A/N: Hmm, my muse is dark tonight. I've rated this for future chapters as when my muse starts being dark, she also tends to desperately hold onto thoughts of love. I can't list this as Rose/9 Rose/10 Rose/10.5 Rose/? as I'm not really given the option for multiple choices. However, I have a lot of time to cover here, so it touches on every possible Rose/Doctor paring for my timeline. And yes, I'm aware this has been done a thousand times, but not by me, so now I'm doing it. :D

Disclaimer: I so obviously don't own Doctor Who; I just like to borrow the characters and mutate their inner voices. Please don't sue, my house is small, my car is useless and my dogs are pains in the arse, but they're all I have.

When the Bough Breaks

By: Danae Bowen

Part One: The Years of Then

They say that once you've heard the TARDIS, you'd recognize the creaking, groaning, whining sound she made from miles away. You just know, without fail, no matter how long it's been since you've heard her, that she's come home. Those that have heard her have no choice, even if they're not conscious of it - they're always waiting for that unmistakeable grind to precede the appearance of the beloved blue box.

Rose Tyler spent her life waiting. Waiting for the next alien invasion she'd have to help stop. Waiting for the next cataloguer to disrupt her existence. Waiting for the next piece of tech Torchwood wanted her opinion on. Waiting for that tiny piece of coral to grow into a new TARDIS to take her far from home. Waiting for the doctors to explain to her why, no matter how hard they tried, no children ever filled her womb. Waiting for the tears to stop flowing as she lowered her mum's body into the ground. Her dad's. Her brother's. Waiting for grey hair to break up the natural brown she'd allowed to come back in. Waiting for the next breath to pass her husband's lips with no hope of ever hearing his heart beat again. Waiting for a wrinkle to obscure her features, dimming of her eyesight, difficulty breathing, difficulty remembering. Waiting for the walls between dimensions to grow thin again allowing travel between worlds. Waiting for the unmistakeable sound of her TARDIS returning to her. Waiting for her Doctor. Waiting for her death.

She was born on a different world, on the 27th of April, 1987, although if you asked her now, she'd grin at you and shrug her shoulders rather than admit to her birth date. No one would believe anyway. She'd lived normally those first few years, raised by a mother who loved her dearly, dated immature boys, dropped out of school in favour of finding work. All things expected of a lower income London teenager. Everything changed, however, on the 6th of March, 2005. Oh, she's quite sure that at some point the Doctor realized she'd lied to him, but when he reached out his hand and asked her to come with him, she couldn't bring herself to tell him she was only seventeen. She'd be eighteen soon enough, what was one more year on top of that? So, she let him believe she was nineteen, old enough to make her own decisions, counting on his own blurring of timelines to refuse him the mathematics that would let him know the love of his life was barely old enough to legally drive a car.

Her youth, her love, her life - it was something he needed desperately but didn't know at the time. Occasionally he'd offer her a slight touch, a squeeze of the hand, little gestures that kept her moving forward despite the fact she was burning from the inside out. His blue eyes would sparkle and she would lose track of what she'd been saying. His fingers would caress her skin and she'd forget what dangers they were facing. His breath would flutter the long blonde strands of her hair, and she would gladly have laid her life down at his feet. She loved him so desperately, so completely, with such abandon and determination that her own life became forfeit without him - and so died the Rose Tyler she'd been, born in her place Bad Wolf, created from the love that grew solid between them.

"I want you safe, my Doctor,"

Laid before him, stripped bare of her humanity, there was only Bad Wolf filled with the power of the time vortex. She knew he saw only Rose Tyler, knew his actions were to save what was left of the girl he'd brought so far from her home, and she didn't have the heart to tell him that when he changed, so did she. Gone were his blue eyes, big ears and northern accent. Gone was the leather jacket that had kept her warm on so many different planet surfaces. In place there were warm chocolate eyes, a skinny youthful body and some really great hair. Leather changed to a suit and tie, and when she was lucky his dark glasses would notch up his attractiveness just that much higher. Out of respect for his sacrifice, Rose buried Bad Wolf deep inside her. Thoughts of destruction and power hidden away, knowledge she'd gained locked deep inside the library of her mind. Some would have thought it a difficult process, having all the power of Gods at her fingertips and instead choosing to return to being the slightly dim teenaged girl she'd always thought herself, but he made it so simple. She continued to laugh as they ran, let him save the day without interference, and allowed time to play out exactly as it had always been intended. The universe didn't need Bad Wolf, but the Doctor needed Rose Tyler and the universe needed the Doctor. Paradox at its finest, and so she complied willingly and full heartedly, taking the emotional evisceration provided her without fundamentally altering the fabric of reality to serve her own needs.

Time marched on. Ten years to one, her world to his. Humanity surged and prospered, changed and grew, and everyone she loved died around her. When her husband's single heart pumped out it's final beat, his lungs no longer expanding to fill with oxygen, and the doctor's pulled that white sheet up to cover his face, Rose lay down on the bed next to him as she wept her loneliness into his cold, silent chest.

Rose Tyler had died three times in her life - once when the Bad Wolf saved her beloved Doctor, once when Pete Tyler caught her at Canary Warf and ripped her away from her second heart, and once lying on a cot in a sterile hospital room, zeppelins outside the window blocking the sun, sobbing into her dead lover's body. Rose Tyler abandoned the last of her humanity that absurdly warm afternoon, and allowed the Bad Wolf to come out of slumber, to take away her pain.

Without her husband at her side, the pretence that she was normal no longer held. She emptied their outrageously stocked bank accounts, packed a single bag that she slung over her shoulder, and without a single look back at what had been her home for years she stepped out into the chilling twilight, leaving the London night lights coming alive in her wake.

She knew only one other place on this world that had any connection to the girl she'd once been, so that's where she headed. Norway. Dårlig Ulv Stranden. Bad Wolf Bay. She commissioned a home to be built on the rocky shore, fifty meters from where she'd last seen the Doctor while the Bad Wolf slept. A tent sheltered her body for months while her home was constructed - three simple rooms, each wall built of impenetrable glass, allowing her to look out at the world but molecularly altered so that no one could look in. In the center room stood her TARDIS, grown from a single piece of coral left to her, always in the form of a blue police box as Rose couldn't have it any other way. She'd had it shipped from storage in London, the last link to her old life, all final ties dissolved. Supplies came once a month, dropped by helicopter onto her beach, always more than she required - she hadn't missed a single thing.

So, she waited. Alone but for her TARDIS. Alive without life. Nourished without growth. Aged without deteriorating. Her dark hair grew long, past her chest, her waist, her knees. Her jeans traded for simple linen robes. Her body always kept perfect even as her mind fled to live amongst the stars. Each morning she watched the sun rise, each night the sun set - tides came and licked the bottoms of her feet, only to be drained back out as the moon shifted position. She slept when she needed to. Ate when she was hungry. Always the human, but so much more.

The universe moved forward, but still she waited.

~~~~ TBC

A/N: Please read and review - the more reviews she recieves, the faster and harder my muse works - she says it's to please, but really it's just to get more reviews. TY.