We should be seeing so Rose-Tyler-Defender-Of-Earth action soon I also did a time line and accurately figured out how old Rose should be by now, so yeah.

Chapter Four

Can't you see that you're smothering me,
Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control?
'Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you.

Linkin Park – Numb

Rose's face blanched as she tried to keep contact with either of Martha or Mickey's casted eyes.

"I can't be here" she argued, her tongue like sandpaper in her mouth. She sounded like a broken record player even to her own ears.

The couple shared an uncomfortable look.

"Rose, you're back on earth."

She glared at Mickey and clenched her teeth.

"I can't be here!" She insisted angrily.

If she were here, than that meant she had crossed and torn a hole through the universes all at once. She had a responsibility to that universe and to this one – actually, she had a responsibility to every universe – and that was to stay there and not crack the walls down. Effectively, being here, in this universe, was destroying not only the second universe, but possibly all the other universes as well….

Rose's throat constricted. People depended on her there, in the other universe. They needed her.

"I have to get back! I have to save them!"

She made to stand but her weak knees drove her back down.

"Save who? What's going on?"

"Why was it only me?!" her face turned ablaze in anger, her eye red and seething.

"How? Why!".

Again, she tried in vain to stand but her muscles had turned to jelly and had left her to simmer on the bed.

It occurred to her as she sat, encased in this cruel room, that everyone always left her behind. They always sent her away. Always trying to protect her when she did not need it. It was her responsibility to protect earth and fight off any invaders and she had failed. Rose Tyler, defender of earth! ha! What a joke! They'd just given her that title to appease her guilt - guilt over not ever being able to do anything right, protect anyone. She'd go down as a coward who did not stay back and fight, who did not even have a chance to do anything to protect anyone.

Thought her misery, Rose began to realize something particular in the way Mickey had been speaking; Something she had otherwise overlooked.

"How did you know I was there?" rose whispered, her hair shielded the lovers from her furious eyes.

"Locked away In the other universe again?"

"Well-"

"You knew all along and you didn't stop him".

Rose's deadpanned voice momentarily flattened Mickey. His mouth snapped shut with an audible click. He looked up at her and then away, unable to hold her accusing eyes. He balled his fists and resisted the urge to hit something, but Rose continued, her voice taunting him to break something and unwind.

"You just let him leave us there. You left me there!".

Mickey smashed has balled fist on the wall to his left, spitting angrily as he glared at the woman he used to love. The woman he had waited for and mooned over for years. The woman who fell in love with the Doctor the moment she had met him and did not even give him, Mickey, her best friend, a second look or though. Not even enough decency to break up with him! 'Thanks!' 'For what?', 'exactly'.

"What were we supposed to do Rose?" he snarled, pulling his fist out of the concaved plasterboard.

"Keep both YOU and the metacrisis here? Shit! We insured that you would have a good proper, and happy life!" He stressed the happy in a hissed voice.

"We wanted you safe. We wanted you happy. You could finally have the life you always wanted with your precious Doctor" he spat.

"But he wasn't THE Doctor Mic-"

Micky whirled towards his wife, hoping that at his side they could convince the girl that what they had done for her had been the right thing to do.

"Rose," she started tentatively, "what else could we do?".

Fat tears fell down Rose's gaunt face. Her eyes screwed shut while she listened to the other woman.

"Your mother had a child waiting back home for her. Your family was there Rose, and the Doctor, he knew this. So he did what he thought was right to secure your happiness."

Rose crumbled to the floor in silent tears. Her nose and eyes burning with the excrements that continued to trail down her face.

"Didn't I get a say in this?" Her voice was more accusing than questioning. "Didn't I have a right to decide?"

"But you did make your choice Rose..." hissed Mickey as he pulled a splinter from his hand. "You chose the other one. You kissed hi-"

Rose hurdled her weight forward, her arms stretched out in front of her as though she wanted to shake Mickey, but Martha held her at bay as she screamed.

"How do you know what happened! You weren't there"

Blushing, both husband and wife looked awkwardly between them. Mickey coughed nervously and answered her in a tone that bespoke wrongdoing.

"There was a war, a war that happened and did not at the same time. During that time, Jack and Torchwood were looking into the possibility of sending this man" he seemed unwilling to tell Rose about the Time Lord, "to another dimension: like they had once done to the Cybermen and Daleks"

Rose swallowed as she listened. She could remember the pull of the darkness as it reached out to tear her away from the doctor the first time.

"Some place this guy would never be able to wreck havoc again." he continued, "but the link between Universes was - and should still be- sealed and the best he could find was a footage, a blurred image of you and both of them...". Mickey coughed and rubbed his hands together and allowed his wife to finish the story for him.

"Jack was angry at first - the doctor had disappeared and he believed you were still with him. Safe. Happy. When he saw the footage, he understood the doctor's logic and knew you would be, that surely you would have been, safe. He wanted to bring you back here Rose, but we all knew we couldn't. They couldn't take away your happiness for their own selfish needs" Martha finished for her husband, whispering to the broken girl.

"You were happy weren't you?" asked Mickey, voice raw, but Rose was too far gone. Her thoughts muddled together, unable to believe her friends had left her behind, but unwilling to wish it had not happened.

Of course, she knew the Doctor would not have told Jack; Jack would have disagreed with the idea. But, aside from their constant discord, Jack was a time anomaly (her fault) which had made the crazy pin stripped man even less amiable towards him.

Jack loved Rose in his own special way. And at one time, it might have been love, but Jack could not withstand a monogamous relationship for very long and, either way, she did not see him like that. They were bonded by a golden tendril; she had saved him and brought him back to life and for that, he would always be grateful towards her – even if it had also cursed him with immortality.

Rose swallowed hard, her ears popping with a low click as she did. Had she been happy? Well, yes, but... Of course she had been happy she fumed. But how could he understand?! He knew the difficulties she had been through to create the dimension cannon. The months she had spent getting a proper education and knowledge to actually develop such a machine. She had known there would be no way Pete was going to house such an incompetent "daughter" and had therefore gotten her bachelors in science and engineering over the span of only two years and had scaled through the ranks of Torchwood.

She had poured all her hopes and dreams into her studies – forcing herself to achieve what she had not in her youth. The years following the doctor had enabled her to concentrate in class - not only because of his elevated diction and intelligence (which she liked to think had rubbed off on her) but because of her need to see him again. To get him to say those three words that would make leaving her family behind worth it. But he had left her behind again. Left her the protector of a universe and of a being so much like him but not. He had trusted her to protect that world and those people that inhabited it. Most of all, Jackie and Bennie depended on her. They had always been there for her; she needed to save them.

It no longer seemed relevant that she had been left behind. That the doctor had moved on. She was not the weak little pink and yellow creature that had first embarked upon the TARDIS and been whisked away. She was Rose Tyler. She was not weak. She could save them. She had to save them. She would save them. Without her, they would all die and it no longer mattered whether or not she did so long as they lived.

She felt adrenalin pump through her body - a burst of energy that caused her heart rate to accelerate irregularly and for her synapses to create links between her thoughts at a much quicker rate.

The daleks, she remembered, had appeared out of nowhere and they'd been so close to their building when she had fallen through time and space. There might not be anyone to save anymore. She was wasting time arguing, precious time she could be spending on saving her mother and Ben!

"I have to get back now".

Panic was bubbling in the pit of her stomach. A burning, churning feeling that swelled inside of her and Rose grinded her teeth in agony.

Exterminate.

The daleks. She had to.. She had to get back. Destroy them.

Her heart was beating out of control, her eyes wide - the whites yellowed and lined with thick red lines.

She gasped for air, hands on her chest as the air rushed out of her lungs and refused to intake any more.

She had to get back.

Exterminate.

She had to get back now.

Her vision was blurring. supernovas coloring her vision - bursts of blues, reds and purple.

She thought she could hear someone, (or was that her?) demanding that she breath. but she could not. Her body felt cold. Numb. Like it was not her own and she finally succumbed to the darkness that had been weighing down on her.

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