Chapter 2: The War to End All Wars

Disclaimer: I own nothing except a TARDIS mug and a Ten/Rose poster. *Sigh*

A/N: Once again no Beta, so you can all blame me! Enjoy…?

Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, Stuff of Legends, The Abomination, the Valiant Child, was tired.

No, that wasn't it. She was lonely. Alright, she was tired too, but that was less important.

Fifteen years ago, she had seen the end of Torchwood. She had spent fifty years helping it grow, earning her six doctorates, trying to ignore her past. Then, she spent another hundred tearing it down. From the beginning, she had known. Rose Tyler was dead. As she fell that day at Canary Wharf, her not-father had appeared out of nowhere and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her back, away from the Doctor, keeping her safe.

She snorted. Safe. She was about as safe as a fox being burned out of her home. Her expression darkened as she remembered the pain.

One thing Pete Tyler had not expected when he materialized was to have his not-daughter flying towards him. He never got the dimension hopper around her. She died. Her body and soul lost to the Void. She ceased to exist.

And then she woke up, a gold membrane heavy around her mind. Two words appeared in her subconscious. Bad Wolf. She had seen this coming while filled with the untempered schism of the TARDIS's heart. But like Jack (the memories had slowly tricked back over time), she hadn't been able to control the results. Rose Tyler aged like any other human. If, that is, any other human had ridiculously fast cell regeneration and capacity for higher frequency brain waves that made her a stronger telepath than any human that ever did or will exist. Like the Doctor would say, she was Impossible.

In other words, she had been mostly Rose Tyler, but Bad Wolf lay dormant ever since the Game Station ready to protect her if need be. That small, sleeping cache of pure energy saved her as she crossed the Howling, but as she was destroyed, the Golden Goddess adapted, filling in the gaps and becoming more prevalent in her biology. Now it wouldn't leave. She wasn't a Time Lord. Not even close. They weren't made up of Vortex…stuff.

She was – well, the only word Rose had to describe herself was Abomination. Like nothing else before, she walked from moment to moment, only bound by her mortal side. If she allowed herself, she could take one step England 2171, and the next in Barcelona (the planet, not the city), year 7634. Since she was still partially human, she knew if the input Bad Wolf received was too strong, her mind would burn like it had that day so long ago. She theorized that if this happened, the Vortex would completely consume her physical body, and she would become a TARDIS herself. Frankly, Rose didn't like that theory much. A big eleven-dimensional box without a pilot or friend or even someone to speak to in all of time and space? No thank you.

Now, she could see timelines so clearly that she could hardly distinguish them from the present. That worried her. Over the years, she had slowly been overcome by this new view of the world. Shutting herself off had done nothing to help, so she bottled Bad Wolf away, hiding her ability to travel through the vortex without any assistance, smothering the timelines. Now, she was simply a genius telepathic human girl in her mid-twenties that had destroyed half the Earth.

One hundred and twenty years ago, Torchwood had come into contact with a Time Agent who had been thrown off course. The greed and ambition of the humans around her manipulated the technology, growing and expanding far outside of where human should ever go. Time travel was mass produced, and soon every first world country was filled with the devices.

Rose immediately recognized the danger and wasted no time in spreading the word to anyone she met, from scientists to housewives. The party against using time travel grew, but it wasn't enough. Not long after, programming for the general populous were spread in commercials, advertised of the streets, even sold in the black market. Torchwood theorized that if they only gave codes that would lead them into the future, no harm would be done and no paradoxes made.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

As history fell apart around her and the rebellion failed, Rose made the final decision. It had been many years since she freed the Vortex, letting it fill her every cell, power and the silky smooth feel of time filling every pore of her skin. Going back and preventing this would cause a disastrous paradox, but if she removed the humans and righted the wrongs they had don't to the fabric of time, the timelines would be preserved.

As she gazed across the stars, everywhere and nowhere at once, she saw the Darkness. She saw what it would do. She saw it destroy every universe of creation itself. Every one would blink out of existence until nothing was left but – here, she normally would have grimaced in disgust – the Daleks.

Once again pushing back as much of Bad Wolf as she could, she returned to earth and stood on the empty streets of London. Every car was abandoned, strollers and bikes left unattended. Piles of clothing and abandoned groceries littered the sidewalks. They were all gone, and she was alone. Rose Tyler fell to her knees on the hard black pavement and threw her head back. Her scream reverberated for miles, but only rats and rodents of the sewers looked up at the sound of pure despair.

"Alright, enough of that." Rubbing her hand over her face at the dark memory, she pulled herself from the dark corners of her mind and got back to work. The in-flux modulator had become misaligned with the arabellum input spectrometer while she leaned against it, lost in thought.

Once she adjusted the necessary components, talking herself through it all the while, she wiped the grease off her palms onto her work jeans and strode over to her modified radio.

"I've tinkered with it until it could pick up frequencies from the planet Maltraxion. Did you know the fourth great matriarch – the planet was run mostly by women – loved the Rolling Stones? She just so happened to start a century of cultural exploration which happened to kick start a fascination with Earth 20th and 21st century music! Why, I have no idea." She paused and tried to figure out who she was talking to.

"Ha! Only fifteen years and I've already gone 'round the bend!"

As soon as she tuned in, Soft Cell's Tainted Love began to play. Rose's mouth split into a wide grin, tongue and all, when her head was filled with much happier memories. She remembered the day the Doctor had taken her to see the end of the Earth and they had played "classical music." He had looked beautifully ridiculous, all big ears and leather as he wiggled in an imitation of a dance. As she began to swing to the techno beat, she imagined that Doctor dancing with her again, spinning her around the console, bright blue eyes shining, the TARDIS filled with music and laughter and hidden innuendoes and Jack (oh, Jack, how I miss you) recounting his escapades, most of which he ended up naked with at least one feisty new piece of eye-candy.

By the time the song ended, she felt inspired, ready to work harder than she ever had before. She remembered why she was working on a dimension cannon on a desolate Earth in the wrong universe, why she couldn't stop, and why she couldn't give up. The Darkness was coming, and so was Bad Wolf.

One year later, she had locked onto the TARDIS. It didn't matter which one; the Doctor in any incarnation could get her back to the right timeline and to her Doctor. She gulped in breath and prayed to all the gods she had stopped believing in years ago.

"I'm coming, Doctor."

A/N: The reason Rose took longer to build this dimension cannon was because she only has one chance and no one to pull her back. Sorry that this was all setup, I promise we'll have a one-sided reunion soon! R&R please?