Disclaimer: I have no claim to the wonderful world of Doctor Who.
A/N: Thank you for reading and/or reviewing this story! It means so much to me to be able to share these ideas with all of you. I apologize for the ending of the last chapter, but a writer has to be a bit evil occasionally. Once again, the warning of darkness from the previous chapter continues for this one. Really. You've been warned.
Previously:
Rose was in shock. She was properly in shock. She could barely process the events going on around her. Her body had gone numb, there was a roaring sound filling her ears, and she couldn't seem to form the words that she needed to say. So she simply stared, open-mouthed, at her Doctor as tears ran down her face.
The Doctor met Rose's stunned gaze with a look of regret, and said out loud, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
At that exact moment, dozens of cries of "Exterminate!" echoed around the room as the Daleks all fired their weapons at the Doctor and he collapsed, lifeless, on the floor.
Chapter 8 – The Manifest
Rose stared helplessly at the Doctor's lifeless form, silently willing him to regenerate. He was still part Time Lord, and he had healing capabilities far beyond that of a human. You could practically watch a gash seal itself over with new skin in a matter of minutes on his body. It was always possible that he had underestimated the amount of Time Lord qualities that he had. It would only be a matter of seconds, then he'd be glowing with golden energy and all would be right once more. Rose was sure of it.
Patiently, Rose waited for any sign of movement or golden light from him. Her heart raced within her chest as she stared with vigil at his motionless form.
An indeterminable amount of time passed in silence, before one of the Daleks finally declared, "The Doctor is dead. There is no sign of regeneration."
Honestly, Rose knew that the Dalek was right. She could not allow herself to believe it, though. They were happy, her and this version of the Doctor. The original Doctor abandoned her, left her with his "copy", but she had grown to love the metacrisis for whom he was. They were supposed to grow old together, but dying at the hands of Daleks just when they were getting started? That was a cruel move on the Universe's part. It wasn't fair. This was supposed to be their happy ending.
Through building tears, Rose stared down each of the Daleks in the room, and a white-hot fury began to build in the pit of her stomach. These wretched creatures had been the cause of so many of the worst moments of her life. They almost killed the Doctor back when he was cloaked in leather. Instead, they caused him to change and she lost the first version of him that she had grown to love. The Daleks were part of the battle at Canary Wharf, and it was a Dalek that knocked loose the lever that caused Rose to almost slip into the Void. Instead, she was left stranded in this universe, apart from her Doctor for painful years of her life. Then, it was the Daleks that caused the darkness to take over, destroying stars and planets and entire civilizations. She was reunited with the Doctor, but the events surrounding their destruction led to her being left in this universe once more. And now, the Daleks had just killed her husband, her Doctor, the one that gave her the choice to spend her life with him.
At that moment, Rose's thought process narrowed to a single train of thought. She wanted to rip each of the Daleks apart, piece by piece, atom by atom, until nothing but dust remained. She had never before felt hate and anger such as this. It deadened the pain of loss that had previously consumed her, and she idly wondered if this is what the Doctor felt when he embraced the Oncoming Storm. Anger clouded the edge of Rose's vision with golden hues. Limitless power emanated from her very being, and in that moment, with grief and anger and desperation clouding her thoughts, Rose wanted only to destroy. She wanted to hurt these creatures for all of the things that they had done to the Doctor, to her, and to every other being in every universe that they had ever wronged. And not a soul was around to stop her from doing so.
Are you sure? A voice quietly asked in the back of Rose's mind
Yes, she replied without hesitation. These creatures deserved nothing but death and destruction for the horrendous deeds that they had committed.
And just like that, Rose felt her body consumed by fire. Strangely familiar music ripped through her mind as the fire pulsed through her veins, burning every inch of her body. Never-before used synapses fired in her mind, and Rose could see nothing but a beautiful, golden light. In an instant, she could feel the turning of the planets and the unrelenting expansion of the universe. She could see timelines stretching out before her in her mind's eye. All that is, all that was, and all that ever could be. It was so beautiful, but it was tainted with such rage and hatred and pain. Why must the universe suffer so? The memories from the Game Station with her leathery Doctor suddenly unlocked, and she was flooded with rage and the urge to protect her Doctor, while at the same time, Rose realized with horror that she was the reason he had regenerated and the reason why Jack was forced to die over and over again.
The Daleks startled Rose out of her scrutiny of previously-locked memories as they shouted, almost with glee, "The Bad Wolf has returned!"
The Bad Wolf glared at each of them in turn, and they backed away in fear from the unmasked fury that radiated from her golden eyes. Growing tired of having her hands chained above her head, she disintegrated herself, reappearing in the center of the room, no longer restrained.
The Daleks hesitated for a moment, before shouting, "You will return our Emperor!"
Rose let out a little "Ha!", twirling around to observe the Daleks as they surrounded her. Golden tendrils of time itself surrounded her entire body, swirling within the brown depths of her eyes, and her voice took on an otherworldly quality as she said, "Did you really expect a being such as myself to abide by your will?"
"We will destroy your Earth if you don't," they replied.
"No matter. You killed my Doctor. Now, I will destroy you."
The Bad Wolf raised her hands before her and each of the Daleks on the ship, as well as those down on the Earth, were split apart into atoms. And just like that, nothing remained of the Daleks but dust. However, Rose felt no relief from the act.
Dropping to her knees, Rose found herself on the ground next to her lifeless Doctor. She gathered his body into her arms, pulling him onto her lap, and slowly rocked back and forth as tears relentlessly streamed down her face. Golden tendrils of light swirled around them, and Rose tried to summon the power to bring her Doctor back to life. She could now remember doing it once before to bring back Jack. It had been so effortless then, surely she could do it again to bring back her own husband.
But the power would not obey her.
"Bring him back!" Rose's desperate plea rang throughout the empty room as she continued to clutch at the Doctor's lifeless body. She could feel the power in her body and mind, hovering just at her fingertips but unwilling to do as she demanded.
"I've done it before, and I will do it again!" Rose shouted stubbornly.
"You can't," a forceful voice replied, causing Rose to gasp. The words were all at once heard, felt, and seen as they plastered themselves in swirling, golden letters within her mind. The voice itself was laced with power – the power of the universes and time itself – and Rose could just make out the sound of a lone wolf mournfully howling behind it. "This was always meant to be, my child."
Rose recognized that this voice must be the source of her power, and that it was coming from within her own mind. But she was no longer thinking logically, and so she argued with it. "No! You can't take him away from me!" Rose sobbed. "It's too soon! We were supposed to grow old together."
"And you might still,"the voice replied cryptically. "But this body's time has passed. Ever since his becoming was set in motion, it has been his destiny to die for you in battle and to bring about the fury of the wolf."
"Oh I'll show you fury, all right," Rose muttered. She drew on the new power that was burning violently through her veins and threw all of it into trying to bring the Doctor back to life. The light fixtures around the room shattered, sending glass spraying all around Rose. When the sharp shards neared her body, they disintegrated into sand, the soft particles falling straight to the ground and forming a perfect circle around Rose and her Doctor. Exhaustion pulled at Rose's weary bones, her head spun, and her vision flared black at the edges. Still, she tried to bend the power to her will. The remaining objects in the room began disintegrating around Rose's glowing, golden form. When she couldn't hold on to the power any longer, the golden goddess collapsed in a fit of tears against the Doctor's body.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she whispered to him over and over again.
Hours passed as she clutched the quickly cooling body to her, waiting for some miracle to bring him back to life. She waited five and a half hours for him to return to her, just as she had been told to years ago. When it was clear that there were no changes to his lifeless state, Rose kissed her husband on the forehead and whispered, "I love you, my Doctor. I always will."
She laid his head gently on the ground. Remembering the strange circuit-board device that he had sent her an mental image of earlier, she carefully dug around in one of his pockets until she found the small, green circuit-board dangling on a keyring. Rose unclasped the chain that hung around her neck with the TARDIS key that she refused to stop wearing, and slipped the circuit board onto the chain with the key. She hesitated for a moment, then carefully removed the simple wedding band that the Doctor was wearing, adding it to the chain, too, before she clasped it back around her neck.
Then, eyes blazing with golden fury, Rose stood up, refusing to look back down at the body on the floor. She made her way over to the lever that the Doctor had instructed her would destroy the ship. Her hand hovered over the lever for a moment as she hesitated, thinking of how simple it would be to just destroy the ship and herself with it. She could easily ignore the instructions that her Doctor had provided her with on how to work the ship's transport device and simply allow herself to be destroyed along with the ship and his body. It would be so easy. And it would be quick. The pain would only last for a moment before the sweet nothingness of death took over.
Rose's fingers twitched towards the lever, but a burning sensation against her chest snapped Rose out of the haunting thoughts that coursed through her mind. She looked down to see her old TARDIS key glowing orange. Grabbing the key, she could feel it quickly becoming hot to the touch.
This is his fault, Rose thought with anger as the TARDIS key reminded her of the other Doctor, carelessly jaunting about somewhere in the other universe. He was the one that left them on that beach with only the clothes on their backs. No sonic screwdriver, no TARDIS, no universe-saving tools that always kept them alive in dire circumstances. That Doctor had abandoned them to this fate.
For a brief moment, Rose could think only of the heartbreaking grief that she was experiencing, and in her anger, she wanted him to suffer, too. She wanted him to know what had happened, to know what path he had set them on and what pain he had caused. She wanted to yell at the original Doctor and stomp her feet like a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum.
"Are you sure?" the voice asked once more.
"Yes," Rose replied coldly and she swiftly pulled the lever. Fire and flames lapped at her skin as she felt the ship rip to pieces around her, destroying her Doctor's body so that it could never be found and experimented upon. In the next instant, the golden light swirled around her and Rose felt as though she had been doused in ice water. She screamed as her limbs froze and burned all at the same time. Her body felt as though it was being both compressed and pulled apart, all as a hauntingly beautiful song ripped through her mind.
Just when Rose thought that she couldn't take the pain any longer, it abruptly stopped.
Rose could vaguely decipher that she was standing upright on a solid, glass floor that was definitely not self-destructing. There were bright orange and green colors all around her and she could hear the song of time and a universe long ago abandoned. She couldn't make out much more, however. Her ears roared, her head pounded, and her vision quickly began to fade. She had exhausted herself, and the golden haze that surrounded her body made it impossible to see clearly.
"What!?" An unfamiliar, masculine voice vaguely called through the rushing sound that filled Rose's ears.
Rose tiredly looked up at the source of the voice, but did not recognize the man that stood before her. She frantically scanned her surroundings, trying to see through the gold. She could just make out a familiar greenish glow in the center of the room before she noticed startlingly that she could feel two different presences within her mind. They were both powerful and undeniably alien, one terrifyingly confused and the other absolutely delighted. The delighted presence mentally wrapped Rose up in a comforting embrace, and she felt as though she had returned home. And then Rose recognized it as the TARDIS. Which meant that the gangly man in a bow tie must be the Doctor with a new body. The Bad Wolf had transported herself from the burning Dalek ship, across the Void, and directly into the Doctor's TARDIS as it traveled through the time vortex.
It only took Rose a handful of seconds to make all of these connections, and then she met the Doctor's eyes with her own as gold pooled mysteriously within her brown orbs.
"My Doctor..." Rose cried frantically as the golden light furiously whipped around her. As if she was surrounded by wind, her blonde hair was tugged every which way around her face. Weakness quickly spread throughout her limbs and she suddenly felt as though she was no longer in control of her own body.
"It's okay, Rose," the Doctor replied soothingly, as he tried to reach a hand through the golden light towards her. "It's me, I'm the Doctor. New face, but still me."
Rose's eyes narrowed at him as she finished her sentence coldly, snapping, "My Doctor is dead."
The Doctor froze in his tracks as Rose's eyes locked with his own and he saw unfamiliar hatred and rage swirling within their depths. Then, Rose's arms spread out wide and her head snapped back almost of its own accord. The Doctor backed away not a moment too soon, as the golden haze that surrounded her briefly expanded, then suddenly collapsed in on her in a fiery blaze. Just as the last remnants of gold sank beneath her skin, Rose collapsed, motionless, on the floor of the TARDIS.
The Doctor could only stare on in shock and horror as he remained frozen to the spot.