DISCLAIMER: I do not write stories on this site for payment. I make no money from this. I don't own the sandbox, I just like to play in it.
A/N: I intend NOT to do regular author notes, but they may happen. This story may be very different from what you might expect. It is an AU Sci-fi story, anything could happen. Given that it also heavily deals with "Time" it may seem to jump around compared to cannon, but this story represents its own time line and assumes the reader has a reasonably detailed knowledge of series 1-9. It starts in the last moments of the end of series 1 and rather quickly moves to the end of series 9. This story is NOT a complete rewrite, but does rewrite key moments of time and key plots of the cannon. Example, in this story, Rose was never in love with the doctor in a romantic manner. I hope you enjoy the story. Constructive criticism is welcome, flames are not.
Impossible Wolf
Chapter 1: Bad Wolf
"I am the Bad Wolf," Rose said to the Doctor. "I create myself." It was an incredible feeling to see all of time and space the way she could in that moment. She had come here with a mission to save the Doctor, but now that the moment had come, she had a chance to do so much more. She would have to be careful, but she would make this work.
"I take the words… I scatter them… in time and space," she told him. But he didn't know she was doing a lot more than that. Rose was, at that moment, part human and part TARDIS. She could see what she needed to see. As she was scattering those words where they needed to go, she was also looking for other events to prepare herself for in the future. When she saw Torchwood… the Cybermen and the Daleks, the wolf in her mind howled. Then she saw the Daleks again and the reality bomb, and this time the wolf snarled angrily. She had a lot of work to do still. "A message to lead myself here," she told the Doctor.
"Rose! You've got to stop this. You've got to stop this now!" the Doctor pleaded with her. He was terrified for her and shocked that she wasn't dead already.
Rose looked into her mind and her DNA and made the changes she would need to live the life she wanted. She saw getting trapped in another universe and decided to use that time to trigger the changes in her human form as it was the only way to preserve the time line. She looked back on the Doctor's time line, she saw a girl tell him which TARDIS to steal, and thought it odd, but looked back further still. She saw his time in the Academy and relived it all in a fraction of a second, before placing it aside.
She looked all around Gallifrey and realized why the Doctor left, but still made use of a lot of their knowledge, placing it aside as well. She began to follow his timeline forward and saw the time war, and the Moment. She implanted a link between herself and the Moment to prevent a horrible catastrophe.
Rose began to see the same girl over and over as she looked through the Doctor's timeline and she realized the girl was helping him, protecting him from something sinister. She vowed to help this girl anyway she could, but continued onwards.
She reached out and used her power to pull Donna Noble into the TARDIS just after the Doctor's hologram shut down. She knew he would need someone to help him through his grief and that the woman would die without his help.
She guided the TARDIS where it needed to crash after he regenerated again. She saw River Song become his wife and thought it a good match, and decided to make it a mission later to save her in the Library. She saw him finally meet the Impossible Girl that she had seen through his timeline and followed that thread closely until she saw how it happened.
Clara, her name was. And she was such a brave and wonderful girl, giving her life to save the Doctor, like Rose herself had just done, only knowing it was likely to be a one-way ticket. But Rose wasn't going to let that happen. She reached out again with her power and pulled the essence of the various shards of the girl back into her original being, and added a few changes to her as well. This one deserved to make a difference.
"You've got the entire vortex runnin through your head. You're gonna burn!" the Doctor was telling her urgently. Why couldn't he understand that he was her best friend and she wants him to be safe and never alone? And then she realized. He didn't think he was worth it. With all the good he's done, the people and worlds he saved and will save.
"I want you safe…" she began telling him. She wanted him to know how important he was not just to her and their friendship, but to the entire universe, and even all the universes to an extent. "… my Doctor. Protected from the false god."
"You cannot hurt me. I am immortal," the Dalek Emperor interrupted her. That was an interruption that she just could not let continue. She had work to do and she would be damned if these Daleks would stand in her way.
"You are tiny," she told it bluntly. There was no reason to mince words with insane Daleks, just erase them and move on. "I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence, and I divide them." She reached out with her mind and did exactly that. She focused on every atom that made them up, concentrating and preparing to shred them.
"Everything must come to dust," she said as if giving a lecture on the nature of time. "All things, everything dies." She pulled apart every atom so it no longer held a bond with anything else. She did this for each and every Dalek and their ships, one at a time, to ensure they could never come back, leaving them as just dust. "The Time War ends!"
The Emperor tried to put up a fight, tried to deny what was happing, so she made its demise slower. It should have known better than to piss her off. When it was over, she felt around with all her senses to ensure she got them all, and when she was satisfied the Daleks were no more, she got back to work.
Rose looked at the events around her getting trapped in the other universe, and was surprised to see that the Daleks there had stolen a prison ship made by the Time Lords, but also an experimental TARDIS. She looked to a point after the crisis was over, and was pleased the sphere was still there, it hadn't been sucked into the void. Then again, neither had the Doctor's TARDIS. She touched it with just enough of her essence to repair it, enhance it, and make it fully operational, as well as give her a proper personality like the Doctor's TARDIS.
She created two very special fob watches, very similar to those used by a chameleon arch. In them, she placed all the knowledge she set aside earlier, as well as a few more augmentations and memories of herself as Bad Wolf and all her plans as such. She reached across the void into the other universe, and dropped one of them to the sand in front of herself just as the Doctor's hologram vanished.
Rose then stepped forward in time in that universe, and found herself on the beach where the Doctor had just left her with his clone. She understood why he did that, but it was completely unnecessary and even a little foolish. She reached out with her power again and pulled herself back through to her own universe before the walls closed, and forward in time again to when the Void TARDIS would be repaired and complete. There she placed herself into a hammock that had been placed in a room set aside for her, and placed the second fob watch on the main console as she left.
"Rose, you've done it. Now stop," the Doctor said trying to get her to release the power, that should have killed her already, before it finally would. She had already saved his life and destroyed the Daleks, but he was afraid of what else she might try to do with that kind of power.
Rose wasn't done yet, though. She still had much to do. Some of it, however, didn't require much, and so she sent out echoes to transmit as stored holographic messages when they would be needed.
Time, ironically, was running out for her. She reached out for the penultimate time and altered the regeneration abilities of the Doctor and River Song. She didn't have the opportunity to make them such a conscious choice as she did with others, but she did make it a permanent ability before she pulled back at the sound of the Doctor's voice again.
"Just let go," he told her urgently. She was going to die before his very eyes. He couldn't do anything to stop it unless she was willing. He had to get through to her.
"How can I let go of this?" she asked. There was so much good she could do with this power, but even with the changes she made to herself, it was starting to overwhelm her. She had one last thing to do though. She couldn't let her brother figure die. She needed him, not just for brotherly advice and comradery, but also to help her advance her plans. "I bring life," she said, reaching out to him and pouring life and healing energies into him. She was starting to lose control though, and like with the Doctor and River, couldn't make his regeneration a conscious ability to adjust as he wanted. She was just glad she could make him live again to be honest.
"But this is wrong!" the Doctor said to her, still with urgency in his voice. "You can't control life and death!" He wished he could sometimes, but no one should have that kind of power. But here was his friend, his companion, doing just that. He felt a sudden grating on his time senses, a person had just been transformed into a fixed point! 'Oh no!' he thought. 'She's losing her control. She's going to die.' He wanted to scream because unless she was willing, he couldn't take the power from her.
"But I can," she said, the glow from her eyes fading again as she focused solely on him as she fought to regain her control. "The sun and the moon, the day and night…" she told him. It was all there for her to see and if only she had more time she could do more with it. She looked forward in time again, and saw briefly what she thought was all her hard work being shredded, and her heart broke. "But why do they hurt?" she asked him. She was trying so hard to put the power away now, before it completely overwhelmed her and destroyed her. She was able to store a fraction of that power away within herself, but the rest was killing her, and she knew it.
"The power's gonna kill you, and it's my fault!" he shouted. He didn't want her to die just because of some well-meaning mistake. She was an example of the best of human compassion, and now that was going to lead to her death. It just wasn't fair.
"I can see everything," she said as he looked away in sorrow and grief before turning back to look at her, pleading with his eyes to let him help her. "All that is… all that was… all that ever could be," she said in a pained voice. She had done what she could, but there was so much more and it hurt that she couldn't fix everything wrong in the universe in the short time she had this wonderful power.
His eyes widened as he realized she was describing something like how he could sense timelines, and how it troubled her to not be able to use what she had. He had to find a way to make that an opening if there was going to be any hope of saving her. He stood and looked at her, not as just another human, but as an equal. "That's what I see, all the time. Doesn't it drive you mad?" he asked partly in curiosity and partly as a suggestive command.
"My head," she cried. She was trying so damn hard to release the power back to the TARDIS before it could consume her, but a part of her wanted to let it. Then she saw an image flutter through her mind, a face, the girl that willingly offered herself as a sacrifice to the winds of time to save the Doctor. With one last mighty push of her power, she reached out and sealed the scar in the universe that caused the Doctor's timeline to be exposed like an open wound.
And with that final act, she was exhausted, no longer able to control what happened to her now, nor stop the splitting ache within her mind. "It's killing me," she admitted to the Doctor with a cry of pain.
"I think you need a Doctor," he told her in a way that managed to sound both cheesy and urgently serious at the same time.
She looked into his eyes as they took a step towards each other, and saw that vast mind of his working on something. Perhaps he had a plan! Maybe she would survive this after all. And then she remembered why she even had this power in the first place, to save the Doctor. Now he was going to have to save her from herself. But at least she had used that power to ensure he would be able to keep saving others as well, and that he wouldn't have to do it all alone.
The Doctor leaned in and kissed her lightly. Before, he might have been able to take the power another way, but now, he needed the proximity to be able to contain it even for a short time, so he kissed her, and drew the power into himself. As the power was flowing into himself, he used it to ensure that she was in fact, still alive. He didn't know how she survived, but she had. And then, when the he had the power drawn out of her and contained, she collapsed in his arms.
He set her down gently where he stood. He needed to do this quickly or he might not be able to regenerate. He stood back up and stared at the darkened TARDIS that she had stepped from, furious that his lovely machine would cooperate in such a dangerous plan. He did his best to make his displeasure known within his mind, before releasing the power back to the TARDIS.
He staggered as it fully left him, and he realized that even though he only held the power for a few brief seconds, he really was going to need to regenerate. He wondered how this pink and yellow human had been able to hold on to it for so long. He then picked her up and carried her into the TARDIS, taking off into the time vortex so he could regenerate safely, hopefully with a chance to explain it to Rose before he changed right in front of her.
"Where am I?" Clara said as she was falling through something she didn't have the capacity to describe. She was confused, and for some reason felt grateful to even know her own name. She suddenly felt a rush of air and a hard surface rush up to meet her from underneath.
She rolled over and tried to push herself up, feeling hard ground under her hands and knees covered by a layer of wispy fog. "I don't know where I am," she called out in a frightened voice.
"Clara," she heard a soft voice whisper from the darkness above her. "Oh, you impossible girl," the voice said again, this time sounding more concentrated. Clara whipped her head around looking for the source of the voice, until she saw a purple cloud of… something form in front of her. The edges of the cloud began to glow with a brilliant golden energy and took the shape of a girl about her age, with long, flowing golden hair and matching glowing golden eyes.
"Who are you? Where am I?" Clara asked in confusion and not a small amount of panic.
Instead of answering, the girl raised her arms slowly, her palms glowing with the same brilliant golden energy, and she was drawing in countless orbs of golden light towards her palms, and then redirecting them at high speed directly at Clara!
Clara raised her own arms in an attempt to shield herself, but found the orbs of energy absorbing directly into her skin, leaving a warm, soothing feeling behind. Her eyes sprang wide open as her memories began to come back to her with each orb that flooded into her.
"I am the Bad Wolf," the girl said after what felt like years of orbs flowing to her. Clara felt as though her life was starting to make sense now. She remembered the Doctor, the Great Intelligence, jumping into the Doctor's timeline to save him, and everything else from each of the lives she had lived.
"I created this place," Bad Wolf started, "to bring the pieces of you back together. You saved someone dear to me in ways the human mind can't yet comprehend, and in doing so, became dear to me yourself. Not only that, your actions directly and indirectly saved the whole of the multi-verse. You will not be condemned to be scattered on the winds of time."
"Bad Wolf? That sounds familiar. I saw you in the Doctor's past, didn't I?"
"It will take time for you to fully reintegrate your memories, but yes."
"Where are we?" Clara asked again, trying to understand more.
"In reality, we are nowhere. This place doesn't exist. It is an abstract, a place made of thought existing only in a space between seconds but where time has no meaning."
"Clear as mud that was," Clara said with a sarcastic lilt to her voice.
Bad Wolf smiled at her. "That's that Impossible Girl I know."
"How exactly do you know me, or that nickname?"
"I am the Bad Wolf," she responded as another orb of swirling energy formed in her outstretched hand. This orb was a mix of purple and golden energy swirling together. Bad Wolf smiled, and without warning launched the ball of energy forward.
Clara gasped as the orb struck her and absorbed into her immediately. She saw flashes in her mind, glimpses of Rose Tyler and her desire to save the Doctor, like Clara herself had recently done. She also felt warm and safe in a way she couldn't put into words. "Rose?"
The girl's eyes widened a fraction at that. "Oops. I guess I gave you a few more memories than I intended. I'm starting to lose control of the power I absorbed and need to get back," she said, avoiding a direct answer. "This place will stay here within the Doctor's time line until he comes to rescue you."
Bad Wolf began to glow brighter and a faint wheezing and groaning sound could be heard as the girl began to disappear.
"Wait!" Clara shouted, but it was too late. Bad Wolf was gone, and Clara was still rather confused. Suddenly, she heard a thud, and looked around in a panic, unable to tell where it was coming from.
"Doctor?" Clara asked, hoping it was him approaching. When she got no reply and still couldn't see beyond the small area she was in, she grew worried and frightened. "Doctor!?" She called out, looking for her friend, before she broke down in tears again. "I don't know where I am," she cried softly. Maybe the time winds had destroyed her sanity and this was what going crazy felt like.
"Clara," she heard the Doctor's calm voice call out. "You can hear me, I know you can."
Captain Jack Harkness was had fallen asleep in his office in Torchwood Three. That wasn't uncommon though, which is why he had a little room set up directly beneath his office that he could get to by a locking hatch.
It was early in the morning, just before sunrise, when he was woken by an urgent beeping from his wrist device. He didn't remember setting an alarm, so he checked, and found that it was indicating a message waiting for him. He pressed the play button and was shocked the rest of the way to wakefulness when a holographic image of Rose, the girl he had thought of like a little sister, appeared from his device.
"Hello, Jack," the hologram said with a smile on her face. "If you're seeing this message, then something terrible has happened, or rather is about to happen. Either way, it can't be avoided. Not for lack of desire, but because preventing it would actually cause far greater problems. I promise to explain everything to you when I can, but for now, I need to ask you for the biggest favor of my life. Just after lunch, I need you to go to Torchwood Tower. Bring a lory.
"After things settle, but before the cleanup crews move in, I need you to get something out of there. On the ground floor, in a secure vault chamber, is a large metal sphere. Please, Jack, move it somewhere safe where it won't be damaged, destroyed, or disturbed in any way. I can't begin to describe how important it is that only you know where it is and that you don't try to force your way into it. When a girl named Clara comes to the travel office looking for you and the sphere, take her to it."
The hologram blinked off and Jack was left staring where it had been. He knew Torchwood One had something to do with the ghosts around the world and that the sphere Rose mentioned had something to do with it too, but he'd been able to get very little information from the home office about it. And now it would seem that his little sister, and by extension likely, the Doctor, were also involved.
"What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Rose," he asked himself softly. How was she involved? What was going to happen? Clean up crews must mean something big was going to happen so he should be able to get the sphere out before the chaos really starts, but why did she want it moved and left undisturbed? And who was this Clara she mentioned?
Jack left his office to prepare for a sudden trip to London and plan a steak out. It was going to be a long few days, he just knew it.
"Where are we going?" Ashildr asked in amusement and curiosity.
"Gallifrey…" Clara started. Something was niggling at the back of her mind, but she couldn't focus on that right now. "Like I said, Gallifrey," she continued before pulling a lever and the TARDIS shuddered. "The long way around."
All of a sudden, the TARDIS lurched violently in another direction causing both of them to grip the console to remain on their feet. "What was that?" Ashildr asked, just before a hologram appeared before them.
"Clara, Clara, Clara…" the hologram of a blonde girl in a pink jacket said. "I knew you were impossible, but isn't this taking it to the extreme?"
"You!" Clara exclaimed. "I know you. I've seen you before. Where have I seen you before?" she asked in confusion.
"You might recognize me," the hologram said began. "But I doubt you'd remember me. The only time we met was when you were scattered through the winds of time."
Clara gasped. Only the Doctor had found her in the abstract space within his timeline. He didn't even know how she got there or how that space came to be.
"I created a safe space for you to be put back together, as it were. A place where you could be put back together like a puzzle and from where the Doctor would be able to rescue you," the hologram spoke again. "But you were, for all intents and purposes, dead. In order to revive you, I had to add a few special pieces to your puzzle. One of those pieces was an ability similar to regeneration, but without the limits meaning it is a conscious ability and the only thing that can prevent you from regenerating is your conscious desire not to."
The two travelers were shocked at this, but Ashildr was even more shocked when the hologram turned towards her, almost as if looking right at her, and it scowled. "You, are a great mystery. I am the Bad Wolf. I have seen the whole of time and space and I still do not know what to make of you. You have changed much from the simple village girl you started as. You we will decide about later."
The hologram turned back towards where Clara was standing still with a shocked look on her face. "You need to go back to Gallifrey, right now. I know it sucks having to go through what you're about to with the raven, but you're going to regenerate. They said you died on that street, but never said anything about which death. Go, regenerate, then go home and rest. When you wake up, look for a Captain Jack Harkness. You should be able to find him in a little travel office on Cardiff Bay. Tell him Rose sent you to look for Jack and the Sphere. This is urgent, your future could depend on it. Go!" And with that, the hologram blinked off.
They stared at each other for a minute, before Clara adjusted some of the controls and then headed down a hall to the wardrobe room where she had left her other clothes. If she was going to be put back into the moment, she'd better look the part.
When she came back into the console room, they were just beginning to land in the extraction chamber when she turned to speak to Ashildr. "I don't know what all happened, or what's about to happen, but if Bad Wolf was right, and I do have a future, I want to meet it with a pulse."
"How do you know you can trust her?" the other girl asked.
"I know she saved my life before. I knew it as soon as I saw her. I've known her before somehow. I have to trust her. As soon as I'm out those doors, you have to take this TARDIS and fly away before the Time Lords get you."
Clara walked over to the doors, turned briefly to smile at the other girl, then stepped out, closing the door behind her. She was surprised to find the outer shell was no longer a diner, but back to its gray cylindrical form. As soon as the TARDIS disappeared, a dark-skinned woman wearing the same uniform the General had walked into the room.
"Where did that TARDIS go? Where is the Doctor?" the woman asked.
"The Doctor is back with his own TARDIS. Are you… are you the General?"
"Yes," she said simply.
"Blimey, the whole regeneration business can really do a number on you, can't it?"
"Honestly," the woman said with a faint smile, "the Doctor did me a favor. The only time I've ever been a man, that last body. It's good to be back to normal."
"Well then, all's well in the world," Clara said sarcastically. "I still hate you lot for what you put the Doctor through. But I need to be put back before time will heal, isn't that right?"
"I'm sorry," the General said.
"Don't be sorry for me. Be sorry about your world and what's happened to you all to make you such a despised people."
The General hung her head, knowing that it was true, but spoke anyway. "Are you ready to be put back, then?"
"Yeah, let's get it over with," Clara said as she walked over to the still open doorway leading back out to Trap Street. "I just walk back to where I was, and time restarts, yeah?"
"Yes," the General confirmed.
"Well, here goes nothing."
"Good luck, ma'am," the General said.
Clara walked back out onto Trap Street and saw the Doctor still frozen in the doorway watching, and she wished she could do something for him to prevent him being trapped in the confession dial, but knew she couldn't.
She stepped up to where she was facing the raven and resumed her position, hoping that she would still live but not change like the Time Lords do. She rather liked herself as she was. A moment later, there was a resounding crack and the raven struck her causing her to gasp, before a plume of black smoke escaped her and she collapsed.
When she regained consciousness a few minutes later she looked around and saw no one on the street. She looked back to where the Doctor had been and saw a closed door. She realized he must have just been teleported. She did the only thing she could do… she ran. All the way out of Trap Street and back home like the Bad Wolf told her to. She sat down on her bed thinking about everything that had happened. She couldn't believe she was still alive and had a pulse again. She laid down to relax and catch her breath, and promptly fell asleep.
When Clara woke again, she realized she had been asleep for two days! She got a shower and made some breakfast while contemplating what to do next. She did trust Bad Wolf, she felt… something… like a bond of some type with her, but did she really want to go through with this? But then she remembered that it was going to be important for her future somehow, and want to get a train ticket to Cardiff.
Jack was sitting in a secret room in the travel office itself. He had closed and sealed the Torchwood Three hub years ago, but still periodically checked in on rift activity, hence the secret room with a computer terminal tied to all the instrumentation equipment.
He was surprised to hear an alarm beep indicating someone was approaching the old travel office. It too had 'closed' years ago, so no one should be coming to it. Checking the monitor, he saw a relatively short girl with shoulder length dark brown hair walking towards the seemingly abandon travel office.
Jack wondered if he was finally going to be able to fulfill Rose's last request or shoo away another local teen looking for a place to bring their friends for a part or a scare thrill. He thought back on the message Rose had somehow left for him. He had thought it was such an odd message at the time, but went along with it. After he secured the sphere, he started helping out with the cleanup and was devastated to find Rose was on the list of the dead.
He had wanted to rant and rave and take a sledge hammer to the damn sphere for the part it likely played in the events that led to her death. But Rose had asked him to keep it safe for some reason. She asked him to watch over it and take a girl to it when she came looking for him.
Wondering if that day had finally come, or if he was going to have to play the part of irate owner cleaning out an abandon office space, he walked out into the little travel office and unlocked the doors before grabbing a box and pretending to clear the place out.
A few minutes later, the door opened hesitantly, and the girl stepped in slowly. "Hello? Anyone here?"
Jack walked into the main room with the box in his hand. "The travel office is closed," he said briskly in case he needed to chase this girl away. Would be a shame to have to do that though, she was quite beautiful.
"Sorry," the girl said. "I don't mean to interrupt. I just have a quick question if you don't mind and then I'll probably be on my way."
That was new. Usually, when he had to chase people away he just had to give them a look and they apologized pretending they walked into the wrong area and ran off. "Well?"
Clara looked him over, thinking this seemingly bitter man couldn't be who she was asked to find, but had to try anyway. "Are you… Captain Jack Harkness?"
"Why would you think that?" Jack asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Rose sent me here to find Jack and a sphere."
Jack sucked in a breath and his entire demeanor softened. "Are you, Clara?"
"How did you know that?" she asked suspiciously.
"Captain Jack Harkness," he said as he reached out to shake her hand. "Rose left me a message to be expecting you." With that said, he came around the desk and led her back to the door. "I was given specific instructions to take you to the sphere," he said as he led her around the corner towards the water tower.
"And what is this sphere?" Clara asked curiously as they walked.
"No idea," he told her. "I was told that you needed to see it, though. Here we are," he said as they stepped onto the sidewalk.
"This looks more like a tower than a sphere," Clara said.
"It is, but this is the only way into the chamber anymore," he replied as he pressed a button on his wrist device and they began to descend.
"Well," Clara said as they continued downwards and she saw another section of the walk slide into place above them where they had just been. "There's something you don't see every day. And I've seen some pretty wild things."
"I'll bet you have," he said with a smirk as he stepped off the paver and led her down a tunnel off the side of the large room they had descended into. It went on like a cave, deeper underground, until it opened into a large chamber with what looked like a large metal ball.
"So, that's the sphere then," Clara decided to state the obvious. "What now?"
"She didn't leave any instructions for you on what to do when you got to it?"
"Nope. Just a message to find you and have you bring me to it."
Before either of them could say anything more, the sphere began to glow, faintly at first, but then brighter. As the glow brightened, they could see the shape changing as well, like a blob almost, reshaping itself.
When they glow disappeared, they both stared in awe. Where there had been a metal sphere, there was now a large, opaque, purple crystal in the shape of a teardrop with the tip pointing up and it had a faintly glowing purple ball at the top of it. The entire thing appeared as if it were carved out of a single giant piece of opaque amethyst.
They looked at each other in confusion mixed with amazement. It was a beautiful crystalline sculpture. They walked around it and realized that the dimensions were perfect all the way around. It seemed to be absolutely flawless. That was until a crack appeared. But it wasn't so much a crack, as it was a perfectly straight, vertical line, that grew wider as what was now obviously doors began to open.
Rose was staring at the beach where the Doctor's hologram had just been. She was trying to tell him not to be on his own, to find someone to travel with. She wanted him to never be alone again, at least not for long periods of time. His image had just flicked away, when she saw something fall to the sand.
She reached down and picked up what turned out to be a gold fob watch covered in intricate circular designs that reminded her of similar designs she had seen somewhere in the TARDIS. She flipped it over a couple times, taking in the details. She could swear she heard a faint singing melody coming from it.
Curious, she pressed the button to open the watch and was surprised when a purple mist floated out of it and swirled around her head, before seeping into her eyes. And then she saw so many things. She saw the doctor growing up on Gallifrey, lessons from the Academy, the impossible Girl that sailed through the winds of time to save the Doctor, memories of the TARDIS, and most importantly, Bad Wolf and all she had done. With a cry of surprise, Rose collapsed.
Jackie, Pete, and Micky all ran to her fearing something terrible had happened. Pete checked and found she had a strong pulse and just appeared to be exhausted and asleep. Micky picked up the open watch he found next to her and recognized the writing on it from the TARDIS. He closed it and put it into her jacket pocket, thinking it was a memento of her time with the Doctor. Pete picked her up and carried back to his jeep where they all began the long drive back to London.
Rose was back on the beach again. She knew it was coming though. She'd had years to assimilate the memories and information that Bad Wolf gave her, and now she was starting to feel the pull inside of her.
"Doctor," she said to the clone. "I am so sorry that I can't stay. I wish I could help you, and later I will a bit, but right now, I have to go," she told him as she pulled him in for a hug as he looked at her in confusion. The Doctor had just left, so how was she going to go anywhere but with them?
Rose then let go and pulled her mum into a tight hug. "I love you, Mum. No matter what happens, always remember that. I promise I'll visit when I can. I should be back soon if everything works out."
She took a step back, and they stared at her in shock as her normally honey colored eyes suddenly flared bright purple, before she was surrounded by a brilliant golden glow. The Doctor's clone gasped.
"Bad Wolf," he said softly while Rose nodded at him. He then surprised her by smiling wildly at her. "I have no idea what's going on, but you've survived this long, so I'm sure wherever you're going, you're going to be brilliant!"
"What's happening? What's Bad Wolf? What do you mean going?" Jackie asked in concern until her daughter smiled brightly at her.
"The Doctor will explain Bad Wolf, but I'm about to be pulled back to our universe, Mum. I love you and I'll see you soon." There was a bright flash of golden light after she said that, and then she was gone.
When Rose reappeared, she was in a hammock in a room that looked like it was meant to be a bedroom, aside from the hammock. She was pleasantly surprised however to find that the hammock was quite comfortable.
"Hello, my Wolf." She heard in her mind. She was a little surprised at first, but then remembered from Bad Wolf how she would bond quickly with the Void TARDIS that she should now be in.
"Hello. Are you the TARDIS I was told I was transporting to?"
"I am. On the table next to you, are the essence container that your other-self left for your friend, as well as some other items I thought would be useful for you."
Rose looked at what seemed to be a nightstand, and found the golden fob watch that she knew was for Clara. Next to it were two wrist watches and two other devices that resembled her Doctor's sonic. They were a hand held tubular shape, but with a black and purple color scheme. Instead of the short round emitter at the top, there was a small rectangular black cage with four small translucent purple tubes surrounding a slightly larger similarly colored tube in the middle that protruded just slightly from the angular roof-like portion of the cage section. Instead of an end cap on the bottom, it tapered down to slightly smaller black dials with a few purple rings.
Rose thought they were lovely and put one of them in her pocket before placing one of the watches on her wrist. As she did that, the TARDIS spoke in her mind again.
"The watches are remotes to call for me if you need, as well as a communication device and a teleport. Basically, they are personal computers that can be worn on your wrist. The sonics can be plugged into a special port on the main console to recharge should you ever drain the power supply. Both the wrist computers and sonics can be operated with a thought."
"That's brilliant!" Rose exclaimed as she put the remaining three devices in another pocket so she didn't lose them. "I wonder why the Doctor's TARDIS didn't make something like that for him."
"As much as I love my sister TARDIS, she is an older model and is slower in picking up such designs, not to mention the Doctor is not the easiest three-dimensional being to live with."
Rose laughed at that. "That's the truth, but he's worth the trouble," she replied as she left the room and walked towards where she assumed the console room would be. "Did the Daleks damage you too badly after they stole you?" she asked with some concern.
"I have had sufficient time to remove all of their technology and repair all the damage they had done. Thanks to yourself and my sister TARDIS, I have even been able to perfect the advancements that made me such a precious secret experiment of the Time Lords."
Rose entered the console room and looked around in amazement. She had only really seen the Doctor's TARDIS before, and it was a mess of bits and bobs, as if he designed it especially so no one else could understand it. This console room though, was a work of art.
It was as if the outer shell took the shape of a sphere specifically to reflect this room. It was dark colors, mostly black and purple like her sonic, but with neat and organized panels on the side consoles. The central console was orderly with regular nobs, switches, buttons, dials, levers, and other assorted controls.
In the center of the main console, was a large translucent tube that had unbroken glowing purple rods surrounding a slightly larger central rod that was not actually connected to its counterpart below it.
Around the walls were various light fixtures that gave it a futuristic look, with tracks of light spanning the entire circumference of the room and along the rib-like struts that seemed to hold the walls together.
Rimming the upper portion of the room was a dark gray catwalk that led off to various doors, and below was another level with some access for repairs under the main console. All in all, it was absolutely beautiful!
"Oh, you are a beautiful girl, aren't you? I never used to be big into technology or gadgets or all that, but I can see now that it would be very easy to call you sexy," Rose said appreciatively to the TARDIS as it came to life around her.
"Thank you, my Wolf. It is a nice change to be appreciated. I detect two life forms approaching outside. Would you like me to change the outer shell to make entry and exit easier for you?"
"I didn't realize you could do that," Rose said with some surprise. "I suppose I just got used to the fact that the Doctor never fixed the chameleon circuit in his TARDIS. I admit to being quite fond of that blue box, but I would hate to cause any confusion. Can you make the outside into something that represents your true beauty and uniqueness?"
A hologram appeared in front of her showing a beautiful crystalline teardrop shape in a deep purple color and she loved it right away. "That's perfect. Will it take long to form?"
Rather than answer in her mind, the TARDIS vanished the hologram and then Rose watched as the doors changed before her very eyes. They became the same color, texture, and shape that had been displayed in the hologram and she was enthralled by them. She walked up to the doors and lightly stroked them, feeling the crystal-like material beneath her fingers.
"Dear, please set this as the new default outer shell. I doubt I'll ever want to change it, but just in case, this is what it should always revert to after a change," she said and the TARDIS hum changed pitch briefly in agreement.
"Well," Rose said after a moment to admire the change, "I guess it's time to welcome our guests." She took hold of the two inlaid handles etched into the crystal, and gently pulled the twin doors inwards to see a shocked Jack and Clara standing outside. "Did you miss me?" she asked with a cheeky smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Rose!" Jack exclaimed in shock as he rushed up to her and pulled her into a hug. "I thought the Doctor took you back to the parallel world to be trapped again."
Rose chuckled a little as she returned the hug. "Breath Jack. He did take me back there, so that I could help the clone Doctor, but Bad Wolf had some other ideas. I can still help him some, but that doesn't have to happen right away."
Jack stepped back slightly and took a good look at Rose. She was really there and alive. "How did you get back if he left you in the other universe though?"
"Bad Wolf pulled me back," Rose told him before she stepped away for a moment and turned to the girl that was there with him. "Hello, Clara. You might not rem…"
Before Rose could continue, Clara pulled her into an equally fierce hug, causing Rose's eyes to go wide with surprise as a little squeak escaped her lips. "It was you! I thought it was some cosmic being called Bad Wolf that stitched me back together and saved me from the time winds, but it was you all along, wasn't it?"
"How did you remember that?" Rose asked in surprise. "Those memories occurred within an abstract that your mind shouldn't be able to comprehend yet."
"I don't remember it all," Clara admitted. "But some bits and pieces started coming back to me after I regenerated."
"You regenerated?" Jack asked Clara in surprise.
"It's not exactly the same as a Time Lord's regeneration, Jack," Rose told him. "And I'm sorry I didn't have time to do the same for you when I brought you back. Clara and I can choose not to regenerate if we want to," she told him with a sad look and refusal to meet his eyes. She felt bad about his extended life not being a choice.
"You can regenerate too?" he asked her. The shocks just kept on coming, until he realized something. "I don't have to worry about outliving my little sister," he said in a low voice filled with awe.
"You don't hate me?" Rose asked him with a hint of surprise.
"I won't lie," he told her seriously. "There have been times when I wish I didn't have this very mixed blessing. But knowing that I'm not alone in it makes it even more worth it."
"I hope the Doctor takes it as well when he finds out he doesn't have a limit on his regenerations," Rose said quietly.
"Why don't we go track him down and tell him then?" Clara suggested.
"We will, eventually. But there are some things to do first," Rose said as she pulled the golden fob watch from her pocket and handed it to Clara. "You need to open that. It will complete your transformation that your regeneration started."
Clara did just that before anyone could say anything else. A purple mist enveloped her and settled into her eyes just like with Rose and the information flowing through her mind made her eyes get even wider in shock, before she collapsed into Rose's arms.
"What just happened?" Jack asked as he helped Rose to pick Clara up and take her down a hallway into a room that had a hammock in it. Once the girl was in the hammock, Rose took a deep breath.
"I have a lot to fill you in on Jack," she said as she led him out of her room and closed the door so as not to disrupt the sleeping girl's rest. "But wait till we get back to the console room at least. Clara needs rest to assimilate the changes in her mind."
"Okay. You can start with how the sphere is no longer a sphere and looks like a less chaotic version of the TARDIS," he told her as they walked back to the console room.
"So, you have your own TARDIS that can travel between universes?" Jack asked after Rose finished filling him in on everything.
"You make it sound like I own the TARDIS or something. It's more like she's a friend that's helping me out," Rose told him. "She can talk to me in my mind since I bonded with her."
"Seriously?" he asked with more than a hint of skepticism.
"Dear, could you please turn the lights off and back on again to show the good Captain here just how alive you really are?"
The lights in the console room turned off. Then a row of dimly lit decorative light fixtures same on showing various shades of blues and purples. Next came the brighter upper ring of small light panels around the top edge of the circular walls, the lights themselves chasing around the room three times before all turned on and brightened the room considerably.
"You've amused her, Jack. I think she likes you," Rose said with a half smirk.
"It's my winning smile and charming personality," he said has he jokingly preened.
"Come on over here," Rose said, still chuckling slightly as she walked over to one of the side control panels that housed a communications system.
"What's this section," Jack asked, having never seen any controls other than the central console in the Doctor's TARDIS.
"Communications," Rose said as she pulled out her sonic and started buzzing it over Jack's vortex manipulator for a moment before she pointed it at the control panel. "There, now you always have a link to us as long as we're in the same universe." She then repeated the process connecting his device with her own watch.
"Too bad you can't fix the rest of it," he said only half-jokingly.
"Oh, I didn't realize it was broken," Rose said taking her sonic to his manipulator again as he explained.
"Not so much broken as disabled by the Doctor, again."
"He just doesn't trust anyone, does he?" Rose said with some sorrow as she reactivated the device, and fixed some of the glitches it had and adding a couple little functions to it. "There, now it's fully functional, can also create a shield around you to stop most weapons fire, and has a tiny little deadlock seal around the main casing so the Doctor can't so easily meddle with it again. The deadlock can be turned on or off with a triple press of the secondary function key."
"I really need to get one of those," Jack said admiring the sonic.
"I thought you were more the sonic blaster type, Jack?" she said with another half smirk and a mental question to the TARDIS.
"That got destroyed a long time ago, but it was already useless then as I could no longer get battery modules for it," he told her.
"Is that so?" Rose quipped just before the TARDIS materialized a new sonic blaster onto the console next to him with a manual.
"WHOA! How did you do that?" Jack asked in shock as he picked up the blaster and looked it over with an admitting eye.
"I didn't." Rose admitted with a smile. "I just asked the Dear TARDIS if she knew where we could get something like that for you and instead she made it for you. Rechargeable with some new features she told me. I told you she liked you."
"Thank you," Jack said with an affectionate pat on the console, which caused the lights to flicker happily. "So, what's next?" he asked as he turned back to Rose. "Off to Pete's world?"
"Not yet," Rose told him. "Clara needs to rest first and when I went through what she is, I was out for a few days."
"Well then, how about we go get some dinner?" he asked with his usual disarming smile.
When Clara woke, she knew some days had passed, again. Most tellingly was her urgent need to use the restroom. She climbed out of the hammock, barely registering that's what she had been sleeping in, and rushed to what she assumed to be the restroom and was thankful she was right. After that was taken care of, she stripped off her clothes and took a long hot shower to wash away her few days of grime and give herself a chance to think.
While she had been unconscious, she had remembered all the different times a part of herself spent across the Doctor's timeline. She learned all about Bad Wolf, lessons the Doctor learned at the Academy and ones he missed or paid little attention to. She learned about TARDISes and time. She remembered everything about being uploaded into the data cloud, and the skills she picked up in it. She also remembered when she was stitched back together in a place that was nowhere and nowhen, and how close she became with Rose, or Bad Wolf, or whatever she was called at the time. She knew it was Rose's compassion that was the driving force behind Bad Wolf though.
It was all a lot to take in. She felt like her mind had been expanded to hold all these memories and new knowledge and senses. She briefly wondered if she was a Time Lord now, but after putting a hand to her chest, found she still only had one heart.
Stepping out of the shower, she dried off and went about her other morning routines before walking back to the dressing area where she had left her clothes, but found them to be missing. Where she had placed them, she now found two choker style necklaces that looked to be made from a beautiful dark purple metal of some kind with an amethyst in the same teardrop shape of this TARDIS attached in the middle.
Picking one up, she stood in front of the full-length mirror and put it around her neck to see how it might look. She was surprised when the ends sealed themselves together and the necklace began to glow. She stared with wide eyes at the mirror as a ripple of energy swept down her body leaving clothes in its wake.
She was now wearing a nice white shirt with a soft black jumper over it. Looking further down, she saw a short but not tiny skirt the same shade of dark purple as her necklace, followed by black tights that flowed all the way to her feet. She was surprised that shoes weren't part of the outfit, but realized that her feet still felt protected while still being able to acutely feel the floor beneath her.
Thinking the other necklace must be for Rose, she put it into one of the little hand pockets the jumper came with and realized the pockets were a lot bigger on the inside. Clara walked back to the bedroom and to the door, only after opening it did she realize this must be Rose's room. On the door was etched a wolf howling up at a moon that was shaped like a rose in bloom. It was a very pretty design and an amusing way to label the door. She was about to go looking for Rose when Rose found her.
"Good morning, Clara. How are you feeling?" Rose asked with concern.
"Fine," Clara replied as she turned to face her. "Great actually."
"That's good. I was just about to grab a quick shower before we head off to get some breakfast, so hopefully you can join us," Rose said as she reached for the door.
"Oh, here," Clara said as she pulled the matching necklace out of her pocket. "I just had a shower and when I got out, my clothes were gone and these were in their place. I accidentally put one on and it created these clothes for me."
"Thanks, I was wondering what I was going to do. Three days without a change was starting to drive me nuts," Rose said with a slightly forced laugh. "That reminds me, I have something for you too that the TARDIS made." She pulled the watch and sonic from her extra pocket and handed them over to Clara who looked at them with the same awe she had the necklace.
"These are lovely. Thank you," she said, and then patted the wall, adding, "both of you."
"I'll explain about them on our way to breakfast," Rose said. "Right now, I just want to get a shower so we can go get some food."
Clara laughed and stepped out of the way while Rose hurried into her room and to the shower. Clara continued on towards where she assumed the console room was as she placed the watch on her wrist and the sonic in her pocket until she learned a bit more about them. She walked along deep in thought. Something seemed a little off about Rose. While she had only 'known' Rose for a few minutes in the 'real world' or however you want to describe reality, she now had all her memories of all her shattered selves, as well as her time in an indescribable abstract time and space where Bad Wolf, or rather Rose, had stitched her back together. Her memories indicated they had grown quite close in that time and place, especially with that last blast of purple and gold energy. It had felt like they had shared something deeply personal but there was no real context to it, especially with the memories only now having been returned to her. It was all rather sudden, but still, there seemed to be something different about Rose, something she couldn't put her finger on. She was having a hard time describing even in her own mind what seemed to be off. It was as if the Rose she now remembered was behind a pane of glass that was fogged over.
When she found the console room, she put those worries aside as she also found Jack looking at his vortex manipulator as if it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. "Wha'chya doin?"
"Good morning, sleepy head," he said as he looked up at her. "Rose fixed this for me and now I can even use it just by thinking what I want to do with it."
"Huh, I wonder…" Clara started and then concentrated on her feet for a moment, and then some low-heeled shoes appeared, causing her to gain an inch of height and Jack to whistle appreciatively.
"That's a neat trick. How'd you do that?" he asked her.
"Found this earlier," she said pointing to her necklace, "where I had left my clothes when I went for a shower. Tried this on and it made clothes for me, nice ones at that. Figured if you can think at your vortex manipulator, maybe I could with this."
He turned his arm a bit and used his manipulator to scan her, occasionally tapping a control here and there. "Huh. That's an interesting idea. Clothes made of nanites, created, stored, and controlled by the computer core which is your necklace."
"Well now… that is a brilliant idea. Maybe this TARDIS doesn't need a huge wardrobe like the Doctor's. Maybe it's just got a little closet full of these little beauties," she mused.
"We can check after we get back from breakfast. I wouldn't mind one if we can find one in a style that's more… me. But I wouldn't ever want to give up this coat… too many fond memories with this coat."
Clara thought about it for a moment, and an identical coat, but sized for her, materialized around her. "A coat like this?" She asked with a smarmy grin, before focusing again, vanishing it.
"That's just cheating," he responded with mock outrage.
"Still, that's some really handy technology. Never have to buy another outfit again, or even have to worry about packing away your wardrobe if you move," she said with a note of admiration in her voice. "I'm assuming the necklace keeps the nanites in a pocket dimension."
"What makes you say that?" Jack asked curiously.
"Over the last few days in the land of nod," Clara said sarcastically, "I assimilated a lot of technical and theoretical knowledge. It's still a bit overwhelming honestly."
"So, it creates and stores nanites in a pocket dimension," he suggested, "and beams them out to take the shape of clothes that you think about? Imagine what other uses you could use such technology for," he said with a hint of awe in his voice.
"Reckon we'll find out," Rose said as she came up behind them. She had her necklace on and for her it created fairly long purple jacket that reached to about her knees, a dark gray tee shirt, snug but not tight black jeans, and black sneakers with purple trim and laces. "Our watches have a similar technology built into them apparently, but I haven't really explored that yet."
Jack's eyes bugged out at that idea. "I'm tempted to skip breakfast and start looking for a storage closet where cool toys like that are stored!"
Rose laughed as his exuberance. "We can look for the 'toy room' later, Jack."