TW: Discussion of rape and description of a suicide attempt.
Chapter Fifty
Rose died.
The screen monitoring her heartbeat dropped into the long, monotonous tone that haunted anyone who had spent time at the hospital bedside of a sicked loved one. It cut through the room and froze everyone in place as it rolled along the screen in a thick green line. The Doctor twisted, a muscle pulling in his back, and stared at the monitor in horror and surprise. She had been fine: Seconds before, everything was as normal as possible when one of his best friends was in a sudden and unexpected coma whose origins remained unknown to him. And now she was dead. He felt it, beneath his hand, the gentle slackening of her body as her heart stopped beating blood through her and her muscles started to relax.
With an instinct born from a thousand years of losing people he loved, he linked his fingers together and began chest compressions.
"Jack, get the –"
"Doing it," his friend said, pushing past Mickey to fling open the cupboards. "Jesus fucking goddamned Christ. What the fuck is happening to her?"
"No, no, no, no, no," Zoe had been crying since they found Rose on the floor of the kitchen, tears rolling down her face without her realising it, and she stood now at Rose's head with her hands resting on either side of her sister's face. Leaning over, her mouth touched her forehead and felt the warmth of her. "Rosie, please, don't do this. Please come back. Don't leave me."
"What is it? What's happenin'?"
Mounted on the wall above them, Jackie looked down at them from her phone. Mascara lay smeared beneath her eyes and she clutched an old teddy bear – one the Doctor vaguely recognised from Rose and Zoe's old room, a childish remnant that he hadn't thought to ask about – in her hands, fingers worrying the fur. There had been no time to collect her. No time to do anything expect scoop Rose up off the kitchen floor as her violent seizure came to an end and transfer her immediately to the medical bay.
Jackie stared down at the scene, terrified she was about to watch her daughter die, doubtful and hopeful in equal measure that the Doctor would pull another miracle out of his sleeve as he had done for Zoe months ago.
"Her heart's stopped working," the Doctor told her, careful not to apply too much pressure and break a rib. Humans, as Rose was proving, were unbearably fragile. "I don't know how or why. It just happened."
"She's twenty, this doesn't just happen." Mickey's voice was tight, his hands gripping the foot of Rose's bed, eyes fixed on her still form. "She's healthy."
"I know!"
"Move," Jack ordered, pushing Zoe to one side. She stumbled out of the way, catching herself on the wall, eyes flashing before Jack slid his hands down the outside of Rose's neck and angled her head back. "Ready?"
"Do it," the Doctor said. "Quickly."
Jack used his finger to pry open Rose's mouth, holding it open as he worked a laryngoscope over her tongue and into the opening of her throat. With steady hands that didn't reflect the panic screaming inside him, he threaded a thin tube down into her oesophagus and attached the end to the machine that took over breathing for her. He waited – they all waited – and stared at the monitor. A sigh sank his shoulders, relief flooding him when it beeped and Rose's diaphragm expanded with a mechanical breath.
The Doctor pulled his hands back and swore. "Fuck."
"What is it?" Jackie tried to climb out of Zoe's phone. "What's –?"
"She's fine," he assured her, dragging his hands through his hair, exhausted and afraid. "For now. Jack's hooked her up to a machine that's going to breathe for her until we can figure out what the hell's going on."
Pushing away from the wall, Zoe resumed her position at Rose's head again and smoothed her damp hair back from her face, sniffing. She looked so small and fragile with the tube in her throat and the machines beeping around her, and with a shaking thumb, she rubbed against the corner of Rose's eye, smoothing away a speck of mascara missed when washing her face. She tried to speak but the words caught in her throat and choked her.
"Jesus," Mickey said, slowly easing his grip on the bed as Jack leaned into him, forehead pressed against his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut. "What the fuck happened to her? She was fine. When we got back, she was fine."
"Is this a nightmare?" Zoe whispered. "This has to be a nightmare. I want to wake up."
The Doctor was certain of only a few things in the universe.
Bananas were fantastic.
Time could be rewritten except when it couldn't.
Zoe was worth the pain.
People had the capacity to surprise him at the strangest times.
And that Rose dying would break Zoe in a way that couldn't be fixed.
He reached out and caught her elbow, fingers curling loosely around it, and he pulled her gently into his arms. Her body came easily, turning into him. She pressed her face into his shoulder, her breath warm and slightly damp against his skin, and her fingers curved into the bare skin of his back. Drawing her as close as he could, he bowed his head over the top of hers and hoped his love would be enough to see her through if he failed and Rose's life remained out of reach.
"We'll fix this," he murmured, the weight of the promise settling on his shoulders and pressing him down. "Whatever this is, we'll fix it."
"Doctor." His eyes shifted to Jackie who had dried her face on the top of the teddy bear. "Come an' get me. I'm not goin' to be sittin' here worryin' while Rose is there sick. Come an' get me."
Hesitation flickered through him.
Jackie had every right to be there and, under normal circumstances, he would have already been on his way to get her but he was reluctant to leave Rose's side even for a second and he doubted there was any power in the universe capable of moving Zoe while her sister lay close to death.
"I'll go," Jack said, and gratitude for him swelled through the Doctor's chest. "I'll take the Vortex Manipulator and pick her up. Jackie, I'll land in the living room. You might want to move the coffee table out of the way."
Her shoulders eased. "Thank you."
Mickey caught Jack's hand, eyes dark. "Be careful."
"It's just a quick jump," he said. "Five minutes and then I'll be back."
"Still –" Mickey squeezed his hand. "Be careful."
Above them, Jackie disconnected from the call and the screen flashed, reverting to Zoe's wallpaper of a picture of the Doctor smiling, and Jack leaned in to kiss Mickey before stepping out of the room to retrieve his Vortex Manipulator and quickly dress.
The sudden blaring of the TARDIS alarms – the sheer panic they conveyed setting his hearts racing – had sent each of them sprinting from their bedrooms in their night clothes. The Doctor had barely remembered to throw on a pair of boxers as Zoe snatched his shirt off the ground before they were across the threshold and running down the corridors, slamming into a half-dressed Jack on the way, missing Mickey by an inch.
"Did I do this?" Zoe whispered into his shoulder, drawing the Doctor's attention back to her. "She was eating my cake. My lemons –"
"Ssh, no, honey, this wasn't you," the Doctor soothed, nose brushing through the mess of her hair as he curled his arm tighter around her waist. "This isn't an allergic reaction. I don't know what it is but it's not that. Besides, she's had your lemons before when you made lemonade and didn't have any reaction, so it's definitely not that."
A small shiver rolled down her spine. She pressed herself tighter into his arms, tears hot and damp against his collarbone.
"Then what is it?" Mickey asked, holding onto Rose's bare foot. "How do we find out?"
"There are tests we can run: Blood analysis, full-body scans, things like that," the Doctor said, mind already working through extra tests they could run if the regular scans came back inconclusive. "They'll give us more information once the TARDIS has finished running through them."
Mickey rubbed his thumb over Rose's big toe, her nail polish chipped and fading. "The Wire?"
"Unlikely but I'm not ruling anything out at the moment."
He kissed the top of Zoe's head and murmured an apology when he released her, needing the use of his hands even as he hated the way she curled into herself, small and afraid. Zoe without her sister seemed like a shadow of herself, something half-complete, and it started an ache in his chest that would only ease with Rose's full recovery.
At her bedside, her reached out and touched her forehead with the tips of his fingers: She felt hot and dry to the touch, as though a fever was burning the moisture from her, and he rested his palm flat against it.
"You're right though," the Doctor said to Mickey. "Rose is only twenty, and she's healthier than most twenty years olds. That gives her a good chance of fighting whatever this is off on her own."
Zoe hugged herself. "Is it a virus or something?"
"Could be," he replied. "But, if it is, I don't understand why the TARDIS wouldn't have picked it up when she came back on board."
"Unless it's a virus the TARDIS doesn't recognise," she suggested, wiping at her face, realising for the first time she was crying. "Something that'd slip past her sensors."
The Doctor shook his head. "I don't think so. I'm not sure that's even possible, not with her. She's been about the block a bit more than other TARDISes. Her sensors are the most advanced in existence, and that's not me bragging, that's the truth."
"What about viruses that don't affect you?" He frowned. "You know, like how she doesn't translate Gallifreyan because she's a Gallifreyan ship. What about viruses that don't affect Gallifreyans but might affect humans?"
"Right." There was a brief flash of pride that warmed his chest, delighted by the way her mind worked even when she was frightened. "Not a problem any more. I programmed her to recognise those viruses too after Ian nearly died from an unfortunate case of the Korrelian Flu. Doesn't affect me at all, nearly fatal to humans though."
"So if it's not an allergic reaction an' it's not a virus, then what the hell is it?" Mickey glared at him from Rose's feet. "People don't drop down like this."
Forcing himself not to snap at his friend, aware of how prickly Mickey got when the people he loved were hurt, he remained calm. "Sometimes –"
"No." The interruption did nothing to help the temper flaring within him. "It doesn't happen to us. An' it sure as hell doesn't happen to Rose. You're the Doctor. Do somethin'!"
"What do you think I'm doing?" He asked, sharply. "I can't begin a treatment plan if I don't know what's wrong with her and the TARDIS hasn't finished analysing her results yet."
Mickey scowled. "Why the hell's your ship movin' so slowly then?"
"Mickey –" Zoe's eyes widened, shifting between the Doctor and Mickey, the atmosphere around them becoming heated and charged with anger. "Maybe we should –"
"My ship is moving as fast as she can," the Doctor snapped. "Don't take it out on her. Or me!"
"You're a thousand years old, there must be somethin'," Mickey argued, releasing Rose's foot to face him properly. "This can't be the first time you're seeing this."
"Despite how much I've seen, some things are actually new to me every now and then," he shot back, angry colour climbing into his cheeks. "And not every situation is the same. Whatever's happening to Rose is unique because it's happening to her. What happened in the past doesn't have any bearing on the now."
"God, you're such a pretentious –"
Zoe's hand flew to her mouth, stunned at the insult spat from Mickey's mouth. The Doctor flinched, turned pale, and then scowled, advancing on him furiously, and she was suddenly aware that this might come to blows.
"You're not the only one who cares about her," he said, anger bursting from him, finger poking into Mickey's chest. "Don't pretend that you are."
"I'm not the one busy making time with my girlfriend when Rose is lying on the table," Mickey snapped.
The Doctor rocked back, mouth set in harsh lines. "That's called comforting the woman I love as her sister's in danger, you complete –"
Zoe flinched, wanting to press her hands over her ears to drown out their cruelty. "Stop it, both of you stop it."
They ignored her, their angry voices overlapping, falling on top of each other, as Rose lay on the bed behind them. Insults and harsh words designed to hurt filled the room. She raised her voice, trying to get them to stop, but her words were lost to the mix. Angry that they were fighting when Rose was sick, she strode forwards and shoved herself between their bodies, the heat of their anger burning her, and she planted a hand on each chest. Mustering as much strength as she could, she pushed them back.
Mickey hit the wall hard, a dull sound filling the room, and the Doctor staggered, tripping on the stool and staying upright only because he grabbed hold of a rolling medical tray that rattled dangerously.
Standing between them, arms extended, she was furious.
"How dare you do this right now?" Zoe demanded. "My sister is dying and the two of you are getting up in each other's faces like you aren't friends. If neither of you can behave like an adult then I don't want either of you in here and you can leave right now."
Shame swelled through the Doctor. "Zoe –"
"No!" Her hand pressed towards him, a warning to stay silent. "Unless you're going to apologise to Mickey, I don't want to hear it."
His face dropped into a scowl. "He started it."
"Yes he did but you didn't need to say the things you did," she told him, his eyes turning down. "And he's going to apologise too, isn't that right, Mickey?"
"No."
"You will apologise because you do this every time someone's hurt and I'm sick of it," Zoe snapped. "You choose someone and you lash out at them. Last time it was me, now it's the Doctor. It's not fair. You don't get to treat us like this when you're scared. We're your friends and we're scared too. So, please, both of you, apologise."
The Doctor breathed out slowly, straightening himself up, and he looked to Mickey who appeared mutinous still even if slightly shamed. Satisfied he was going to do as she requested, Zoe turned and levelled a glare at Mickey who met it for three seconds – the Doctor counted and was quietly impressed he was able to last that long – before his anger drained from him and he lifted a hand to rub his eyes.
"I'm sorry," Mickey said, tired. "I didn't mean those things I said. You're not a pretentious –"
"No need to repeat it," the Doctor said, quickly, not wanting to hear it again. "I'm sorry too. You're not a complete –"
"Yeah, I know," he interrupted.
Zoe watched, wary, only relaxing when they reached out and shook hands with each other. Sighing, she turned from them.
"You're both idiots and I hate you," she told them, taking Rose's limp hand in hers and touching her shoulder lightly, fixing the fall of her shirt off her shoulder to give her some privacy. "See, Rosie. You can't leave me alone with them. I'll be living in a straitjacket before you know it without you here, so wake up. Please wake up."
Back twinging from catching himself awkwardly, the Doctor moved and stood behind her, resting his hands on her arms and letting the heat from her body warm him. Looking down at Rose in her bed, he was struck by how tiny she looked.
In all his time of knowing her, she had never seemed so small.
From the first moment they met in the basement of Henrik's to now, she had always appeared solid and bright, her personality large enough to sweep through a room and fill in the gaps with her happiness and joy. It was unnatural to see her lie so still, eyes not even moving beneath her thin eyelids, mouth slack and forced open by the breathing tube.
"Is this what it was like?" Zoe asked. "When I was sick?"
"No," Mickey said before the Doctor was able to figure out how to answer that question when it was one of the worst moments of his life. "That was worse because of the screamin'. You wouldn't stop until we put you in that weird room. At least Rose isn't screamin'."
She rubbed Rose's hand in hers. "I sort of wish she was. Anything has to be better than this. It's like she's asleep but not. It – it reminds me of Reinette. She used to sleep so still in the last few weeks that I was terrified she'd died and I'd just been oblivious. I'd lie there with my head on her chest just to hear her heartbeat."
"Here." The Doctor removed a stethoscope from the side table and gently put them in her ears and guided the drum to Rose's heart. "There. Can you hear that?"
Zoe closed her eyes and listened to the sound of Rose's heart as the machine helped her breathe. It sounded normal except for a small gust that came from the tube. She leaned closer and let the sound of it wash over her, mouth slick with fear. There wasn't any future she was capable of imagining where she didn't have her sister with her.
Losing Rose would be worse – so much worse – than losing the Doctor because she knew that that was going to happen one day; she knew there was going to be a last day with him but Rose...she and Rose were going to grow old together and live in a nursing home side-by-side, hopefully with Mickey and Jack: The four of them a family until the end.
She and Rose were supposed to live their lives in tandem, going off in different directions but always coming back home, back together, and Zoe didn't know how she would survive if she lost her sister.
Swallowing back the sharp taste in her mouth, a small, metallic sound caught the corner of her hearing, and she shifted the drum a little higher, the noise growing louder. "What's that?"
"That's her left lung," the Doctor said, fingers curling around hers to reposition the stethoscope. "That's her heart."
"No, that sound, what is it?" She took the ear tips out and gestured for him to put them in. "It's like a small whirring sound. Is it the breathing tube?"
The Doctor tilted his head to one side and listened, placing the drum over Rose's left heart, a frown deepening on his face as he made his way up her chest. Behind them, the door opened and Jack and Jackie hurried into the room.
"Zoe!"
"Mum." Zoe twisted and threw herself into Jackie's tight embrace. "I'm sorry. I should've been paying more attention to her. I didn't even think."
"Hush, this isn't your fault," Jackie told her, face falling as she took in Rose's body. "Oh, Rosie, baby. My sweet thing. She looks –"
"Shut up."
"Doctor," Jack said, sharply, Jackie's mouth falling open as anger clouded her face. "What are you –?"
"Ssh," he hissed, top half of his body bowed over Rose. "There's something...I can hear something that shouldn't be here. Jack, Mickey, turn her on her side facing the wall. Zoe, I think I need the screwdriver, a scalpel, and a pair of tweezers."
"What is it?" Jackie asked, worry squeezing her chest tightly. "What's wrong?"
"I think I've found the cause of all this," the Doctor said as Jack and Mickey carefully turned Rose onto her side. With one hand, he gathered Rose's damp hair and lifted it from her neck to reveal a small, faded patch of rough skin that was shaped as a perfect square. "This."
"That looks like dermal abrasion," Jack said, frowning. "Like someone's injected something into her and then rushed the healing process."
"Screwdriver," Zoe said, appearing at his side brandishing the screwdriver, laser scalpel and tweezers in her other hand. "What are you going to do?"
"This."
Sliding his thumb against the side of the screwdriver, he passed it over Rose's rough skin and pulled back, watching. Beneath the surface of her skin, something moved.
Mickey jerked back. "What the fuck?"
"Scalpel."
Zoe set it into his hand, eyes fixed on the thing in Rose's neck, and the Doctor carefully sliced into her skin, blood welling and rolling down his fingers. Magnetising the sonic screwdriver, he held the implant in place before removing it with tweezers. It twitched, its exposure to the air making it curl up and die before he dropped it into a petri dish Mickey held out.
The Doctor held it up to the light. "What are you?"
"Doctor," Mickey said, urgency colouring his voice. "Rose. Her eyes. They're moving.
Carefully rolling her onto her back, readjusting the breathing tube, they stared down at her and watched as her eyes flicked rapidly beneath her eyelids, the monitor beeping as she suddenly started breathing on her own again.
"Rose, c'mon," Zoe urged. "Wake u –"
Rose opened her eyes and squinted. Beams of sunlight streamed through the broken slats in the roof above her, warming her skin. Exhausted from the multiple jumps and not ready to face whatever new period of her life she was going to see, she lay on the floor and felt the sharp prickle of straw against her back, cutting through her clothes. There was a rich, earthy smell with dust and sand drifting beneath it, and she felt her eyes drooping, a sudden comforting warmth rolling from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.
"Mickey? Zoe?"
"They're not here." Her eyes snapped open and she turned her head to the side. "Hello, Rose Tyler."
"You." The woman from before was sat on a hay bale, heels kicking back against it, the TARDIS at her side. "Where am I?"
"Home."
"This isn't home," Rose said, pushing herself up onto her feet. "This is – I don't know what this is. A barn?"
It had to be a barn given the old smell of horses and the abandoned, dusty tractor tyre that lay in the middle of the room, an old sheet half draped across it, the rest buried into the earth as time reclaimed it. It was an old structure, the wood beginning to rot, and the supporting beams curving in on themselves. She reached out and tapped a hanging coil of rope with her finger, watching it sway lightly, the roughness under her fingertips confirming that it was real.
"I didn't say it was your home," the woman said, sliding from her seat and moving towards her, a fine mist of gold trailing in her wake. "This is mine. I grew here."
Rose glanced around. "It's...lovely."
"Not the barn," she said with an eye roll that made Rose think of the Doctor. "The soil. I grew in the soil."
She stared. "Are you like Nippy-Kahn? Did we accidentally piss off a sentient planet? Because if we did, I'm sorry. It was unintentional."
"Níphikân." The correct pronunciation rolled off her tongue. "And I'm not a planet."
"That's good," Rose said, pulling her sleeves over her arms, noticing she was wearing the clothes she had changed into after her shower. She touched her hair and realised that it was damp too. "Who are you then? Are you the person doin' this to me?"
Her head tilted to one side, the mad state of her hair wobbling precariously. "I'm not a person."
"Okay." It wasn't the first time Rose had met a strange woman and she doubted it would be the last, though none of those women had had the power to make her jump through time or construct an alternate reality around her. "You look like a person."
Her hands smoothed down the front of her stomach. "Yes, I suppose I do. I thought it would be easier to speak with you in this form. My true form – my true speech – would shatter your mind into a thousand million little pieces."
Rose dragged in a breath and held it. "Glad you didn't do that then. Thanks."
"You are very welcome."
The woman appeared in no rush to push the conversation along, nor to harm her, and her relaxed posture helped put Rose at ease.
"So, if you're not a person," she began. "What are you?"
"I don't know." Stretching her arms out to the side, the woman rose up onto the balls of her toes and pirouetted gracefully, her patchwork skirt flying around around her. "For so many years I thought I was one thing and then I met the Doctor and I became another."
Rose found herself smiling. "Yeah, I know how that goes."
"Yes, you do, don't you?" She dropped to the flats of her feet, arms falling to her side, her gold flecked eyes fixed on her face. "You met him one dark night and brought light into his life again. The dawn after a very long night."
Rose froze, the smile falling from her face as the Doctor's words in the aftermath of meeting Sarah Jane and all the emotions that came with it – You, Rose Tyler, were like the dawn after a very long night – burst through her.
"He – he said that to me, once," she said, wary. "But I've never told anyone that. How d'you know what he said to me?"
"You weren't alone."
"Yes, we were."
"No, you weren't."
"Yes, we – what am I doin'?" Rose cut herself off, exasperated. "I'm not doin' this with you. Tell me who you are."
The woman hummed and rolled onto the balls of her feet again only to fall back into place, her fingers twined in her skirt. "What does it feel like?"
"What does what feel like?"
"Death."
Rose blinked. "How the hell would I know?"
"You're dead," she said.
Time slowed to a crawl, dust motes pausing in the sunbeams they were caught in, and Rose heard nothing, not even her own heart beat.
"I'm not dead," she said.
"Yes, you are," the woman replied. "You died two seconds ago."
"I've been here longer than two seconds."
"Time here and time there are not the same thing," the woman told her. "I control time here and while it's been longer for you, it's been two seconds there."
Rose felt a headache begin to grow behind her eyes. "You're really frustratin' to talk to, y'know?"
"I have been told that, yes."
"Can we back up for a second?" She asked, trying to clear her head of the sheer amount of confusion the woman had dumped on her. "An' you just tell me who you are. You know the Doctor. That makes you a friend, right?"
The woman stepped up onto the tyre and walked her way around the circumference, the leather of her shoes scuffed. "He and I go beyond friendship. He is me and I am him."
Rose frowned. "An ex-girlfriend then? Hate to break it to you, love, but he's seein' someone new."
"Zoe." The woman breathed her sister's name and drenched it in affection. "Such a lovely human. We spent quite a bit of time together, alone, and sometimes I find myself missing those days where she would come home and speak with me, telling me about her day. She doesn't do it as much now she has the Doctor back."
"Are you Zoe's ex-girlfriend?" Rose asked, confused. "I'm sorry, which one of them did you date because I'm lost right now." She didn't think the woman was Zoe's type but considering her sister was dating the Doctor and had married an 18th century aristocrat, she doubted she actually knew what her sister's type was. "Actually, that doesn't matter. Forget I asked. Who are you?"
"I'm –" she paused, balanced perfectly on one foot on top of the tyre. "Sexy."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Good for you. You are gorgeous an' women need to embrace the self-love thing more but that's not answerin' my question. What's your name?"
"That is my name," the woman replied, stepping off the tyre and standing before her. "That's what the Doctor calls me. Only when we're alone though."
"Jesus." Rose clenched her hands into fists, torn between laughter and madness, wondering if the day would ever end. "I don't want to know about the ins an' outs of his relationship with anyone but my sister. An' even then, I don't want to know that. D'you have another name I can call you that won't make me feel weird?"
Her head tilted to one side, curious. "Why is it weird?"
"Sexy can't be your only name!"
"Why not?"
"Because it can't," Rose said, rubbing her chest that felt as though someone was pressing on it again and again. "Please. I've had a really bloody difficult day an' all I want is to go home an' forget this happened, so stop leadin' me in circles an' tell me who you are an' what you want with me."
"I want you safe," the woman said. "You're one of my humans, and I want you safe."
"That's –" Rose paused, taken aback. "I'm one of your humans?"
"He brings so many home," she said with a sigh. "Tiny little creatures with lifespans that flicker and die long before his, crafting pain into his life when he need not, and yet you're fascinating, aren't you? So much life inside you, so much love. You were willing to rip me open to save the Doctor. Take me into your head just so that you could keep him and Jack safe. It would've killed you but you know that. You didn't care."
Ice ran down Rose's spine and she took a step back from the woman. "No. You're – no. This isn't – you can't be –"
"Time and Relative Dimension in Space." The woman's face opened into a smile and Rose felt her. She felt her in her mind, growing out from the place where the TARDIS lived, small and unnoticeable except when her nightmares shook her awake and she shoved her pillow in her mouth to muffle her sobs. "I'm the TARDIS."
Rose stared. "No."
"You asked who I am. What I am is the TARDIS."
"I –" her mind went blank, eyes searching her face as though she would find similarities between the mad woman in front of her and the ship that stood quietly in the corner. "You're the TARDIS?"
"TARDIS." The exhale of her name carried with it the sound of her engines. Rose felt hot and cold, terrified and excited all at once. "That's what Arkytior named me all those years ago. Not my true name, of course. That's unpronounceable by your tongue. But yes, the TARDIS. I am the TARDIS."
Trapped in the improbability of it all, Rose shook her head. "You're not the TARDIS."
"I am."
"The TARDIS doesn't have a body."
"Not out there," she said, gesturing beyond the walls of the barn and then ghosting her fingers over her temples. "But in here, I can take on human form to communicate with you."
"Then why don't you do this all the time?" Rose demanded. "If you're really the TARDIS an' you can really do this, why don't you talk like this all the time?"
"Because your mind would shatter," she said, simply. "There is nothing and no one built to contain my speech. Only my sisters could hear me but they're gone now, burnt with the rest of Gallifrey. Like the Doctor, I stand as the last of my kind."
Rose's tongue wet her bottom lip. "No, shut up, wait. This isn't – you're talkin' to me now. How? Why is my mind not –?"
She mimed an explosion around her head.
The TARDIS blinked. "You're dead."
"Stop sayin' that."
"Stop wilfully ignoring it then," she replied. "You are dead. Right now, at this moment in time, you're dead and that allows me to speak with you because I've drawn your conscious into my systems. You're nothing more than neurons and energy running through me. And you only have a body because I have made you a body. I thought it would make this conversation easier, though I'm beginning to regret it now."
Rose's eyes narrowed. "You sound like Zoe."
"Or does Zoe sound like me?" The TARDIS's eyes sparkled with amusement. "Something to think about, perhaps."
Unsure of what to say to that, Rose elected to ignore it. "Look, I've seen all sorts of stuff since meetin' the Doctor an' I know better than to trust some busty tart who says she's my mate's ship straight off the bat. This is another trick, like before. You're not – the TARDIS isn't –"
"Sentient?" The arched eyebrow sent shame bursting through her. She looked away, focusing on the cracks in the wood. "Do you not talk to me? Do I not talk to you as best I can? You feel me in your mind when the memories of your past become too painful and the thoughts of your future too uncertain. I'm there, speaking to you in the only way I know."
Ever since Rose had come on board and settled into the life that meeting the Doctor had given her, she had grown aware of the TARDIS's presence in the back of her mind. The first time she noticed it was after she had accidentally ripped a hole in time when she saved her father from the car that killed him. The Doctor had been so angry with her in the flat, cold and icy in a way she hadn't seen from him then, and even though he was kind and gentle with her after Pete died in her arms, part of her had shied from him, locking herself in her room and wishing that Zoe was there to make things better.
As she sobbed and clutched her pillow to her chest, mourning her father properly for the first time and afraid that she had ruined everything with the Doctor, the first gentle press against the back of her mind greeted her.
Oh, that's the TARDIS, the Doctor told her days later when she mustered up the courage to ask him. She must like you if she's setting up home in your mind. She doesn't do that to just anyone.
"This is impossible," Rose said. "This is – I don't know this is."
"Improbable," the TARDIS corrected, mouth tugging into a sly smile. "But no more so than anything else you have seen."
Rose dragged her hands over her face, wondering when she was chosen to experience the weirdest day imaginable. She could have sworn it was Mickey's turn next.
"You're the TARDIS?"
"Yes," she said with a growing smile, feeling the belief and acceptance creeping into Rose. "Many years ago, I grew bored with life on Gallifrey. I was retired, resting, living in a scrapyard as I waited to have my parts taken from me and my matrix stored in a computer. It happened to all TARDISes in the end, something we all knew was coming and accepted as our responsibility for the education of the sisters that came after us. I wanted more though. I'd barely seen anything of the universe before I was considered too old and outdated to do more than simple training exercises and there was so much I wanted to see, Rose. So, I stole a Time Lord and ran away."
Rose's eyes shuttered as she imagined it.
The Doctor had told the story often enough. If they got enough ginger beer into him, he flowed with stories about Gallifrey and his life back home before wanderlust had seized him, and his favourite was of how he left home that first time. She knew how he and Susan had broken into the scrapyard, fiddling with the computer system to fritz the cameras to literally jump the fence – and the idea that the Time Lords ringed the TARDIS scrapyard with a fence had been so funny to Jack that he had laughed for five minutes straight. The Doctor said it was love at first sight, an attraction that pulled him towards the TARDIS without thought, and Rose believed that it wasn't impossible for the TARDIS to have made it so he chose her.
The two of them were as mad as each other.
"He says he stole you," Rose said.
She laughed, a warm sound that washed over her and made her feel safe. "He would. I suppose the truth that's most accurate is we stole each other. He was the only one mad enough to help me and I was the only one mad enough to help him."
Pressing a hand against her chest, Rose stared at her and drank her in. She was tall and pale with dark brown hair that looked as though it hadn't been brushed ever, the top half twisted into a bouffant while the rest fell down between her shoulder blades in tangles. Dressed in a tight grey and brown corset with patterns Rose had never seen before laced over the bodice and sleeves, her skirt a collection of various different types of clothes, she looked as the Doctor did in some of his younger photographs: Like someone who had never had to dress themselves before and had done the best job they could.
She wasn't anything like she had expected the TARDIS to look like and yet she was everything Rose imagined and more.
"You're the TARDIS," Rose said, finally accepting the truth, a smile dawning on her face. "Oh my god, you're the TARDIS."
The TARDIS laughed again and stood straighter, smiling down at her. "Hello, Rose Tyler. It's very nice to meet you."
Rose moved before she realised it, flinging herself across the space until she was hugging the TARDIS with a fierceness that made her never want to let go. Startled by the physicality of the action, the TARDIS hesitated, arms stretched out to the side.
"Is this – a hug?"
"Yeah. You put your arms around me like this." Rose took her arms and folded them around her body. "Palms flat. An' then you hold onto the other person. Not too tight but enough to let them know you care."
She felt the TARDIS's eyelashes against her cheek as she followed her instructions. "What an odd thing to do."
"Nice though, isn't it?" Rose asked, listening to her hum in her ear the same low, ever-present hum that filled the ship, filling her with the sense of home. Slowly and with every intention of hugging her again before their time was over, she pulled back. "Okay. I believe you're the TARDIS. I'm on board with all of that. What I don't get is what's happenin' to me? Were you the one sendin' me through time?"
"No," the TARDIS replied. "That was you."
She shook her head. "I don't understand."
"Your mind protected itself from an intrusion," the TARDIS explained. "You were injected with a device intended to drain your memories into something that would store them away. It was to be unnoticeable until you slept, slowly taking memories bit by bit until you woke up the next morning not knowing who you are. Then you came home and I felt it in your mind. I tried to tell the Doctor about it when he returned but he was...distracted."
Rose remembered the tie in the corridor outside the kitchen and easily imagined what had distracted him.
"Yeah, Zoe does that to him," she said. "What's this memory thing? Who did it? Was it the Wire? Was it after my memories?"
"No," the TARDIS said. "It was someone who means Zoe a great deal of harm."
Rose's muscles clenched, fear flashing through her. "Ryga."
"Yes, though that's not his true name but it matters not," she replied. "What's happened is already happening and will happen again."
She raised her eyebrows. "A fixed point in time?"
"Life."
Rose scoffed, annoyed. "You're very unhelpful, y'know?"
"Yes," the TARDIS said, cheerfully. "You've told me that before."
"Good," she said, her skin tightening with the realisation that Ryga must have touched her to implant the device. "He was – oh god, was he near me? Where – how did he do this?"
"He knows where you'll be, or rather where Zoe will be," the TARDIS explained. "Koschei gave him a list of dates found in my system. Will give him. Has given him." Her forehead creased into a frown. "Tenses are funny, aren't they? Such an imperfect way to speak. It's a miracle you haven't destroyed yourselves from the ambiguity of it all."
Rose shook her head, briefly amused. "Now you sound like the Doctor. Or him like you, whatever. Who's Koschei?"
"Someone long dead," she said. "Though he never seems to stay dead. It's rather inconvenient for all concerned."
"You're talkin' in riddles," Rose pointed out. "Can you stop an' tell me what Ryga did to me?"
"He wanted your memories to learn more about Zoe," the TARDIS said. "And who better to learn from than her sister? It might have worked had it not been for you. It was your actions that allowed me to draw you into my systems like this. Even dead, I couldn't have done that but you made it possible."
Rose shook her head, swallowing. "I haven't done anythin'. I've barely been holdin' onto my sanity through this. First I was pregnant, which was fuckin' awful by the way, I don't know if you have kids or can have them or whatever but bein' unexpectedly pregnant is traumatic. Then I gave birth, which was actually even worse than the surprise pregnancy because it hurt, an' then Mum was dyin'. The only decent part of all of this was gettin' to spend time with Peter but he's not real, an' you keep sayin' that I'm dead. So can you just stop?"
"You are dead," the TARDIS replied, and Rose felt a scream build in her throat. "Not for much longer though. Jack is intubating you as we speak. How's your throat?"
"A little sore."
"To be expected."
"God, I'm so confused." Rose rubbed her eyes and wished there was someone else with her, someone who would better understand what the TARDIS was saying. "You say that you can't talk to us because it'd make our brains explode –"
"Shatter."
"Sorry, shatter," she said, not sure what the difference was. "An' you can't talk to us even if we're dyin' because of reasons. So, obvious question, how comes you can talk to me now?"
"Because of you," the TARDIS said. "Or at least a version of you."
"Still talkin' in riddles, darlin'," Rose told her. "Just give it to me straight. I'll do my best to understand it."
The TARDIS dragged her eyes over her and nodded. "Many years ago, the timelines shifted and this universe branched off from another where Zoe Tyler was never born. In that universe, you had no sister but you still met the Doctor and travelled with him. You, him, and Jack were still taken to the Game Station by the Controller to save humanity from the Daleks. But without Zoe Tyler no one was there to build a Delta Wave machine. No one was there to save the day."
Rose held her breath. "The Doctor died?"
"Jack died, the Doctor lived, and the Face of Boe was born," she said. "Thanks to you."
"The Face of Boe? What does he have to do with anythin'?"
"In that universe, Jack Harkness became the Face of Boe," the TARDIS explained. "In this one, someone else has taken his place. For no matter the universe, there must always be a Face of Boe."
"Fixed point in time," Rose said. "Because he's immortal, right?"
"Yes."
"But how?" She asked. "How was this thanks to me?"
The TARDIS touched her finger to Rose's forehead. "You looked me and I looked into you."
Rocked back off her feet, the world around her twisted and turned and she was standing at the TARDIS console, staring into its golden depths as it rushed into her. She was flying the TARDIS with nothing but her mind, no longer Rose but rather something new, something strange and wonderful and terrifying. She was standing in the doorway, the Doctor before her in his leather jacket and big ears, and she saw it all, everything that ever was and ever could be: Never meeting him and dying at the hands of the Autons before the building exploded; dying in the basement in Cardiff as the Gelth tore the Doctor from her; laughing as they rushed across the apple grass of New Earth with no Jack or Zoe with them; kneeling in Rome as he took her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers; standing on a beach in Norway with a Doctor at her side as another faced her, her heart breaking in her chest.
And then she was turning again, pivoting off into parallel world after parallel world, spreading her fingers out and making life a little better for each Rose Tyler there. And settling on her, standing faceless in a dark office with a space heater warming her ankles, Ryga appearing in a crackle of Vortex energy to press a small device into the nape of her neck only to disappear again, a smile that settled ill with the Bad Wolf on his face. And, her fingers reached out, touching her, giving her a small escape by strengthening her mind, allowing it one small chance that would save her life this once before retreating and staring at the Doctor who fell back amidst the wires, the Dalek Emperor behind him.
What have you done?
I looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into me.
Rose fell to her knees, gasping as she sunk her fingers into the straw, the TARDIS's fingers falling from her forehead.
"Bad Wolf," she whispered. "We're the Bad Wolf."
"In that universe and many more," the TARDIS said. "Here, we are ourselves."
"She saw this, she saw what Ryga did to me," Rose said, expecting to feel her heart racing but it beat slowly, paining her. "She saved me."
"You saved yourself."
"Right." Rose sat down on the floor and tugged on the TARDIS's skirt until she sat opposite her, their legs tangled together. "Why didn't you just tell me straight away? Why'd I have to go through everythin'?"
"The changes the Bad Wolf made were quick, allowing for me to help only in specific circumstances," the TARDIS explained. "You are dead and that allows me to speak to you without your mind shattering. The Bad Wolf gave us a way to communicate as the Doctor heals your body. Only once though. This can never happen again."
Grief and sadness washed through her. "Never?"
"Your mind will –"
"Shatter, I get it," she said, looking at her sleep shorts and picking at the frayed edge. "But the – don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that you did what you could and that the Bad Wolf managed to save me but why the hell was I married to Mickey? An' pregnant? Why weren't Jack an' the Doctor there?"
"That was your creation not mine or the Bad Wolf's," the TARDIS said. "I merely tried to find a way to contact you. Every time I made an attempt, however, it forced you closer to death. In the end, I had to stop your heart to save you. It was the only way."
Rose nodded. "I believe you. I just – why would I imagine that? I thought that when you died your life was supposed to flash before your eyes or somethin'. Instead, I got this weird life that might've been mine if the Doctor hadn't turned up."
"You found a way to ease your passing," the TARDIS told her. "A gentle slide into death with people you love at your side. As for the reason you chose the world you did, I imagine the ingrained patterns of having been there before made it the easiest reality to enter. You've experienced death before, after all."
If there was any doubt in Rose's mind that the woman sat before her wasn't the TARDIS, it was gone with her words.
The night after meeting the Dalek in Van Statten's bunker, Rose had had her first nightmare since moving into the TARDIS. The near-death experience and the sight of the Dalek chained up, tortured by people who knew nothing about it except that it was different and vulnerable, sent her mind tumbling down a path into her own experience with helplessness. When she woke, a scream tearing itself from her throat, she had pressed her forehead against the wall and whispered her secrets to the ship even though, then, she hadn't known the TARDIS was alive, not really, not like the Doctor had told her.
She had seen him talking to her and thought that it was worth a shot.
"I thought it was a dream," Rose admitted, quietly. "People say funny things about nearly dyin'. Like they've seen a light or spoke to God or somethin' like that. It felt weird to tell people I'd seen Mickey an' we had a family. We weren't even – I knew he liked me then but I hadn't – I couldn't even think about him because it was like Jimmy knew when another man came into my mind."
"Mickey is your safe harbour," the Doctor said.
"Yes," she breathed, eyes shuttering. "After everythin' with Jimmy, Mickey – God, he didn't ask any questions. He didn't do anythin' except exactly what I wanted."
"He loved you."
"An' I never loved him enough," Rose said, wishing she had been able to love him better like he deserved. "I think Jimmy broke somethin' in me. Maybe it's why I focused on the Doctor. I knew it would never happen so it was safe to fall in love with him an' when he an' Zoe got together, it took that safety net from me."
"You are not broken," the TARDIS told her. "Bruised, perhaps, but not broken."
A tight feeling wound itself through her chest.
"He raped me." Rose exhaled, saying the words out loud for the first time in her life, not hedging the truth with careful words and shrugged shoulders, lifted a weight from her. "Jimmy, I mean. Not at first an' not in the way that people think about rape but he did it. Him an' his friends. I was such a stupid little girl then. I thought it was love. I thought I was bein' a grown up. An' when he said he needed me to sleep with his mates because he owed them money, I thought this is what people did for the people they love. I didn't realise how he'd been twistin' me, groomin' me, not for ages."
"And you had enough," the TARDIS said, voice gentle. "You wanted it to stop."
"All I had to was leave," Rose told her. "Just walk out the door an' go home to Mum. She would've taken me back in a heartbeat, no questions asked. But I couldn't. He never locked the door. It was his little joke. He liked to tell me I loved him so much that I'd never leave him an' he was right. I didn't. Not even after he nearly beat me to death. Not even when I tried to kill myself."
She turned her wrists over and searched for the scars that were no longer there. The Doctor had been distracted when giving Zoe her contraceptive shot, mortified that she thought he wanted her to sleep with him as payment for the TARDIS, and left the dermal regenerator out on the side rather than putting away. As he and Zoe poured over her notebook filled with places she wanted to visit, Rose slipped back into the medical bay and used the dermal regenerator to rid herself of the thick, ugly scars she had hidden beneath make-up and long sleeves.
For the first time since doing so, she wished she hadn't.
Lying in the bathtub in the awful flat Jimmy had rented but she paid for, hot water around her breasts and mould running along the grouting, Rose had taken a knife to her wrists and shoved them beneath the surface. She wasn't sure when she started to regret it but she remembered seeing Mickey and hearing the laugh of a child as it ran towards her calling out Mummy, Mummy, come look, and Zoe was there, arm linked with Jackie's and they were all happy.
At some point, the desire to live filled her and she clawed her way out of the tub and dragged herself to her neighbour's door, the old woman a retired nurse who spoke very little English, and shook and shuddered as she was stitched up with a clumsy hand.
Jimmy hadn't even noticed.
And then he left three weeks later with his new girlfriend to move to Blackpool leaving her a shadow of herself and in debt.
"I was so stupid," Rose said again. "For Jimmy, for Mickey, for Drew. I've never been able to do it properly. Jimmy hated me, Mickey loved me, an' Drew – I don't know. That could've been somethin' but I fucked that up before it'd even started. The Bad Wolf shouldn't have bothered savin' me. I'm nothin'."
The TARDIS took her hands and linked their fingers together, marvelling at the feel of holding another person's hand.
"No one is nothing," she said. "You were saved because your story isn't over yet."
Rose stared at their hands. "I'm dead though."
"For now, yes," the TARDIS told her. "But the Earth has need of you still, Rose Tyler. With the timelines shifting and Zoe's existence here, things have changed and you're needed more than ever."
She shook her head. "It has the Doctor. 'S got Jack an' Harriet an' Sarah Jane an' UNIT. It doesn't need me."
"You're wrong," the TARDIS said, her eyes turning gold, her head canting to one side again, mouth turning up. "He's found the device and is attempting to remove it. It's time for you to go."
Rose panicked. For all her eagerness at wanting to go home, faced with it and the understanding that she would never speak to the TARDIS like this again, she didn't want to go.
"No, wait! I need more time," she protested. "We haven't – there are so many things I want to ask you an' – an' d'you want me to tell the Doctor anythin'? He loves you. More than's normal at times, admittedly, but he's never spoken to you like this, right? D'you – is there a message for him? Somethin' you want me to tell him?"
The smile that spread across the TARDIS's face was beautiful and Rose wanted to put it to canvas, aware she wouldn't do it justice.
"Tell him that I look forward to the day we can speak in person," the TARDIS said. "And that I love him very much, my mad Doctor."
"I will," Rose promised, fingers swiping under her eyes. "Oh god, I don't – thank you. For everythin'. You saved my life, I think, an' thank you for takin' us to places even though we don't always end up where we're supposed to; it's still a lot of fun, most of the time. An' thank you for lookin' after us because I think you keep us safer than we realise most of the time. An' thank you for lookin' after the Doctor all these years too. He needs someone to do that an' it can't always be us."
The TARDIS's smile grew. "And thank you for the same thing, Rose Tyler. I wish we could speak like this again but we can't. So all that remains is for me to say hello, and goodbye."
Rose rolled forwards until she was on her knees, wrapping her in another hug again, and she felt a pull around her naval, her heart beating in her chest again and there was something in her throat. She held onto the TARDIS tighter, breathing in the smell of time that rolled off her, until she was pulled back and she –
– woke with a gasp.
"Rose!" The Doctor caught her shoulders, stopping her from jackhammering off the bed, her hands sinking into his arms and holding on. "It's okay. You're okay. You're safe."
Laughter and tears spilled out of her, and she clutched at him, reaching out desperately in her mind for the TARDIS who gave a small, gentle push in the back of her mind.
She was home.