On her first visit to the parallel universe, or Pete's World as her family jokingly referred to it as, there were obvious immediate differences from her own universe. The zeppelins were hard to miss, as was her father's life and success. But there were more things that took time and a little bit of investigation to discover.

The Hindenburg never went down in this universe, hence the popular use of the zeppelins. Dodo birds still existed, Amelia Earhart never disappeared (though she died in war later), there were six new fruits and nine new vegetables, the metric system was implemented everywhere, the constellations were in different shapes, and sugar was half as sweet as it was before.

Some changes were small, others were ginormous. There was no World War I and II in this universe - there had only been the Great War. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand had not been assassinated in the midst of the tensions rising in Europe. If it seemed strange at all that one man's death prevented an entire war, Rose passed no comment. She had seen worse stopped by far less than one man's life. From what she had read however, the lack of the first war amplified the effect of the second. The Great War raged well into the 1950s, destroyed what was left of the monarchy in Britain, and led to the fall of many European countries. It was 2007 when they arrived and the world was still recovering from the war.

Another big change was the relationship between humans and outer space. Getting into space took longer, thanks to the war. But when the human race got there, they were completely and abruptly confronted with the lifeforms from beyond their small world. The Shadow Proclamation had placed a protection on Earth that didn't allow alien life forms to enter with the intent to harm until humans had progressed to the point of being able to defend themselves. It was their way of protecting young species like the humans.

Once the humans showed intelligence however, the protection diminished. The planet had been lucky in the short thirty years since then that they hadn't been attacked too often. Torchwood was capable of handling what came their way. They had known about aliens far before they went to space and had used that to their advantage, preparing for the day that the aliens would come to their little rock. Their attitude was the same but the intent was different.

Most importantly out of everything different, there was no Doctor.

And that was perhaps the most devastating difference of all. Rose's life had revolved around the Doctor for over two years. Those years were the very best of her life and she did not know how to go on past that point.

Jackie had tried to talk Rose out of her funk in the days following their arrival in Pete's World. Time and time again she would go into Rose's new room and try to tell her how things would get better, that the pain would fade and that she would find someone new. Rose remained silent through most of it until finally she asked her mum, "Did the pain of losing Dad ever go away?" To which Jackie had no response.

And then Darlig Ulv Stranden happened. They had been in this universe for six months when the Doctor called out for her. She told Jackie, Pete, and Mickey. Anyone else would have thought she was mad. But not those three. They believed it, because they met the Doctor. So they listened to the dream. He was calling her and that night, they got into Pete's old Jeep and off they went. Just like the dream said. They followed the voice across the water, kept driving hundreds and hundreds of miles, because he was calling.

It was that day that changed everything for Rose. She was going to get back to the Doctor, come hell or high water. He said it was impossible, but Rose didn't believe it. There had to be a way to get across the void without damaging the multiverse. The Time Lords were able to do it when they were alive, and that meant that other species could too. If they found a way.

In the initial months of being in this universe, Pete had offered Rose a place at Torchwood. He was the head of the organization and even if they weren't related, Rose qualified many times over for a position. After the Doctor disappeared and Rose composed herself, she took up his offer. She could work with Torchwood on the terms that they would work on recreating the Dimension Cannons.

"The Doctor said both worlds would collapse if we did that." Pete said, wary of destroying the world for a daughter he only just started getting used to.

Rose was unyielding. "The Doctor doesn't know everything."

She was willing to work without pay. She would train relentlessly, both mentally and physically to meet the Torchwood standards. She needed no special considerations for being a Tyler. Only this one thing.

Pete tried to bluff her, claiming she wasn't in a position to negotiate such a thing with them.

"I have more experience with alien lifeforms than your entire organization combined."

She was right.

It has been two years since then.

6:30 A.M. An alarm blared from a small phone hooked up to a charger near the wall. It was shrill and piercing. It was also pointless. Rose Tyler was already awake, seated at the island countertop in her kitchen, clutching a cuppa. She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath against the onslaught of sudden noise.

There was a time when she dreaded waking up to that noise. It signified a loss of comfort and reminded her of responsibilities she would rather ignore. There was a time when she would have snoozed that alarm five times before rising from her sleep to drudge around her flat in a sleepy haze until a good dose of caffeine brought her around.

That time had passed long ago. Now, she and sleep didn't quite get along anymore. Restless Rose, that's who she was. She needed to be occupied at all times, lest she succumb to her urge to hide herself away from the world.

In the time since Bad Wolf Bay, Rose has made good on her promise to work for Torchwood. She endured a rigorous training program for six months that included getting her A-levels, a small point of pride for her considering what had stopped her from getting them in the first place.

They worked her hard. In part, it was because they didn't think she should have a place there. Who was she to come popping in from another universe, taking a job from someone else just because her father was the director? They seemed determined to show her that she had to earn her place. So she did.

Pete was hard on her too. It was funny how it looked from the outside. The first team she was on after her training thought she'd get off easy if she screwed up. But that was quickly cleared up after she broke protocol, risking her life to try and stop someone from shooting a hostile Silurian. Pete laid her out in front of everyone for that. And, strangely, that had increased her credibility.

Now, she was a commander in her own right. Commander Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth. Granted, her team was small, consisting of six people that included Mickey and Jake, who were placed with her to keep watch over her, no matter what they said. That small team was responsible for initial alien interactions. They would investigate, mediate, and defend until whatever they were facing was beyond their capabilities.

Rose sighed. She opened her eyes to see her rather bare flat. She moved out of her parents' mansion the moment she could afford to. She loved them deeply, but she couldn't live every day hearing her mum try to give her reasons to stay in Pete's World with them. So she got a little flat and put nothing in it beyond the bare bones needed to live.

A flat didn't matter. Clothes and nicknacks didn't matter. Torchwood did. Her place was blocks away from headquarters and that was all that mattered.

Rose stacked her dishes together and placed them in the sink. She grabbed her phone off the charger, headed for the door, and started into a light jog. It was only a five block distance total to the office, but a small run was better than no run.

She slowed down as she approached the building, taking the opportunity to control her breathing and pray to whatever could possibly be listening that today would be the day that she could go home.

Who was she kidding? Today was no different than yesterday.

"Good morning, Commander!" came the chipper voice of Mary Robeson the moment Rose stepped into the cavernous lobby. She was a stout woman with short, curled hair and a smile a mile wide.

There were often jokes that Rose never left Torchwood, that she was the first one there and the last one to leave. While the latter tended to be true, the former role belonged to Mary.

"Morning, Mary. How are you?" Rose let her guard down briefly, something of her old self shining through.

"I'm perfect as always, Commander!" She chirped in reply, her smile wide as she tidied the front desk. She was a delightful woman, truly, but there was something missing in her eyes. It was not unlike talking to an android. Mary was always sunny and prepared with repeated phrases of greeting.

Rose felt immense pity for her. When Lumic's Cybermen rose up years ago, there were debates on how to handle them. People like her father wanted to round them up and get rid of them. Others said that Cybermen were people and they should help them. And in that time, people got hurt. People like Mary, who experienced a partial upgrade before her late husband saved her life. Her life was saved, but she didn't seem to feel things the way humans do. And so, she was happy all the time. Rose pitied that a great deal.

She gave Mary a soft smile before scanning into the bright, somewhat glamorous elevator lobby. Torchwood in Pete's World was every bit as flashy as they were at Canary Wharf. Rose found it distasteful, and often found herself sneering at bits of flashy interiors and shiny baubles.

At her desk, Rose flipped through reports left from the night before as she allowed the computer to slowly boot up. Torchwood received numerous reports of suspicious activity following the Cybermen. Most of them were complete rubbish.

Man claims sister-in-law is secretly a winged alien who - Rose's eyes nearly rolled right out of her head halfway through the intro. It was like they were a joke to some people, really.

"Morning, babe," came the gruff voice of Mickey Smith. Mickey, like the rest of her family, was a bright spot in this universe. He was, without a doubt, her biggest supporter in her goals of getting back home. She thought it might have something to do with his own restlessness in Pete's World, but she never pressed him on the matter.

Rose closed the files and tossed them to the end of desk. "Hey, Micks. You should see the rubbish in this stack."

Mickey snatched one up, flipping it open to read. "'Neighbor's car alarm sounds like it's getting inside my head. It's alien hypnosis.' Yeah, alright, mate, lay off the telly."

Rose snorted.

"Any updates on the cannon?" Mickey asked her as he settled into the desk next to her. Unlike Jackie, who pretended the dimension cannon project wasn't happening, Mickey did not dance around it.

"Nothin' as of yesterday," replied Rose. "Thing is, the packaging's all done, we can build up energy in 'em. But we can't find a way to push through the void without bringing the universe in with us."

"It's like a balloon, we have to find the right point to push on and we'll slide right on through." Mickey said, sipping his coffee. He leaned back in his chair, at ease in what was essentially their home in this world. "It's gonna take time."

"I know!" she snapped. He gave her a look and she sighed, trying to ease the tension in her shoulders. Her voice was small, "What if it takes too long?"

Mickey was sturdy. "That's the chance you have to take. If there's anyone that can figure it out, it's us."

Rose looked at him, struck by his maturity. He was a far cry from the boy who clung to her legs at the sight of the Nestene Consciousness. He held himself with a confidence and sophistication that seemed unachievable when they were kids.

"Good morning, beautiful people!" Jake's cheerful voice ended the conversation. Rose greeted him and then immediately tuned him and Mickey out as they chattered about some football player.

The morning flew by as Rose filed paperwork. This was the dull part of the job, and it was also, unfortunately, a large part of it.

The very welcome sound of Rose's phone ringing broke the silence in the office hours later. She look heavenwards in thanks for the relief before pulling off it's hook.

"Tyler speaking."

"Commander, we have some strange readings from the Colliery in Staffordshire." The voice of Brigadier George Roberts came through to her. "The site is large, but we want your team on it today. I will be joining remotely, in case a secondary team is required."

Rose stood and gestured to her team. At once, they dropped what they were working on and got their stuff together.

"We'll come down to be debriefed now and we'll head out immediately."

Rose was standing between the seats of the driver and passenger when they pulled up to the site in question. It looked the same as any other abandoned factory. Overgrown plant life was slowly but surely overtaking the decaying building. Graffiti from local kids stained the rusted and crumbling walls.

Beyond Mickey and Jake, Rose's team consisted of Gwen Cooper, a young, Welsh woman who once was a police constable, Tricia Portman, a middle aged former PI, and Matt Brown, a young veteran. They were a solid team, if not a little disjointed. They each seemed to have their own personal agendas that ranked higher in importance than their jobs. That frustrated Rose at times, as it frequently left her with the responsibility of cleaning up after them. She wouldn't be able to do it without Mickey and Jake, who were as dedicated to defending the Earth as she was.

"Do we know which building?" Rose asked. There were over twenty buildings on the site. They'd be here all night if they didn't have a way to pinpoint the location of these aliens.

"The readings are coming from all over the place, Commander," said Matt, fiddling with a device that read the temporal energy surrounding them. "But it seems to be focused on this one -" He pointed to the fitter's shop.

Rose glanced at the screen, noting how it was densely packed in the center of the smattering of buildings. She looked up and saw nothing. There was no movement, no noise, nothing.

"Surround the perimeter of the area and I'll do a walkthrough. See if we can identify from a safe distance before making an approach. It could a lifeform without a body."

They unloaded from the van, each carrying weapons and tech to make scans as needed. On each of them was a radio that connected them to each other as well as to Brigadier Roberts, whose own team was three kilometers away, waiting in the wings for any sign of a threat.

"Stay safe, boss," said Jake, giving her a small salute. She nodded once at him and gave the signal for them to spread out.

Rose stalked through the overgrown grass as the team moved out. Protocol dictated that she have her gun at the ready as she approached, but she was never really one for the rules.

As she got closer to the building, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The energy they were reading must be strong enough to be tangible. Rose found it odd that it was still silent.

There were rusting metal doors hanging onto the frame. A chain held them to lock together, but the rust and decay was so much so that she was able to pull them apart with little effort. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark of the inside of the building. There were flashes of light from the holes in the ceiling and she could see that the inside was just as delipidated as the outside. Debris was littered across the ground, parts of the structure fallen inward.

The odd thing about the site was not the decay, but the presence of a bunch of statues. As Rose crept forward, she took notice of how the statues were littered throughout the space. Now, she was no expert on industrial era factories, but in her universe, they certainly didn't make stone statues.

Rose walked past them slowly, weaving her way into the building. The unease she felt coming into the building was starting to build. She jumped at the sound of her radio crackling through the quiet.

Mickey's voice came over, "Rose, we're getting a whole lot of energy readings out of there. What the hell is going on?"

Rose pulled the radio close to her face and pressed the com button, "I don't know. There's nothing in here, just statues. No one's here."

The only way to make the scene more perfect would be eerie music that built as she edged forward. Rose grimaced at the thought. Something was happening but she couldn't figure it out and the anticipation was sending her heart into overdrive. There must have been dozens of these statues. All of them had their hands hovering over their eyes.

"Are you seeing anything?" Gwen asked over the radio.

Rose brought it up to her face. "Nothing so far. Just these statues everywhere. They look like angels or something. Bloody creepy."

She started to reach for her gun. It was time to stop playing the role of the pacifist. Whatever these creatures were, they couldn't be good.

There was a rustling behind her that made her jump. Turning quickly, she spotted a silhouette that differed from the statues. It moved twitchily, like it was afraid.

"Wait! There's someone in here. Human, from the looks of it," Rose relayed to the team quickly before putting her radio back on her hip. She moved forward into the light. She waved to get the person's attention. They turned. It was a middle aged man and he was terrified.

"Hello, who are you?" Rose asked, trying to sound gentle while sure of herself. She took a step towards him.

He scrambled away from her, making her freeze midstep. "No! No, stay back! D-don't come near me!"

"What? I'm here to help! What's wrong? What's here?" Rose tried to come closer to him but he backed away further. He stumbled into a statue. He looked up at it and then yelped, jumping away again.

Rose looked between the statues and the man. He was afraid of them.

"Is it them? What are they?"

He shook his head violently, spluttering. "L-leave me alone! I don't want to die! Please!"

Rose tried again to approach the wildly twisting man. Then, there was a shout. She flinched. When her eyes opened, she was blown away by what she saw.

The man was gone.

Rose jumped, horrified. Oh my god…

The statues. It had to be them. They were the only other thing that had moved since

"I am Commander Rose Tyler. I represent Torchwood, an organization that acts as a mediator and a protector between Sol 3 and alien life forms. Identify yourselves."

There was silence. The unease building in her was unbearable. The only sound was her ragged breathing. She blinked again and in that short millisecond, she heard shuffling and laughter.

Rose spun in a circle, trying to see all of the statues. Something moved. Something had to have moved. But if the only thing in here was the statues -

"Code Mauve! Get out of here, now! The statues are alive, I repeat, the statues are alive!" Rose was shouting into her radio.

She blinked. And then screamed.

In that short millisecond, all of the statues had turned and moved towards her, horrifying grimaces etched across their faces.

She stumbled backwards until she felt the dreaded wall behind her. She was at least twenty meters from the door she came through and the statues were surrounding her. She reached for her gun but in her panic, dropped it. She couldn't risk reaching for it, because if she did, she would have to look away from them.

"Rose, report!" Mickey's voice snapped through the radio. They must have heard her scream from the outside.

Rose kept her eyes wide open, determined to not take an eye off of these creatures.

"Brigadier Roberts, do you copy?" Rose said, her voice even despite how her nerves shook. She ignored Mickey.

"Affirmative, Commander. 10-2."

Rose took a shaky breath.

"There's no way out. I'm cornered. The statues seem to move when you look away from them. I lost my gun." Rose took a deep breath. "Matt, is the temporal energy concentrated where I am?"

A million ideas were running through her mind. I could reach for the gun and blow them all to bits, but I would probably only manage to get half of them before one of them manages to kill me. My team could attack from the rear, but there was still only five of them and dozens of these things.

"Mostly yes. There seems to be some coming from fan house and the lamp house. Those are to the west and southeast of your location."

She licked her lips. "And your location?"

"We are on the outermost perimeter of the site."

It might have been disturbing that Rose was placated by the fact that her team was away from the point of danger. She shouldn't have come in here alone. It was too late for that, though.

"Brigadier, I'm afraid we are going to have to turn to desperate measures today. These creatures will not identify themselves. They are stone, and they look like angels. It seems that they don't move unless you look away from them. And when you look away from them, they kill you." Rose tried to manage as clinical of a description as she could. They would need the information to have for future reference if these creatures ever appear again.

"As Commander of this mission, I believe the best course of action is to destroy the buildings in question whilst the creatures remain inside. The danger they present to humans is too steep to trust diplomatic measures."

Rose's heart jumped when Mickey shouted through the radio. "No bloody way! Absolutely not, we will find another way -"

The radio cut off. Jake probably forced him to stop. To talk about it, maybe. She didn't know. They had been in this position many times before and she didn't think it warranted a debate at this point. One life or everyone's?

Rose was starting to get antsy as the radio stayed silent.

Finally, the Brigadier: "I can override your order, Tyler. It might be your mission, but I rank higher."

Because this was the time for an ego trip. Rose would have rolled her eyes if she could.

"You can, but you won't. My life is not worth that of everyone else's. Who knows the damages this lifeform can cause if it gets to the public? Follow my order."

There was silence on the radio and Rose imagined there was some sort of fuss being made on the other end.

"I commend you for your bravery, Commander. It will be done." Roberts was short with her, but his voice held the gravity of respect for her decision.

Rose's eyes were watering from the strain of remaining open for so long. She gave in and allowed herself a short blink.

Her breath caught in her throat when the statues moved so close she could touch them.

"Mickey, do you copy?" Rose said, the weight of what was about to happen finally entering her voice. She was going to die and these were her final words.

"I'm here," he said, dropping the pretense of their formality. "Don't do this, babe. We can find a way -"

"Oi, shut up, you! I've got some things to say and you ought to listen to 'em," her cockney accent was coming through heavily. Mickey fell silent. She wished there wasn't eight people listening in on the conversation, but what choice did she have? "Tell my family that I love them - always. They are the best of me and I'm sorry I haven't been there like I should be. If you ever see the Doctor again, don't -"

Here Rose took a minute to calm her breathing. Any mention of the Doctor made her upset. The first time in two years she had mentioned him and it was to make sure the news of her death would be told to him gently. Life really was a bitch.

"Let him know." She didn't have to say more than that. Mickey knew. Her parents knew. "And Micks? I love you. I'm sorry for everything I've put you through, you deserved better. You're the best friend I could've asked for. Have a fantastic life."

She pulled the radio away from her mouth. With sweaty hands, she turned off the communicator. Whatever Mickey had to respond to that, she didn't want to hear it. It would break her heart and she couldn't go bravely into her decision

Slowly, Rose let go of the breath she had been holding. She reached up to her neck where on a chain, a key hung. She wrapped her hand around the key and she closed her eyes.