A/N: So sorry about the wait. The Month from Hell and the Paper of Doom have been demanding my attention. A month until the end of the semester, people. One month!

Note the very strategic aligning of chapter numbers and chapter titles :) If you catch my drift, then I think you'll like my attention to detail. :D One more chapter, and 'Tardis' will be complete, and the one-shots will be begin to be posted.

Without further ado, I give you: Rose.

Energy and tension in the TARDIS grew as That Day neared and began to take form. The ship seemed to fairly quiver with anticipation while Tardis and the Doctor cleared away the space needed and prepared for the coming event, even helping on the random occasion by revealing cargo holds and sporadic cupboards for storing the removed items. Tardis occasionally rubbed her middle, responding to phantom pains of their last, most fatal adventure. She had been surprised when one day, roughly a week before That Day came, she realized that she was just as excited to return to John and Torchwood as she was to finally bring Rose back to the Doctor. He'd been content to be a normal doctor for fifteen years. Surely a few with Torchwood and in the TARDIS wouldn't have completely revived his need to keep roaming, dragging domestic with him from galaxy to galaxy without realizing it. Oh, what grand adventures they would have!

They hardly slept the night before That Day dawned. Spastic checks to the monitor showed the beginnings of a ripple, but for hours, it was not enough to get excited about. The wait seemed so long, that eventually they both began to become worried. They couldn't risk a transmission through an unstable ripple, knowing that if it wasn't wide enough to accept the transmission, the ripple could catch at an edge and tear into a rift, allowing for the entrance of anything in the Void that wanted to come out.

It was approximately 4:23 in the afternoon (though one could never be quite sure when traveling on the TARDIS. The clock in the Time Room that was tuned into the general time in Cardiff, however, still read 4:23, with the second hand a bit past three-quarters of the way through it's cycle) when the monitor gave off a shrill beep, the 5-minute warning of a fair sized ripple. Tardis sprang out of the captains chair and hefted her pack over a shoulder, and the Doctor darted out of the room, returning a moment later with a ridiculously excited grin stretching across his face.

"I've got a present for you!" he said brightly, pulling a bit of wadded leather from behind his back and passing it over.

She knew what it was before she'd begun unraveling it, and pulled it to her face, pressing it to her nose and inhaling. "It smells like him," she commented, grinning up at him.

"Yes, well… I suppose it would."

They shook hands amicably, grinning at each other halfway through and launching into a proper hug between friends.

"Don't need to remind you to take care of her," she said, stepping away and holding tightly to the bag's strap and her new leather parcel.

"No, you don't," he replied. He fingered the control next to the monitor. "Well," he said with a sigh, and then he gave her a grin that seemed to stretch from ear to ear. "Allons-y, my girl!" He flipped the switch.

And suddenly she was falling, only to be caught in such a familiar embrace that she nearly wept at the feeling. She and John stared at each other, emotions flitting back and forth without so much as a word, and though a part of her desperately missed her new friend from a universe over, that wonderful feeling of home, however mobile and unstable it could be, enveloped her and told her that now, after all these years, all was the way it should be.

"Not dead?"

"Nanogenes."

"Ah."

But before they even began to think about properly greeting each other as two friends who have been separated for so long, he dropped her to her feet, and they dashed to the monitor, hands clasped together naturally, to say a joyous hello and good-bye to the Doctor and Rose, who peered back at them with expressions that said whatever had to be done to bring them together again was more than worth the effort.

And Tardis found, that after nearly 20 years of separation, she could not take her eyes from her sister's face. Sobbing and speechless, she touched a hand to the monitor, over Rose's cheek. Rose immediately pressed her hand to the same area, and through a separation so thin between universes, the sisters had their reunion for the rest of time.

Tardis choked as she wept. Rose's face looked livelier, lovelier, and infinitely more at home than Tardis could ever remember. "Rose," she managed to whisper, and Rose's smile stretched more than one would think it could. Tardis's tears left cool trails down her cheeks and pooled on her lips in tiny, salty drops that she automatically swiped away with her tongue. "Are you happy?" she asked, laughing despite her tears.

Rose's eyebrows quirked in that compassionate line that Tardis had forgotten existed. Rose, a universe away, exuded exquisite feeling, almost knocking Tardis back with its strength and addictive power. "I was only happier the day you were born," Rose said firmly, voice quivering with tears of her own. The edges of the screen began to darken and fade away. She gave a little burst of laughter. "Now I guess we know why."

Tardis's tears filled her eyes until she could hardly make her sister out anymore. Her ecstasy at succeeding in what they all thought impossible turned bittersweet. The darkness had covered the Doctor's face completely, but she hardly noticed as she fought to clear her vision and soak in as much of her sister as she could. "R-Rose," she stuttered through choking sobs, and she did not know what she was pleading for.

Rose's smile turned sad. "Now then, let's see that smile," she coaxed, her voice crackling with static. All Tardis could manage was to turn the corners of her lips up. Rose smiled a bit more. "There we are. You know what I'm going to say, don't you, little Tardis?"

Tardis did not know when John had begun to hold her up, though later she would decide that he had never really let her go at all. Rose's mouth moved in those familiar words, and though John did not speak, Tardis heard his voice overlaying Rose's. "Have a good life. Do that for me, Tardis. Have a fantastic life." As she said those words, Rose's face disappeared completely from the monitor, her loving goodbye fading away as the connection was severed.

"She refused to leave without saying good-bye to your mum and Mickey. Even demanded to bid Pete farewell even though he wasn't her dad. You're the only one who didn't know where she'd gone all those years."

She only heard him vaguely over the roaring silence. She had spent her whole life working to bring Rose back to her Doctor; she couldn't remember feeling happier or more accomplished upon the completion of one of her many projects. But with the joy came the heavy, sickening, bottoming out of her world, and for the first time since she had woken up and realized that Rose had gone missing and wasn't coming back, Tardis felt the absolute loss that she had set aside.