(The characters in this story thus far are not owned by me. They are the sole property of the writers and owners of Doctor Who. While I enjoyed the Ninth Doctor, I am by far and away a Tenth fan. This Alternative Universe story post Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways. This was a Christmas gift to a friend because she is a huge shipper of the Tenth Doctor and Rose. This will be a multi part fan fiction diverging for the most part after the goings on of the episode The Parting of the Ways. Please enjoy."
'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'
It always happens the same, the nightmares. They come without warning, and the only thing that drives them away is the warmth next to me. This one however, seemed to come almost unbidden. It had been nearly four months since the last dream. And this one.. it felt like I was there again, with the whole of the Time Vortex spinning inside me, burning me up from the inside out. See, a human body wasn't built to even hold the tiniest atom of the Time Vortex and it changed me forever. Part of it's still there even though the Doctor did his best to take it all in order to save my life. But, I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? It starts more or less where it usually starts, or at least the more or less area where my brain decides to remember my dream. Maybe it's self preservation, you know?
I glared in frustration, anger, and something far more primal at the white side of the blue doors, almost willing them to close themselves, but they didn't. If anything they rested, wide, flashing the blue like a woman flashing her knickers. Daring, cheeky box! "Oi, come on. Take me back to him. I don't care what he told you! He needs me!" I cried, kicking the umber textured support.
"Please." This time it came more like a prayer, a benediction to the jolly Blue Box that's taken me everywhere and nowhere. "Please, take me back." I rub the support this time, stroking the rough texture like I would a child's cheek to calm them once they've had a nightmare, but she remains as silent and still as ever. However, even as I'm opening my mouth once more to beg her to return me to the Doctor thousands of years in the far flung future, a sound jerks me out of my own mind.
The straining groan of chains as they go taut only to slacken and clatter against each other pulls my attention once more to the same familiar part of the main console and the chains that Mickey helped attach to it. It still hasn't budged an inch, even a micro-millimeter. I feel panic rising once more, even after I've done my best to choke it down, but its clawing itself up again, trying to writhe it's way out into the world.
"Oi! Mickey, tell mum to give it another go! More this time. It ain't goin' nowhere! Come on, he needs me. He needs us!" I yell again, my chest aching more than it had before. Moving back to the console I stroke it almost lovingly once more as I tune out the sound of my former boyfriend going to pass on the word to mum.
I know my mum doesn't understand it at all, and I certainly know Mickey doesn't. Maybe even I myself don't understand it. All I know is that my world started when I met the Doctor. It's like my entire life was on hold until he came out of nowhere like a slow, silent fog. Never in a hundred lifetimes would I have thought after 19 boring years he'd be there. Saving my arse. Saving everyone's arse like he does all the time. Like he has thousands of times. And not one of them know it.
Another pang of sorrow rolls through me in a wave and I choke on it. I cry out again and slap my hands down on the console once more in frustration. "Stop being a git! Come on. I need him. The Doctor needs me. You can't just leave me here!" Tears start to well in my eyes and I do all I can to hold them back. But there is no amount of breath holding that I can do to stop them. I fail miserably; the tears come unbidden anyway. At least one does.
"Please, you can't just keep me here. He needs me. He needs us." Letting out a half sob of aggravation, I slump to my knees and rest my forehead on the edge of the console just under that silly lever he loves to muck about with. "I love him, TARDIS. I love him. I've loved him from the moment he took my hand. And I've loved you. I can't just walk away and let him die alone in the future. I can't just walk away and leave you here to be forgotten."
There. It was out there for the whole world to hear. Alrite, just the TARDIS, but she wasn't listening. Why would she? I'm not him, I'm just the girl he trips around all of space and time with. But, I was meant to be with the Doctor. I was meant to be with him forever, to grow old with him. He needed me, because without me, he was something else. He was death walking, the creeping fog. The monster under the bed of the Daleks. The Oncoming Storm. And I was his Rose.
At some point my mind drained away, my ears quit working and all I could hear was my own heart breaking. Here I was feeling sorry for myself and my mum and Micky were still reving away. Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered Mick yelling at my mum to keep going, but I ignored it. "Please." One last time. Only, that didn't seem to do anything.
In fact I finally let it out, my voice was beyond use, at least for the moment. Instead I turned my face towards where he always stood giving me that bloody cheeky grin of his and I swear for just a moment I smelled him, all leather and warmth. Every inch my Doctor. That seemed to be the floodgates because a moment later I could feel the tears slipping down my cheeks, smearing across the panel where my head rested.
"Rose! Rose, look. It's working." But I was oblivious to it; the sound of the chain breaking and the grinding of the control panel fell on deaf ears. Instead I sobbed again and dug my fingers into the edge of the console. Surely my Doctor was dead now. The Daleks had gotten him, forever silencing his two hearts. Jack was gone too. And here I was, bloody useless and out of luck.
The last thing I was expecting was a hand gripping my shoulder, it's fingers hooking into the pink hoodie I wore and the light shake that came with it. I turned an accusing glare on my assailant only to fall lax at the face hanging excited over mine. "Rose, Rose, it worked." Of course, I knew he didn't understand at all, but Mickey. God love Micky. With his help I rose only to stare between the swirls of smoke-like light coming from the console then back to him.
"Mickey, you can't come with me. You have to stay here and take care of my mum. Please." I whispered, already pushing him toward the doors. Not a moment after his heels cleared the edge of the TARDIS, the doors snapped shut and I leapt back myself, nearly losing an arm in the process, though I didn't let that hamper me. What if she changed her mind? What if she didn't take me back?
I spun around on my heel, nearly tripping over my own feet on the way to the console and the—singing? Why was there singing? Where were the voices coming from? So many voices. A gasp slipped from me and I felt almost like I'd run into a unyielding wall of soft, fluid heat. That didn't make a bloody lick of sense though. Liquid heat, a brick wall of softness? None of that made any sense, yet it's what I felt.
And then I was lost, falling through sound, pure, clear (clarion), and beautiful sound. I saw everything, I heard, and felt everything. I saw the dawn of life on Earth, and I saw it's last moment. I saw the Doctor and I standing on Platform One as we witnessed it's last terrible seconds. I watched as he slipped his hand into mine. The softest little cry fell from my lips and I swayed, my head filling more, more past the tipping point until I knew we had arrived. And I knew what I was.
I am surrounded by heat and water-like light. The heart of the TARDIS. She is me, and I am her. I feel every moment of time, passing through every atom of my being as we race toward the Doctor. I remember a moment like this, or I am watching a moment like this, or perhaps I am waiting for it to happen. I see, and wait to see Blon Fel-Fotch stand in front of this light. I feel the TARDIS take every last molecule of her and spread her to the stars and revert her. And I see her decades from now, a new being. A better being.
But I have other things, other things to do. The doors burst open without so much as a second though and I come out, surrounded by that same, liquid light and feel it surge once more through me and sway on the spot, my gaze falling to the Doctor. I speak, but is it my voice? Is it her voice? I know it's a her, just as I know why she did this. Why she brought me back. Because she heard me crying. And because, like the Doctor, they cannot ignore a crying child. And that is how she see's me. A child. Of course I am, to the TARDIS, to the Doctor, I am a child.
"What have you done?!" We hear him, or, do we hear him? Time has no meaning for us like this, with our head so full, with our body being packed to bursting. Our body. She has a body, and it is mine and she flexes inside me. Walking.
"I looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into me." We speak. We all speak. The billions of trillions of voices, they speak. But this is me, and this is her. And we speak to the man we love. We watch as horror spreads over our Doctor's face and we feel confusion. Do we not belong with him? Should we not have come?
"You looked into the Time Vortex — Rose, no one's meant to see that!" Obviously we were meant to see it because here we are, to save him. To save Jack. To save the world. The mechanized, cold voice barely registers to us. We are more, we are wider. We are every point in every time. We are everything that ever has been, is, and will be. We are the potential of every life.
"This is the abomination!" But that cannot be true, no matter what this false Supreme being feels. We know better because we are Everything. We see it before it comes, we hear it, and we anticipate the shot only to reverse the ray once it comes. We are unfazed. And that is when we realize.
"I am the Bad Wolf." These words that chased us from the beginning of time, to the day he took her. Rose. To now, and beyond. "I create myself." This is Rose speaking, but even now it feels strange. Because there is no more one, there is us. "I take the words. I scatter them in time and space — a message to lead myself here." And lead myself, she, me, us, here. To this moment. For one purpose. To save our Doctor. My Doctor. We are Sexy, the TARDIS, and he is ours. We are Rose Tyler.
"Rose, you've got to stop this! You've got to stop this now!" We look down, casting our gaze on our Doctor and hear the pleading in his voice. But we are unable to stop what is coming because we know what we must do. We know that there are things which must be reversed. And these creatures, they must not be allowed to live once more. We are death. We are the Bad Wolf. We have become the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds. Surely he knows that we cannot stop this.
"You've got the entire vortex running through your head. You're going to burn." We know what he is going to say, but it is pointless. We can feel it, this liquid fire, and it is doing just that. It is burning this feeble shell.
"I want you safe." The voice is foreign, but it is the voice of thousands. "My Doctor." Surely he will understand that this is what we must do. "Protected from the false god." We do not understand what is coming from his eyes. Somewhere inside this head in which we are trapped it registers almost as horror.
We feel anger at that the mechanical voice that dares what it does. "You cannot hurt me, I am immortal!" But he is not, and we have come to prove it.
"You are tiny." Together we speak, our words holding weight. Holding this speck's death sentence. They destroyed my sisters, my brothers, and we shall destroy them. We are jury. We are judge. We are executioner. "I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence, and I divide them." We have spoken, and carry out the will of the Universe. The meat in the bones. Before us we watch as each metal being is disintegrated, each atom slipping free with no will to hold it's form. Everywhere in the universe we feel this light slip as we scatter the atoms to the stars.
"Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies. The Time War ends." We end it. We feel and we watch as every last atom is taken apart and spread to the stuff between stars. And we feel ourselves burn, knowing that this will end us too. This was what we came for. We came to end, and save. And it has cost us greatly.
"Rose, you've done it. Now stop. Just let go." His voice is commanding, but it is filled with something else and we sense it. It is filled with something that he himself cannot express to us. No, to her. To Rose Tyler.
"How can I let go of this? I bring life." Already we feel the toll this has taken, and somewhere we reach out and feel life breathed back into a being that we love as well. Jack.
"But this is wrong! You can't control life and death!" But he is wrong, he is so wrong!
"But I can. The sun and the moon, the day and the night. But why do they hurt?" This is what we don't understand. We should be able to do this but we cannot because we are burning out and it hurts.
"The power's going to kill you, and it's my fault!" We want to reach for him, to cradle his face in our hands and pour ourselves into him, anything to stop the pain that nearly shines from his eyes. We want to show him our love.
"I can see everything. All that is.. All that was.. All that ever could be."
His face lights up, and we feel as recognition and joy leaps across his face, watched as he leapt to his feet, and will listen as he speaks, excitement, and understanding in his voice. "That's what I see, all the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?"
"My head." Our head, no, her head. This girls head that we are inside, it feels as if it will shatter.
"Come here." His voice is a benediction, and we feel that there is something more in those words.
"It's killing me." We are slipping, and Rose is finding her voice. We should give this to her, we brought her here, to give this to him. We brought her here because she shared with us her most intimate, weakest moment.
"I think you need a doctor." He has no knowledge, does he? We do. She does. He must save her before we burn her out. Before we destroy what our Doctor loves.
We feel his fingers slide through Rose's and we try to disentangle ourselves. We try to save her ourselves. So much death that we have dealt, so much punishment, but we cannot leave this innocent in our wake. We must try to slip from her, we must try to save her. We feel, no, I feel his mouth as it presses to my own. I feel as his arms slip around our body. This hurts, it feels as if the world is being shoved into every cell of us. I, we, I do not understand. We. I do not understand where She begins and I end, or is it where I begin and she ends? I feel as the voices, the liquid fire inside me spreads, urging me to breathe out and kiss him and I fall into it. I do what she wants.
I breathe out into his kiss and I feel his mouth melt onto my own, I feel that heat pull from me, and where I know I should feel alone, abandoned, I do not. I do not because my Doctor is holding me. I want more, but I know nothing more, but silence. Silence and an unending darkness.
[ Stay tuned for part 2. Coming Soon! ]