Anti-Rose.
Prologue
Set between "Father's Day" and 'The Empty Child."
"Rose, grab that lever there and push it up." the Doctor said. His usually cheerful face was grim, the worry he felt showing in his eyes as Rose glanced up at him. He nodded as she carried out his instructions.
"Hold it there, and be ready to press the button on it's immediate right on my mark." he told her. Feeling as if she was playing a high-stakes game of 'Twister', Rose turned, reaching her left hand over the one holding up the lever, stretching till her hand hovered over the button he'd mentioned. "Now!" he told her. Rose brought her hand down on the button, which clicked and sank flush with the console surface. Her head snapped back as the TARDIS jolted, and then the second, bigger, jolt shook loose her hold on the console. She hit the grillework around the console face down with a thud, which winded her. She rolled onto her back as the Doctor looked down at her with a mixture of irritation and surprise. As usual, he had not only stayed upright, but also appeared completely unfazed by the tooth-rattling jolts.
"What are you doing down there?" he asked. "We still have work to do, we're not clear yet. Now get up and help me."
Muttering under her breath Rose got up, ignoring the smarting of her left cheek, which had hit the TARDIS floor first and very hard. The Doctor waved her back to 'her' side of the console, and she moved there without further comment. Time was too precious to waste on bickering. She could complain about his attitude later-if there was a later, that was.
switch up, turn the yellow knob three-quarters around to the right, hold the green and red buttons down together."-as they fought to pull the TARDIS from the deadly pull of a nearby black hole the Doctor had thought to study. He had set the TARDIS co-ordinates to a time when another factor had weakened the black hole's pull, but something had gone wrong, and they had arrived 2000 years later, when it was back to full strength. The black hole was pulling them slowly closer, despite the TARDIS's engines being at full output. The Doctor had tried a variety of solutions, all of which had achieved precisely bugger all.
The Doctor checked a screen. His face was grim.
"That's it, Rose, I've tried everything I can think of and I've run out of ideas."
"You mean you're just going to give up?" Rose asked, aghast. The Doctor had never struck her as a quitter. He kept on fighting, even in the seemingly most hopeless situations, and he had always managed to turn things around.
"Me, give up?" he asked. "No, there is one other option open to us, but it's very dangerous. It could kill us as surely as the black hole would."
"Yeah, but if there's a chance shouldn't we take it? I'd prefer possible death to certain death given the choice." Rose replied.
"You're absolutely right." said the Doctor, not in the voice of someone who had been persuaded, but more like the voice of the person doing the persuading. One day, Rose decided, she would ask the Doctor where he had learned his particularly effective brand of psychology.
"The energy to run the TARDIS comes from something called the Eye of Harmony." the Doctor explained. "At full power, the TARDIS still only runs on about fifty per cent of that power. If I make some changes that will enable me to use all of that energy in one great dematerialization, it might be enough to wrench us free. However, it could shake the TARDIS to pieces so we die in the vacuum of space, or it may just not work and leave us in the same place but with no power to slow the black hole's pull." He flashed her what she supposed was a reassuring grin, but she was far from reassured. However, she gave him a weak smile back and said, "Let's just try it, shall we? A chance is a chance."
He nodded. "Okay, Rose, I need you to do exactly what I tell you. Hold down that button there, pull that lever there down and keep it down, and flip and hold that switch."
"I only have two hands!" muttered Rose, but found that by using her foot to hold down the far end switch, she could reach the other two with her hands and do as the Doctor asked. It involved her being sprawled uncomfortably across the TARDIS console, but the important thing was that she could reach.
The Doctor turned two knobs, slid down 5 switches, and did his own contortionist act to grasp two handles.
"Hold on! Remember as well that we don't know where and when we'll turn up if this works. The TARDIS will need weeks of repair before she'll move again." He pulled down on the handles and used his chin to depress a button.
The lights brightened, then gave out completely. A terrible grating, grinding noise sounded, and then a high-pitched whine filled the air. The TARDIS made several stomach-twisting jerks and lurches. Rose lost her grip by the second, landing hard on the grillework around the console. Her fingers found purchase on the grille edge, and she hung on desperately. More bumps, groans and grinding sounds echoed as the TARDIS bucked like a recalcitrant horse, all overlaid by that mechanical whine, which Rose thought of as the TARDIS screaming. Rose squeezed her eyes shut and focused her entire being on holding on.
Some time later, the racket stopped, to be replaced by a silence Rose had never heard in the TARDIS before. There had always been the quiet hum of machinery even at rest, now conspicuous by it's absence. Waiting to be sure it was really over, Rose then gingerly got up. She blundered around in the dark, trying to get her bearings, and tripped over something on the floor.
It was the Doctor.
"Doctor!" she cried. There was no response. She grabbed his arm, felt his chest, and was relieved to find both his hearts still beating. She scrambled over to the TARDIS scanner, hoping to find out where they were, hoping not all the power was down.
As if in answer to her prayers, a slow but steady hum started up again, and some lights came up. Whether they were emergency lights, or whether they had been fixed by some sort of auto repair system, Rose didn't know and frankly didn't care. More importantly still, the scanner glowed with power, and in answer to Rose's touch on the buttons, an image resolved on screen.
They were not still trapped by the black hole, neither had they ended up in an alien place. Even the time seemed familiar, and Rose could only think that the TARDIS had returned to a time and place it was familiar with. For the image that Rose saw was very familiar to her.
They were back in the Powell Estate.
The TARDIS had brought Rose home.