It was later, after the Sycorax were gone and Rose had said her goodbyes to her mother and Mickey, that she asked, “what really happened in Station Five right before you regenerated?”
They were sitting inside the TARDIS as the spaceship took them to their next destination, arms within touching distance. It was the closest she’d been to this Doctor in such close quarters. It made her skin tingle in anticipation, but she didn’t reach out.
“What do you mean?” the Doctor said.
Hesitant, almost scared of the answer, she said, “What— what happened to Jack?”
The Doctor looked straight ahead. “They got to him, Rose.”
“No.” Rose shook her head, on the verge of tears. “Are you sure?”
A hole opened up where her heart was beating desperately. Please, no, she begged. Jack had been nothing but good to her and after that kiss, she hadn’t stopped thinking about possibilities except when her life was actively in danger.
She thought for a moment that there was something between the three of them, something good, something strong, but the Doctor’s reluctance to go back for Jack made her think it wasn’t the same for everyone in their little group of three.
“The Daleks killed everyone. They were going to kill me when—” the Doctor stopped talking, turning to Rose.
“What? Did you remember something important?”
“Back in Satellite Five, you said— Nah, it can’t be.” He turned his gaze back on the console and reached to turn a dial down. “I bring life,” he murmured, maybe hoping Rose didn’t hear him.
“What do you mean ‘I bring life’?”
“Something I heard back there,” he stood up, pulling a lever that lit up the console. “It’s nothing.” He grimaced. “Well, it’s probably nothing.”
The way the Doctor said it only unsettled her. She didn’t remember everything that happened back there and she wanted to understand her role in it.
“We have to go back and help Jack then,” said Rose after a moment of quiet.
“Rose, you know I can’t go back on my own timeline.”
“Then what about five minutes after we left Station Five?” she begged.
“What for? There’s nothing left to do there,” his face remained impassive, but he sounded sad.
Rose sat up with a serious expression. “I want to make sure.”
The Doctor turned to look at her, his expression matching hers. “Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”
The TARDIS groaned when the Doctor pulled another lever, then it shook for a few seconds until it was upright again. The sound of the landing rang through the console room until they stopped completely. Then, there was silence.
Rose looked up at the Doctor, but he wasn’t making eye contact.
She stood up and made her way to the door, where she held onto the handle for a second too long.
“We can still go back,” said the Doctor.
Rose opened the doors to find the control room empty. There was a thick layer of dust covering the floor, the makings of the Delta wave abandoned in the middle of the room. Rose stepped out of the TARDIS, walking down with hesitant steps: she felt as if she was stepping on top of what remained of the Daleks and it freaked her out. She heard a faint rustling movement behind her back.
“I’m so sorry, Rose,” she heard the Doctor say behind her back,, he was within reaching distance, yet he was careful not to crowd her.
She stepped on a set of wires and a chill went down her spine.
Suddenly, Rose remembered.
There was a bright light, all of time and space stretching all the way to the creation of the universe and to the end. And then, there was destruction, the unmaking of those who threatened the planet and the timeline, all by her own hand.
She did that.
“Bad wolf,” she murmured. As she did, more memories were fighting to make their way to the surface. “I did this?”
“You did what you thought was the right choice while the time vortex controlled your mind,” reassured the Doctor.
She remembered something else. Creation. She fixed what the Daleks did, she was sure of it.
“I bring life,” she murmured. Her head pounded with the beginnings of a headache that felt all too familiar.
“Rose…”
“No, I did it, I know I did,” she turned around to find the Doctor looking at her with sad eyes. “We just have to find him. Them. I don’t know how many I brought back.”
She watched in real time as the Doctor’s face changed, his mouth falling open in surprise, his eyes widening.
“No, it’s just me,” said a voice behind her.
When Rose turned around, Jack was standing at the door of the room, leaning against the frame. He looked exactly as he did when he kissed her a couple of days ago. Well, a couple of days ago for her.
“Jack?”
“Same old, Jack,” he said. “Though I’m a little offended, I thought you left.”
“Jack!”
Rose ran to him and he welcomed her with open arms. They hugged for a long time, Rose clung to him like wet clothes on a rainy day, desperately savoring every second of it, inhaling the scent that she had come to associate with Jack —blossoming trees in spring, leather and summer rain— that he insisted wasn’t aftershave.
“If I knew all I had to do to get a hug like this was go against the Daleks, I would’ve done it much sooner,” he joked.
“God, I missed you,” said Rose.
“How long were you gone?” he asked.
“Just a couple of days for us.”
“And yet, you bring an entirely different Doctor to pick me up,” he pointed out.
Rose finally let go of Jack and turned to look at the Doctor, who stayed put where he was.
“I guess that’s fair,” she said.
The Doctor chose that moment to come forward, his expression wary. “Jack.”
“Don’t I get a hug too?” Jack smiled, his eyes bright, arms extended in invitation.
The Doctor kept his eyes on Jack, as if deciding what to do. Rose felt a pang in her chest, she wanted them to be okay again, to be the same ones that had been having adventures all across time and space.
Eventually, the Doctor came closer and with a sigh, he went into Jack’s arms, letting himself be wrapped by the 51st century man’s arms. When Jack let go, he said, “Okay, I can’t wait to hear why you’ve got a new face, but I could use the TARDIS's wonderful shower first.”
He clapped his hands then pointed towards the TARDIS and started walking, but the TARDIS's doors closed as he approached.
They all stood in silence for a moment, then Rose and Jack turned to the Doctor, who had his sonic screwdriver out, pointing at the doors. “You can’t go in, Jack.”
“What do you mean?” Rose asked.
Jack was looking at him cautiously. “Is something wrong?”
“You are, Jack. I don’t know what you’ve become, if you’ve become a fixed point in time. You and the TARDIS could rip timespace in half.”
Rose turned to him, disbelieving. “We can’t leave him here.”
The relief that washed over her at seeing Jack unharmed was immediately replaced with apprehension. The pounding in her head was getting stronger, patches of darkness clouding her vision. She grabbed the Doctor’s arm when she felt like she would keel over. Bright light seemed to bathe every object in the room.
“Doctor, what’s happening to Rose?” asked Jack.
“The memories of the time vortex are resurfacing,” he said.
“What does that mean? She looked into the time vortex and lived?” he asked, incredulous.
“Barely.”
Rose’s knees shook and before she knew it, the Doctor was holding most of her weight to stop her from falling. Jack rushed to her side and helped hold her up, until they sat her down on one of the abandoned chairs that littered the station.
“Doctor…”
“I know, Rose.”
“It hurts,” she said, tears running down her face, unbidden.
“I know.”
“Can you make it stop?” Jack asked.
“I can, but we’ll have to go,” he said. “And you can’t come with us, Jack.”
Jack’s face fell. Rose didn’t want to leave him stranded in the year 200.100, but she wanted the pain to stop. She suspected that even if the physical pain stopped, she would always carry the pain of what she did to Jack with her, even if she didn’t understand the ramifications of being a fixed point in time.
Rose didn’t know what her face did, but Jack reached over and wiped the tears off her face. “It’s okay, Rose, I’ll find you again. I still have this old vortex manipulator with me. We can meet up wherever you want.”
Her chest tightened, looking at Jack’s hopeful face. “You promise?”
“Rose, you are worth the inevitable nausea that comes after jumping around a few millennia.” Rose laughed through the tears, a watery thing that made Jack smile. “That’s more like it. We’ll be laughing about this in New Vegas in no time.”
“I thought you didn’t want to go back there,” said Rose.
“It doesn’t have to be 23rd century New Vegas,” Jack replied.
Rose looked up at the Doctor, who was bathed by the bright light that surrounded everything now, and asked, “we can do this, right? Meet again?”
“Oh, Rose”—finally a little of his joy coming back to the Doctor’s voice— “I don’t think I could stop our reunion even if I wanted to.”
Rose felt something click between them, almost as if the universe was finally right again with the promise of their eventual reunion. Rose couldn’t wait to be traveling with them once again.
Jack smiled up at the Doctor, the corner of his eyes crinkling as he did so. “So, where shall we meet again?”
The Doctor smiled at them both. “What do you think of New New York? I hear New Earth in the year five billion twenty three is lovely.”