Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all characters are property of the BBC. I do not own them nor make any money from them. I only spin stories for my own amusement and the entertainment of others.
I Create Myself
Rose Tyler is three years old. Jackie Tyler wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of her crying and rushes to her bedroom.
"What's the matter, sweetheart?" Jackie asks, stroking Rose's head and brushing back the blond hair from her forehead.
"Wuf," replies the young child in between staccato breaths.
"Wuf?" repeats Jackie. She doesn't understand.
The little girl nods. "Wuf try'n get me," she answers as she begins to cry again. She reaches for her mother, who scoops her into her arms.
"Wuf...wolf?" asks Jackie. "Did you have a dream about a wolf, sweetheart?"
The girl nods again. "Bad woof. I scared, mummy."
"Poor darling," says Jackie. "It's over now. It was only a dream." She wonders what has caused the nightmare. As far as she knows, Rose has not yet been exposed to fairy tales or any other references to bad wolves. She will have to call in the morning and see if the babyminder has read the stories to Rose against Jackie's wishes. But for now, they both need sleep. She picks up her daughter and brings her into her own room. She lets her sleep in her bed for the night.
The next day she calls Alice, the babyminder. It was an honest accident. Rose had been watching cartoons and playing with the remote. Somehow she managed to change the channel when Alice walked out of the room to get her a snack. When she returned, Rose was watching a documentary, transfixed as a pack of wolves tore into the carcass of a moose. Alice quickly switched the station back and assumed no harm had been done. She had meant to tell Jackie, but it had slipped her mind at the day's end.
There doesn't seem to be any lasting harm. Rose has the rare fitful night now and then, as all children do, but there is no more mention of wolves.
Rose is six.
She is standing precariously on the edge of the bed, prepared to let her gymnastic experience on the vault aid her in springing from the bed to the hallway beyond her open door. She is old enough to know that there is nothing lurking under her bed, but there is no harm in being cautious.
She grabs her teddy bear, backs up, makes a few running steps, and leaps for the doorway. She clears the space between the bed and the door, avoiding the sharp teeth and yellow eyes that she imagines wait for her. She runs to her mother's room, opens the door, and climbs into the bed.
"Bad dream?" her mother mumbles, patting her head without fully waking.
"Mmm hmm," says Rose as she snuggles in closer.
She doesn't elaborate. Her mother is asleep again. Besides, she'd likely get herself and her friend, Mickey Smith, in trouble if she says anything. Even though he is twelve and seems so grown up to Rose, he wasn't supposed to be watching that werewolf film. Still, he would have turned it off sooner if he had known she had entered the room.
But the film might not have been the cause of the dream anyway. Rose vaguely recalls having the same dream of a wolf—not a werewolf—chasing her on a few other occasions, but she never remembers until the dreams come back again. Rose pushes the thoughts from her mind and lets the rhythmic breathing of her mother lull her back to sleep
Rose is eleven.
She wakes up with a start. She has had the same dream that recurs a few times a year. The details vary each time, but the basics remain the same. It starts with a haunting howl, then she sees the yellow eyes bearing down on her from some point above as the wolf snarls and bears its teeth. At first she is frozen on the spot, but she always manages to get her legs moving and begin to run. Each time, the wolf chases her down streets, into a building, and down corridors until Rose finds herself cornered. And then she wakes.
She has had enough. She won't forget the dream this time. She gets out her journal and writes down as many details as she can remember. Maybe by remembering, she can keep the dream from coming back. However, two nights later, the dream returns. This time she knows she is dreaming, but she can't wake up. She calls to her mother for help, and the gentle shaking finally releases her from her nightmare.
"You called for me," her mother says soothingly. "Are you ok?"
"I'm fine mum, just a nightmare." Rose tells her.
"Do you want to talk about it, love?"
Rose shakes her head. Her mother's concern is comforting, but she is old enough to know dreams can't really harm her. "I'm fine," she says. "Just needed help waking up, 's' all."
"Okay then," says her mother, kissing her forehead. Rose smiles and drifts back to sleep. The rest of her slumber is peaceful.
The next day Rose visits the school library hoping to arm herself with information that will help end her recurring nightmares. She checks out a few nature books and brings them home to read. The photos in the books are beautiful, not frightening, and her research leads her to a new appreciation for the animal. The creatures she once viewed as bloodthirsty man-eaters now impress her as intelligent social animals that typically avoid humans.
Still, she is worried that the dreams will continue, so the next day she stays after school to use one of the library computers. She looks up wolf symbolism and dream symbols. The information is conflicting. The wolf can symbolize fear, aggression, and evil in general. But it is also a symbol of intelligence, cunning instincts, loyalty, and freedom. It seems she has a choice.
A few weeks later, after a particularly rotten day at school, the dream returns: She hears the distinctive howl and looks in the direction of the sound. She sees a large silver and white wolf staring down at her from the top of a red double-decker bus. Its yellow eyes peer down at her and it begins to snarl.
Something in her mind tells her that the wolf will not attack, and she can feel her heart beating rapidly as she tries to slowly back away. Her inner voice is wrong. The wolf springs from its perch and lands a few feet from where she is standing. It appears ready to pounce.
She wills her feet to run and finds to her great comfort that she is right outside her block of flats. She runs to the stairwell and tries to shut the door behind her, but the wolf is too fast. She runs up the many flights of stairs with the wolf just paces behind her. The door to her flat is unlocked and she rushes in, unable to shut the door behind her. She runs to her mother's room, but the door is closed and the wolf has backed her against it. The wolf is snapping and is about to bite her.
Rose does not wake up as she usually does. She reaches out with both hands and grabs the animal by the throat, choking it. Suddenly aware of what she is doing in self defense, she stops. The wolf is dying. Rose bends over the animal and begins to cry.
"I'm so sorry," she tells the magnificent beast. "I just didn't understand you."
The wolf looks into her eyes, and somehow Rose knows that the wolf is communicating the same thing. She knows that she is forgiven. She rests her head against the head of the wolf and pets it until it takes its last breath.
Rose awakens, aware that she is crying. Though she knows it is only a dream, she feels a debt to the animal. For months, Rose reads every book in the school library—fiction and non-fiction—about wolves. Her appreciation has turned into a fascination and love. She now sees wolves as a powerful animal that has an instinct not just to hunt, but to loyally protect those it considers part of the pack. Her dreams do not return.
Rose is thirteen.
Her fascination with wolves has been long forgotten. It has been replaced with dreams of adventure and travel when she is in a deeper mood, or obsessions over local boys and teen idols when she is feeling more frivolous.
She is given an assignment in her literature class to choose a villain from a fairy tale or myth and argue for the character's virtue in a first-person point of view. Her essay is entitled "I Am the Big Bad Wolf." Her teacher praises her for so thoroughly understanding the character, and she gets the highest marks in her class.
Rose is almost seventeen.
She lies on a second-hand mattress in a run-down studio flat. She rubs the bruises that are forming on her wrist, but her tears are the result of heartache and shame. Though she came from a meager background, she had a mother who loved her, got decent enough marks in school, and had dreams of a better future. But she gave it all up because of Jimmy Stone.
She hates him. She hates herself for trusting in him. She gave her heart and her body to him. He seduced her with professions of love and promises of fame and fortune. She quit school for him and never got her A-levels. So she works at the pub he performs at, picking up glasses and avoiding men with wandering hands. He takes every penny she makes to spend on alcohol and (she suspects) stronger substances. He never kept his promise to let her sing with him.
Tonight she saw him snogging a woman who watches him perform at the pub. She confronted him when he came home, and he grabbed her wrists and threw her against the wall. It's not the first time that scene has played out. He is gone now, and she never wants to see him again. She cries herself to sleep.
Rose dreams she is standing on a high wall peering down at Jimmy Stone.
"Look at me!" she calls to him.
He looks up in fear.
"I am not afraid of you anymore," she yells at him. "You do not control me." The echo of her voice sounds like a howl, and she realizes she is on all fours.
"You were wrong to betray my loyalty," she calls to Jimmy, who is too terrified to move. "You were wrong to hurt me."
She springs from the wall just a few paces from where Jimmy is standing. His pupils are fully dilated and she understands the reason for his fear. She can see her image reflected in his eyes. She is golden and beautiful with piercing yellow eyes. "I create myself anew," she says with a threatening snarl. She is strong. She is fierce. She circles around him, teeth bared. "I am the Bad Wolf."
He is afraid but he does not seem able to run. "I could hurt you the way you hurt me," she barks. "It's what you deserve."
He runs and she is in swift pursuit. He darts into the pub and tries to shut the door, but she is too fast. "I am cunning and intelligent," she barks at him. "I could be so much more."
She has him cornered. She could rip him to shreds, but she doesn't. He isn't worth it. It doesn't matter anymore: she is free. She lifts up her head and lets out a slow mournful howl.
Rose wakes up from her dream, her body convulsing with the power of her sobs. When she can cry no more, she knows it is time to leave. Her thoughts turn to the two people who have remained loyal to her despite the fact that she has been undeserving. Though it is three in the morning, she calls Mickey and asks him to take her home to her mum.
She falls asleep in her own bed knowing that she is loved. Her dream is forgotten.
Rose is nineteen.
She is amazed at the life she leads and the things she sees daily traveling in the Tardis. She happier than she can ever remember being, and she feels as if her life finally has meaning. The potential may have been there all along, but she has the Doctor to thank for making it a reality.
She is vaguely aware of the words "Bad Wolf" that seem to pop up during their travels. Gwyneth mentions the "Big Bad Wolf" when she reads Rose's mind. A boy paints the words on the Tardis when she returns to London a year late. One of the stations airing on Satellite Five was called "Bad Wolf." She is vaguely aware, but it does not become a conscious thought. There is no need—her life is fantastic.
Rose is twenty—at least she thinks she is.
Now that she traverses space and time with no particular pattern, she is not sure how to measure how much time has elapsed since she began her journeys with the Doctor. What she is sure of is that it was better with two, and that he should not have sent her home. She is loyal: committed to him no matter the cost. And though the Doctor has a "superior Time Lord intellect" and she is just a human, she is sharp with strong instincts. He is about to face his biggest enemy, and he needs her.
Rose sits on a bench in a playground trying to explain to Mickey why she can't just forget the Doctor. Then she sees it, written on the tarmac in letters as large as she is: "BAD WOLF."
"I thought it was a warning," she tells Mickey. "Maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it's a message. The same words written down now and two hundred thousand years in the future." Her mind recalls all the times she has heard or seen the phrase in her travels. "It's a link between me and the Doctor. Bad Wolf here, Bad Wolf there."
Mickey is doubtful. "But if it is a message, what is it saying?"
"It's telling me I can get back," she says, confident these words are true.
Rose is in the Tardis, staring at a portion of the floor where Mickey and her mum have been able to pull off the grating. The amber glow surrounds her and enters her. Behind Rose, the doors of the Tardis close, but she is not aware. The sentient glow attaches to a thread in her mind, a theme that has given her strength and shaped her very being throughout her life. The thought becomes life and scatters like stardust across the cosmos. It is not Rose. It is not the Time Vortex. It is both and yet something different altogether.
The doors of the Tardis open and somehow she is out, reunited with her Doctor. He asks her what she has done.
"I looked into the Tardis and the Tardis looked into me," she tells him with a calm caused by the entity to which she is symbiotically linked. The Doctor is worried, but Rose regrets nothing.
A Dalek attempts to harm Rose's body with a blast, but the entity within her takes control and reverses it. The entity is in control, but she doesn't mind because it moves according to her strongest desire.
Rose hears it speak. "I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself." It looks at the Doctor, trying to make him understand. "I take the words, I scatter them in time and space," says the Bad Wolf. It waves Rose's hand and the letters spelling "BADWOLF" on a wall float away. "A message to lead myself here."
The Doctor protests. "You've got the entire vortex running through your head," he tells her. "You're going to burn." Rose can feel his fear.
"I want you safe," Rose—not the Bad Wolf—tells him. "My Doctor. Protected from the false god."
The Bad Wolf takes over again, dividing the Doctor's enemies into atoms. "Everything must come to dust," it says. "All things. Everything dies. The Time War ends."
"Rose, you've done it. Now stop," pleads the Doctor. "Just let go."
"How can I let go of this?" Rose and the Bad Wolf say as one. "I bring life." She has not just saved her Doctor. She feels the breath of life enter a friend who had died protecting her Doctor.
"You can't control life and death," the Doctor tells her.
"But I can," Rose-Bad Wolf says. "The sun and the moon, the day and night." Bad Wolf is power and protection. She needs him to see. But Rose feels a pain in her head. "But why do they hurt?" Rose asks. Unlike the pain inflicted on her when she was younger, this is not his fault. It is a choice.
"I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be," Rose is not sure if it is the Bad Wolf or she who is talking or if any distinction remains. "My head," Rose cries, wanting to let go. She hears the Doctor beckon her as she speaks again. "It's killing me."
The Doctor speaks. She feels his arms as he steadies her and feels his lips as they gently meet hers. The power leaves, as does the pain. She falls into a slumber accompanied by the music of the spheres.
Rose awakes and her experience is forgotten like the dreams in her past. She will face changes and challenges unlike anything that has come before. The Bad Wolf will have more messages for her and her Doctor. But for now, she is at peace.
Author's Note: Rose's experiences at age eleven are loosely autobiographical, and part of the inspiration for this story. It also gives a little insight into my name. :)