"He had to have a tragedy. Scaled down to human size, but he still lost his whole world. He had to have a tragedy.
"Right, moving on, or rather back, to just who he is. So, imagine this: you've got two people who really love each other, and passing between them is all the power in the universe. What would you guess would happen?
"One stray thought from her: I wish we could be together. I wish I could spend my life with him.
"One stray thought from him: I wish I were the sort of man who could love her as she deserves to be loved. I wish I could share a life with her.
"You might already have guessed that the reach of the Bad Wolf was unbounded by dimensions. The Void is a bit more problematic; no doubt if she'd seen the Daleks in the Void, she'd have made short work of them as well, but that's beside the point, really. Darlig Ulv Stranden--Bad Wolf Bay--tipped me off. I thought it was a final message sent from Rose to herself, a way for us to say goodbye. But it wasn't. And it was hardly the only place the Bad Wolf touched in her new world.
"Don't look at atlases of England, that is, Rose's original England, since one must be precise about these things, for the village in which Doctor John Smith was born. It won't be there. You see, 'Fellows' is a bastardization of the original Old English village name of Yfelwulf.
"Doctor John Smith was born in Bad Wolf, England."
"ROSE TYLER IN CLANDESTINE RELATIONSHIP WITH OLDER MAN!"
"I'm in my dotage, Rose," said John, perusing the tabloid article as Rose leaned against him, giggling. "I'd better stock up on soft foods. How do you think I'd look in a dressing gown and bath chair?"
"Could they have put it in more insulting words, do you think?" Rose asked, wiping tears of mirth from her face.
They were at John's flat, spending a quiet evening in. The tabloid headline had leaped out at Rose on the way over, and she'd decided to pick up a copy for John's growing collection. Once a paparazzo had caught them kissing in Hyde Park on a sunny afternoon, the entire gossip rag wolf pack had followed.
"I'm so sorry about all of this, John," she said. He was taking it all in good humor, but she still felt bad. "I really didn't think they were interested in me at all, given the Royal Family's latest shenanigans."
"Don't apologize," said John. "It's actually given me some street credit with my students. None of them dares to ask about it to my face, but I overheard one student saying something to his friends about 'I can't believe the bastard is bagging Rose Tyler.'"
Rose chuckled at their private joke. There had been, in fact, no "bagging" thus far. She and John had agreed early on that things between them were moving so fast that they'd best put the brakes on their physical relationship and spend some time simply getting to know each other. It was actually a relief to Rose. Her relationship with Jimmy Stones had been basically a lot of shagging and shouting, and while she loved Mickey dearly, she'd always felt they'd sort of just drifted into a relationship. Much as she wanted John--and she did--waiting felt like the right thing to do for now. Nonetheless, she'd gone back on birth control. She wanted to be ready when it happened.
Besides, for now, just being with John was enough. Two months had scurried by since their first date, and they hadn't yet run out of things to talk about. As both of them tended toward being incredibly opinionated, they'd had not a few arguments, but those tended to leave Rose feeling energized rather than beaten down, the way her shouting matches with Jimmy had. She'd dragged John to movies he wouldn't ordinarily have seen, and he insisted she go with him to operas and concerts she'd never have considered attending. He met her friends and family, and she met a few of his colleagues.
"I don't make friends easily," he said one day. "I envy you that."
"You could always cut down on the sarcasm," she suggested.
He considered it briefly and shook his head. "Nah. Not worth it."
"Am I ever going to meet your father?" she asked.
"I hope so." John's voice was very serious. "Unfortunately, he doesn't like London, so we'd have to go to Fellows, and the only thing of interest there is the private academy where he teaches."
"Thought you said he was a doctor, too."
"No, I said I'm Doctor John Smith, son of Doctor Thomas Smith," said John. "It just turns out his doctorate is in English literature. To return to the point, I would like you to meet him sometime. He's shorter than I am, but much better looking, and hardly sarcastic at all. I'm a little afraid that if I introduce the two of you, you'll fall for him and give me the brush-off."
"Oh, shut it, you," said Rose, and punctuated her order with a kiss.
She'd never been so happy as she was when she was with him.
Unfortunately, she and John weren't able to get nearly as much time together as they wanted, since Torchwood had been turned upside-down by the Cybermen attack. The Cardiff Hub reported sudden and intense energy fluctuations from the Rift with dismaying frequency, and there were a number of odd occurrences in London. The top of Big Ben disappeared for precisely one hour. A block of houses seemed to be moving backward in time, getting newer by the day and week. A downpour of corn pelted Parliament. Remnants of strange machines were being found all over the city.
And Rose's dreams were getting more intense and sinister all the time. Even the presence of the Brown-eyed Man didn't keep some of them from becoming nightmares. Oddly, John was getting mixed up in them, too. There was sort of a bizarre one about a space station and a woman who was just a sheet of skin and something about the end of the world. Then there was the creepy one with ghosts and Charles Dickens. The strangest thing was that her subconscious was now making no distinction between John and the Brown-eyed Man. The dreams were so real that sometimes, she mistook them for memories and it took her hours after waking to sort them out.
"Rose!" Mickey popped into her office, eyes gleaming. "Rose, you've gotta see this!"
"Gotta see what?" she asked, saving the document she'd been working on.
"Me an' Jake found this--this thing. Part of some kind of machine or weapon or something, and the lab says it's got organic matter in it. It's like nothing any of us have ever seen. You'll love it." He held out his hand. "Come on."
Grinning and curious, Rose took his hand and let him lead her down to Torchwood's main lab. The thing he and Jake had brought in was sequestered behind a curtain, which Mickey grabbed for a dramatic reveal.
"Ready for it?" he asked. Rose nodded, and Mickey pulled the curtain aside.
Rose leaped back, cold panic washing over her.
Mickey looked at her, concerned. "Rose? You okay?" He looked at the object, a metal dome obviously disconnected from a larger piece of machinery, with a couple of projections, one of which looked like a malevolent eye.
"Dalek," Rose whispered. She didn't know where the word came from, but she'd heard it in her dreams, seen those domes with their metal bodies.
"What was that?" asked Doctor Elizabeth Ross, one of the scientists examining the thing.
Rose swallowed hard and indicated the object. "I've seen that thing in my dreams. It was called a Dalek. How--where did you find it?"
"Under the London Eye," said Mickey.
Ross looked hard at Rose. "Tell me, what's your psychic level?"
"Normal," said Rose. Standard Torchwood procedure was to test the psychic ability of all new employees. Rose had shown no more than average.
"And you say you've seen this in your dreams?" Ross pressed.
"Yeah. Lots of 'em. The domes go on top of metal bodies, kind of . . . tin cans with round things all over, some kind of, of arms--they scare me." What she didn't add was that they scared the Brown-eyed Man as well. "I hear their voices, too. They're loud and grating, like they're screaming, but it's all mechanical. 'S like nothing can stop them."
"Dalek," said Ross, trying out the word. "I suppose that sounds better than 'gun-dome thingy.'" She lifted an eyebrow at Mickey, who had the grace to look abashed.
"You said you found this under the London Eye?" Rose asked. Mickey nodded. "I'd like to take a look myself. Might give me a clue about why my brain thinks it knows this thing."
"We were planning to take another team over today," said Mickey.
"I'm going with," said Rose firmly. If her dreams were starting to come true, she figured everyone had problems.
A few hours later, she was under the London Eye with a group of operatives and scientists. Someone had handed her a Geiger counter, and she was making herself useful. She was actually rather glad to have something to do; it took her mind off the powerful sense of déjà vu that had hit her upon entering.
Think I'm going mad, she thought. Her counter chattered at something, and she went over for a closer look. Next to one wall were some scattered pieces of metal and, oddly enough, something that looked like a plunger. It gave her the creeps.
"Found something over here," she announced.
A couple of the operatives came over with a bag and started collecting the debris. One of them, a fresh-faced kid named Sean, disturbed something that rolled out of the shadows. He bent down and picked it up.
It was a ball made of metal, not quite the size of a football. "Lookit this," said Sean.
The operative helping Rose collect the other pieces of metal stood up, blocking her view--
--and then the world exploded.