Disclaimer: Characters belong to RTD and the BBC. Alas. I'm just borrowing them. No infringement intended.
This story was written for the wendymr and dark_aegis's Rose Tyler Ficathon. I wrote this fic for kiarasayre, who wanted 1. Nine (somehow--can be a reference, multi-Doctor fic, full-on participation, whatever), 2. Bad Wolf reference of any kind, and 3. In honor of the late SG-1, a reference to Egypt and/or Egyptian mythology and no smut. Massive thanks and kudos to ladycallie, who is a wonderful beta, and an amazing, patient friend. This piece continues to be ana amzing journey to write. I thought whatever I wrote for the Ficathon would be a one shot, a brief story, but The Bad Wolf and the topic of Egyptian mythology sent me in a research frenzy, and this has turned into quite possibly, the most epic story I've ever written.
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All That Is Eternity and Everlastingness by Queen_Gwenyvere [Reviews - 51]  Chapter or Story Author's Notes: | |
Rose Tyler dreams in gold. Warm, safe, loving gold. It is brilliant and all consuming. She looks down at her hands and sees more gold streaming from her hands, pulsing from her skin. She is emanating gold. Everywhere gold, everywhere warmth, everywhere love, everywhere song. There is an exquisite beauty to it that she does not think she can express in words. She feels as though she is swimming, floating along on a crest of flames. She expects to burn, to be scorched, to be engulfed by the flames, but instead it buoys her, protects her.
There is solid ground beneath her feet as the crest delivers her to her destination, in the way the ocean eventually returns swimmers to shore.
“Rose.”
Everything around her is black, dark, and yet she knows she is still pulsing the gold light. She knows she shimmers.
“Rose.”
That voice. So familiar; a balm and a knife both.
“Lots of planets have a north.”
She opens her mouth, tries calling his name, but she has no voice. Desperately, she searches for him. Where is he?
“Rose.”
She spins around and gasps. The darkness recedes and everything comes into focus with frightening clarity. She is on the Game Station.
“What have you done?!”
He stands before her exactly as she last saw him–an angel in black: leather jacket, boots, jeans, jumper, big ears, big nose–him. He is here, calling to her.
“You won’t see me again. Not like this. Not with this daft old face.”
Rose reaches for him, feeling tears well behind her eyes. He looks as though he is in pain. She smells dust, death–like sour milk and burning hair and loneliness. For nineteen years, she never knew that loneliness and pain had aromas, and now she knows them as intimately as she knows the scent of her own perfume.
They are on the Game Station. Satellite Five. Floor 500.
Jack. “You are worth fighting for.”
Daleks. “EX-TER-MINATE!”
The Emperor. “I am God of all things!”
The Delta Wave. “Your head gets barbequed!”
The Doctor, sending her away. “Rose Tyler, you’re a genius!”
She hears singing, a distinct voice, a woman, haunting her, calling out to her, loving her.
“See you in Hell,” Oh Jack…
The Doctor steps towards her, his arms outstretched, as though to embrace her.
“Come ‘ere. I think you need a Doctor.”
Behind her, Rose hears a growl. Spinning, she sees a wolf, gray with teeth bared, its eyes shimmering the golden light. Her heart pounds. She looks at it and is surprised to find the wolf returning her gaze. It looks almost melancholy, oddly familiar, like it knows her. It knows.
The singing intensifies. It is beautiful.
It is a dirge.
Suddenly, the wolf snarls and races forward, pouncing on the Doctor. Rose screams a warning, or tries to, but still no sound comes. As she watches, helpless, the wolf attacks the Doctor, biting viciously at his throat. He tries to fight the creature, but it is too strong, though it is a thin, small creature–funny, she always thought wolves were Big. It tears at his throat, its claws ripping at his chest, ravaging him as though it wants to crawl inside him–Granny and Red were swallowed down the gullet of the wolf and the woodsman saves them; the woodsman isn’t supposed to swallow the wolf, Rose thinks, a song of a nursery rhyme from her childhood spinning through her mind. “Mother said straight ahead/Don’t delay or be misled.”
The Doctor screams, and the sound sears itself in her mind, a nightmare to haunt her nightmares.
Before Rose’s eyes, the Doctor dies at the jaws of the wolf.
The wolf climbs off the Doctor, blood coating its muzzle and chest. Rose tenses, expecting it to turn and attack her, to decimate her the way it has destroyed him. Instead, it does a curious thing. It begins to whimper and nuzzle the Doctor, as though it is a Beloved Pet trying to wake its Master. It makes a mournful keening noise, crying to match Rose’s own tears.
Suddenly, the world is gold again. Gone are the dust and death, the stripped wires and flickering monitors of Floor 500; they are replaced by the wave of fire, consuming Rose and the Doctor both–a funeral pyre of sorts. This time though, the fire does not soothe.
There is pain.
“You’re gonna burn!”
Again, Rose tries to scream and again, speech eludes her. She is trapped in a silent prison of fire and pain, of light and flame. When it finally ends, after an eternity or mere seconds, the wave has left them on a different shore.
It is silent. The singing is gone. So is the pain. The gold is gone too. Rose looks down at herself and sees only pale skin. Everything is gone.
Where her old Doctor once lay, clothed in black and bathed in blood, her new Doctor lies. He is wearing his own suit of armor–pinstripes and trainers. He looks to be asleep.
The wolf sleeps also, its head on the Doctor’s chest. He appears to be in no danger. The wounds the wolf wrought appear to be fully healed.
Of course they would be, she thinks. He’s regenerated.
“Rose.”
She turns. It’s him. Her First. The man who grabbed her hand–“Run!”–for whom she swung over fire, who brought her out of the darkness and into the light, who gave her life, who showed her that love and pain feel so similar it is common to mistake the one for the other.
“Doctor!” She looks around. “Where are we?”
He smiles, all teeth and madness. Oh, how she misses him. In spite of herself and the fact that she’s grown to care as much for the Man Who Sleeps as she did for the One She Lost, she goes to him, lets him take her in his arms. She buries her face in his chest, inhaling musk and cloves and him. He smells of dust and death and loneliness too and she tries to remember if that scent was always there, or if she is only dreaming it.
“I missed you,” she breathes, pulling back slightly to look at him.
He shrugs, his face inches form hers.
She frowns. His expression is bizarre–he looks like he’s stoned, eyes wide pools of inky pupils, face slack. “Doctor?”
His mouth crushes hers and once again she is unable to speak. He holds her to him in a vice-like grip and this is not a kiss of passion of longing; it is a punishment.
It feels like he’s sucking out her soul.
Somehow, she wrenches away from him, crying out as she is awash in a fresh pain. She turns to the other Doctor–“New new Doctor”–for protection, but he is still asleep. To her shock, curled with him is….her? Her and the wolf. She is molded to him like a lover, her head pillowed on his right shoulder, her hand over one of his hearts, and the wolf is curled up on his left, its paw covering his other heart. Two hearts–one for her and one for the wolf?
She is confused.
A hand on her shoulder.
“You did this,” he says, her Northern Star, his voice gentle. Everything about him seems gentle now, peaceful almost. “You killed me.”
She gapes. “What? How?” She feels trapped, insane. “No! I tried to help you!”
“You killed me,” he says again, simply, as though he is reciting a list of chores. Then his face hardens into a mask of anger. “You saved me.” He’s nearly growling.
“But you just said I killed you!” Rose protests, backing away from him like prey cornered by its predator. “How can I have killed you and saved you? It’s impossible.”
“No it’s not.” Another voice. Her new Doctor. Her trainer and specs-wearing, orally fixated old new love best mate. He smiles at her and she feels her terror ebb. His smile has always been enough to chase away her fear. Oh how he has smiled more since…since becoming….since becoming.
“You killed me,” he says.
“And you saved me,” the other finishes, no longer angry. They both stand before her and she is so full of love she wishes to die.
“How?” she asks, suddenly aware that the singing has begun anew. It is a hymn, a celebration.
They point. She looks and sees herself, asleep with the wolf, her head pillowed on its stomach. They both look so peaceful, so innocent. Harmless.
“The Bad Wolf,” her past says. “She sleeps.”
Her present wiggles his eyebrows in the way she has come to find endearing. “But soon she will wake.”
She feels herself being pulled away from them and wonders what face her future will wear.
~*~
Rose gasped and sat up straight in bed, her eyes flying open like snapped up window shades. She was drenched in sweat, despite wearing only a thin t-shirt. As she tried to catch her breath and calm her raging heartbeat, she took in her surroundings. Lavender walls; plush heather-gray carpet that she can sink her toes into like sand; dresser littered with trinkets from times gone by and worlds not yet formed; indigo-skirted vanity cluttered with makeup bottles, with tubes and compacts, gels and creams, the accoutrements of her sex, protection; oak vanity overflowing with clothes and shoes; four poster bed with a queen sized mattress and sheer purple curtains and pink and purple bed linens and loads of pillows–her room on the TARDIS, the room the TARDIS fashioned for her, a place meant to be a haven, a place to find rest.
Rose ran a hand through her newly-shorn blonde mane. The dream had been so vivid, seemed so real; she could still smell the blood, hear the Doctor’s–her first Doctor’s–screams, smell the age in his leather jacket, feel the punishment of his lips on hers. She remembered the fire, first cradling her, then consuming her, lapping at her skin and bringing with it a pain the likes of which she had never before known. Her skin tingled as though she’d had a mild electric shock.
With a sigh, Rose kicked off her tangled covers and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The mattress and box spring were so high that, despite her average height, her toes barely brushed the carpet–she felt like a little girl. She pushed herself off the bed and padded across the lush carpet, removing her dressing gown from the wardrobe. Grabbing a large, soft towel, Rose headed for the bathroom.
When she first came on board the TARDIS, she had shared a bathroom with the Doctor, but he’d made such a fuss that she took to long in there doing “girly things,” that the TARDIS created a private bath in Rose’s room–whether it was for her benefit or the Doctor’s, Rose had never quite discerned. The benefits were probably mutual.
She turned the water on full blast, as hot as she could stand it, hotter. Shedding her sweat-soaked T-shirt and shimmying out of her knickers, Rose stepped beneath the blistering spray, gasping slightly as it burned her skin. She reached out and turned on the cold water, just enough so as not to be scalded, and then luxuriated in the heat and the pounding water. Bracing her hands against the smooth ivory tile, she bowed her head beneath the spray, moaning slightly as she let the water work a few kinks out of her neck. She turned and the water cascaded down her face. Reaching for the bottle of apple blossom-scented shampoo that she had bought at a bizarre on Lerappa IV, Rose began to lather her hair.
She still wasn’t quite used to having shorter locks. She’d spent so much time growing it out, getting regular trims so as not to get split ends, and deep conditioning it once a week. But that was before she met the Doctor and spent a good portion of her bathing time washing out the soot, debris, goo, and assorted bodily fluids of assorted aliens bent on galactic domination that long hair had become somewhat of a nuisance. She’d made the decision to cut her hair Christmas night, as she stood in her mother’s flat under the spray of the shower washing away the ash of the disintegrating Sycorax ship–no longer her flat, her Estate; it was her mother’s flat, the Estate her mother lived on that Rose visited whenever she got a chance. Her childhood home was no longer her home, perhaps had never been her home. Her home was the TARDIS, was by the Doctor’s side. She tried not to think of what she might have to endure should she ever have to re-acclimate to an Earthbound existence–she’d seen Sarah Jane’s pain at being left by the Doctor, being forced to resume a “normal” life after seeing so many splendors.
Rose shuddered at the thought as she rinsed the lather from her hair. She hadn’t told anyone she was cutting it off–not her Mum, not Mickey, not the Doctor. She’d simply gone to Shireen’s and left a half hour later with nearly ten inches less hair. She felt freer, lighter. New Rose for the New Doctor. He’d been in the TARDIS, tinkering on some pan dimensional whatchamawhoseit when she’d slipped inside.
“Well?” she had asked, once she’d finally garnered his attention. Old body or new, he was still a bloke obsessed with tools and fixing things that probably didn’t need to be fixed.
He had placed his tool on the console and walked over to her. He’d said nothing at first, simply run his fingers through the newly-shorn mane. She remembered the look of intensity on his face, how it looked as though he was studying her. Maybe he was comparing her to her old look, her old safe.
“You have less hair,” he’d observed, clever as ever.
Before she’d even realized what she was doing, Rose had found herself reaching out and lightly touching his hair. “And you have more,” she’d said.
“That’s alright then, isn’t it?” He had grinned.
She’d matched his smile. “Yup.”
Rose lifted a bottle of conditioner off the shelf when she heard a knock at the door. Gasping in surprise, she nearly dropped the full plastic container on her foot.
“Rose?” She heard him call from behind the door. “You alright?”
“Aside from you scaring me to death and me nearly breaking my foot with my bottle of cream rinse?” she replied, not bothering to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” he hollered. “I just–look, do I have to shout or may I come in?”
She shrugged, and then felt foolish for doing it, since he couldn’t see her. “Guess so. The curtain’s pulled.”
She heard the door open. “You won’t be giving me a show then?” he asked cheekily.
“Oi, not this early in the morning!” she replied, now unable to keep the mirth from her voice. She loved this bit about them, the banter, how easy it was to talk to him, to find simple fun in things. Resuming her original task, Rose poured a dollop of conditioner onto her palm and began massaging it into her hair.
“Apple blossom?” the Doctor asked, his voice sounding as though he was standing just on the other side of the curtain.
“Yup,” she replied, reaching for her shower gel and puff. “I got it on–“
“Lerappa IV, I remember. Jack wanted to go there and have you try their HyperNuetella crepes.” His voice sounded light, joyous at the memory.
“He said they would give me a ‘foodgasm,’” she replied.
“Jack loved ending any word in ‘gasm.’”
Rose laughed, but it hurt. Oh, how it hurt, the pain in her chest, the ache left by the absence of her friend, her sweet, handsome, loyal, brave friend. The Doctor said he was “busy rebuilding the Earth,” but Rose didn’t know how he could know that, or why the Doctor would have left him behind. Jack had said goodbye to them. He’d kissed them both goodbye. Rose knew he was dead–the Doctor wouldn’t have left him behind otherwise. She hoped. After Sarah Jane, she wasn’t so sure.
“Is that what you’re going to do to me? Just leave me behind?”
“No, not to you.”
“See you in hell.”
Oh Jack…She’d lost them both to the Daleks
“Rose?” The Doctor sounded concerned. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
.
She sighed, leaning her head against the tiled wall. She shivered as her damp skin pressed against the coolness of the wall. “Why do you ask?” Rose noticed how tired she suddenly sounded.
She watched the Doctor’s shadow move behind the plastic shower curtain. He’d perched himself on the edge of her sink. She heard him sigh. “The TARDIS. She…she told me you had a nightmare.” His voice sounded as though he was committing a betrayal.
Rose looked at the bathroom ceiling, as thought she expected to see some sort of physical representation of the TARDIS looking down at her. For good measure, she rolled her eyes anyway. Sometimes she wished the old girl would keep things to herself.
“It was nothing,” she said firmly, setting about the task of rinsing her hair. She let the water pound furiously on her head, muffling any argument he may have been making.
Suddenly, the curtain was yanked back and she yelped. He was standing there, plain as day, seemingly unmoved by the fact she was standing wet and naked in front of him. She gaped at his presumption and lack of respect for privacy. The look on his face was one of concern and utter seriousness. Whatever the TARDIS had told him, it wasn’t that she’d just had a bad dream. The old girl must have told him how terrified Rose had been–she knew it just by looking at him.
“Doctor!” she screamed furiously. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rose grabbed at the curtain, yanking it back across her soapy body.
“I was trying to have a perfectly pleasant conversation with you, but you so rudely tried to ignore me,” he said, sounding nonplussed.
“I’m taking a shower!” she protested. “You can’t just barge in ‘ere and demand answers to things that are none of your business, then go about invading my bathtub just because I’m not answering when you’d like me to!”
“Fine.” His eyes darkened and he released his grip on the shower curtain. “Finish up and get dressed, then meet me in the console room. We’ve been getting a distress signal. I want to go investigate.”
Rose frowned. “How long have you been picking up the signal?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Half an hour, maybe.”
“So why aren’t we there already?”
He looked away. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Now it was her turn to look away. She almost felt bad for yelling at him, even though he did barge in on her shower where she was perfectly quietly trying to forget a very disturbing dream. “I’ll be out in a mo.”
He nodded and she watched him turn to leave the steam-filled bathroom.
“Doctor?” Her voice trembled and more memories of the dream washed over her. Fire and blood and the wolf and him dying and him living and them together and with her and warning her and gold and singing and pain and…
“Yes Rose?” He looked at her, eyes no longer full of anger. All she had to do was tell him…
She shook her head, shaking the memories away. “Never mind.” She smiled slightly and pulled the curtain closed. She waited until she heard the door close with a soft click, then slumped against the wall, letting out a ragged breath. “Stupid,” Rose muttered, banging the back of her head lightly against the wall repeatedly.
As the water beat around her, she heard their voices in her head, her Doctors warning her.
“The Bad Wolf, she sleeps.”
“But soon she will wake.”
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