Seared
It wasn't unlike pins and needles. The sensation of burning, that is.
It was a curious sensation of there-not-there and a core of cold pain that burned in the back of her mind. A steady flame. One that grew and grew the longer it took for her to move. But her feet were lead to the ground and her hands were glued to the control panel as if they were all honestly fused together. A forever circuit of metal-human-metal—and it wasn't even proper metal.
It was a circuit of alive-alive-alive.
But within that circuit there was the knowledge of movement. And that knowing, which grew more vast even as she burned brighter—that knowing told her that she was close. That they were close to their goal. But at this moment she couldn't exactly remember what that goal was because she was just so full of knowing. She was bursting with it!
Or she was burning with it. There wasn't a difference with it because it hurt. And it hurt inside of her, where it shouldn't have even been possible for her to hurt. Why was she being hurt? She couldn't remember. But she could remember planets.
Planets and people and past and present and the future—she could see it all. And this horrible knowing kept expanding behind her eyes. Gold blocked out the comforting green glow and everything she saw and everything she touched looked as if it was on fire. The very air she breathed felt like clawed fingers trying to free itself from her body. Her shoulders carried the weight of planets (because she could see even through the flames in her eyes that there were planets on the verge of imploding and self-destructing and annihilation and Armageddon and she knew all of the ways to make these horrific futures stop if only she could just move and break the circuit of her forgotten choice—) and her hands might be attached more then just because of the circle and because she wanted this.
But she couldn't remember why.
And then a terrible voice spoke—in a way that voices that do not have voices can speak—and told her that it was time.
Time for what?
But a shrill, fluctuating wail echoed terribly through the air once... twice... and the knowing that had been burning inside of her mind with its endless twisting and possibilities and OH.
And oh.
She could see it all. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It was blue, icy blue. And inside of it was a core that burned gold and she was burning up with it. It was the TARDIS and She had looked in to it. But she was not the TARDIS. She wasn't blue—she was pink and yellow and she had had a name once. But the knowing had pushed it to the far corners of her expanding mind and the path back to it could not be found again.
But she could see it. Blights in time and space. And the center of it all—The Doctor. Her Doctor. Their Doctor. She saw not with her eyes but within time itself. The record of him turning and seeing pink and yellow and burning even as he falls to his knees and cries out—the words are consumed by a roar. A long, wailing roar that howls in her ears and in her heart (and when did she get one of those?).
The wailing whine had hit its third repetition. The path was now viable.
She could go and save everyone (Because today, everyone lives! Just today...) and all the planets and all the stars and she can hold back the black when even the Doctor should falter. As long as she was by his side, the stars wouldn't dare flicker out. Because she would call out and her howl would shock them back in to life—because she burned like the very stars. And what stars wouldn't listen to the most powerful, the most luminous of them all?
But first... but first she had to save her Doctor—before he destroyed himself.
But even as the door opened, her body was too heavy to move. The weight was too great. She could not turn around. She had a body—she had a body that must be moved. So she took hold of the burning and screamed her frustration—
And then she knew how. She knew how to move.
And the voice-that-was-not bid her go.
Go and spread the fire.
But she would do more then that. She would save the universe. And she didn't move herself as was normally done. It wasn't a simple problem of mechanical error that had made her too heavy, it was far more complex and complicated for the answer to be that simple. But she had no time for problems. The fire was burning stronger now and there was no time—even through there was more time then could ever be needed and running out of time was a physical impossibility—
She stood still.
And she made the world move for her.
She made the world spin and she made it move under her feet till she could see through the doorway. The sudden blackness of it startled her. It was so dark here! But she could feel all of the little lives in this tiny room even as she burned away the darkness with golden light. See? Even know her very existence pushed back the black! The Doctor—her Doctor was on the floor. That wasn't supposed to happen. Not yet. But even as the thought came she knew that it also was supposed to happen. It had been a possibility. This solider was on the verge of giving up. And a great shock had come.
She moved the world until she stood over him. Looming. The tips of their shoes touching. A pleasure at the touch came—a spark that traced itself back to the not-a-voice that rejoiced in the touch, in the life—and the feeling of The Doctor. Who also felt like fire to her senses. But his burning wasn't like her own. His felt slow, controlled and old and long lasting and forever—it was wonderful.
But he spoke—and how had this fire the words to speak? He demanded so much from her. How could she tell him when she had no mouth and he didn't seem to hear her own not-a-voice?
And then she remembered that she had a mouth. That she had eyes and a nose and hair and a body that was almost buckling under the burning weight of the knowing—
What had she done?
The Not-A-Voice spoke for her—
"I looked in to the TARDIS." She knew that was her voice. Knew it deep within her insides that were being torn apart by pins and needles and claws. But it was her voice done wrong. A mockery of a voice. Because that wasn't human—
She was Human.
And she knew why, the Not-A-Voice echoed through her vocal chords. "And the TARDIS looked in to me." She almost choked. She felt her lips tremble. Why had she done this? But the not-a-voice told her it was because of the little life forms that surrounded The Doctor. The metal shells with tiny lights inside were a threat to her Doctor. Her eyes—she could no longer see with her eyes.
All that was—she heard her name before The Doctor uttered it.
Rose. Her name was Rose.
And she wanted her Doctor safe. No matter what. It was always going to be like this. She would have endured this burning for him no matter what. The tiny pieces of time called her an abomination. Inside of her mind she snarled—damn the planets, damn creation and damn the Daleks and their false God—for all of creation would burn before anyone hurt her Doctor.
It wasn't anger that pushed her to raise her hand—She returned the Dalek's fire back to it's origin. She did not need to use another creature's weapon. She needed no weapons.
And maybe the small part that was still so human under the sheer knowing knew that some part of herself was being lost by this. That this made her 'Bad' and 'Evil' and 'frightening'. But these descriptions had no point. Not to her. She was no longer just 'Rose'. No longer just the pink and yellow human that ran with the Doctor.
She was going to run with the Doctor for forever. She could see it. Their faces glowing with their inner fires and her howling denial to the stars as the blue, blue light blinded her eyes and all but sucked her away—and the brown eyes of her Doctor looked on in horror and oh—
And oh.
She had a name for herself.
Dårlig Ulv Stranden.
The poor wolf stuck on her poor wolf-beach.
Slem ulv-bukten.
"I am The Bad Wolf." She spoke, her voice echoing even as her eyes looked to the future. It was a terrible, terrible future. But of all of the futures, this was the only one that would lead to victory. This was the only future that would make the stars stop going out. Her loneliness and the Doctor's pain were small sacrifices for the universe.
But today. Just for Today... Today they didn't have to die. They could be whole for a little while longer.
She took her future—her terrible future of loneliness and made it her mantra. She made it her name. She took her name and sent it out amongst the stars. Printing and stamping and owning it—marking all of the planets and all of the futures so that everyone would know who it was that was sacrificing for their continued existence.
The Bad Wolf would accept this future because it would lead to the best outcome. Because it would lead back to her Doctor and to her forever with him—these abominations before her did not matter.
"I create myself."
Her own not-a-voice howled.
And she turned them all in to dust.
Because eventually everything turns to dust.
Even her.
But not her Doctor. Not Jack. Not the earth... Even if the knowing burned her out like a star gone too bright and too big and even if she collapsed on the inside she would not let this go. Because it was more then the knowing now.
Bad Wolf was not just a by-product of a choice.
It was power and it was strength and it was the future and the past and all that ever could be wrapped up in to one pink and yellow human—and she knew that she would not be able to function when she couldn't even move and making the world move around her only burned her out quicker—
The Bad Wolf would rise again. Just like Jack Harkness will always rise again. They were forever changed now. Forever trailing in the wake of their Doctor. Even if The Doctor didn't know it, even when he thinks they're lost, the Bad Wolf and the Impossible Man would always follow him.
The Bad Wolf breathed—and she looked down at the Doctor as the man called out her name for the first time. And she told him (again to her, who had already seen and already breathed this future even as she altered and edited and cut away at time to suit her liking) who she was now. "I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself."
How can I let go of this?
She wouldn't, it was too late to let go of it.
The Bad Wolf saw the hole she had made in Time and Space and she pulled it together and fused it shut. She made it permanent. She changed it all. She changed Jack and she changed the Doctor (and even though he would die in a sense, he wouldn't be gone. He had been fantastic—but fantastic can only go so far. He needed to brilliant.) and she changed Time itself.
Because there was only one Time Lord now. And he would not notice the shift. Not at first.
But even he would be blind till its too late. Because he shut himself off from 'all that ever could be'.
This is not the end, her not-a-voice told him even through he had no not-ears to listen.
Her human lips were moving and her human vocal chords were working—and she spoke without thinking because she had heard the script before.
—And then Rose opened her eyes and saw her hands fused to the controls of the TARDIS with her knuckles bone yellow from the strength of the grip, the glow of the TARDIS' core stinging her eyes even as the first flickers of the Burning started to lick at her insides. Rose blinked again and bowed her head even as the TARDIS moved to return to the Doctor. To start the end.
"I want you safe... my Doctor..." She wheezed with her human voice—before the Bad Wolf altered even that and finished changing her from the inside out. She knew the script. She knew the lines and the actions and the people—the Bad Wolf had already changed the past, present and the future. Rose would be the last thing edited because she was the center of it. She did this. She had done this. Rose wanted to cry. To pound her fists and stamp her feet and wail about the injustice of it all. She was supposed to stay with the Doctor for forever! She refused to move aside for Martha! She would not give her Doctor over to Donna Noble! She didn't want to!
But she would. Because she knew that the Earth needed it's defender. And Donna Noble needed to be sung amongst the stars. The Bad Wolf hushed her cries and wrapped her up with gold fire and whispered in to her ears—
It is time.