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 5: Damage Control

Rose woke slowly, allowing herself a luxurious, cat-like stretch before opening her eyes.

"Rose!" a voice screeched, making her nearly fall out of bed in shock. It turned out to be her mother, who was sitting in a chair at her bedside and looking terribly concerned.

"Um, hi, Mum," Rose said, swiftly taking in her surroundings. She was in a medical ward with several other beds, and most people were unconscious. Looking out the window, she surmised it was night. Then, the details of the mission began to come back to her in pieces. She knew they'd been on the krey ship, captured. The scientist had put a... snoot on her arm to speak telepathically... but that was nighttime as well. How long had she been out?

"Loo!" she said suddenly.

"What?" her mother yelped, startled. A muddled, "Stuff it, we're tryin'a sleep," came from one of the adjacent beds, but neither woman paid it any heed. Rose swung out of her own bed only to look down at herself in horror and indignation.

"What the hell?" she drawled incredulously. "I don't know why I'm here, but the way I'm feeling now, it obviously couldn't have been bad enough to warrant one of these embarrassing hospital gowns!" A surge of urgency blindsided her just then, making her eyes widen. "Screw it, loo!" She ran off, leaving her mother in her dust

A trip to the head and a change of clothes later, Rose assured Jackie that she felt fine and went about finding her team. As she went along, the rest of the mission came into focus in her mind. The weapon, which was nothing short of psychological torture. Some presence in her mind – she wasn't sure what it had done, only that it had acted through her and ended the agony. And the name of the invasion leader. Badwulf. Bad Wolf. The phrase drove her to distraction, and she had to oust in from her thoughts to get anything done.

Jake was the easiest to find; he was asleep in the same ward she had been, bandaged quite thoroughly. Rose gave a little moue of sympathy and ran a hand along his cheek before going off in search of someone else. Mickey had passed out on a cot, either too concerned about his teammates or too exhausted to make it home. From there, it was easy to get him, Ingrid, Pete, and Jackie into Pete's office to talk. Rose wasn't sure why this was necessary, but Mickey seemed to insist on it.

"Rose, how do you feel?" Ingrid demanded as soon as she breezed in the door. The woman looked ragged herself, and Rose suspected she had been treating patients all day and night.

"A sight better than you, I expect." Ingrid snorted and gave a wry smile.

"Thanks."

"So, why are we having an impromptu meeting? The danger is over, right? Oh god, don't tell me they're sending a second force. Did you find something in their computers?" Rose asked, becoming more worried by the second.

"We haven't even gotten to the computers yet. It's still on the damage control stage," Pete quickly explained. Mickey nodded and spoke next.

"I need to talk to you about the report we submit. So, first, you have to tell us exactly what happened." He looked very serious, which alarmed Rose.

"You were all there. The scientist-"

"Scientist?" interrupted Ingrid, which made Rose remember that the whole conversation she'd had with the alien had been telepathic. So, she rehashed it to the group.

"But why did you turn yellow? None of the krey turned yellow when the weapon hit them. And since when are you so powerful! Near as we can tell, you shot the signal back through the weapon somehow and overloaded the chips we found in their heads. Every one of them was fried. Then, the weapon blew out," Ingrid ranted. Her tone was a mix of awe and confusion, but Rose barely heard the end of what she had to say.

"I... I turned yellow?" she asked cautiously.

"What do you mean, she turned yellow?!" Jackie exclaimed helpfully.

"Jacks-" Pete began, but his wife cut him off.

"Oh no, Pete Tyler, don't you try and explain anything to me. You're still in the doghouse for letting her go up there in the first place."

"Mum, I practically ordered him to let me go. Besides, I've turned yellow before. Did my eyes glow?"

"Yep, your eyes were so bright I couldn't look at them," Ingrid affirmed.

"When was this?" Pete asked, intrigued.

"When Mum and Mickey helped me open the TARDIS and get back to the Doctor. I used her power to do a lot of impossible things, and I apparently got very shiny. But that doesn't make sense! I..." Rose drifted off, suddenly acquiring a very alarmed expression. She grabbed Mickey's arm.

"You can't let the rest of Torchwood know. They'll want to study it. It's not something I can, like, conjure up at will; I don't even remember all the details of what it did before I passed out. Honest, most of the time I'm just a very mediocre psychic." She didn't exactly sound panicked, but her eyes were wide and demeanor serious. Torchwood knew about her past with the Doctor - not that they advertised it to most of the personnel – and they valued her experience. But if they thought that she had some sort of psychic, magical, glowy, physics-be-damned power, it would undoubtedly be a long and uncomfortable few months for Rose. If, indeed, it took only a few months. Even Pete couldn't protect her from that.

"We won't, Rose. We'll write up a report, and if it's good enough for me, it'll be good enough for the rest of the board," Pete assured her after a long moment. She and Mickey visibly relaxed.

"Thank you," she breathed.

However, Pete persisted, "But we're still concerned about you. Ingrid said your heart was beating dangerously fast after you passed out, and we don't want anything bad to happen to you."

Jackie gave a swift nod and commented, "That's the most sense you've made in days."

"But I'm fine now!"

"After sleeping for 13 hours," Mickey pointed out.

"Well..." drawled Ingrid, "I don't know if that was the attack or Rose's superpowers. Most likely, it was a combination. The other psychics were pretty addled, and many were knocked out. Actually, the strongest ones are still unconscious... which seems kind of backwards."

"There was no defense against it," explained Rose bitterly, "It was like the more... awakened your senses, the more of you was open to attack." She had acquired a far-off, haunted expression as she spoke, and everyone went silent. Her teammates looked traumatised themselves, and Jackie put an arm around her shoulders.

"I've never heard you scream like that," Mickey said quietly. Rose pulled him into a tight hug, and he held her fiercely.

"Sorry I scared you."

"We're digressing," Pete interrupted. "We still don't know if this thing you do is harmful to you. And even if we hide it for now, if it keeps happening, that'll become difficult."

"It won't happen again... probably?" Rose tried with a wince. Pete just looked sternly back at her. Even Jackie seemed to have suddenly made up with him, joining in on the glaring. Rose honestly did not know what to tell them, and for that matter, she found it undesirable to get into the subject of Bad Wolf just yet. Instead, she begged more time to think about what to do. The group then sussed out what should go on the official report.

The team had learned of the weapon from the first krey they killed. So, they soon located it but had to draw several aliens away from it to get a good look. Rose and Jake had done that, leading the aliens on a merry chase until a separate krey had found Mickey and Ingrid, shoved them aside, and turned it on. Jake was then shot while defending Rose's writhing form. Finally, the pair of techies shut the inhibitor chips off remotely and eventually overloaded the machine. It made Mickey and Ingrid look like geniuses and Rose and Jake look like master soldiers, with so many krey mowed down by gunfire – but it was still more plausible than a mediocre psychic using time magic to do the wildly improbable.

"Alright, you'd best go home and recover," Ingrid ordered at the conclusion, but Rose snorted.

"You go home. I slept for 13 hours, and I know it was a war zone out there before we even left, so I'm sure it was a disaster by the time we got back. Where can I help?"

It was nearly a day before Rose managed to get Mickey alone to talk. She desperately needed someone to work things through with her, and he was the one she trusted the most.

She didn't mince words, starting, "Mickey, there's something I didn't mention to anyone." To her surprise, he merely cocked his head and waited for her to continue, as if he had expected this. Figured. Rose took a breath and continued,

"The leader on the ship. His name was Badwulf." Now Mickey's eyes widened.

"Seriously? Bad Wolf?" Rose nodded.

"That... can't be a coincidence. The bay in Norway, and now some random alien?" Mickey wondered aloud, and Rose found herself deeply grateful for his lack of skepticism.

"But I don't know what it means! Last time it cropped up, Bad Wolf was a message to myself. It told me I could get back to the Doctor."

"Maybe it means he's coming back for you?" Her heart wanted to flutter at the idea, but instead it clenched. She shook her head as she spoke, anguished.

"No, that's not right. The words didn't make me sit tight and wait for the Doctor last time; it helped me realize what I needed to do to get back to him. But what resources do I have? Last time, I needed to access the heart of the TARDIS, but there's no... TARDIS..." she trailed off.

Mickey blinked at her and said, "What?"

"Me. There's some of the TARDIS in me, Mickey! But what am I supposed to do with it?! All it does is make me sort of psychic!" Growing excitement in her tone had been replaced with frustration.

"Is that all it can do? And I say, 'all,' but really, no other mere psychic we have could take out that machine with their brain."

"I-" she stopped.

Mickey watched her carefully and prodded, "Or is that all it's done so far?"

"It's... I mean, what happened on the ship, it was still just psychic energy. An excess, yeah, but not even anything I can control. But... originally, I thought any psychic skill I had was just a back door the TARDIS left herself in my brain. A connection to her specifically, and to the Doctor by association. And then it grew. What if it's not done growing?"

"What if it hurts you, Rose?"

Rose waved her hand at the question, "That's a chance I'm willing to take. But what do I do? Let it grow at its own rate? I think I should try and, like, train it, yeah? Get to know my inner wolf. What do people do when they need to find themselves?" She looked at Mickey expectantly, and the man spent a long moment considering.

"Well, in the movies, they always go to Tibet."