When we were back at the station, the Doctor was immediately on the move.
"Turn everything up! All transmitters, full power, wide open, now!" When he saw the workers just stare at him, "Do it!"
"What will that do?" Mickey inquired from where he was sitting at the computers. He had stayed behind with Lynda and to monitor the station while we were gone.
"Stop the Daleks from transmatting on board. It won't stop them for long, but it will slow them down."
Planet Earth was still a sitting duck, especially after ignoring the warnings from the Satellite.
"Lynda." The Doctor turned toward the young woman standing beside Mickey, the Doctor's lips pursed before he stared down one of the workers. "I told you to evacuate everyone on board."
Lynda stood in solidarity by Mickey's side, "I didn't want to leave Mickey behind."
I looked at how she placed a hand and Mickey's shoulder and gave her a smile.
Mickey looked almost bashful despite the dire situation.
I would have to hear about how those two got together, once we were all safe though.
"There's not enough shuttles left, Doctor. We've been trying to figure out what to do about the hundred trapped on Floor 0."
The other spoke up, "Oh my God, the fleet is moving. Its trajectory is heading toward Earth."
I looked to the Doctor, "What do you need?"
The Doctor was pacing between the Floor 500 grates pulling them free and pulling out wires, hoses and misc parts.
"They've made a big mistake leaving me here. Can anyone guess? Anyone? What have they left me with?"
"A transmitter?"
"That's right. Can anyone guess what that means? Can you?" The Doctor was nearly manic with how he tore through the wiring.
Jack sputtered, "You've got to be kidding. A Delta Wave?"
"Give the man a medal." The Doctor's eyes were wide with what looked like excitement but I could see how his left eye was just a lil wider as if trying to stop tears. He was fighting himself, even as he tried to find a way to fight the Daleks.
"How can I help?" I repeated myself.
"What's a Delta Wave?" Mickey asked.
Jack answered, "A wave of Van Cassadyne energy. Stand in the way of a Delta Wave and your head gets barbecued."
"This place can transmit a massive wave. Wipe out the Daleks." The Doctor spoke excitedly.
The TARDIS's song warbled worriedly in my head.
"Problem is, a wave this size, building this big, brain as clever as mine, should take ooh..." he pondered and tore open more ducts, "about 3 days." He looked over at those at the computers, "How long til the fleet arrives?"
"22 minutes."
I dove into the mess and started to follow the doctor's lead by stripping the wires and reconnecting them to the routes he pointed to. Jack went and came back with the extrapolator, which he plugged into the station's mainframe.
"With the extrapolator in place we have a forcefield. I can only concentrate the extrapolator on the top six levels, 500 to 495."
"Meaning the Daleks can still enter manually through the lower floors."
"Well they can try." Jack checked his gun.
"Jack."
He ignored my look.
"The guards had guns with bastic bullets, that's enough to blow a Dalek wide open."
I knew he was fibbing.
I hadn't known him long but long enough to know that the more confident he sounded in crisis the more he was flying by the seat of his pants.
"Rose, Mickey. I could use your help stripping the wires."
I watched as Lynda pulled her hand from Mickey's as he went to answer the Doctor's call.
"I'm going with them." She pointed to the small group grabbing guns and readying themselves to leave Floor 500.
Mickey shook his head, "No, I don't like the look of this."
Lynda gave him a smile, "I've always sat, mindin' my own business Mickey. I don't want to do that anymore."
"Then I'm going with you."
"Mickey." I called him.
He looked at Lynda, "I know what you mean." He then looked at me, "It's about time I protected you, Rose."
He stepped away and wrapped an arm around Lynda, "I'm terrified."
"Me too, but that doesn't mean its not worth it."
Jack called over, "If you are coming, into the lift and isolate the lift controls."
I went to follow but a voice whispered in my head 'stay'.
I watched my brother go and then looked down at the Doctor.
"Stay Rose, he needs you." Mickey spoke up, looking back.
"Doctor, keep her safe."
The Doctor nodded in return.
Jack came up to me and the Doctor.
"It's been fun, but I guess this is goodbye."
"Don't you dare."
Jack put his hands on my cheeks, "Rose, you are worth fighting for."
I bit my lip as I tried to stop myself from getting emotional and Jack gave a little groan before resting his forehead against mine then giving both my cheeks a peck.
Jack rocked back and looked like he was gonna go in for my lips but I gave him a mock glare and he let out a laugh before turning to the Doctor.
"Wish I'd never met you, Doctor. I was much better as a coward."
Hands on the Doctors cheeks and my eyes widened as Jack went in for a goodbye smooch. He waved his hand as he left, "See you in hell."
We had been working only for a couple of minutes when the Doctor spoke up.
"The TARDIS could take us away. We could leave. Let nature take its course." He looked up, his gaze connecting with mine, "But you won't, will you?"
"Even if my brother and Jack weren't out there fighting, never!"
Sounds of something booting up and the Doctor sprung up running towards the computers.
"The Delta Wave is booting up."
"How long?"
The Doctor hung his head.
"Ok, long." I tapped my fingers against the desk before stopping,
"How about the TARDIS could she boost the signal somehow. Quicken it?"
His head hung lower until his shoulders suddenly tensed and he jumped up.
"Rose Tyler, you are a genius!" he kissed my forehead, "If I use the TARDIS to cross my own timeline...Yes!"
I let out a giggle at his joly expression but my smile faltered as he pulled me into the TARDIS.
He wouldn't, would he?
"Hold that down!" He put my hands on a lever, "Hold that position."
I was scared, "Doctor, don't leave..."
"Just hold it and everything will work out. I promise." He was fiddling on the other side of the TARDIS and the song was growing urgent in my head.
A hallway of doors in my mind were shaking as if in anxious anticipation.
"If I'm very clever and I'm more than clever, I'm brilliant. I might just save the world, or rip it apart."
"I'd go for the first one."
"Me too." He flashed a grin, his gaze intent on me. "Hold on! I've just got to go and power up the game station."
As soon as he turned away he was sprinting out of the TARDIS and as soon as her doors closed her engines began to move.
A voice in my mind whispered, 'Rule #1: The Doctor lies.'
I caught a wisp of an emotion: apology full of righteousness. He had to be projecting in order for me to feel it.
I cried out, "Doctor!"
I let go of the lever and ran toward the door,
"I promised I'd never leave you. Let me out! Let me out!"
The Doctor's voice sounded behind me and I turned to find a hologram of him staring with that intense look of his as if he could actually see me and he wasn't just a recording.
"This is Emergency Program 1. Rose, now listen, this is important. If this message has been activated it could only mean one thing. We must be in danger and I mean fatal. I'm dead or about to die at any moment..."
"You stupid, stupid..." I let out a cry, "Why can't you ever listen to me?"
"That's ok, hope its a good death. I can't let you die, not here, not now. You must get to safety. The TARDIS is taking you home."
"No." I whispered I could barely see him through my tears, "You're my..."
"The TARDIS can never return for me. Emergency Program 1 means I'm facing an enemy that should never get their hands on this machine."
I ran to the console, "Sexy isn't a machine, she's more than that."
I felt her respond back to me.
"Let the TARDIS die."
I shook my head, "No, I can't do that."
"If you want to remember me, just do one thing. Rose," The hologram turned its head toward me, "Have a good life. Do that for me Rose. Have a fantastic life."
"I will." I stared at that familiar bittersweet smile, "But you aren't going to like how I do it."
I gave a wry smile in turn, "It was never your decision to make."
He faded from view and the TARDIS landed.
I closed my eyes for a moment, I sat upon the pilot's chair and in my mind I walked through the corridor of my Mind Palace.
I opened the first with no resistance and I gasped as a flood of memories from another time and place flooded my mind. Tears poured down my face and I startled as I heard a knock on the TARDIS's doors.
"I suppose I should say goodbye."
My mum's arms were warm and she patted my back as I cried.
"Let's get you something to eat."
I shook my head, "Mum, if I changed. If I wasn't your Rose anymore would you still love me?"
"What are you going on about then?"
We came to sit on a bench in front of the skatepark not far from where the TARDIS had parked.
"I have to do something, but it'll change me. But it's the only way to save the Doctor and Mickey."
"Now you listen to me, Rose Tyler." Jackie Tyler held me out in her arms, "Being a mum isn't about picking and choosing' the parts of your children to love. Will you still be the babe that said 'mum' as your first word? The little girl who would save up every pound so she could get her own science magazine subscription? The young woman who stayed by my side making me tea and biscuits through every heartbreak?"
I nodded.
"Then no matter what happens to you. You'll still be my Rose."
I fell back into her arms, "You always know the right thing to say."
My mum raised her head proudly with a smile, "I'm pretty great, yeah?"
"Absolutely fantastic!" I wiped my eyes with the edge of my scarlet blouse's sleeve.
Jackie held my hand, "You'll always come back to me, won't you?"
"Always."
I looked out across the empty asphalt yard and my eyes caught something strange.
Yellow and white chalk that when I stood and viewed it from a little more distance wrote out, 'Bad Wolf'.
I looked across the way and graffiti on a fence 'Bad Wolf' and another door in my mind opened.
"Bad Wolf"
My mum came up behind me, "What is it?"
"A sign that I can do it. I can save them. If I become the Bad Wolf." I whispered then kissed my mum on the cheek, "I have to go."
"Be safe, Rose."
I stepped into the TARDIS.
"Alright, Sexy, how do we do this?"
'Open the doors'
I sat by the TARDIS's heart beneath the console and closed my eyes. I opened the rest of the doors in the corridor.
A life lived long ago in another world and dimension.
A life lived in routines, enslaved to the very thing I'd loved dancing. Caught by a man that would never let me go, who was far too obsessed with perfection.
Only feeling free when I lived the life of a ultra-modern Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich to fund humanitarian efforts alongside my 'sisters' I'd met along the way.
The final door was opened and I met the 'social workers' again.
"Took you long enough. Now its time for your inheritance."
The symphony of Time was thunderous in my head, so loud I thought it would kill me.
And then it was if a dam broke and I couldn't feel anything, not even the pounding of my own heart.
I felt the stinging heat spreading out from my brain out through every nerve in my body, my eyes fluttering open to see my skin shimmering. I felt like I was going to burst every part of me from my pores to my toes felt like it was burning.
A Starling had starlight infused in their consciousness into their very being, a wave of energy burst from me.
The world went dark and then golden.
I opened my eyes to a sea of golden light and a familiar voice spoke from it.
A being of light particles formed, feminine, her arms wide open as if to embrace me.
"Hello sister"
I knew who she was like the song that seemed to have been infused into my very soul.
"Hello Sexy"
A breath of warm air embraced me and the burning from before calmed, the warmth growing comfortable around me. Invigorating, flooding me with energy. I felt as if I could do anything.
"At last I won't be alone."
"Never again" I stepped forward and embraced her, a long sigh escaped her. I saw flashes of ages of loneliness, of joy, of heartbreak but most of all freedom.
"Promise to be my family, my Bad Wolf."
"I promise."
I was enveloped in golden light. It was like jumping into a hot spring.
The warmth, no longer painful, seeped into my pores, into my soul and my very sense of self.
All of me filled to the brim with golden light.
"Now we can save my thief together."