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At the mention of her constant companion, Rose felt the good humor between them drift away. In its place somberness settled like a thick cloying blanket. That wasn't an emotion she was completely used to feeling with the Doctor, not recently at least.
Ever since landing on Bad Wolf Bay a second time, things had been easier for her and the Doctor. The perils on Pete's World weren't as dangerous as most they had faced before because it was no longer just the two of them running through time and space. Now they had people willing to back them up, able to provide support if needed, and there just didn't seem to be as many dangers to get into on one planet.
But more than that, it was because they had been in a standstill. Three years time that felt like a very long vacation. They were stuck on Earth, because that was how they both viewed it, stuck, tethered, anchored when they'd rather be running. There hadn't been any true somberness for a while, of course people died and bad things happened, but not the likes of which they hadn't encountered before.
Which is why this was all so strange, so completely beyond what Rose was prepared for. They had been talking about going off in the TARDIS together for the past year, ever since it had begun growing rapidly. The Doctor had worked out his own way of amplifying the growth rate that the Doctor Donna had already improved.
So why did the Doctor leave without her? They were meant to go together, to be together forever. So where was he now?
"Rose?" the Doctor asked gently, his voice calling her back from her musings.
She blinked rapidly, her eyebrows descending in a frown. Her teeth sunk into her bottom lip, worrying it between her teeth in a painful way that helped her keep her focus. "It started when our TARDIS began maturing. Well, that's not entirely right. It started with you being an ass to me while we were exploring the TARDIS. She'd just opened her first hallway and we were going to see the rooms."
The Doctor nodded to show he was following. His hands knotted in his lap, his long legs sprawled out away from his bean bag, bumping up against hers. His left boot knocked into Rose's right tennis shoe and he felt compelled to keep the contact. She looked so far away from him right now, sitting on a bean bag close enough for him to touch, but her eyes were going a soft gold and she was describing events a lifetime apart from him.
"We were racing each other and you made some stupid comment about me needing to get back in training because I was too slow. It was dumb, it didn't mean anything. You ran ahead of me and went into the first room. I was only a bit behind, but you pulled the door shut tight and when I asked you to open it, you said, 'Sorry, you were a bit slow.'" Rose was shaking her head now, her lip back between her teeth.
Rose had a perfectly lovely mouth and the Doctor felt certain that if she kept up this habit of chewing her lips she was sure to mar them. But now was not the time for tiny reprimands. He would just have to remember to tell her later.
She looked up at him, her eyes a brighter gold and his hearts clenched. Her beautiful brown eyes hidden behind something that wasn't entirely her. Yes, it worried him greatly.
"And I don't know what happened. It hit a nerve, you know, you saying that when I'd said it under such different circumstances, and I don't think you even knew how you were saying. But in that one second, things went a bit hazy and then she was talking."
"What did she say?" he asked, his brow line puckered. The Doctor was just managing to keep himself from reaching out for Rose's hand, just barely.
Rose's golden eyes looked past him over his left shoulder, her gaze capturing the fire and echoing it in her already brightly burning irises. "I am the Bad Wolf, I am here, my Doctor, and I do not forget." The words came out, a musical lilt and a combination of voices that were timeless and forever.
The Doctor's tenable restraint broke and he was across the small distance between the bean bags in an instant, his arms wrapped securely around Rose, pulling her onto his lap and propping his chin on top of her head. "I want to speak to Rose."
She burned in his arms, a heat that was filled with the power that lived inside her. The power she had taken into her to save him. This was his fault. It was always his fault. He took these people with him and returned them broken and damaged, if they returned at all.
Time and again. And he couldn't stop, because he was a lonely selfish old man who even knowing what he did to those he loved would do it again to someone new. He'd confessed this to Amy and she still hadn't believed him.
"Shh," Rose whispered, Bad Wolf fading back to the place by her soul. Rose turned in his embrace so that her arms stretched up his back and her chest pressed against his. "I'm right here. Everything is okay."
"Don't," he ordered, but it came out shaky. He didn't deserve to have her comforting him, not when he was the one who had done this to her and –
"You're wrong, you know," Rose said, her words muffled against the rough fabric of his tweed.
The Doctor startled back, feeling as if she'd read his thoughts even though that wasn't possible. His frantic eyes ran endlessly over her face, her perfect beautiful face, he dropped his head down to match the eye level of hers. He wanted to see everything, every single aspect about her, see where the Bad Wolf was, save her from it, if he could.
"Shh," Rose whispered again, one hand coming up to run down the side of his face.
His eyes fell shut at her touch. Only she did this to him, reduced him to a jittery mess with absolutely no words when usually he couldn't be shut up to save his life. It hurt, how much he'd missed her, how much he'd miss her again when she inevitably left.
She had to touch him, even as she felt it was a dishonor to River, she had to feel him, know that he was real beneath her touch. It was a combination of missing her own Doctor, fearing for him, and knowing how long it had been for this Doctor, how much he'd changed. Suddenly her three years felt much closer to his two hundred.
"It's not bad," Rose said, her fingers now running along the edge of his collar, fiddling with it and coming around to pet at his bow tie. "Bad Wolf, what we are together, it's not bad. And I'm not sorry I did it to begin with; I'd do it again right now without a second's hesitation. We belong together, the Bad Wolf and I, just as much as you and I belong together – well, as we did – "
"Forever, Rose. You promised me forever." His eyes fluttered back open.
She smiled, combing back the hair that had fallen into his face, unable to stop touching him even as she knew she should. "Quite right too."
"Rose," he groaned, his forehead falling forward to rest against hers. "What are you doing here? Why is Bad Wolf still with you?"
"I'm here to find my husband, as you well know, Doctor. And I was trying to explain as best I could about Bad Wolf before you tackled me, as you do well to remember too." She cupped his jaw, her thumbs tracing down over his chin. It really was prominent, but in a way that had things been entirely different, she would have felt compelled to nip.
As it was, she titled his face upward and away from hers. "Something is coming, Doctor. That's why you went running off. The TARDIS was finally ready to travel, you'd told me the night before, made me promise to call in sick to Torchwood so that we could test her out. Then I woke up to an empty bed and a half scribbled note."
"What's coming?"
Her teeth sunk into her lip; the Doctor removed one hand from where he'd been cradling her back to tug it free. Her gaze narrowed in on his hand and the Doctor felt mildly abashed for the intimate gesture. She was being so very Rose, so touchable and open to him, but she was another man's wife, granted that man was him. And he had a wife of his own. Still, he refused to let her leave his lap, River would just have to understand.
"I don't know. Something you'd only just realized. You'd been acting spacier than normal. Bursting out in random tangents about things that couldn't be happening, stuttering off into frenzies of 'What – what –what?' that you would never explain. But you were worried, got that wrinkled up look you do when you can't figure something out."
His face took on that exact look now. "What look?"
Rose grinned, momentary joy blossoming in her heart that that look hadn't changed even if his face had. "That one," she said, stroking her index finger down his nose.
"Rose Tyler, I do not wrinkle up my face."
But she wasn't listening, she was marveling at the way her name always sounded coming from his lips, no matter the eye color that went with them. Every time he said her name it was like a christening, he made her Rose Tyler, made it sound like a song and hymn. She lived for that pronunciation.
"I don't, Rose," and now he was whining, which made her laugh and broke the spell that his saying her name had cast over her.
"Yes, you do." She settled backwards onto her abandoned beanbag, breaking the hold his arms still had on her. There was once more appropriate distance between them and if she chose to sit on her hands to stave off the need to touch him, then that was her business alone.
The Doctor apparently felt no such compunction because he sat down in front of her, hoisting her legs into his crossed lap, and tapping his fingers at a frantic rhythm against her jean covered shins. "So I went chasing after something which somehow landed me here. I was chasing it alone, without you? What did the note say?"
Rose skirted his intense gaze, her cheeks heating up. "Nothing particular. That you – er – quite righted me and that you'd be back as soon as you could and please not to worry because you were perfectly capable of handling this and would I please refrain from slapping you when you did return."
"Quite righted –" he murmured before the implications of that saying clicked into place. "Ah – right – quite right – ah! I mean – well, I do mean – Rose – "
She grinned, finally raising her eyes back to his. She patted his hand on her leg. "Yes, I think we've covered that. That's all you said though, nothing useful. Really, it's obnoxious and rude when you do that. I'm your wife for heaven's sake! If you're going to do something foolhardy at least have the decency of running it past me first."
Her grin had slowly morphed into a glare that had the Doctor nervously plucking at his bow tie as if to give him more room to breathe. "Rose, really, that wasn't – well, he is me, but I would never – "
"Don't even, you big fat liar," Rose interrupted, her conversation with River not far from her thoughts. "You did just that when you locked me in the TARDIS." Her eyes flashed golden as if to serve as a reminder.
The Doctor tugged harder at his bow tie until her hand came up to settle his. Her touch flustered him and he sought out something else to say. "Did I run on tests on – on , well, you when Bad Wolf surfaced?"
Rose pulled her hand back, sensing that it wasn't helping the Doctor be particularly coherent. She rubbed them over the plush carpeted section of the library that the bean bags occupied. "Every test in the book. There was a lot of poking and prodding involved, none of the desirable kind." She peeked up at him, her tongue slipping through her teeth.
The Doctor blushed crimson, his ministrations on her legs ceasing immediately. "Oh, I – Ah, well – that is to say –"
As much as she enjoyed watching the Doctor squirm, especially this Doctor, she decided to save him the stutterfest he was currently drowning in. "The best you explained it, Bad Wolf I mean, is that Bad Wolf and I are bonded on an elemental level. I created myself as much as she created herself and together we created each other, the result of which is this," she gestured down the length of her body. "A two for one special."
The Doctor's gaze swept over her, taking in her outfit for the first time. Form fitting jeans and a plain white t-shirt, nothing miraculous, and a little out of the ordinary for Rose since she usually wore something slightly brighter. At least she did three years ago.
"She was lying dormant right here," Rose continued. She pressed the palm of her right hand against her chest, just to the left of her sternum. "Something woke her up, and now I can feel her."
"Feel her?" the Doctor asked leaning forward over her legs, fascinated in equal measures as worried.
Rose nodded, her left hand sweeping her blonde hair behind her ear. "She feels like . . . like heat and – and love and anger."
His hand reached out, fingertips brushing over the back of her hand and Rose dropped hers so that he could place his palm against the area she had indicated. He felt her delicate heart beat thrumming away inside her chest, a sound and feeling he had constantly missed.
It took a second, then Bad Wolf moved, stretching herself into the Doctor's touch, rejoicing in his nearness just as she did at the other Doctor's. Her voice spoke hauntingly, "I want you safe, my Doctor."
Rose's hands came up to cup the Doctor's jaw, tilting his face back so that she was able to look into his hazel eyes with her golden ones.
"I won't let you hurt her," the Doctor warned darkly, the Oncoming Storm lurking in his words.
The golden Rose smiled softly, her thumbs brushing against the hollows of his cheeks. "How you've changed, my Doctor. But I have not. 'Everything must come to death. All things. Everything dies.'"
He grasped her wrists tightly in his, chaining her to him. "What are you talking about? What dies?"
Her gaze drifted past him, to the fire visible over his shoulder. "Everything. But the time has come, my Doctor, and he who claims to see as I do, the whole of time and space, every single atom, it is time for the false god to know death."
"The Daleks are gone, Rose," he argued, anxiety spiking within his hearts. She was trapped, the Bad Wolf was trapped, because what she was saying didn't make sense. They had done this already. She had spoken these words and destroyed the Daleks.
Her attention snapped back to him. "No. I see everything; all that is, all that was, all that ever could be, and I see him, my Doctor. The false God who would – " she broke off, exhaling sharply, her head lolling forward.
"Rose!" the Doctor shouted, scooping her into his arms. Her head fell onto his shoulder, her heart racing frantically in her chest, pounding against his making a cacophony of beats. "Rose, it's okay, you're okay."
Pushing up from the ground, he stood, cradling her in his arms, and strode quickly from the library. The doors opened for him, ushering him out into the winding hallways. "River!" he yelled.
A door further down the hallway opened and a clatter of footsteps echoed toward him. "Doctor?"
"I need the MedBay," he said, shifting Rose in his arms to brace her weight better.
River anxiously looked over Rose before turning to the labyrinth of doors around them. "Where is it?"
"I don't know," he snapped.
"What happened?"
"Bad Wolf."
River nodded, running ahead and pushing open the doors at random to find the MedBay. It was the fourth door she opened, halfway down the hallway. "Here!" she called, sticking her head and arm out to wave the Doctor over to her. "What do we need?"