The Doctor is dying. Please, please, help.
River's message, broadcast through the universe. Her plea rippled out from one end of time to the other, catching and eddying and echoing outward, when it caught on the snag of a decision-made-differently...
Running, always running. A bright, manic grin flashed over his shoulder as he reached out and caught her hand in his. Their hands always fit together, just right.
But there was something wrong. Something disturbed her sleep. She tossed and turned, frowning at the discomfort that whispered in her dreams.
The words formed in her half-aware mind.
The Doctor is dying. Please, please, help.
Brown eyes snapped open as Rose gasped into alertness, staring blankly at the dark ceiling. She had been on-edge for days, feeling a niggling at the back of her mind that told her she'd forgotten something very important, but she hadn't known what.
A long-fingered hand came to rest gently on her stomach. Rose turned her head to meet her husband's dark, serious eyes. He had heard the call as well, she knew.
"We have to help him."
There was a flash of something in his eyes when she spoke, but he nodded all the same. She rolled to face him, her ever-so-human husband, and snuggled closer into the arms that willingly folded around her. He tucked her head under his chin, sighing resignedly as he pulled her against him.
She allowed herself to relax in the comfort of his arms for just a moment, before tilting her face up to kiss his neck where his pyjama top opened. "I love you, Doctor Tyler," she assured him, "but he needs us."
"I know." His wonderful voice washed over her. "We'll go to Cardiff tomorrow."
Rose nodded, and let the sound of his single heart lull her back to sleep. Yet she still felt him reach out with his mind, and reply.
We are coming.
She fell asleep once more with a smile on her face.
In Cardiff there is a rift in time and space, which draws a number of... unusual visitors.
There is also a large office building, owned by Pete Tyler, which houses the Welsh corporate offices of Vitex Industries and the Torchwood Institute.
The basement of this building holds the offices and workshop of Rose Tyler, Torchwood's penultimate alien expert, and Doctor Tyler, Torchwood's preeminent alien expert.
Most agents seek out Rose when they have an urgent question, as she is far more likely to give a straight answer.
Their shared workshop holds any number of projects, mostly the Doctor's. However, one corner of the large room is devoted to a very special, very unique, shared project.
You might be forgiven, at first glance, for mistaking it for a largish black backpack.
This is entirely Jackie's fault, as she had visited the workshop earlier that year, and made a comment to the effect of "I hope it's not going to turn into some huge thing like that blue box. You need it to be nice and small and portable – like a bag or something."
The Doctor had been most put out to discover that TARDISes can, in fact, go through a 'teenage phase' – or at least, they can when their growth is being rapidly accelerated by exposure to the energies of two different universes at a formative age, shatterfrying the plasmic shell, and bonding with the Time Vortex energy Bad Wolf had left in Rose.
Rose knelt next to her backpack-TARDIS and unlocked the front clasp.
Funny, how it had still grown a lock.
The TARDIS' doorway opened wider than anyone familiar with your average backpack would expect, although it was fairly run of the mill to anyone familiar with TARDISes. Stepping through the trapdoor-like entrance sent Rose racing down a slide into the Console Room, as the Doctor followed, pulling the apparently-canvas flap shut behind them.
"Hello, beautiful," Rose murmured as she ran from the cushion-covered landing pad, up the stairs to the console. The Doctor smiled to himself as he moved to join her. It was a sentiment he truly understood.
On the inside, at least, it was similar to the Blue TARDIS, with pale blue light from the time rotor column illuminating bronze coral pillars, around which Rose was weaving as she readied the TARDIS for departure.
No one – not Rose, neither of the Doctors, nor the DoctorDonna – would ever have imagined that a human could bond so well with a TARDIS. But the growing coral had seemed to sense remnants of Time Vortex in Rose, and had latched on to it. The Doctor had guided her through meditations to help increase the bond – a process which could have been a little bit boring to his brilliant mind, if not for the fact that it had let him watch the coral grow before his eyes.
The meditations also had the added benefit of unlocking whatever was left of Bad Wolf in Rose, for better or worse.
Rose's frantic energy had brought her close to her Doctor. She turned to him and stepped into his waiting embrace. "You ready for this?"
He sighed. Again. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. "Not even remotely," he admitted, suppressing yet another sigh.
The plan was daring, desperate, highly dangerous, completely untested and extremely likely to fail.
In short, exactly like every other plan he'd ever made in his life.
But this time, they were relying on Rose's untested psychic abilities rather than his own, and that made him... uncomfortable.
It wasn't that he didn't trust her completely.
It wasn't that he didn't love her absolutely.
It wasn't that he didn't have faith in her abilities.
It was just... nervousness, surely.
"Come on, handsome, work with me here."
There was a grin on Rose's face and in her tone, but the Doctor knew she was hurt by his hesitance. He wasn't giving her due credit, and he knew it. He pressed a kiss to her forehead with yet another sigh, then straightened. "We can do it," he said, with more confidence than he truly felt; then reached for her mind with his own...
Bright energy cascaded from the Rift as they reached out, reached into the tear in Space/Time.
The Doctor could feel his two hearts beating once again, but they were Rose's, as well...
There was the glow of the TARDIS, the pulsing glow of Bad Wolf, boosting their reach...
...and they stretched across galaxies, through every second of time; and yet they were tiny, only an instant, the space between his heartbeat and hers...
...and there it was, a weakening of the wall between universes. Rose reached for it, pressing against it urgently...
A hand reached out to press a button on the TARDIS' console, though neither of them would ever be able to say which had done it.
In the Torchwood basement, a whirring, wheezing metallic grinding sound rang out, again and again, and the little black backpack flickered out of sight and dematerialised...
The Doctor reached behind them, knitting the ragged edges of the Rift together, trying to seal it against the horrors he knew could come through, encouraging the wound they had just torn to heal.
He didn't know how well it was working, but he had to try.
Suddenly, all was confusion. The tempest that was the Time Vortex seemed to seize at their minds, condemning their action as impossible. The psychic winds howled, pummeling the Doctor's shields as he frantically tried to keep Rose from the worst of it.
He felt a warm glow as Bad Wolf reached out to him...
...and suddenly they were through, into a different universe.
This TARDIS sang in their minds, revelling in the newness of its first home. It reached for the source of the call that it, too, had heard.
It was well that the TARDIS knew where it was going. In the Control Room, Rose and her Doctor lay together, oblivious to the universe.
The TARDIS whispered into their minds, trying to wake them; but a human mind cannot withstand the fury of the universes without consequence, no matter how brilliant it was.
A/N: So, to explain some things:
Due to the time differences between the universes, seven years have passed for Rose and Doctor Tyler in Pete's World, compared with the three years in the Doctor's universe, since Journey's End. I know this isn't a lot of time to grow a TARDIS, but Rose and Doctor Tyler need it. I figure Bad Wolf probably has more tricks up her sleeve than anyone could guess.
Rose and Doctor Tyler will, of course, have said goodbyes and such to Rose's family. I thought about including that scene, but it seemed a little unnecessary. I might write it as an omake sometime later.
This chapter isn't betaed yet, because my beta was asleep when I finished, and I wanted to post it, so please review and let me know if there are any major problems.