Resolving Issues

[the_blaidd_drwg]

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.

Comments

[capj_harkness]

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.

[capj_harkness]

"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."

[the-blaidd-drwg.livejournal.com]

Eventually? He was one to talk. He'd had a long time to make it through eventually. "Maybe being stuck here forever would be a good thing for me," she pondered quietly. "I can't go back to Earth, Jack, there isn't a home for me there anymore. So what am I supposed to do, just wander the universe in my TARDIS, picking up people like he did?" She didn't think there was any way she could manage that.

[the-blaidd-drwg.livejournal.com]

Rose just shook her head at the memory, knowing Jack really never would let her live that down. "Well, that sort of thing 's always been more you than me," she said, giving him a pointed look. "And you turnin' right around and flirting with it didn't help!"