Chapter 4: Bad Wolf Rising

Time stretched from minutes to hours as he waited impatiently at his one-time friend's side. Jack'd refused to leave him, even though the result of Project Twilight was waiting for him in one of their holding cells. He didn't want someone from Torchwood discovering the Doctor's alien nature, let alone discovering exactly who he was. Though he might have almost absolute power over the Cardiff branch of Torchwood, he had no desire to have someone drop the hint to London that the renegade Time Lord was within their grasp.

The Doctor's expression was fluid as he slept, almost as if he were chasing demons in his mind. A few times he was certain that he'd seen the man mouth Rose's name before he turned restlessly in the bed, his face revealing a bone-deep anguish. What, he wondered, did the Time Lord dream? And what exactly was 'Bad Wolf'? The words alone were enough to send a chill through him. He remembered the last time he'd heard them, when the Doctor had said something about those words following him through time. However, the Doctor had later dismissed it as nothing. So what was it about 'Bad Wolf' that had caused his friend's collapse? Or was there even a relation?

He sank into the hard-backed chair next to the Doctor's bedside with a weary sigh. What was he doing? He'd spent so much time so angry with the Time Lord and now, here he was. Waiting impatiently by his side for him to wake. It was almost a replay of his life before. No longer a con man or adversary, but a friend. A comrade. A man in love.

He sighed again as he rubbed his eyes, wishing that he could dismiss his feelings as easily as he thought he once had. Anger could hide so much, he'd learned. How does one fall out of love? With the Doctor – an infuriating, enigmatic man who could hide so much behind his shuttered eyes. With Rose… Oh, Rose.

No. He'd find her and save her. He refused to believe in any other outcome.

"Doctor, wake up. Please…" The words were involuntarily spoken, but they produced a more obvious movement from the Time Lord. "Doctor?" he asked, hopefully.

"Bad Wolf," the other man breathed and lapsed back into unconsciousness.

The chair creaked as he leaned back into it, pinching the bridge of his nose. If his friend didn't wake soon, he'd have no choice. No option. He'd have to inspect the results of Twilight and deal with Evelyn Smythe. And, then, he'd have to save Rose and Cardiff without the Doctor's help.

Though he'd saved the world before without the Time Lord's aide, this time it seemed a rather daunting task.

"Any change?" Gwen asked as she walked into the guest room that he'd commandeered.

He shook his head sadly. "Not yet. Just more of the same. I thought I heard him say 'Rose' and 'Bad Wolf' but there's been no sign that he's about to wake."

"Chris's been asking when you're coming down," Gwen said, revealing her purpose in disturbing him.

A sigh escaped through his lips as he shook his head. "Has our newest 'guest' been giving us trouble?"

"That's the funny thing. Our guest's been very helpful. But he's insisting upon speaking to someone in charge for certain 'guarantees'."

He blinked. "Guarantees?" he repeated the word dubiously.

Gwen nodded. "Exactly. I think you need to come down and see this one. Keeps asking us to save him from 'her'. Not sure who she is, but our guest's obviously frightened of her."

"Bad Wolf," the Doctor murmured, almost in response to Gwen's words.

"Doctor? Are you back with us again?" he asked, reaching out to touch the other man's arm.

No answer. Not even a twitch.

He sighed again. "Right. I'll come and see what our guest has to say. Can you stay here for a bit? Just until I get back?" He didn't want the Doctor waking alone. At least a somewhat familiar face should reassure him. Though he wondered why he felt the other man needed such reassurance. Damnit, he'd thought that he was over this. Over him.

Guess it turned out that he was a better con man than he thought if he could con himself for this long.

Gwen nodded. "Of course."

Shooting her a thankful smile, he stood and turned toward the door. Pausing, he looked back at her. "If he wakes up before I get back, bring him to me. I think he'd be interested in Twilight's results."

"You sure?" she asked, glancing at the prone figure on the bed.

He nodded. "Yes."

The response was apparently enough for her as she turned her attention back to the Doctor. With one last glance at the Time Lord, he left the room. He had work to do.

Time.

It changed around him, swirling in patterns that it had no business attempting. The future was being rewritten by a skilled hand, assuming shapes and formats that it shouldn't. A timeline was erased, wiped away without care for the effects upon the rest of the continuum. Another and another were gone.

His senses screamed, threatening to send him back into the blessed unconsciousness that had been his only recourse to survive the violent alterations. However, he hung on grimly, desperate to determine just what had gone so terribly wrong.

I see you.

The voice was playful, familiar, but an underlying malevolence disturbed him. The words played about his unconscious mind, toying with those memories and senses that he could not protect quickly enough.

'Who are you?' he wanted to ask, but he could not force the words to shape themselves in his mind. His telepathic pathways were too disused, too raw from the impact of the temporal storm, to do so properly.

You know who I am.

He did. Oh, no, he did, and the word was just on the tip of his tongue, the edge of his mind. If he could only say it, only speak the word, he could banish the voice from his mind. One word. Just one.

"Rose," he said and opened his eyes.

"Doctor?" A slightly familiar voice said and he turned his head toward the source of the sound. Gwen, he identified absently.

"What am I doing on this bed?" he asked once he'd identified what he was lying upon. There was something important he had to say, or do. Wasn't there? He just couldn't remember. It was there, just on the tip of his...

"You collapsed," she replied. "We were on our way to see Toshiko, but you suddenly pressed both of your hands to the side of your head, collapsed, murmured 'Bad Wolf' and lapsed into unconsciousness."

Bad Wolf.

Rose.

He sat up quickly, bracing himself as a wave of nausea swept through him. "How long have I been unconscious?" What if it'd been days? What if the deadline had been passed, and Rose – oh, Rose – was permanently changed?

Gwen reached out to steady him, holding his arm tightly. "Careful. You've been unconscious for two hours." Her words caused his earlier fears to dissipate.

"I'm fine," he said as he eased out of her grip.

She didn't look convinced, but she didn't repeat her earlier gesture. "Are you sure you're all right?"

He smiled somewhat faintly. "I'm always all right." Liar, he accused himself.

She seemed to decide to change tack. "Jack wanted me to bring you to him once you were awake. There's someone he wants you to meet."

What he truly wanted to do was to find Rose. But he didn't have enough information to do so, not yet. He was willing to follow Gwen's suggestion for now. "Okay."

They headed into what seemed to be the bowels of the Hub. He caught glimpses of what looked to be a large hanger full of alien artefacts and what seemed to be a Triskellian Star Chaser, but the full view was obscured by carefully arranged sheets of plastic. "Lots of construction," he observed, hoping to draw more information out of his companion.

Gwen nodded. "Yes, there is." However, she didn't elaborate.

Frowning, he followed her into a narrow corridor with doors situated to either side. She came to a stop beside one of the unmarked entrances and rested her hand upon the knob.

"Our guest is in this room. Whatever you do, don't approach him. He's restrained, but he got a little…bite-y," she cautioned and opened the door.

Inside, he could see Jack talking to a man tied to a chair. The captive wore a stained and slightly bloodied denim jacket, a white t-shirt, and a ratty pair of jeans. Straps were around his torso, his legs, his wrists and arms, and around his neck, causing his clothing to bulge strangely at the edges of the leather. He felt slightly confused as he walked in, but the confusion swiftly faded as he spotted the man's sharply pointed canines.

"Listen," the vampire began, his eyes wide and rolling. "I'll tell you anything you want to know, okay? Just as long as you kill that one."

That wasn't right. He knew the expression upon the creature's face easily, but it didn't make sense. It was fear. But, even held captive, vampires were not known to show any such emotion. It was an unforgivable weakness.

"Which one?" Jack asked.

"I told Joxer, I did. I said he shouldn't turn her. Told him that he should just suck her dry like we planned. I said that there was something off about her. Didn't matter that she was pretty. Oh, no. Joxer always had a thing for blondes. And now look what's happened."

"What happened?" he asked, interrupting the interrogation as he purposefully walked to Jack's side.

"She's killed us! Well, killed anyone who opposed her. She was new. That isn't how it's supposed to work. New vamps shouldn't be able to just take over like that, but she's too powerful. Too strange. Never seen anything like it, actually. And I've been a vamp for two hundred years. She's just surrounded by this golden light, but it doesn't burn. It should burn us, but it doesn't. Should burn her, but it can't."

No. Oh, no. No, no, no. A fearful certainty filled him as he remembered his dream. It wasn't a dream at all. It was a nightmare.

"Bad-" he began.

The vampire cut him off. "Don't say it. Please, don't. Don't even think it. It just attracts her attention."

"Where's your nest?" Jack asked.

He sensed Time shift again and felt the icy tendrils of golden energy reach into the room.

The vampire seemed to sense it, too, as he began to pull on his bindings. "You have to save us!"

"Your nest!" Jack demanded, but he could tell that the other man could see it too. A golden light started at the floor, surrounding the vampire's feet.

"Warehouse, by the docks. NO! I'm sorry, please, I'm sorry, Bad Wolf. I didn't mean-" The vampire's words cut off into a scream of agony as the energy enveloped him.

He grabbed Jack's arm, pulling him away from the vampire. "Don't touch him!" he ordered, shooting a warning glance at Gwen.

Not again. Please, not again. He'd seen this before. Last time, it'd burned her. Threatened to destroy her as it was destroying him now.

Molecule by molecule, atom by atom, the vampire separated into dust. And he knew. Oh, no, he knew.

"What the hell was that?" the former Time Agent demanded.

"Rose," he replied in a hollow voice.

"Say what?" Jack asked, his eyes wide.

What on Earth was the Doctor talking about? Rose couldn't've done whatever the hell it was that happened to the vampire. Right?

"What do you remember about Satellite Five?" the Doctor asked. The question seemed rather random, but its impact upon him was obvious.

Satellite Five. His hands automatically clenched into fists at the sound of those two words. The Game Station. What did he remember? Somehow, he managed to staunch the bitter reply that lingered upon his lips.

He remembered the sound of the TARDIS's engines as it dematerialised. He remembered watching the only place that had ever been a home to him – because of the Doctor and Rose - leave him behind. He remembered the days spent on the station, searching through the remains of the Big Brother houses for food. He remembered his desperate attempts to cannibalise the main controls of the station to fashion a rudimentary communication device to try and contact the planet surface. He remembered how it felt when he realised that no one was going to come. He'd finally had to use the extrapolator to create a method of escape. However, his escape method failed. He knew that he was going to die but, instead, he was rescued by a friendly pair of Methrasolines.

What did he remember? "Enough," he finally replied.

A sharp intake of breath revealed that Gwen was still in the room. He'd revealed too much about himself in just his reaction to the words, he knew. However, he found that he didn't mind. Not anymore. He was tired of running.

"Do you remember what happened to the Daleks?" The Doctor apparently hadn't missed a nuance of his response. He could see that the other man felt guilty.

Good.

He shook his head. "No, I don't. Last thing I remember with the Daleks was one shooting me..." He'd died and then, impossibly, lived again.

The Time Lord couldn't entirely hide his wince, as if something about his words affected him. "Rose happened, Jack. She did something so brave and so stupid..." The Doctor shook his head, drawing in a bracing breath. "She looked into the Heart of the TARDIS. The Vortex filled her, became her. She used that power to save me – save you, too. She caused the Daleks to turn to dust, exactly like she did with the vampire. She must've brought you back to life, too."

Oh, god. He remembered. He remembered three words that had brought him back from the brink. Three tiny words.

I bring life.

It was Rose. Rose had saved him, but at what cost?

"The power was killing her," the Doctor continued, meeting his gaze. "Her tiny human brain couldn't contain that much power, so I saved her just like she saved me. I pulled out the Vortex and put it back where it belonged. She collapsed and I carried her into the TARDIS. I had to get us away from the Satellite, as quickly as possible since I was starting to regenerate. She woke a few moments after I'd sent us into the Vortex and she couldn't remember what had happened. I thought it was better that way. She lived and that was what was most important."

He staggered, bracing himself against the wall. "But if you took the Vortex from her, what was that?" He gestured toward the now empty chair.

The Doctor's expression turned grave. "That was the Bad Wolf. She assumed that name, created herself, when she took on the Vortex. I can only assume that I must've missed some small measure of the energy when I removed it from her. It must've interacted with the vampire virus..."

That was when the full impact of the revelations occurred to him. Rose Tyler had almost died because of the Vortex. However, now, because of the vampire virus, she wouldn't. She was already dead. She had all of space and time at her fingertips. It was amazing that she'd only chosen to remove a single threat to her continued existence and not the Doctor.

Not himself.

"What can she do with that power, Doctor?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.

"Anything she wants. Everything she wants. She has the power of life and death. The power to erase species from time. Anything at all."

Their goal of finding the vampire nest had just gained a new urgency. They had the name of the vampire that had turned her, but if he were in her shoes, he'd secret that one away, inaccessible, until the next full moon.

The Doctor suddenly stumbled, his face ashen. "Oh no," he whispered.

Alarms began to ring around the Hub and he darted to the communications panel in the wall. Pressing the talk button, he snapped, "Report!"

Toshiko's frantic voice came through the speaker. "Jack! Thank god, we've got a problem. Something's happened to the moon. It's like we've skipped ahead several days. The moon's phase has changed. It's full."

Oh, no. He turned back to the Time Lord.

"She knew what we were planning," the Doctor said, his expression stricken. "So she did the only thing she could do. She accelerated time."

She was a vampire now. Truly a vampire. They'd lost her. Oh, god, they'd lost her. Which meant that there was only one choice. To save the Earth and the rest of the universe, he could do only one thing.

That choice would kill him as surely as it would the Doctor. However, he had to say it. Had to order it.

"There's no choice," he said in a grim voice. "We have to kill Rose."

To be continued...