Torchwood Rose: Training
Part 1 of the "Torchwood Rose" series…
Rose Tyler was no longer just the Doctor's Rose. She was now Torchwood Rose – Defender of the Earth. In her own right, she had become a strong and confident kickass warrior - with a heart of gold.
For three months after Canary Wharf, Rose put her life on hold and waited for him with bated breath. After the good bye disaster at Bad Wolf Bay, she finally stopped holding her breath and decided that she was tired of waiting to live. It was time to take her life back. The day after the goodbyes at BWB, she dried her eyes, walked steadily into Director Pete Tyler's office at Torchwood, and requested field team training. That day was the start of her new life as Torchwood Rose – Defender of the Earth.
That first year at Torchwood, she focused on training. It felt so good to be doing something, to push herself, to lose herself in the physical realm instead of the emotional one in which she had been marking time. She worked hard – so hard – to hone her basic skills into sharp and instinctual ones. She learned survival skills, hand-to-hand combat, and martial arts. She even swallowed her disgust and threw herself into weapons training. She rationalized that it was better to know and not need than to need and not know. She tried hard not to consider what the Doctor might think about it because he wasn't in this universe to defend it. She was, however, so she continued to push herself hard and she excelled. Her already lean runner's body turned hard and muscular and she was completely in control of it. She felt confident that she could physically do whatever needed to be done and it felt good!
Then it was time to focus on her mind. Participating in the basic psychic training that was mandatory for all Torchwood field agents revealed that she had some previously undiscovered telepathic and empathic abilities that were beyond the norm. She was not terribly shocked at this news. After all, she had spent over two linear years living with and communicating with the sentient TARDIS and the whole Bad Wolf incident had only strengthened that mental relationship. It soon became clear, however, that the basic Torchwood training was not going to be effective enough for her and she would need further assistance. The accidental crash landing of a shipful of Tirlugians solved that problem, though. The tall, blue-skinned humanoids were discovered to be a benevolent species with strong psychic abilities. In exchange for refugee status and relocation assistance, since they were fleeing from a hostile invasion on their home world, the Tirlugians agreed to contract with Torchwood to provide advanced psychic training for those who needed it. From them, Rose learned how to voluntarily communicate with other telepathic beings without using spoken or written language, how to put up shields when she didn't want anyone (or anything!) else able to access her inner thoughts when she did not want to communicate, how to compartmentalize and organize her thoughts more efficiently, and how to read all of the hints and nuances of "mind language." Her empath training not only helped her to recognize the emotional states of others, but also to tamp down on emotions that threatened to spiral out of control – whether hers or someone else's. Being in control of her mind was even better than being in control of her body, Rose had decided - especially since it truly helped her to become at peace with the events that had led her to this life.
She didn't just develop her body and mind, however. Even though she had worked so hard, she wasn't planning to turn herself completely into a warrior – except as a last resort. She knew very well that there were other - better - ways to protect the Earth. That's where her other, more natural, skills came into play.
After their basic training was over, but before the advanced field training began, all of the Torchwood field team members were also asked to choose what other area that they were most interested in – where they wanted to concentrate their time and attention when they weren't in the field. Aliens didn't land, invade, interfere, and/or need help every day. Therefore, field agents needed to decide how to best utilize their time between field operations. Rose was already prepared with her answer on the day that they asked her to choose her secondary area. Mickey had briefly tried to talk her into joining him in the tech dept, but she politely declined. She knew what she wanted – especially after working so closely with assisting the Tirlugians. She wanted to directly complement all the physical and psychic training that she was receiving by fine tuning all of those diplomacy skills that she had already started developing during her travels with the Doctor. Therefore, she decided to join the Inter-Species Relations department. She threw herself into diplomacy, language, and species identification training and learned how to deal with the physical, emotional, and social needs of the alien species that Torchwood knew about. Unsurprisingly, she soon found that she was able to add extensively to that list herself, having had encountered some species with the Doctor before this alternate Torchwood had the opportunity to do so themselves. She found that while she was quite adept at defending against and negotiating with the hostile aliens, she was even better at (and really enjoyed) working at coexistence and cooperation with the peaceful ones. Her training as a low level empath really assisted her in this field, as well, since she was able to somewhat sense and assess the intentions of others.
The bottom line was that she truly loved her work. It was a way to connect her old life with the Doctor to her new life in Pete's World. It was just like she told Mickey and her mother in that chippie long ago before she made her way back to the Gamestation as Bad Wolf: "You don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say 'no.' You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away." She built up a reputation for herself by conducting all of her Torchwood dealings by this philosophy and that quickly gained her the respect and admiration of all of those whom she came in contact with through her work, both human and alien. Therefore, she quickly rose through the ranks to become both a field team leader and the head of the ISR department in London.
Better yet, she had put the past behind her, to be remembered fondly instead of painfully. She knew that she would always miss the Doctor, and would be ecstatic to see him if he ever found a way to return to her. However, she could not waste her life just sitting around and waiting for him to come back to her because that would probably never happen. Instead, she decided to truly live her new life and focus on her future as Torchwood Rose.