Jack had no idea what Rose was doing

Jack had no idea what Rose was doing. Of course, he’d lost his ability to even relate to her on an intellectual level back when she started writing the language of the Doctor’s people and solving complex mathematical equations. All without knowing it.

Still… Jack had his burning imagination, tempered (or fueled, as the case may be) by over a hundred years of getting into tight situations. Asking Yana about the watch seemed like a magnificently bad idea. Especially because when the old guy looked at it, it seemed like this was the first time he’d ever seen it.

“Well, what would happen if you opened it?” Rose asked, and something knotted in Jack’s stomach. Why wouldn’t she listen to him? It was like he was less than completely there, lately. He’d talk, and she’d just…make assumptions about what she thought he was saying instead of actually paying attention to him. Or Martha Jones for that matter. He could tell she liked Martha, but she never really looked at their slightly-abducted medical student.

The old man blustered, his cheeks growing flushed. “I don’t know.” His brow turned downward and he rubbed his head, a sweat breaking out on his brow.

Martha, bless her ‘fix everything’ doctor tendencies, stepped in and tried to diffuse the situation before it erupted into God knew what. “Rose, I’m not so sure…”

But Yana’s thumb was over the clasp and he was about to open it. Jack actually closed his eyes, fully expecting the entire world to end. He wasn’t expecting there to be a crash of metal on cement and Rose gasping.

Wincing, he opened one eye, not at all expecting Martha Jones to save the day. She’d slapped the fob watch into the floor and was scrambling for it. Snatching it up off the floor in the midst of Yana’s astonishment and Rose’s protests, she let out a heavy breath and held it to her chest. “Yana wasn’t Yana. The professor—he wasn’t himself. You weren’t yourself. Rose, I don’t know what this means, but it seems serious. The Bad Wolf said humanity had to die in the dark and in the cold! Rose, are you listening to me?”

“Well, I never!” Yana exclaimed, keeping a careful eye on the watch cradled against Martha Jones. It was like he’d seen it for the first time, and was now obsessed. The angry glint in his eye was enough to confirm that for Jack. The man had a hunger for the thing—which was so far removed from the reserved, jovial fellow they’d come upon.

Not knowing how to react to his friend’s irrational behavior, Jack glared at Rose. “We’re going home.”

And because this is how his whole day had been, Rose wasn’t even paying attention to him. She was looking past Yana. “Maybe she has a point,” Rose was telling the dead space in the centre of the room. “YOU ask her what Bad Wolf meant! Alright, fine! I’ll do it.” She turned to Martha. “Bad Wolf?”

Clenching her eyes shut, Martha took a deep breath and steadied herself. “I had a dream. A dream that wasn’t a dream.” She looked at Jack, who gestured for her to continue. “You—it—whatever said that the human race had to die here.”

The seeming-forgotten bug-alien with the too-luscious lips finally spoke up, her antennae flickering back and forth in an agitated manner. “Chan what is this Bad Wolf Tho?”

Martha shrugged. “I don’t know. It just said…”

Jack noted Yana backing away slowly, some mixed look of discovery and betrayal playing on his features.

Jack looked down at the watch that Martha had just given him. The alien metal sung in his hands. Nothing that one could hear, but it seemed to vibrate, or sting him in some penetrating way. With caution, he uncurled his fingers from it, and was startled by the pattern. It was his first up-close look at it, and he recognized the script—it was what Rose had been covering the TARDIS with in her efforts to ‘communicate’ with the Doctor.

Keeping a tight grip on it, he flashed it in front of Rose’s face to get her attention. “Rose, what does this say?”

She only glanced at it briefly. “Don’t be daft. It says it contains the genetic memories of a Time Lord called--” abruptly falling silent, Rose stared over Jack’s shoulder.

“Give…give it to me,” Yana stuttered nervously. He was fighting with something, and Jack really didn’t want to stick around to find out what that was. The weirdness levels here, at the end of the universe, were uncomfortably high. “Give it to me now,” the professor began again, this time his agitation was making him more forceful, but not necessarily more certain. “It’s mine, and it rightfully belongs to me,” he started again, this time in a tactics change. “You have no claim to it. Give me the watch.”

Martha Jones nudged Jack and he noted Rose nodding to the thin air again. “Uh huh,” their acquaintance told the invisible party in the room.

Jack let out a groan of frustration. “What is that idiot telling you to do now?” He’d never have said that before—the Doctor was the smartest man he knew, and one he respected above all others. But lately…he just wanted to kill the alien. He just wanted to wrap his fingers around the Doctor’s throat and…

Rose’s eyes refocused on them. Jack always hated when the Doctor got that ‘oh, what’re you all doing here?’ sort of look about him, and Rose was going the same way. “He, um… thinks we should go back to the TARDIS.”

Not waiting for details, Jack grabbed her hand and yanked her toward him. He felt something separate in her shoulder, and he winced. While he’d been perfectly willing to bludgeon her to death a few minutes ago, he really didn’t want to hurt her. “Come on.”

“TARDIS…” Yana said uncertainly. “TARDISes and Time Lords. You say these things…Always saying these things…”

Jack really hadn’t been paying attention to the professor until he saw Martha frozen there, her big brown eyes round with surprise. Slowly he looked over at Yana. The man was holding some sort of laser pistol to Martha’s back. “I…I want the watch back. It’s mine.”

XYZ

The Doctor sputtered, pushing water out of his lungs. Shivering as he sat up, he glared at his OTHER arch-nemesis. “What did you do THAT for? Now I’ll never know how it ends!” He shook the drenching water from his face, glaring at the pregnant woman with the bucket.

“Oh, sorry I interrupted your STUPID DREAM!” she hollered in that special Jackie Tyler voice that made chewing glass sound attractive. “Get up off the floor! Pete’s asking for your head and Mickey and me are the only reason you’re not sitting in a cell right now!”

Pulling his legs under him, he ground his teeth as he got up. His head… was killing him. There were too many people in it right now, and he’d just thoroughly bashed his head off something, and Jackie was existing near him. All intolerable things.

He touched the soft spot on the back of his skull. “Jackie Tyler, I can get back! And now I have to get back, because Rose and Jack and some girl that I’ve met and haven’t met and would have met in another time li--”

Jackie slapped him. “Start talking sense, Mister!”

One hand on his cheek and the other on his bruised cranium, the Doctor looked at her like she’d sprouted a third eye. Mickey was nowhere in sight to save him. Again. It was getting humiliating. “I AM! Reality’s a little wibbly-wobbly right now, and you’re drowning me and beating me and are probably going to throw me in the river. Look, There’s this Time Lord, and I thought he was dead. I mean, I knew he was dead. He got sucked into the Eye of Harmony, and I--” He winced when Jackie’s hand reared back. “Ok, anyway, he’s back, but he’s kind of not back, and I have to make sure he gets not back-back, because, then, like, the whole universe is going to explode or something without me there to stop him because he’s a total megalomaniac and I was the only one that could do anything about him.”

Jackie scowled, and the Doctor was wondering if she was going to slap him again. “Are you calling my daughter incompetent?”

He blinked. “What?”

Jackie put her hands on her virtually non-existent hips. They were being lost behind the mound of baby she was carrying very high in front of her. “Are you saying my daughter can’t handle one little Time Lord?”

The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jackie Tyler, you make my head explode,” he informed her very calmly. “Other Time Lords can’t handle this one little Time Lord. I can barely handle this little Time Lord. And that’s only because I play dirty pool.”

It was the hormones, the Doctor had to remind himself. The hormones were raging so badly he could actually smell them in the oils left on his face when she slapped him a second time. “Dare I ask what that was for?” he mumbled calmly, his headache intensifying with the additional brain jarring.

Jackie blustered, her entire face turning red. It was entirely possible those throbbing veins in her forehead were going to burst and squirt blood all over the warehouse in just a moment. “For leaving my daughter with some…some…Time Lord maniac!”

Rubbing his eyes, the Doctor shifted around in his uncomfortably wet underpants. First of all, it was heinous that Jackie should make him wear the damned things. Second, now they were wet and clingy. “You’re impossible. You’re completely…” he yawned. “Imposs…” his eyes started drooping.

“Wait? What are you…” Jackie was saying something, but he really couldn’t concentrate on it. He could only thing about one thing. Ok, two things. No. Three things.

One, he couldn’t remember being this tired in a non-regeneration situation. Two, Jack had under-arm stains. And three… “Jackie…I like oatmeal.”

He slid to the floor, feeling like he was going to fade right out of existence. Yana was right there with the gun, and there wasn’t anything he could do about…

Just a nap. A nap, then he’d reach out and…and… slap the Master silly.

Twenty minutes. That was all he needed. Power-napping. Twenty minutes until reality exploded .

XYZ

Jack… Jack hated his life. Well he loved his life. He got to shoot things and blow them up. But, on days like today?

On days like today, when he’s at the end of the universe, and has three things happening at once… those were the days when he cursed his existence.

Like right now. Yana was having a total freak out session over this damned watch that belonged to some Time Lord, and he had a gun on Martha. If that wasn’t bad enough, Rose was wobbling on her feet, blinking something away, and he was standing here with nothing but a crowbar, which was a real shit shield, when going up against a gun.

“Chan, why are you doing this, tho?” The professor’s luscious blue assistant asked. “Chan, it is just a watch, tho?”

Sweat glistened off of Yana’s chin. His jaw worked up and down like a silent stutter. He maybe didn’t want to be doing it, Jack thought. But something compelled him. “It—it’s mine. It’s mine and I’ll have it back. Just give it here.”

Still holding up the crowbar-laden hand defensively, Jack shook his head. “I’m sorry, professor. I can’t do that.”

Chantho was suddenly in Jack’s peripheral vision. The moment he saw her, the laser gun went off. There was a pause as the smell of burnt ozone lingered in the air, and everything seemed to hang upon the smoke—expectation and fear and hope. Before it cleared, Rose’s body hit the ground.

Aww shit.

XYZ

“Are we dead?”

“I don’t think we’re dead. I wasn’t dead. Well, ok, I don’t completely know that for certain. Your mother has been killing me slowly.”

The nothingness was… vast. It was neither light nor dark. There was nothing substantial, no concept of space or place, but the nothingness was thick around them like an existential fog.

“You should be nicer to my mother.”

“I think you should be meaner to her.”

“So how do we get out of this?”

“I like oatmeal.”

“Not helping.”

“Sorry. First thing that came to mind. Or second.” And since they’d tripped quietly, and without him noticing, right into telepathic speech, it had just sort of tumbled out. Since when was Rose telepathic?

“What was the first?”

“Sex? With Jack? In my bed?”

“You want some?”

He hated when her voice got all flirty like that. Mostly, he hated it because he kind of liked it. But she was confounding, because she was being flirty, but she still… with Jack. In his bed. “That was an accusation. Not a request.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that.” She hesitated. “But I really need to get back. We were in the middle of a hostage situation. Friend of yours?”

“Long story. He and I… go way back.”

“I didn’t think he was your type.”

“Rose, this is very serious. The universe is ending. And you’re a Time Lord. Did you know that? Seriously. With Jack. In my bed.”

“I don’t know why you’re upset. You like oatmeal.”

The Doctor would have sighed, except for the part where there was no air, no space and not time. “We need to get out of here.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

TBC…