When Rose Tyler was six years old, her mother gave her the ruby ring with the stylised heart shaped stone that would one day lead her to her soulmate. There was only one thing wrong with the ring.
It had two heart shaped rubies instead of one. Rose's blood chilled. Even at her age, she knew exactly what that meant. Her soulmate was a Time Lord, the destroyers of countless planets in the Kasterborous constellation. Time Lords were evil, everyone knew that. Rose tipped her chin up as she gazed at her mother. But her voice shook when she spoke. "Mum, why is my soulmate a Time Lord? They're twisted. Wrong. They're as bad as the Daleks."
Jackie Tyler knelt down, gathering Rose into a gentle hug. "They're not evil," Jackie stated quietly.
"How do you know?" Rose asked in a muffled voice; her face was buried in her mother's shoulder.
"They're people, just like us. Driven by love, loss, fear, hatred. The same things that motivate us. Some view us as collateral damage, necessary to save the universe, while others see us as deserving of life as they are. Does that make sense?" Rose nodded, reassured.
She stepped back, staring at the ring in fascination. Rose knew that the details of the ring told something about the person they were crafted to represent. Curlicues of blued metal, and curious little geodes smaller than a greyhound beetle that resembled the inside of a crystalline star. Rose shook her head, and smiled. She couldn't wait for the future.
Theta Sigma, one day to be the Doctor, sat on the roof of the Time Academy, slowly spinning the ring on his left hand. Theta had memorised the ornate golden band about a hundred years ago.
Carved wolves made of gold prowled next to the singular heart-stone, whilst gemstone roses bloomed. Theta didn't have anything better to do, so he daydreamed about meeting his soulmate for the first time. However, the reality didn't live up to the expectation. At all.
When Rose was eight years old, her comfortable world was shattered for the first time. Rose awoke in the middle of the night to Jackie dragging her out of bed.
Her mother took her, bolting into the main plaza of their little town. Screaming shattered the night, with noxious black smoke already rising from the horizon. Quakes rocked the ground, cracks already zigzagging.
Like sinister shooting stars, Dalek ships arched across the upper atmosphere. A small gunship awaited them, people already climbing in. They piled inside, the doors of the ship closed, and it arrowed into the sky. Rose would never forget the lonely beauty of her home planet, hanging alone in star-studded velvety darkness.
Nor would she ever forget the dusty greenish yellow continents dissolving a second before her only home blew apart into a million fragments. Rose closed her eyes, still hearing the screams of her friends and neighbours. Those screams would follow her into adulthood and beyond.
Cass Corde stared at Rose in exasperation, wondering why the heck they'd put her best friend on this gunship. "The heroes died first, Rose. Makes me wonder where they dug you up."
Rose grinned weakly at her. "A backwater farming planet. Besides, cowards die too. You ought to be careful."
The little ship bucked, groaning with the stresses of G-force and its own damage. Cass stepped up to the controls of the transmat beam, ready to beam Rose back to safety. Rose just tilted her chin up, glaring mulishly at Cass. "No. It's not happening."
They glared at each other for a long moment, then Cass backed down. She was unlikely to be able to stuff Rose into the transmat, and operate the controls. "Might as well set the distress signal. Maybe there's someone out there who can save our sorry hides."
Rose's smile was bright, her eyes sad. "Maybe."
They both knew that only a TARDIS or a Dalek saucer would be able to stop them from hitting the surface of Karn, and that was a dubious kind of salvation anyway.
The Doctor groaned, flopping into the overstuffed green armchair that had been his since the middle of his seventh incarnation. The Doctor tried not to think, tried not to feel. But the fact remained that the Time War was getting worse.
Soon its full fury would crash down upon the universe, and everything would be lost to madness. Some said that it was the Last Great Time War, because everything would burn in its wake, Dalek, Time Lord, and human alike.
The Doctor glanced down at the intricate golden ring on his left hand, and sighed. Most Time Lords found their soulmates by the age of two hundred or so. He was well past two thousand years of age, and still hadn't met them. Maybe his soulmate had died.
Goodness knew enough other people had died in this war. Humanity had grown to touch every star in the sky, and now it would all- the Doctor stuffed the thought down viciously. He cast about for a distraction.
The distraction the Doctor was seeking arrived a moment later with a series of quiet bleeps. A distress signal. Far too many of them, these days. The Doctor moved swiftly across the room, and set the coordinates. Five minutes later, he strode out of the newly materialised TARDIS, into a storage room filled with supply crates.
The craft was jerking and wallowing wildly, and the Doctor knew from the data that the TARDIS had fed him, it was going to crash on Karn. Time to evacuate as many people as possible. Except for the fact, the Doctor realised, that everyone seemed to have left the ship.
The Doctor heard voices, and turned a corner. Two young women hunched over a computer interface, arguing with the recalcitrant AI. Neither of them seemed to notice him. At that moment, the ring on the Doctor's left hand began to beat with a single, human heartbeat.
"Help us, please. Can anyone hear us?" Desperation and the need for survival were beginning to set in, and Cass heard her anxious voice in a detached sort of way. But no god answered. Not even another ship.
Only the tinny voice of the computer's governing intelligence. "Please state the nature of your ailment or injury."
Rose, in a display of temper, barely missed punching the display. "Neither of us is injured, damn it!"
If computers could sound exasperated, this one did. "Providing a clear statement of your symptoms can help us provide the medical practitioner most suitable for your needs."
Cass and Rose both groaned, and Rose really did punch the readout this time. Sparks flew, and Rose shook out her fist. They looked at each other, and abruptly Rose smiled. "When you said best friends to the end, I didn't quite imagine it ending quite like this. No one to help. No lives to save. Just… this."
The despair in Rose's eyes and voice nearly broke Cass. Stubborn, fiery, compassionate, that was Rose. Not this. "We did what we could," Cass reminded her.
Instead of replying, Rose gasped and whipped around, fumbling for the fingerless gloves she always wore. Dimly Cass saw Rose rip off the left one, but all her attention was on the man standing in the doorway. He was only slightly taller than Rose or Cass herself, with piercing blue eyes, shorn chestnut curls, and a battle worn black leather jacket.
Cass's spine sagged with an inexplicable sense of safety. What really registered, though, was the red cord binding him to Rose. The Red String of Fate. He was Rose's soulmate. He and Rose seemed to be having an intense silent discussion. Probably telepathy. Finally he broke eye contact with Rose. "Hello Cass, I'm the Doctor. Pleasure to meet you."
The sense of safety he brought mostly vanished in a single heartbeat as Cass processed what that title meant. Terror, instilled since infancy, screamed up her spine, mixing with rage and betrayal in the pit of her stomach. This was no kind of rescue at all. "Get out." Cass said, sounding more calm than she felt.
The smile faded from the Doctor's face, replaced by serene calm. "No. I will not leave you or Rose to your deaths."
Cass was about to retort that if one of them died, then that was worth their lives, but something stopped her. Soulmates were each other's mirror images, with complementary differences, but at the core they were the same. Rose wasn't evil. So maybe, just maybe this Time Lord was different. Although if she weren't kidding herself, it was the pleading look Rose was giving her that changed her mind.
Cass couldn't send her childhood best friend to her death. Not when there was a chance to save all of them. In the instant Cass made her decision, something shifted above human perception. The timelines altered, flowing like quicksilver into their new pathways. Cass gained a future, and wars were won and lost.
The Doctor smiled gently at her. "I thought so." There was no mockery in his words. Then the Doctor held out a hand to each woman, grinning. "Run for your lives!" They did.
