A/N: I was reading meta and this plot popped into mind begging to be written. It's not going to be the happiest story, as Rassilon is a giant dick, but it won't be all dark and gloomy. If you are reading this for Rose/Doctor, I'm sorry, but the Doctor won't show up until like 2/3rds of the way through this story.
A couple things won't line up with canon, but that's because this takes place in Gallifrey's far past. Things get explained as the story goes on, though, so don't worry about that. I hope you enjoy this story. Have fun reading!
No one was around to the see the flash of light go off in the Torchwood Archives. It was the middle of the night, after all, and the one person who had been in the room was long gone. Another universe away, in fact.
Rose, not looking a day over twenty despite having lived many times that, appeared in a valley. Red grass covered the ground, not green, and the tree leaves were blue. The sky was light blue with large tan and brown rings blocking part of it. She'd never seen rings around a non-gas giant planet. Even then, she hadn't been on the planet; she'd been on an orbiting moon in the system, like Europa in the 33rd century. It was a lovely place for ice skating as long as you wore the appropriate thermal gear.
Also in the sky were two suns: a large, reddish-orange sun and a smaller red one. The larger one was much brighter than Earth's sun, almost on the verge of hurting her eyes even when not looking at it. On the edge of the horizon, a third, copper-colored mass sat in the sky. Rose thought for a brief second it was another sun, but she realized it was a moon after a deeper look. This sky was quite the contrast to Earth's sky, which on a good day had the sun and a hint of the moon in it. It matched a lot of her late husband's descriptions of his home.
Her heart dropped into her stomach. She dreaded the idea that she ended up on Gallifrey. Something had to have gone wrong with her jump for her to end up inside a time-lock. On top of that, she'd burnt out her Dimension Cannon, so she couldn't leave until she fixed it. Maybe it wasn't Gallifrey, though. The rings, suns, and snow-capped mountains matched her husband's descriptions. The sky and the leaves both being blue didn't fit, though. The sky would be orange and the leaves silver if this were Gallifrey. Big universe; it must just be a similar planet, she reasoned.
Further down the valley at the base of one of the mountains, Rose saw a city. It wasn't as big as some major Earth cities, her home of London for example, but it was still sizable. She looked down at her Dimension Cannon then at the city. It was about a day's walk away and looked high-tech enough to have parts to fix her device. Making up her mind, she began the trek to the city to find some parts and information.
As she grew closer to the city, about an hour or two into her walk, she began to feel a buzzing at the edge of her mind. It reminded her of when she worked on her telepathy with the Doctor. The people of this city had to be telepathic for her to be feeling such a strong presence on the edge of her mind. Since telepathic species generally shielded well, she didn't feel anything distinct. The closer she got to the city, the stronger the presence was. She was right on top of the city at the end of a long day, and the presence filled her mind. A whole telepathic city was just outside her mental barriers, waiting for her.
Few people were on the outskirts of the city. The couple of people she did see weren't speaking any language she recognized. It wasn't a galactic-standard language. Nor was it any of the other languages she'd heard in the course of her travels without a translator. It did, however, sound like the Doctor's language, the few times she'd heard it. Another point in favor of this being Gallifrey. The people were humanoid, so she didn't stick out. Her clothes, consisting of something like her old jumping outfit, were out of place, though. The people she saw in the city were wearing robes, which were strange in these high-tech surroundings.
The city reminded her of the 51st century in its modernism. The architecture was a different style, and technology was less overt, of course. It gave Rose that feeling, though. The technology that was in the open had telepathic interfaces. The rest of the technology might be that way. After all, telepathy was as much a sense to telepathic species as sight or hearing. Society tended to design itself to have it be a part of everyday life.
Rose continued down the street toward a denser part of the city. She didn't see any cars but figured that at this level of technology, they must be using transmats. The one thing she did see on her way was a woman clad in fancier red robes with gold adornments down her front. As she walked, the few people she passed bowed and greeted her, showing respect. Rose wondered what kind of importance she had, religious or political? Or something else? Luckily the woman was walking quite far away from where Rose was. She didn't want to get thrown in jail hours after arriving. It had happened in her past travels for not showing the proper respect to certain people. Right now, she didn't have the Doctor to get her out, though.
Where was she going to stay tonight? She didn't have any local currency or even a way to talk to the people here. Jail might be a suitable option after all, she joked to herself. She mulled over her options to find a place to stay. She had a few things with her that she could barter with, but she didn't know what this society found valuable. She figured she should find more information, like a library. Then she could worry about other things.
She hoped that a library would have some books that would allow her to interpret the language around her. It was a challenge, though, to find a library without said books in the first place. The search took her hours due to the unfamiliar architecture and language barrier. To top it off, her exhaustion was only growing by the moment. By the time she found a library, the larger sun was beginning to set. The smaller sun had set an hour or so after she'd reached the city. She'd rather sleep than look through hundreds of books to find the information she needed.
Rose had been expecting holobooks or other digital media in the library. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of shelves of real, physical books. Or at least physical, paper writing. The library contained scrolls instead of bound books. It seemed out of place, but everyone outside was wearing robes, so it must be how this society worked. The library had signs everywhere, but Rose couldn't decipher any of it. She didn't even know what section she could start to look in to find language books or if those would do her any good.
She looked around the library for a children's section. Libraries usually had children's books on language learning, right? She didn't see one, but she did see an information desk. It was a safe bet that the desk worker would have some sort of translation device. She headed that way in the hopes that the worker could assist her.
Forty-five minutes she spent attempting to communicate with the man at the desk. His translation device didn't work on a single language that Rose knew. They only resolved it by having a telepathic conversation consisting of images. Thirty minutes in Rose found a place to start her language learning attempts. After the last fifteen, she found a possible place to stay for the night. The religious center down the street had spaces for people to sleep at night and served an evening meal. She'd missed tonight's dinner, already. She also missed whether the religious center was a church or a temple. That kind of information doesn't translate well to telepathic Pictionary.
Her eyes began to droop. She hadn't formed a low-level telepathic connection in a few years and was out of practice. She couldn't sleep yet, though; she needed to learn at least a few basics of the local language. She still didn't even know the name of the planet she was on or the name of the language these people spoke. Enough things differed from her husband's stories that it might not be Gallifrey. He'd told her it was still called Gallifrey in Gallifreyan. Once she could read the language, she could figure it out for herself.
The books that the library assistant directed her to were… somewhat helpful. They had pictures, but she didn't know how to read the writing to learn how to pronounce it. The writing guides expected some understanding of other 'common' languages to read them. She didn't know any of the languages, though. At least the library had videos. They were children programs that reminded her a bit of Sesame Street but without the puppets. After about an hour of videos, Rose was too tired to remain at the library any longer.
That was when she heard it. In her exhaustion, her mental shields slipped that little bit. Not enough to be rude to the locals, but enough that she heard what had been at the edge of her shields all day. She'd written it off as part of the collective telepathy of the people of this planet, but it wasn't at all. It was singing. A very familiar singing.
Memories of golden light and a desire to save the Doctor's life filled her mind. This singing was the harmony she'd heard to the TARDIS's melody. She had no doubt exactly where she was now. Only one planet in the universe could possibly have an open link to the Time Vortex.
Rose hurried back to the attendant's desk where the man who had helped her earlier was still working. She bowed out the greeting that seemed to be common here. After he returned her bow, she applied a gentle knock to the outermost mental shields he had. Then, she sent him the singing along with the feeling of curiosity and questioning.
The attendant sent her back images of a swirling rip in the fabric of space-time. It was an opening to the Vortex, exactly like she thought. He sent her more images of children taken there to look at it and where it was. He also sent her feelings of warning, like she shouldn't go there.
Rose had stopped listening, though. She sent a quick mental 'thanks' before rushing out the library doors and onto the street. She forgot her exhaustion in her desire to go to the Schism. Her connection to the TARDIS still existed, and maybe, just maybe, she could send a message through the gap to her. The Old Girl couldn't come pick her up on this planet, but she'd at least know Rose needed to get back to her.
Standing on the street, Rose noticed the strange night sky. It was brighter than most planets would be at night. The sky was a vivid orange color with two moons above. One was the large moon she'd seen earlier in the day; the other was a smaller, less colorful moon. She shook her head; she didn't have the time to focus on this. She needed to get to the Schism before she passed out from sheer exhaustion.
The long walk there was tough but not unbearable. With the Doctor and as a Torchwood agent, she'd had days that never seemed to end involving minimal sleep. This was not the worst she'd dealt with. That honor belonged to her early Dimension Hopping days. Back then everything had been less precise, and she didn't know what to expect on the other side of the jump. Those days were luckily long in the past.
The Untempered Schism was exactly as the library attendant had shown her. The swirling colors promised so much knowledge, and the beautiful song played stronger in her head. She wasn't looking directly into it yet, not prepared and unsure of what would happen. She looked around at her surroundings. Two young men were chatting while working on something. Scrolls and other papers, as well as a few technological devices, surrounded them. Another person was sitting with them and helping them with their work, but she couldn't quite look at them. Like a perception filter but verging on uncomfortable. Like she wasn't supposed to look at the person, yet they still somehow felt so right. The men they were with didn't seem to have any trouble looking, though.
The three were deep in their work it seemed and didn't seem to notice her, so she braced herself to look in the Schism. Her eyes focused on the ground as she walked up and centered herself in front of the gap in reality. She took a deep breath and looked.
Rose missed the three nearby people's heads snap up to stare at her. The song in her head grew both louder and gentler in her head, blocking the outside world. Her eyes were glowing, and she could see everything once more. This time, she wasn't burning; she'd had time for her brain to adjust. She didn't have the power she had last time; that had been a combination of her and the TARDIS while this was all her. This was a final culmination of all those changes she'd been through over the decades.
She sank to her knees and sat on her heels, still staring into the Vortex. Under her skin began a golden glow reminiscent of a regeneration. Despite that, she wasn't so far down in the knowledge entering her brain, that she missed it. The third person, now crouched at her side, whispered, "Bad Wolf," with reverence.
Like that, she blinked, attention pulled from the Schism. All the gold dissipated under her skin and faded from her eyes in a brief second. She coughed once, and a golden mist left her mouth. It was like the Doctor's regeneration that went wrong. "What the hell?" she whispered. Her head turned to look at the person next to her.
Rose recognized them now. Their name was an itch in the back of her mind as if she once knew it but had since forgotten; knowledge no longer to be known. The Vortex's knowledge was leaving her now, but it left a few pieces imparted upon her. Who this man was and had been and would be in both her personal past and future and her far past, before her awareness. "Hello, Stranger," she said to him, smiling, tongue tucked between her teeth.
"Hello, dear," the Other said.
Well. It wasn't every day that you came across the pre-reincarnation version of the man your husband was spontaneously spawned from.
A/N: Let me know what you think! Next chapter will be up sometime soon since I already have it half written. It should be about twice as long as this prologue. P.S. if any of you lovely readers are willing to beta for me, please let me know. I really need a second opinion on this because about halfway through editing, the words stop having any meaning to me.