A/N - If you want to know what the Wolf looks like in the flashback scene, visit my Pinterest board for this story. My username is my actual name, Tamara Reuveni, and the board is called The Doctor and the Wolf. Very easy to remember.
Chapter One - Waking the Wolf
"Faster!" Rose yelled.
Outside she could hear Mickey revving the truck's engines and smell burning rubber. The chain was pulled taut, but it was holding.
"Come on, come on," Rose muttered, her hands clenched into fists. "Come on, please, please, please."
And then the bolts snapped, and the console cracked open. Golden light spilled out, coiling and dancing in the air like something alive. And just like in Cardiff, Rose heard the heart of the universe singing inside her head, an achingly familiar song like a lullaby from her childhood. This time she didn't look away. She stared into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS stared back.
She didn't hear her mum and Mickey banging on the door, asking if she was all right. All she could hear was the song.
Hello, Wolf, it hummed happily. I've been waiting for you.
~o0o~
She stood alone at the center of the Hall of Judgment. The Tribunal looked down upon her from their thrones. On the balconies above, almost all the Time Lords and Ladies were assembled, awaiting the verdict. On some faces she saw disdain, on others pity, but none gave her hope.
The Tribunal finished its deliberations, and the Secretary stood up. "This court," he announced, his voice carrying to every corner of the cavernous room, "finds the Time Lady known as the Wolf guilty of treason and dereliction of duty. Before the sentence is passed, is there anyone here who would speak on her behalf?"
The Hall was silent. She hadn't really expected anything else. There were many on Gallifrey to whom she was a hero, but none of them were here. The Tribunal had made sure of that.
She looked up at her judges. "May I speak?" she asked humbly.
The man in the highest throne who was known as the Teacher stood up, his cold eyes glittering with triumph. "Do you wish to recant your treason and take up arms in defense of Gallifrey again?"
"No. I just want to say…" She raised her voice so they could hear her on the balconies. "You're pathetic! Call yourselves lords of time? You're not even people anymore. You started this war with your arrogance and your greed, and now you hide in your glass tower and watch while real people get slaughtered. And you accuse me of betraying Gallifrey? The Daleks aren't half the monsters that you are!"
She thought she saw the Teacher's jaw twitch in anger, but all he said was, "Are you quite finished?"
"Oh, yeah." She waved a hand airily. "Sentence away."
He resumed his seat and gestured for the Secretary to continue.
"By unanimous agreement," the Secretary announced, "the Tribunal sentences the Time Lady known as the Wolf to death. The method of execution shall be Mortality."
Her courage faltered. It was probably the kindest method of execution in the galaxy, but it was still dying. Her memories would be wiped. She would forget Gallifrey, her friends, her family, her whole life. Then her consciousness would be transferred into a primitive form, one with no ability to regenerate. There she would exist for the duration of the body's life span and die with it, but she would be someone else. The Wolf would be gone.
~o0o~
The Wolf looked into the Time Vortex with human eyes and remembered everything.
She remembered Gallifrey and three hundred years of love and loss, joy and pain. And she remembered her life on Earth, her mum and Mickey and going shopping with Shareen and eating chips and watching telly and doing a hundred normal things and never knowing why she couldn't be happy with that life like everyone else was.
But clearest of all, she remembered the Doctor, her wonderful Doctor who had shown her the universe.
She was Rose Tyler and she was the Wolf, and right now she had to save the Doctor.
~o0o~
"What are you? Coward or killer?"
The man known as the Doctor looked down at the device beneath his hands and remembered another day, long ago and still to come, and another weapon, a weapon powerful enough to end an endless war, but at a terrible cost. He'd made his choice that day, and he'd regretted it every day since. He couldn't change that moment, but he could still change this one.
He stepped back from the delta wave device. "Coward," he said softly but clearly. "Any day."
The Emperor regarded him from the holo-screen. The Doctor thought it looked disappointed. "The human race will be harvested because of your weakness," it said.
"And what about me?" he asked, trying not to sound like a scared little kid. "Will I become one of your angels?"
"You are the heathen! You will be exterminated!"
He felt a wave of relief so strong it made him weak at the knees. At least he would escape that fate. As someone once said, death was but the next great adventure, and he'd always loved an adventure. He stood up a little straighter. "Maybe it's time." At least Rose was safe. He held onto that thought as the Daleks closed in. Rose would live.
He closed his eyes and waited for the end. But it never came. Instead he heard an oh so familiar wheezing, groaning noise.
A faint memory - "It brings hope to anyone who hears it, no matter how lost. Even you, Doctor." Rose had said that to him once. Or someone who looked like Rose.
He kept his eyes closed, certain he was imagining it because it was the sound he most wanted to hear in all the universe.
Then the Daleks began to shout in alarm. "TARDIS materializing! TARDIS materializing!"
He spun around and there she was, his sexy little spaceship, blue as blue could be. But his momentary joy was quickly drowned by terror because if she was here, that meant…
The doors opened and out stepped Rose Tyler. But there was something very wrong about her. At first the Doctor didn't understand what he was seeing. She had absorbed the Time Vortex; he could sense that right away, but it should have been burning her up from the inside. She should have been glowing like a supernova. Instead there was just a faint golden mist clinging to her skin.
"Rose?" he said warily, taking a step toward her.
She looked at him, and her eyes were Rose's eyes. Perhaps a touch of gold in her irises, but still full of Rose's humor and compassion and love, love for him, for her Doctor. He reached out to her with his mind, and in an instant he understood. A Time Lord. There was a Time Lord in Rose's head, holding back the Vortex, controlling it.
He staggered back a step. It had been so long since he'd felt the mind of another Time Lord, he'd almost forgotten how it felt. Who are you? he asked silently.
I am the Wolf, she replied. It was definitely a she.
He tried to remember if he'd ever heard of a Time Lady called the Wolf, but it didn't sound familiar. A part of him wanted to laugh with joy. He wasn't the last one. He wasn't alone in the universe. But a much larger and less selfish part of him asked, How long have you been inside her? How much damage had this Wolf done to his Rose?
Since before she was born. For the crime of treason, the Tribunal sentenced me to death by mortality. They placed my dormant consciousness in a human fetus still in its mother's womb. As the child grew, her mind became interwined with mine. We were one and the same before we took our first breath. When I looked into the heart of the TARDIS, it awakened the dormant part of my consciousness, and I remembered.
The whole exchange passed in less than a blink, and then the mind of the Wolf withdrew just as the Daleks began to recover from their confusion.
Cries of "Exterminate!" filled the Gamestation control room. A beam of light shot past the Doctor, aimed directly at the Wolf. Before he could even cry out, she raised her hand and dissipated the beam harmlessly. She turned a cold glare on the Emperor, and the Doctor felt a surge of hope because that look was pure Rose Tyler. She was still in there somewhere.
"I'll deal with you in a minute," she told the Dalek ruler. "But first…" She turned away from the holo-screen. "I have to send myself a message."
The Doctor followed her gaze and saw the great metal letters spelling out Bad Wolf Corporation above the doors of the lift. She waved her hands and the first two words disappeared.
"What've you done?" he asked.
"Sent the words into the Vortex, scattered them across the universe to lead me back here."
"But why?" he demanded. "Why did you come back?" He could guess why Rose had looked into the Vortex in the first place. She had thought she could save him if she could just convince the TARDIS to take her back. But once the Wolf awakened and found herself free and in possession of a fully functioning TARDIS, why had she come here of all the places and times in the universe.
She looked at him as though he'd asked why birds flew or suns burned. "I want you safe," she said. "My Doctor." Then she turned back to the Emperor.
It quailed a little under her gaze, but it said defiantly, "You cannot hurt me."
She grinned, and for a moment she looked exactly like a hungry wolf. "Wanna bet?"
"I am immortal!" the Emperor said, but it no longer sounded sure.
"You are tiny," she said disdainfully. "I can see every atom of your existence, and I divide them." She raised her hands, and all around them Daleks began crumbling into dust. "Everything that lives can die. Even you."
The Doctor watched in dismay as his beautiful Rose turned into a vengeful god before his eyes. She was glowing brighter now, losing control. The power was consuming her.
On the holo-screen, the Dalek ships exploded into atoms and drifted away into the dark, the Emperor's final cries of "I cannot die!" silenced at last.
"Rose!" he called to her. When she didn't turn, he said, "Wolf!"
She looked at him, her eyes shining like Christmas lights.
"It's done. We're safe. You can stop now."
"But I could do so much more," she protested. "So much good. I can bring life."
Several decks below them, he felt something new awaken, something that should never have been. Oh, Rose. What have you done?
"No," he pleaded. "Your body's still human. You're going to burn if you don't let it go."
Even as he said it, she realized it was true. There'd been a growing pain in her head for several minutes now. She tried to release the Vortex back into the TARDIS, but it wouldn't go. She cried out, clutching her head. "Doctor, I can't … I can't get rid of it."
He caught her as she fell, gathering her in his arms. "I've got you," he murmured, stroking her hair. "It's okay. I've got you."
"Doctor," she sobbed. "It hurts. Oh, my head."
He looked at her and knew what he had to do. He leaned down and kissed her.
The Vortex burned like a thousand suns as it passed into him, and even so the feel of her lips against his was intoxicating. When the transfer was complete, he took a deep breath and blew the energy back into the TARDIS. He looked into her eyes, searching for any traces of gold. There were none. She was herself again, though he wasn't sure he knew who that was anymore.
She looked up at him, dreamy and unfocused. He wondered how much of this she would remember. "All better," he said, but he knew it wasn't by a long way. She had a fully awakened Time Lord consciousness in a human brain. They would have to deal with that sooner or later.
She gave him a sleepy smile. "Thanks to my Doctor," she said and slipped into unconsciousness.
He carried her into the TARDIS and laid her gently on the floor. He could sense the newly resurrected Jack running toward them, time distorting around him. He considered waiting, but a Time Lord-Human hybrid was going to make life complicated enough without adding a walking, talking, flirting paradox into the mix. Jack would survive. He would have no choice.
~o0o~
Rose woke up in the TARDIS. The Doctor was standing at the console, his back to her. She sat up, rubbing her head. "What happened?"
He turned toward her, and something in his face terrified her but she couldn't say what it was. "Which one are you now?" he asked. "Am I talking to Rose Tyler or the Wolf?"
She sighed. So he was going to be like that. "I told you, Doctor," she said, getting to her feet, "I'm not two people. I'm one person who temporarily mislaid about three hundred years worth of memories. Rose Tyler has always been the Wolf, and the Wolf will never completely stop being Rose Tyler no matter what happens from now on." She moved closer to him, trying to pinpoint that strange, terrifying something she could feel. Her senses were so dull in this body. "Do you believe me?" she asked.
After a pause that felt like a lifetime, he said, "Yeah. I believe you."
She sighed with relief. "Good." She looked around, suddenly noticing who wasn't there. "Where's Jack?"
"He's gone."
She looked at him suspiciously. "What do you mean 'gone'? Why didn't he come with us?"
He refused to meet her eyes as he said, "He died, Rose. The Daleks killed him."
She gasped. "No. Oh my God." Not Jack. Jack couldn't die. He was … he was Jack. He was a force of nature. The man who could flirt with a homicidal robot or sell snow to an Eskimo. The man who'd danced with her on the roof of an invisible spaceship in the middle of the London Blitz. He couldn't be gone just like that. But even as her mind refused to accept it, part of her -the part that remembered living through the Time War - knew the inescapable truth. Everything that lived could die.
She looked at the Doctor. "You're dying." It wasn't a question. That was what she'd sensed as soon she woke up.
He gave her a sad smile. "Fraid so."
"Because of me. You pulled the Vortex out of me."
"Had to. It was killing you."
"Can you regenerate?"
"What do you think I'm doing right now?"
She put a hand over her mouth to hold back a sob. "I'm sorry," she mumbled through her fingers. "I wanted to save you, and now you have to use up one of your regenerations to save me."
"Oh, don't worry about it," he said dismissively. "I've been waiting for a chance to get rid of this daft old face since the first time I looked in a mirror."
She smiled weakly. "I like your daft face."
He smiled back, the first real smile he'd given her since he sent her back home. "Listen, Rose. I don't have much time. I need to make you a promise, only I don't know who I'll be five minutes from now, so if I don't remember or I don't care, you have to make me keep my promise. Do whatever it takes. Don't let me break my promise. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"Good. I promise you, Rose Tyler the Wolf, that I will find a way to change you back into a Time Lady. I will search the universe over and I won't stop until I find a way to put you right again. Don't let me forget it."
She stared at him with wide eyes. She'd hardly dared to think that far ahead, let alone dream that it was possible. "I won't," she promised him in return.
Suddenly, he doubled over in pain. She wanted to run to him and hold him, but she knew it was too dangerous. The regeneration had taken hold of him completely. If she interfered with the process, he could die. She clung to one of the pillars of the TARDIS and prayed that he would remember his promise and care about her enough to keep it because if she had learned one thing about him during their travels it was that no one made the Doctor do anything he didn't want to do.
The energy poured off him, so bright she could barely see him, and then it slowly began to fade, and there was a new man standing in front of her. A man with messy hair and a considerably smaller nose. His beloved leather jacket hung on him like a circus tent.
"Hello," he greeted her cheerfully. His Northern accent was gone too, replaced by something similar to her own pattern of speech. Then he stopped, distracted, and began running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. "New teeth," he muttered to himself. "That's weird." He refocused on her. "Where were we?"
Rose held her breath.
"Oh, right." He grinned. "Changing you back into the Big Bad Wolf.