AN/ For Jess, who is wonderful and lovely. This didn't quite turn out the way I intended it to, but you asked for Nine and Rose and this is what happened. I'm sorry it came so late, but I hope you'll like it.
Word count: 1086
circles never end
"The universe is big. It's vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles." — The Doctor, Season 5, Episode 12
Some says their story started with the universe, others say it began when a war-weary alien who had had to destroy his home and a blonde shop girl from London saved the world together.
In the end, though, the story really starts like this.
The panel hiding the Heart of the Tardis opens up more easily than Rose had thought possible. The doors close themselves behind Rose so that she can no longer hear neither her mother's nor Mickey's words, and a shining light fills the room.
She has made her choice a long time ago. The Doctor has just saved her life, and it is time to return the favor yet another time.
She lays her hand on the console, breathes in, and smiles.
"Let's go save our Doctor, shall we?"
She lets the golden light fill her vision and listens to the song of the universe as it puts words on a melody that has haunted her since, it seems, she first understood what being haunted meant.
It's almost funny how the world finally makes sense now that she can see it in its entirety. How she ever managed to live so long without seeing any of this is a wonder, because now she can think of nothing she fears more than going back to a life where possibilities aren't etched in colors at the corner of her vision.
The Tardis hums happily at the back of her mind, and Rose spends both a single second and a million moments that will never be thanking her for her help with this, and before she knows it (only not really, because she's seen it already, felt it already, feels it still and will feel it) the Tardis.
The doors open, and it feels like she's stepping out into a whole different world. She can barely believe she was there only a few hours ago.
Everything looks so different to her now. Golden light swirls around her, and her mind is filled with possibilities, her mind sings time's endless song and she never wants to let that go.
But first, she has to deal with the discord in that beautiful harmony – the Daleks. She can finally see them, and they truly are terrible.
She thinks she finally understand why the Doctor hates them so much, if he too sees all that they have done and could do the way she does now.
In the end, all it takes is a wave of her hand and they are gone, erased as if they never even were, dust and ashes on the ground. But she is so tired already, and yet she still has so much left to do, so many lives she can change.
"I am the Bad Wolf, I create myself," says someone, only it's her, she's talking but she didn't know she was talking. Her control is slipping away, but time, time is everywhere, and she's burning up with it.
It's a fever she can't quell, a fire she can't put out, and it takes her looking into the Doctor's eyes to realize that she doesn't even want to try. She can do so much more like this.
(Everywhere and nowhere all at once, moons rise and wolves howl, suns explodes and galaxies turn, and Rose can feel it all, she can see it all – and right in the middle of it stands a man who is so much more than that, and a box who is not a box, and they will be all alone if she stops now.
And she never wants them to be alone.)
"Rose, you've done it. Now stop. Just let go."
The Doctor's voice reaches her through the fire, and she desperately wishes he could see that she's not done. She can't be done when there are still so many wrongs she can right, so many lives she can still save and never need to be sacrificed.
She has only one choice left – to stay or be forced to leave in the end – but it never was a choice at all, not since he grabbed her hand and said 'Run'. Why can't he just see that?
She smiles and takes a step forward. Her body stumbles but her mind reaches into the oceans of possibilities that surround her and find the right one. The one future she can live with.
"I bring life," she whispers as the fire in her burns brighter and hotter than ever.
And because she may be the Bad Wolf now, but the Bad Wolf is also Rose Tyler, she kisses him like she wishes he had kissed her.
"Please, Rose, just let it go. This will kill you," he begs once she steps back.
She doesn't answer. Nothing she could say would change a thing, she can see it. The fire spreads slowly toward her heart with every passing second as they stand in silence, almost frozen.
Whether time slows down or speeds up, Rose can't quite know. Both feel the same to her now, but something happen.
The universe stills for a single moment, and she burns herself out in a blaze of gold.
On the Satellite, the Doctor stares unblinkingly at the place where his companion was a mere moment ago just as Jack bursts through the doors.
Somewhere else, somewhen else, a young girl with blonde hair and eyes that have already beheld Time looks into Space and finds her future for the second time.
.xxx.
"Are you sure this will work?" The girl-who-was-Rose had asked the Doctor's Tardis at one point. "Are you sure I can do this?"
The Tardis hadn't answered through words, but she and the girl-who-was-Rose saw the universe the same way – through shades of possibilities and inklings of futures. There was no need for words.
'You've already done it,' were the words that weren't said.
'Let me tell you a story,' they didn't say. 'The story of a girl who was a wolf and a wolf who was a girl, who took Time in her head and rewrote it so the man she loved never had to be alone.'
And so a girl-turned-wolf dies on a Satellite and on a planet by then long gone, a wolf-turned-girl opens her eyes for the first time to see a burnt orange sky, her whole future ahead of her.
One day she'll start running, and she won't ever look back.
She'll have better places to be, after all, and a long, long life to enjoy them.