacon in the fog, Rose began to hear words from the past, words she had almost forgotten:

She ran her hand through her long, blonde hair and thought on this. “But I can’t forget you,” she eventually whispered to the void. “And I can’t go home. Not any more.”