"I always knew you'd leave." He blinked in surprise; not because of what she said, but the way she said it. Sure. Resigned. Her expression was somber and her eyes were dark, even while she took a deep breath and mustered up a tiny quirk of her lips. "Come on, if we walk for a ways we can kill some time waiting for our ride."
And that was all she said on the matter. No amount of talking around the subject or addressing it directly could get another peep out of her, Rose didn't talk about being left in Pete's Universe on the sly by his Time Lord half. He talked and Rose listened, she answered when he asked a question, but she offered no opinion on his actions and he took comfort in that, her continuing to see him as he was, the Doctor, human-ish or not.
..o0O0o..
Eventually they were fetched, hours later as Jackie liked to remind him, and he was settled in with Rose without question. When he started drowsing mid-sentence, she settled him in her bed. When she grew tired, she joined him, and he woke up to her tucked against him, close enough to count her eye lashes. They developed a routine as much as he was loathe to admit it, and as the days passed by he developed itchy feet and a guilty conscience. The desire to travel was stronger than he'd thought. Keeping it to himself only exacerbated the problem until one day he left and didn't return for three days.
When he did show up again, it was to find Rose in their flat, cup in hand at the table, and a slump to her shoulders, gazing at nothing. The door opening should have been loud enough to garner attention but Rose remained where she was, attention lost a million miles away. Or so he thought.
"How was your trip?" she asked, calm. She took a deep breath and sat up straighter, gathering herself back into a stronger shape. "Find anything interesting?"
He answered with enthusiasm even as he watched her, drawing closer in a side winding pattern as he took off his coat and put down the bag he had come through the door with. Rose continued to look into the middle distance, cradling her cup between her hands in front of her mouth, elbows balanced on the tabletop. When his prattling garnered little in the way of actual responses from her, he moved up to her side and addressed her directly. "Rose?"
She looked up at him and he saw her eyes were dark again with some unknown feeling, like they'd been when they'd been left here, and he didn't know what to make of it.
"Hm?"
"Are you alright?" he asked and when her look turned wry, he inwardly cursed himself.
"I'm always alright."
He knew she'd say that.
..o0O0o..
It took two more disappearances before he felt like the obvious had clubbed him over the head. Rose had taken each of his sudden absences in stride and never held it against him; but she was very aware that he'd never asked her along, and how each time he vanished, it was done without warning or reassurance that he would return. Each time he returned, he would find Rose alone somewhere, always staring at nothing, lost in thought, shoulders slumped. Defeated. Certainly, when he made himself known, she would pull herself together, shake off whatever mood she seemed to sink into and act as though he had never left; but he wondered...
He'd been fidgeting with his house keys. They had made a tiny jingle. Such a tiny noise, such a massive clue; because Rose had heard it. She wandered into the kitchen where the Doctor was filling the biggest mug he could find with tea and kissed him on the cheek, patting the spot fondly if a little sadly, before wandering to her room where she changed quickly and left for work.
It struck him as he boarded the bus later not long afterward, on his way to somewhere else, that Rose had known he was leaving again and used what she'd known to determine how she acted.
He gave no warning, so he must not want her to know. He didn't treat his return as anything special, so coming back to her was nothing to get worked up about. He didn't ask questions about her in his absence, so can't have been terribly interested. He never asked her along, because he didn't want her with him.
He kept leaving, because he wanted to leave.
He kept leaving when she wasn't looking, so she left to give him his opening.
A ball of dread filled his stomach, made worse when it finally hit him.
I always knew you'd leave.
Rose knew him better than he knew himself. He felt like a fucking idiot as the thought unraveled inside of him. She could tell he was restless, how he jittered with it, the little sound of him playing with his keys giving away his imminent departure; she could tell he wasn't happy and she let him go without a fuss, just the way he liked. Greeted his return with interest but not excitement, because his return was temporary, and she was always mindful that a hard deadline was coming. Ice began to creep in his veins as he realized that she was distancing herself emotionally because he'd become uncertain, inconsistent. He wondered if she were afraid he'd never come back someday.
You can spend the rest of your life with me...
His eyes widened.
But I can't spend the rest of mine with you...
Oh god. What was he doing?
There was mild chaos as he cut his plans short in a desperate scramble to get back to Rose as soon as possible. His mind had been alight with his epiphany as he caused a small riot to slip from one bus to another without going through the hassle of changing his ticket (or paying for it).
He'd been setting this up since France, he thought ruefully, laying down the experiences needed to make Rose doubt him and his desire to live the domestic life with her, and, he realized too late, doing nothing but reinforcing the idea that he could and would abandon her at any given moment.
When he returned he entered as quietly as possible, morbidly curious to see if she behaved differently out of sight in his absence. He found her in her bed, pressed into the wall, crying as quietly as possible into her blanket. Her misery seemed to rise sharply as her crying became anguished and her figure trembled, before abruptly losing steam and going limp, her tears petering down to weak sniffles and her hand appearing to wipe her face. He felt like his guilt was complete.
She jumped when he knelt on the bed, almost panicked as his hands closed around her shoulders, unaware she wasn't alone. But she froze when he turned her and she saw it was him, caught out with her sadness on full display with no way to deny what he saw.
He pulled her into a hug and held her long after she relaxed into his embrace and started returning it. The talk they had that day led to him asking her to come with him and while the joyous look she gave him filled his heart with answering happiness, the cautious hope in her expression also made him feel like the biggest heel ever.
..o0O0o..
Funny thing about time passing. You don't notice it.
Morbidly funny really, the Doctor reflected as he stared at his reflection in the mirror, a quick-slow crawl-sprint to the end; you don't even notice when your hair starts going gray or lines develop on your face, not until there's too many to be denied.
It had taken him more than a decade to notice he wasn't aging human slow. He looked the same now as he did then, and while he stared miserably at his unchanging reflection, he cursed himself here and across the void for doing this to him. He thought of Rose, how he was still going to live through the agony of watching her age and die long before him. He felt robbed of that lifetime he expected to have with her, matched close enough that they wouldn't be parted for long at the end, he felt cheated of the assurance of his own short life and the relief of knowing he wouldn't have to face the future without her. He wondered if Rose had noticed yet.
He may have been out of regenerations, become a partial human hybrid, and have a considerably shorter life expectancy than before, but it was looking like he would still have centuries ahead of him. In a strange universe. Alone. Truly alone.
He cried.
..o0O0o..
He vanished again. He was good at it.
Three weeks. He couldn't even tell you about the places he had been, the urge to run had been dizzying and he'd spent the whole time lost in a miserable fog of indecision and anguish until the urge to see Rose again grew too strong to be denied.
She wasn't in the flat when he returned, nor was she at work or at her mum's. He refrained from actually speaking with Jackie who was just as quick to smack him in her sixties as she had been in her forties. He checked Rose's usual pit stops but everywhere he looked he came up empty. He eventually returned to the flat to think and wait.
Three days after his return he was gearing up to a really impressive hysteria, still having not seen hide nor hair of Rose, when the front door opened. He tore into the living room to see her walk inside, a tired cast to her shoulders but a determined weight in her movements as she dropped a black bag on the carpet and staggered doggedly to the couch. She had a grim set to her face that only darkened when she heard him say her name.
Ignoring him she slumped into the cushions with a relieved breath, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. In sharp, jerky movements she unbuttoned her jacket and stripped off the gloves she'd been wearing. His eyes widened to see the alien tactical vest previously hidden and the angry red lines that seared across her hands, sure signs of torture.
"I'm surprised you're here." She said honestly, still not looking at him. "I thought 'this time, this time, he's not coming back'." A hand sank into the chair with purpose to pull out a bottle of vodka, surprising the Doctor who had no idea she had stashed booze in the furniture. With a sharp twist she had the cap off and taking a deep draw, sighing with appreciation. She wiggled the bottle. "Haven't eaten yet, alcohol should hit delightfully quick."
He asked where she'd been which finally made her look at him. The half-lidded, somewhat disbelieving look she gave him unsettled him. Then she seemed to shake off the bitter edge and answered.
"Deep cover. I just got back planet side a few hours ago." She flexed her hands, closing her eyes as the pain throbbed in time with the curl of her fingers. "Let myself get snatched by some slave traders from the outer Andromeda system to find where they were parking their galley and get back the people already missing." She cringed when a line across the back of her left hand broke open, weeping blood slowly, "'S' long mission. Made a bit of an impression on my captors, fought harder than th' others, killed a guard," the grin she flashed was a wild thing, "got listed as a potential for the fighting pits instead of the pleasure houses. This," she raised her hands a bit, "is a parting gift for destroying their engine and getting all the slaves out on their emergency vehicles. Didn't know braided steel could be used like that."
"How-" he stopped and tried again, "how did you escape?"
"I strangled their leader with the cable he was maiming me with." She said bluntly. Lurching forward, she forced herself to her feet, spots of blood dripping across the armrest and the floor. She groaned. "I need to sleep now. I stay awake any longer I'm gonna start babbling about air gardens and funny succulents."
He caught her up in his arms before she could start for the bedroom and for a long moment she held herself rigid, refusing to give, before sighing at the warmth of the Doctor's embrace and relaxing in to him, letting him pick her up and carry her to bed where he treated her hands while she slept.
Any distress he felt was only compounded when he removed her jacket to reveal the red scorch marks traveled up her arms to disappear into her shirt sleeves. He stripped her of the vest (a design he recognized now and felt a chill pass through him at how close her escape had to have been) but left her clothes undisturbed and climbed into the bed with her, holding her close.
..o0O0o..
He didn't run again. Not without her. He'd gotten a stark reminder than a human lifetime could and would be cut short whether he was there or not and it would kill him no matter how it happened; the regret would hurt all the same. That 'mission' into space was the last of its kind, he went out of his way to make it so.
Rose had been alone in enemy territory and at their mercy for twelve days and she showed it. She was gruff, and defiant, meeting his eyes boldly only when he asked if she'd had another choice when it came to the lives she took. Eyes flashing but words carefully chosen, she told him she wouldn't audition for a decent pleasure house even if it meant better treatment. She flashed that wild smile again, filled with teeth that tear, and he felt something had come undone in his absence and he hated it.
He noticed too that she watched him. Wary, waiting. He would catch her sometimes, standing at the window with a cup of tea; she may have been facing the view but her sight was always turned to the corner of her eye as she tracked his movements whenever he passed the front door. She didn't do it often, but when she did, he always felt a twinge of sadness that she didn't believe he would stay with her.
Today he'd dropped his keys while she was stirring a pot on the stove and she'd stilled completely for a beat before picking up like she'd never stopped.
He wrapped his arms around her and teased her mercilessly to make her laugh. He couldn't make her stop expecting him to leave, he'd have to live with her uncertainty of him until the memory of his choices faded from painful shards to hard learned lessons.
..o0O0o..
It took what he felt was ages before the wariness lapsed from her eyes but, as Time passed, she started to trust him again; and the next time he felt the need to run, she'd come home to find him with two bags, and their passports in one hand, while his other hand was out, waiting for hers.
They were going to make the most of this.
..o0O0o..
"Why didn't you say anything?" He asked her one day. "Surely you've noticed."
"Noticed what?"
"That I'm not," the words stuck in his throat. Sadness leaked into his expression, aching and lonely. "That I'm,"
"Shh" she hushed him, hands gentle as she cradled his face, brushing her lips along his cheeks and carefully light over his mouth, "it's alright."
"No it's not," he said faintly, staring at her unblinkingly as though to remember her every detail. "It's not."
"I've got you. I promised didn't I? I'll never leave you."
That only made him cry. She held him when he dropped completely into her embrace, her hands carding through his hair.
"Silly Time Lord" she teased and roused him to meet her gaze again, "haven't you noticed?" A funny emphasis on 'you' brought him up short. Her gentle expression was tinged with triumph. "Look at me Doctor. Look at me."
..o0O0o..
I create myself.
..o0O0o..
"You always knew I would leave."
The accusation was pained and wrapped in a tone of epiphany. He'd been thrown for the ultimate loop when he realized she had foreseen this.
She clasped his hand firmly between her own. Her hands were just as young and toned as when he'd met her. His were showing age after three hundred years. They'd run long and far, left earth and came back and were returning to it now and it was while he was reminiscing about going noticeably gray that he had looked at her and been brought up short by the fact that she wasn't. She looked no different than she always had. He knew then that time had crept up on him in a reversal of roles he couldn't have seen coming. Then the obvious hit him: she did, once. Long ago and worlds away, she must have seen.
"My Doctor." was all she said, possessive and adoring.
"You're going to outlive me." He voiced it, sounding strained and tormented. "What have I done to you?"
"You ran with me." She smiled bright. "I would trade it for nothing else."
"But you," he cut himself off, struggling, before forcing out what he saw, "you changed spots with me. I'm going to leave you."
"I have you now. Now is what matters." She bumped her forehead against his. "We're good together, yeah?"
"If you knew," he tried to ask the obvious. "Why would you,"
"I couldn't leave you alone here." She told him, heartfelt, "You could lose me and still have the TARDIS, a chance to keep running until you found someone else. But you," she gave him a look filled with such concern it melted his heart, "were left here without her, stranded. How could I choose to leave you behind when I knew you were going to be alone here?"
"But now you'll be alone!" he barked, distressed. She frowned at him and let go of his hand to shake him by the shoulders.
"Stop worrying about the future! We don't even live there!" Her comment briefly caught him up and she used that pause to talk. "Don't you dare demean what we have by telling me I should have chosen different; don't demean me by telling me I should regret you! I am not going to leave you, and I hate that I have to insult you Doctor, but at least I'm going to keep my word!"
He gaped at her, feeling the sting of her words, the truth in the implied accusation.
"You heard me," she crooned, nuzzling into his neck as she embraced him. "I'm never gonna leave you."
..o0O0o..
"Rose"
"No Doctor."
"Rose."
"No Doctor."
"Rose."
"I'll never leave you. Stop trying to say goodbye."
..o0O0o..
There came a day when he realized he was tiring, and he felt a new bitterness fill him. Oh, when they were in a pinch he could still put the pedal to the metal just as quick as Rose, but when the adrenaline wore off and there came quiet days in between, he felt tired. So tired. Physically he was getting weaker, slowly, inevitably.
"What's wrong?" Rose's voice cut in, drawing him from his deeper thoughts. They were resting under a tree in a park, he was reclining back against her in the cradle of her embrace, watching an outside dance class practice. He hummed as she dragged a hand through his hair. "You've gotten quiet."
"I'm wearing out." He admitted. Time had worn away much of his reluctance about talking about his feelings. "I can feel it." He gestured toward the people swaying across the grass. "I can't even dance with you, I'm so tired."
"My Doctor," she whispered into his ear, holding him tighter. "We are dancing."
He felt a bloom of warmth in his chest even as he held to his melancholy.
"Soon I won't be able to run" with you was left unsaid.
"Someday," she agreed, not one to spare his feelings by denying the truth, "but we are now, and now is what matters."
"I thought we were dancing." He retorted.
"All across the stars." She teased with a kiss against the salt and pepper of his side burn.
..o0O0o..
He listened to the heart monitor beep, it's steady pace mapping out the repetitive thumping of his single heart. He'd had a seizure yesterday, and while his recovery was faster than human normal, it was still a signal of what he felt was his inevitable decline. He hated this room, he hated the bright lights, he hated this bed. Mostly though, he hated his aging body.
The moment was upon him, he thought dismally, his running days were behind him now. He'd be a danger to Rose if they went and sniffed out trouble again. He'd promised to live the slow life with her and he'd found that it itched, but now time was forcing it on him and he was reluctant to give in. Carpets and drapes. The universe cringed.
His door burst open, startling him greatly. Rose stood there, wearing a black leather jacket similar to his old one, and underneath one arm, she carried a helmet. She stalked up to his bed with a brilliant smile and tossed it to him. It was TARDIS blue.
"What,"
She ripped away the tags monitoring his heart and likely scaring the nurses station half to death when all his vitals suddenly dropped to dead. She hustled him up on his feet, the cold floor chilling his soles.
"Rose, what-" he stopped at the wild smile on her face.
She took his hand.
"Run."
..o0O0o..
His grin was so wide he felt like his face should split in half. The wind blasted his face and pressed him back into his seat, and it felt like his heart would burst. He looked over at his driver, the rubber edge of his goggles pressing against his cheeks as his grin grew impossibly wider.
In his ear he heard her voice from the built in mike featured in his helmet that was paired to a mic in hers.
"Didn't I say, Doctor?" Her voice was full of her affection for him. "Forever."
They rode down a long forested road on a TARDIS blue classic earth motorcycle, her at the helm and him in the side car, together.
..o0O0o..
"Four hundred years Rose Tyler. Far more than I ever thought I deserved."
"We did good together, didn't we?"
Chuckle. "Oh far more than that. We were absolutely brilliant."
Pause.
"Rose?"
"Hm?"
"Can you leave this universe?"
"...what?"
"I didn't want to think about it." Didn't want to think about her choosing loneliness, for in effect that was what she had done; if she were trapped in this universe, she would be alone, unchanging, without even a single person to keep her from slipping forgotten into a strange universe's history. She'd chosen him, and the tragic aftermath, and he'd been so happy. "But," he gripped the arms crossing his chest tightly, "if you can..?"
Pause.
"You can." He said nothing of the relief that mingled with his melancholy.
"Doctor."
"You could have."
"No. No I couldn't have." Couldn't have.
"But you cannow." He insisted. That pause had been too telling, her wording, too specific.
"It's not important."
"Please Rose," he begged, "Please, I need to tell you."
"You don't need to tell me squat-"
"Rose."
She sighed, defeated.
"What, Doctor?"
"I'll have had other companions, other people, but I'll have never forgotten you." He pulled a small gold disk out of his pocket and passed it to her. "I'll never have wanted to miss a second with you, of you. When you go back -and I hope you go back-, the only thing I'm not gonna have is all of our time together. That's why you're gonna need this." He tapped a shaky fingertip against the face of the gold disk. "That's me."
A shaky breath and Rose sniffed hard to hold off the tears.
"My Doctor."
..o0O0o..
"My Doctor."
"My Rose." Even now he was teasing.
She held him close as gold light filled her eyes. There was no need to hide it. He'd suspected for centuries now, confirmation wasn't worth concern.
"Bad Wolf." He breathed, meeting that golden stare with all the ardent passion he possessed.
"I'm running Rose." He murmured, warmth embracing him in a welcoming cocoon, his eyes slipped shut. "I'm running."
"Through all of Time and Space." she promised, pressing her forehead to his as he released a long sigh.
A blinding flash of light.
The coin in her hair glittered.
..o0O0o..
"I wondered when you would decide to visit." Teeth flashed white as she turned in her seat to look behind her. Blond hair fell in a wild tangle around her face and a gold coin glimmered in her hair. "I was beginning to think you had better things to do with your time."
"Sorry," the Doctor said lightly, face relaxed and posture casual as she leaned against the door's frame; her eyes though, they were flickering all across the Moment's face. Rose's face. "life's been a bit hectic and it must have slipped my mind. Here now though!"
The Doctor said nothing on what had brought her here, of the memory that had bloomed into existence when, in a musing voice, her first incarnation had said, "you know, you look a bit like that Bad Wolf Girl-" and her mind had been set ablaze. The Time War's end, her childhood home, a girl in white with wild, unkempt hair, and the name 'Bad Wolf'. The tangle of memory slotted itself back into place, upsetting everything until the Doctor could bear it no longer and bolted from her first's side to seek out the only one who could give her any answers.
"Yes," the Moment's expression turned sly and she coyly tucked her chin into her shoulder, "and it only took you a few billion years."
"Hang on now, be fair," the Doctor replied, only mildly affronted, "that wall was harder than the skulls of some humans I could name! I've been busy," the Doctor's eyes shaded as she looked at the Moment, "as I'm sure you noticed."
The Moment didn't appear to care. She blithely carried on.
"Yes, blame the wall." She drawled, looking for all the world as though she found the Doctor unimpressive. "Well, now that you're here," at this, she hopped down from atop her box, her shoes making almost no noise as she landed on cold stone. She waited as the Doctor crossed the room; the marble floor of the time vault was a damp gray that seemed to suck the light out of the air, making the Moment's pale visage stand out, or so it felt to the Doctor. "I assume you have something to say?"
The Doctor smiled slightly.
"Oh, I just had a few questions if you don't mind, it's just I'm terribly curious about something." she said as she came to a stop in front of the Moment.
"Ask and we shall see." The Moment's eyes glittered with humor. The Doctor's gaze dropped down and she nodded. "What are you curious about?"
"Well for one thing, your outfit." The Doctor was looking at the Moment's clothes. The Moment's brow canted.
"Oh?"
"Hm," the Doctor hummed, now openly analytical. "because you said you took this form from my future, but I don't recall ever seeing Rose dressed like this."
"But I'm not called Rose." The Moment replied, rocking on her toes. "I said, didn't I?"
"Ye-eah," the Doctor dragged out, "but you see, even that isn't right, because when Rose was holding the Vortex I remember very well what she was wearing." She met the Moment's eye as she tapped against her own temple. "And what she was wearing was what she wore all the time; jeans and hoodie. Another thing is your dress is frayed and there are holes in your stockings, but you're weirdly clean for looking so ragged."
"I'm not hearing a question." She sang cheekily.
"If this is Bad Wolf, then why wear Rose's face? Because you knew how I'd react to that after I remembered? And why would Bad Wolf be back, what have I done?"
"This is Bad Wolf's face." The Moment said with surety. "This is what she's always looked like. You're search for answers is all your own Doctor. And Bad Wolf isn't back." She said a touch sarcastically, hands settling on her hips. "She's still lost yet, wandering time and space," a dark edge settled in her smile, dragging it down to something less kind, "running, just as she predicted."
At that the Doctor did frown.
"What do you mean?"
The Moment's expression didn't change.
"Bad Wolf is being hunted. She is running without a hand to hold. No safe refuge, no help in sight."
"You're lying." The Doctor denied, shaking her head furiously. The Moment held her gaze, exasperation creeping into the dark of her eyes.
"The Bad Wolf flees from monsters on the far side of forever with no escape in sight. Are you going to offer no assistance?"
"Rose wasn't the Bad Wolf." The Doctor tried, but the Moment wasn't having any of it.
"I tell you she's in trouble and you deny her name? Your priorities have changed since last we spoke, that's for sure." The Moment chided, head tipping to let light catch on the pieces of metal tied into her hair.
"Rose was human, she couldn't possibly have housed time and space again without it killing her," the Doctor said angrily, "that's why I took it out of her in the first place! No, no-no-no," the Doctor set about pacing a small tight loop before the Moment, whirling to point in her face, "you're lying to cover something else up, I left Rose safe and sound and one hundred percent human-"
"More like seventy-ish," the Moment cut in, "seventy six if you wanna get technical. Davros actually pushed her over the threshold when he shocked her on the Crucible; total wake up. She'd remembered who she was long before then, but she'd been asleep in a way until then." The Doctor was shaking her head again, denial etched all over her face. "I don't see why you're so upset; you gave that world its own Lonely God, bought and paid for with a single mortal life of your own to get her started. She'll wander the stars, protecting the weak while everyone else falls away, like the passing of the tide; until their inevitable goodbyes blur into one and she'll choose the silence of space to keep her memories from screaming,"
The Doctor shook her head.
"No. No."
But the Moment was relentless.
"And space will offer more of the same, until so much time has passed, she becomes their legend, Bad Wolf standing before the dying of the stars." The Moment's smile was full of teeth. "She will outlive love itself."
"No!" The Doctor got right in her face, her own expression terrible and full of thunder. "Stop it! Rose is not Bad Wolf!"
The Moment's face softened a bit as she reached to lift up the Doctor's hand, wrapping it in her own.
"Of course Bad Wolf was Rose."
"How can you know that?" The Doctor asked helplessly, "How can I know any of this is true?"
The Moment ducked her head and the Doctor looked down as the Moment started running her thumb over her knuckles.
"I said, didn't I?" She asked quietly and the Doctor watched her hand. "I chose this face and form from your future." She looked up from under her lashes, a sly curl to her smile. "I just didn't say how far into it, this was."
Her hand curled solidly over the Doctor's and the Doctor stilled. A plain gold band was fitted on Bad Wolf's third left hand finger. She stared at it for a long moment before her head shot up to meet the Moment's triumphant gaze.
"Bad Wolf is in trouble. Will you help her or not?"
"But," the Doctor seemed to be out of words as her world was rocked. She latched on to the first thing she could think of, "I can't, she, I can't cross-"
"Don't be dim. You're a Time Lady, and what you can't do alone, I recall you have a whole race that might be able to assist you."
The Doctor stared at her. Her hand grasped the Moment's hand back.
"What?" she breathed. The Moment held her gaze.
"What can you do with your people behind you that you couldn't have done without them?"
The Doctor tore away without a second thought, leaving the Moment laughing in the vault, the untamed jangle following the Doctor all the way down the hall.
..o0O0o..
Light exploded in every direction. Debris and dust flew in whirls and juts. The ground rumbled as building fell and she ran.
..o0O0o..
Time, time. She was forever running out of time. The Doctor waited impatiently for the others to go through final checks, their motions fluid and sure but no where fast enough for the Doctor who had had to wait for the machine to be restored and made functional again. Her skin itched with fear she would be out of time by the time they were ready to launch.
Finally a Time Lord approached.
"We're ready Madam President," she couldn't muster the energy to be annoyed by the title, "the Eye of Harmony is up and ready for travel."
She strode with purpose to her TARDIS.
..o0O0o..
It had been a rough few days. She'd barely escaped her latest skirmish without any major damage taken. There were fresh tears in her clothes and her leggings were spotted with holes, but she still had air in her lungs and adrenaline enough to carry her another few days until she found a safe place to hide away and recover. She lifted a heavy hand to huff a laugh at how chipped her nail polish was. She was sure her makeup was a nightmare too.
A ball of lead weighed down her middle as tears filled her eyes.
..o0O0o..
Dimensional travel now was a smooth ride compared to the last time she had made this trip, but she still had to run wildly about the console, hitting all kinds of switches and hanging on for dear life when the TARDIS gave an ominous rumble.
"Their definition of 'ready' is severely flawed!" she shouted to the TARDIS as the room shook around her. "Yipe!"
..o0O0o..
"So far, so good." She said, walking steadily across the fine, lightest gray sand. The wind had been holding constant all day and she'd been fairly comfortable, her energy level holding steady enough she could keep going well into the night.
..o0O0o..
"No!"
Sparks flew from the TARDIS console, a small fire started on one side and the Doctor lurched up from the ground and threw herself against it, dragging herself to her feet with desperation and will power. She used a pocket extinguisher to put out the fire and started furiously working the controls. The siren went off.
"Oh, come on!"
..o0O0o..
"Oh this is nice," she said appreciatively as she looked around, "thermal." She wandered deeper into the cave, listening to the sand shift with her steps. "Yup. It'll do."
..o0O0o..
"Well, where is she if she's not on Earth?" The Doctor demanded.
..o0O0o..
She wound herself into a ball, the gently curving pit she dug at the back of the cave made to fit her frame slowly warming with her body temperature as she laid under the long winter vest utilized as a blanket.
"This is cozy."
..o0O0o..
"Five planets, twelve time zones. Five planets, twelve time zones!" The Doctor shouted in absolute frustration. "Why can't we find her?!"
..o0O0o..
Her head shot up, looking around. Something was watching. She quietly shifted to prepare for fleeing.
..o0O0o..
"What do you mean you can't land?!"
..o0O0o..
"That was lucky, wasn't it?" She mumbled as she took a bite out of the small, unnamed desert mammal she had discovered wandering into her cave. The fire she had roasted it over crackled merrily as she tore a leg off to gnaw on. "Tastes like rabbit."
..o0O0o..
"You lookin' for someone?"
The Doctor scowled.
"Yes and it feels like ages since I started."
"Impatient, aren't you? Relax, some things just take time."
The Doctor could have screamed.
..o0O0o..
She stared up at the stars, the rock she sat on smooth and dark and cool beneath her touch. The wind nipped at her face, unsettled her hair. It was a beautiful night.
..o0O0o..
The Doctor moaned, burying her face in her hands as her hair fell forward. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. To her left a small electrical fire was burning, the TARDIS buzzing grumpily in a bid to get her driver to deal with it.
"What? I'm having a moment, can't I have a moment? We've been looking and looking and looking-" she stopped and sighed. Lifting her head, the Doctor beseeched the TARDIS. "Why can't we find her?"
..o0O0o..
The ground rumbled, staggering her steps. An explosion went off far into the distance. She looked sharply in the direction of the noise just as another tremor shook the ground.
"What the-"
..o0O0o..
"I am not throwing a pity party!"
..o0O0o..
They descended in fire and laser light, explosions and falling debri. People were screaming as they ran in terror, seeking to flee the city as the monsters knocked on their doorstep.
She had run all the way there, standing on a hillside as she watched the devastation roll down on the helpless people like a crushing tide.
"Not this." She pleaded to no one.
..o0O0o..
"She was right. Dim. I'm so dim!" The Doctor ranted as she adjusted the programming to track her world's Vortex energy in a bid to track Rose. "Why didn't I think of this before we left?!"
Wrong time, wrong place. A-freaking-gain.
..o0O0o..
Her lungs were working overtime as she dashed across the white sands, pushing herself harder, hopelessly slow in the face of her impatience. She couldn't hear the sound of her own steps over the noise coming from the action, but she could almost feel the heat of fire as the sky turned orange above the city.
"Stop it, stop it, stop it." She gasped as she ran, her pulse in her throat, her blood thundering in her skull.
..o0O0o..
"Is this it? Have we made it?" The Doctor asked herself, looking at the monitor for a tic before darting for the door. The TARDIS buzzed but she didn't wait before throwing it open. She stopped, wide eyed.
"What..."
..o0O0o..
Fire light flickered across her vision. She was ducking and diving, avoiding people and laser sight alike in her mad dash to reach the center of the action.
Her head was pounding.
..o0O0o..
"WHERE IS IT?"
Impossible, was her first thought. It can't be, was her second.
Fog rolled past her legs as she stared up at the black, empty, pocket of space, where Gallifrey had hung.
She knew this place, knew it like she knew her name was The Doctor; with a bone deep certainty and time hardened sense of fact. This was where she and all her other faces had stashed her home planet to save it from devastation, from herself. It was supposed to wait until the right moment to be retrieved so that it might one day shine in the dark tapestry of her universe again. And it was not here.
..o0O0o..
"Stop it!"
How those words fell on deaf ears.
..o0O0o..
Checking the calculations did nothing. Changed nothing. The Doctor felt numbness settle across her as she thought of Gallifrey lost once again, this time with no clue as to where it had gone. The TARDIS buzzed at her, but she was pacing in agitation, tugging at her hair.
"The hell is going on?!"
..o0O0o..
A short, sharp trill of pain escaped her as she cuffed a corner hard as she took a turn, sending her stumbling to the ground. Her hand closed over her arm, teeth gripping her lip as she rode out the initial wave of pain, working to focus through it. She couldn't afford to stop. She had to keep going.
..o0O0o..
BZZZZZ! * pop *
"Ow!" The Doctor hopped about, shaking her foot out as electricity zinged unpleasantly through her sole. She turned an angry on the console. "What was that for?"
Her stomach bottomed out as a transparent image of Rose flickered into sight briefly before vanishing. She breathed for a moment before nodding, expression tense.
"Right. We were looking for Rose." Approaching the monitor again, she considered, before punching in an inquiry.
A smile split her face before she whooped.
"You sexy thing you!" She said brightly as she twirled around her console. "Always where I need to go!"
..o0O0o..
She had been darting down a main street when necessity drove her to fling herself bodily behind an open door, dragging it shut behind her. The sound of metal passing by had her holding her breath, one hand over her mouth, the other delicately touching fingertips to cold stone as she balanced in a crouch inside the empty home. The rustle of her clothes sounded painfully loud in her ears as she waited, the faintest crunch of dust under her shoes made her wince in dreadful anticipation.
..o0O0o..
"Okay," The Doctor said, pointing an accusing finger at the console. "No more funny business. This is it? The right planet, the right time zone," she growled, "the right and true no-foolin'-I'm-dead-serious-don't-you-mock-me place?"
The TARDIS hummed.
The Doctor's eyes narrowed suspiciously for a moment before huffing.
"Alright." The Doctor squared her shoulders as her face settled into business-like lines. "Let's do this."
..o0O0o..
She was almost there.
..o0O0o..
From the moment she opened the doors, memory spilled over and painted the world in red. The line of her mouth parted in shocked exhale as people rushed by, fleeing the laser fire of, of,
"EXTERMINATE!"
Dalek.
Oh how her heart lit with anger and pain.
..o0O0o..
"No, hold on, that's not cool!" She cried as she watched the mother ship turn away. "You can't just leave when I'm almost there! It took ages!"
She bitched at the ship as she diverted her path to follow it.
"Don't you run away from me!"
..o0O0o..
She was herding people away from danger when she spotted the vessel overhead. The dalek warship was unmistakable, flying over the city and trailing smaller assault vehicles like a particularly dark line of ducklings, lighting up the sky with smoke and fire.
An ugly expression twisted across her face and she pulled out her screwdriver.
..o0O0o..
She skidded behind a dumpster as she spotted a contingent of daleks ahead. She watched and saw the moment they all paused, her brow knitting in confusion, before they as one turned to follow the mother ship.
Looking up, she spotted more flying to catch up.
Confused, she left her hiding spot and followed.
"Bright side, bright side," she chanted under her breath as she ran. "the people are safe..eh, as long as the daleks are preoccupied." Her brow knit. "But where are they going?"
..o0O0o..
She remembered this. It felt so much like then she almost couldn't separate her past from the present. The lights, the noise, the smell. The tangy metallic sense of blood mixed with the dry, chalky taste of crumbling plaster, like a visceral sickness that slowed her mind and weighed her gut down with dread. The war was alive around her, it was alive within her, and she had never left it.
That wretched voice came from behind her, and she turned, held tight and guided by instinct, hitting the creature with a lethal shock from the sonic screwdriver before it could finish, before she could second guess it. She watched the explosion as if seeing it from outside herself, and feeling only a dim awareness that she didn't offer it any chance.
She had to stop this. She had to hurry.
..o0O0o..
She thought she had heard something, a fleeting impression of noise, nearly known. She didn't stop running. Couldn't afford to. She'd realized what they were doing. Where they were going. Ice was moving up her body and catching her fear ablaze.
..o0O0o..
Ding. Her hand snapped up, eyes flicking down to the screwdriver. The tempo of her hearts could have set a rabbit's to shame as she read the calculations that said a trace of her home universe was nearby.
Rose.
..o0O0o..
They were outside the city now, passing over the little ghettos and rural districts to verge on the white sandy landscape of the desert. The people who had escaped the city were panicking, thinking they were being hunted down by these foreign invaders, but the daleks paid them no mind, intent as they were on their prize.
She stole a vehicle and accelerated, she had to get in front of them.
..o0O0o..
"She's following the-, why is she following them?!"
She wasn't going to entertain the thought that they might have her in their grasp.
..o0O0o..
Her throat was closing up as the wind bit at her, and her eyes were watering as despair tried to choke her. They were getting too far away. The ache behind her eye splintered and cracked and the pounding, pressing, agony spilled outward to coat her insides with fire. She couldn't, she, she had to do it-
She couldn't let them go.
She screeched to a stop, leaving the vehicle where it fell. She felt too warm.
Her hands tingled.
..o0O0o..
She shook the screwdriver, inarticulately screaming, as the tracking died to nothing, a sure sign that Rose -wherever she may have been- was out of range. She was near to chucking it, helpful device or no helpful device, when it suddenly went haywire.
..o0O0o..
In. Out. In. Out.
Breath shuddering, damp lashes pressing together, and tears falling. All noise falling away and strange stillness taking its place. And somewhere deep inside, where memories sleep, a song echoed and grew.
Above her, the daleks paused in their flight.
..o0O0o..
"Sorry-I-need-this-big-emergency-good-luck!"
It wasn't grand theft auto if you weren't on earth.
..o0O0o..
The sand hissed with each careful step she took, moving slowly toward the center of the dalek mother ship. She could still hear destruction in the distance as she looked up at the circling dalek bodies, aware of the shake going down her spine. She'd never been in this position before. Alone, in the face of her oldest enemy. There was once a time, many years ago, that she had stood before their forces in furious defense of another, but she hadn't been alone then. She'd had the backing of an amazing multi-dimensional time ship.
But this was not then, and she was not as she was.
Her eyes spilled over with light.
"I am the Bad Wolf." A tear rolled over her lip and she tasted salt. "I create myself."
..o0O0o..
She was racing against time, a task she had never enjoyed, exiting the limits of the city and pushing her land steed (she'd care what it was called after) to its limits. Far ahead she spotted something pale and small. A figure in white.
A blonde figure.
Torn from her, pulled from her, the name came unbidden.
"Rose!"
..o0O0o..
"THE ABOMINATION." They cried.
"You remember me." Her lips pulled in a faint smile.
"YOU ARE A COMPANION OF THE DOCTOR."
"Not anymore." Something warm and lilting passed through her. "Bit wild around the edges."
The warmth fled, leaving only the chill of closing teeth. She knew what they sought. She would never let them have it.
"And the Doctor isn't in right now."
..o0O0o..
They were closing in on Rose, tightening rotation. Fear, cold and slicing, made a red ruin of the Doctor's insides.
Then she blinked, and Rose fairly lit up.
..o0O0o..
"YOU WILL GIVE US THE CUBE."
Evil, loathesome little creatures.
"YOU WILL GIVE US THE CUBE."
Created from hatred and vanity.
"WE WILL DESTROY THE CITY-"
Without mercy. Without conscience.
"UNLESS YOU SURRENDER GALLIFREY!"
Eternity lasted forever, and it lived and died by the second. The universe called to her, pressing the knowledge of planets, of stars, of time, on to her, seething to be seen and held in her grasp. Her skull felt thin, too thin to hold it all; yet it did. She did.
"EXTERMINA-" She saw.
"No more."
..o0O0o..
The Doctor couldn't say how she felt. Jumbled up perhaps, or numb. Nearly there, but not enough, she blinked in the glare of light, horrified to see history repeat itself. Rose, lit from within and fairly searing with the burning gold of time, surrounded by daleks who were row by row falling away in shining waves of dust, the nimbus of unmaking gradually spreading out to touch every dalek in the sky; and by the quieting in the distance, all the ones in the town. For a moment, the white sand turned yellow as the dust settled across the landscape, glowing dimly under Rose's light.
The Doctor abandoned the vehicle. Keeping her gaze on Rose's figure, she bolted across the twinkling remains of the dalek forces.
..o0O0o..
She was blind to the world around her. Music filled her ears as time lines and possibilities rushed under her skin with the same steady thrum of blood flowing through veins and she looked beyond sight to chase down every last trace of the daleks that had boiled across the unprepared inhabitants of this planet.
"The Time War ends," the words echoed, "The Time War ends." She felt the last of them fall away. "No more daleks will block out the light."
She heard the tiniest of whimpers. She thinks it comes from her.
"It hurts."
Suddenly, there is an arm around her.
..o0O0o..
She burns to the touch but the Doctor refuses to let go. Her hair is just as wild, her outfit torn and ruffled exactly the same. The Doctor stared at Rose when the Moment had chosen to become. The moment they met again and fear and joy both tangled inside her hearts at being reunited. She knew, there would still be questions left to answer, so many questions; but right now, in this moment,
"Rose!"
Eternity and curiosity looked back at her and for a second she forgot that a new face might be throwing Rose off, and she feared Rose might have been changed by her brush with Time itself when,
"Doc..tor?"
The grin that the Doctor wore was beautiful. Already the burn was easing.
"Hello."
The light dimmed and warm, honey colored eyes locked with the Doctor's as Rose returned her smile, joy budding in her heart. Those eyes never changed.
"Hello."
..o0O0o..
"I knew you couldn't stay away."