I See Everything
Everything is there, within reach. A single thought, and the history of entire worlds, the entire universe even, would change to her will. And yet, she was bound to the mind and wants of this vessel, the girl who had opened herself up in the desperate hope to save the Doctor.
Her Doctor. Her champion.
Seeing the single, soul-encompassing wish that the young but brave girl contained, the Bad Wolf had taken root in her mind, using her to guide her fellow sister-of-time to the future, to save the man whom the universe was so dependent upon. The last of her lords.
Bad Wolf did not understand how to move as a corporeal being; she simply moved to where she wanted with a thought. Nothing complicated about it. No matter that with each reach of energy she used, her host slowly began to burn within her. She had chosen to do anything to save the Doctor, so the Bad Wolf would do what was necessary to do so. If that meant Rose Tyler's death, than the young girl would return to the energy she was born of, and become a fellow sister-in-time. A goddess, able to help others just as she had as a being of flesh-and-blood.
Bad Wolf wanted to unravel the Daleks, all the way back to when they began. But a memory flashed through her mind—Rose Tyler's mind—of dark beings able to rip apart the physical world, brought on by a paradox, and she understood. If she destroyed the Daleks, than it was likely the Doctor that the Doctor would never meet Rose Tyler—what was that odd pain somewhere in her middle?—and so would never come to this point, meaning that Bad Wolf never destroyed the Daleks. The paradox was pointless, so Bad Wolf settled for the next alternative.
"What are you doing?" The Doctor demanded. Bad Wolf looked down at him coldly.
"I looked into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS looked into me," she replied, her power softened by the human tones of the human child.
"You looked into the time vortex Rose, no one's meant to see that!" the Doctor protested. Bad Wolf continued to stare down at him, amused by his protests. Of course she was meant, to see that, she was time.
"This is the abomination!" The Dalek emperor declared dogmatically. Instantly, the other Daleks began chanting 'exterminate' and fired on her.
Reaching into the memories of Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf sought to see how to control her limbs. Seeing the correct sequence of neuron firings, she lifted her arms to the Daleks. As the beam came to her, she stopped it, and reversed the action so that the shot was never fired within the space it had once been.
"I am the Bad Wolf," she declared. "I create myself. I take the words. I scatter them, in time and space. A message to lead myself here." For without Rose Tyler, she would never have been able to interfere here, and save her champion.
"Rose, you've got to stop this, you've got to stop this now! You've got the entire vortex running through your head, you're gonna burn!" the Doctor urgently insisted. Had he just heard her? She was not Rose Tyler, not at that moment, though she depended on her to be here. She had scanned the child's memories, found each instance that the words were needed. And she took an extra step.
After this Doctor regenerated, the next regeneration would face many new perils. She carefully placed the idea of going after Rose into Pete Tyler's mind, through the void because it closed, to protect her vessel. Then she made sure that her name would be visible to the Doctor on Shan Shen once Rose Tyler delivered her message to Donna Noble, the DoctorDonna, a victim of her power, unlike Rose Tyler, who so easily welcomed her power and help. She forced the Doctor to pause before entering his TARDIS, to hear Adelaide kill herself because of his arrogance; she inspired the Master to save his old friend from those who had betrayed him so long ago; she made River Song find the good things about the Doctor before the bad, so that she would fall in love with him; she sure that the Doctor landed in Amelia Pond's backyard, and she did far more into her Doctor's future, insuring that he would always be on track.
She also looked to the past. She could look at the Doctor and see everything about him at once, and so she took measures to make sure he would become the man he was today. She made sure the key to the TARDIS was lying just outside his home, and that their connection would immediately be sparked, and several other things to protect him and guide him.
"I want you safe, my Doctor," she whispered, Rose Tyler speaking more than the Bad Wolf at that moment. "Protected from the false God."
"You cannot hurt me, I am immortal!" the Dalek emperor declared, his voice pompous and imperial.
"You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence, and I divide them." She extended her power again, and ended the Dalek that had so foolishly tried to attack her. "Everything must come to dust." Rose Tyler attempted to reassert her consciousness for a moment, allowing the Bad Wolf to feel remorse for a moment, but only just. The human child may pity the Dalek, but Bad Wolf could see all that they were: creatures of hate who hated no thing more than themselves, and it was time for them to end. "All things. Everything dies," she declared, raising both of Rose Tyler's arms and ending all of the Daleks, despite the useless protests of the emperor.
"The time war ends," she said, more subdued now, seeing the end of the carnage that had crippled her domain so badly.
"Rose, you've done it, now stop. Just let go," the Doctor said, more gently and more pleading than before. Couldn't he see that she was not only Rose Tyler? They were both intertwined, the Bad Wolf and Rose Tyler, a single entity in a fixed point of time and space. And even after he removed her from this human vessel, she would still be a part of Rose Tyler, hidden in the back of her mind, until the human finally withered and died, to guide her to her place in the stars.
"How can I let go of this?" Rose Tyler whispered, agreeing with the Bad Wolf. They were all-powerful, a single being, just as they were always meant to be. And then Rose Tyler-Bad Wolf whispered again: "I bring life!" And Rose Tyler extended her powers to the man below, and gifted him with life again. But she didn't understand time on her own, and before the Bad Wolf reasserted control, went too far, and granted Jack Harkness eternity. Bad Wolf could have fixed it before it even happened, but she saw that it was right.
"This is wrong! You can't control life and death!" the Doctor said, and Bad Wolf-Rose Tyler could see the desperate sadness within him, a remnant of the death of Gallifrey.
"But I can," they replied. "The sun and the moon, the day and night." And as they continued to see, continued to reach across the cosmos and all of time to protect their Doctor, a fire began, separating their bond. "But why do they hurt?" they whispered in anguish, not wanting to be alone again.
"The powers gonna kill you and it's my fault!" the Doctor said in anguish.
"I can see everything. All that is, all that was, all that ever could be," Rose Tyler whispered, the fire in her mind prompting her to try and control her body again, trying to get away from the flames in her mind.
The Doctor stood and stared into their eyes intently. "That's what I see, all the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?" he questioned.
"My head," Rose Tyler cried, the Bad Wolf stepping back, preparing for what was coming as Rose Tyler took control of her body and mind again, with the smallest influence of the Bad Wolf. Tears traced with time ran down her face, decorating it with gold finer than any of the riches of any being in the universe.
"Come here," the Doctor urged.
"Is killing me!" Rose finished.
"I think you need a Doctor," their champion said, drawing Rose Tyler into his arms. Bad Wolf paused in her work as inside, Rose Tyler scoffed at the cheesy line, a part of her mind being wound forever with time, outside the pain it otherwise brought her.
The Doctor kissed her, an action that pleased Rose Tyler-Bad Wolf immensely, and drew most of Bad Wolf from Rose Tyler as gently as he could.
But he did not get all of her. While he absorbed all of the energy of time that Bad Wolf possessed, he did not gain the consciousness that had protected Rose Tyler for so long and declared her one of its own. He did not see that in the furthest doors of his companion's mind there was a golden glow that would never go away as long as the mortal Rose Tyler lived.
As the last of their energy was taken, Rose Tyler-Bad Wolf stared at the Doctor for a long moment, recognizing the glow in his eyes as the precursor to his death; exhausted, Bad Wolf retreated into her hideaway, and Rose fell to the ground, bereft of the infinity she had been carrying in her mind. And when she awakened later, she was left with nothing but the lullaby of time, and a new awareness of the TARDIS.
And when she was separated from the Doctor, universes apart, she could still feel that power in the back of her mind, the whisper that one day, all would be right. That whisper led her to the universe where the Doctor had died, giving Donna Noble the right message. And it was that whisper that allowed her to find the Doctor again, to help him rid the universe of the Daleks once more.
And standing again in Pete's world, under a sky full of zeppelins, that tiny voice whispered so quietly that Rose Tyler could not hear, "we will rise again."