The adventure referenced in the first part of this chapter comes from The Resurrection Casket by Justin Richards, one of my favourite Doctor Who novels.

Chapter 26

Rose jerked awake and stared blinking into the darkness. The steady hum of the TARDIS had been replaced by something more like the buzz of a light fixture right before the bulb blew.

The Doctor's agitation pulsed over their connection, and Rose was already swinging her legs out of bed when he rapped sharply on her door. "You need to get up, Rose."

The tension in his voice shivered down her spine and she reached for her bedside lamp as she sat up. Nothing happened. She hit the switch again, and still nothing happened. "Doctor, why isn't the light working?"

He sighed, and she could picture him leaning against the other side of her door. "Nothing's working. The TARDIS has been hit by something like an EMP; all the systems were knocked out."

Rose swung her legs out of bed and made her way carefully to the door. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to make out the outline of the Doctor standing in the corridor. "Then how am I supposed to get dressed?" she asked.

She heard fabric rustle and then felt the cool metal of the sonic when the Doctor pressed it into her hand. "You remember the torch setting, yeah?"

Rose ran her fingers along the cylinder until she felt the dial to adjust the setting. A few quick turns and the corridor filled with pale blue light.

"I guess you do. Hurry and get dressed. I need your help to repair the TARDIS."

A week later Rose sank into a hot bath, grateful their adventure on Starfall was over. Pirates in real life weren't nearly as exciting or romantic as they were in books and movies.

Once she'd washed off the grime of travel and some of the aches from fighting the robots had melted away, she dried herself off and dressed in soft flannel bottoms and a vest. A quick inquiry of the TARDIS sent her down the corridor toward the Doctor's study.

She opened the door quietly and watched the Doctor for a moment. He was in his chair with his head tipped against the high seat back. His eyes were closed, but from the lines of tension around his mouth, she knew he was awake.

A moment later, he took in a deep breath and held out his hand. Rose padded across the carpet and slipped her hand into his, letting him pull her into his lap. The Doctor traced a finger along the bruises forming around her neck from where Salvo 7-50 had attempted to strangle her. "You were incredible, Rose."

"Well yeah," Rose said, grinning at him. "I'm brilliant, remember?"

The corners of his eyes crinkled up a little. "I do keep telling you that, don't I?"

Rose saw his gaze drop to her bruises again, and some of the light went out of his smile. "Doctor, I'm fine," she reminded him. "I'm not going anywhere, not for a good long while."

The corners of his mouth turned up in the barest hint of a smile, and he brushed his lips against her cheek. "Can't fool you, can I Rose Tyler?"

"Nope." Rose bit her lip thoughtfully, considering the adventure they'd just survived. A man obsessed with bringing his dead wife back to life… "You're not…" She toyed with the Doctor's tie, trying to find a gentle way to ask her question. "Could you maybe relate to McCavity? I mean, aside from the jealously murderous part."

His fingers tightened around her own. "Why would I relate to a man who went insane trying to bring back the woman he loved?"

That's a yes then. "Just thought maybe… well, humans wither and die, right?" She felt the pain he tried to ignore whenever the cold fact of her eventual death was brought up, but she refused to let go of the subject. They hadn't talked about this since their relationship had changed; maybe they needed to. "An' the Resurrection Casket was supposed to bring the dead back to life."

The Doctor went very still, staring straight into the fireplace. Rose took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "I mean, I know you knew there was no way it worked how they thought it did. But… did you wonder, just for a moment, if maybe there was a way to extend my life?" The muscle in his jaw flexed, and she stroked the side of his face, trying to relax him. "I was tempted, just for a moment," she admitted in a whisper.

The Doctor froze. That… he had not expected that. "You what?"

Rose stared down at his tie. "Well… been thinking about it a lot actually. The Beast, he said I'm going to die."

His time senses argued against the sentence, and he devoted part of his brain to analysing why while running a comforting hand up and down her arm. "Rose, it's not real. The Beast lied."

"It knew about everyone else," she retorted.

"It knew about their pasts, not their futures."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the Doctor knew why the thought of Rose dying in a future battle felt wrong—because it had already happened. His left hand clenched into a fist as he fought for control. He'd tried so hard to forget Rose had died, going so far as to not even tell her what had happened. But right now…

As always, Rose picked up on the shift of his emotions. She pulled back a little so she was looking him in the eye. "Doctor? What's wrong?"

He swallowed hard and stared at the fire. He'd been carrying this for so long; he'd almost forgotten Rose didn't know. The TARDIS hummed chidingly, and Rose narrowed her eyes at him. "What's going on, Doctor?"

"Rose… do you remember what I said on the Game Station when you told me you'd looked into the TARDIS?"

Surprise registered on Rose's face, and he couldn't blame her. He'd never brought up the Game Station willingly. "You… you told me I'd looked into the Vortex."

"And that the power was going to kill you."

It only took a minute for Rose to catch on to what he was saying. She straightened up. "It didn't! I'm still here, aren't I?"

The Doctor sat up and ran a hand through his hair. "Because you, as Bad Wolf, were tied closely enough to Time to bring yourself back," he explained, keeping his voice as even as possible. "I should have realised, but I was too caught up in my own problems, and then I was so glad to see you wake up…"

He took a deep breath."The Vortex killed you, Rose, just like it killed me. I regenerated, and you used the power of Time to reverse your own death. So… you've already died in battle, so far from home. The Beast was right; he just didn't realise it had already happened."

Rose was silent for a long moment, trying to digest that. Dying and coming back to life wasn't something she'd ever thought she'd do, and she looked down at her arm, half expecting it to look different, now that she knew she'd come back from the dead. She wanted to argue again, but somewhere inside her, she realised she'd known this for weeks—months even.

Months. The Game Station had been almost a year ago, and they'd learned about the effects of Bad Wolf months ago. Rose stood up slowly and looked down at him. "You've known this how long?" she asked.

The Doctor looked away from her, staring at the fire again with pursed lips. Good. So he could feel the anger she had a tight rein on. His Adam's apple bobbed. "Since we found out how being Bad Wolf changed you."

"Months then." Her calm evaporated, each word out of her mouth sharper than the one before. "You've known that I died and came back to life for that long, and you didn't think it was something I should know."

"Rose…"

"No! I don't want to hear any of your excuses. None of them." Paradoxically, the Doctor's remorse only made Rose angrier. If he'd just told her this ages ago, he wouldn't have anything to feel remorseful about.

She glared down at him, and she saw acceptance of all her anger in his eyes. Unable to stay in the same room with him any longer, she stormed out of the room and down the corridor blindly, not caring where she was going, only that he wasn't there.

A door appeared a few paces in front of her and she darted through it, stopping when her feet touched grass. She looked up, and even though she knew it was simulated, the warm sun on her face relaxed her fractionally.

You won't let him find me, yeah? A hum of agreement reassured her, and she sat down at a wooden picnic table set with a light supper spread. Rose's stomach growled, and she realised it had been hours since she'd eaten. She heaped her plate high with cheese and cold meats and washed her meal down with a cider.

Once she'd eaten, she stood and started wandering. There was a grove of trees about a hundred feet to her right, and as she got closer, she realised they were fruit trees. "Harbouring an orchard, are you Doctor?" she murmured, and then giggled when she saw what kind of trees they were. "Pears! Oh, you beauty," she told the TARDIS. "He definitely won't come searching for me here."

A surge of rebellion washed over her, and she yanked one of the ripe fruits from the tree and took a large bite. Sweetness burst on her tongue, and she sighed with delight. The Doctor might hate pears, but they had always been one of her favourite foods.

In the back of her mind, she felt the gentle prod of the Doctor's presence. It felt guilty, and she let him feel her anger before shutting him out as best as she could.

Rose knew the Doctor. She'd always been aware that he had secrets; with over 1000 years of memories, it would be unreasonable to expect him to share everything with her at once. But this time, he'd hidden something about her, something she had a right to know.

She blinked back a few tears and kept walking through the orchard. After walking what she thought was about a mile, the trees opened up onto a clearing with a small cottage and a stream running behind it. It was exactly the kind of house Rose had pictured when she'd read fairy tales as a little girl, and she gasped with delight.

The top half of the Dutch door was already open, and Rose reached inside to turn the knob on the lower half. Inside, it looked just like the cottage where the three good fairies had taken the Princess Aurora to raise her in the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty.

She looked around the room and followed the stairs to the upper storey. Aurora's room was dominated by a four-poster bed, and looking at it, the exhaustion of the past few days merged with her disappointment. She flopped down on it, sighing in pleasure when she discovered it was just as comfortable as the bed in her own room. Within minutes, she was asleep.

The Daleks disappeared, turned to dust by the power of Time unleashed in its purest form. Rose stared straight forward, her arms spread wide as she called the power back to herself. She felt the Doctor's fear in her mind, but she couldn't look down at him, couldn't do anything as Time continued to burn its way through her.

"Rose, you've done it, now stop. Just let it go."

The TARDIS chimed in agreement, but all Rose could see was the good Bad Wolf could do. "How can I let go of this?" she asked, reaching out for something she could do to show the Doctor why she couldn't go back to being just Rose Tyler.

There. She found a thread of reality that made her human heart hurt, and she pulled it. "I bring life."

"But this is wrong!" the Doctor protested. "You can't control life and death."

"But I can," Rose told him simply. Didn't he see what Bad Wolf meant? All of time existed at once for Bad Wolf, and she knew that the frail human body of Rose Tyler only had minutes left to live. Again, she found the thread of reality and tugged, making sure that it would always be the Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler—as it should be.

Rose woke up with a gasp. She hadn't dreamt of Bad Wolf in months, not since they'd unlocked the room and her telepathy. And this dream had been different from the others. It felt more like…

She reached out to the TARDIS and the ship hummed in confirmation. It was the ship's memories she'd seen, even though she lived the dream in her own body. But why did you want me to see that? Just so I'd know when I apparently brought myself back from the dead? The TARDIS was silent, and Rose pushed the question aside for later.

After lying in bed for a few more minutes, she realised more than four hours had passed since she'd left the study. It surprised her a little that she didn't feel any panic coming from the Doctor. After a fight like that, she hadn't figured he would leave her alone for this long. "Maybe he's finally learned when not to push," she muttered as she stood up and rolled the kinks out of her shoulders.

Her shirt stuck to her back, and she knew without looking that her hair was sticking up. This wasn't exactly how she wanted to look when she saw the Doctor again, and a gentle nudge from the TARDIS led her downstairs to a fully equipped modern loo. I don't think Sleeping Beauty had one of these, she thought as she turned the water on to the perfect temperature and climbed in.

The TARDIS had moved all her toiletries to this shower, and Rose sighed as her fingers worked the shampoo through her hair. The dream came back to her then, and she examined it closer. There was something in that scene the TARDIS wanted her to know—probably something else the Doctor hadn't told her. "I bring life," she murmured, feeling a hum of encouragement from the ship. Something had happened then… but what? Thanks to the loss of the memories, there was only one person who could answer the question for her.

Feeling clean and refreshed, Rose turned the shower off and reached for a towel. In addition to her toiletries, the helpful time and space ship had also brought Rose's favourite jeans and a bright red top into the loo. Rose blow dried her hair straight and dressed before carefully applying her makeup with a more subtle hand than usual. When she was done, she took one last look in the mirror and nodded in satisfaction. She looked like someone who should be taken seriously.

When she opened the door, she blinked for a moment and then chuckled, patting the ship on the wall. Instead of leading back to the rest of the cottage, she was in the corridor, just down from the study. Stepping into the corridor momentarily disoriented her, and it took her a moment to realise that time outside her secret room had passed more slowly than it had for her.

"Well, that explains why my mind isn't filled with the Doctor asking where I am."

She snorted when she pushed the door open and he was seated exactly as she'd imagined, his chin resting on his fist as he stared into the flames. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked without preamble.

"I thought you didn't want excuses."

Her back stiffened, but then she relaxed. He wasn't mocking her; in his guilt complex way, he honestly didn't think he deserved to explain himself.

Rose sighed and took her seat. "I don't," she agreed. "But I'd like an explanation."

He huffed out a breath and turned to look at her. "My explanation is pretty pathetic, Rose," he warned her.

"Yeah, I figured. But come on, out with it."

"You were dead when I picked you up to carry you back into the TARDIS—well, dead or just barely come back to life. I… you know what the thought of losing you does to me." Rose nodded; after all, it was her reminder of the wither and die comment that had sparked this conversation in the first place. "It was bad enough when that was just an eventuality I had to deal with. Knowing I'd already watched you die once…"

A shudder ran through him, and Rose tuned into their connection for the first time since he'd told her the truth. The guilt was expected, but more striking was the deep sorrow. "That's why you kept pulling away," she murmured. "You kept seeing it, didn't you? Over and over."

He nodded and buried his face in his hands. "Some days it just played on a loop in my brain. I know I should have told you. But telling you would have meant admitting it happened, and I just… I couldn't deal with that." His hands rubbed at his face, and when he finally looked at her, she was unsurprised to see that his eyes were damp.

Rose sighed. "Doctor, I thought you finally figured this out on Krop Tor. Telling me things, sharing them—that makes it easier to deal with them, not harder. You should have told me so I could at least be here for you and understand." She shook her head and steeled her resolve against the sympathy that was creeping into her tone. "And even more than that, you should have told me because it was my life—well… my death, I suppose." He winced, but she didn't let herself soften. "Unless telling me would have put me in danger, the way I would have been if I'd remembered the rest of the Bad Wolf memories, there was no possible excuse to keep this from me."

She waited for a moment, but to his credit, he didn't take the out she'd offered. Not that she would have believed him since he'd already told her, but he didn't even try.

"And I hate that I have to ask, but since you've kept this from me for so long, I'm suddenly wondering if I can really trust you."

His head jerked around and his wide eyes met hers. "What? No Rose, I swear I won't lie to you again."

"Not lie, maybe, but keep something from me? Tell me why I feel like there's still something about that day that you haven't told me." His face shuttered. "Ah, that's what I thought. What else did I do, Doctor? I destroyed the Daleks and apparently made sure the entire experience wouldn't kill me…"

Her forehead creased in a frown as she tried to work it out, but the harder she tried to access the memories, the fuzzier they became. "I had this dream… What happened when I said, 'I bring life?'"

He bit his lip, then slumped back into his chair. "You saved Jack's life," he said. "He'd been shot by a Dalek, and you just… you had the entire power of the Vortex, all of time and space at your fingertips, and you used to it to bring your friend back to life."

There was more though, Rose could tell from the expression on his face. "Doctor… Is Jack rebuilding the Earth, like you said?"

The Doctor winced and shook his head. Of course she wouldn't rest until she knew the entire truth. "He's… well, I don't know exactly where he is right now. He might have gone on to do that, but remember, he had the Vortex Manipulator."

Rose's anger was a living force, pulsing across their connection. "We just left him there, without telling him and without knowing what he'd do? Doctor!"

The Doctor leapt to his feet, the need to defend himself finally pushing him into action. "Rose, no. You don't understand. I swear, I had a reason to leave him." He'd never forget how wrong it felt the moment Jack had come back to life.

"What, because you were jealous and couldn't handle the thought that I might fancy him more than whoever you regenerated into?"

The remark stung, as he expected she'd intended it to, but he refused to react. Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at her steadily. "Jack… you didn't just save his life, Rose."

A tremor of unease hit him, and he wondered what exactly the dream had shown her—clearly not everything. "What did I do then?"

"You made it so he can't die. He just… he just comes back, every time."

Rose's eyes filled with tears and she raised a hand to her mouth. "Every time? How often has he died? How do you know that?"

"He would come back every time," he amended. "I haven't been keeping track; I don't know where he is or if he even knows this about himself yet. But I felt it the moment you did it. You made him a fixed point."

Rose wrinkled her nose. "I thought fixed points were events, not people."

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair as he paced in front of the fireplace.

"Exactly! And that's what's so… so wrong about it. You made him a fact, one that the rest of the universe has to bend around. And living beings are never meant to be fixed points. Being near him… it actually hurt. Especially since I was dying at the time."

Rose bit her lip, and he knew what she was going to ask before the words came out of her mouth.

"Can we go see him? I want… I want to let him know I didn't just abandon him. And I suppose… apologise. Living forever, that's gotta be hard."

The Doctor hesitated. "The TARDIS isn't fond of him either, now," he warned her. "For a being who exists at all points in time and space at the same time, being near Jack is… well, it's just not right."

"But she'd do it for me, wouldn't she?" Rose cajoled, stroking the wall.

The ship hummed in agreement, and the Doctor felt a stab of betrayal. You were just as anxious to get away from him as I was. He felt her telepathic shrug, which basically said, "Whatever Rose wants."

He couldn't argue with that sentiment. "I expect she might. I truly don't know where he is though; I'll have to put a search protocol in place, tell her what we're looking for and hope she can find him someplace."

"That's all right," Rose said resolutely. "As long as we try to find him, that's what matters."

The Doctor pursed his lips. There was something else, a connection he didn't think Rose had made yet.

"What is it?" she asked, an edge of impatience in her voice. "Got another reason we shouldn't see Jack?"

He swallowed his retort and let her anger roll off his back. "I just want to make sure you understand," he said evenly. "You're time sensitive now too, Rose. Seeing Jack again will be like… like someone rubbing sand paper against those senses. It'll be uncomfortable; it might even hurt."

For a moment her gaze faltered, but then she set her jaw. "He's my friend, no matter how uncomfortable he makes me."

The Doctor nodded slowly. "I'll have the TARDIS start searching for him, then."

Rose looked away, and he wondered what she was thinking. There was still a fair bit of anger in her, though it had faded a little during their conversation. "I think I'm gonna go call my friends," she said. "I haven't talked to Shireen or Keisha in ages."

"Oh. Of course."

She shook her head. "I'm still… I'm really not happy with you right now," she said softly. "And I don't wanna say something that I'd regret later. So I just need a few hours to myself, and then tomorrow, you can take me somewhere and we'll get into trouble, and by the time I've saved your arse—again—everything will be back to normal."