Title: Looking Within
Author: Shen
Rating: PG-13
Setting/Spoilers: Post-Doomsday, in my Peril-verse (see my profile). Recap of said 'verse is at http://shengirl dot livejournal dot com/8390 dot html
Characters: Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jake, Jackie and Pete Tyler, OCs
Teaser: Rose has landed in the other universe. Should she hope for a way back or carve out a new life for herself? And what unexpected resources might she find on the way? Action/Adventure Reunion!fic.

Chapter 3: Only Rose

The car was silent as it left Dårlig Ulv Stranden. Rose sat in the back seat, arms crossed on her knees and her head buried in them. There was no rigidity to her form; she rocked with every turn of the vehicle, listless. Softly, her mother laid a hand on her back in a gesture of fruitless comfort. She was certain she was the quintessential picture of defeat, but at the moment she could not care less. When she'd heard the Doctor in her head, TARDIS-boosted but oh-so-faint, she could barely tell it was him. Like looking at someone through milky glass. But as she drew closer to the beach, he became more defined, and they could reach out and touch minds. Heartbreakingly faint, hardly true communion, but she would take what she could. And as he became clearer to her, so did his emotional state: Depressed resignation. It told her he did not have a way for her to get back, and yet to hear it, "You can't," not ever again...

"Rose... you don't have to come back to work right away," Pete suddenly offered. Rose stiffened beneath Jackie's hand.

"Don't you worry about work right now, sweetheart," she soothed. Work? There were a few moments of silence in which Rose's mind raced with thoughts of work. At the end of her furious philosophizing, she realized there was almost no choice.

Mickey tentatively asked, "Are you going to quit?"

"No," Rose stated adamantly, finally moved to speech. She could have been happy with the Doctor even without the danger and time travel. She'd told him as much on the sanctuary base. But if she couldn't have her first love, she'd be damned if she'd give up her second – adrenaline. Before, work had been something to keep her occupied while waiting on the Doctor. Even if she could only admit that to herself in the dead of night when she couldn't sleep, it was true. Her TARDIS key remained around her neck, and she'd had her phone refitted for use at work. Not only was Torchwood unable to match a superphone for reception, but she had to have it on her in case the Doctor needed to call.

No more. Being an adrenaline junkie had to be an end unto itself from now on. And helping people, defending the Earth, or what else was her time with the Doctor for?

It was a few days before Rose pulled out of her haze of grief and humorless, machine-like work efficiency. Somewhere in the middle of filling out endless paperwork – which was distinctly not chasing aliens or being undercover or anything else adrenaline-inducing – she got to thinking. Bad Wolf Bay? Why Bad Wolf here, in another dimension? How? When she had seen everything that is, was, and could be, had she seen this separation from the Doctor? Perhaps it was unavoidable. Or avoiding it would have had some kind of cataclysmic result. In that case, was the name of the bay just a sign that she had left an extra hole in the universe, something to give herself a goodbye and some closure? She supposed that, if her super-powered self could not preserve her happiness, it would at least want to preserve her sanity.

Or was it a way back?

No. Down that road lay madness. If she'd gone through the trouble to tell herself that there was no hope, to value realism over a dream doomed to non-fulfillment, she could at least listen to herself. But if there was a way...

After long debate with herself, Rose decided that she would live her life as normal unless another sign was seen. After all, "Bad Wolf" had been graffitied all over time and space before. If this was truly another message of encouragement to herself, surely she would have left it at least twice. Until then, it would be downright unhealthy to get her hopes up.

"Man, that orlick still won't talk," Mickey whined by way of greeting one morning. Rose blinked at him.

"What orlick?"

"The only one that lived? It was that blighter that pushed the button on the weapon that put you out."

Confused, Rose asked, "Did you take it out of the room while I was unconscious?"

"Yeah, it was injured. You didn't know? It, uh, it was in the report we turned in. The report you added to."

"..." Mickey was looking at her skeptically, but she remained silent for fear of embarrassing herself further. She really was rubbish at paperwork... and at caring about paperwork.

"...Right, well, there's a captured orlick, and it's being very stoic."

"Well, you better let me talk to it," Rose stated.

"What? Why?" inquired a puzzled Mickey. Rose coolly quirked a brow at him.

"Any other ideas?"

Rose wasn't sure what had possessed her to try and talk to the alien. Something that wasn't paperwork had appeared in her field of vision, and she'd snapped at the line like a doomed river trout. Now, irrevocably hooked into it by her own stubbornness, she entered the alien's interrogation room and sat across the table from it. Her, actually; the orlick was clearly a female.

"Oh, now they send the psychic in after me? What are you going to do, probe my mind?" she asked bitterly. Rose wrinkled her nose at her.

"Firstly, no. You may have violated my mind, but I'm not about to do it to you in return. Second, you're speaking English."

The orlick shrugged and responded simply, "Easy enough to learn. With our techniques." She didn't elaborate, and Rose didn't prod her.

"What's your name?" she asked instead. The orlick displayed brief surprise before hardening.

"Do not attempt to be friendly to me. I know you are a killer. I saw. This technique will not work with me." The disgust-sodden words cut Rose to the quick. She'd shot that orlick in the head without a second thought. Pure reflex. When had violence become instinct for her? Yet, she didn't have time to dwell on it.

"Listen, I'm sorry," she said sincerely, "but he was about to shoot me."

"Your people attacked us," the other woman argued.

"I would honestly have preferred to trap you all. No death." Rose kept her tone even, but it only vexed the orlick further.

"And what did you expect us to do?! You snuck into our place of work with guns!"

"You snuck into our planet with weapons and killed any bystanders who inconvenienced you," Rose countered, letting just a little steel slip into her tone. The alien faltered. She was clearly agitated now, fidgeting in her seat and jingling her handcuffs.

"Look, it was a job. Work! We were mercenaries. Like family. And now..." she trailed off. Rose softened.

"I'm sorry." The alien looked surprised, and Rose continued tentatively, working on a hunch, "The one I shot. Was he very special to you?"

"He..." the alien stared fixedly at her knee. "It hardly matters now. But, scientist and soldier, we thought... even if I was not hard enough for the life, I could learn... perfect for a mercenary band. But thank you. No one else here has apologized."

God help her, Rose was about to cry. The loss of her own love was still too fresh to keep a poker face. So, she sniffled as she got up, walked around the table, and put a hand on the alien's shoulder.

"I know. I really, really know." The alien turned to look her in the eye, and Rose could tell she believed her, convinced by the raw agony in her eyes or her voice. "But you have to listen to me. This planet is full of people, people I care about. And somewhere out there are the people who sent you here. To attack aliens who were innocent but far from unarmed. Sent you with inadequate numbers and weapons. They're responsible for the loss of your family, and now I want to protect my family from them. Can you help me?"

To Rose's relief, she could and did. It helped that the orlick was stuck on Earth until Torchwood could flag down a hitchhiker-friendly space tourist. It behooves anyone on a doomed planet to do everything in her power to help it.

"Alright, this is really important!" Rose declared as she walked up to Pete. Mickey happened to be talking with him at the time, and both men grew concerned at her appearance.

"Rose did it... did the orlick make you cry?" Pete asked incredulously. "It's alright; you're just worse off than we thought. I really should have thought twice about letting you work in this state. And you, Mickey, you let her go in there with it!"

"Wha-? She... tricked me?" Mickey tried lamely. Rose sighed.

"Can't a pair of girls just have a good cry together? Is that a crime now?!" Rose demanded with an edge of hysteria. "I'm sorry it was on company time, boss, but I think you'll find the information I got to be quite worth what you'll pay me for the time!" Looking thoroughly chastised, the men remained silent.

"Thought so. Linnae – that's her name, not that anyone else bothered to ask – was part of a mercenary band. They were doing recon for a species called the krey. Well, kreylavindo...hala... something, but I'm calling them the krey. There are probably other recon teams on Earth right now, but Linnae's says this area is going to be point zero. Since we have the most proficient defenses against aliens."

"Only you could extract that kind of information with a good sob," Mickey said, clearly impressed.

"Point zero?" asked Pete resignedly.

"For their invasion."

When Pete called together the higher ups of Torchwood, Rose quickly explained what she had learned from Linnae and immediately followed it by stating she had a plan.

"Oh? It better be good, fresh meat," growled an older man.

"Indeed; we won't take your idea just because no one's had a chance to think of another yet," agreed the financial advisor.

"Please, if someone has a better idea, use that one. I'm working for our survival, not for my own career advancement," Rose countered sternly. The Tyler glare had been shaming children and husbands for generations, and this time it even made a few executives blush. This was more like it. Adrenaline. She didn't have to feel when it was pumping, justdo.

"The krey are highly telepathic, but to my knowledge, we don't have any effective psychic weapons," Rose enunciated, trying to sound professional. "And I'm told they should be immune to the one the orlicks used on me." It made sense. Why give your workers something they can use against you?

She continued, "So, we'll have to rely on regular weapons, assuming diplomatic overtures are declined. I suggest we have forces set to meet them on the ground but that we also send cells up to their main ship. The recon teams each had a teleporter so they could be picked up before the invasion rolled over their hiding territory. There's a code on it to prevent humans using it, but Linnae knows it."

"Do we want to split our forces like that?" Pete asked the room.

"That's what the army's for," Rose answered. The military liaison nodded.

"In the event of a large-scale invasion, Torchwood is only meant to support the armed forces with intel and such. We're smaller and mostly covert, after all." Rose nodded in agreement.

"We can sneak around the ship and try to disable it. Or see if we can find any weaknesses. Basically anything that can help; the plan's honestly a bit fuzzy there, but we can only be so helpful to the military. Better to have us in our element, as it were." The military liaison began discussing possible strategies with the other higher ups, and it was agreed that, barring new information, this was the best plan. Preparations had begun.