Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or anything else that anybody could sue me for. I own nothing.

Pandora

It opened with a sound as though it had simply gotten fed up with her effort. In that moment, the brightest most brilliant light flooded her senses. All of them, not simply her sight, from her sense of smell to the sense of touch. How light alone could do that to a person was beyond her but in that moment she didn't care.

Then she heard it, a whisper that wasn't a whisper. As in, not a physical whisper, but an involuntary thought that crossed her mind.

"How far would you go to save him?"

She answered truthfully, deep down knowing that if she didn't, the TARDIS would only disregard her. "I would give my life. My soul. My mind. I would travel to the beginning of time, even to its end…beyond if I had to."

Satisfaction overcame her, another involuntary feeling. The TARDIS must have been pleased with her response.

"Very well…"

Then it hit her; an explosion of pure energy equaling the force of a supernova. It struck her full force, and yet she didn't fall back. She stood against the power before her, taking it within herself like a mother taking her child into her arms in comfort.

No…No. She was the child taking her mother into her arms.

Pure, raw energy. That was the only way to describe it. It shook her to her core physically and mentally. Every breath in was like white fire, burning her throat and lungs but at the same time she knew it was the very heat that granted her life. But when she exhaled she was frozen to the core, so cold and empty from the loss of breath that she felt nothing would ever be right again. Rose barely had a heartbeat to realize that with every breath in and every breath out, she was connecting to the very foundations upon which life and death were based off of.

That was only the beginning.

Aside from the fire and ice radiating through her body she was slowly being filled with…with it all. All of time. All of space. Everything.

A million random visions and thoughts flashed before her eyes and mind. Those she particularly paid attention to were those of earth. The images of humanity's fishlike ancestor first crawling from the primordial seas of earth. The part of her that was still Rose Tyler titled it in her swimming mind the Adam and Eve of all land creatures on earth. From human to worm. She saw as her own race grew gradually away from the animals they had been bred beside for millions of years. As they developed new technologies for killing one another, and new technologies for saving one another. She could also see her planet's end.

The Daleks. She was also shown images of their creation. They left the seas of chaos but they never grew from them. She realized they were not living creatures, but an infection upon all that was alive. They were like viruses, rogue strands of genetic code cone horribly wrong. Eating and devouring not only bodies, but the souls of all they converted. The very sight of them angered, sickened, and scared her. Angered her because of what they'd done. Sickened her because of the knowledge that such darkness had been allowed to thrive in the threshold of light. Scared her because of the truth behind the nature of their being.

Time was a river. She understood the meaning of that statement as she saw the end of everything due to Dalek infection. How the Doctor would be unable to unleash the Alpha Wave and kill all life on earth. How in his darkest moment he would realize that he couldn't do it. Couldn't kill all those people and himself in the process of destroying those that had taken everything from him. Despite what he knew that meant, he was condemning them to a death worse than death itself. The goodness, the self of a person died, but a part of the physical body remained, so they could not die. The self simply faded away to nothing. When the time came for their soul to move on there was nothing but the Dalek remaining. Giving them no eternity.

She saw the Daleks line up like a firing squad. Howling, "exterminate!" in ugly computer tones. The Doctor remained there on his knees, the last of his kind, resigning himself to his fate. There would be no regeneration this time. The Daleks would see to that. Rose watched with every shaky breath while the Doctor took in the breath that would be his last breath. Dalek lasers launched and met their mark. He didn't scream, even though Rose felt how extreme his pain was. All that happened was the fall backward, his legs twisted awkwardly beneath him.

His two hearts slowed to a stop. His dying sigh a murmur only she could hear.

"Rose…"

Out of all the things Rose had been shown by the heart of the TARDIS, none shattered her soul more than that. He just tried to do the right thing. Even the images of thousands of people that fell to the infection held nothing in comparison to his death. The Daleks would consume everything in the galaxy until there was nothing left. A part of her saw it as selfish of the Doctor to condemn all those souls just so he could die with a clean conscious. That was the part of her overrun by the wisdom the timeline granted her. Then there was Rose herself, who would have given all those lives in that moment just so he could have lived.

Rose couldn't let any of that happen. The Doctor would one day meet his death, his final one. The universe would one day end. All things would turn to dust. That was the nature of time. All things had theirs.

But this was not going to be his. This would not be the end. Rose had the power to stop it and she would. Even if it was the last thing she did.

The End

AN: I always imagined what it was like for Rose when she took on the power she did. I'm probably not even touching the surface of it. Also, it's a little thing but there's a line that's referencing his regeneration abilities. She just took on all of time and space so she was kind of all knowing. And remember she forgot everything by the time it was taken out of her so I figured I could get away with it. But ah well. Please R&R