The Doctor knew the moment that the Meta-crisis died. It was as though a window that had been left open just enough to let in the murmur of noises from outside, but not open enough to really notice, had been slid shut and his mind was just a tiny bit quieter. Had the Time Lords still been around, he never would have detected it, like a whisper in Time Square, but as they were not, the silence echoed around his lonely mind just a bit. He had known that the bond with the Meta-crisis had endured them being in two separate universes for about a century of linear time now. Every once in a long while the connection had widened enough for some strong emotions to slip through, and the part of him that wasn't intolerably jealous or angry was glad to observe that the times of joy that slipped through had far outnumber the times of fear, sadness, or anger. However, that portion of him was considerably smaller than the part that contained the jealousy he felt towards the Meta-crisis for getting to live a lifetime with Rose Tyler, or the part that held the devastation that he had lost her again by a conscious decision on his own making. So those and all emotions towards Rose Tyler had been figuratively boxed away in a special shoe box after his regeneration and put mentally out of sight in a closet where he wouldn't be faced daily with his loss (a trick he had learned from a teen magazine he once read while waiting for Amy). That being said, he didn't much appreciate the Meta-crisis telepathically rubbing it in his face, or mind, that he was Rose Tyler fantastic life and the Doctor was not. The first time it had happened, the Doctor was still in his last regeneration and grieving the loss of Donna and Rose. He had been traveling alone, which had only intensified his anger at the unfairness of the universe and had been in the middle of a disastrous trip to Mars when he had felt it. All around him, death and panic reigned supreme, when blooming out of the back if his conscienceless came the slight petals of joy, love and ecstasy that could only have come from the Meta-crisis during a very specific event. Needless to say the Doctor had not handled it very well, and the Time Lord Victorious had been born.
But now that the inevitable had finally happened, the Doctor felt no sense of relief. As he sat staring at the center console (brooding others would and had called it), he was happy that the Ponds were currently not on board the TARDIS and that his wife hadn't popped in unexpectedly. He now had an opportunity to pull out the box and reminisce on the happy times he had shared with the woman that had saved him and that he could now admit to loving. For the first time he allowed himself to wonder if she was still alive or if she had passed on first, he wondered if she had become a mother, and if she had settled down into domestic life (he doubted it), but mostly he wondered if she had ever thought of him. He couldn't regret taking her back to Pete's Universe and giving her a chance at a normal life, not if she was happy, but he was selfish enough to hope that she had still loved him as the Doctor even after all this time. But he would never know because the Meta-crisis was dead, and so was his last connection to Rose Tyler.
About a month later there was a vibration along the line that tickled the spot in the Doctor's mind where the bond had been, but because it occurred while he happened to be staring down a one of the Silence, it was stored away deep in his memory and forgotten the moment he turned and looked away.
For being dead, Rose Tyler sure had a lot to do. After the shock had worn off enough for her mind to start working properly again, at an even higher processing speed than before, Rose was able to catalogue all the changes that had occurred within her body. She filed away the cooler body temperature, increased respiratory ability and bone density, but while this was subconsciously and instantaneously being stored away for further exploration, she focused in on the double heartbeat and all of the implications that came with it. So when the cacophony of voices burst through as the humans in the room moved past their shock, she had a few hypothesis she could share with them. The most probable theory was that when she became Bad Wolf, the TARDIS had seen that she wished to be with the Doctor for as long as his forever would be, not just for hers. However, her human body as it was would not survive a regeneration cycle, but the TARDIS saw every possible timeline and the strongest included Rose Tyler undergoing over a century of slow transformation by the remnants of the time vortex into what was known as human plus, and so, when the moment of death had come about, it was a short gap to close to finish the metamorphosis.
That being said, the next question was what she did now. She had prepared for her death, all the details were sorted, and the only thing that was wanting was the actual body to put in the coffin. Now that that plan had gone all to hell, Rose Tyler, Time Lady, had some options. Only six people plus herself knew the truth of what had happened, and she had undergone such a radical transformation that for all intents and purposes she was dead to everyone else. She could try and prove to everyone she was still alive and still the same person, but that didn't seem like it would lead to pleasant results. She could form a new life under another name, and this way she would be able to be close with her family, but they were already quite advanced along their timelines and would get older and when the six in the room passed on, no one would remain who knew whom she really was. Besides, she didn't want to build a new life, she had just made it to the finish line of her last one and it wasn't like she had made contingency plans for this. The last option was to try and find her way back to the prime universe and the Doctor, who was the reason for the change in the first place. This one seemed the most impossible and had the most unknowns: was the Doctor even alive still or had he burned through his remaining regenerations? Would he still want her by his side or had he moved on? Oddly enough, the idea of getting through to the other universe was of the lowest priority on her worry scale. She had done it once as a human, so advancing the technology that already existed with her new Time Lady brain seemed simple enough, and she wasn't in any rush anyways. First she had a funeral to get through.
In the end she decide on a combination of the making a new life and searching for the Doctor. She kept Rose as her first name, but changed her last to Harkness. Smith had been her first thought, in honor of Mickey and the original Sarah Jane, but it seemed to be a bit presumptuous to take the name of the Doctor's alias when she wasn't even sure of what he wanted, let alone what she did. So she had picked the last name of one of her dearest friends and who was also facing a much longer life than originally planned on. (John had told her all about what had happened on Satellite 5 when it had become apparent that there were some lingering effects). She started working at Torchwood again and at the recommendation of the previous director and board member (Donna), headed a team that focused on inter-dimensional travel. She was introduced as a new alien arrival to Earth that was looking for a way to get home to a parallel world, was given a new identity under the new name and began working to once again cross the void. 20 years passed, and while she barely aged, those around her very noticeably did.
Donna Susan Noble died on a Thursday afternoon (much to her displeasure) at the ripe old age of 120, beating that pesky average just like her mother. Like her mother and grandfather before her, those who had worked with her at Torchwood and all that who had known her mourned her passing, but none so much as her husband, two sisters and 4 children. Rose Harkness, an old family friend, had been at her side with the aforementioned group of people, when Donna had breathed her last goodbye. But while a chorus of mourning had broken out around her, she merely sat with an expectant look on her still young face. Donna's children merely shrugged it of as an alien thing and in their grief thought no more about the unusual behavior. Only when minutes had turned into an hour, and then another and the body had been taken away to be prepared for cremation, did the face morph into one of sorrow and grim determination. Rose Harkness made her preparations, and Rose Tyler said goodbye to her children one last time. The dimension manipulator had been tested and was ready to be used for its intended purpose. For the safety of the multiverse, she was taking one of two manipulators; the other was to be destroyed upon the death of her last daughter, barring regeneration. That way, if Sarah or Martha did by chance regenerate, they would be able to come search for Rose if they so chose. Mother's duty done, she gave one last look full of love and pride and disappeared from a shoreline about 50 miles outside of Bergen.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, any of the lines that come from DW, or characters, but this was written by my overactive imagination.
