A/N: This idea came to me while I was rewatching Season 7. I remember when Clara's character was first introduced, I was convinced that she was going to be somehow connected to Rose/the Metacrisis Doctor and I was very disappointed when that didn't end up happening. So, this is my way of creating the story I REALLY wanted. :P
Rose Tyler was dying - or, at least, she was relatively certain that that's what was happening. She had never actually died before, but she still had a lingering suspicion that it wasn't supposed to be quite like this.
It had all started with dreams - dreams of her old life, back in the original universe that she had been born in. She had only had dreams like these twice before in her long life - once when she had originally been trapped here in a universe where giant floating zeppelins constantly littered the skies over London, and once again when the stars began going out and Torchwood had called her in for a special project.
Both times, he had been there, haunting her sleeping hours like a ghost. He was always calling for her, but he always seemed to be just out of her reach. She thought that the dreams would be gone for good when she was dropped off in Norway (again) with his half-human double and had consigned herself to a life of following the slow path.
After that, Rose had gone on for nearly seven decades without another single strange dream haunting her in the night. In fact, she had had a long, happy, normal life - well, as normal as a life with him could ever be. It was a life that she never could have imagined herself having, but it was a life that she cherished nonetheless.
She was used to dreaming about him, though - so when the strange dreams finally began to return, Rose tried very hard to convince herself that it was simply grief that was fueling her nightly visions. She had only just lost him earlier that year, after all. And oh, she absolutely hated that phrase - "lost him", as though she had simply let him slip through her fingers and he could still be out there, somewhere, wandering around, if only she could just find him again - but she still couldn't quite bring herself to say the "d" word, so "lost" would have to do.
It was his heart that took him in the end - and the mundanity of it all still made her sick to this day. She supposed that he wouldn't have minded, though - he had always been quite fascinated by his single, human heart. Even when he had known that it was his simple humanity that was going to kill him, he hadn't been upset or afraid - he had gone in peace.
So when the dreams started up again soon after that, Rose told herself that it was all just part of the mourning process. That was normal, right? But she had lost so many during her long, long life - her father (twice), her mother, and more friends than she could count - but none of that had ever brought on such strange dreams.
They started just the way that she remembered from last time - a voice calling her, beckoning her forward and leading her towards ... something. This time, though, the voice wasn't hist - or, at least, it wasn't just him. It was a strange, singing voice that seemed to contain everything in all of time and space within it. There was also a bright, golden light accompanying it - that was new.
After a few nights of trying to simply shake off the voice and ignore it, it only became more insistent. In fact, it began to form a face and a shape that was familiar and strange, comforting and terrifying all at once.
"Rose, it's time."
But Rose always vehemently denied it - always pulled back and tried to fight against the current of the voice, the light, the song.
"Come home."
After another week of this, the face that spoke to her became more solid - forming the outline of a young girl with blonde hair and golden eyes. She had a gaze that seemed to look right through Rose's skin and peer into her soul.
"Are you afraid of the big Bad Wolf?" The strange woman had a smile that was like a snarl.
Rose hadn't heard those words in years, and in the dream she always scrambled to try and remember what they meant. The only thing that she knew for certain was that the words were somehow a solid tether to the Doctor - a link that she could follow through all of time and space that would always lead her back to him in one way or another.
For the first time since the dreams had started, Rose finally stopped trying so hard to fight them off. She surmised that if these few spoken words were somehow connected to the one man in the entire universe who she most wanted to see, then maybe this strange woman and her glowing aura were simply another beacon, ushering her back to him once more.
After that, the woman's face began to change. Her long golden hair darkened, as did her sparkling yellow eyes.
"Are you ready to go, now?" she asked one night, reaching her hand towards Rose in a calm, beckoning gesture.
Rose's heart beat once, very hard, as everything in her cried out for answers and urged her forward. Still, she hesitated as she brought her hand up and prepared to touch the strange, otherworldly woman.
In her dreams, Rose's hands weren't aged and wrinkled as they were in real life, but as she stepped closer to the glowing creature, the light shining off of her seemed to seep into Rose's own skin, infusing her with a youthful, ephemeral glow.
"He's waiting," the woman reminded her patiently.
And that's all that she really needed to hear - because if the Doctor was somewhere out there looking for her, then Rose Tyler had no choice but to answer his call. She locked her jaw and forced herself to stare directly into the woman's haunting, golden gaze as she stepped forward and finally felt her fingers connect with the shining light.
"Just remember ... you can't make soufflés without eggs."
Before Rose could ask just what that odd bit of advice could possibly mean, the eerie melody echoing in Rose's ears took on a strange, familiar rhythm, and she woke up to the sounds of "Habanera" from Carmen ringing in her ears.
After that, Rose's dream took on a strange sense of realism - it was so real, in fact, that she began to question what the lady in gold had actually done to her.
In the dream, she was a different person entirely - though she didn't quite know how she knew that (there weren't exactly mirrors lying around in the underground bunker she suddenly found herself in). Dream logic seemed to fill in the gaps, though, and when she was asked, she succinctly informed her companion that she was Oswin Oswald, junior entertainment manager for Starship Alaska.
The man who had done the asking called himself the Doctor. The name rang in her head like a memory - or, perhaps it was more like an alarm - but Rose couldn't quite place where she had heard it before. She certainly didn't recognize his face - she was positive that she wouldn't ever be able to forget a chin like that ...
There was a young couple with him, too - a tall, skinny Scottish girl called Amy and a man with quite the remarkable nose who they called Rory.
The whole adventure reminded Rose of her old days of traveling around in the TARDIS, but in the dream she couldn't quite seem to remember her past with any sort of specificity. It was simply as though she felt a strange, reminiscent ache for days gone by as she - as Oswin - helped the Doctor and his friends navigate through a dalek asylum.
The odd dream turned into a nightmare when it turned out that she wasn't a junior entertainment manager at all - but rather a living mind trapped inside the shell of one of the most feared and hated creatures in all of existence.
It all went quite mad after that, but Rose made sure that the Doctor and his companions made it out alive, even if she didn't. She couldn't quite explain why the urge to save them was so overwhelmingly important, but it didn't really matter. She only knew that the daleks needed to be defeated, and the Doctor needed to live to fight them another day.
The dream ended in a burst of fire and heat, which then dissipated back into that now-familiar glowing, gold light. When Rose opened her eyes again, she was staring into the face of the woman who she now somehow knew was the Oswin girl, though her normally born eyes were golden as she smiled up at Rose.
"Did you enjoy seeing him again?" she asked, her voice somehow patient and teasing all at the same time.
"Why are you doing this?" Rose demanded angrily. "Why can't you just leave me alone, to die in peace?"
"Because you're not dying," the woman replied evenly. "Think of it simply as ... the next step in your journey."
"What are you talking about?" Rose asked warily.
"Don't you remember?" the Oswin-looking girl asked, tilting her head at Rose as though she were a wild animal trying to get a better look at its prey.
At her prompting, a memory suddenly flashed in Rose's head - a memory that she had thought she had tucked away and forgotten long ago. She blinked and suddenly she was back on Satellite Five with the entirety of the time vortex running through her mind. "I can see all that is, all that was, all that ever could be ..." her past self muttered, her eyes glowing bright with the same golden haze that was standing before her now.
"The Bad Wolf," Rose muttered as understanding finally crashed over her waves. "You're the Bad Wolf."
The creature before her smiled ferally once more, her eyes flashing somehow impossibly brighter. "You know me," the woman replied slowly. "I have been with you throughout all of time and space, Rose Tyler, and I have come again to usher you into the next chapter of your journey."
"But what does that mean?" Rose asked desperately. "What's going to happen to me?"
"Your old body will die," the Bad Wolf explained in an emotionless monotone, "but the mind will move on to a new one."
"A ... new body?" Rose asked, confused.
"In time," the Bad Wolf agreed simply. "It will take a lot of energy to get you back to that world, but it will happen. It has already happened. It will always happen. This has been designed from the moment that you looked into the heart of the TARDIS."
"So all of that ... that dream with the daleks ..." Rose's words trailed off as the memories of the dream suddenly came flooding back to her. That man with the chin ... could it really be?
"It was a weak connection," the Bad Wolf explained slowly. "In time, you will be tied to that world more concretely. For now, you experience these things as dreams."
"And ... the Doctor?" Rose asked hesitantly, barely daring to hope.
"He's alive and well. And waiting for you."
"But ... the name ... I called myself 'Oswin' ..." Rose continued, still trying to wrap her head around this great, impossible situation.
"Oswin, Rose, Clara, Bad Wolf, what's in a name?" the creature asked, flashing her odd, inhuman smile once more.
"Okay, but ... in the dream I couldn't remember who I was. Not properly, at least," Rose insisted. "How am I supposed to find the Doctor again if I don't even know who I am?"
"The connections will build in time," the Bad Wolf assured her. "All will happen as it was designed to happen. You'll see it all very soon, when I come again at Christmas."
"Christmas?" Rose repeated dubiously.
"Until then, Rose Tyler ..."
And then her eyelids snapped open and Rose came awake with a startled gasp. Her eyesight was no longer as good as it had once been, but in the pitch-black darkness of her room, she could easily see that there was a strange, yellow glow coming off of her skin. She breathed out a heavy, confused sigh and a swirl of bright golden energy drifted from between her lips like smoke and danced before her eyes.
It was all so completely, ridiculously, impossibly mad, but when she got up the next morning, Rose still made sure to mark her calendar and count the days until Christmas. She had to admit that she was interested to see what the Bad Wolf would show her next.