A/N: There is a theme song to this chapter. Or at least the last half of it. The song can be found all over Youtube. It's called "This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home." I had this playing while I wrote and, frankly, love it.
Chapter Text
Rose woke in stages. The first thing she noticed was that she was on something soft and had no recollection of getting there.
Her second realization was that there was a cup of tea beside her bed, and she wanted absolutely nothing more at that moment than to consume it. She pushed herself up and reached over for the cup, raising it to her lips. The tea was lukewarm, but within moments of it hitting her stomach, she felt the fog in her mind begin to ease.
Then the panic descended. "Tony!" she yelled at her partially open door. "Tony, where are you?"
The boy himself came rushing in, looking none the worse for wear. He threw himself at Rose and took her in a tight hug.
"I was worried about you," she said, putting her arms around the child. She returned the embrace and kissed the top of his head before he released her.
"I was worried about you," Tony returned. The worry in his voice was evident. "I couldn't wake you up."
Rose blinked and shook her head as the last of the fogginess in her mind evaporated. "Well I'm awake now, none the worse for wear. You seem okay."
"M' okay," he mumbled against her. Rose released him and took another sip of the rapidly cooling tea. The Doctor had been right; tea was perfect for clearing the mind. She was glad she'd stocked an entire case of teabags in the TARDIS bag before she'd left Earth.
"Do you know what happened?" she asked, looking Tony fully in the face, worry etched across her features as the full memories of what had happened came back to her.
He pursed his lips and closed his eyes, evidently trying to summarize his experience. He stayed that way for a moment and Rose was about to prompt him when he let out a long breath and opened his eyes. "I saw time."
"You saw time?" she repeated, quirking an eyebrow.
Tony nodded. "Yes. It was like…" his mouth moved but he couldn't seem to produce words. He raised his hands and wove them in the air in front of him, trying to describe something with shapes that he struggled to put into words. "It was like this stream that's running through everything and it's there and it's not and…" he sighed and gave up, dropping his hands to his side. "I can't describe it. It felt like my head was going to explode."
She rested her hand on his upper arm and inclined her head to meet his eyes again. "Are you feeling okay now?"
"Yeah," he affirmed quietly. "But it's hard to think about it."
Rose pulled him to her for another hug. "I know what you mean, Tony. I've seen it too, remember?"
"Is that what it felt like when you were Bad Wolf?"
She nodded. "Like my head would explode, yeah. I don't remember it much, though. John told me once they made all Time Lords look into the Vortex as kids."
Tony recoiled in horror. "Why would they do that to kids? It fucking hurt."
"Language," Rose scolded, scowling at him.
"As if you don't talk like that," the boy muttered. "I think it was warranted."
Rose inclined her head at the point. "Maybe, but don't make a habit of it. You're ten. It's inappropriate."
"Yeah, well, so's running away from your home planet and stealing a safety shuttle, but that didn't stop you."
"Point made," she said with a raise of her eyebrows. This kid was too clever by half. "But yes, Time Lords all had to go through that. It was their initiation."
"That's horrible," Tony said softly, a grim look coming over his features.
"It was their culture," Rose responded with equal softness. "It was how they became who they were. Different morality, yeah?" She had explained to him long ago the concept of relative morality that she'd learned from the Doctor during their travels. Cultural relativism was a topic that had been far easier to understand when the cultures she experienced were so varied.
"Still isn't okay to put kids through that. I'm not doing it again, that's for sure." He rubbed his temples with his fingers, frowning.
"Obviously. I'm not letting you anywhere near the Vortex again, not after you got stuck like that. Pretty sure it's ready for us to travel now, if the TARDIS will let us." A memory of her lumbering exit from the beach came back to her and her head shot up. "Did the TARDIS move?"
Tony grinned. "Yep! She moved all on her own. She came to get us. So she wasn't totally stuck!"
Rose moved her legs over the side of the raised, cushion-covered platform that made up her bed and stood. She was prepared to feel shaky, but was pleasantly surprised that she didn't feel any weakness. "How long was I asleep?"
The boy shrugged and followed her as she walked out to the console room. "Maybe a half hour longer than me. Don't know how long I was out, though. I think the TARDIS moved us, 'cos I woke up in my bed too."
Rose looked at the console, with its still, simple time rotor and vortex flux stabilizer, it looked absolutely nothing like the Doctor's TARDIS or the schematics he'd sketched for her in his notebooks. A thought occurred to her and she laid her hands on the console, excitement building as her thoughts coalesced into a solid hypothesis.
"Think you can talk to her, Rose?" Tony asked gently, coming up behind her. "I mean, what if she came to the beach because of you? Maybe you can navigate the TARDIS yourself."
"Was thinking that, actually." Rose reached beneath her shirt and pulled out the TARDIS key she never took off. It was the one the Doctor had given her years ago and it served no purpose here besides sentimentality, as the young TARDIS had no locks. But the metal of the key had been warm since they had moved into the newly grown timeship, and Rose could feel the remnant of the connection she had shared with the original TARDIS as Bad Wolf. When the sentient machine had looked into her before they had returned to the Gamestation all those years ago, the TARDIS' consciousness had burned a path through Rose's being that had never been completely quiet since.
"Think I might be able to, yeah," she muttered, opening her eyes. "Can't hurt to try, anyway, eh?"
Tony grinned and ran to the other side of the console. "My sonic got a reading of the phase variance of the Vortex, if that helps any. Maybe I can try thinking it really loud?"
Rose couldn't help but smile at that. "Sure, Tony, think loud."
She clasped one hand around the key and replaced the other on the console. Tony closed his eyes and put both palms firmly down on the flat stretch of coral. "Okay."
Rose looked into herself and felt for the awareness burned low on her connection to the ancient TARDIS. It was a sensation more than a vision, but she could very nearly see the light behind her eyes. . She could feel the steady, curious hum of the young TARDIS, daughter of the one Rose had known so well, surrounding and perfusing her mind.
She focused on the hill where the TARDIS had grown. She pictured it in her mind as clearly as she could and she wordlessly urged the telepathic ship to understand. She mentally traced the path up the side of the hill to the clearing, trying to draw to the fore of her mind the smell of the earth and grass, the soft crunch of dry ground under her naked feet when she toed off her shoes and ran freely through the long grasses.
It took her a moment to realize that the console itself was vibrating under her hand. The inquiring note in her mind deepened and became determined. Beneath her feet, the floor shook in an intense oscillation. Back and forth, up and down, the pinkish-orange console room swayed and shuddered. Rose dropped the key and grabbed the edge of the coral console with that hand to brace herself against the movement. Tony fell backwards, dropping out of sight as he landed on his bum with an 'oof.'
And in the space of a moment, it stopped. The ship stilled and was quiet.
Tony rose with a wince, hand rubbing at the spot over his tailbone where he had landed. "Did we move?"
Rose lifted a shaking hand from the console and looked around. Everything looked the same in the console room. She strode quickly towards the door with Tony trotting along behind her and threw open the door.
"Yes."
Tony pushed in front of Rose and stepped out. They were in the coral forest, in what could be best described as a clearing.
Rose watched as Tony turned back to her, beaming, his eyes wide in excitement. "We moved!"
She grinned back. "We moved! But this isn't where I was aiming for. I was trying to take us back to the hill."
"What'd you do to make her move?"
"I thought about where I wanted to go and just sort of thought… at the TARDIS. I don't know if that makes any sense." Rose shrugged slightly
Tony's eyes roved over the outside of the TARDIS and his hand reached out to touch the exterior. "Did you think this too?"
Rose stepped out and turned to look. Her mouth dropped open in shock and her eyes darted from the TARDIS to meet Tony's gaze and, as one, they burst into delighted whoops of laughter.
Standing in front of them, surrounded by tree-like coral structures rising out of the ground and stretching towards the burnt orange sky, was a police box, as red as the wood of the trees that grew in periodic clusters around Gallifrey's plains. At the base, instead of straight lines and sharp corners, the box was fused with the ground, rooted solidly into the pinkish-orange substrate from which the coral structures arose.
Rose, still giggling, ran a reverent hand down the flat panneled door. "Oh you brilliant thing," she said happily. The windows were not glass, but flat stretches of what could only be wood. She and Tony circled the structure, examining it from every angle. There was no light on top, but the shape of a small fixture where one should be.
"Suppose she must've seen it in my head, what I thought a TARDIS should look like." Rose felt a thrill of happiness at the sight of the wooden box. It was entirely the wrong colour, but it still drew up from within her a bubble of hope and unparalleled joy. "Tony, I'm starting to think this might actually work."
He turned to her, his face split in a wide grin. "Can we try again? Please, Rose?"
The smile on her own full lips matched his own and she ran back into the TARDIS, giddy with excitement. "No time like right now!"
As she stepped towards the console, something struck her as different. They had been outside only minutes, but something had changed. The mushroom-shaped growth of coral that had made up the console now shone with a dull gleam, like poorly polished metal. The smooth curves and sweeping lines now had edges, and a bar circled the circumference of the console. It occurred to Rose that having something to actually hold on to might make the next trip a fair sight easier.
Tony had vanished down the corridor but returned just as Rose completed her examination of the changed console.
"Thought this might help so we don't get thrown around again," he said, handing her the wound bundle of rope they'd kept from the shuttle.
"Good plan. Doesn't do us any good to hit our heads, eh?"
She unwound the rope and looped it several times through the bar circling the console. She motioned Tony over and started to tie a rough harness around his chest and shoulders. "Are we going to try to make it through the Vortex?"
Rose was holding an end of the rope in her teeth as she wove a complicated knot at Tony's shoulder. She removed it carefully and looked up at him, "I don't think so. Seems like that might be a little harder than just popping here and there. We should probably get some practice moving about the planet before we try something that big."
His face fell and disappointment coloured the boy's soft features. "But I'm tired of waiting, Rose. I'm tired of waiting and worrying they're gonna find us. Can't we just try?"
"Tony, the Time Vortex is dangerous. It hurt us both just hours ago, we can't just go charging headlong into it."
"The Doctor would have," he muttered petulantly.
Rose took a deep breath, steadying herself. "The Doctor isn't here. It's just me and you, not some great bloody civilization with a billion years of time travel experience. I'm not a Time Lord."
"But what if I am?" he said quietly.
Rose's eyes went wide. "What?" she croaked.
"I looked into the Vortex. That's their initiation, isn't it? Maybe I can control her now. I saw time, Rose. I saw all of it, and I can feel it. Right in here," he put his hand on his chest. "What if I can direct us?"
"Tony, no. That's final. We'll try popping around the planet and then we're going to read John's notes and make sense of this and come up with a plan, alright?"
He said nothing, only nodded once, sulkily.
"Okay, then. Let's focus on the hill and try to get back there, yeah? Maybe we confused things by thinking of two different things last time."
She tied the final knot of her own makeshift harness and placed one hand on her TARDIS key, and one hand on the console as she had before. "Ready?"
Tony nodded and splayed his fingers across the greyish, gleaming stone that made up the console. He met Rose's eyes and with a grin shouted "Allons-y!"
Rose laughed loudly and closed her eyes, picturing the hill. The dewy grass after a rain, the smell of spices on the air and the humus of dead leaves and dried grasses that lined the ground beneath the trees. She could see the leaves, lit like fire at the rising of the suns, in her mind's eye. The gentle, curious probing of the ship's awareness caressed her mind and Rose felt it inspecting her foremost thoughts. She willed the ship to understand their destination, thinking of the old TARDIS' ability to be directed through time and space.
Beside her, Tony breathed steadily and softly. Rose's every cell was aware of the ship and the boy. Of the world spinning beneath them, of the stars circling above. She could feel the heartbeat of the planet below her feet, and the awareness of the corals that surrounded them, reaching out. With every ounce of her will, she urged the ship onward.
It took longer for the shaking to start, but Rose was glad of the rope when it did. The ship around them shuddered and bucked. She felt the rope cut into the soft skin at the neck of her shirt. Rose took her hand from the key and reached over for Tony's which she took in a tight grasp. She glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw the determined look on his face.
Take us back there, Rose called in her mind, focusing on the red grass-covered hill that bore a copse of trees they'd known as home for months. The steady, warm response of the ship filled her head, blocking out all sound, all light, except that which the overwhelming consciousness produced.
The hum of the TARDIS' answer rose in a spiralling crescendo of energy. Rose's eyes snapped open, unseeing. Notes of a million different pitches joined in with the TARDIS, a harmonious symphony of colour and sound that reached back through her mind. A finger of flame caressed the slumbering awareness and the world around her exploded into a golden cascade.
The console room erupted with light that was not light, and song that was not sound. An aura of golden light emanated from the two figures at the centre of the spiralling ship.
The TARDIS' roots reached deep into the black earth of Gallifrey; she reached for the roots of her sisters. Beneath the ground, a wave of resonance roared along a network of immeasurable age, a song of connection echoing across the surface of the planet. The TARDIS was one, but also many, a single branch of a grand awareness that reached out and became whole as the spark of sentience burned through every conduit.
A million million voices rose in unison and on one small beach on the edge of a silver sea, one small branch of the grand, unified consciousness breathed life into the being she found flickering at the back of her human's mind.
Fire swept through Rose's veins, but she was powerless to move her hands away from the console.
The storm of swirling light and sound and energy and reality shattered around her and condensed into a single gleaming stream which exploded into dust which settled on every surface, erasing the console room and leaving only a world of silent, white light as the shaking of the ship reached a crescendo and it felt as if the world would tear apart around them.
Rose screamed as the energy within her mind ripped outward in a wave of golden light.
The lights faded, the shaking settled, and the room returned to its normal state, all coral and stone. Rose slumped forward and slid sideways, away from the console, held awkwardly aloft by the ropes she had tied.
Tony untied himself as quickly as his hands would allow. His shaking fingers fumbled on the complicated knots Rose had tied to keep him safe, but after a moment he slid free of the bindings and rushed to Rose's side.
"Rose? Come on, Rose," he repeated as his hands worked. It took him longer to undo her harness, taught as the rope was from holding up her weight. She fell to the floor with a dull thump as he undid the last knot.
Tony sat cross-legged and pulled her head into his lap. "Rose? Can you hear me?" He passed his hand over her opened mouth and almost sobbed with relief when he felt the soft breath touch his fingers.
Her skin felt hot, so Tony set her gently down and ran for the galley to fetch a bowl of water and a cloth. It took him only a moment; when he returned she remained there, unchanged.
"This feel better, Rose?" he asked in a small voice as he ran a cool cloth over her face and arms. "Is that helping?"
As the minutes ticked by and she remained stubbornly unconscious, Tony's panic grew. He patted her cheek with his hand. "Come on, Rose. I'm sorry," his voice came out as a sob. "I'm sorry, this is my fault, please don't be cross with me." He hugged her awkwardly from where he sat. "Come on, just wake up."
Tears sprang to his eyes and he sniffed loudly in the room. "Wake up, please." His voice broke as he hiccupped a sob and the tears fell in earnest.
"Please don't leave me here alone," he gasped out between sobs. "Please wake up."
Minutes swirled into hours. Tony's voice ran raw as he begged her to wake. Her skin cooled to normal, and her breath came more easily, but still she did not rise. The boy curled into her side on the warm, smooth floor, hiccupping and sniffling as he continued to implore the only person he had left in all the worlds to come back to him.
"Why won't she wake up?" he asked no one. The ambient light in the room dimmed as the TARDIS hummed a sad note.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he sobbed as he fell into a fitful sleep beside the unconscious woman.