The Bad Wolf Rose
I was so naïve when I was young.
When I was young, I thought that nothing could ever touch me. When I was young, I thought that I would live out a long, happy life with a nice house, a nice husband, and a few kids, maybe if I had the money. I was happy with the standard life.
That all changed when I ran into the Doctor.
Travelling with him, I saw whole new worlds, the future, and beyond. I was a wanderer, wizened beyond my years by a living legend, a hero from across the universe who saw something in me that I thought I never had.
When I was with him, all my goals and dreams changed instantly. I no longer needed the house, the money, or the kids. Hell, I didn't even need the husband! All I wanted and needed out of life was the Doctor. I even went as far as to sacrifice my own to make sure he was alright. What I found instead when I woke up was a total stranger that took a while to get accustomed to.
And sure, he repaid me in kind; we were always saving each other, yet we were trapped in a limbo-verse, dancing along the edge of just companions or something more. I never knew how things would turn up, but I was happy with life as it was. I was happy with an unspoken love.
I guess I wasn't meant to be happy.
Just as soon as I was used to his new face and our newly established relationship, it ended with my untimely demise, my trip down the rabbit hole and banishment to another universe. The Doctor couldn't do anything to save me, so he came to say goodbye, but it wasn't really a goodbye. It was more of him watching me pour my heart and soul out as he stood idly by, not even truly there. Ironically, he disappeared before uttering the three words I so desperately needed to hear him say.
That destroyed me.
Our farewell clearly wasn't enough for me, so I did what anyone else in love would do: I clawed my way back to him. I broke every rule, law, and regulation for inter-dimensional space-time travel for the Doctor, and when I finally found him, he had already moved on. I had been replaced by a ginger woman, her larger frame standing by his side right where I used to stand.
I practically died once more.
Still, I pressed on, and right as our reunion was about to occur, of course something else stepped in our way, this time via a Dalek energy blast. The Doctor nearly died in my arms, and if not for his uncanny ability to regenerate, he most surely would've. He was still the same man due to his trusty severed hand, but I felt like something had changed in those moments between his life and death. I just couldn't see it yet.
After all my efforts, we never got the chance to talk properly, the thrill and importance of the adventure I had so greatly missed taking precedence over our rocky status. We saved the day, with the help of his newly developed Meta-Crisis and a Time Lady Donna, and all seemed to be well; I was even back in the TARDIS as if nothing had changed.
It never occurred to me that things could go so wrong so fast.
Mickey left with Jack and the girl Martha without saying goodbye, though I think it had something to do with the crush he developed on her during the mission. Though I was going to miss him, I knew it was for the best. I wasn't much paying attention when I absentmindedly wandered off the TARDIS. Only when I felt the familiar sands did I realize that I was back in hell. I had been tricked back onto Bad Wolf Bay by the one person I trusted most.
I didn't much listen to what Donna had to say, nor did I listen to my mum or Pete. Honestly, all I could do was stare at the Doctor who refused to look at me. Even after I pleaded with both of them to let me go with them, I could tell that the Doctor was not going to change his mind; I could tell he was going to leave me here, and my blood boiled with fire. If this was the last time I would see him, I would make him suffer, so I did what any other devastated, heart-broken girl would do: I kissed his clone.
The kiss, though wrong, proved my point, and in the next moment, I heard the familiar whine of the TARDIS, her final farewell lingering in my ears. I had long since been able to understand her strange language, though I didn't know why, and I heard the sorrowful dirge ringing long after she had left.
My life after that was like I used to dream of when I was young.
I had a nice job at Torchwood; I lived in the family mansion. I even had the guy, a human man with striking similarities to the Doctor who I had grown to love that insisted on calling himself John Smith after I had called him the Doctor one too many times. I guess old habits die hard.
Sadly, I had everything I had wanted, but I didn't want it anymore.
I guess that in the end, I got what I wished for.
It only took me a few years to figure out that I didn't age. After I had turned thirty and hadn't even grown a wrinkle, I knew something was wrong. At first I thought I had been exposed to something in my travels, but after countless lab tests and blood analyses, no one could find a single thing wrong with me. I was as healthy as a horse, maybe even a little too healthy...
It took me being run over by a car to realize that I couldn't die either. I was about thirty three, coming home from a long day at the office, when I was hit by a truck going about 100mph. The impact should've killed me instantly; my body should've been mutilated, but I was fine. I wasn't even scratched. The final report said I survived by a miracle. My report said that I was cursed to live forever.
My life spiraled out of control from there.
John insisted that we travel across the stars in our own TARDIS, a parting gift from the original Doctor, to find a cure. My mother was a constant wreck, always agreeing with him. My brother, Tony, even went as far as to create a division of Torchwood dedicated to curing me. The only one I could rely on to talk to was Pete, and even he was hard to communicate with. I guess he had started to really care about me after all, and would often tell me to listen to my mother.
Every day I warded off the verbal assaults and the physical exams. The people I loved became unbearable monsters, the bringers of my unbelievable stress and pain. My job no longer became a safe place due to my brother, and my home became a sterile prison of medicinal cocktails and procedures. I was trapped in the place that was supposed to keep me safe.
I wished I could've been back in my own universe where there were those who would understand my situation. At least I could've spent my days with Jack, the immortal man to compliment the immortal woman I had become. We would make a fine pair, saving the world forever, even after the Doctor had gone. But he was literally a universe away, and I was stuck here.
Eventually, my loved ones got tired of trying to save me. They slowly grew old and impatient with my protests, and after a while, I watched them die off one by one. Mum went first of old age, and then a brokenhearted Pete left a few weeks after. John wasn't too far after them, lasting only two more years before his singular heart gave out. I was so numbed by his death that I barely had time to register Tony's. He died young, only sixty when he passed away due to a heart attack, and I was left all alone in the giant, empty mansion. It was the only thing that hadn't changed besides me.
Needless to say I sold it. I sold everything in it as well, minus a few needed essentials which I packed into my TARDIS. I gave all the money away, though I didn't know where. I let it go just like everything else in my life.
I began to travel everywhere and anywhere I could, roaming around all by my lonesome, just as the Doctor did. The years flew by, the time escaping my mind, and before I knew it, when I returned to Earth seventy years had passed, and everything had changed. Scared of the new world in front of me, I fled to the stars, thinking I could always come back later, but later would always come with more troubles and heartache.
I grew old, so impatient and afraid, that I became distant, closed off to the worlds I ventured to. I refused companionship, afraid that if I left them, then they may never be the same again, and they may never return. It was then when I wondered if this was what the Doctor felt when faced with companionship. I wondered if he felt this fear and panic, this unrelenting sadness for the human condition.
The fear of change turned me cold and uncaring. Sure, I saved the universe countless times; I was this universe's Doctor practically, but I never let anyone in. My TARDIS was company enough, her concern for me growing daily, but I pretended not to hear her. I pretended not to know what was wrong with me as I played dress up as the fantastic hero.
I was far from fantastic. I was a tragedy.
I had known what was wrong with me for a while now; I had just lacked the strength to face it.
The truth was, I had died a long time ago, and maybe that was why the Doctor shied away from me; maybe that was why he let me go, because he knew I was already dead. It had just taken him a while to figure it out, and I just didn't know it yet.
Rose Tyler had been dead for a long time, back when she had her old dreams and was the naïve young age of nineteen. Rose Tyler had died the moment she decided to go back for her Doctor and ripped open the soul of the TARDIS to save him. And oh, how he tried to save her by sucking out all the venomous power in her veins, but he was too late; Rose Tyler was already gone, replaced by the perfect impostor silently living under her skin, and he used up his life for nothing.
Sure, he acted chivalrous, but did he truly pay the price? Was he the one who lost it all, who lost their life only to be brought back by some unknown force? Was he the one who had to live on while his loved ones died around him? Of course not! He just regenerated and moved on, never loving or caring for a thing, and if he managed to do that, he abandoned it in fear of loss. Honestly, the notion sounded familiar.
Ironically, I was becoming just like him.
But I would not be like him. Never.
I would claw and fight and scratch my way back up from the ground, just to find a shred of meaning in my life. I would remain strong, and never stop searching. And maybe one day, I would find what I was looking for most of all.
Revenge.
I am the Bad Wolf, a lone creature of time and space, whose life will endure for centuries on end.
I am the Bad Wolf, and I will never forgive the Doctor for making me this way.