"You heard my voice, I came out of the woods by choice"
- 'Hopeless Wanderer' Mumford and Sons
"I guess this is fitting, Tony. Friday night and it's you and me here together at midnight," Rose mused as she held the toddler on her hip as she stood in front of the large bay windows of the Tyler Mansion. "Haven't had much of a life myself these past few years."
It was a true statement of fact, Rose sighed to herself. The past three years were complete chaos from the minute she was left standing in Torchwood Tower in Pete's World as the Doctor had called this reality. Chaos was her life now. As soon as they she had spoken with the Doctor last on Bad Wolf Bay in Norway her adventure truly began. Since then she was announced to the world as Pete Tyler's long lost daughter and heiress to the Vitex fortune. It wasn't much later though that both she and Mickey sought out Torchwood and began working there.
Where else would a person who has traveled the universes work? Rose scoffed looking up at the stars as Tony rested his head on her shoulder looking out himself. She and Mickey worked on a team together with a number of others to handle all alien contact on parallel Earth in addition to dealing with any conflict that may arise. Rose found herself turning into a soldier more than when she had even run with the Doctor. Initially Pete had protested at the idea of his newfound daughter running around and combating aliens but after he began to oversee Torchwood and a group of aliens came in raising hell Rose had stepped in and with two sentences averted full on war by managing to calm the group down. Seeing how much Rose had actually picked up and learned in her travels, Pete had no choice but to let her join in and start working as an agent for the ever growing Torchwood.
This happened to be one of the few weekends she had decided to take off after a particular horrid encounter with a few rogue Racnoss in the sewer system. That whole mission had left Rose completely exhausted and ready to just sit down with a nice cuppa and a warm bath. Her mother however had other plans. The minute her mother had seen an opportunity to take a night to herself and Pete however she had begged her daughter to watch little Tony and so here they were. Rose couldn't complain in the end to a calm night of hanging with a two year old however oxymoronic that sounded. Tony was a great kid to be around however. He was hyper as any two year old could be, but what Rose loved most about her little brother was the wonder that he had about everything and anything. Rose would spend hours just sitting and talking and telling stories of the stars to her brother who soaked it all in before asking for more. He was definitely a way to keep her grounded in all of the craziness of her job.
"There are thousands of worlds out there Tony," Rose explained to her younger brother with a small smile on her face, memories flying through her head faster than she could rationally process and bringing emotions to the forefront. "I've seen so many of them and maybe someday soon you will too. I traveled with this man you see, a crazed man in a beautiful blue box that traveled through all of space and time."
Rose continued on telling Tony stories of how she had met her first Doctor who was all blue eyes and leather, stealing her heart and changing her life with the simple statement of 'run.' Slowly as her stories continued on she noted that Tony was starting to finally drift on her shoulder. She turned her head gently kissing the top of his head as she held him tight looking up at the stars. She relished in the fact that the stars were mostly the same here in this reality; there was some sort of comfort in being able to look up into the black sky and see the same stars and constellations that she had known her whole life with new ones added in. In her mind she envisioned all the planets she had visited, all the lives she had watched the Doctor save, and silently wondered how many of them were still safe and secure. Unfortunately she would never know without a way to travel into the stars.
When she felt Tony's breathing finally even out as his tiny hand clutched at her shirt, Rose allowed herself to relax and the tear to finally fall from the corner of her eye. Three years and she hadn't heard from the Doctor. 'I'm burning up a sun just to say goodbye,' he had said to her on that beach. Maybe things weren't just meant to be. Since her arrival, Rose had taken to finding all the differences between this world and her own. The one main difference she had discovered but loved were the new constellations that filled the sky. Mixed in with the fierce warrior Orion and the Great Bear of Ursa Major were others stories of samurais and tales she once regarded as bedtime stories appeared in the stars. Her favorite she had discovered were two clusters of stars that appeared overhead that represented Little Red Riding Hood and the Big, Bad Wolf. It seemed almost fitting that she found the most beauty in the cluster of stars that made up the wolf.
Ever since she had looked into the Time Vortex and become the Bad Wolf, her life had changed. The Doctor had hated to talk about him taking the Vortex from her and as a result having to regenerate, but Rose remembered enough to be able to piece it all together. She still had dreams of that day that haunted her at night, even more so since coming to this reality. The past few weeks her dreams had changed though. She had been in the field with her team tracking down a loose Silurian in the forests of Germany at the request of their government when Rose had her first nightmare. After that she had limited the amount of sleep, choosing to take longer shifts at watch enabling the others to sleep while they were hunting. Now that she was at home she was exhausted, but Tony wanted to stay up late it seemed. Rose wasn't complaining at all. The nightmares, these dreams were completely and utterly haunting. They made no sense and were just tearing her head apart.
Rose kissed Tony's head once more and made to turn towards the stairs so she could put him down when she noticed something strange. She looked up at the Wolf in the sky and noticed that it was different. The two stars at the end of the tail just disappeared. Rose looked at the sky closer until she shook her head. It had to be clouds or the sunlight or even her lack of sleep. She had to be imagining it; stars just didn't disappear normally. Rose watched a short time longer before she turned away. Enough of that nonsense. She couldn't really trust herself at the moment when she was running on as little sleep as she was at that moment.
Quietly she carried her little brother up the stairs to his bedroom where she set him down for the night. Watching him sleep in the dim light of his solar system mobile, Rose felt a brief pang of regret. She doubted she would ever have a normal life after meeting the Doctor. Rose turned and looked at the ceiling littered with the stick on glow-in-the-dark stars which she had silently named herself as she was arranging them in anticipation for baby Tony. Rose's life was anything but normal now as she worked for Torchwood but she found herself settling which scared her even more. There had to be something that she could do that would change this lull that her life was forced into ever sense she was stuck in this universe.
Someday she would see the stars once more. Someday she would defy the laws of physics and universe and see her Doctor again because nothing is impossible. Someday…