Author's Notes: This chapter is a sort of AU of The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, but it's gone significantly AU by now and only touches on certain parts of those episodes. Credit to Russell T Davies, the writer of those episodes, for the few ideas I filched.
Chapter Two
"D'you really think now is the time to have a deep-and-meaningful?" Rose asked. "With the whole of reality on the line?"
"This is a time machine, in case you've forgotten," the Doctor said. "Reality can wait a few minutes."
"I really don't think –"
"Rose," the Doctor interrupted somewhat austerely.
Well, so much for trying to reason with him. The set of his jaw alone was enough to tell her that even logic and the threat to life in the universe were not going to stop him from getting to the bottom of this latest mystery. Trust the Doctor to get his priorities all wrong.
"Fine," she sighed, "we'll talk. But this thing that's going to happen will happen soon. Well, in a way it's happening through all of time and space, and throughout all universes. Time ship or not, we don't have time to waste just standing around. So we can talk all you like. But while we're talking, I need you to build something."
"Build something," the Doctor repeated, sounding nonplussed.
"Yeah. A Z-Neutrino biological inversion catalyser, to be exact about it."
The Doctor looked like he'd been slapped. "A ... Rose, there are only two reasons to build a biological inversion device of any kind, let alone something of that magnitude, and neither of them are good."
"Doctor," Rose said firmly. "Please just do it."
"I can't be part of it," he said, shaking his head so hard that she wondered if he was trying to shake the taint of the thought right out of him.
"I just need you to do this one thing," Rose pressed. "I just need you to build it, because I can't. I don't know how. And I'm sorry to have to ask you for even that much. I know how you feel about it."
"Rose, why –"
"You just have to trust me."
The Doctor stared at her for about twenty seconds longer in silence, as if analysing her would show him the correct path. Apparently somehow it did, because he visibly set his jaw and rounded the console. He yanked part of the grating up and leaned down to forage through his spare parts, locating what he needed to start constructing. He banged things together more loudly than Rose thought was necessary, as if needing some outlet for his anger.
Fair enough, she thought. She certainly hadn't expected him to just placidly agree to this.
"Your Torchwood team didn't mention anything about this. Which is strange, because they were very happy to tell me all sorts of other far more meaningless things once I'd confirmed my identity," the Doctor said. "Do you know, they'd thought I was made-up. A strange figment conjured by a warped mind, they said."
"Yeah, well," Rose said evasively, "they think I'm completely off my nut, so there you are."
"Interestingly, even though they told me lots of things about recent world events and Torchwood's current creed and even the weather for the last week, that is the only thing they said when I asked about the life of one Rose Tyler. 'Barking mad', was the phrase they used, actually."
Rose could hear the implied questions, even though she doubted he'd ever voice them aloud. He wanted to know, were they right about her? Had something happened since he'd last seen her to send her off the deep end? Why else would she be asking him to do this?
Rose had heard that sort of sentiment whispered around her often enough over the years. 'Oh, that's Rose Tyler, you don't want to get too involved with her. They say she went through some tragedy and it broke her mind. She's not quite right, that one.' Never mind that she was, in every way that mattered, their boss. Torchwood 8's hierarchy wasn't quite official, just like the whole presence of Torchwood in Canada hadn't been official either since she'd taken it over and remade it. Their respect for her only extended to listening to orders when the aliens were raining missile fire on them, and that was only because she was damn good at saving lives.
Human lives, at least. Usually.
Anyway, not one of the Torchwood team knew a single personal detail about her. She found it easier that way. It meant there was less explaining to be done.
"It's all that travelling with you," Rose said flippantly. "Taught me that being anonymous is sometimes best. But we can't all go about spouting off ambiguous names like 'the Doctor' or 'John Smith' to help us along. Some of us have to fly under the radar in other ways."
"Keeping out of the history books when you're outside your own time, is that it?" the Doctor asked.
Rose swallowed, her mouth having somehow turned bone dry at startling speed. She'd have preferred to never have to explain that part of her life back in the other universe to him, if possible. But then, when did things with her (or him, for that matter) ever go quite to plan?
"Something like that," she replied, and knew even as she said it that he wasn't going to accept that as an answer.
"Why were you in the 25th century, Rose?" he pushed.
"What if I said that knowing that would affect your future, so I can't tell you?"
"What if I said I don't believe that?" he countered. "You weren't ever a particularly good liar, Rose, so don't bother."
"Well, what if I just don't think you need to know?" Rose shot back. "Huh? Couldn't you just trust me? Or did I just imagine how much faith you were willing to put in me last time we were together? What happened to that?"
The Doctor scoffed, "Of course you didn't imagine it. Look at what you've got me doing now." He gestured at the device he was fiddling with to make his point. "That's how much I trust you. But Rose, this is something I need to know. If you've had to travel back and forward in time, I have to know why so that I know whether or not it's going to change the wrong events."
"Oh, yeah," Rose said angrily. "I know this one. 'I'm a Time Lord and I know more than everyone else put together, so tell me everything you know or I'll go on a monologue and make you spill everything you've ever known'. It's been a long time since I've heard this song, but I do still remember the tune so well. Not to mention the accompanying dance."
The Doctor frowned. "You sound like the people on that bus on Midnight," he accused.
There was another topic Rose would rather not have to go into right now, possibly even more so than the other. The only other time in her life she'd killed a person so directly had been flying away from a black hole, and she'd been too scared of the thing possessing that man to feel sorry about the man himself until much later. This time hadn't been like that. She'd had time to think about it. Too much time, she thought.
Someday, when she'd come to terms with it herself, filing it away with all the other things that she wished she didn't know she was capable of, maybe she'd tell him about what she'd done on the bus. But not just now.
"No," Rose corrected, trying to refocus her attention to banish the memory. "I don't sound like them. I sound like a Torchwood agent. I know I do. Sometimes I'm not all that proud of it. But you can't be at Torchwood for as long as I've been and not have that rub off on you a little. I'm used to being responsible for myself, and for my own planet. Having you swan in and tell us we can't look after ourselves because we can't understand what's going on around us is aggravating to say the least, Doctor. Nice as it is to have you save the day in the end, you don't have to treat humans like ... well, like we're stupid apes."
God, why was she even getting angry with him about this? Really, she just wanted to be happy that he was there, practically within touching distance. But just having him around confused her emotions. She didn't like it. At the same time, though, she loved it. She'd rather have him around and sending her for a loop than lose him again, any day.
Perhaps he felt the same way and so didn't want to push her too hard. Or perhaps his experience on that bus was still a little too fresh in his mind for him to doubt the negative impact his arrogance could have on humans. Whatever the reason, he let her criticism of his attitude go without them having to have a big row about it.
Saving the universe certainly sprang to mind as a good excuse to leave that sort of thing until later.
Unfortunately for Rose, the Doctor instead addressed a different aspect of what she'd said. "How long were you at Torchwood, then?" he asked. "You barely look any older than when I last saw you, but you make it sound like ages."
"A while," she replied simply.
Inwardly, Rose cursed herself. Trust him to pick up her every little slip of the tongue. She wasn't usually this reckless in choosing her words. Not these days. She'd learned to watch herself. No, it was being with the Doctor again that made her careless like that. Had to be. She couldn't seem to stop herself from talking, blurting things out, because there'd never been anything she couldn't tell him (eventually, at least). And now here she was again, and it didn't seem natural to have to keep secrets from him.
The Doctor bristled at her answer, but didn't verbally respond to it immediately. When he did speak, his voice was calm. Deceptively so, she thought.
"There's nothing you could say that would make me turn my back on you, you know," he said. "You can just tell me, whatever it is you're hiding. We'll work through it."
"Like that I'm carrying a gun this very second?" Rose offered, looking to shock him into taking it back. She knew he believed what he was saying, but she personally doubted that his assertion would stand up to real testing. There were so many things she could tell him that might just manage to turn him against her. The gun was one of the truths that she thought she could deal with him knowing. "Or like that I've used that gun?"
"Like that," the Doctor confirmed, but she caught the slightest hesitation as the admission took him off-guard. She hadn't been the type to give a second thought to guns as self-defence at all the last time he saw her, even after spending all that time with Jack and his weapons. That should give the Doctor some vague clue of the sort of change he was up against now, she thought.
I killed a woman today, she added silently, but she couldn't quite say it aloud. Later, she thought. That seemed to be becoming like her mantra. Later.
"Is that why you think you can do this?" he asked, signalling at the half-made inverter as he slid another part into place. "I'll tell you now, killing one person with a gun doesn't compare. Do you really know what this device does?"
"Yes," Rose said. "It sends feedback through an entire species if they share enough biological material. The only reason to build one is to either take complete mental control over or commit murder against a whole clone species. And I need you to set it to do the latter. It's genocide in a can, basically, without there being an actual can."
"Yes," the Doctor said. "And can you do that? I won't step in and do it for you if you falter. I'm not even sure I can let you do it, knowing what you're planning."
"I've done it before," Rose said.
"The Game Station hardly counts," the Doctor scoffed with a dark expression. "It might have been your body and your oh-so-human need for everyone but the villains to live, but the Bad Wolf wasn't really you. You can barely remember doing it. I had to tell you about it when you asked about those garbled nightmares you couldn't figure out. But you'll remember this time, trust me."
"I wasn't talking about the Bad Wolf," Rose said.
The Doctor fumbled with the inversion device for a moment, but didn't quite drop it. Just as well, Rose thought. She wasn't sure they had time for him to start over again if he broke it. Not if they wanted any chance of keeping that so-important element of surprise on their sides.
"No?" he asked hesitantly. "You've ..."
"I'm wanted for genocide back in that parallel universe," Rose began. "A fugitive, even, depending on who you ask. I'm a bit surprised the Torchwood team didn't tell you that much about me as well, actually. I could never work out whether they actually knew it. I suppose that answers the question. Not that it matters now."
"What happened?" the Doctor asked.
"Does it matter?" Rose asked. "Genocide is genocide no matter what. And yes. I remember it. Always will."
"It matters to me," the Doctor insisted, his voice cracking just a little from the force of his words.
Yeah, she supposed it would. He was probably much more likely to forgive her for that than he ever would be to forgive himself for the many times he'd had to kill off most or all of a species, as long as she could prove to him she'd had no choice.
That was the moment, Rose realised, when she could turn him against her if she wanted. She could keep her heart from being broken again. She could stay with him just long enough to help avert the end of all universes, and then she could leave him behind knowing that their relationship was eternally broken anyway. The future had to happen one way or another. In many ways, it would be so much easier for both of them if it happened without the two of them being together again for now. They'd found each other again, yes, and even properly kissed finally. But they hadn't had time to for the reality of being together again to sink in. Not really.
But if she'd learned nothing else in a life filled with hardship, Rose had at least learned that avoiding being hurt meant avoiding living. And she could no more purposely walk away from him on bad terms than she could choose to have never loved him in the first place.
"It was Sontarans," she said, and that immediately softened the Doctor's hard expression. That was it, she realised. The opportunity to make him hate her had already passed. She barely even needed to expand on that explanation, because the Doctor knew the Sontarans. He knew what sort of decision she'd faced.
"Them or the Earth?" he asked.
"Them or sixteen planets in the surrounding systems, actually," Rose said with a lightness she didn't feel. "Thousands of creatures with bloody, war-driven minds against billions of relative innocents. It's an overly simplistic way of looking at it, I know, but that's how I had to see it at the time or I'd have gone as mad as my Torchwood employees think I am."
She'd thought just after she'd ordered the strike that she almost might understand how the Doctor felt having to end the Time War. But in pressing that final button, she hadn't also wiped out the human race and left herself alone in the universe.
He'd had to do so much worse.
And that was why she, rather than the Doctor, was the one who had to do the terrible thing she was planning now. He couldn't bring himself to do it. Not again. Not with the blood of his people already figuratively staining his hands.
"Public opinion over the Sontaran incident shifted after the fact. Isn't that always the way?" Rose mused. "So Torchwood put the blame squarely on my shoulders to cover their own arses, and then they disavowed all knowledge of me. I was exiled from Britain. From the whole of the Empire, actually, but that one central government based in London was having trouble keeping track of so many people scattered so far across the globe, so I managed to slip under the radar. Took over Torchwood in Canada."
"Britain expanded and took active control of the whole Commonwealth," the Doctor nodded. "One of your team explained it to me. A small Torchwood base was set up in each country in the Empire, he said."
"Yeah," Rose laughed mirthlessly, "that's how it was supposed to be. Like Torchwood 2 from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. That exists in this universe too, if memory serves. Just one man sitting in a tiny base going slowly insane from the want of companionship and the need for something important to do."
"But your Torchwood obviously grew," the Doctor commented. "I counted seven people in that base."
"I took some other insurrectionists under my wing, and so the ranks swelled. Catch them showing any gratitude for giving them a home and a purpose, though."
"And was crossing universes your idea, or Torchwood's?" the Doctor asked.
Rose shrugged. "Mine. Torchwood 1 in London would have jumped on the idea if they'd been capable of thinking it up, of course. The knowledge that it was even possible had faded out of records. Torchwood didn't know enough to even attempt it. So it had to be me."
"Is that why you went into the future? To tell Torchwood what needed to be done?"
"Something like that," she said.
She could already see those three words becoming her default answer for all of the more uncomfortable questions he was bound to ask her. Although, if she used it too often, she thought he might physically implode from frustration with her.
And really, she was fairly attached to this incarnation of him. It'd be a shame for him to have to regenerate from something as useless as that. He'd want to go out in a blaze of glory, if he had to go at all.
Regardless of the method, she wasn't ready to lose this Doctor at all.
For this time, at least, the Doctor let her non-answer pass. It seemed he'd remembered the imminent danger they were all in after all. Oh well, better late than never, she supposed. His hands sped across the device, which looked to be coming together finally, attaching bits and pieces together in a way that made no sense at all to Rose.
She couldn't have built it without him, which meant she couldn't commit the murders without him. That would haunt him, she thought, but it had to be that way. Even if she couldn't explain it to him, he'd be far more haunted by what would happen if he didn't help her do it.
"Torchwood only caught on to just how many stars were being affected about a hundred and thirty years ago," Rose said, shifting the topic away from herself. "They'd thought at first that it was just the usual situation where stars go supernova and the light stops reaching us thousands of years later, only that there seemed to be strange abundance of them. They didn't think anyway was wrong."
"But the stars were closer to Earth than that?"
"Yeah," Rose said. "All of them were close enough that the scientists started worrying that whatever was happening might somehow spread to our sun soon, and that'd be the end of us. It took Torchwood about sixty years to create the technology to explore time and space so they could see what had happened – or was happening. But they couldn't figure out any actual cause. There didn't seem to be one. The effect seemed to be spreading out of nothingness. They couldn't figure it out at all. My Torchwood team stole the information, and I was able to put everything together by sharing my knowledge of parallels with them. They all thought I was mad, of course. But then, it was a choice between the hope given by the word of a crazy person, or the despair of watching the world end without any way of stopping it. I'd take hope and prayer any day, and so did they."
"There's a lot to be said for hope," the Doctor agreed.
Rose smiled slightly. "Yeah, I know. You taught me that. Although I couldn't give any hope to the rest of the branches of Torchwood; I'd have been arrested. If all goes according to plan, or close enough to it, the other universes will just reset themselves. Torchwood London will never have a clue what happened."
"So I suppose you found out where the collapse of all those stars originated from once you got the universe-hopping sorted, or you wouldn't be here now," the Doctor said.
"Well," Rose started, "sort of. The Earth in 2008. And twenty-something other planets. And the Medusa Cascade. All at the same time, happening together. It's all a bit garbled," she admitted self-abasingly. "Sorry. I'm relying on post-event accounts, and you know what we humans can be like when it comes to recording the facts of alien encounters. Buried evidence gathered through Torchwood 3 in this universe was the only information that was even slightly reliable, and even they seemed unsure of the full details."
"Torchwood 3," the Doctor said. "That's Cardiff, is it?"
"Yeah," Rose agreed, but didn't elaborate. "The thing is, we studied that event closely enough that I know we can't act before the Earth is moved to the Medusa Cascade. Something about the future of humankind making their way out into the stars somehow revolves around that. So people have to die. Good people. But we can step in and prevent a couple of things that don't have to happen. They're up in the air, you see?"
Rose's eyes slid against her will to the door that led into the rest of the TARDIS, where Donna was off waiting for the Doctor and Rose to get it together.
She didn't have to have her memory wiped, Rose thought. In no other universe had that tragedy ever come close to occurring. Only in this time and place, since this was the only universe with a reality bomb. She'd seen it, in other places. Donna Noble, a brilliant woman spoken about with revelry on a hundred planets, the Doctor's companion for years to come yet. That was what Rose wanted for her more than anything.
Rose was damned if she was going to stand back and watch while a woman lost everything she'd ever learned about life and about herself since meeting the Doctor. She knew how devastating that would be for her personally. Who would Rose Tyler even be without the Doctor? She didn't want to know. Rose swore to herself that the Doctor wouldn't have to face that choice, and Donna wouldn't have to go through it.
"Humans," the Doctor scoffed unexpectedly. "You think you have any concept of time travel? It's complicated, and incredibly intricate. You can't even begin to imagine what could happen if you mess around with these events you're talking about, especially if they're somehow bordering a fixed point in time."
"The timelines are blurred around the things I'm talking about. We wouldn't be changing them, just deciding a path. I'm not stupid, Doctor. I've learned a lot about paradoxes since I last saw you."
"Who told you that? About the blurring?" the Doctor asked, sounding stunned.
"No one. I can see the way the edges shift, like it's in motion or something."
The Doctor frowned heavily. "Rose, you shouldn't be able to see that. That's the way I see the universe. A human mind shouldn't be able to process it. The knowledge would burn out your mind."
He sounded like he was truly worried about her, not like he was just annoyed at her for trying to muck about with time. That was nice. Rose had missed that.
"Yeah, well, I've got a good brain, me," she responded glibly. "It's been just fine for years. Don't worry about it. Just ... I know what I'm talking about, okay? Can you just accept that? There are things coming that could go off in one bad direction, but really shouldn't. We can help it along, is all."
Rose looked down at the Doctor's hands, which were running slowly over the inverter but didn't seem to be actually doing anything anymore. She frowned. "Hey! That's been finished for a while now, hasn't it?" Rose accused. "You're just fiddling now, buying time. Trying to distract me with all that 'intricacies of time' talk of yours."
The Doctor looked down at the completed biological inverter. "Yes," he admitted. "I'm trying to give you time to think about –"
"It's the Daleks, Doctor," Rose interrupted. "It's not just a choice between some people on Earth or a random group of clones. It's the Daleks."
Rose remembered a time when she'd stopped the Doctor from killing a single Dalek. She had admittedly done that more for his benefit than anything to do with the Dalek itself, but still. How she'd grown up since then.
The look of terror in the Doctor's eyes was just a shadow of how he'd looked confronted with that one Dalek when he'd been certain they were all gone. He'd coped with that. He knew now that he'd probably never completely get rid of them. Daleks. The species that just wouldn't die.
She probably wasn't going to commit complete genocide at all, Rose mused darkly. There were always more somewhere. But if someone told her that they could ever properly wipe the damn things out of space and time, she might just jump right on that bandwagon and support them. It was having to be the one to do it that gave her pause. Oh, she wasn't the kind to step back and let someone else do it really, as she'd proven on that bus earlier. But being right there and watching them die at her hands ... Not even the Sontarans had died in front of her like that. It was so ... personal.
The Doctor knew what it meant that the Daleks were back in force. Yet, even knowing that, he couldn't use the device himself. Never again. She knew that.
But Rose thought, seeing that slither of fear in his eyes at the mention of the Daleks, that maybe the knowledge of just what it was they were facing meant he was at least starting to understand that Rose wasn't completely crazy for wanting him to build the device in the first place. With the Daleks, it was always a choice between them and all other life in the universe. This time, it was actually a choice between them and all matter in the universe. In every universe, actually.
A single race of insane murderers, versus every star, planet and creature in every avenue of existence. It was something she'd been thinking about for the last couple of days, since she'd first fully discovered the nature of the events that was making the stars go out. She'd decided, and she stood by it now, that faced with that choice, Rose thought she could live with wiping a species out. She would never be comfortable with it – she'd have to be psychotic not to care at all – but it was necessary.
"You should go and tell Donna we're ready," Rose said quietly. "We've got work to do."
Rose gave the Doctor the time and place co-ordinates when he arrived back, red-head in tow. Donna was glancing between the Doctor and Rose with a frown, likely sensing the tension.
"Off to save the universe, then, are we?" she asked.
"Every universe, actually," Rose said.
"Well," Donna said. "Can't say you aren't good at one-upmanship, Blondie. He hasn't even saved the one universe since I've been travelling with him."
"Oi," the Doctor complained. "What, are you saying you want the universe to be in danger just so I can act impressive?"
"As if you don't already think you're that impressive anyway, space man," Donna shot back.
As tense as the Doctor was, he couldn't seen to quite help the slight tug of a smile against his lips at that. Rose could tell by that alone that Donna was good for him. She loved the other woman for that.
"That's more like it!" Donna said. "Bit of a smile."
Rose's heart ached with the memory of saying the same thing to him just before they'd been separated. It had been quite a while ago for her, but the memories of those last few minutes they'd had together were burned into her mind.
Donna's fate wouldn't be the same. She wasn't going to be separated from the Doctor. Not if Rose had anything to do with it.
"The Medusa Cascade, you said?" the Doctor asked.
"Yeah," said Rose. "23rd of June 2008 on Earth. I'm pretty sure everything happens in the Medusa Cascade at the equivalent time, but it's hard to tell. Like I said, shoddy records."
The Doctor nodded. "All right, we'll start by looking there. And this is a tricky business, so we'll have to be spot on. Do you know the time of day?"
"Like you could hit the exact time anyway," Donna snarked.
"Donna," the Doctor chastised. "We're on a schedule here. So, time of day?"
"Early morning," Rose said. "Maybe eight o'clock? But you'll want to go earlier than that."
"Why's that?" the Doctor asked, squinting suspiciously at her. "If you're planning to change something ..."
"No!" Rose said, exasperated. "It's just that you have to move the TARDIS a second out of synch to match the rest of the Medusa Cascade. Torchwood 3 mentioned that part in their records, at least. I don't know how long that's going to take you."
"Could be a while," the Doctor agreed, "since 'a second' could be a rounded figure. Without anything specific to aim for, we'll have to go searching for the right time. It could be hidden in any of thousands of parts of a second." He looked at the centre of the TARDIS console. "Which means we'll need a bit of accuracy," he said to it pointedly.
The room shuddered, as if in annoyance.
"Hey!" Rose cried. "Really not the time to make her angry!"
"Sorry," the Doctor said, but didn't sound it at all.
Sometimes he could be so petulant, Rose reflected. She tried to ignore how fond the thought sounded inside her own head.
"Isn't anyone going to tell me what we're actually doing?" Donna asked. "All this talk of one second and cascades and things, and no one's told me anything even slightly useful."
"Trust me, Donna," the Doctor said shortly. "This time, you're really better off not knowing."
"Oi, she's a human, too," Donna pointed at Rose, "and apparently she's capable of knowing. Don't treat me like an idiot."
"I'd rather not know either!" the Doctor burst out. "It's nothing to do with being human or Time Lord or otherwise. Look, it's fine. There's going to be some danger, so be prepared for that, but we're going to sort it. Other than that, it won't help you to know. Really."
Donna contemplated the Doctor, looking as though she wanted to argue further, but something in the Doctor's expression seemed to stop her. She held her tongue. Rose could tell just how hard that was for her.
The Doctor set and reset and reset again the co-ordinates on the TARDIS, checking the monitor repeatedly and even flinging the TARDIS doors open once or twice for a better view.
It was a jerky sort of ride, tossing the TARDIS in all directions, but both Rose and Donna managed to keep their feet by clinging onto convenient railings and coral struts.
"It could be happening already, just a second from now, or a second ago," the Doctor muttered in aggravation, "and I just can't find it."
"What if –" Rose began.
"Oh ho!" the Doctor exclaimed suddenly as a loud, consistent beeping sound echoed throughout the console room. "It's a signal. Yes! Something to lock on to, finally!"
Harriet Jones, Rose thought sadly, thinking back on Jack Harkness's notes of this occurrence. She remembered Harriet. There was nothing to be done about her death now, and they couldn't have saved her life even if they'd got there in time. She was too important, even if she wasn't Prime Minister anymore. An extraordinary woman like that living in the world where she shouldn't have survived – it would have been magnitudes worse than how she'd tried to change her father's death back when she'd been new to travelling in the TARDIS and couldn't have begun to grasp these things.
They endured the rocky trip through what felt like the biggest storm in the universe, fires bursting spontaneously into existence around the room. When the TARDIS stopped finally, Rose dropped her arms (which were aching from having held on so tightly) from around the coral she'd grabbed and rushed over to the Doctor's side, looking at the console monitor. For a few moments she saw numerous planets, including the Earth, and breathed a sigh of relief. Right time, right place, she thought.
Now there was just one more thing to be done.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden replacement of the view of those planets with several faces.
"Jack!" Rose exclaimed.
All those reports she'd found that he'd written for Torchwood and then tried to bury (quite successfully, too, until she'd come along knowing what to look for), and she hadn't managed to run into him in person during all of her travels of the universe. It was so good to see him again, even if it was only on a monitor.
Had he always been that gorgeous?
She tried not to feel guilty at seeing him still alive and as young as ever. Such a long life was not something she'd wish on anyone, but she couldn't take back what she'd done to Jack. He was stuck.
She was sorry for it, but she couldn't dwell on it.
"Rose Tyler! Where have you been?" Jack scolded her jokingly. "And you!" he said to the Doctor. "Took your time, didn't you?"
"Captain," the Doctor greeted. "And Sarah Jane Smith and Martha Jones! It's 'This Is Your Life' all over again, without the tea!"
He smiled at Rose as if sharing a joke with her – the first true smile he'd given her in a while – but the reference went over her head. It was obviously something she should have remembered, she realised. She was constantly doing that: forgetting.
It was just so hard to keep it all straight in her head.
"Come on, Doctor," Rose said. "We have to go before the Daleks detect us. The only thing we've got going for us is surprise."
The Doctor nodded, already pinpointing the largest of the ships and directing the TARDIS towards it. "Are you sure you're ready?"
"Yes," Rose said.
"Are you sure –"
"Yes," Rose answered again. "There's no choice."
The Doctor looked torn about the truth of that, but nodded curtly nonetheless, throwing the last switch. The TARDIS ground into motion once more, and Rose swiped the biological inverter from where it was positioned on the grating.
"This button here?" she asked, indicating.
The Doctor's eyes flicked from what he was doing at the console to look. "That button there," he confirmed.
"You don't even have to come out," Rose said. "You don't have to watch."
"Yes. I do," the Doctor said.
Rose bit her lip in sympathy and nodded. Of course he did. He had to see for himself what he'd done. He was that sort of man.
The TARDIS stopped and Rose pushed open the TARDIS door, almost expecting a Dalek ray to hit her before she'd even had time to orient herself. No attack came, though, luckily, though weapons all over the massive space all jerked towards them almost in unison, ready to act.
It was just as well the Doctor had come out, Rose found, because every Dalek on the whole ship, and the grotesque being she very quickly determined was Davros, had their single eyes trained on him rather than the woman with the weapon behind her back.
Well, they thought he was the biggest threat to them, didn't they? Normally they'd be right. But not this time.
Rose acted quickly. She wished she didn't need both hands to operate the device as she aimed and depressed the button; she would very much have liked to have been able to block out the screams even a little by covering her ears. Sparks flew as the Dalek minds were cut off abruptly from their metal suits, never to become active again. Hundreds of thousands of Daleks, many of them down on the 27 planets surrounding the ships, sparked out within seconds of each other, and Davros died with a painful scream right in front of her eyes.
She felt all of it almost as if it was happening to her.
It took a little while for everything to fall properly quiet, with only the sounds of the ship around them humming to indicate that time hadn't frozen completely. The quiet made it sound unbelievably loud in comparison when the biological inverter smashed against the ground, Rose's suddenly slack fingers having lost their grip on it.
Rose wavered on her feet, and the Doctor was immediately at her side. As she leaned over and was sick, the Doctor held back her hair for her, murmuring inaudibly in her ear.
Rose was pitifully thankful that he was even willing to touch her after seeing that.
She'd known it would be hard, but she hadn't realised how ... deafening their deaths would be. Those were sounds that would ring in her ears forever. She still felt nauseous.
"The screams," she said.
"I know," the Doctor said calmly – too calmly to be real. He ran a hand over her back.
It didn't quite make her feel better, but she was glad for his support anyway. She'd been worried, based on his reaction to just the idea of doing this earlier, that he wouldn't be able to even look at her once it was done.
"I need to go put the planets back," the Doctor said softly. "This ship's starting to malfunction without anything to keep it on course, so I have to hurry. Will you be all right?"
No, she thought.
"Yeah," she said. "Go save the universe."
"Oh, no," the Doctor said, his voice kind. "This is just the clean-up. The universe has already been saved. Some brilliant human woman, I think. I'll have to remember to thank her for that."
Rose burst out with a harsh laugh that caught almost painfully in her throat. "Yeah. I bet all of them out there will appreciate it too."
"They never do," the Doctor said, and Rose met his eyes for a moment before he pulled away and went off to make sure everything was put back where it belonged.
Those three words provided an interesting insight. Rose thought she might understand something important about the Doctor, now. How much he needed everyone to know how clever he was, and to admit that he was the only one in the universe who could do whatever it was that needed doing at a particular time to save everyone. It wasn't that he was being cocky. It was just that, every now and then, he wouldn't mind the acknowledgement. Not for the whole world to bow at his feet or anything. Just for someone to realise the sacrifices he'd made, and love him for it.
She looked away from what the Doctor was doing as she pulled herself back to her feet, and came face-to-face with Donna.
"You just ..." she started, sounding shocked and angry in about equal proportions.
"I killed them all," Rose admitted. Her voice sounded hollow even to her.
Well, she thought, this certainly put the one death on that bus on Midnight in perspective, didn't it? That had been more hands-on than she was used to as well, but though she'd felt bad about it, she hadn't felt that anything like terrible as she felt about this now.
"How could you?" Donna asked. She looked at the Doctor. "How could you let her?"
The Doctor shook his head sadly, not even pausing in his work. "I told you that you were better off not knowing."
"You've never met the Daleks, have you?" Rose asked.
"The what?"
"Daleks," the Doctor said. "They're the metal creatures all around you. No, Donna's never run into them."
"And now maybe you never will, if you're lucky," Rose said.
"What, all of this was so I wouldn't meet them?"
Rose would never admit it to her, but in a way that was true. If it hadn't been for wanting to save Donna, and to prevent the creation of a man who'd spend the duration of his suddenly human lifetime miserable without the touch of his TARDIS in his consciousness and the ability to explore the stars, Rose wouldn't have had to be the one to kill the Daleks. It had to be done one way or another, of course, so it wasn't all for their sakes. But then the Doctor would have had to live with knowing that he – or a version of himself, at least – had a much more direct hand in the genocide than just building the weapon, and that that other version had barely even regretted doing it.
Still, Rose's conscience at least might have been a lot clearer if it wasn't for the need to prevent Donna from losing herself. It was a fair trade, Rose thought, even if Donna would never appreciate that it had even been made.
They never do, the Doctor had said. Yeah, she'd sort of seen that in the other universe as well. She could learn to deal with it here. She just needed some time to sort through it all.
It'd been a long week.
"Last one!" the Doctor called as he sent off planet Earth back to its usual orbit.
Rose thought of that planet; that was her real home outside the TARDIS, even if she'd only really spent her childhood years there. The other universe had never quite felt that way, even when her mum and her sort-of-Dad and Mickey were hanging about just like they should be.
She'd never fit, in all those years.
"There," the Doctor announced. "And now I think we'd better get off this ship, because it's starting to get very unstable and just might blow up at any second."
"Oi, thanks for the warning!" Donna said. She spared a distrusting glare for Rose before heading back to the TARDIS.
The Doctor walked up to Rose and placed a hand on the small of her back, using it to direct her gently towards the TARDIS with him following bare inches behind her. He closed the door of the TARDIS as they both entered, dropping his hand away from her and allowing her to walk further into the room before crossing to the console.
"Back to Earth, d'you think?" the Doctor asked them. "I imagine Jack and Sarah Jane and Martha are a bit confused. We might want to let them in on what just happened."
"You want to be involved in the clean up?" Rose asked. "Really?"
"Well, not with UNIT and all the red tape and such, but between a few friends? I could stand a quick visit."
Rose thought of Jack with his strong arms and his willingness to say things that the Doctor never would, and Sarah Jane's caring eyes as she'd said "Find me, someday." And she didn't have a clue who that Martha woman was, but the Doctor did only take the best.
Yeah, she could do with a visit as well. Maybe seeing all those brilliant people she'd just saved would help a little.
"So what, everything's back to normal?" Donna asked. "Isn't anyone ever going to tell me why you've suddenly decided – without even talking to me about it, thank you very much – that the best way to deal with aliens is to just go in there and kill them all straight away? Or am I just supposed to shut up and go along with it?" Donna looked directly at the Doctor. "Is that what it's going to be like now?" she asked. "You two off sharing secrets like a private little club, no third wheels allowed? Because I'll go home right now, if that's it. I'm not putting up with it!"
"Donna," Rose started, "we don't mean –"
"You," Donna said harshly. "Just ... not right now. He's an alien, at least. He's got all sorts of weird morals to fall back on. But you, you're human and you still did that."
"Donna," the Doctor said warningly. "Leave off her. If you want to blame someone, have a go at me. I built that atrocity."
Rose turned on the Doctor. "Oh my god, you are such a pig-headed martyr!" she said.
The Doctor looked very taken aback. That probably wasn't the reaction he'd expected from trying to defend her.
"Stop trying to take responsibility for everything when it isn't your fault," Rose said. "It doesn't make you noble, it just make you stupid. You don't have to always be suffering as much as you do. Take responsibility when you need to, but let the rest of us be accountable for our own actions, will you? I'm not going to feel any less guilty if you're trying to take the blame as well. Probably the opposite, actually. So please just don't."
The Doctor, rather than getting angry with her in response as she half-expected, still looked more stunned than anything. "I can't help feeling guilty," he said.
Rose shook her head tiredly, breathing deep to calm herself down again. "No," she said with a mirthless laugh. "You wouldn't be you, then, would you? But at least try to put it in perspective, will you?"
"You're both as bad as each other, aren't you?" Donna asked incredulously. She literally threw her hands in the air dramatically. "Right. I'm going to be in my room. You," she said specifically to the Doctor, "can either come in and explain everything, or come in and help me pack. You know how many clothes and products and things I have, so I'd think twice about choosing that last bit if I were you. And the explanation better be bloody brilliant, or I'm making you carry my bags back to the house as well as packing them for me!"
With that, Donna swept out.
"I'm sorry," Rose said. "I didn't want to put space between you two. You seem to get along so well."
"We do," the Doctor said, "except when we really don't. Not your fault."
"Well," Rose said. "I'm still sorry."
"So am I," the Doctor said. He took the few steps necessary to close the gap between them and reached for Rose's hand. She offered it gratefully.
"I get what you were trying to say, you know," he said.
"Do you?" Rose asked. "Which part? I barely understand any of it myself, right now. I don't even know why I got angry at you."
The Doctor squeezed her hand comfortingly. "You meant that you feel responsible for my guilt on top of your own, so I'm making it worse for you. And I'm sorry."
Rose nodded slightly. "Yeah. But you can't help it, can you?"
"No," the Doctor said simply.
Bizarrely, she had a moment of wishing that she'd had time to go brush her teeth after being sick earlier so she could kiss him, because maybe at least one of them would feel better if they could share that kind of comfort. God, her life was strange. She'd been yelling at him just now, and killing Daleks barely ten minutes ago, and nearly being thrown off a bus full of frantic humans into fatal sunlight not half a day earlier, and here she was worrying about kissing him.
Stupid, she thought. What was wrong with her?
Still, just the hand-holding was nice. Whether or not he was quietly blaming her, she didn't know, but the important thing now was that it apparently wasn't enough to push them apart. Just knowing that lifted a weight off her.
Maybe the Doctor hadn't been lying to himself earlier at all when he said she could tell him anything. After he'd seen her kill a whole army at once, with the purposeful push of a button, everything else just sort of paled.
Not that she was going to burst out with all of her secrets, or anything. That'd just be plain stupid of her.
"You'll be able to straighten out things with Donna, right?" Rose asked.
"Yeah," the Doctor said. "She's never seen a Dalek before, like you said. She'll still probably be annoyed with me for not explaining to her in advance, but we've been through this sort of thing before on a smaller level. She doesn't want to leave the TARDIS any more than I want her to go. We'll work it out."
"Good," Rose said. "I don't want you to lose her, either."
"She'll still probably think you're crazy for a while," the Doctor said. "Until she gets to know you."
"Yeah," Rose said with a tiny forced smile. "And then once she knows me she'll be sure I'm mad. That's okay. I'm used to it. Bit like you, I think. 900 years of being the mad alien with the blue box, right?"
"You and me, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said. "We just might be two of a kind."
"Yeah?" Rose asked.
"Absolutely."
He thought they fit together, even after all this. Maybe that would be enough to help her get through all the things that she knew had yet to come.
"I'm glad to have you back," the Doctor added. "It's been a bit chaotic, so I can't remember if I even said that."
"Nor can I," Rose said, and a choked laugh slipped out of her mouth unexpectedly. "I missed you, too."
She reached out and rested a palm against the centre of his chest.
"Two hearts," she said. "I can feel them against my fingertips. I'd almost forgotten."
"So," the Doctor asked, "was it worth it? Jumping galaxies just to find some stupid two-hearted alien so you could save the world?"
"Always," Rose said.
The Doctor smiled, seeming to take a moment to bask in her answer. Then he turned more serious again. "Really, though, what about leaving behind your family to travel forward into the 25th century and getting stuck here with all this baggage? Did you even get to tell everyone what you were doing before you jumped forward in time?"
Now that the immediate danger was behind them and there was enough time to actually explain it, Rose thought that she could probably give him that one answer. Rose had secrets that mattered more to her than this one, anyway. She only worried that it might open her up to the questions she didn't want to answer so much.
Still, she might as well get it over with.
"What makes you think I got to the 25th century by travelling forward in time?" she asked.