Author: EbonyBeach

Rating: T for language

Summary: The Doctor and Rose land back in London on the fateful day of the terrorist bombings, and when Rose begins to lose her perspective on what she always thought she knew, the Doctor is there to help her through. 9/Rose. For all the victims and their families. RIP.

Spoilers: None

Beta: FireOpal :)

Disclaimer: Not mine. The news report and the Prime Minister's speech I got from AOL News.

Dedication: All those who lost their lives in the terrible attacks on London on Thursday 7th July 2005.

Notes: I was inspired to write this when I saw a bunch of flowers someone had left at one of the affected tube stations, which said "You will never be forgotten." It really hit me then, and I had to write my feelings down. I hope you like it, please let me know what you think.

Rose knew the was something wrong the minute she stepped out of the TARDIS and into the familiar grey concrete of the estate. Everything looked the same, but after almost a year travelling with the Doctor she had picked up the ability to sense danger in the air: a sort of electrical crackle that made the hairs on her arms stand up.

He could feel it too - she saw it in his eyes and the way he seemed to be listening for something beyond the screams of kids playing football against the wall. She watched him for a moment, unsure quite what to make of the situation, before instinct kicked in and, with an understanding nod from the Doctor, she legged it towards her mum's flat.

She passed people talking in low tones, their faces grave - a few were even crying - but she didn't stop to hear what they were saying. Panic held her heart in a death-grip and didn't let go until she was folded safely in her mum's embrace.

"What's happened?" The Doctor half-smiled a hello to Jackie who was still, two minutes later, clinging to her daughter, and she nodded towards the TV in reply.

"Oh no." He sank into the armchair, all traces of a smile gone, vaguely aware of Rose perching on the arm next to him. Her hand instinctively found his as they watched the Breaking News report in horror.

"...At 8.51 this morning, seven people were killed in an explosion on a Circle or Central Line train one hundred yards from Liverpool Street Underground station. The blast happened in the region of Moorgate, Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations. Five minutes later, a total of twenty one people were killed following a blast on the Underground close to Russell Square and King's Cross stations."

Pictures flashed across the screen: wreckages; chaos; people running around in terror; rescue workers beginning the immense task of sorting through the rubble; confusion, desperation and fear in every face.

The reporter, a youngish man whom Rose recognised from his reports on the Aliens of London, continued. "At 9.17am a further five people were killed in an explosion at Edgware Road Underground station. Police said a blast ripped through a carriage, a wall and into two other trains. Exactly half an hour later, a bus on Upper Woburn Place near Tavistock Square was destroyed by a fourth explosion.

"The Transport Committee had previously blamed a power fault for the disruption to Underground services, but as events unfold, it is becoming ever clearer that terrorists are behind these horrific suicide bombings. Al-Qaeda, the IRA, individual liberation groups: the government cannot afford to make any allegations at the moment. The Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is at Glen Eagles for the first day of the G8 Summit, made a speech today at noon."

The image changed again to a film of the Prime Minister. He looked the same as ever, Rose thought distractedly - harassed, concerned and incredibly tired; although nowadays that could be said about half the people on Earth.

"Smarmy git," the Doctor muttered, but listened intently to his speech all the same.

"I am just going to make a short statement to you on the terrible events that have happened in London earlier today, and I hope you understand that at the present time we are still trying to establish exactly what has happened, and there is a limit to what information I can give you, and I will simply try and tell you the information as best I can at the moment.

"It is reasonably clear that there have been a series of terrorist attacks in London. There are obviously casualties, both people that have died and people seriously injured, and our thoughts and prayers of course are with the victims and their families..."

Rose sank back against the Doctor, resting her head against his chest and closing her eyes as the enormity of events began to hit her. "Oh my God."

It was a mark of how much shock Jackie - like much of Britan's population - was in that she failed to respond to this apparent intimacy between her daughter and the nine-hundred-year-old alien who accepted the cup of strong tea she passed him with genuine gratitude. As she sat on the sofa, she saw he was gently stroking Rose's hair with his free hand, a gesture that at that moment she was just thankful he could give to comfort her daughter when she needed it the most.

"...It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilised nations throughout the world."

By the time the Prime Minister finished his speech, tears were streaming down Rose's face. The Doctor said nothing, just continued to run his fingers slowly through her hair, letting her tears fall freely onto his jumper. He drank his tea, eyes fixed on the screen infront of him as more reports kept coming in about casualties, deaths and suspects, and still his hand moved against the blonde locks of the usually-strong young human who was now curled up in his lap, chocking back sobs as she struggled to compose herself.

They sat like that for ages, the silence broken only by Rose's sniffs and occasional words of disbelief. When the phone rang they all jumped, and Jackie leapt to answer it before the second ring, soon to be engrossed in a long and tearful conversation with her sister.

"Thought she'd never leave," the Doctor murmured when she departed for her bedroom, phone in hand.

Rose hiccoughed and gave him a sharp look, betrayed slightly by the streaks of mascara down her cheeks. "Somethin' like this happens and all you do is try and start a fight with my mum - won't you ever stop?"

His face was unreadable as he reached down to put his empty mug on the floor. "Probably not."

Unsatisfied by his reply but realising she wasn't going to get anything further from him, she followed his gaze back across to the TV, where a different reporter was commenting on the plummets in London share prices, as solemn and serious as if he was announcing that the world had three minutes to live.

Suddenly Rose leapt off the Doctor as if burned, anger bubbling inside her. He looked mildly wary but not at all surprised as she began to pace infront of him, fresh tears slipping unnoticed from her eyes.

"I don't believe it," she murmured, wiping her wet cheeks with the backs of her hands. Her gaze was fixed on the floor as she tried in vain to makes sense of everything in her head. "They just don't care, do they? People are dead, and they don't even fuckin' care!" Now her eyes were staring into his, and for the first time in a long while the Doctor was truly scared: not of her, but of the hate that such devastating events could stir up in the most loving of people. He stood up slowly but didn't make any movement towards her.

"Rose..."

But she was in full swing now. Her voice became louder as she sought for a way to express what she needed to.

"They talk about share prices as if they're the most important thing in the universe!" Jackie came in and pointed at the phone, signalling for her daughter to keep her voice down, but Rose ignored her, her eyes still locked with the Doctor's. "Well I've seen the universe," she continued, moving to stand straight infront of him as her mum hurried out of the room, desperately reassuring her sister that 'seeing the universe' had just been a figure of speech.

"We've seen the universe." She took his hand in hers, feeling her anger slowly beginning to seep away with the calming proximity of his presence, the familiar safeness of his battered leather jacket and trademark dark coloured jumper.

"And what has the universe taught us, Rose?" He said softly, moving his free hand to gently hold her cheek, brushing away her tears with his thumb.

She closed her eyes as she leaned into his touch, letting out a shaky breath. When she looked at him again a shiver raced down her spine at the fire in his blue gaze. "It's taught us," she whispered, all the energy of her argument suddenly gone out of her, "to never give up. To fight for what we believe is right and good and- and fair..."

And then he pulled her into his arms, and she cried into his shoulder in helpless abandonment, clinging to him for dear life. "I think we need some fresh air," he said quietly.

As they made their way out of the door, neither of them noticed Jackie watching from the kitchen, stood as she had been for the past ten minutes.

LINE BREAK

"I just feel so useless," Rose said as they walked hand-in-hand down to the park. Dusk was drawing near and London was bathed in a deep orange glow. "I've saved worlds I've never heard of, people who I didn't think could ever exist, and now I can't do anything to help my own race."

She sat down heavily onto a bench, closely followed by the Doctor. The air was warm but she cuddled up to him anyway, and he smiled slightly and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

"You know," he told her, "sometimes humanity needs a shock - a warning, if you like - to make them assess their lives and purposes on the planet. I'm not saying it was a good thing," he added as she tried to interrupt, "far from it; but just maybe it might finally kick them lot in Downing Street into action."

Rose observed him carefully. "You knew this'd happened?"

He shrugged, a hint of a smile on his lips. "No, not exactly. And it'll get a lot worse before it even begins to get better. But things are about to change Rose. People are about to realise they can say no."

There was a moment of silence as she registered his words. "How do you know?" She asked eventually, absentmindedly tracing circles on his thigh.

His eyes watched her fingers intently, but otherwise he showed no sign that he had noticed what she was doing. "Because," he said quietly, "it's your generation that fight back against terrorism, resist global warming, end poverty forever, cure Africa of AIDS and ultimately set up the Earth for the First Human Empire. What the terrorists don't realise is the power of a nation scorned - that their attacks don't divide the world, but unite it." He grinned suddenly and found her gaze. "It'll be blood, sweat and tears for a long time yet, but I reckon you stupid little apes are up to the challenge."

Rose smiled despite herself. "Somebody get me a pen and a record book - I reckon that's got to be the first compliment you've ever payed the human race!"

"Don't get used to it," he muttered and she grinned momentarily at his sullen tone, but it slipped from her face when she saw three kids run past chasing a football, their screams of delight echoing through the air like laughter in a graveyard.

"They're all so innocent." The Doctor didn't reply, but his silence prompted her to continue. Her circles became harder and more painful as she dug her nails into his leg, completely unaware of the grimace on his face as she fought to express the mix of emotions in her head. "Why's it always the innocent that die?"

A thought she'd had earlier fought its way to the front of her mind, and she turned to him, her gaze distressed and full of fear. "If I was still working at Henricks, I'd have been on the Circle line from Aldgate station at the time it exploded. Try gettin' your head around that!" Her tone was so light it could have floated, and so false she felt instantly sobered. "Things like this - suicide bombings - they happen in Iraq and Madrid, they don't happen here, right on your doorstep."

She took a deep breath, momentarily distracted as she searched for the right words, and he seized the oppurtunity to hold her hand in his once again. "We travel the universe, fight aliens, and we're lucky if we find ourselves in less than three life-or-death situations before we pull off a miraculous escape and come back to Earth for chips. And," she went on, hardly bothering to pause and breathe anymore, "through all this, I'm still human and always will be, just like this 'god-forsaken rock' will always be my safety net, somewhere I can always count on to be relatively safe." She met his eyes, her own anguished, frightened and shining with the threat of tears. "But it's not though, is it? Nowhere's safe anymore."

They watched each other for a long time, before the Doctor let go of her hand and reached out to brush a loose strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering for perhaps a few more seconds than was strictly necessary. Rose didn't think she had ever experienced anything more tender and meaningful with anyone, and she felt the butterflies fluttering wildly in her stomach.

"Safety." His voice brought her straight back down to Earth, and she immediately wondered if she'd imagined the moment - the look in his eyes assured her, however, that she was not the only one who had been there. "It's what humans crave above anything else." She followed his gaze up to the sky, where the first stars were beginning to shine. "Financial security, protection for their family and friends, a long and healthy life." He was looking at her again now, his eyes burning into her soul.

"But they all live in fear, and people fear what they can't understand. Try as they might, they'll never understand someone's desire to destroy, to kill."

"Do you?"

He looked at her even more intensely, if that were possible. "What, have the urge to blow people up? Frankly I've got better things to do with my time."

Rose didn't know if that was entirely a joke, but she didn't ask. "No, do you understand it? Why they do it?"

He was thoughtful for a moment, perhaps thinking what to say, perhaps how exactly to say it, she couldn't tell. "There are things going on," he began carfeully, "deep inside the Government - MI5 and 6 - that the rest of humanity couldn't ever imagine. They can guess, theorise, predict, but they'll never get it right because they don't know one tiny fragment of what's really going on."

It was almost dark now, and Rose realised she was shivering - partly from the incoming cold, partly from the immenseness of what the Doctor seemed to be suggesting. He took off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders, and she tucked her knees up to her chest so as to preserve warmth. "But if you know all this," she said eventually, "if you're sayin' that what we always believed was the truth is not that at all, do you know what's actually goin' on?"

To her slight surprise, he smiled, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. "D'you think I'd be sat here if I did, when my life is in so much constant danger that I can't be the same person two days in a row?" He moved lower into the bench and let her rest her head against his shoulder. "Existing like that, lying all the time, living in the shadows; I can't imagine it."

Rose raised an incredulous eyebrow. "What're you talking about? You exist like that, live in the shadows, know so much that it almost gets you killed every day!"

He nudged her gently, grinning. "I can't help being a genius, just like you can't help being nosy or stubborn or mind-numbingly beautiful." The air was set alight with the subtle accentuation of his last two words, suddenly making it very difficult for her to breathe. He pretended not to notice, although he was finding it just as hard to remember quite how his lungs worked. "All the agents, running all the time - they must be so lonely." His voice was soft that Rose had to strain to hear. "I used to know what that felt like."

She was aware of how close he was, and how this seemed to be restricting all reasonable thoughts making their way from her brain to her mouth. All she managed to whisper was, "What happened?"

He smiled, his lips now so close to hers that she felt him breathe across them as he spoke. "I found you."

And then he kissed her.

LINE BREAK

Jackie was on the phone again when she heard the door open. She watched her daughter and the Doctor as they walked through to the living room, hand-in-hand as always. Saying a hasty goodbye to her bewildered brother, she was able to observe them from the kitchen once again. She had never approved of the Doctor, to put it lightly. In the past she had despised him for coming so quickly into her life and leaving with her only child in tow, loathed him for stealing her precious daughter without so much as a goodbye, hated him for dragging the most important thing in her life into so much danger and not even being able to ensure her safety.

And yet as she stood there, seeing them so absorbed in each other, everything suddenly began to fall into place. Rose was never stolen or dragged away - Jackie prided herself on raising a daughter who knew how to stand up for herself - she'd chosen to go, to find adventure and planets and aliens and God only knew what else, and deep down her mother had known this all along.

She was pulled from her reverie when her daughter called, "Mum, where are you? We're goin' back to the TARDIS now."

Taking a deep breath, Jackie walked as smoothly as she could into the living room, smiling in what she hoped was an unsuspicious way. "Will you still be here tomorrow?"

Rose nodded, smiling, and even the Doctor didn't look like he minded this prospect too much. She moved forward to hug her mum and wished her goodnight.

"Are you okay?" Jackie murmured, looking her daughter up and down. "I've hardly seen you at all, what with the bombs and the stress and everything. You were so upset. Sue says she knows a good counsellor, you know, for the shock."

In response, Rose grinned over at the Doctor and reached for his hand. "It's fine mum; I'm fine. I think after good night's sleep everything'll make more sense. And if it doesn't, I've got my very own counsellor right here."

He smiled at her then with so much blinding respect and love that Jackie was temporarily stunned. Maybe she was even more wrong about him than she'd thought...

Finding herself once again, she took the Doctor's arm as he walked past her to leave. "I- I think I owe you an apology." He looked a little taken aback, but motionned for Rose to wait by the door for him. "I know I've hated you in the past," Jackie marched on bravely, "but I think I was wrong. She needs you, I saw that today. The way she just fell into your arms- " A wave of unexpected emotion threated to overcome her at the memory of the pain on her daughter's face which she was now officially sacked from preventing. "I just- I've realised that nothing I could ever do will stop her needing you."

She gripped the Doctor's arm tighter as he shifted slightly. "But if you ever hurt her..."

"...I'll have you to answer to." He smiled. "Thank you. And I won't. If I can use my life to save her, I will. Goodnight, Jackie."

She watched him walk to the door, a tear tracing its path down her cheek. It had been such a strange day. She was still very much confused and in shock over the bombings, but there was something calming about the presence, something in his eyes that assured her it would be alright in the end.

She managed a smile as her daughter said goodbye a final time and took his hand. The world was constantly moving and evolving all around them, but there were somethings that would never change.

Somehow, she mused as she retired to bed, she doubted either of them would be getting a good night's sleep at all... Somehow, she was happy for them, having each other to comfort and hold when times got tough. Having each other to love.

And no mother could begrudge her daughter that.