She had been wrong to save the Dalek in the museum. The universe owed nothing to it, who would destroy everything but itself if given the chance. In her defence, she didn't know what they were like, and had been raised to see the good in people. But she had made the Doctor feel like a madman for realizing that all of time and space would be better off without a hateful alien in a tin can suit. He was probably chuffed that what he thought was the best outcome was right at his fingertips.
She only hoped that if she was the one who gave him guilt, she was the one who could take it away.
Something you don't learn in Sunday school - understandably so, because it would put people off the whole hero business - when you do something good, all the armchair saints have ideas of what you should've done instead. Something he no doubt learned in his travels was that if you didn't try to help or harm anyone and just tried to pass through, people were actually less likely to judge you. But then he wouldn't be the Doctor, right? He helped people, that's what he did, fixed broken situations.
Could he fix her, if she got back to him?
When, she corrected herself. Her odds were better if she thought positive, or at least acted positive.
And bitterness over never being enough of a hero threatened to trap her into whatever sorry little dimension she was currently passing through. She had to keep moving, keep doing the right thing simply because it was right. He would want her to stay more or less the same, and if she couldn't keep Doctor-y thoughts in her head he would settle for Doctor-y actions.
Moving forward meant making quick decisions, which she didn't mind. She was always good at thinking on her feet. Perhaps a decision could be both the best and good enough. After all, what's good enough is often the best that can be done in the circumstances.
If she could make it back to the Doctor and share her thoughts with him, perhaps they would have more peace of mind, and they'd save more lives in the long run.
At least they'd save more lives than were being destroyed in her present.
She decided that all the talk about his one constant companion being death was utter bollocks. Bad things happened of their own accord, he was just passing through, in a vehicle that didn't punch holes in the fabric of reality. She had witnessed horrible things despite wanting a peaceful lay-by, after all, the less chaos she had to put up with, the faster she'd get back to her Doctor.
She was amazed by his dedication to saving people. Doing the best thing could make you feel like a villain, especially when you were saving people who were nice, but not good. Was it so wrong to not be ashamed of that, to enjoy it even?
Sometimes it was easier to just walk past disaster areas until she could make it to the next dimension, and sometimes it was easier to speed things up a bit. They were going to die anyway, she realized that. She wouldn't half-help people only to abandon them the moment her dimension cannon had a full charge. It was cruel to give them false hope. Besides, all those lives were nothing in the face of the destruction of all of reality! She even started feeling like a hero again.
When she finally landed in the right time and place, she wanted to jump for joy until regret of her past was replaced with dread of her future.
It didn't matter if the rest of the universe thought she was inhuman and wrong, but if he did-
She would hide it. Play off her attitude as a painful joke, and point him in the right direction whenever he needed directing. She'd been alone for too long. If he wanted her old self, maybe she could get her old self back again by traveling with him once more. Maybe that's why he had so many companions over the years, because staying alone with your thoughts could make you look insane. Hell, it could make you insane. Maybe he'd bring her back to sanity. And maybe she could do what she did then, keep him from mutating into a monster, as well as redeem herself. Maybe gave her hope.
But she just had to go and let her guard down! She congratulated his duplicate on doing it right the second time. To her surprise he agreed, and his small smile made her melt into a puddle of relief. She found salvation in war, who'd have thought?
Well, he didn't think so. His smile faded, a grim realization appearing to dawn upon him. "You're not the girl who jumped through time next to me anymore."
"You're one t'talk, your body isn't the original body I jumped with." She tried to give him a cheeky smile, but her facial muscles moved haltingly, like rusted gears, and instead just showed her teeth.
His grin also looked painful, but he tried to look her in the eyes. "You've changed in ways I didn't expect. And it's my fault." The valiant child who died in battle.
He was trying, he really was, and she appreciated that. But her heart still felt like a chunk of ice.
"He's right. You're hard to recognize," her mum sighed.
Vaguely she remembered stories of fairies swapped for human children, except the fair folk did a better job of disguising changelings. She stank of Time and her bones awkwardly jutted out of her skin.
"What happened to you? What did you see? What did you do?"
"Only what I had to. Got back home, found the Doctor, found you." She averted her gaze, looking her in one eye.
And you'll keep on changing. And in forty years time, fifty, there'll be this woman, this strange woman, walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles from Earth. But she's not Rose Tyler. Not anymore. She's not even human.
Her mum was an optimist, it was only a couple of years.
She turned to the Doctor, the one with the centuries-old body, eyes pleading. He was her last hope, he could imagine what she saw without fearing her, maybe see all of her with his soft dark eyes and not make her feel wrong.
Please take me home.
She practically purred when his eyes widened in realization, his arm wrapped around her waist, and he almost dragged her back to the last place she could call home.
Despite swearing up and down that he still didn't do domestic, he prepared that so very English meal, fish and chips, and she properly smiled for the second time since coming back to Universe Prime.
"Hero's welcome," he quipped.
"It takes one t'know one, yeah?" She gazed up at him with an entirely new kind of awe, despite the pounding of her heart.
"Well, it's my universe too." He bit into a chip. "That's beef dripping I fried them in-"
The small talk made her want to scream. She had to know in her bones that he wouldn't reject her. And she wanted to get it over with, in case... what would come after that?
"I guess it's true, you can't go home again." Her head swam with terror as the dam broke. "Tryin' t'get back t'you, I saw so many people of all sorts of species die while doin' what I had t'do in order t'make my next jump. You had t'commit double genocide t'save the universe, but the ones I let die were just in the wrong places at the wrong times! I thought it would be a one-time thing, just t'save the multiverse, yeah? Then I could walk away from it. But it won't leave me. An' there were ones that I didn't just let die, I-"
He looked her in the eyes, his own warm in a way she had never seen before, and squeezed her free hand. "Now you have become Death, the destroyer of worlds." A sad smile crept into his face. "You had to."
He might as well have told her I love you in Gallifreyan. Her entire body overflowed with warmth, and she hugged him with the strength that she should've used to hold onto the bloody Magna-Clamp.
They could save each other from the pain of doing the right thing. He couldn't fix her, no, but he accepted her. That sounded positively brilliant, even better than a redemption that might not ever come.
Oh, he was gorgeous when he knew he was acting as a god; taking responsibility with pride instead of despair. As tears of joy crept down her cheeks at his too-bright eyes and blindingly white teeth, she silently thanked herself for not giving into despair on her long road back to him.
The middle-aged woman who said that no one should have as much power as her Time Lord Victorious did was the most ungrateful bitch she had ever met. Lecturing him on right and wrong after he had gone out of his way to save her life? It was a shock but not a surprise when he had to restrain her from attacking Captain Adelaide Brooke more after giving her a good slap. He gently reminded her that they were here to fight the Laws of Time, not do their job. His touch alone was enough to calm her down.
She rushed him back to their home, and he didn't appear to hear the gun fire. Just as well, he never liked guns.
That was a person, full of life and memories, knocking four times four. Her Doctor could save him and regenerate, but...
If he had changed his face a week after first meeting her, not months, would he have still loved her when the light settled? Doing that was like taking a shower five minutes after getting a perm. She had just found unconditional acceptance, and had no way of knowing if his new body would be as willing and able to lick her sins away. The sad resigned look that his double had given her would probably be the best she could hope for-
His eyes flickered toward the chamber, but she scrambled in front of him with a stumbling body and firm resolve.
"No, please don't." Her voice was weak, trembling with the fear that her happiness would be stolen from her yet again. "I just got back t'you, what if your new self thinks I'm..."
That was one of his favorite ways to shut her up, she mused. She forgave him because he listened to her anyway. What was the life of one old man compared to both of them enjoying their forever?
"But I am changing. I don't want to be a hero anymore. I could do so much more."
He really could do so much more, she thought as his fingers kneaded the tension out of her back. Especially with her.