Sorry, Fell asleep ten minutes before i was going to post this.
Chapter 4
Season 2, "The Second Half"
Age of Steel
The Doctor smiled at Rose, who returned it.
"And here I thought, you would get all emotional human ape on me."
Rose just punched him in the arm. "Oi, I'm not just any ole' ape."
His smile turned into a grin. "But you admit, you're an ape."
"No I'm not."
"You just said it."
"Did not."
"Oi." Mickey and Rickey interrupted.
"Whats all that about?" Pete asked as the van neared the Cybermen Factory.
--
The Doctor sighed again, and muttered, "Here we go again."
Mrs Moore just sniggered at his attitude. "Why do I get the feeling that you attract trouble with a capital T and a cherry on top?"
He half smiled at her. "Can't have a holiday, standard holiday, no trouble except that with finding a decent restaurant, and the usual hassle with substandard hotel rooms."
"Really?"
"Yeah, and it's even worse since I started travelling with Rose. It's like its attracted to her just as much. Heard a few tales of her life before she met me, always on the go. Two of her Jobs blew up, and that's not counting the department store she worked at that I blew up."
"You blew up her Job?"
"Yeah well, her store was being used as a transmitter or something for a bunch of Autons." He justified.
"Autons aren't around, they were wiped out a decade ago."
The Doctor looked at her. "How would you know that?"
"Public knowledge, the Torchwood Institute, surely you've heard of it?"
The Doctor paused, and when he replied, it was with a seriousness that took her off-guard, "I'm from a parallel universe. I've only heard of Torchwood once in all my life that I spent here on Earth - well, my Earth - and I've spent centuries of it here."
"You're not human?" She asked as they reached the entrance to the tunnels into the Factory. The way she asked it made him wonder if this parallel was just as mirrored with the human race here as acknowledging of alien life as the one he left just the other day.
"Time Lord. We can live several centuries without needing to regenerate, and taking our regenerations into account, my race and I had the potential to each live several millenia."
"Had?"
"I'm 901 years old, Regenerated 9 times because of all that Trouble with a capital T that followed me around. probably got another 400 years in me yet if nothing untoward happens to reduce that figure. The rest of my race died. Burned during a War - a Time War. The Time War, I fought against an enemy unlike any the universe - my universe - had ever seen before or since. Took destroying my own race to beat them. Monsters and Angels, both or neither." With a sad sigh, he added, "A few of our people tried to leave before it happened, but something happened just before the conclusion of the war. The time-lock that would prevent others from entering the Time War after it ended prevented them from leaving. Only I got out. The Last, the only survivor. Ever since I've travelled. I carried so much guilt - still do, but I've… managed only because of Rose. I met her some time after my 8th regeneration. I hadn't really wanted to know what face I bore, since that one, I… I had been 'born' if you will, in battle, full of anger and hate. It's because of Rose that I learned to see life anew. Despite the constant peril, running for our lives, getting out of traps and so forth, she doesn't want to stop travelling with me. Over a year and a half she's given. Longer than any other I had travelled with previously, encountered more than almost all the others. By rights she should hate me for getting her into danger so many times… but she doesn't. Sometimes I wonder if she has it within her to hate me, and for every moment that I doubt it is a gift."
"You sound like you care for her a lot."
"She saved me from death several times. The first time we met, and several times since. One of those times… by rights, physics and human physiology, she should have burned with the power she held. But she didn't. I sent her back home out of harms way. I knew I would die that day. I felt certain of it. And then she appeared like an angel, glow and all, finished the Time War once and for all. A whole fleet of the enemy force that my people fought with great difficulty. It took the destruction of my home planet to defeat armies that numbered in the billions. And she destroyed an army of the same creatures that numbered in the billions also, in less than 2 minutes. She's one in a trillion trillion, that girl. That angel."
Mrs Moore smiled sadly, and corrected, "No, you sound like you don't just care for her, but-"
The Doctor shook his head, and said, "Anyway, haven't we got a factory to infiltrate?"
--
Rose sighed as she was presented before a strange-looking Cyberman.
"I am Cyber Controller. You are not like the others. Your sensor readout is contradictory, and does not register on others. Explain."
Rose wondered what that was about, and asked as much.
"You will explain or you will be deleted. Explain."
"If you think I'm going to explain something that I don't know myself, then you're not as, smart as you try to be."
"If you will not explain you will be deleted. However, you will not be deleted just yet. Your companion is being brought here for questioning, and you may be useful in extracting them from him."
"Companion?" Rose asked confused.
"The one with a Binary Cardio-vascular system."
Pete looked at her, and she explained quietly to him, "He's got two Hearts. That's probably what he means."
"That is exactly what I mean. He does not register as Human, and yet his sensor read out is just as contradictory as your own."
--
"You are both the same, you are both incompatible for upgrade, you will be taken for additional analysis. Comply or be deleted."
The Doctor and Rose both sighed, and then the Doctor launched into this big speech, glancing at a camera occasionally, with a few hand signals thrown in.
--
Rose held back a sniffle as Mickey told her he was staying.
"What if I need you?"
"You don't need me, Rose, you haven't since the day you met the Doctor. The wonderful yet rude alien with three hearts."
"Two hearts." Rose corrected.
"No, three. Two his own, and the third… yours."
Rose hugged him tight, and kissed him on the cheek.
"Goodbye, Rose Tyler."
She smiled slightly, and promised, "This isn't goodbye Mickey. I'll see you again."
"You can't, you heard the Doctor."
"We got here by accident. Who's to say it won't happen again?" She asked rhetorically to make her point.
"Ah right. If that's what you want. See you later, Rose. Have a good life until and after then, yeah?"
She nodded, and whispered, "I know we'll see each other again." And went back to the TARDIS.
As she shut the door, she saw the look on the Doctor's face. He had lots of questions, and the first one he asked, as he began the process of returnign to their home universe, was, "What do you mean, you know we'll see him again?"
She gave him a mysterious smile, and shrugged. "There was this one gap, crack or whatever, in Time that we fell through. Who's to say it's not the only one we'll run into, with our luck?"
"Oh come on, now you just jinxed us?"
"Like we weren't jinxed before?"
"Well… you got me there. Now, back to your Mums to say hello, assure yourself that she didn't die and all that emotional baggage?"
"Oi. No acting like you don't care."
"Who's saying I'm acting?" He joked.
"I know you, Doctor. Don't deny it. If anything… you care too much."
He smiled slightly, and as the TARDIS jerked to a halt, he had an idea. "I think we should change first, she might get the wrong impression."
"Where did we land?" She asked.
"Oh, a few blocks from your flat, not sure if the TARDIS would fit in your living room."
"She fit in the bathroom, so she should fit in the living room too."
"She's never been in your flat."
"Yes she was, over Christmas."
"I landed her outside your flat." He stated.
"Yes you did. But I wanted to keep her protected from those Pilot Fish and the Sycorax ship, so put her in the bathroom."
"She can't fit through the door." He pointed out.
She sighed, and said, "Change, then I'll show you she can fit, alright?"
"Sure."
--
10 minutes later, and the Doctor was staring at her in confusion as they landed.
"If you've landed me in the Dark ages-" He stopped upon seeing her open the door to reveal her living room.
"What?"
"Doctor?" She asked.
"WHAT?"
"DOCTOR?!"
"WHAT?!" he exclaimed again in total confusion.
After the heartfelt meeting with Jackie, and a brew in hand half-drunk, he finally recovered enough to ask, "Rose Tyler, have you been piloting the TARDIS without my knowledge?"
She shrugged, and nodded.
"When? And that's another thing: HOW?"
"Oh, simple, really. Just followed the instructions in that piloting lessons book you have. Not found the Time-Travel volume of it yet, but the space part of it I can do."
He stared for a minute before he asked, "What piloting lessons book?"
She frowned. "You've not seen one before?"
"No."
She reached into her jacket and pulled it out, and handed it to him.
"You read this?" He asked. He thought that she said that alien languages weren't translating for her when he was unconscious, yet she read this, written in Gallifreyan.
"Yeah. You should read it, might get the right places next few trips." She teased.
"Alright alright, I'll give it a good read through." He grumbled, as he opened a few pages and flicked through it, going slow for effect.
A cough made him look up.
"Anymore questions, My Lord?" She asked with a grin.
"Yeah, I got one. How many times did you pilot the TARDIS? Because some words that Sycorax spoke before is starting to make sense."
"Well, I took her from here to U.N.I.T., then from there to the Sycorax vessel to get Harriet back."
"So three times?"
"Yeah."
"Just three times?"
"Yeah, didn't know how you'd react if you knew…"
He sighed, and stood up. He stepped up to her and pulled her up and into a hug. "I'm very very… proud of you, Rose Tyler."
She grinned and sank deeper into his embrace, and felt him lower his head ontop of her. Slowly, the steady double-beat of his two hearts started to rock her into a slumber.
When he noticed, he simply smiled and held the embrace until she began to relax too much to stay stood up, and helped her to her bed, where Jackie rather forcibly prevented him from being in the room while she changed her into some pyjamas and put her into bed.
When Jackie came out, she saw that he was sat back down, a sad smile on his face, the cup of tea held in his lap, and his eyes drooping closed. She tried to stay quiet, thinking he was going to sleep, when he asked, "Jackie, do you know anything about who her birth parents are?"
She shook her head. "No, Pete… Pete was the one who knew, and kept it secret. If I knew, Rose would have known before she even met you, Doctor."
He nodded, and asked, "Why was it such a big secret? I keep getting the feeling that it's a pretty big secret, bigger than the secret should be to other kids. I only know she's adopted because she slipped up and almost said the full word. She caught herself but just a syllable too late. Don't think she would have told me on her own, but she doesn't act ashamed of it or anything like that."
Jackie sighed and sat across from him.
She began, "All I know is that her birth parents wanted her to have a locket. We tried to open it every so often, Rose even asked for a watch maker to try, it was like it was welded shut or something."
"Anything else?"
"Why? Whats so important that you know this?"
He sighed, and had to explain it for her, "You know what caused me to regenerate into the man you see before you? I absorbed the Time Vortex, and I'm a member of the only race that could ever do so without permanent death. If I was on my last body, then I wouldn't have survived. I only held it for 30 seconds. In that time my mind had been burnt by all that power, every cell of my body decaying inside-out. A Death which Rose by rights should have experienced before I got to pull it out of her. She absorbed it before me, that's what she used to get me back. She used the power to take herself and the TARDIS forward in time to just before the Daleks were about to kill me for good, she then used that power to send throughout time and space, little messages to lead herself to doing exactly that, two words that I had learned to dread before then. 'Bad Wolf'. I'm sure she-"
"BAD WOLF?" Jackie asked, going pale.
Her response was unexpected.
"Jackie, have you heard that phrase before?"
She nodded. "I never knew where Pete got the tale from, but every night until he died, he would sing her to sleep with this strange tale of a bad wolf."
He frowned. "Really? Not just a childrens fairytale or something like Little Red Riding hood - that has a Wolf that's bad."
"No, 'Bad Wolf' as in 'The Bad Wolf'. The Bad Wolf that saw time and space."
He sat up straight. "Jackie, tell me more."
"If you're… all her life, she's seen various things with the moniker, 'Bad Wolf'. When she was a teenager, in a rebelious stage, she was part of a group who, when talking about her, always called her 'Bad Wolf'."
"'I am the Bad Wolf, I create myself. I take the words, I scatter them, through time and space. A message to lead myself here.'" He muttered.
"What?"
"When she took the Vortex in, that's what she said. She didn't just scatter the words through her travels with me, but before that. But why even further back?"
"She saw the message all those times before she created the message?" Jackie offered.
"No, there's something else. Time doesn't work quite like that."
"How would you know?"
"My race were called the Time Lords for a good reason, Jackie."
"Oh. Maybe it'll come to you after you've had some rest, you look shattered."
He smiled faintly and sat back down, "Thank you. Don't need as much sleep as humans but, things just caught up with me I guess."
"You can use the spare bedroom, same one as before."
"Thanks Jackie. Never thought you'd be civil like this." He mused. "Ever so grateful for the change." He added.
"Despite the fact that she took herself back to your side, you did send her back to me, and you don't seem to mind coming back for little visits, so for her sake. Now go, get some sleep. I might be asleep when you get up, if so, get whatever you want for breakfast from the fridge. The Prime Minister you two know has been ever so good for this country, my fridge has never gotten to be so full…" she trailed off as she left him to it.
--
When he woke up, it was night and there was a note on his bedside table from Rose, telling him that she was in the TARDIS library.
He soon stood at the door into it, watching as she read a book. He didn't know what book, all he saw was a book open in her hands, a big book too. But what interested him, was she occasionally looked at the shelves and grabbed another with her free hand, and put into into a trolley she was pushing, that was slowly getting fuller with other books.
When she stopped and sat down at a table, he made his approach.
"What's got you so interested in reading all of a sudden?" He asked.
And in near-perfect Gallifreyan she replied, "'It is a little known fact among the students of the Time Lord Academy that only one tenth of those who go for the TARDIS piloting exams actually do pass the space portion, and a tenth of those pass the time portion of the exams. Only those who passed both portions were allowed to pilot the TARDIS's, since even a small pilot error could strand a Time Lord centuries before or after their intended time destination. Even travel between locations without the temporal portion of piloting is difficult, since there is the whole of creation at that point in time to travel to. Even more difficult to master is flying a TARDIS through space, rather than dematerialising and rematerialising, since there are the obsticals between the start and end points of the journey.' Hey Doctor, I take it you didn't pass then?"
He chuckled, and instead of pointing out that she spoke Gallifreyan, although she probably wouldn't realise without it being pointed out, he instead replied, "No. Funny thing actually, because the other TARDIS's with only few exceptions, were all piloted by fully-qualified Time Lords."
"What's so funny about that? And come to think of it, if they don't let you pilot without passing the exams…"
"Oh, now that's the funny part." The Doctor explained. "I kind of… stole… the TARDIS."
"And she didn't get angry with you?"
"Who didn't get angry with me?"
"The TARDIS of course." She gave him a grin, and added, "How could you forget her like that? She's going to be mad for a week, you know. Last time I forgot her I couldn't find any clean clothes, and she wouldn't let me into the Wardrobe Room until I apologised."
The Doctor was crestfallen. "Sorry love, didn't think." He mumbled, and rubbed the shelf he was stood beside.
Rose smiled softly as she heard a low thrum in response. "Okay, a day then." She corrected.
"Anyway, what exactly are you reading?"
"Oh, found several books on Time Travel; paradoxes and the like, thought I should learn as much as I could after falling into a parallel world."
"What books? We never learned from any books for that part at the Academy."
She smiled. "You didn't read a lot when you were young did you?"
His self-depracating smile was all the answer she needed.
"The TARDIS has a whole section, and I'd swear it was like these books are written for humans. Read a history book on your people a few months back, so I know they weren't exactly fond of us, and Sarah Jane told me that you were the only Time Lord she encountered who treated her as a person."
--
Jack frowned as the computers reported rift activity near the outskirts of the city.
"Suzie, Tosh, Owen…" he began, and smiled at his team as they came in. "Looks like we're taking a bit of a field trip."
--
Rose smiled as the TARDIS landed in Cardiff.
"So come on, tell me, what we doing here?" The Doctor asked.
Rose shrugged as she put her coat on, and stepped out into the familiar sight of the bay area, and the Doctor followed.
"Just, something I used to do each year. Kind of missed last year's, idiot."
"Hey, Come on, I told you, it's pretty difficult to pilot the TARDIS through time."
Rose rolled her eyes but didn't say anything. Instead, she set off, and the Doctor dutifully followed, wondering what she was doing.
About half an hour later, he raised his eyebrows, because Rose had walked into a florist shop, whose owner recognised her immediately and got out an order.
"Sorry I-"
"No need, I saw the missing posters." The owner cut in, her welsh accent coming through softer than most welsh people's.
"Right." Rose smiled in thanks, and left the florist.
The Doctor asked after 5 minutes, "What's this about?"
Rose sighed. "When I was 8, my Mum brought us here to visit my Aunt Jen. I was left alone with her while my mum went to shopping… She had some of the best stories. She used to call us once a fortnight, and tell me a story over the phone. You'd have liked her, her stories were about heroes and demons from other planets." She looked shocked for a moment, before she whispered, "Now that I mention it - one of the monsters - she pretty much described a Dalek!"
"What happened to her?"
Rose closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, the Doctor's hearts ached for her. She looked haunted. "She had a heart-attack. I dialled 999 but I couldn't understand the operator. By the time my mum got back..."
Rose closed her eyes again, and this time, didn't open them for a full minute.
"She died, this day, but 11 years ago. Each year since I've spent a day, to come here and get her flowers and put them at her grave."
The Doctor saw this, as they entered a graveyard.
"Doctor, would you mind…?" Rose started, and he nodded and left her to it.
She watched him as he left, and he gave her her phone, "I'll be in the TARDIS, if you need me."
Once she lost sight of him, she proceeded to her aunt's grave.
Nearing, she noticed someone else there, a policewoman from the looks of things.
She silently added the flowers to the pile there already, and touched the name engraved on the gravestone.
'Jeniffer Cooper, loving wife, aunt and sister'
Rose looked up at the policewoman, who looked at her.
"I'm Gwen. You look familiar…" Gwen mused, before she realised, "You've visited every year…"
Rose nodded, and wiped her eyes of the tears that collected. She stood and held her hand out, and as Gwen shook it, she turned her head and asked, "You look familiar…"
Gwen smiled but shook her head, "Doubt you'd have seen me, I was always in a car and saw you as you left."
"How did you know Aunt Jen?" Rose asked.
Gwen raised an eyebrow, and replied, "She's my aunt too."
"We're cousins?"
Gwen shrugged. "Maybe, Aunt Jen married my Dad's brother."
"She was my mums' sister." Rose inserted.
Together, the two left to talk about their former favourite aunt.
--
"I loved her stories when i was younger," Gwen was saying. They had gone to a cafe, and had several cups of coffee.
"Me too, did she ever tell you about the robot in a shell with a plunger and whisk for arms?"
"Yes, I especially liked the part about the Professor." Gwen answered.
Rose raised her eyebrows, and added, "She never called him that when she told the story to me."
"Really?"
"Really. Ever wonder where she got her stories?"
"Not really. Why?"
"You might not believe me, but keep in mind - that space ship hovering over london. I've met Aliens."
Gwen raised her eyebrows. "I don't believe that. Besides, how could they be aliens? My boyfriend says it's like a sort of cyber terrorism."
"Your boyfriend's an idiot."
Gwen laughed. "You've met him then?"
Rose laughed too, and added, "So what was his explanation for Aliens in Downing Street, the big spaceship that hovered over london?"
"Psychotropic drugs in the water supply."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Yes, he really is an idiot. Do you know how hard it was for me to even get into the water treatment plants for London?"
"What?"
"Nevermind." Rose rolled her eyes.
"So what's your name?" Gwen asked.
Rose thougth for a moment, before she replied with a slight grin, "The Big Bad Wolf."
"Oh come on."
Rose shrugged, "Well I just told you that I once broke into the London water treatment plants, and you're a policewoman, I'm not exactly going to give my name away."
Gwen laughed, "As if. Family stick together, my mum always said."
Rose nodded. "So they do. Anyway, I must be off, exploring other worlds with my alien friend and all that."
Gwen raised her eyebrows again. "You can't be serious."
"And through time too. I think I might have met one of your ancestors, Gwen. You look like her. Gwyneth - never got her surname. Worked in a Funeral Parlour. Died there. I should tell you that story sometime." Rose said as she got up and paid for their drinks. "Next time I'm here on Earth, got your number afterall, yeah?"
Gwen smiled and nodded. "I'll see you then, Big Bad Wolf."
--
The Impossible Planet
Rose frowned as the TARDIS struggled to rematerialize and stabilise into the universe.
"Huh..." the Doctor muttered, and once they stepped out, he rubbed the side of the door. "She's a bit queezy, like she didn't want to land."
"Well, if you think that it's gonna be trouble, we could always go somewhere else…"
The Doctor and Rose split into laughs at the mere thought, and the Doctor looked around once he got control. "I think… We've landed inside a cupboard. Here we go."
The Doctor opened a door, and they both heard a computer say, "Open door, 15."
"Some sort of Base. Moon-base, E-base, Space-base. They build these things like a kit."
"Glad we're indoors." Rose muttered, and got a flash of swirling gasses.
"Open Door, 16." The Doctor opened, and Rose followed him.
"Human designers, you've got a thing about kits. This place was put together like a flat-pack wardrobe, only bigger."
"What, made by a space version of Ikea?"
"Maybe, well, as long as they didn't forget the all important last screw." The Doctor replied.
As they neared another door, he added, "And put together easier."
"Open Door, 17."
He looked into the next room, and smiled. "Oh, it's a Sanctuary Base."
"Close Door, 17."
"Like, Deep space exploration. We've gone way out. And listen to that-" Rose listened, and the low humming they had heard ever since stepping out was clearer slightly. "-Underneath, someone's drilling."
Rose got a sudden urge to look at something on the wall, and spoke, "Welcome to Hell."
"Oh It's not that bad."
"No - look."
Rose felt chills as she tried to read the inscriptions below it, and felt the Doctor freeze too.
"Hold on, what does that say?" He muttered, and ran over to the wall.
"Weird, It won't translate." He added.
"But I thought you and the TARDIS translated everything, writing aswell. Should be in English."
"Exactly, but if that's not working, means, this writing... is old. Very old. Impossibly old."
The Doctor got up and went to the next door, and started to open it.
As he spoke, Rose looked at the writing, and she felt as though she should at the very least, recognise it. But she didn't.
"We've gone beyond the reach of the TARDIS' knowledge, which is not a good move."
"Open Door, 19."
The Doctor was shocked to see 3 unfamiliar aliens on the other side, standing with some sort of ball in one hand.
"Hello. Sorry, ahm, I was just saying, nice base."
"We must, feed." The middle one spoke, the ball lighting up as it did. The Doctor looked at it, and asked, "You gonna what?"
"We must, feed. You."
--
"But that field would take… Phenominal amounts of power, not just big but off the scale. Can I?" The Doctor pointed to the calculator.
Rose went off, and found one too.
After a bare minute, the Doctor began, "D'you see, to generate tat gravity field and the funnel, you'd need a power source-"
"Hold on, Doctor." Rose inserted, and the Doctor saw she was whirling away on a calculator too. "Almost... Ah. There we go. You'd need a power source with an inverted self-extrapolating reflex of 6 to the power of 6 every 6 seconds."
"Which is impossible." The Doctor added, but he was looking at Rose with awe.
"It took us 2 years to work that out." Zach inserted.
"Well… We're very good." The Doctor replied with a wink to Rose.
--
"Just a thought, Rose." The Doctor began.
"Yes, you would have to get a mortgage." Rose joked.
"Not that. Before, you worked that out nearly as fast as I did."
Rose rolled her eyes, and inserted, "Okay, I'll admit. I cheated a little."
"What?"
"I saw some of the calculations you were doing."
"What?"
"Always was good with Numbers, but it'd taken me a day to do those calculations."
"What?"
"Whats with you saying that all the time?"
The Doctor didn't say anything, flustered. Well, more like he didn't say anything for a minute.
"You cheated?"
"Hey I wanted to look smart too." Rose defended.
--
"The Satan Pit"
Rose looked around, wondering why the lights were going out when the terminal she was at activated, and she saw the numerous ood on the screen. "This is the Darkness, This is my domain. You little things that live in the light, clinging to your feeble suns, which die in the end."
"That's not the Ood." Zachary told them. "Someone's talking through them."
"Only the Darkness remains."
"This is Captain Zachary Crossflane of Sanctuary Base 6 Representing the Torchwood Archive. You will identify yourself."
"You know my name."
"What do you want?"
"You will die here. All of you. This planet is your grave."
The Doctor came on the comm and asked, "If you are the beast, answer me this. Which one? Hm? Cause the Universe has been busy since you've been gone. There's more religions than there are planets in the Sky. The Arkavets, Orkology, Christianity, Pash Pash, New Judaism, San Clah, Church of the tin Vagabond, which devil are you?"
"All of them."
"What, then you're the… Truth behind the Myth?"
The voice sounded curious, "This one knows me, as I know him. The Killer, of his own kind."
The Doctor sounded a tad pissed off, as he shortly asked, "How did you end up on this rock?"
"The Disciples of the Light rose up against me and chained me in the Pit for all eternity."
"When was this?"
"Before Time."
"What does that mean?"
"Before Time."
"What does 'Before Time' mean?"
"Before Time, and Light and Space and Matter. Before the Cataclysm, before this universe was created."
"That's impossible. No life could have existed back then.
"Is that, Your religion?"
"It's… a belief."
"You know nothing. All of you. So Small. The Captain, so scared of command. The Soldier, haunted by the eyes of his wife. The Scientist, still running from Daddy. The little boy who lied. The virgin. And the Lonely Girl, so very far away from home. The Valiant child, who will loose everything in battle so very soon."
"Doctor, what does that mean?" Rose asked.
"Rose, don't listen." came the soft reply.
"What does it mean?"
"You will die, and I will LIVE!"
--
"Doctor, Ida, Can you hear me?"
"He's gone."
Rose froze. She looked at some alien writing, and she could still read it, so she knew. "What do you mean he's gone?"
"He fell, into the pit. And I don't know how deep it is, miles, miles and miles."
"What do you mean he fell?"
"Well, I couldn't stop him." There was a long pause. "He said your name, wanted to me to tell you something, but he stopped. Said you know already."
Rose closed her eyes. However they were going to get out of this, she couldn't see. All she did was that the TARDIS was still around translating, and the Doctor was still alive, since she still saw things in engish.
--
She watched, as the planet disappeared from the monitors.
"The Planets' gone. I'm sorry."
She closed her eyes and searched her mind for the connection. It blinked out of existence for a fraction of a second. Just only a fraction. When it came back, she almost smiled in contentment, she heard the TARDIS assuring her somehow, She'll be back.
"First human beings to fall inside a black hole. How about that? History." Zachary joked.
"It'll be fine." She whispered back, and she caught a flash of the TARDIS approaching the ship.
And she really did smile when the shaking ceased.
And then they all were pushed to the side. "We're… turning."
"It's the Doctor." She told them, and her heart soared.
"Sorry about the Hijack Captain," His insufferable cheer-in-the-face-of-danger came on the speakers, "This is the good ship TARDIS. Now first things first, you got a Rose Tyler on board?"
"Never had a doubt." Rose cheered. "I see she found you down there then!"
"What do you mean? I found her!"
"As if, Tell him, TARDIS!"
"OWW! Oi what's that fo-OW? Okay okay she found me!"
Rose smiled with absolute joy and ignored the confused looks on Zachary and Danny's faces.
"I take it she's towing us?" She asked.
"Yep. Gravity Shmavity, my people practically invented black-holes. Well… infact, they did. In a couple of minutes we'll be nice and safe. Oh and Captain, can we do a swap? Say, You give me Rose Tyler, I give you Ida Scott? How about that?"
"What she didn't die from boredom?!" Rose joked.
"Oi!" came the sarcastic reply.
"Right, Clear space, mind if we do that swap now? The TARDIS is missing a certain person."
"And What about a certain person with a Binary Cardio-Vascular system?" Rose asked.
"He might be too."
--
Rose hugged the life out of him, and he did the same. After a minute, They let go and the Doctor commed the other ship.
"Zach? We'll be off now. Have a good trip home. And the next time you get curious about something-Uh… What's the point, you'll just go blundering in. The human race."
"But, Doctor," Ida asked, "What did you find down there? That creature, what was it?"
"I dunno, never did decypher that writing. But that's good. Day I know everything, I may aswell just stop." The Doctor looked at Rose, and she knew what he thought, that he hoped that day would come when she was around.
"What do you think it was?" Rose asked. The look on his face as he turned back to the TARDIS controls made her wonder, if he did actually find out.
"I think… we beat it, and that's good enough for me."
"It said I was going to loose everything in battle. Doctor, I-"
"It lied." The Doctor told her with a look, a hopeful one. "Right. Onwards, Upwards. Ida? See you again Maybe?"
"I hope so."
"And Thanks boys!" Rose called out. "For pulling me out when you did."
"No problem!" Danny replied, and Zachary added, "The Doctor would have kicked my arse if I hadn't!"
Ida interrupted. "Hang on, though Doctor. You never really said. You two, Who are you?"
"Oh…" The Doctor looked at Rose, and with a smile, answered, "The Stuff of Legend."
With that, the Doctor took the TARDIS away.
--
Onboard the ship though, Zachary regailed the two of tales from the Torchwood Archive. On the third day of this, he came to one that intrigued Ida Scott.
"It is said, her name burns in the Cascade of Medusa herself. The Lonely Goddess, cursed to travel through Time and Space alone. The old files of the Torchwood Institute referred to her as the Big Bad Wolf. It is also said that her heart burns fiercer than a sun, and her soul shines brighter than a thousand suns."
"I've heard of the Bad Wolf Corporation…" Ida started.
Zachary nodded. "It's not known how or why, but one of the longest lasting companies of this day, the only one to have started and stayed operational only on Earth, is one rumored to have been started by the Lonely Goddess."
"Oh come on, It's just some torchwood rumor taken out of proportion over the centuries."
Zachary shook his head. "I've seen the file on how the Institute was created. Queen Victoria was attacked and almost turned by 'The Bad Wolf'; a Werewolf."
They all shared looks.
"Wasn't that species of Light-based creatures made extinct around the 28th Century?" Danny asked.
"Well, Torchwood comes from even earlier, so it's not exactly impossible." Zachary inserted.
"How much earlier?"
"Come on, did you not learn your history? Queen Victoria?"
"Nope, not got a clue."
"19th Century."
"Really? That far back?"
--