AN: Bit of a change of pace this time! No episode rewrites, but a lot of important set up, and yes, I will be rearranging the canon episode order a bit. Thanks for your follows, favourites and reviews. They mean a lot. Please enjoy!


The Doctor was sulking.

Yes, he was sulking, and trying to pretend otherwise. Seven months. Seven long, miserable months with an increasingly pregnant Jackie Tyler as company while he tried to think of something! Anything, to get him home!

He was careful not to take his moods out on Jackie; none of this was her fault, and she had been nothing but hospitable towards him since his incarceration in this godforsaken universe began. He was as polite to her as his short fuse could bring him to be, but it was difficult when this universe was so useless! Dull!

Nothing he could think of to get himself home led anywhere, the people weren't trusting of him whatsoever so his investigations were hampered left right and centre by busybody humans who thought they knew better than him. He supposed they were still Torchwood, this universe or his own. Always thinking they knew better than him. Bloody Torchwood.

His mood weighed itself down further at the familiar phrase. It was one he repeated to himself at least three times a day. Rose, stood as a ghost before him on that awful beach, had coined the phrase and it was one he had begun to cling to. Rose. Biting back a low hiss, he hoped, quietly and to himself, as was always the case these days, that she was okay. Maybe she had managed to move on. Found herself a nice place to live and just... just carried on living. At the thought though, he heard an evil, selfish whisper in his mind, one that said he hoped Rose hadn't moved on, that she was still waiting for him to come back. That she was still his Rose, all pink and yellow and ready to see more of the universe.

That day on Bad Wolf Bay though...

Jackie had been right, she had looked as though she hadn't slept in weeks. Hair limp, face washed out against the beige of the beach. Beaches were awful. He hated beaches. Nothing good ever happened on beaches. D-Day? Happened on a beach. Seagulls? Existed around beaches. Bad beaches. Bad, bad, beaches. The worst beach of all? The one at Bad Wolf Bay.

He snorted to himself in disgust. Bad Wolf. Nothing but bad omens, everywhere he looked.

Heaving a sigh, he turned to his newest plan and began reviewing the schematics, looking for the flaws, the pitfalls, everything that could go wrong. This was really his last resort. A dimension cannon, he called it.


Rose was losing her mind.

After their encounter with Shakespeare, she and Martha had retired in two separate directions, her new friend off to the bedroom the TARDIS had provided for her, and Rose back to the library. She had dived back into her studies, looking into first the aliens encountered on her most recent adventure, and then into Plasmavores and Judoon. These three took an hour or so of her time, and then she dove into the folder put together by the TARDIS, on the creatures the Doctor had encountered over the years, in case she should run into them herself.

She read about Davros, creator of the Daleks, and tried not to shudder with revulsion at the paragraphs about the Kaleds and Thals and their generations-long war. Her mind bent and swerved and confused itself as she considered that the Doctor had only been involved because the Time Lords had apparently sent him there, to that conflict, to stop it all before it began. To destroy the Daleks before they could become. How he had, eventually, decided against destroying them.

She wondered whether he ever regretted his decision, in his countless encounters with the creatures in the years proceeding the event. During the Time War, on the GameStation… at Canary Wharf. Rose couldn't even say, in the moment, that she understood where he was coming from. To allow the Daleks to be was the most Doctor decision she could think of, but even so, it was difficult to stomach. Did that make her a worse person than him? She wasn't sure.

The pages on the history of the Daleks, of their deformed Davros, were many, and reading through them all took her a long time, though with all the reading she had been doing lately, she was getting through entries a lot faster than she had at first. Soon though, she had finished, and after making herself a cuppa to wash down the revulsion, she turned heavily to the stack of books she had collected on travel between universes and steeled herself.

She soon lost track of time (as did happen on the good ship TARDIS) when faced with the far heavier task of understanding scientific theories and getting her head around what any of it bloody meant. The whole task felt utterly hopeless, if she was being honest with herself. Three pages into the first book, she was stopping every line or so to complain to herself about her lack of understanding. She tossed that book aside and pulled another to her, hoping for better results, but all that happened was a repeat of the process, over and over and over.

The problem was simple; she wasn't smart enough to understand. She could read these books until she was blue in the face, but without any understanding of what the words in them meant, she was lost. What could she do about that though? Was there some sort of space Uni that could teach her the relevant information? And if there was, how would she get herself in? If she was being honest, her best bet would to be to find someone on Earth who understood this stuff to help her out.

"Wonder if UNIT could help," she mused aloud, staring despondent at the sad pile of books that, while being written in English, may as well have been scribed in a completely alien language for all the understanding she had of them.

The door creaked open. "Hey, it's me. Mind if I come in?" When Rose shook her head no, Martha stepped fully into the room. "I don't really know how I found you…"

"TARDIS must have led you here," she said absently. She couldn't even bring herself to look up as Martha stared, wide-eyed, over the pile of books consuming the table.

"What's going on?" she asked, walking over and gingerly picking up one of the books. She glanced over the cover and her eyebrows rose. "Have you got exams you're running from too?" she asked jokingly, though she clearly knew that wasn't the case. "Is that what this is?"

"No, but maybe going back to school wouldn't be the worst thing," she said, staring despondently at the pile. "Can't make head nor tail of all this."

"Why do you need to?" Martha asked. "What's going on? Is it about that friend of yours?"

"Yeah," she said heavily. "We were - we got separated a few months ago. He said getting back's impossible but I can't just leave him trapped, so I've been trying to study multiverse theory, anything that might give me an idea of how to make passage between universes possible."

Martha's expression of disbelief went to newer and newer heights as she spoke, and When she stopped, she hesitantly said, "Look, I know I don't really… know you, or anything, but it sounds to me like you need a plan."

Rose tensed and tried not to go on the defensive. Was it Martha's place to say that, really? When they had only known each other for a day?

"Well what am I supposed to do?" she asked, tone fringing on desperate. "The Doctor's the expert - the one who knew what he was doing - and now he's trapped, with no way of me ever bringing him back! He's trapped, without his ship, without me, in a universe that's not his own, and there's nothing I can do about it!"

"But if he was the expert and he said it was impossible -"

"He's called things impossible before and been wrong. Me, for example." At the reminder, she felt her confidence bolstered. "I can bring him back. I just need to figure out how."

Martha stared at her for a good, long while, then said, "Well that sounds like a lot of work. We'd better get started, hadn't we?"


Huon particles.

The words stared out at her from the monitor in the console room. They were an energy from the start of the universe, destroyed by the Time Lords - that gave her a start - during their war with the Racnoss. They were golden in appearance and nowadays existed only within the heart of the TARDIS. She swallowed.

In all her worrying over the Doctor, she had kept forgetting about whatever it was that was going on with her. Specifically, the glow Donna had seen, or the change in her voice Martha had heard in the jail cell in London.

The glow was the same one that had pulled Donna to the TARDIS, which meant it was something to do with -

Rose stopped breathing. Her thoughts stuttered then stopped. She thought back to what she had said to the Cult of Skaro at Canary Wharf. "I took the time vortex into my head and I turned him to dust…" And how had she done that?

Memories of the GameStation were fuzzy at best. She had been in a total panic, thinking of nothing but her best friend trapped amongst thousands of Daleks, with her millenia away from him with no way to help. Her mum - God, her wonderful mum - had helped. She had brought her a truck.

To break into the heart of the TARDIS.

The same heart she had seen for the first time in a golden glow, when the ship had opened herself up.

Rose had broken into the heart of time itself and took it into herself to become -

The Bad Wolf.

The golden haze of amnesia that was her time spent as the Bad Wolf, when her Doctor had sacrificed himself to save her…

Because no one could survive that. Because behind that golden glow was something indomitable and deadly.

And Donna had been soaked in it.

"I have to find her!" she exclaimed, rushing around the console as quickly as she could. Martha, who had been sat on the jump seat trying to get her head around one of the books on multiverse theory, jumped out of her skin.

"What?" she asked. "Find who?"

Rose threw the dematerialisation lever and explained, "Before I met you there was this woman, Donna, who ended up in the TARDIS on her wedding day in this golden glow, and it turned out that her fiance had been poisoning her coffee with this liquid stuff for months, and that was what made it happen, but the gold particles - it's pure time energy and it's fatal, but Donna was soaked with it." And so was she. But never mind that.

Martha's expression hardened in a familiar look of determination. "We'd better find her fast then."

Rose's throat was too dry for her to reply. God, she hoped Donna was okay. She had set the TARDIS coordinates for the same place she had dropped Donna off at the end of their adventure together and hoped the woman hadn't moved since then.

Sprinting from the TARDIS and pulling herself up short just as a car whizzed by, blaring its horn at her, she took a second to collect herself before running for the house they had landed opposite to, Martha hot on her tail.

Hammering on the front door, she managed to hold herself still for maybe two seconds before she was ringing the bell, over and over -

Until the door opened to an elderly man. Rose's heart sank. Was this the wrong house? Had Donna moved after all? Worse, had she died?

"Yes, can I help you sweetheart?" She blinked, realising that she had been staring at the man and not speaking. Martha nudged her.

"Uh - I - I was just wondering whether a woman called Donna Noble lived here?"

The man's expression brightened. "Oh, are you two friends of hers?" he asked, and at the confirmation that he knew her, Rose felt herself relax.

"Yeah, we are," she said, "and we need to talk to her. It's really important."

"Oh, well I'm sorry but she's gone away. Off on holiday to Egypt!" he said, looking rather pleased, in opposition to Rose's plummeting stomach. "Said something about wanting to see the world after all that nasty business with that bloke Lance." The old man's expression turned surprisingly dark at the mention of the man - but then she supposed it would when he was her -

"I'm sorry," she said, "how exactly do you know Donna?"

"Ain't it obvious?" he asked jokingly. "I'm her granddad Wilf. She never mentioned me?"

He was still joking, but Rose said, "No, I - we don't really know each other that well. I just needed to talk to her."

"Well she's not due home for another three days," he said, looking regretful. "I'm sorry. I could pass on a message for you."

"No, no that's okay," she said, rational mind beginning to take over again. If she was on holiday in Egypt, seeing the world, it meant she wasn't ill - or worse. "We'll come back."

"Well it's a shame for you to have come out here just to leave again," he said. "You girls hungry? Thirsty? I'll put the kettle on! It's not often I get to meet friends of my little girl."

She couldn't help but smile at that, and turned to Martha, who didn't seem to know what to say either. She smiled and shook her head, telling Rose to decide for herself.

Turning back to Wilf, Rose smiled and said, "That'd be lovely, thanks."


"You know, when my little Donna was a child, she put herself on a bus to Strathclyde because her mum wouldn't take her on holiday." Wilf chuckled to himself as he pottered about the kitchen fetching mugs and biscuits.

Rose and Martha were seated at the table. They had offered to help and he turned them down, saying it helped him learn his way around.

"I haven't really lived here that long," he admitted. "Poor old Geoff died not long ago and I moved in to help Sylvia cope with it."

She frowned. "Geoff? He was -"

"Donna's dad," Wilf said. It seemed wrong for the happy old man to be so down. He turned to she and Martha and frowned. "You didn't know?"

"Ah - well, like Rose said, we haven't known her very long," Martha said quickly.

He nodded, not looking completely happy, but enough to continue. "Well, first with that disastrous wedding - I missed it, you know - and then Geoff passing away like he did, I thought my girls needed someone to be there for them."

Rose nodded. "And Sylvia - is she with Donna now?" It might be a good thing if she went with her mother. If the side effects of the huon energy were delayed, having a family member with her might come in handy.

"No, she's in town with her friends," he said. Oh. Well there went that strand of hope. "She'll be back soon though, if you wanted to talk to her."

"Oh, no, that's okay." She still remembered the somewhat dour woman from the reception, and on second thought decided that it was probably best Donna wasn't off trying to find herself with her mum in tow.

"We won't keep you that long," Martha added when Rose made no move to explain herself.

They drank their tea and Rose nibbled at a biscuit for Wilf's sake, while the old man asked Martha about herself; her family her job, her doctorate. She was just glad he wasn't questioning her, because she wasn't sure what she would say. "I'm a time traveller whose family are all either dead or trapped away in a parallel universe." Something suggested that he might call the emergency services before she had finished regaling her story.

While they talked she glanced over a newspaper. Wayne and Coleen Rooney were having another kid while on the page opposite, scientists warned that the number of bees was declining at a worrying rate. Someone had written in to complain about the budget and someone else, to complain about food poisoning from their local Thai restaurant. It was all so… normal. Normal in a way she hadn't experienced in so, so long. It was even a little bit, dare she say, alien.

"She won't be Rose Tyler," a ghost whispered in the back of her head, causing her to freeze up. "She won't even be human."

Sucking in a harsh breath, she turned the page with more force than was necessary and was confronted with a story about a brand new diet pill in the works. Adipose Industries! the headline of the two page spread declared. The Fat Just Walks Away. Accompanying the sensational words was a picture of a blonde woman, posing with a golden necklace in the shape of a pill. Her smile seemed forced, but she supposed that not everyone liked having their picture taken.

"I know a few people who'd kill for some of that," Martha said, and Rose turned to see her reading the story from over her shoulder.

"So do I," Rose said with a small laugh. "It'll be chaos when this stuff releases."

"You talking about that Adipose stuff?" Wilf asked. "There was a piece on that on Breakfast TV this morning. Sylvia said the same as you - but she still cut out the pre-order form." He added, an amused twinkle in his eye. She looked and saw that indeed, a corner had been cut out from the paper.

"I haven't heard about this stuff before," Martha said, shooting Rose a surreptitious look. "I have I missed something?"

Suppressing a sardonic smile, she showed her the date on the paper - a day after they first set off together. She saw Martha relax somewhat and had to admit to relaxing herself - if she had made the same mistake the Doctor had when they first began travelling together, she wasn't sure she would have a good enough excuse ready to stop Martha from killing her.

"It was only announced the other day," Wilf said. "Today's the first time we've actually heard owt about it. Sounds too good to be true if you ask me."

Rose hummed agreeably, glanced at the clock, and stood with a sigh. "Thanks for the tea, Wilf. We should probably get going though."

Martha hesitated for half a second, before standing too. "Yeah. Tea was lovely, but my family will be wondering where I am." She said this with a pointed look at Rose, who nodded. Looked like they were heading back to Martha's place next.

"Ah, well don't let me keep you girls," he said, standing too. Rose went to put the empty mugs in the sink, only leaving them unwashed when he waved her away. "Never you mind those, you just get yourselves home."

He led them back to the front door and said, "So, I'll tell Donna you stopped in when she gets back, will I?"

"Uh…" Was that a good idea? She didn't want the woman to think that Rose was stalking her or something. "Tell you what, just let her know what Rose, with the blue box, is looking for her." She smiled wide and patted the man on the arm. "That'll be good enough. And thank you again, for the tea. It was - it was really nice."

"Don't you worry sweetheart," he said, giving her hand a pat too. "I can always tell when a lady needs a good cuppa. Whatever's wrong, I hope you feel better soon."

At that, she almost froze up. "I - I think I will, Wilf. Really." She smiled at Martha, and Martha smiled back, and for a moment, she could almost forget anything was wrong at all.


Martha's flat was quite nice. Decked out in soothing blues and greens, it was comfortable. Homey. Rose relaxed back into the sofa as her friend moved about the place, ignoring the beep of her voice mail as she tidied up and gathered together some of her medical texts.

"If there's going to be studying on the TARDIS, some of it's going to be for my exams," she said. "Knowing we both have work to do might actually help."

She was right, of course. It wouldn't be right for Martha to spend all her time helping Rose when she had her own life stuff to take care of. In a flush of shame, she had realised that until Martha said it herself, she had not taken into account Martha's medical school studies when she accepted the woman's help in getting back the Doctor.

The phone rang again, and Martha ignored it.

"Leave it!" she called from the next room over. "It's probably no one."

It rang and rang and rang - then went to voicemail. "Hi, I'm out. Leave a message."

A voice said, "Martha, are you there? Pick it up, will you?"

"It's my mum," she said, grimacing slightly. "Definitely leave it."

"All right then, pretend that you're out if you like. I was only calling to say that your sister's on TV." Rose's eyebrows went up as Martha came into the room, face curled into an expression of pure disbelief. "On the news of all things. Just thought you might be interested."

Hurriedly, Martha switched on the TV, and the two of them watched with rapt attention as an elderly man, dressed in a sharp suit, spoke to the cameras. At his side was a young woman who resembled Martha.

"The details are top secret," the man said.

"How could Tish end up on the news?" Martha asked.

"Tonight, I will demonstrate a device which will redefine our world."

"She's got a new job," Martha continued. "PR for some research lab." Rose watched the screen through narrowed eyes. Her danger alarm was beginning to ring.

Then, he said it.

"With the push of a single button, I will change what it means to be human."