A/N: Originally written as part of "In with the New", this section didn't seem to fit in the story's narrative. Still, I love determined!Rose and couldn't bear to drop the piece permanently.
There are so many ways to deal with loss.
There are those that try to forget; they pretend an ordeal never happened, or that it happened to someone else. Just a footnote in a story in a chapter of another's life.
Some fight to replace what they've lost, finding solace in the bright, shiny newness of a novel distraction. Rebounding on people or locations or activities until their heart is wrung and they're lost in the confusion of how they ended up in an even greater dilemma.
A number of beings lash out in hatred—of themselves, of their situation, of others that they hold to blame. Violence and rage and heat and passion destroy everything around them that could offer comfort or solace in a time of desperate need.
These are all signs of weak resolve and feeble character. Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf, is neither weak nor feeble in resolve or character.
When Rose had been forcibly deposited by her father next to that hated, impassible white wall, she'd collapsed in on herself. I've lost him, I've lost him, I've lost him, I've lost him, a continual stream of thought in her head like a mantra.
Once, she remembered, the Doctor had taken her to see a star collapse. "It's much bigger than your sun, nearly eight times," he'd said as he flipped switches and pulled levers, seemingly at abandon. "It's beyond the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, of course, so we should see a beautyof a black hole when it's through. See, if you have a star that's more than three but less than ten solar masses, and it metallicity—meaning the percentage of the star that isn't hydrogen or helium, stellar nucleosynthesis and all that—is greater than…."
He'd walked around the console twice, twirling knobs and giving his supposed elementary explanation of local astrophysics. Rose had been in the jump seat, following him with her eyes, chin rested in her hand, marveling not at the wonders of gravitational collapse, but at things like the shape of his hands and the line of his shoulders as he reached around the console to press one last button. The TARDIS shuddered and drifted for a handful of heartbeats as they arrived at their destination. The doors flew open to reveal a massive chaos of such extreme beauty that Rose momentarily shielded her eyes to give her brain time to adjust to the literally astronomical events unfolding in front of her.
The Doctor had programmed and piloted the TARDIS in such a way that the passage of time was visible. Decades passed in a breath. The supernova expanded to fill the sky—Could she call it a sky? It seemed so much more than that—before turning in on itself. Colors that Rose couldn't name rushed back towards their point of origin, setting the TARDIS into a slow turn that took the Doctor three full rotations to set aright.
The infinite collapse of the imploding star sent electromagnetic shockwaves towards them, remnants passing through the interstellar medium. What little could get through the TARDIS's shields made the interior lights dim, and Rose had reached for the Doctor's hand as the illumination flickered. Back then, she had stared in wonder at the absolute destruction of the stellar body in front of her.
After the Battle of Canary Wharf, she grieved with it in complete understanding of its total undoing.
She'd been punctured through by Cybermen and Daleks and Torchwood, passing through what they called 'Hell' only to land in it—a universe without her Doctor. An aching, ragged hole where her heart ought to be should have bled her dry.
But Hell hath no fury like the Bad Wolf in search of the Oncoming Storm.