Warnings: Religious references, slight spoilers for The Day of the Doctor, Doctor self-bashing/self-hating
Series summary: The TARDIS doesn't always take the Doctor where he wants to go, but it always takes him where he needs to go; Time Lords hold a secret behind their backs, and they have a duty to follow.
Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who (or the lines from Parting of the Ways)
Chapter 1 – The Doctor
The Doctor placed his hands on the switch, ready to pull it and destroy all of the Daleks – and Earth in the process. The Dalek Emperor claimed to be immortal, but he wasn't; the Doctor knew that only God was truly immortal, and everything's time came – including his.
But he couldn't do it. The Doctor was reminded of that awful day, the Last Day, when he had activated the Moment and destroyed it all – even though it appeared that he had failed, and that the Daleks were alive and well while all the Time Lords but him had perished. Not only was there no guarantee that the Daleks would be annihilated by this new effort, but there was no way that he could commit genocide again. Maybe if he hadn't met Rose, he would have been able to do it, but the thought of her looking at him, disappointed, crumbled his resolve.
He let go of the switch. "Coward. Any day."
"Mankind will be harvested because of your weakness," the Dalek Emperor reminded him, though the Doctor was finding it more and more difficult to see how not committing mass murder was a weakness.
"And what about me?" he asked, though he felt that he knew what the answer would be.
"You will be exterminated."
The Doctor felt strangely hollow at that prospect. He had no idea if he would regenerate if he was shot by a Dalek, though on some level he almost wished that he wouldn't. Rose was gone, living her life back on Earth, safe from all of the dangers that he could bring her; Jack was lying dead somewhere else on the platform…
"Maybe it's time," he lamented, closing his eyes.
The time stretched on, tense and anticipatory; he heard the sound of the TARDIS, the wonderful, familiar sound ready to send him away to where the other Time Lords were awaiting his arrival…
"Alert! TARDIS materialising!" The panic was evident in the voice of the Dalek, and the Doctor realised that the sound was not imaginary – somehow, Rose had overcome Emergency Programme One and rebooted the TARDIS to come back to him: the stupid ape. "You will not escape!"
The Doctor turned to the TARDIS to see its doors open, and he was blinded by the light that poured from within. He lifted his hands to shield his eyes, shying away from the immense power. When he could bear it, he lowered his hands, staring in wonder at Rose as she stood in the doorway, long tendrils of bright yellow light reaching beyond the confines of the miniscule outside of the blue box. He fell backwards, and Rose disappeared, reappearing a few feet in front of him.
"What have you done?" he asked, terrified at what his pink and yellow girl was doing to herself.
"I looked into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS looked into me."
The Doctor couldn't believe what he was hearing. Golden light was swirling within Rose's eyes, giving them a terrible beauty. She didn't understand what she had done, for the TARDIS alone couldn't do this to someone. "You looked into the Time Vortex. Rose, no one's meant to see that!"
"This is the Abomination!" the Dalek Emperor cried, and as much as the Doctor wanted to tear the creature limb from limb for referring to Rose as that, he couldn't help but agree with him.
"Exterminate!" A Dalek shot at Rose, but she caught the beam in her hand and sent it back.
"I am the Bad Wolf," Rose declared, staring up at the words that had plagued the two of them throughout time and space. "I create myself." She lifted her hand, drawing her palm across the words. "I scatter them in time and space: a message to lead myself here."
The Doctor could barely take this any longer. "Rose! You've got to stop this – you've got to stop this now. You've got the entire Vortex running through your head. You're gonna burn!"
Ignoring the Doctor's panic, Rose turned to him, the golden light in her eyes disappearing. "I want you safe," she said simply, and the Doctor's hearts threatened to tear themselves apart. She was putting herself in grave danger, exactly how she had done all those weeks before when she had risked absolute perception overload from fixing his injured wing. When was she going to learn that she couldn't keep risking herself for his sake; he wasn't worth it. "My Doctor. Protected from the false god."
"You cannot hurt me," the Dalek Emperor told her. "I am immortal."
"You are tiny," Rose told the Dalek Emperor, her voice changing; the London twang was gone, replaced with some upper class quality that sounded wrong coming from Rose's mouth. "I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence and I divide them." The gold returned to her eyes as she lifted her hand and a Dalek disintegrated. "Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies."
The Doctor watched in both fear and amazement as Rose raised her arms and the Daleks surrounding them disintegrated as the first had. "The Time War ends."
"I will not die. I cannot die!"
But he did. The Bad Wolf destroyed the entire Dalek fleet, including the Emperor, and Rose was left with the Time Vortex running through her head on Platform One. She had done it, she had saved the Doctor – and now he needed to save her.
"Rose, you've done it – now stop. Just stop."
"How can I let go of this?" she asked, the accent he was familiar with returning to her now pained voice. "I bring life."
The Doctor sensed a resurrection – Jack's resurrection, as the ex-Time Agent became a Fact, a wrong thing, just like the thing that was standing before him. "No, this is wrong! You can't control life and death!"
"But I can," Rose said simply, looking back down at him. "The sun, and the moon. The day and night. But why do they hurt?" Tears were running down her cheeks, but the Doctor was sure that it couldn't possibly be hurting Rose as much as it was hurting him.
"The power's gonna kill you, and it's my fault!" he admonished himself, looking away from Rose Tyler, from the latest casualty of his life and actions.
"I can see everything," she told him, and that caught his attention. "All that is, all that was, all that could be."
A jolt of excitement shot through the Doctor. Finally there was someone else who could understand his mind, for the first time since Gallifrey had burned. He stood up. "That's what I see, all the time." But he couldn't be selfish; he couldn't ask Rose to stay this way just so that he could pretend that she was a Time Lord. Even as the Bad Wolf, Rose did not have wings, and she never would. "And doesn't it drive you mad?"
"My head-" she whimpered.
"Come here."
"-is killing me."
"I think you need a Doctor," he smirked, pulling her towards him and turning to the side.
He knew just how to save his pink and yellow girl.
He leaned down to her level, pressing his lips to hers. It seemed cruel that their first kiss was in circumstances such as these, but he ignored the pity he felt for himself in favour of joy when he realised that she was kissing him back.
The Time Vortex leaked out of her, crossing over to him as he wrapped his wings around the two of them; once he had absorbed it all, he would start to die, and then he would regenerate…
But he didn't want to. He wasn't ready to leave this body behind, to risk Rose leaving him once he became someone else – for he had known, ever since he had first told her about regeneration all that time ago, over fish and chips after Earth burned, that she was absolutely terrified of him regenerating on her, and to be honest, he didn't blame her.
So he didn't take it all. He pulled back from the kiss as both of their eyes were still burning gold.
"Let go," he murmured, and in her weakening state, she didn't have the strength to hold onto the Bad Wolf anymore. They breathed out in sync, the golden light leaving them and going back into the TARDIS.
Rose collapsed when it was done, but the Doctor caught her, stumbling slightly as the effects of the Time Vortex weakened him. Knowing that he would have to leave Jack behind, he carried Rose into the TARDIS bridal-style, placing her gently on the grating.
His head was throbbing and his vision blurring as he settled the TARDIS into the Time Vortex. Once they were safely away from Platform One, he could fight the weakness off no longer – he stumbled around the console to where Rose was lying, dropping to his knees by her side and then crumpling into a horizontal position next to her.
The last thing he saw before his vision went black was Rose's peaceful, sleeping face, still marred with the tears that the Bad Wolf had made her cry.