A/N: The song I'm talking about is the Doctor Who theme song (Dooweeooo) Disclaimer: I own nothing.
When Rose had looked into the heart of the TARDIS, when she had absorbed the time vortex and became Bad Wolf, she found something.
Something was woven into the core of the universe- a string of light and notes pouring around and around. Time was tied tightly to it, there could not be one without the other.
It flowed through her, pouring a secret into her mind. It revealed to her what it was. The beauty of the sound, the word, the presence astounded her.
She knew it, she did-does-will have it, the answer to the question. The Question. The oldest question in the universe, the one hidden in plain sight, the one he was-is-will be running from. The Question he has always ran from.
Doctor Who?
She felt it pulsing through time and space, the answer written in the medusa cascade if only those that had the eye could see it, but she could. She could.
In her mind, she cupped her glowing golden hands around it, as it grew bright in her grasp. She could hear the song that accompanied it, the song of the universe. His song. Oh, how could she have not heard it until now?
She felt as if she had been completely blind and deaf until this moment. She could see the Doctor now-
Old and young, curly-haired and straight-haired, reckless and careful, forgetful and regretful- her big-eared Doctor (I can feel it, the turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour. And I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And if we let go... That's who I am) and then a curly grey haired grumpy Doctor. The poor old forgotten yet hopeful one. Floppy-haired and then spiky hair that stuck up.
Blond curls and brown curls.
(The brontosaurus is large and placid! And stupid! If the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square on the other two sides, why is a mouse when it spins? Never did know the answer to that one)
Black hair, white hair.
(Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the Fourth Dimension? Have you? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet - without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day...)
The song... The beautiful and strange and wonderful song...
And, in that one tiny moment, Rose Tyler truly knew the Doctor.
(He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever... He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe... And... He's wonderful)
(Well, of course I'm being childish! There's no point in being grownup if you can't be childish sometimes)
(What if you were really old, and really kind and lonely, your whole race dead. What couldn't you do then? If you were that old, and that kind, and the very last of your kind, you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry)
And she loved him- she was Bad Wolf. She would do anything to save him, so she did.
He would do anything to save her, he took the wonderful gift that had been given to her- but he saved her life.
(Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Someone days nobody does at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, everyday in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call... Everybody lives)
But then, she forgot.
Rose Tyler never again remembered what had transpired...
Maybe Donna Noble was not the only companion who forgot.