A/N: So here it is! This is a reworking of an older fic of mine, Howling To The Stars. If you haven't read that, it really doesn't matter. This is supposed to be a complete reworking of that old story, hopefully with much better writing and a bit more ingenuity on my part. I do however need your input! I have a pretty important question for you guys at the bottom Author's Note. So I'll see you there! I hope you enjoy this first chapter!
Disclaimer: I do not, in anyway, own Doctor Who. All rights go to BBC.
"Once the breach collapses, that's it! You'll never get to see her again, your own mother!"
"I made my choice a long time ago and I'm never gonna leave you."
. x . x . x . x .
She can't breathe. It's like something has snatched the oxygen clean from her lungs as she crumples there on the control room floor, her gasps for air the only sound echoing in the sudden silence.
She's almost certain that she won't ever really know how she managed to get up and get back to the TARDIS, all she really knows that one moment she was staggering to her feet and the next she was curled up on the old jump seat in the console room, shivering and simply staring at the ceiling. At some point after her arrival, the TARDIS takes the liberty to return herself to the time vortex, though she rocks and shakes and sparks in her own grief.
She isn't sure how much time passes before she stands numbly and starts for her room. Has it been hours? Days? However long it's been, the time has done nothing to ease the pain in her chest that only seems to worsen with each beat of her heart.
While her hope had been for some peace in sleep, she hadn't exactly counted on it. When she reaches her bed however, she barely manages to sit, before the small part of the back of her mind that she's long associated with the TARDIS' gentle hum expands, pushing warm, lilting music through her mind. It reminds her for a moment of when she was young and her mum would lull her to sleep with those little nursery songs and lullabies that all mothers seem to know.
Though the thought of her mother sends knives through her heart, she doesn't have much longer to dwell on it before the TARDIS' song becomes more persistent, and exhaustion tugs thought away from her. Her last thought before she drifted off into a fitful rest is that she'd never expected that a spaceship would sing her to sleep.
Waking is painful. When she first comes to, her mind remains stuck in the routine that years with the Doctor has created in her, and she's already swung her feet - which had become bare sometime in the night, though she can't quite remember changing clothes - off the bed before it all comes crashing back. All routine vanishes as she curls herself up again, sobs finally wracking her body as the truth settles in. The Doctor's gone. Trapped in another dimension. Along with her Mum and Mickey. She's totally and completely alone now.
"Not alone, My Little Wolf." A voice whispers in the back of her mind. Something like fear rushes through her at the voice, definitely female, with a warm tone that leaves no room to doubt that its owner truly cares. The TARDIS is quick to put her mind at ease, and after a second, she realizes that the voice belongs to the TARDIS. While she'd received vague feelings and often heard music from the ship in the past, there'd never been spoken words.
"Is that... Is that you?" She asks the empty room, voice shaking slightly, and flicker of approval comes from the TARDIS' designated place in her mind.
"Yes, it is."
"I've never heard you talk before. At least not properly." She points out, sitting up and looking round at the room, from the walls to the ceiling, willing the pain in her chest to subside, though it's to no avail. She finds herself wondering if this is how The Doctor always heard the TARDIS, and if it's why he always talked aloud to her. The thought stings and she forces it out of her mind quickly, not daring to dwell on it.
"I've never had need to speak before. You have never misunderstood me without words."
"Why now then?" She asks, finally standing. Crossing her arms over her chest and not bothering to change clothes or put on shoes, she starts toward the console room, though she isn't quite sure what prompts the desire to go there.
"My Thief has been my companion for more than nine hundred years." The TARDIS tells her, her immense pain flooding over some into Rose's mind. "I do not wish to be alone."
Suddenly Rose feels very small. The Doctor had been her world for almost three years. He had been the TARDIS' for nine centuries. Surely the pain she's feeling is nothing when compared to that of the ancient ship's. She thinks about it as she enters the control room, the grating biting into her bare feet for a moment before she takes her previous place on the jump seat again.
"It is not my intention to make you feel less deserving of pain, Little Wolf." The TARDIS reassures her, no doubt feeling the rush of emotion. "I simply do not wish you to leave. I have already lost my Thief. I do not think I could bear to lose my Cub as well."
"I hadn't exactly planned on leavin'." Rose points out, closing her eyes as the green light surrounding them pulses ever so often.
"But it is there, in your mind "
"I mean.. yeah, I've thought about it. What other choice do I have?" She asks, all of the sudden feeling tired despite having just woken up. She knows that, with the Doctor gone, she'll have to return to normal life. Get a job, find a place to live, figure out how to be like everyone else again.
"I could teach you, Little Wolf. I could teach you the ways of my Thief, and we could continue on, all across space and time for all eternity." The TARDIS suggests earnestly, sounding just as eager for adventure as the Doctor had, leaving the human to fight down a bitter laugh.
"That's the problem though. Us humans don't tend to last too long. By the time I'd learn what I needed to know to even travel I'd have one foot in the grave." To that, the TARDIS gives a huffing noise that sounds very much like a sigh in response. "What's that for?" She asks, tilting her head a bit and watching the console as if it itself is speaking to her, it makes the TARDIS' voice in her head seem a little bit less surreal.
"There's something I haven't told you, Little Wolf." The TARDIS admits, sounding almost... guilty? Rose sits a little bit straighter, unable to help but feel a little bit anxious at the possible implications of whatever secret the ship had kept to herself.
"Well what is it then?"
"You looked into my heart. You looked into time itself and almost died because of it, all to save my Thief." The TARDIS recounts the events of The Game Station, something akin to nostalgia seeping in to mix with the loss. "While my Thief removed much of the energy from the Time Vortex from your body, even he could not remove it all. Some remained in you. Bad Wolf has been working inside you ever since, changing you. Changing you in a way I fear will now become a curse."
"What're you saying?" Rose asks, voice shaking again, though now with fear as she tries to understand what the TARDIS is implying.
"My Thief was not to be the only one of his kind for long, but soon you will be."
"What?!" Her voice raises some, tense with panic, her heart racing in her chest as she puts together the pieces that the TARDIS is presenting to her, even if it makes little sense. If she's right, then what the ship is suggesting that she's... Or that she's becoming..
"Your thoughts are correct, Little Wolf. It will not be long now before you are the last of the Time Lords in this universe."
. x . x . x . x .
Rose still isn't entirely sure that the whole thing isn't some sort of colossal joke or dream that she'll wake out of at any given moment. It probably wouldn't be the strangest dream she's ever had.
That doubt isn't at all helped as the TARDIS seems to almost mother her over the next several weeks.
She hadn't really thought that the ship would be able to insist on anything, but in the past few days she's learned that the old girl has plenty of tactics to get her own way. She'd been forced to eat at least something by the sudden disappearance of any door except the one that led to the kitchen, and the room simply sealing itself once she's in it, until she had done so. She'd been urged to change into proper clothes by being locked in her own room until she'd obeyed that request too.
The TARDIS hasn't used words to communicate since that first conversation, the one that Rose won't be forgetting in a hurry, but she certainly has her own ways of getting her point across, and it only takes a day or two for her to give in and simply do as the TARDIS asks. It doesn't take too long before listening the urges that the ancient ship pushes at her turns into habit again.
Though there's a huge part of her that just wants to grieve and mourn and mope about the ship that truly is her home, the TARDIS had refused to allow it after the first few days. True, when she wakes up in the night with his name on her lips and tears streaming down her face the ship soothes her with the same music as that first night until she finds rest again, but during her waking hours the Type 40 is very nearly without pity, and Rose finds herself wondering if the Doctor had only ever been able to keep moving because of his beloved ship. She can definitely see the old girl playing a large role in keeping him sane.
After a few weeks, she's forced to leave the TARDIS for the first time since Canary Wharf. It's out of necessity, it really is. The simple fact is that there isn't any food left on board and the ship had refused to allow her anywhere else until she'd gotten some groceries. As it is, the familiar sound of materialization has her heart beating a bit faster than is necessary. Part of her thinks it's almost silly how desperate she is not to leave the confines of her bigger-on-the-inside home, but the rest of her is in a state of panic at the mere thought.
In the end, she looks at the monitors about ten times and checks that the key around her neck is secure about twenty before she actually pushes the door open. Despite the fact that the TARDIS is tucked into a shady alley, she winces as squints in the daylight. She'd grown accustomed to the dim green, and the brightness of what feels like a summer day in London makes her eyes sting and water the slightest bit.
She's in and out of the store just as quickly as she can make it, almost running back to the alley. She's got the TARDIS key off her neck before she even gets to the blue box, but when she pushes her way back into the console room, she pauses. The TARDIS is making a soft rumbling sound, and coupled with the bit of amusement that's not hers that colors her mind, she's almost positive she's being laughed at.
Indignation threatens to rise in her before she realizes just what is so funny. With the hurried way she'd done the shopping, her quickness to push her money at the cashier, and her almost bolt back to the alley, she must have looked absolutely ridiculous, like some sort of fugitive. It's stupid, but she ends up laughing until tears prick at her eyes and her stomach hurts from it all.
When she realizes she's forgotten milk ("Of all the species in all the universe and it has to come out of a cow!" she can't help but think for a split second,) and has to go back, she's a bit more collected, and even takes a moment to pause and feel the sun on her face.
It's the first time she dares to think and really believe that she might be okay.
It's not for another month that the pain starts.
. x . x . x . x .
At first, it's not bad. Just the general bodily ache she usually associates with the beginning of a bout of the flu. She tries not to focus on the waves of worry she sometimes picks up from the TARDIS as she lays in bed and tries to rest, hoping that if she gives in to the persistent drowsiness that she's felt for the past few days that it might help.
She wakes up, and feels a hundred times better, even if she's not entirely sure how long she's been asleep. In the TARDIS, time becomes all but irrelevant.
. x . x . x . x .
She's wandering through one of the corridors just a few days later when the TARDIS shows her a door she's yet to see: a simple black one with a golden doorknob. Engraved into the dark wood is Gallifreyan symbols she can't read, the engravings the same gold at the knob. Unable to help herself and sensing no rebuff from the TARDIS, she reaches to open it. She gets the vague sense that the ship is excited by this place, and it makes her own pulse pick up slightly. Then she opens the door and gasps.
The room doesn't seem to be a room at all, because she opens it and for the life of her it feels as if she's outdoors. She squints in the change of light, but once her eyes adjust, they snap as wide as they can go.
It's like an endless meadow of scarlet grass and it absolutely takes her breath away. Instead of blue, the sky's a beautiful golden orange that seems just perfect, and in the distance she sees a few scattered trees with silver leaves that almost make them look to be aflame. Of all the planets she's been to and the places she's seen in the universe, this tops it all, and she doesn't even know why. It just does. The TARDIS hums almost happily as she steps through the door.
She sits in the grass for hours, watching a second sun begin to appear on the horizon. She only leaves when her stomach begins to growl. She asks the TARDIS to keep the room close, and she grins when she retires to bed hours later and finds the door right across from the one that belongs to her bedroom.
It quickly becomes her favorite place on the ship. She knows it's not possible, but it seems to go on forever. In the distance she can see snow capped red mountains and forests of silver leaved trees. Though she's asked the TARDIS several times what it is and where it's supposed to be, she's never gotten an answer and despite her research in the library, she hasn't found any information of the place. It's like it simply doesn't exist.
The second time the pain returns, it's worse. Several times worse.
A pounding headache joins the cacophony of pain that wracks her and she doesn't even try to leave her bed this time, instead curling herself up beneath the covers and praying for the pain to stop. She gets the feeling that it would actually be worse, but when the wavering music washes over her, she realizes that the ship is doing something to block out at least some of it. She can't find it in herself to complain.
She drifts off, though she's not entirely sure when she does so, and falls into an uneasy sleep soon after the TARDIS begins to sing to her, curled up and breathing quickly.
When she wakes, it's not as it was the first time. She's not pain free, there's still a throb just beneath her skin, and she has to focus to keep her breathing slow, but it pales in comparison to her previous discomfort. She also doesn't feel as if she's slept, at least not well. It reminds of times she'd had to work late at Henrik's and only managed to snag a few hours at most.
She only has a day to recover from the last spell before she explodes into agony while reading on the jump seat of the console room.
It's nothing she's ever known and yet... the way her head feels like it's about to explode and her very blood feels as if it's boiling in her veins seems almost familiar. Like she has felt this before. She feels the TARDIS, feels how concerned the ship is. Almost scared. It does nothing to ease her panic.
She hears music in her head and for a moment thinks it must be the TARDIS, but as it gets louder and louder until the sound of it alone seems to tear at the seams of her mind, she hears an undercurrent to the singing: howling.
She tries to stand, but her legs refuse to support her and her knees hit the grating beneath her with a minor pain she can't even register over the burning inside her. Her hands clamp down on either side of her head and she thinks she must be screaming, knows she must be screaming, but she can't hear it over the howling that's taking over the music in her head.
Images flash before her eyes, and though she knows they must be going faster than anything in the universe, she sees it all. She sees everything that will ever be, everything that may, everything that never could, everything that had to and has to. She sees it all, and it's so much.
Golden light explodes behind her eyes and the world goes dark.
She wakes with a gasp and a jolt of her body, her back arching off the console room floor as her lungs suck in as much air as it possibly can. Her eyes open wide and she just lays there, gasping for a few minutes. A flicker of confusion hits her as she doesn't understand why her heart rate hasn't slowed. It takes her a second to realize what's happened.
Her heart isn't racing.
She just has two of them.
A/N: So? Thoughts? I really think that's a lot better than the first chapter of the original version. By a long shot. Anyway, for the question I need answered. While some of Rose's adventures will not follow along the lines of the show, many of them will, to at least some extent. I can upload a whole 'episode' at once, but those are likely to be 8,000 to 10,000 word chapters. That being said, I can also break down each episode to three more reasonable 3,000 to 4,000 word chapters. If the chapters are larger, updates are going to be more infrequent than the small chunks. There's only about one or two more chapters between us and The Runaway Bride, so I need to know what you guys want.
Anyway, I really hope you enjoyed reading it. Tell me what you thought in a review! Those are God's gift to authors, don't you know? I hope to see you next chapter!
~TheFallenArchangel
