Chapter 4: ... to Queen.
"Explain this to me again Rose," her Doctor asked as he led her towards the TARDIS. He had appeared just in time to see Rose be celebrated for having prevented a skirmish possibly a war between the Humans and Chtonians.
"It wasn't my fault. I was just trying to help. They were at each other's throats, but I managed to get the Chtonians to trust me. I found out that Alistair guy was up to his ears in trading weapons with both sides. A few words later and I was their golden girl," she explained.
"So all the burns marks and disruptor dust I saw back there, wasn't from some large battle you were up to your nose in," he asked suspicion in his tone of voice.
She smiled coyly. "Well, I kind of forgot that Alistair's men were kind of upset with me and the guys didn't want to sit around and wait for me to get shot, so there was a bit of a firefight, but I wasn't in it. I swear," she said.
He looked her over and nodded to himself. "Alright, let's get in and get started," he said and held the door open for her.
"So how long has it been for you?" she asked as he studied her intensely.
"Not long half a year maybe," he said.
"All alone to help me," she couldn't help herself. Her heart almost sang with joy and she threw her arms around him and gave him a thankful hug.
"Don't hug me yet, it is not all good news," he said as they wandered into the TARDIS. There was a large new addition looking like a large gun.
"What's that?" she asked feeling that it looked a bit ominous especially as she suspected it was meant for her.
He turned and looked towards her. "I'm afraid that is meant for you," the Doctor said.
"You wanna shoot me?" She asked.
"Come over here and sit with me," he asked. She obeyed and sat next to him in the old sofa-like seats behind the TARDIS console.
"I'm afraid things haven't exactly resolved themselves to my satisfaction, however this is about as good as I can come up with unless I reconstruct a lot of artifacts from Gallifrey, which is impossible without my people. Rose, I am unsure this is a viable solution for your problem. That thing there it would remove the remaining Time Vortex energy from all your cells. But in the process I'd have no control over when in the timeline I extracted the energy meaning you might still change or change back. And even worse it could still kill or damage you along the way... But if I don't use it, the process will go on and on. I don't know Rose. I can't decide for you, you'll have to do it," he explained.
"Do it," she immediately said. She trusted him and if it was potential change either way then she'd choose his way rather than any random future. Danger be damned her doctor would take care of her.
He stared at her for a few moments then gave her a broad smile. "My brave little flower," he said and caressed her chin. She enjoyed the closeness realizing that she missed being really close to any one. She was friends with the Doctor but whenever she felt they were about to become something more something stopped him and she couldn't bring herself to do much more than flirt much as she wanted too either.
He got up and mumbled, "No time like the present." Suddenly she felt a knot in her stomach. Nervous energy she realized. She needed to distract herself. The Doctor started setting things up first launching the TARDIS into the Time Vortex.
She decided that of all times to examine her thoughts on this. If she was really honest with herself, she couldn't take the next step with the Doctor because she really wanted someone who would commit to her fully, but she knew it couldn't be with him. The Doctor had long ago decided to be the gateway to expanding her universe but nothing more. Sarah had planted the seed for this thought long ago. She had opened her eyes just as much as their encounter with Reinette, and the realization that she would end up being just another companion to the Doctor. Was this the reason that the Doctor had warned her about that one day she would leave him rather than him leaving her. There had to be another way a better way.
"Rose," the Doctor said with a tone of worry. She looked up and nodded. She was nearly tearing up now and she had done it too herself. She should leave things unexamined especially with a life like the one she led. Still better than the one she had left. Maybe that was what she needed. To find a better life beyond all this, but something told her it might not be with the Doctor or even at home with her mum. Everyone left home in the end.
"I'm ready," she mumbled feeling suddenly a bit small looking at the device, at the TARDIS and at the Doctor. It was a feeling she hated. She had fled home because she felt uneducated, unappreciated and living at a dead end. Now she had somehow started wondering if one day she would leave a life of adventure behind. "Get your head in the game," she berated herself mentally realizing that she was potentially staring down the barrel at her death or yet another life changing event.
"Rose, if this fails... I..." He looked at her with worry and despair. She realized then that he had this solution long ago, but all the time since and it was probably more than he told her he had fought to find a better way. Now he was nearly chickening out.
"Doctor I know, it is taking a chance, but it's better than the alternative," she argued.
"You could live with the alterations for a long time before anything happens," he suggested.
"No, Doctor I won't. Listen I want this done and over with. If it's to be a change let it be only one not a life time's worth. Do it," she said, while in her head his words echoed, but her tendency to jump in and take the quick solution had already made her speak.
He gave her another long look full of regret and apology as if he had made her make a devil's bargain with the TARDIS. "Here we go," he said and flicked a switch. The recently silenced engine of the TARDIS sprang back in motion and the device fired a golden mist at her. There was a moment of white hot pain.
With depredation he watched the mist flow into Rose and fill her completely. Rose shook back in the seat, opened her mouth like she was screaming. He wanted to go to her, hold her even to flick his invention off again, but it was to no avail. The Mist swirled in a ever speeding tornado around Rose pulling more and more of the residual energy out of her. She seemed to practically glow inside out. Then his device switched off, the mist disappeared and Rose slumped clearly unconscious.
He almost yelled in exultation as he saw her chest rise and fall with regular breath. He ran the few steps towards her. Rose evaporated into a tiny cloud of golden light motes just as his hands reached her. Just like that she became an outline then was completely gone. "Rose! No! Rose! Oh no," he screamed her name then thumped the seat where his only twenty years old best companion ever had been moments earlier.
She was in some sort of dreamland surrounded by angelic singing and golden whorls while her body tingled strangely. She looked down but there was nothing. She held out her hands but saw only more light. "Doctor, doctor," she yelled but there was no answer just more that singing. Singing which she recognized as the same she had heard in her head when she had tried saving her Doctor the first one she had known.
She drifted for a long time, she thought, she screamed, she panicked then after a long time she just cried and wished to be home safe and sound wrapped in a hug by her mum. There was massive rush through her like a sneeze and everything turned white again.
After so long the golden nothing she found herself blinking as she saw colours again. She realized she was looking down the colonnade leading towards her mum's apartment. "What? How?" she said and looked around. It was glaringly obvious now. She had feared she had been dead, but now it looked like that wasn't the case. The Doctor's device, he had warned her that it might have an effect on her. Maybe it had blown her back in time, however getting home was by far not the worst place she could've ended up.
"Oh, no, I've lost the Doctor," she realized, "and I have no idea when this is." She almost panicked again then after a few moments she managed to calm herself. She walked calmly towards her mum's place hoping she hadn't hit some weird point in time and was about to cause a paradox. Still she wanted to, needed to see her mum. She wandered up to door and looked around. The markings, the drapes, the colours all looked like home. She knocked.
A few minutes later her mum opened the door with a muttered, "yeah yeah keep your knickers on."
"Mum," she asked studying the woman to see if she had somehow landed correctly.
"Rose, oh, god, Rose it is so good to see you. It's been so long... So you and your Doctor are back for a visit yeah," her mum intoned.
"No, it's just me," she said and grabbed her mum in a fierce hug glad to be home and suddenly realizing how much fun and life threatening danger she had been in and what wonders and horrors she had seen since she had last been at home in those arms.
"Alright, it's alright, you just come in. I'll make us some tea yeah," her mum said, but a voice just like her mum's clearly pained with feelings of loneliness continued, "but it is not like you'll tell me the truth only the edited bits. I just know it Rose, he had taken you from me and made you great. He has sharpened your thorns but also given you grace and strength. It must because your dad wasn't there to bring you up that you need him."
She blinked immediately realizing that those words had been thought or felt more than vocalized. "Yeah, tea would be nice," she intoned focusing on not listening in on her mum. She knew from her experiences that it was both bad form for a telepath and a horrible thing to do for any moral person. Even more shaken and confused she followed her mother inside. It was weird coming home. She had noticed it last Christmas, she had felt it when they had come back from the parallel reality and she had run to embrace her mother. She still occasionally needed the person, but she felt weird coming home... no visiting her mum's place. That was it. It was her mum's place now. She had left home.
But she was barely inside and sitting down before her thoughts headed straight back to her situation. She had been blown back in time to her home and somehow lost the Doctor. She hoped he would think to look for her here, but she had to face that unless he guessed somehow that she had survived he would probably think her dead. "Here you are," her mum said and placed the steaming cup on the small table in front of the TV, which she thankfully didn't turn on.
"Rose," her mum said with a note of worry in her voice. "Why are you back?" she asked.
"I dunno," she replied. "I was with the Doctor and something happened. I ended up back here... Mum, I think... maybe I've lost him. Maybe he won't come looking for me," she admitted voicing her current fears.
"Rose, you're not making sense. What happened?" her mum said and her voice continued mentally, "I would like to smack that asshole. First he takes Rose, then Mickey and now she comes back and... And there is something different about her. Wait a minute is her hair a different colour not really and yet it is?" She shook her head to stop hearing her mother's thoughts. Being telepathic even just slightly as it seemed she was, was rather more a pain than she had imagined. She fully appreciated why the Doctor never used his much. She tried to avoid thinking about how she was suddenly telepathic. It was apart of a lot of things she'd rather not deal with.
"I was sick and the Doctor invented something to cure me," she said and saw the immediate anger directed at the Doctor all over her mum's face. "It wasn't his fault. It was my fault I was sick not his. I think he cured me, but something went a little wrong and I was back here like I had been dropped off by the TARDIS," she explained and wondered again why she was back here. All her mum could give her was advice on daily mucking about in 2006 London nothing else. Maybe it was just the comfort of saying things. She wondered why she was being so introspective. Maybe she was getting older. She took a calming first sip of her cup.
"Darling, it's not like you to be quiet like this," her mum interjected.
"I know, it's just... it's just a lot," she said worrying about what she would do now and what was happening to the Doctor.
He sat the TARDIS down in the year 2006 of Earth. He wanted to forget Rose. He wanted to let her scent, her voice and everything else become happy memories and pleasant what ifs rather than the constant torture that had plagued him for months now. He had erred and he had killed her. She had said she was ready, but how could she. She had been but a very very young Earthling, whom he, spurred by loneliness and recognition of a being repressed far below her potential, had stolen away from her life. And in the process he had destroyed her. Rose, Jackie and Mickey had suffered for his egotistical attitude. His last incarnation had the right thought when he sent her away before she died in battle. She had gone back to him. She had given him the mental freedom, the sheer joy of life that had driven their many adventures this year. And in one move he had obliterated her.
He had searched for her using the TARDIS. Well if he was honest he had done it after he had brought himself low in alcohol, tears and screaming. Not since the days after his destruction of Gallifrey had he mourned like this. He had gone through all stages of grief. Now there was only one thing left. He needed to go and face the last person aside from him that knew really knew his Rose his beautiful dead flower. Jackie's flat that he had avoided for so long was no more than a few steps away. He knocked.
Jackie opened the door, literally tore it open obviously having seen him through the door spy. "You, you, bastard, I hate you," she screamed and attacked him tears in her eyes making long tracks of mascara on her face. He wondered for a moment as he tried to avoid the worst of her anger, if he had spoken without noticing, but realized that it wasn't so.
He grabbed her arms and tried to hold them still. Jackie flailed about a little then looked up at him. "You did this too her and now she is gone," she almost wailed with misery, "you've made her into an alien. I want her back, give me my Rose back. Make her come back."
He stared at Jackie in confusion. "Jackie, I don't understand. I came to tell you I lost Rose." She continued repeated the same words for a while then stopped staring at his face, probably finally understanding that he really didn't know.
"You mean... Oh, dear. Well come on in. I have something to tell ya and its a bit of a shocker," Jackie said.
She sat him down in the living room, which looked as messy and cluttered as during his last visit. Jackie sat in the couch and looked at him with her black stained eyes. "Listen, I didn't understand half of it. Rose came back a while back all alone. She was different. I couldn't put my finger on it, but there was something different about her. She told me, she had been sick and you'd tried to cure her, but something went wrong and she was flung back here with me. She couldn't make sense of it," she explained.
He felt like he had suddenly had an infusion of joy. Like a wildfire happiness spread through his body and mind. He hadn't killed Rose it seemed. Somehow he hadn't killed her like he had feared. Instead she had somehow been catapulted back here to her home. The questions of why here and how suddenly loomed large in his mind, but while a wide grin sprouted on his lips unbidden, Jackie went on sounding solemn.
"She wasn't herself. I knew that. She was quiet, thoughtful maybe even a bit introverted. Rose was never like that before. She did a lot of strange things too like finish my sentences and yell at the TV telling people on it they were being stupid. Still she's my daughter and I welcomed her home. She even stayed for a little bit. I think she hoped you'd dare show your face even if she warned me that sometimes you abandoned people," she gave him a warning glare. He winced at the thought, something had obviously lingered in Rose's mind after their encounter with Sarah-Jane.
"But then it started Doctor. I don't... I am not even sure if she is Rose anymore. She was so strange. She... god... Doctor she floats when she sleeps. Only a few centimeters off the blankets. When she sneezed the power in the estate goes on the blink. Then finally one day it happened. Another Rose showed up asking to speak with herself and apologizing for the confusion... She... They talked for a few moments then the first one that been here with me. She closed her eyes and focused. There was a strange noise in the air... like beautiful singing and then my Rose... one of them any way disappeared," she explained.
He was horrified and intrigued at the same time. Rose, poor, darling Rose, his cure hadn't worked it was clear now. He thought about what Jackie had said. The changes sounded massive staggering even, but the last part was horrid and fantastic at the same time. Somehow Rose had become a naturally time traveller. Just like the TARDIS... She was probably confused the dear girl, but she was alive. He needed to find her. "Jackie, where is she now... The one who stayed behind, where did she go?" he asked.
Jackie gave him a despairing glance then explained, "She said, that she had just told herself to try and jump a few days back in time because that was what she had always done and that doing so would teach her that she was able to. She told me that she had figured it out. She was no longer my Rose. She was a new Rose the same but in a different body. She spoke about evolution and stuff like that. I didn't really understand. Any way she looked at me and apologized again."
"Mum, please listen. I know you don't understand. I barely do. But just listen. I am going to go now. I won't be gone forever, but I must try to find the Doctor. I'm afraid what he is thinking. I must look for him. I don't know if I can. If I stay here he might show up some day somewhere, but the chances aren't great and I don't want to lose him. But listen, if he comes here, tell him... Tell him I don't blame him and that I'll be back in six months if I don't find him before that.
"That is what she said," Jackie explained.
"Jackie, when was that. How long ago?" he asked.
Jackie looked up and walked over taking down a calendar which she checked. "Three months," she said.
"And I am off," he said and quickly headed for the door with his jacket whirling around him.
"Wait a bloody minute," Jackie cursed.
He turned and looked at the intensely angry looking woman. "I want you to be honest, Doctor! Can you bring her back? Is she still my daughter?" she ranted.
"I don't know Jackie. I don't know if I can, if I should change her back. I do know one thing though and I know Rose does too. Everyone changes all the time all our lives. It is when we stop. When we stop striving. When we stop running. When we stop living and wait to die that your time passes fast and leaves your life worthless," he turned took a step for the door then stopped realizing he had left something important unsaid, "And Jackie... There is no way that Rose Tyler has or would ever stop being your daughter. She is still your Rose only different. Don't let that get between you."
He ran outside and headed for the TARDIS. He could of course look for Rose heading through time and space for days, months and years, but he knew what his first stop should be: 3 months in the future of this council estate.
Travelling through time under her own power was a glorious experience. From the moment between thinking and imagining the target, feeling able to just sense exactly the point in time she wanted to reach. To the moment when she dove in the wild benevolence of the Vortex and swimming through a golden whirlpool before emerging on the other side feeling warm and refreshed. She was unsure of her abilities and limitations but she wanted to be careful for now. She had told herself first to jump back in time creating a tiny paradox before telling her mum about her next return and hoping the Doctor would hear about it.
She had considered travelling through time to the far future, but she didn't have the translation circuit of the TARDIS nor the proud ship's sensors and so she opted instead to remain on Earth jumping back and forth at historic events looking for him, but first she would jump to the future and see if the Doctor was there and if not leave before anyone else of her arrived back there to actually stay with her mum. She focused and pushed herself into the Vortex.
She could actually feel herself now. She was like a spark, a presence jaunting back and forth through the Vortex. There myriads of others as well echoes of herself, of the TARDIS, the Doctor and infinities of other things. She couldn't tell or follow them and so she opted for good old investigation instead. The warm tingling of the Vortex ended and she arrived on the windswept estate in the middle of late autumn. The chill immediately told her about another benefit of a ship like the TARDIS. She headed for the estate proper when she felt it. The presence of the TARDIS was astonishing to say the least. It was like suddenly meeting a giant.
But a gentle one. With its friendly power the ship's mind reached hers and unable to articulate much more it transferred warm and almost overpowering feelings of welcome, joy and finally almost motherly pride to her before pressing into her mind and making sure she could understand everything including the Doctor. She turned and walked in the direction she felt the ship stood in.
She walked towards the ship as it stood in between the tall buildings, when she saw the Doctor jump out of the TARDIS looking confused. She had no idea how long the TARDIS had stood there, but he looked a bit tired and a whole lot worried. "What is that?" he articulated and seemed to sweep the area with his eyes until his eyes met hers. They widened in recognition. She couldn't help grinning before running towards him.
"Doctor," she yelled happily.
"Rose, oh, Rose," he replied and lifted her into a close hug. He drew back and stared at her. His eyes examined her and she felt the feather light touches of his trained telepathy slide across her mind. He withdrew as if burned. "It is you, but... I am sorry. I tried, I really did," he explained.
"Doctor, I'm alright. It's hard and strange, but I'm fine," she explained meaning every word.
He gave her a look and to her surprise it wasn't a look of pity but one of respect that he so rarely gave her, but always meant when he did. "Rose, you're fantastic. You're simply the best. I am so glad to know you're alive and well," he explained but his eyes were suddenly sad as if he was facing some future he had long dreaded.
"Doctor, I... I don't want to leave you and travel on my own. I can't stay here not any more and I can't go out there on my own. I don't want too. Please let me come with you," she begged afraid her changing would make him chuck her out or freeze her out.
He suddenly broke into a wide happy smile, "Are you sure? I mean I ruined..."
There was song like note and another Rose appeared next to them looking happy. The Doctor immediately grew grim at the appearance of her double. "Don't worry, I know about paradoxes, but this one has always been in the timeline, I always appeared to myself at this moment. Mind you it was the last time, it gives me headaches you know," the new Rose said as she stood there with perfectly set hair dressed like a princess in light white dress and white shoes.
"You were probably apologizing. I seem to remember you were. And you you soppy girly girl, you were tearing up yet again," she smiled at her herself then continued, "you're both not done with each other yet. No I know Doctor, I am not going to tell you about the future. Paradoxes equal monster headaches for me now. Rose you need to listen to this it is important. You two need to stay together, not forever but at least a while longer Doctor. I need you to teach me about being a good person, an explorer, but I also need to ask you to teach me other stuff to be able to survive. I need to know a bit more about the science and the Time Vortex aside from all of time and space. I know teaching from books sound dreary to both of you but not to worry that is not what I am asking. Teach by example but do try to teach me Doctor. I am going on a great quest too and a lot of it will be with you, but some of it won't and the Vortex won't always be there to help me. Finally the two of you I promise and I should know I was there. You're going to have a fantastic time."
She disappeared like a fading ghost of golden sparkles leaving them smiling and astounded. "Rose, you coming," the Doctor said and headed for the TARDIS.
"Of course," she replied with a grin and ran inside.
And if you listened as they walked inside you'd have heard. "I think you're gonna have a legend and a few nicknames of your own soon."
"Come off it," a girl's voice replied.
"Bad Wolf," the man's voice said in a teasing tone as the pumping noise started. There was laughter emanating from the Blue Box as it faded from sight.