the_blaidd_drwg | Resolving Issues

Resolving Issues

Who: Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness
When: Afternoon, after Jack spends the morning with Martha
Where: Lounge
Summary: Rose is still irritated at Jack's attitude in the lobby and it turns out they have some issues to work out between them.

Rose was still grumbling about Jack that afternoon, completely unable to understand where his bout of attitude had come from. It was completely beyond her comprehension no matter how many times she analyzed the situation. Of course, her irritation at the entirety of said situation probably didn't help matters any, and, as predicted, she did feel bad about how she'd reacted to the new arrival's insistence on knowing what was going on, but with everything else that had been going on lately, she just couldn't take it anymore.

Normally these things wouldn't have continued to bother her so much, especially the bit with Jack, but she had very few acquaintances in the hotel, and even fewer of them were what she could consider friends. Martha didn't know her, just of her, and Rose could easily tell what the other woman's opinion of her had been before they'd met. Jack was the only one who really knew anything, the one she'd been close with so long ago. It mattered to her that he'd acted that way at all, and that she may have helped to cause it.

She needed to do something was what it came down to. She had all sorts of pent up energy from just milling around the damned hotel and there were only so many banana daiquiris a girl could drink before she really started to just look pathetic.

So she forced herself out of bed, where she'd been alternately moping and seething, and got dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that, like all the other clothes the hotel had swiped from her TARDIS, was just slightly too big for her. Her sonic screwdriver went in her pocket like always, along with her assortment of keys, and then she pulled on her boots and set off. A good bit of wandering never hurt anyone.

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Jack was sitting in the lounge, sipping a coffee from his blue and white striped mug. He had a book in his hand, but he'd barely glanced at it in the last half hour. He was mostly lost in his thoughts. His mind seemed to be running wild, alternately touching on Torchwood, on Ianto, on Kate, on The Doctor being missing, on Martha... on Rose. Actually, Rose had barely entered his rambling stream of thoughts when she walked in the door. He blinked for just a second, briefly wondering if he was imagining her. No, he thought as she glanced around. She was real. He didn't move from his seat. He sipped his coffee and watched her over the rim of his mug.

Not finding anyone of interest in the bar or even the billiards and games rooms, Rose had moved on, wandering into the lounge with the hope that someone would be there, someone to talk to and reassure herself that she wasn't completely alone in this place. Her hand stilled on the door as her eyes landed on the infamous Captain Jack Harkness, complete with coffee mug accessory. For a brief moment she almost considered turning right around and pretending she'd not seen him. Finally, though, her fingers trailed down the wood of the door and she took those careful steps forward, slowly making her way toward him until she could drop into a chair across from his.

He nodded a greeting as she sat down. "Can I buy you a coffee?" he asked with a bit of a smirk, setting his book on the table beside his chair.

She smiled slightly and shook her head, nearly rolling her eyes at herself. "Can barely sit still as it is," she explained in a mellow tone. "Think the last thing I need is caffeine right now." She didn't know what she needed... Not what she needed and could actually have anyway.

He shrugged in an 'oh well, I asked' kind of way and took another sip from his own mug. "I don't suppose you've made any significant developments towards getting out of here lately," he ventured. "Because every avenue I've explored has been a deadend and I'm about out of ideas."

Slumping back into the plush leather of the big chair, Rose's expression turned exceedingly glum. "Still can't get into my TARDIS," she informed Jack with complete unhappiness, "so nope, no 'significant developments' on this end." Was she pouting? Yes, Rose Tyler was pouting. It wasn't like she was used to being locked out of her own home, after all.

"Sorry," he said sincerely. He rotated his mug absently in his hands. He smiled self-deprecatingly. "Is it really bad that I'm starting to get just the littlest bit concerned that we'll never get out of here?" he asked. "This place is just... far too unfathomable." He looked at Rose. "Maybe it's a test to see how far we can get before we give up," he scoffed.

She frowned slightly, not liking that thought at all. "You've been round the universe as much as I have," she mused out loud. "People of all species can be really terrible to each other for no good reason, so it's not that far above my imagination. Just... never thought I'd get stuck somewhere like this." She scratched the back of her head for a moment, then continued, "And new people keep showing up..."

Her eyes moved to his face, and her brow furrowed as she asked with complete seriousness, "What was that, anyway? In the lobby."

He raised an eyebrow. "I could ask you the same question," he said, before falling silent a moment, looking down into the dark liquid that still sat in the bottom of his mug.

"It was different with him, remember?" he said quietly. "Back in the day? He was all rage and wonder and drive and we were like... dust caught in the tail of a comet and it was exhilarating." He looked across at Rose. "I understand what he is and there's something awe-inspiring about being pulled into his orbit. Running with the last of the Time Lords: the last of the last of the great ancient powers. On him that sort of arrogance is expected. Probably necessary, actually. Even sort of endearing." He shook his head ruefully. "You've become so much like him now." He studied her a moment. "We were equals before, but you don't think of us that way anymore, do you?"

Rose felt a small smile slip into place as Jack described their time with him, putting it into words that didn't nearly compare to the real thing but were still so wonderfully accurate... And then it vanished as the rest of what he said took hold of her thoughts.

That sort of arrogance... Jack was saying she'd become like him in all the worst ways. And by his choice of words, it wasn't nearly so endearing on her. She felt her pride bristle at the implication, making her want to reach out and... But, was he right?

Her jaw tightened and she looked away from him, turning so he could only see her profile and taking deep breaths. "I don't-" She closed her eyes and stood quickly, turning her back on him completely and crossing her arms. "Maybe you're right. Maybe that's just what happens when your life revolves around him."

"Maybe it does," Jack conceded. "It's not like I would know." The ones that got left behind didn't get to find out. "Still, you were better than me yesterday afternoon, when you were presuming to tell me how to behave in public. Where I come from, telling someone you've just met your name is the standard practice. If somebody changed it, I didn't get the memo."

His comments felts like someone had hit her in the stomach. Suddenly she was watching herself on a television and everything was just... off. The color, sound, everything about the picture was wrong. "I didn't mean to..." Letting out a breath in a loud sigh, she smoothed a hand over her face in a weary gesture. "Guess 've forgotten how to deal with regular people, in 'normal' situations."

Jack laughed. "Rose, I haven't been a 'regular person' or found myself in a 'normal' situation for over a hundred and fifty years." He put his mug on the table and leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. "A hundred and fifty years since we traveled together, Rose. Well, for me. I'm not the same person. You either. I think if we're going to be friends now, we're going to have to start fresh with a brand new playbook, because the old one is way out of date."

It was such a long time for the both of them, so very long for him really, but she felt as if she'd lived a hundred years since those carefree days. And he was right, they weren't the same people, not by a long shot. She turned back to him and sat on the arm of the chair. "The old one was pretty good though, you have to admit," she countered with that smile of hers that said there was a lot she wasn't saying. And perhaps it held a hint of suggestion as well. "Lot of great memories."

Edited 2009-03-07 03:53 (UTC)

"The old one was fantastic," Jack agreed, intentionally using his word, that they'd heard so often back then.

She laughed, a burst of sound, and reached up to touch her fingers to her lips almost in surprise. Laughing still felt strange to her. "I miss those days," she told him with a fond smile. "They were happy, easy... I miss you, my Captain Jack, there were so many times I missed you over these years." She didn't even know why she was saying it. Those days were long gone, and they couldn't go back to them.

He grinned warmly. "I missed you," he told her. "I saw you once or twice. I lived through the twentieth century, remember? I saw you a couple times when you were a kid. I made sure you didn't see me, though. Timelines. Still, it made me feel a little bit less... lonely, just to know you were around somewhere."

Rose's expression turned to one of fond disbelief and she just shook her head. "Too bad there wasn't another Jack around to help me feel less lonely," she said as she stood, walking across to sit on the arm of his chair this time.

He grinned. "Sorry, there's only one of me. You'll have to share the original with the rest of the universe." His grin became a little wicked. "Lucky thing there's a lot of me to go around."

"Oh, I know all about you, remember?" she informed him with one of her Rose grins. Oh yes, there were many fond memories from their days together.

"I remember very well," Jack replied with a broad smile, which faded shortly. He looked down at his hands. "Rose..." His voice trailed off. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know the answer to this question. "Rose, why did you let him leave me there? Did you ever look for me?"

Her throat tightened up and she suddenly wished she wasn't sitting quite so close. "At first, I... He said you had work to do, and I didn't argue," she admitted quietly, tears burning at her eyes because of the pressure of the guilt pressing down on her chest. "I didn't question it. I should have, but I was just so happy that it was still him... 'm sorry, Jack. Really."

"Don't apologize," Jack told her quietly. "That's not what I was after. I know how distracting he can be. I just wanted to know why." He reached over and gave her knee a reassuring squeeze. "In 1899, Torchwood found out about me. I hadn't been terribly... discreet. I was sort of raging, back in those days. I'd been heard talking about The Doctor. They wanted to find him. They thought he was the enemy." He shook his head. "They really were sick at Torchwood back then. Do you know how I ended up working for them? One night, after I'd refused their offer of 'freelance' work, I was sitting in a tavern and this girl... she's sort of a fortune teller. It's hard to explain. I've never found her to be wrong, though. She came up to me and said that the one I was looking for was coming, but that the century would turn twice before I saw him again." He looked up at Rose. "I suddenly had a hundred years to kill. I didn't know what else to do."

Rose didn't even realize what she was doing until she was suddenly sliding down onto Jack's lap and wrapping her arms around him, her heart demanding that she get as close to him as possible in order to offer whatever comfort he needed and would accept. It may have been a hundred years ago for him, but pain often refused the boundaries of time, as she knew all too well. "Oh, Jack," she murmured in a thick voice, "I wish I could've been there to help you. You shouldn't've had to go through that alone."

He returned her embrace, burying his face in her hair for a moment, before pulling his head back, just a bit, to look at her with a little smile. "You know I'd never object to your company, but if you were there all that time, you'd have to be like me and I wouldn't want that for you." He smoothed his hand over her hair. "Anyway, I had some good decades and some bad decades. I found a family for myself, in the end. Then I found him and I made peace with myself. And with him. I don't have any regrets, Rose, I really don't, so don't you go feeling bad about any of it."

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