That Christmas, Rose spent the entire day surrounded by warmth, good food, and her remaining family members. Tony had brought all of the children and grandchildren around, knowing that it might well be their last holiday spent together. Rose spent hours just talking, laughing, and reminiscing about Christmases gone by with her loved ones.
It was only her second Christmas without her husband, and the entire gathering still felt oddly unbalanced without him around making a mess in the kitchen and telling outlandish stories to all of the grandkids. Tony did his best to brighten the mood, and for that Rose was grateful - but it just wasn't the same without the Doctor.
By the time they had exchanged gifts, cleaned up for the night, and said their final farewells, Rose was completely and utterly exhausted. In fact, she didn't even make it back to her room before she nodded off in the old wooden rocking chair that her husband had made her for her sixty-third birthday. As she slowly drifted off into unconsciousness, the warm glow of the Christmas tree lights blurred in her vision, flared, and then reformed into the shape of a woman.
This time, the Bad Wolf seemed to be vacillating between the woman Rose knew as Oswin, and Rose's own nineteen-year-old face. The creature was an amorphous, shifting mix of the two as she laid her hand on Rose's shoulder and breathed time energy over her skin. Instantly, Rose felt revitalized, and she arose to stand next to the woman, feeling as though she were suddenly seventy years younger.
"He is in pain," the Bad Wolf murmured softly. "He needs you now more than ever."
"Ditto," Rose replied wryly. "Show me."
The golden light around the Bad Wolf flared once more and a whirlwind of cool London snow swirled around her, and suddenly Rose Tyler was another woman again.
This time, she was in the past - somehow with the same borrowed face, but now with a new name. She called herself Clara Oswald - an odd woman who shifted between barmaid and governess as easily as the Bad Wolf shifted her face.
Rose slipped easily into Clara's strange life and experienced everything through her eyes - just as she had done with Oswin in the dalek asylum. This time, however, Rose was able to retain her own mind as well. The whole experience was disorienting to say the least - she felt like an outsider, somehow able to experience all that Clara was experiencing, but still not quite able to participate.
When Rose saw the man with the chin again, her heart leapt within her chest even as she addressed him as a stranger. However, she felt a lead weight settling into her stomach when he turned to look at her and Rose realized that the Bad Wolf had been correct in her assessment of him. There was something horribly, terribly wrong - he was in pain, and Rose instantly felt the overwhelming desire to reach out and soothe him in whatever way she could. The darkness in his strange (yet oddly familiar) green eyes made her ache for him in a way that she hadn't felt since her husband had died.
Rose feared that he might be traveling alone once more (which he should never, ever do), but those fears were quickly put to rest as she followed him and got a glimpse into the strange life that he had made for himself in late nineteenth-century London. She noticed that he had certainly moved on from human companions, though - Strax and Madame Vastra and Jenny all gave Clara quite the shock, but they simply reminded Rose of the good old days when meeting new species was just a typical Thursday afternoon.
What did shock Rose was the persistent darkness that lingered behind the Doctor's eyes, no matter what sort of strange snow-themed threat they faced down. She wanted so badly to reach out for him, but trapped in Clara's mind as she was, there was nothing that she could do but quietly pine away for him.
However, she suspected that a bit of that pining might have finally broken through the barrier between her and Clara when the young woman suddenly grabbed the Doctor's neck and forced her lips onto his. Rose felt an odd mix of offense and pleasure at the action - since it was technically not her lips that were currently doing the kissing, but she still got to receive all of the sensations that went along with the action anyway.
While traveling with the Doctor in her home universe, Rose had had the particular misfortune of having to watch her daft old alien get kissed many times by various different characters and species. Neither of the regenerations who Rose had traveled with had ever particularly enjoyed the physical intrusion, but they usually bore it with a resigned mix of politeness and disgust (depending on said creature doing the kissing).
This new Doctor, however, was quite different - he flailed around as though he wanted to push Clara away abut didn't quite know how, and then his cheeks flushed in an expression that Rose had only ever really seen on her husband. He stuttered awkwardly for a moment as soon as Clara released him and then ran off to distract himself with something new, as he was wont to do.
Still, Rose held on to that lingering sensation of the kiss like a lifeline, silently begging the universe for one more chance to be with the love of her life. She supposed that if she really were dying as the Bad Wolf had suggested, then at least she could console herself with the fact that she had gotten one last kiss from the Doctor before she went.
However, the kiss kicked off a whole new bout of flirting while fighting to survive and Rose honestly had no idea how much she had missed this until she was forced to witness it through another woman's eyes. Did the Doctor really have to be like this with every human girl who crossed his path? She wondered idly how long it had been for him since he had said goodbye to her. How long had he mourned before pushing her aside and moving on with some new, pretty companion?
Rose was about to descend into a fit of frustration and bitterness when the Doctor suddenly led Clara through a familiar pair of blue doors, and for once Rose's awe matched Clara's exactly. The desktop had been changed, but that wasn't the detail that caught and held Rose's attention. No, what surprised her the most was the fact that she could hear the TARDIS in her head, singing her a sweet song of welcome and joy more clearly than she had ever heard it before. The feel of the ship in her mind was similar to how she perceived the Bad Wolf, and Rose's thoughts glowed gold as something deep inside of her gave an automatic, heartfelt response.
Did you miss me, Old Girl? she asked, near breathless with the sensation of peace and home and rightness.
The TARDIS made a chiming noise of happiness and telepathically beckoned her in, filling Rose with the need to run deep inside of her labyrinthine hallways and never, ever leave.
Clara, though, was still too busy interrogating the Doctor. This time, when she mentioned soufflés, Rose was reminded both of Oswin the dalek as well as her own adventures with desserts back in the universe she was currently living in.
With her own memories fully intact, Rose remembered that soufflés had been an odd sort of running joke between her and her half-human Doctor back when he had joined her in "Pete's World". Rose had never been very good in the kitchen, after all, but she tried hard anyway. However, adding a half-Time-Lord with a short attention span into the mix hadn't exactly helped the issue. The two of them had destroyed probably three dozen different soufflés before they had finally perfected the recipe. It became a special treat that they had continued to make for one another for special occasions over the years - birthday cakes were something that Rose's family hadn't bothered with for a long time.
She was so lost in her cherished memories of her husband that Rose had lost track of the conversation going on between the Doctor and Clara until suddenly her entire focus was honed in on a single, silver key. The Doctor held it before Clara's face like a promise and Rose felt her heart lurch in her chest as she longed with every fiber of her being to reach out and claim it as her own.
The Doctor's green eyes watched her intently as he slipped the small key into her - Clara's - hand and then gently folded her fingers securely over it. Rose noticed for the first time that in addition to the concerning darkness held just behind his gaze, the Doctor's eyes looked so incredibly tired as well. Perhaps he really had been through more than she had imagined during his time away from her.
"What is this?" Clara asked breathlessly. The outline of the TARDIS key pressing into the soft skin of her palm and the low keening noise of the time ship herself made Rose want to collapse underneath the weight of her sheer desire to be back in that ridiculous blue box where she knew she belonged.
"Me," the Doctor replied cryptically, "giving in."
Rose didn't miss the way that he looked Clara up and down as though he were sneaking a peek at the back of a new book and he was quite excited by what he saw. And oh, how Rose wanted to capture that look and preserve it somehow - just to keep it jealously bottled away for all time where no other woman could see it except for herself.
She felt hot tears running over her eyelids and streaking down her cheeks as her longing for her husband and this man combined and built within her until they overflowed. She hadn't realized that her overwhelming emotions had once again breached the space between her and Clara until the Doctor's face screwed up into an expression of soft discomfort and worry.
"I don't know why I'm crying," Clara muttered, laughing dismissively in an attempt to fight off the tears that were not her own.
"I do," the Doctor replied with a smile. "Remember this - remember this, right now, all of it. Because this is the day - this is the day! This is the day everything begins!"
And just like that, Rose was nineteen again and she was placing her heart in the hands of this daft old Time Lord and asking him to show her the stars. She knew that she would follow him anywhere - do anything - just to remain at his side.
She was about to open her mouth and somehow force that sentiment across the divide and out of Clara's lips when suddenly there was a cool, vice-like grip around her shoulders, and then she was being dragged forcibly out of the one place that she never wanted to leave.
When Clara tripped over the edge of the Doctor's cloud and began to fall the long, long way down towards the frozen ground below, the dream took on an odd and unexpected shift. Rose's consciousness was not longer simply limited to the eyes, ears, and sensations of Clara anymore. Now, it was more like she was herself again, only no one else could see or hear her as she followed the Doctor and witnessed his heartbreakingly desperate attempt to save the young girl's life.
On this side of things, Rose got her first good, clear look at the woman who's face she had been taking on during her strange dreams. She could see why the Doctor found it so easy to flirt with her - she was as petite and fine as a porcelain doll, with long brown ringlets and intelligent, dark eyes.
Rose watched in resigned fascination as the Doctor reassured the young girl with one hand in her hair and the other forcing Clara's fingers to close firmly around the TARDIS key once more.
"Will you come away with me?" he asked, the desperation in his eyes so heart-wrenching that it nearly took Rose's breath away.
Clara agreed, just as Rose knew that she would - how could any girl possibly say no to a request and a man like that?
Rose went with the Doctor in Clara's place as he faced off against the Great Intelligence and defeated the killer snowmen once and for all. Even though he had no idea that she was there with him, Rose hoped that her invisible presence might be some sort of strange comfort to him.
Their victory was soured, however, as the Doctor leaned over Clara one last time to say goodbye. Right before she breathed her last, Rose caught a spark of gold on the edge of her vision as Clara quietly murmured her parting words. Rose recognized the girl's command from the dalek asylum, and she could see from the expression on the Doctor's face that he had recognized it, too.
"These are the words of the Wolf," an odd, inhuman voice interrupted. "They are a decree to bring you back to the Doctor."
Rose blinked hard and suddenly the image of nineteenth-century London faded from view and was replaced by the glow of the Bad Wolf. She was once again wearing Clara's face - or was it Oswin? Oswald? So many names ...
"Do you see now why you must go back?" the creature asked.
"No," Rose replied, trying and failing to not sound petulant as she did so. "Seems to me that he has everything he needs in this Clara girl. Who is she, anyway? Why do you keep putting me inside of her head?"
"She is a construct," the Bad Wolf explained. "She is a tool - a vessel."
"But ... she's a woman," Rose protested in confusion. "A real, breathing, human woman."
"No," the Wolf replied simply. "She is not."
"Well then what's the point of this exercise?" Rose demanded, still feeling lost and completely out of her depth. "Why are you showing me all of these things?"
"The next time that I come for you, it will be the last," the Bad Wolf answered cryptically.
"What do you mean?" Rose asked warily. "Is that when I'm going to die?"
"No," the creature repeated once more. "It is when you will be transported."
"Transported where?" Rose insisted.
"Home," the Bad Wolf replied simply. And then, in another flash of golden light, she was gone again.