She did it for him. Risked life and limb and her relationships with both her ex-boyfriend and her mum, and it was worth it. She looked into the vortex, the heart of time and space itself, and Rose Tyler disappeared. There was only a myth, a legend, a name scattered across the universe: Bad Wolf.
Bad Wolf was the energy; Rose Tyler was the spirit, the soul. She made the TARDIS go back into its past, Earth's future; with a single gesture, she turned what was life into particles of dust and what was once particles of dust into never-ending life, immortality itself. She thought in chords of alien songs and her mind was brimming with stardust and the energy of the essence of everything.
Rose looked into the vortex. And the vortex looked back. It showed her the past and the present and the future. And the future scared her. She saw the Doctor - her Doctor - burst into flames and like a phoenix create himself anew. She saw Captain Jack suffering with the curse of the wolf's touch; time after time he escaped death, living forever until the end of time. She saw war and famine and the Earth choked by a great black darkness. She saw her Doctor, unconscious, gasping out puff after puff of living, swirling vortex energy.
It scared her. It hurt her. In the end, it made up her mind.
She heard the Doctor call for her. "I think you need a doctor." What a cornball of a line, so typical of her Doctor. She couldn't come to him, couldn't let herself be close to him. Would Rose let the Doctor die just to save herself? She burned from the inside out, tears both hers and yet not streaking her golden face.
It was for the better, after all, Rose reasoned. The universe needed the Doctor, forever and onwards. They needed their savior. Who was she to take that away from them?
Is this your choice?
For him . . . yes.
Rose looked into the Doctor's eyes. For a second, the longest second of her life, she saw the Doctor as what he was: father, grandfather, student, lover, traveler, renegade, runaway, Time's Champion, the Oncoming Storm, the man who walked through time. Rose felt relief. He wouldn't be alone, not for long; someone would come along, fill her space, give him the attention and affection he needs so much.
She smiled, and the Doctor at once realized her intentions. "I can help you---" he started, but Rose shook her head, her glowing blond locks forming a temporary halo around her head.
"No, you can't." Rose ran her tongue over her teeth and laughed a little. It sounded like an echo, accentuated by the vortex raging inside her. "But you can have a fantastic life, for me." And then it became too much, too overbearing.
Her flowing blond hair was the last thing to disintegrate into thin air, leaving behind a glowing Oxford key, a loudly weeping Time Lord, and a name that would last forever.
