She groaned and blinked, pushing herself up to survey her surroundings before collapsing back into a heap on the ground. "What?" She asked vaguely. She wasn't entirely sure what had happened, just that she had been in the TARDIS, and there was a light, and now she was here.

Then a black man was sitting beside her, pushing at her shoulder. "It's the transmit beam," he was saying. "Sort of scrambles you up. But you've got to get up soon."

Rose wrinkled her brow and tried to get her brain back. "I don't understand." Something—something important—was niggling at the edge of her consciousness. Then, all of her grogginess fell away, and realization hit her like a ton of bricks.

"Tell me that I'm not on the Gamestation," Rose begged of the black man. "Tell me!"

"Sorry," he said, shrugging. "We're on the Weakest Link."

Rose sagged back onto the floor. The Gamestation. The Bad Wolf. The Daleks, the Time War—and, of course, her Doctor was going to die. But—but—she didn't want him to die! It wasn't fair! He didn't deserve to die—he had barely begun to live again, from what she had seen. And, of course, he'd still be the Doctor, but he wasn't going to be the same.

"What's your name?"

"Rose," she answered, cracking her head against the floor, hard. Why did it have to be now? She wasn't ready for him to go!

"I'm Roderick," the man said. "Come on, you've got to get up now."

"But—if this happens, he's going to die," she said desperately, clinging to Roderick's arm. "I'm not ready for him to change! He's my Doctor, I—I—I—" she cut herself off before she could finish that sentence.

"Look, I don't know who you're worried about, but you're on the Weakest Link," Roderick advised her. "I'd worry about myself, if I were you."

She prepared herself to stand up, to find her podium and answer questions, and in the end, get taken hostage by the Daleks (but first watch all of these people die, how was that fair? How come there wasn't a way to save them?) when she heard a familiar, very comforting wheezing noise, and, not ten feet away from where she was, there was the TARDIS, materializing on the floor.

She was fairly certain that wasn't supposed to happen. That thought was confirmed when the doors burst open, and the Doctor sprang out—just not her Doctor. The first Doctor that she had ever met, the Doctor with the bowtie and the floppy hair.

Roderick stared. She stared, too, when, right on the Doctor's heels came herself just looking a couple of years older. Her older self was clasping the hand of a skinny man in pinstripes with wild hair—that must be the clone, the duplicate, the Doctor that her Doctor was about to regenerate into.

Amy followed her older self, along with a blond-ish man with a big nose, and another redheaded woman that she didn't know. But she could guess, based on the Doctor's stories. Donna Noble.

"Rose!" the Doctor said, delighted, like they had just happened to run into each other on a merry stroll in the park.

"You're an idiot," the redhead that Rose had deemed to be Donna Noble stated. "She's going to faint."

"I thought that you couldn't cross your own timeline?" Rose asked the first thing that popped into her head.

"I lied," the Doctor said, kneeling down next to her. "Extenuating circumstances. What're you doing on the floor?"

"Transmat beam scrambled my head right up," her older self answered wryly, kneeling on the other side. Wide-eyed, Rose noticed the rings adorning her older self's hand, and the matching wedding band that was placed on the other Doctor's finger. "Give her a minute."

"You're what he's going to be next, aren't you?" She asked, turning to her older self's husband.

"Uhmmm—kind of. Sort of. Maybe? One heart, me, so that'll be different. And—"

"Yes," her older self cut in smoothly.

"He talks a lot," she said, wide-eyed.

"Mmm," her older self said in agreement. "But that tongue. The things that he can do with that tongue."

"Well," he said, shrugging. "I try."

"Great hair, too," Rose-the-older said conversationally.

"Yeah," the Doctor added. "That was great hair. Still miss it, sometimes."

"I bet that you miss everything about this body, seeing as you probably still get carded at the pub."

"Oi! It's not that young," the Doctor snapped back.

"You look about twelve," Amy interjected, kneeling at the Doctor's side. "But there must have been a reason for coming here, you didn't just show up to argue over hair and age."

"Ah, right. I figured that you might be feeling some hesitation, knowing that Nine's going to regenerate," the Doctor said.

"He's going to die!" Rose said desperately. "And I understand that you're all the same man and all, but you're also not, you know?"

The Doctor and his clone exchanged mystified glances over her head, but Rose-the-older knew exactly what to do. "Yeah. The part of him that has big ears and wears leather and has a northern accent is sort of going to die, but he's in there still, all the same. But you're allowed to miss him sometimes, you know? He's still your first Doctor. He's the one that grabbed your hand and said run, and that's the beginning of the story."

"Some things have to end," the duplicate added. "Else nothing would ever get started. But this, all of this, is to make sure that you never have to leave him."

"Plus, regeneration's a natural part of a Time Lord's life cycle. I'll admit that I've been going through them rather—ahem, quickly, but it's to be expected one day," the Doctor added. "Sides, he's pretty, isn't he?" He added, gesturing at his duplicate. "And the tongue—I remember having that tongue, it was talented."

I will not blush, I will not blush. It was hard. It was one thing, hearing her older self talk about sex with a man that she had married. It was entirely another for the Doctor to start tossing in on fringe benefits like the tongue on his previous incarnation.

"It isn't about pretty!" Rose said, finally deciding to dismiss the bit about tongues entirely and not address it at all.

"I know," the Doctor soothed. "I know. But it's still a nice consolation prize. Right, Rose?" He directed this question to her older self, who rolled her eyes but did not respond aloud.

"Rudeness is a quality that transcends regeneration," Donna said. "Come on, spaceman. Both of you. Give baby blondie a hug, and let's get going before we screw up the timelines in ways that they are not meant to be screwed.

She hugged the familiar Doctor first, and then the unfamiliar one—the one that was created for her. That would be for her. Then she hugged her older self, and all of her unexpected guests filed into the TARDIS and dematerialized.

Roderick, along with everyone else in the room, was staring at her incredulously. "Time travel?" She said, shrugging. "Look, I live a complicated life."

The coordinator eventually pulled herself together enough to get the show back on the air, and Rose felt a momentary welling of pure hatred for this woman who regarded forcing people to participate in their lethal games as her job. She had two options here—the Daleks needed her alive, so she was safe. She could attempt to stall as long as possible and wait for the Doctor to get here, or she could get out of the game quickly, and attempt to save as many of these people as possible. The Daleks needed her alive, but not any of the others.

As such, she threw all of the answers, even the few that she knew. Except for the one about the Face of Boe—she just couldn't resist answering it, and being a smartass about it, too. "Jack Harkness," she said, raising her eyebrows just a little bit and grinning ferally, letting her tongue poke through her teeth. She couldn't save any of these people, but she could promise that she would get revenge for them.

Everyone clearly expected the answer to be wrong—the question was clear: "The oldest inhabitant of the Isop Galaxy is the Face of what?" Rose's answer hadn't even made sense in the context given, and she had answered every other question incorrectly, too, the Anne-Droid's response seemed obvious.

Instead, "Correct. Jack Harkness is the most well-known alias of the Face of Boe."

"Hang on," the coordinator interrupted. "The Face of Boe doesn't have any known aliases, and how would she have known them if he did?"

"Oh," Rose said, slightly feral wolf-like smile still fixed on her lips, "Jack and I go waaayyyy back." Thankfully, the current Jack was trapped in What Not to Wear from hell, and couldn't see this and begin wondering how he could possibly end up ageing into an ancient head in a giant tank.

"And! We're going to commercial," the coordinator said in a slightly hysterical tone of voice. "Rose! Out you come," she added, the edge to her tone not disappearing. She flicked on her headset. "How did a personal friend of the Face of Boe end up on our transmat lists?"

Well. The name-dropping had had something of an unexpected side effect. The woman looked alarmed. She glanced from Rose's podium to her clipboard. "How?"

"Time travel. I've no idea," Rose said. All of the contestants were staring at her. "I was in 3252, Kyoto. Or on the way out of it, anyway. We dropped the egg of at Raxacoricofallaptorius, and then we went to Japan, Jack got us arrested and we escaped back to the TARDIS. Next thing any of us knew, there was a light shining through the place, and I ended up here. So your transmat beam is more powerful than you thought, because it can get into the TARDIS, and it can reach into the Time Vortex itself. What does that tell you?"

The woman shook her head weakly, but was interrupted by the Anne-Droid powering up again. Clearly, commercial time was over.

Just as she had been aiming for, she lost the first round. The coordinator frantically tried to stop the Anne-Droid from firing at her, but failed to get it shut down.

When she came to, she was laying on the ground again, this time surrounded by despotic pepper pots that screeched at her to get up as the transmat activated again. The Daleks were clearly about to kill the black girl that had appeared there when Rose got in the way.

"Don't you dare!"

"Rose Tyler is important," the Dalek buzzed. "Rose Tyler must not be exterminated."

"No! You can't kill me yet, can you? You need me alive! You need bait. You need the Doctor to cooperate with you, and you need to threaten me to do it," she said, false bravado hopefully hiding how terrified that she was. "And you aren't going to kill her, either! Because I won't let you! And if you try to fight with me, you might kill me by accident, and then where would you be?"

As arguments, it wasn't the best, but the Daleks seemed to decide that she was worth listening to, because they backed off the girl and herded her into Rose's corner. Rose wrapped an arm around her.

"What—who are you? What's going on?"

"These are Daleks. Sort of. Scavengers, created by the emperor's ship after he fell out of the Time Lock."

"How does Rose Tyler know of these things? Explain! Explain!"

"I know a lot of things," Rose murmured. "I am, after all, the Bad Wolf." Daleks could feel fear. Bad Wolf had been written into legends. The version of her that was Time made flesh that leaked that strange smell that the Doctor's leather jacket smelled like; she was worshipped on at least seventeen planets. And she hadn't even done it yet.

But she would. And soon.

"Rose Tyler lies!" The Daleks in hearing distance all shrieked.

"Do I?" Rose asked. She squeezed the girl's shoulder. "I'm Rose. What's your name?"

"Crosbie," the girl whimpered. "I was in the Big Brother House, then they evicted me. And now I'm here!"

Rose was about to comfort her, but instead something rang a bell. "Big Brother? Was there a man there? With big ears and a Northern accent and a leather jacket? Bit of a smart-arse, calls himself the Doctor?"

"Yes! How did you know?"

"Because he's my—I just care about him, that's all. We travel together. Just hang tight, and he'll get us out of here," Rose added, squeezing again.

...

Sure enough, after she had waited long enough, the Doctor appeared on a screen above. The Daleks threatened, the Doctor looked anguished, a chick in pigtails that was standing beside the Doctor shrieked Crosbie's name, and Crosbie shrieked, "Lynda!" In return.

"I will talk to the Doctor," the Dalek said.

"Oh, will you? That's nice," the Doctor said, grinning at her. Infectiously, amazingly, and she could almost believe that they would both come out of this completely alright. "Hello," he added, waving cheekily.

"The Dalek stratagem nears completion. The fleet is almost ready. You will not intervene," the Dalek instructed.

"Oh, really? Why's that, then?" The Doctor threw back. Her Doctor was sassier than he probably wanted to admit to being.

"We have your associate," the Dalek said. All of the other Daleks around them threateningly waved their whisk-guns in Rose's direction. "You will obey or she will be exterminated," the Dalek continued.

"No," the Doctor snapped. Everyone on his side of the viewing screen turned to stare at him.

"Explain yourself," the Dalek ordered flatly.

"I said no."

"What is the meaning of this negative?"

"It means no," the Doctor repeated.

"But she will be destroyed!" The Dalek protested, its shriek reaching a higher pitch.

"No! Because this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to rescue her. I'm going to save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet, and then I'm going to save the Earth, and then, just to finish off, I'm going to wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!" The Doctor yelled. Rose could see his anger, his pain, the blood and rage at every single Dalek that had ever dared to exist bleeding through, along with his worry for her, and his longing for Gallifrey, for his people.

"But you have no weapons, no defences, no plan," the Dalek protested.

"Yeah. And doesn't that scare you to death. Rose?"

"Yes, Doctor?" She called.

"I'm coming to get you," he said, before shutting off the screens with his sonic. The image rippled and disappeared.

"The Doctor is initiating hostile action," the Dalek said.

"The stratagem must advance. Begin the invasion of Earth!" Another Dalek added.

"The Doctor will be exterminated!"

"Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Well. That wasn't ominous at all—what if something went wrong?

So, I really have no excuse for how long it's been, and I'm not totally satisfied with this chapter, but it'll have to do. Rose is feeling angry, and she's been expecting Nine to regenerate, but that doesn't mean that she's ready to lose him. Remember, she's never met Ten, and when she did meet Eleven it was usually brief. Nine's the one who showed her the stars, and Nine's still her Doctor, and she doesn't want him to die. So she's pissed at the whole situation, sad that she's going to lose Nine, and generally has absolutely no respect for the morons at the gamestation, and, as such, she's going to do whatever she can to make their lives as difficult as possible, even if that just means being a smartass. Also, you may or may not have noticed that I changed the genre- I realized that adventure was probably more fitting for the way that this story is going. It used to be drama, if you were wondering. And if you're one of those people that doesn't usually even notice genres for stories, then it doesn't really matter!