Jack was struggling to keep up with Rose as they made their way back from the surgery. She was obviously quite upset by something and was marching on ahead like there was no tomorrow.

“Rose, relax!” he implored.

“Two hearts, Jack!” she called back to him, her arms flying round her in tumult, “She said there were two!”

Jack charged to her side. “Well, of course she did.”

Rose wasn’t really listening, though, so continued to walk on frantically ahead. “I know it’s not twins. I just know.”

Jack took a deep breath, feeling sure that he didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of all this. “Rose, the Doctor had two hearts,” he stated as clearly and plainly as he could.

Rose then finally slowed to a halt as Jack’s words registered, before she turned on him and gave him a long, lingering look. “What?” she asked.

He gave her a faint smile and put his hand round her shoulder. “Chill,” he said, encouraging her to walk slowly by his side. “It’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Two hearts?”

“Yeah.”

Rose had the perplexed look on her face, the one she used when she was unable to quite get her head around the situation. “Then why didn’t he tell me?”

Jack shrugged. “It probably never crossed his mind. It’s not the first thing he’d thought of working into a conversation. Just like you’d never think of saying, ‘By the way, Doc’, I have two kidneys’.”

“But that’s obvious.”

“Is it?”

Rose thought on it for a moment before she conceded to the argument with a sigh. Jack was right, after all.

Jack had expected rose’s face to clear and for her to lighten up about the while thing now, but she didn’t - he could see it in her face, a real uneasiness and insecurity. “Will you bring me up to speed, Rose?” he asked, “because I think you’re hiding something.”

She ran her fingers through her hair and took several deep breaths. The fact of the matter was that the midwife’s assessment had been too much of a coincidence for her. The two hearts from her scan seemed to have been pulled straight from out her nightmare with the wolf-baby.

“Rose,” Jack pressed as the silence lingered. “What is it?”

“I had a dream last night,” she confessed at length, looking him straight in the eyes. “A bad one.”

He nodded.

“My baby was taken away from me, and they said… these doctors said it had two hearts.” She shook her head and bit her lip. “It can’t be a coincidence…”

Jack shrugged, offering her a cheery smile. “It was just a dream.”

But Rose wasn’t so optimistic. “Since so many things have happened to me, with aliens and time travel and all, I don’t know what to believe anymore… It just feels wrong.”

Jack sighed and put his hand round her shoulders again. “But what’s to worry about? If the Doc’ had two hearts, it’s only natural that the kid should have two as well.”

“But it’s not natural for a human, that’s the point! I’m not going back and risking them taking away my baby. It won’t take them long to realise that there’s only one baby to those two hearts, and that half of its blood isn’t human.”

Jack sighed and dropped his arm from her shoulders. “But you need these checkups. They’re there to help you, and to make sure everything’s okay.”

“But things aren’t okay! If they discover --”

“It might not be so bad.”

Rose gave him a dark look. “You’re very naïve for a human,” she said.

He shrugged again. “Someone has to be a little less than cynical, or we’d all be paranoid and miserable like you.”

She gave him a friendly slap. “It’s not funny, you know.”

“I’m just trying to keep you afloat!” he smirked. “You can’t blame me for trying.”

They both walked on for a while in silence until Rose murmured, “What would the Doctor do?”

Jack chuckled under his breath. “Now I don’t think we want to get inside his head. He’d probably just postpone all talk of the matter, like he does, and offer everyone a jelly baby.”

They both laughed. “Yeah,” Rose concurred, “You’re probably right.”

---

And so, despite Jack’s remonstrations, Rose forwent her visits to the midwife for the next few months and left her child’s progression to nature. (Funnily enough, jelly babies were one of her cravings. ‘Only the Doctor’s child’ she thought.)

Jack roped his flatmate, the elusive Eugene, into Rose’s countdown-to-motherhood, and the pair put their funds together to buy Rose’s future son or daughter some toys, blankets and clothes (thankfully the Winnie the Pooh dress-suit never reared its head). Even Jackie became more and more excited as the weeks passed, and was constantly telling the neighbours about how Rose was getting on. Everyone was somehow managing to see some good in the situation, and, though it felt odd, Rose was grateful for it.

Her whole wardrobe was soon made redundant as the bulge began to make its presence felt, and baggy jumpers and stretchy trousers became the norm. Her feet also fell victim to the extra weight, and she found herself spending more time sitting down than standing up. (The times when she’d been able to run about after the Doctor seemed long gone...) Her days were spent rather uneventfully as she felt unable to do more and more, her alien child seeming to drain her of her reserves, and this meant that, as she found herself homebound, she had the daytime TV schedule memorised by week thirty-two.

As the final weeks began to set in, she prayed that the baby would decide to make a move soon. She could only describe the whole nine-month-ordeal as some kind of marathon, which you started with enthusiasm, had a few little difficulties in the middle, then really began to flag toward the end, praying for the finish line to come into sight. Besides the suffering on her part, she just really wanted to see her baby’s little face and see how much of her Doctor she could discern in him or her.

The baby decided to stay put right up until Rose’s pregnancy had reached its full term (taking advantage of her hospitality, Rose guessed), which then left her with that last, painful hurdle to clear - the birth. And it wasn’t called labour for nothing.

Rose knew when it was time, without a doubt - her instincts just seemed to tell her that the twinges of pain she were feeling signalled the beginning of her child’s delivery, and that it was no false alarm. It started off okay, but she was glad that she wasn’t alone, because this was her first time and she was terrified. Both her mum and Jack were there to keep her company, and Jack made her walk a few times about the flat before they took up residence in the bathroom when the pain of her contractions got too much.

It truly felt to Rose like her body was going to split into two. It wasn’t simply pain, either, it was a sensation she could not even begin to describe, of something very alien trying to force itself out her womb. Which wasn’t wholly unexpected, really, since her child was not exactly human…

“Now this is the price you pay for your night of passion,” Jack joked as he made her comfortable, laying a few towels down for her. “You’ll be hating the Doctor by the end of this.”

Rose gave him a smile in return before the pain became too much to ignore and her real struggle began.

Jackie could barely allow herself to watch her daughter suffer, though. As the hours passed and Rose remained sat on the bathroom floor, being rocked in Jack’s arms, her skin pale and sweaty and her entire body quivering with pain, Jackie could only flitter about in emotional agony and wonder what on earth she could do to help. “Oh, sweetheart,” she sighed at one point, wiping her tearful eyes and kneeling by Rose’s side, “Let me call a doctor or a midwife, please.”

Rose cringed as another great wave of pain thundered through her body, and she felt Jack grip her harder in an attempt quell it. “I want my Doctor,” she replied ruggedly, lying her head against Jack’s shoulder, “Him, or no one.”

“But he’s not here, is he, darling?”

Rose cried out again as she felt another sharp pain in her groin, but she said nothing else to her mother.

Jackie persisted regardless. “Rose, you need help!” she said.

“No!” Rose insisted, gripping Jack’s hand hard as she tried to withstand the agony with her typical bravado. “You know we can’t, mum. You know.” She lost her voice to a combination of tears and pain, and Jack patted her on the back whilst Jackie was forced to watch her only daughter endure so much agony.

And then Rose really screamed. Jack felt her body convulse and he lowered her gently back onto the floor whilst she clutched her swollen belly. “Easy there, Rose,” he whispered, stroking her pallid, damp face with his hand.

“Jack, please!” Jackie continued, putting her hand over his and imploring for him to see things her way. “We’re not experts at this. We need someone who knows what they’re doing!”

Jack looked back at her with understanding, yet he couldn’t do what she wanted him to. “Jackie, I can’t. It’s her decision, not mine.”

“But she’s not just in pain! Look at her!”

“I know, but you’ve got to remember she’s carrying a child that’s only part human. Her body’s been trying to comprehend why it’s come across alien genes for the past nine months, and it’s still trying to figure out how to cooperate with them now, how to make and to feed them. It’s difficult for Rose - it has been since the start - but she can get through this, she can win this fight, because she’s a fighter. And her kid will be, too.”

Jackie massaged her temples and tried not to cry. “But will she be all right?”

Jack gave her a positive grin. “She’ll be fine. Don’t worry, grandma.”

Jackie smiled a little at him then slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t call me that. It makes me feel so old.”

He smirked again and returned his attention to Rose.

Her labour went on to last much of the ensuing night and since Jack seemed to seriously know what he was doing, Jackie could only come and go and offer up moral support. She brought Jack all the towels he asked for, and filled as many buckets with water as he requested, but otherwise, she was quite redundant. If Jack was anything to go by, though, she quite liked the sound of these fifty-first century men.

The darkness lingered on for hours until the sun finally began to rise, and at 7am exactly, a baby cried.

Jackie woke from her stupor in the lounge as that sound hit her ears, a sound she hadn’t heard in her own home for a long time. She heaved herself onto her feet and returned to the bathroom to see, amongst the towels, bloody buckets, and creased sheets, her daughter with a little girl all of her own.

“Hey grandma!” Jack said, catching sight of Jackie in the doorway as he sat there by Rose’s side, “Congrats! You’ve officially got a granddaughter.”

Jackie was far too relieved and overcome to take offence at the Captain right now. “Oh Rose,” she whispered as she lowered herself by her daughter’s other side and looked at the pretty little girl.

Rose just sat there cradling her tiny daughter in her arms, exhausted but content, and quite unable to take her eyes off her. “She’s so beautiful,” she sighed, wiping her tired eyes with the back of her hand and kissing the baby on the forehead.

Jackie kissed Rose’s forehead in turn and looked into the child’s bright blue eyes. “She’s gorgeous,” she said, “Just like you were when you were a baby. Oh, your father would love to be here now…”

And Rose knew that he would; but that only reminded her of who else should be here right now as well. “I wish he was here,” she whispered.

And then Jackie was off: she began rambling straight away about phoning her mother, about buying all the baby’s things (in girly pink), and of how much prettier her grandchild was than Colleen’s baby, Rachel.

Jack couldn’t help but look on sadly at Rose, however, as Jackie jabbered away; Rose had fought so hard to bring this baby into the world, a child who was neither entirely of the human race or of that of the Time Lords, a girl that, though outwardly human, was in fact a hybrid species - and the father was all but absent. It was a bittersweet experience.

The thought that neither he nor Rose had voiced though, and which they refused to speak of, was the possibility that the father might even be dead. They dared not think of such a possibility.

“She’s a little beauty, Rose,” he said at last. “What you gonna call her?”

Rose looked deeply into her daughter’s blue eyes, exact replicas of her father’s, and said, “I don’t know. I’m trying to think what he’d have liked--” She paused and quickly corrected herself. “What he will like, I mean.”

Jack put his hand round her shoulder. “Well, knowing him, he’d just call it ‘The Baby’.”

Rose laughed a little. “The Doctor and the Baby… Of course.”

Jack smirked as he saw Rose’s pale features light up at last. “Well, you could name her after your mom.”

The look Rose gave him made him laugh again. “Kidding!” he added.

“It just has to be simple,” she insisted, “and memorable.”

“You want something Raxacoricofallapatorian, then?”

Rose smiled again whilst her mother could be heard rambling away in the background - she was out in the hallway and seemed to be on the phone already.

“Shame it’s not a boy,” the Captain joked, “You could have called him Jack.”

Rose chuckled another time, but couldn‘t help but feel a little sad. “I so wish he was here…” she lamented, “He’d come up with something.”

“We’ll find him one day,” Jack whispered, giving her a friendly kiss on top of her head. “There’s always hope.”

And Rose’s eyes widened - that was it! “Hope,” she said, smiling slowly.