Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Mass Effect are not owned by Blappeture Mesa. Yet.
Gordon Freeman Disclaimer: ...
*Note* No longer going to be more then a one-shot. Just asume that Rose raised Shepard to be a bad-ass paragon, she never died in Mass Effect 3, and the Master and Jenny eventually fell into the universe. Yeah. Also, Garrus/FemShep. Also maybe some Leatha/Young! Anderson in future one-shots.
Forever:
She's learned since then that just because he doesn't have any more regenerations doesn't mean that they had forever. It seems like such a silly way to die, for him. There's no alien invasion, the world hadn't been about to end- anything drastic like that. There'd only been a lone car, and screaming, and waking up in a hospital with no hand to hold and an empty place in her heart. They'd only had five years.
It hadn't been enough.
Gray:
The funeral is a private affair. There is her mother and her father who really wasn't, and Tony, who didn't really understand. There is her of course, though she almost didn't come. She didn't want to see the grave, cold and grey, and know that his body was lying underneath. The priest says his lines and she felt like laughing, because she knew the Doctor hadn't believed in anything (He believed in her) and would have laughed at the priest himself. But she didn't because she thought that perhaps, the words needed saying.
Here Lies the Doctor
Defender of the Earth
Beloved Husband
Moving On:
A year later, she moves on. It wasn't her mother's begging, or her precarious position as a Torchwood agent. It wasn't even little Tony, begging her to do anything. It had been the reminder of something that the Doctor had said long ago.
"You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That's the curse of the Time Lords."
She'd laughed a bitter laugh, turning up the corners of her mouth in a twisted smile before standing up, and squaring her shoulders. She'd do what the Doctor had done, would always do. She couldn't say she'd never look back, but she'd live on. Alone.
Humanity:
When her human Doctor had still been alive, they'd ignored it. When five years had passed and she still looked like she was in her early twenties, jokes were made about aging well or moisturizing, though she noticed the odd expression that occasionally crossed his face when he thought she wasn't looking. She knew it was time to face facts when she turned forty one and looked like she was the same age as her twenty year old brother. So she'd gone to someone that Torchwood trusted, a doctor named Owen Harper, and had her-self tested.
She wasn't human.
Or, rather, she wasn't human enough. While she stared at the screen with something close to horror, Owen had remarked that something had mutated her DNA out of the normal range enough that she didn't strictly count as human anymore. Something about a triple stranded helix, and unusual brain activity…
She had a feeling someone up there was laughing at her.
Bad Wolf:
She's forty two years old when it first happens. She and a younger agent named Bob were running from a human who had somehow mutated himself beyond recognition when she looked at him and screamed.
Mother father lone grave with tulips placed precariously on the spot death Death DEATH.
He bent to pick her up but she shook him off and kept on running. Five minutes later he was dead. She left tulips on his grave, and left when they began to wilt.
Family:
She knew this was going to happen someday. But it doesn't stop her heart from breaking, or her brother from breaking down into tears, or Pete from closing up, silent as stone. When she left, she didn't look back. It isn't something she wants to see.
Here Lies Jackie Tyler
Beloved Mother and Wife
1967-2030
Breaking Point:
It had been coming closer for a while now. Tensions between Torchwood and the government had been running higher and higher, and it was only a matter of time before the breaking point was reached.
When it did, everyone died.
Not everyone in Torchwood, but everyone that mattered to Rose. Pete died in the first attack, quick and silent with poison slipped into his drink. Ianto, Owen, and Toshiko are next, and when she sees' Tony on the ground, broken and bloodied, something snaps.
When they come for her, they all die. She wonders whether or not she is supposed to care.
TARDIS:
She still has it. The piece of coral is now half as big as her head, much larger than it had originally been. Rose doesn't quite comprehend how this piece of coral will someday be a TARDIS, anything like the old one in her dimension. She almost throws it out, but stopped herself at the last minute as music fills her head.
She never tries to throw out the coral again.
Capture:
She was only caught once, but she still remembers even years into the future. They wanted to know how she ticked, why she stayed young while the people around her got older and older. A lot of the time she was drugged, but she remembers the needles and knives and pain. When she escapes, it is violent and brutal. It took a long time for her to feel normal again.
She always keeps a gun on herself after that.
Leatha:
It's the year 2143 when she meets Leatha. Rose had just reached the place where she was currently living, a small flat in London. A noise in her bedroom alerted to the presence of an intruder, and her first instinct was draw her gun. A startled yelp and a terrified young face met the barrel of her gun, and she holstered the weapon with the sick realization that she had almost shot a child.
All attempts at getting her to reveal her last name failed. She's five years old; with dark brown hair and haunted brown eyes so dark they could almost be black. Rose knows that she should really find someone to take care of her- anyone is better than the hard person she knows she's become.
One years' past and she knows that's not going to happen.
Children:
When Leatha was seven years old, she was hurt. Rose had told her that she could play in the park all she wanted when they grabbed her, three heavily armed men who leered at her in a way that sparked unpleasant memories of the time before Rose. She had kicked and fought, and managed to hurt one of the men but it wasn't enough. Someone hit her in the head, hard, and then it was dark.
When she woke up, the men were gone and Rose was stroking her hair, humming something she didn't recognize. She didn't ask what happened to the men, though she noticed that Rose's gun was missing a few rounds.
Alien Life:
It's the year 2148. Leatha is ten years old. The two had to move again to avoid detection. Humanity discovered proof that alien life existed. Rose wasn't particularly surprised- the chances that this was a universe with no alien life were miniscule at best, even if they hadn't yet decided to show their faces. Leatha was less than impressed by the affair as well- ever since she'd been picked up by Rose she'd been told stories about alien life in the alternant reality, of massive space ships and insane creatures.
When she'd complained about this to Rose, her caretaker had smiled in a way that she didn't often do, with her tongue peeking out of her teeth and laughed. 'You'll see that someday,' Rose had promised. 'And you'll soar across the stars.'
Mass Relay:
When the Mass Relay was discovered, Rose wasn't quite sure what to think. She supposed that she should be happy- should could, if she wanted, take to the stars again. But there was something to perfect, too planned about the relays. Mentally gritting her teeth, Rose turned and looked at the young girl that she raised. And she forced the thought to the back of her head.
Leatha could see the stars. That was enough.
Alliance:
Leatha is eighteen years old when something that had been coming for a long, long time happened.
"I'm going to enlist." Rose looked up from where she was sitting, in the latest of a long line of living rooms
"I thought you would," she answered, before dropping the book she had been reading, and giving the girl that she had begun to think of as a daughter a searching look.
VicorywarloveComamnderWarHER O.
"Thank you, Rose. For everything."
Rose grinned, her tongue poking out from a gap in her teeth.
"No, Leatha. Thank you."
New Beginnings:
Leatha has been gone for a month, and Rose has not been idle. Not that she had ever been idle, even when Leatha had been young. There had been things to do and people to save, and now was no different. Except that something was coming. She had had that feeling for a while now- a prickling in the back of her mind, the sudden feeling that something important was about to pass. Absentmindedly she wonders whether or not the Doctor feels like this, feels time swirling, before she banishes the thought. She doesn't think about the Doctor that much these days.
A noise in one of the back alleys' of Chicago that she's taken up residence in recently breaks her train of thought, and with the practiced ease of someone who's been doing this for over one-hundred years now, she draws her gun. Aiming it at the wobbling crate, Rose narrowed her eyes and powered up her weapon.
"Come out. Slowly."
A tuft of brownish red hair appeared first, followed by a pair of green eyes on a small, malnourished face. The eyes blink warily, and Rose stares.
HEROcommanderhumanNormanyHEROReApErsShepardparagonrenagadeHERO
"Who're you then?"
"Shepard."