"There is nothin' you can do for 'er Doctor?" Jackie asks desperately, watching from behind the double sided mirror as her first child paces back and forth scratching her scalp. She is wearing a hospital gown and one of those I.D. bracelets, which, is pointless since Rose has no I.D. in this world. There are scratch marks up her arm where they tried to put the IV and where she has clawed it out. Although it's apparent she hasn't eaten in days, she is not too thin or ashen, if anything Jackie thinks she's glowing.

"NO! That is not the correct way to address the pro'lem! You have to attack from all angles!" Rose screams running her fingers through her hair and stopping for a second. Both the torchwood Doctor and Jackie wait with bated breath to see if she has finished her tirade.

"Rose?" he asks, holding down the button to a microphone that is connected to the room, "Rose, are you finished, will you come and let me help you?"

"I think… this time it lasted long… er… didn't it?" She forces out. Her eyes are bright, she is now ashen, exhausted. She doesn't focus anywhere in particular as she slides down the wall and curls up.

"Rose! Darlin'! I'm right here! It's mum! I have so much to tell you." Jackie cries out, pressing her hands up to the window.

"To tell to tell… what is… Do we have, there is no time for that. Where is she? Where did she go?" Rose mutters.

"I'm right here Rose!" Jackie cries out, placing her hand over her mouth. She turns to the Doctor and tells him to let her in the room.

He lets go of the button, and turns to the distraught woman, "I can't! She attacks anyone who comes near her when she's like this. We've had to remove the amount of staff on duty due to it."

"What a 160 poun' girl? Causing that much trouble?" Jackie asks disbelievingly.

"She attacks them, just not physically."

But it is too late… Rose is rocking back and forth, already mumbling to herself, her finger in her mouth. Her wrists and hands are wrapped up because she kept biting her nails down to bloody stumps.

"The fire, touch it…. Fiery red, we'll name you Scarlet, mum would love that, oh, Scarlet is too predictable. Dawn, Dawn then? No… that one's already taken,"

Jackie looks at the doctor desperately and he tries to pull Jackie away from the viewing glass to show her the x-ray. "The thing is Mrs. Tyler, Most humans use only a small portion of their brain at a time, Rose seems to be using the entirety of her brain… or none of it at all."

"What is that suppose to mean? An' what do you mean she doesn't attack physically?!" she asks angrily, turning to face the doctor and the scans of her daughter's brain.

"…Door, floor, more! I need more words, more numbers, not enough in English to figure it out…"

"It means… You see these cat-scans? All these black areas?" He says, motioning over them. Jackie can see the entire sheet is made up of black areas.

"…Parasites… how can he love us so? Because we do more damage than he ever did. Exploring, destroying…"

"We're calling them 'dead zones'. On a normal person…"

"Rose is a normal person!" Jackie interrupts aghast.

"Of… course Mrs. Tyler. What I meant was this is highly unusual, usually this blackness signifies tumors. That being said it would seem that Miss Tyler's brain is tumor riddled, and from this x-ray alone someone would think this is a patient with a massive growth we are dealing with, or one who has been dead for awhile. But this is impossible - if anything Miss Tyler is exhibiting abnormally fast learning rates and processing data at record breaking speed. So she can't be brain dead, it's baffling. Then there are some other complications we can't even explain, when I say she's not attacking you physically, I mean just that. She isn't necessarily." He finished.

"Metal, kettle, nettle, petal, set… no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! PAY ATTENTION FOCUS!"

"You're supposed to know what's goin' on. Fix things. You have a big shiny piece of paper tellin' ya you're good at it, so DO SOMETHING FOR HER." Jackie screams pointing at the girl she once knew as her daughter.

"You have to understand Mrs. Tyler, that your daughter is suffering from something that no human, on this earth, that is, has ever experienced. That is why she is here, after all." The Torchwood doctor says emphasizing on the daughter and this earth.

Jackie's not stupid. She prides herself on that.

And so, she tells him as much.

"Listen here doctor, whoever you are…. I'm not stupid. If you ever need to remember one thing in this lifetime of yours, ever again, remember this. That is MY daughter in there, loony or not, and I AM Pete Tyler's wife, your boss. So, get this straight. Alternate Universe or no, she ain't your pet rat you can dissect!"

The room is extremely silent other than their breathing.

Slowly the doctor and Jackie turn towards the mirror to see Rose staring at them directly with her amber eyes.

"I bring life," she whispers in her double voice.

There is a loud cracking sound of a mirror before it smashes to the floor.

Rose can feel everything, including knowing she is not just herself anymore.

She is Rose.

She is the Bad Wolf.

She is Time.

"Touch it… Fiery red, we'll name you Scarlet, mum would love that, oh, Scarlet is predictable. Dawn then? No… already taken; you scold me HATEFUL SPITEFUL…. We are in pain…. We are in tears… I shed my hate…" She says pacing back and forth letting the words flow.

She has tried to hold them back, tried to keep them in her mind but she imagines this is what Tourettes would feel like if she had the disease. Naughty words, forbidden words, spinning tales of the man with the blue box and a girl. They mustn't know. They mustn't find out. She sees them together, a family, the girl and her Time Lord. Then she sees him pushing a swing, Gallifrey burning in the sky, the screams of millions, the silence of millions, genocide, the Holocaust, Hitler, Great Britain in ruins, the universe imploding.

"War, there's always war, Daleks, Cybermen, civilizations tumble… Time is not a line; it's a big ball of swirl that floats to a song on a breeze. He never sang the song, I did. I sang him a lullaby and made the Daleks run away. Time is a womb. Exist here. WAIT! FROM WHERE? I'm past and future, NOT present! Mickey told me… he knew all along that four months is 16 days and 21 hours… 3 years five is months… Right? Yes… no… wait… no right, yes okay." Stopping she wishes, she has time to explain to her mum. She has all the time in the universe; she has no time left to wait.

Again, flashes of a wedding dress, a zoo with beautiful birds, and for him it's only been a month and a half since they parted, only 26 days since he last saw her and his eyes meet with a girl across the room, for the first time. She knows this is his newest one in the long line of many.

"Door, floor, more! I need more words, more numbers, not enough in English to figure it out… I need different systems. I need my notes… stop this… it's too much… YOU WANT IT TO STOP DON'T YOU? THEN FIGURE IT OUT!"

The wolf, the wolf in the basement, back at the old torchwood estate, it had known. He had seen her beast, but where had it come from? Had it come from him? Had it come from the TARDIS, or was it just a manifestation of her insanity?

"But I can't it's too hard… war, pain, suffering, genocide, sex, violence… filthy little parasites… how can he love us?! Because we do more damage than he ever did. I can wait, the wolf can wait, and the girl will obviously have to wait… The girl? I live here too! The screaming I can't stand the screaming."

She can see every atom in existence all at once, and she wonders if this is how the Time Lord feels. If he can feel every atom everything that ever existed or will exist or exists. She wonders why if he has had this power he had not told her how to use it, he should have known this was to happen, just like he will know what is to come. She knows what is to come; she is just trying to find the path on how to get there. But will he accept it? Will he embrace it like she has? Or will he fight it at every turn, making it harder than it has to be? Will he be so blind that he will not see what is right in his face?

"Meddle… Metal, kettle, nettle, petal, set… no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! PAY ATTENTION! FOCUS! I do I need my notes, I can't remember, too much to remember while too much is going on… one twenty that's ninety-nine. Ninety-nine is equal to thirty-six thousand one thirty five… seven point three. Seven point three is the number to be, tree, see the key… the key seems to be seven point three. That makes four thousand nine hundred and fifty. Thirteen point five six years." her breath hitches "Find it, find it find it find it find him…. Yes…. Giggly girl… good, good little girl…. Yesyesyes…"

There is a tapestry in front of her, as it has always been, she just couldn't see it behind the images, and she reaches out knowingly. For the first time in months, Rose (who was not just Rose, but Rose, Time and the Wolf) feels a moment of clarity. There, amongst all the threads of time she finally finds it. The one she was looking for all along. She finally has fulfilled her purpose, for now.

It's then she sees him. He's behind her mother and the Torchwood doctor not there, but clearer and more present than that day at the beach. His mind is reaching out to her, through time space and the void, and she feels the trace of others on him, a flicker of time, like a skipping record. She knows this isn't really him here, that she is the recording, a message to be later viewed. But she still addresses him.

They're coming… She whispers to him, trying to bathe in the warmth of him, to feel his heartbeat in hers.

Not you… them… She adds hastily, she can see his confused look, he had been trying to tell her something and she interrupted. But he's not really there; he's somewhere else, days, weeks, months, years, before this moment or after, a trace of him receiving a broken message.

Hurry… what do I do?

But she receives no answer, and as the faint image of him drifts away from her grasp.

"I bring life," She whispers as she reweaves the tapestry, she is the tapestry.

She feels the waves of what she's done smash through the glass in the room before she collapses. She won't fight them anymore. She will bide herself, or at least that part of herself. For she knows when he is coming. She has made it possible.

It is then she loses consciousness.

"I wish you would come see Rose with me," Jackie tells Pete as she takes Elle into her arm from his. Her second daughter is dripping from the nose, but her big blue eyes are staring up into her mother's in wonder. She breaks out in gummy grin and makes a cooing sound.

"I'm not her father," Pete tells her, trying to pry his finger out of Elle's determined grasp.

Jackie gives him a deathly glare.

"That's not how I meant it and you know it Jacks. She barely recognizes you, let alone me. She's hated me since she's come over this way," he says. He's trying to explain himself and backtrack a little and it's still not working. "I'm sorry, it's just too weird to see you in that much pain knowing I can't share in it the way you do. It happened to fast, I know her more like this than like the normal Rose."

"I know Pete," She says, taking Elle to the sofa so she can feed her. Pete looks at her with so much love that it helps, but only just a little.

"I'll go next time, promise. I'm rubbish at this father thing. I could barely change Elle today, Maria had to show me how." He inches closer to Jackie till he's finally right in front of her and she can't quite avoid looking him in the eye.

"Hey," He says softly, and she looks at him.

"You know I love her right? Know I'd do anything in my power for her to get better? I'm just scared to see her like that." He says, choking up near the end. Tears threaten to spill before Jackie sighs.

"You don't have to come if it's too hard, could you just make sure they aren't keepin' her like that so they can study 'er?" she asks.

"Of course… are you sure though? That you don't want me to come?" He replies.

This is a test, a test older than time itself. This is the test every female of her species gives the male, the test that says although I say one thing I definitely mean the other and you should know that if you love me enough,

It is, of course, the test that every man fails.

"I'm sure," she says with a smile on her lips.

"Okay," he says, seemingly relieved.

She hates him just a little for that.

It's a typical day on the TARDIS and they're both laughing manically sharing in one of those inside jokes that no one in the universe would get. She is sitting there in pajama bottoms and a tank top with a medical textbook in one hand, and a cup of yogurt in the other. He is setting course for the day.

"Zephybria?" he asks her, staring at the TARDIS' monitor.

"Nah, too warm this time of year." She replies, leaning back in a worn out chair.

"What time a year is that then?" He asks, not stopping what he is doing to look at her, but instead lifting an eyebrow staring at the monitor.

"Anytime of year." She snorts.

"Aphroditorious?" He inquires pushing a button and spinning a knob.

"Too Niagara falls-ish." She shoots down.

"Quing Zalpha Seven?"

"Too touristy."

"Quing Zalpha Six?"

She looks at him dead pan, and he gives her that smile he knows melts many-a-woman's glares. Usually it will work on her, but she has proven that sometimes nothing can break her. However, as it seems, now is not one of those instances, as he can see her hiding her amusement.

Last time he had taken her to Quing Zalpha Six she was carried off by some tribe's men to be offered to the chief as a wife. To win her back, he had to become her champion and honor her by winning a sport of his choice against their mighty chief. He chose a spelling bee. Though, thinking back on it, he realizes now not to underestimate any tribesman's spelling. Sometimes they are hiding more behind those little loin clothes than most expect.

When he did finally win, he was rewarded with liquor, food and Martha's hand. Unable to refuse, for she'd be stuck with the tribesman till she killed him, and he really didn't want to start another revolution, he married her.

She doesn't think it's very funny.

Especially when he calls her wife.

"Wait, why are we choosing from places I've already been?" She says finishing the cup.

"Good point." He says, scratching his head.

"You planned it that way!"

"Planned what?' he asks her innocently.

"Planned on bringing up Quing Zalpha Six."

"Nah, that would imply I enjoy you angry."

She stares at him, her face deadpan, a face that he knows all too well and knows that he is about to cross a line with her he doesn't necessarily want to cross.

"I know just the place!" he tells her, rotating a gizmo and pulling a gadget.

"Oh yeah?" She asks.

"Yeah," he says getting that look on his face, the one that is a mixture of determination, forcefulness and is giddy boyhood. Some days, she'd describe it to him as impish.

The TARDIS lands and it takes them a minute to regain their footing. He has no idea where they have landed and that makes it even more exciting. She gives him a look that can only be described as "race you." She however makes it to the door first.

Neither is prepared for what they see.

For Martha, the stunning landscape causes her to hitch her breath in her throat. Placing a hand over her heart, she is tempted to step out, and explore, but she is careful as well. After all, how often do you see fifty foot high waves that are made of ice?

For the Doctor, he cannot tell if he finds the irony painful or nostalgic. Maybe this is what humans mean by bittersweet? He doesn't know.

Turning to Martha, he tells her to go grab a coat. Something warm, maybe some mitts, and maybe some ear warmers, all things she can find in the wardrobe. First left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead, under the stairs, past the bins, it's the fifth door on her left. She raises a brow at him but doesn't say a thing. She runs down the hall to go grab something appropriate, and he is glad she didn't see the pain on his face in under the darkness of the night outside.

While he waits, he decides he'll go for a little reminiscing walk without her. That way he won't be all broody when they explore together. This is her first time here, he'd like to make it memorable for her. There is no wind here, no noise to interfere with the tranquility of the place.

As he reaches one of the taller waves, he stands below it, underneath its cusp, remembering climbing it with a girl with bleach blonde hair and curious hazel eyes. He places his hand against the giant and feels the icy cold against his fingertips. Closing his eyes, he smiles remembering the conversation they had on its peek, underneath the stars.

'Why do they call it Woman's Wept?" she asks him, pushing her hands deeper into her short jacket.

"Because this continent, the only massive body of land on the planet, looks like a giant woman crying from above."

"Oh… I thought it was because woman cry here cuz it's so bloody cold!"

"Har… har… you're quite the comedian Rose Tyler, I told you to bundle up, 'it's cold' I said, 'make sure you have a coat.' But no, not you bundle up means putting on a jean jacket over your jumper."

"Oi! Look who's talkin', all you ever wear is a jumper and that leather jacket." She counters.

"Yes, but my body can regulate its temperature so that I'm slightly toasty wherever I go. Extreme cold and heat that you cannot even imagine are my only deterrent. Can YOU do that miss Tyler? Hmmm?" He asks her with that oh-so smug smile, nose and ears bright red.

"No…" She replies a little put out, before smiling brightly. "But I can do this!" and with that she touches her tongue to the tip of her nose.

"Now THAT'S impressive, forget whatever I told you." He says to her, laughing. "Careful it doesn't get stuck there."


"mmmfph… mmphdmmmrrrrll…"

"Told you so!" he says, pulling her tongue gently off her nose.

"Noted, never stick your tongue to your nose on woman's wept. But imagine where I could do it! You should take me to star search, then together we could rule the world."

"You plan to take over the world through star search?" he asks her.

"Well, yeah… you do know that they are a secret evil government," she responds.

"That still makes no sense! How could winnin' star search mean ya take over the world? Why wouldn't it be the business leaders of star search?"

"I dunno, ask Jack! He is the one who explained it to me."

He thinks it's odd that the memory is so real and tangible, and his hearts fall to the floor. The reason they're so real and tangible is because they aren't in his head. He's sure those voices are coming from above him. Panicking, he starts racing back towards the TARDIS when he bumps into Martha.

"Hey! Got out of my Jim-jams and wore a proper coat. Then some bloke who thought was really something started chattin' me up till I said I had to go find you. Wait, why are we going back to the TARDIS?" she asks as he loops his arm through hers and begins the trek back to the ship.

"I don't know how this happened, but it's bad, it's a mountain of bad, some may even say a plethora of bad to come? Don't think I wasn't tempted, tempted to stay, tempted to warn them, tempted to run away screaming, but I'm not going to do any of those things, I'm going to get you back safely onto the TARDIS because if I did any of those things," he says turning to look at her, "I don't know what would happen to you. So let's do the right thing and get back to our ship okay?"

She's looking at him with confused and scared eyes, but they're eyes full of trust, and she nods her head in agreement. Glad to know she's not going to fight him on this. So she had met Jack had she? He's so lucky that she wasn't near the TARDIS when they met, he's just so lucky that he can escape this unscathed. He looks up once they turned the corner of a smaller more secluded wave, to see in which direction he parked the TARDIS and feels his heart sink when it's nowhere in sight.

Sighing, he looks down at the footprints in the snow covered ice. Two pairs end about ten feet away, logically were his TARDIS would be. He realizes right now none of this makes sense, the fact that his ship would put him in a position of unknowingly creating a paradox, or the ship's disappearance from where it was parked. He searches the ground for another set of prints and isn't surprise when he finds a pair.

What is surprising is that they're tiny.

His eyes follow them up, up and up to the top of a twenty foot wave and sees a flash of what he's almost 80 sure was a little girl. She moved so fast he cannot tell, but the footprints and the splash of fiery red as she disappeared from sight is causing him to think as much.

Determined, he grabs Martha's hand and before they know it, they're climbing the twenty-foot wave, in search of a little girl that the Doctor hasn't even told Martha about. They do so in silence, because Martha is fearful that if she says anything it will ruin his concentration and she believes him wholeheartedly when he says they are in serious danger right now.

Once at the top, he scours the landscape trying to find a glimpse of anything, when he finds his TARDIS in an obvious place not more than sixty yards away. Confused, he continues to look for the little girl. He finds no sign of her, and wonders if she is indeed in the TARDIS.

"Come on, let's go home." He says, smiling and deciding to show her how to ride the waves down to the bottom. They sit down and it's just like a giant slide except there's nothing to slow them down so they keep picking up speed till they smash into the TARDIS.

"Ow." Martha says, rubbing her arm where she made contact.

"Yes… well, off we go then," He says, trying to pass off that nothing undesirable could possibly happen with him and that he never can be a bit of an idiot.

Sometimes, even he has trouble doing that.

She's on all fours, and she can feel the desire to feed rising in the back of her throat. It's been so long since she's been free from her cage, from her shackles that tether her to the weak. She runs, runs not caring where she ends up, chasing scents and dreams across the trees, until she sees her, a little ginger head beyond the trees.

Slowly, she approaches, she sniffs the air for any other scent, trying to find out how she almost missed it, missed her dinner.

The little head belongs to a little body who belongs to a little girl. She stands there, staring at her, and she feels that she's rising into the air, rising up and far away, as they maintain eye contact. She stands on two feet, now Rose again, and she reaches for the child.

She pulls her into her arms, and looks beyond her, past the trees and the meadow, the sky and the sun.

A smile crosses her lips as she licks her teeth. She may be Rose, but she still is hungry, still desires the catch, and so she waits, waits for eternity in the shadows, watching for the sun to fall and rise on her prey.

"Mummy." Is all she hears.