I thought I'd give you a bit of background before we start. It's Post 'The Name of the Doctor' but it's AU to anything after that. The Daleks, all across the multi-verse, have banded together to invade Earth—both Earths'. Their forgetting of the Doctor during 'Asylum of the Daleks' was only temporary. The Alt. Universe was pretty much obliterated, and Rose and Ten II—called John, to escape confusion—are pulled into the original universe. The two Doctors'—quite against their better judgment—gather an army to fight the oncoming force…the prologue is the outcome…
Word count: 758
Chapter summary:This is not the way things should have gone. So many dead….so many loved ones gone…and the broken hearts of Rose and the Doctor resonate throughout the TARDIS. She knows Her Thief and Her Wolf are deeply hurt by their loses. And to add to that, She knows that She is dying. She has one chance, one chance to fix the world before it ends.
Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, Susan would return, I liked Susan. But I don't own it…
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a whimper
-T.S. Elliot
He felt ill. Unbelievably and undeniably, ill. Too many things had gone wrong in too short of time. And too many pieces of his hearts were gone.
He watched with lethargy as the battle went on.
He almost didn't care anymore. The race of cockroaches who called themselves the Daleks would never die, it seemed.
A man, whose name he didn't know, sprinted in, out of breath and panting. "Doctor, sir—"
"Don't call me sir," he muttered half-heartedly.
"Yes Doctor. But we were just informed. The Lady Rose Tyler has been found struck down."
His hearts collapsed on themselves in anguish. Not Rose. Please not Rose. He took a shallow breath.
"Where?" he managed to grind out.
"The-the frontlines sir. The very frontlines."
He was out the door before the man finished speaking.
Finding Rose was not difficult. No shots seemed to even graze him. While he was sprinting in and out of the lines of fire, he seemed invisible to anyone else.
He knelt beside her, her face strangely twisted for being dead. He placed a finger over her pulse, gaping in surprise as it thudded weakly. She was alive!
"Rose, it's me. It's the Doctor, your Doctor."
Her heart gave a shuttering leap, and then it was still.
"No," he croaked, disbelief clouding his face. She had been alive, not even a second ago! "No, Rose come back, stay here with me. You can't leave me—please don't leave me."
Nothing. No more pulse, no breath, absolutely nothing.
"Why?" he screamed. "Why is always like this?"
In the back of his mind, the TARDIS gave a sad trill of song. A mental brush, like the hand of a mother, over his face.
'My Wolf, My Thief, I want you safe.'
Pieces of his soul felt like they drifting off of him. The song She sang was now one of safety. He closed his eyes, wondering if he was finally, blissfully, going to die.
There was a flash behind his eyelids, and then everything was gone.
~oOo~
She can't seem to open her eyes. Behind her eyelids she can see the silhouettes of fire, of soldiers—whether from their side or the others—gliding past. There's shouting, and it hurts her ears, but she can't manage the strength to bring up her hands to cover them.
She struggles to remember, everything, anything, but she can't seem to even remember her own name. She wants to remember, so desperately wants to remember. So she knows why it feels like she should be helping to win this war that she doesn't remember. So she knows why she feels a presence in her otherwise empty mind that doesn't belong to her. So she knows why her heart feels shattered. Heart…She has a heart? When did she get it back? It belonged to—
The Doctor, her mind reminds her.
She feels herself frown. The Doctor? She wants to ask. Doctor who?
Doctor…Doctor…Doctor!
She remembered!
She was Rose Marion Tyler. She was a soldier in the war against the Daleks, beings so foul, so horrible, for what they had caused.
They had taken her husband from her, her mind provided angrily, the memories shooting so very painfully through her shattered heart. John Arthur Noble-Smith, the half-human metacrisis of the Doctor, who had held her heart until the events of his death, not even a week ago. And even now, she felt a large shard of her heart permanently missing from her.
She tried to remember what had happened after, and the memories, startling clarity in them, poured into her brain: Seeing the other Love of her Life, the real Doctor, once again, arguing harshly with him on the matter of fighting on the frontlines, his refusing, going anyway, seeing soldier after soldier going dying in front of her, feeling agonizing pain go through her as a shot went through her…heart?
Wait, that couldn't be right…If that was true, shouldn't she be dead?
Or, was she already dead? Forced to relive the Hell of the battlefield for all eternity.
But no, something inside her told her that she was alive, if only just. The question was…how?
'I looked into the Tardis and the Tardis looked into me…I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself.'
A voice sang in her head. 'My Wolf, My Thief, I want you safe.'
She gave a painful, watery breath through her mouth, a voice she recognized as her own giving the faintest bit of a whimper.
And just as her eyes shot open, the world flashed away.
And that's the end of that. Next time, Rose and the Doctor will be back in the past. Rose a bit farther than the TARDIS intended. Still, she'll make of it what she can. Meanwhile, the Doctor is found by a familiar family a year before the launching of the Titanic.
God, I'm really nervous about this story. I'd really appreciate it if you told me what you thought of it. I'll probably post the first chapter tomorrow.
Thank you! I hope you have a fantastic day!
