My Alternatives fic for the episdoe Love & Monstes.

Used

How dare he! Playing her like this, just using her familial relationship with Rose to get to the Doctor.

How dare he!

Elton Pope was not someone she pegged to do what he had done. And the problem was that he was a nice, good guy. She had truly liked him. And now she doesn't even know what had been real and what had been an act to try and get her to talk about, or worse, rat out, the Doctor.

It was a good thing she had learnt long ago, and through Mickey of all people, that talking about the Doctor was a one way trip to either jail, or a nut house. She knew she hadn't believed him, thought him mad for telling continuous stories of disappearing police boxes, but it was true.

The Doctor, his time machine and all of it had been fact.

And now he had taken her daughter and turned her into a worse person than a normal teen was supposed to be. There was no talking to the girl now. She was lucky if she got a call at all now, and then it was when the Doctor reminded Rose to call home.

Occasionally, for what seemed like no reason to her, the Doctor would even bring her home for a visit.

Rose never stayed past a few hours. She already knew the place and time after all, none of it was interesting. Including her mother...

Jackie knew it, deep down she did, but in the end it was just too hard to keep the pretence up. Rose had abandoned everything to do with having a normal life ever again. Going so far as to tell her to her face that life on Earth was boring, meant for smaller people and simply not for her any longer.

Like Rose was so high and mighty...probably even the Doctor could see the girl was deluded.

After kicking Elton out of her house knowing she'd never see him again, and knowing she'd have to be extra careful with whom she meets from now on, she immediately called the Doctor. Rose never answered a call from anyone but the Doctor anymore. She made calls, yes, but refused to listen to anyone else if she could help it. Anyway, Rose had called not long ago, and wouldn't call again for god knew how long again, so the Doctor was the best bet.

It was a good thing the Doctor gave her the TARDIS phone number after Mickey had left to live on a parallel world.

"Jackie! How are you? Didn't Rose not long ago call you?"

"Just got off the phone around 5 minutes ago with her. Something has happened though that I think you ought to hear..."

She told him about her time with Elton, about how he had been such a nice bloke and about how he had just been using her to get to him. She could hear his voice get stormy, and hoped, even after all the lies she'd been through lately, that he didn't hurt Elton in any way.

"You want me to go talk to him, then?" he asked.

Even though she knew he couldn't see it, she shook her head. "Nah, just...I thought you should know. It's shaken me up a bit and you're probably the only one to understand that right now, who I can talk to."

They decided together to do nothing about it, until Rose happened upon the discussion by walking into the console room and hearing the Doctor's half of the conversation.

She told the Doctor to go with what Rose wanted if he wanted to survive the day. Rose in wrathful vengeance mode didn't care about anything other than hurting the one she was after. For that matter, she didn't much care about anything if it wasn't about herself.

But, imprinted since a young age, growing up without a dad, Rose defended her anyway. For a person who she had already dealt with in her own, much nicer way.

The next day, the TARDIS came wailing into the lounge room, and Rose strode out, a smile on her face. "There, no need to worry about him again, mum, he won't bother you anymore."

She glared at her daughter and nodded. "He wouldn't have anyway. I'd already dealt with him!"

Rose blinked at her and frowned. "Then what the hell were you and the Doctor going on about then?"

"On how to not get into that type of situation again, you twit!"

At a past time, Rose may have looked a bit guilty for having gotten a half sided conversation wrong and interpreting it her own way. Now she crossed her arms and glared. "Oh, thanks. I save you and this is the thanks I get?"

Jackie couldn't help it, she started laughing. "You saved me? Oh, not by a long shot, missy. I'd already dealt with him, like I already said. He wouldn't have bothered me again, because I know regardless of what he did, he is a nice person. He'd leave me alone, because that's what I wanted, and he isn't one to take advantage that way of a woman."

Rose actually looked surprised to hear her say that, of defending a man who had taken advantage of her in another way. But it was the truth. She honestly believed that if he was after the Doctor it must have been for a very good reason that had nothing to do with hurting either him or Rose. Still, nice guy or not, she didn't want anyone using her to get to the people she cared for.

"But he hurt you, mum! No one can hurt you! It's not fair."

Rolling her eyes, Jackie sighed. "Welcome to the world, sweetheart. You see, here, where us normal, stupid people live, we get hurt all the time. And no, it's not fair, but it is the way things work. If you honestly can't handle that, then maybe it's best you're not living here any longer. God knows what you'd do to someone now, if they hurt you in any way, shape or form."

Rose's arms crossed tighter across her waist, before she glared with an extra hard intensity. "What's that supposed to mean? I'm in danger all the time now! I know what it feels like to get hurt."

Jackie shook her head and sighed. "That's what I mean. You're blind. The Doctor's more human than you are..."

"She means, Rose, that not all pain is physical. That everyone is bound to get hurt. Something in their past, what's happening in the present, or sometime in the near future. It's not just the way of this world either, it's the way of the universe."

The Doctor couldn't have timed his entrance into the conversation any better. She nodded at him. "See? The Doctor agrees with me, Rose."

Rose sighed, rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air. "What has that got to do with me?"

Closing her eyes, Jackie did something she never thought she would ever do. She began to give up on her own daughter. "You don't care who you hurt, Rose, as long as you get your way."

The look on her daughter's face was almost priceless. It was a shocked look full of surprise. She spotted out of the corner of her eye, the Doctor frown and nod slightly. He agreed with her. He agreed with her about how Rose was acting. He did know then. She hadn't been too sure until that moment, mainly just guessing.

She saw it then, for possibly the first time ever. A look in his eyes that said he wanted out. There was a tiredness there she hadn't seen in this version of him, but quite often in the other him. Whatever had got him looking like that must have been something to do with Rose. What had she done to hurt him as bad as all that?

"That's not true! I care! About humans and aliens and...and the universe and fixing things."

This time it was her who crossed her arms, but instead of frowning, she perked up one of her eyebrows. "Really? How did you deal with Elton?"

She shrugged. "Mainly I just yelled at him. He deserved it, using bloody creep that he was. I don't care what happened to him when he was a kid, that's no excuse for what he did to you!"

The look the Doctor was sending Rose's back meant more than any words could ever say. And her fears were justified. Elton really had been decent, if not for trying to get to the Doctor through her. "I knew him better than you did, Rose. And while he may have used me, I used him too. And he put up with it, with me, just to see the Doctor."

And she knew then that it was true. She was as much at fault here as Elton was. She had thought him quite fit. She had flirted with him endlessly, until he finally took her hints. And in the end, sex hadn't mattered to him. He may have been ready to sleep with her, but if she hadn't have thrown her wine on him, he would have refused her advances. He had wanted friendship, someone to talk to, a hand to hold.

She had acted so cheap, and the one thing he had gotten out of it was that she was as lonely as he was. Maybe if it hadn't been too late, she would have forgiven him and invited him back over some time. He could have been someone she could have talked to about the Doctor and this crazy life she was living. But it was ruined now. Rose had ruined it for her.

"You didn't help at all. If anything, you just made things worse."

"Fine! Then I'll never help you out again then, since you can handle your own problems well enough without me."

With that said, Rose stormed off back into the TARDIS. The blue door slammed close behind her.

Jackie sighed in relief and felt like she could breathe again. The Doctor was looking at her with an odd expression, but she could see pride glowing in those eyes of his. He thought she was right and Rose was wrong. How much things had changed. The Doctor was no longer ignoring Rose's weak points. Weaknesses which were growing stronger the longer she travelled with the Doctor.

"He had just seen his friends and girlfriend eaten by an alien being who was after me. An alien who used him and his small group of friends in this finding of me. He was already crying by the time the TARDIS had landed, very close to being...well, absorbed, by the alien, when she got to him. She didn't care for any of it. The only thing she cared about was hurting him. She didn't care why he was crying, didn't care about any of it, until after everything was finished and done with. And that was all fake empathetic rubbish."

Jackie nodded, believing him. She had lost per precious daughter quite a while back, leaving this...shell of what used be a human being in her place. Rose wasn't Rose any longer. She didn't tell the Doctor this, though she desperately wanted to.

"What did he want with you? Did he say?"

The Doctor nodded and let out a long drawn sigh. "First time I met him as an adult, I knew he looked familiar to me. When he was a young child, a living shadow had gotten into his house, and it was attacking his mother. I'd been tracking the beastie for a few days and was lucky enough to get there in time to stop it from hurting anyone else. Unfortunately, it was too late to save his mother. All he wanted was to know what happened. It has driven him all his life to find out. I'm glad you're not angry with him any longer, Jackie. He is a good man."

Nodding, Jackie went into the kitchen to put on the jug for some tea. She hoped that Rose would stay in the TARDIS for the time being.

Right now, she was more than fine with her staying away for a bit.

She needed to cool down and have some time to settle her own feelings on what she had just heard her daughter had done.

At least she had the Doctor's quiet company to help her come to terms with this. It looked like he was trying to come to terms with it himself.

He was the one that had to put up with that sort of behaviour all day after all.

She could see he was suffering from it.

Too bad he'd never talk about what happened to get him to truly see Rose like this. She had begun noticing the moment she ran off with him without even a worry at all for her or Mickey. That early in their relationship, and already Rose had been hooked by the lifestyle the Doctor had shown her.

She was afraid to voice it out loud, in case it made the problem any worse.