Back onboard the TARDIS, Rose reached out and laid her hands on the console. “I’m ready, sister,” she whispered. The TARDIS began the trip back to their universe, hoping that it would not kill Rose. She’d done her best to prepare the human girl for traveling but she had not anticipated winding up in a sealed-off parallel world. The Vortex pumps began moving and the machinery hummed. Rose opened her mouth and began singing. The music melded with the TARDIS, Rose’s own life-energy joining to open up the gateway between the universes so that the TARDIS could slip through.
Rose sang until her throat was raw and tears of pain trickled down her face. She threw her head back and sang louder, stopping only when she had to suck in another lungful of air. Her hands tightened on the console. She was unaware of the blood streaming out of her nose. Her head rang and her legs shook, threatening to deposit her on the metal grillwork floor. She leaned on her hands, using her arms to keep her upright as she sang more. She didn’t know what the words meant. She just remembered the haunting melody. It had guided her back to Satellite Five and the Doctor. Now, it was guiding her back to her own universe.
The trip seemed to last forever. Rose sang and sang, unaware of the golden light streaming out from between her eyelids. Her arms grew weak and blood began to mingle with tears flowing out of her eyes. The TARDIS gave a lurch as she passed through the barrier and Rose stumbled, falling to the ground. She tried to keep singing – she didn’t even know what she was singing or why – just that it felt right. The TARDIS’s control room seemed to be tilting and spinning. Rose couldn’t get her bearings to get back on her feet. She coughed, somewhat surprised to see blood on her hands after she pulled them away from her mouth. Her hazel eyes slid shut once more and she sighed.
The TARDIS feel silent. There was no song. There wasn’t even the sound of breathing or a single human heart beating.
Rose? Rose, wake up! Rose, don’t die! Don’t leave me here all alone! the TARDIS cried out. But Rose’s body couldn’t take the abuse. She was still too weak. So the TARDIS did something. Something forbidden by all of the laws of the Time Lords and the Guardians. She poured her own power into the human woman’s body. Subtle rays of radiation that would, in time, alter Rose’s DNA. Rose wouldn’t turn into a Time Lord but she would be something between human and Time Lord. Compatible with both but belonging to neither. It was the most the TARDIS could do. And it would save her sister’s life.
The eleven dimensional creature shuddered with relief as she felt Rose’s heart begin to beat once more. When the woman drew a deep, ragged breath, the TARDIS would have danced for joy had she a body like Rose’s. Still, the knowledge of what she had done frightened her. Even if she was the last TARDIS in existence, the Doctor would extinguish her. The laws forbade it.
That made it, simple, really. The Doctor would just have to remain ignorant. Forever.
~*~*~*~
Rose awoke a long time later. Her head felt heavy. Her arms and chest were covered with blood and the taste of metal and iron was thick on her tongue. But, she was alive. She would get better at this, she hoped.
“Sister?” she whispered. “Did we make it back?”
We did.
“Great. Think you could get me some aspirin and draw me a bath? My head is killing me and I really should wash up before I go anywhere. Where exactly are we, though?”
We’re in the Vortex in our own universe. I think you should take some time to rest before you make any trips. And, there are things you want to ask me and things you need to learn. I will help you, sister.
“Sure thing,” Rose agreed wearily. “First things first, I’m getting out of this French maid’s outfit and getting a bath. Then I want to eat some soup and I guess I’ll hit the library after that. Sound like a plan?”
Sounds like a plan, the TARDIS agreed quickly. Your bathtub is ready. You know how to use the washer and dryer, she chuckled. You didn’t set the laundry room on fire like the Doctor did every time he tried to launder that suit of his.
“Yeah, I finally gave up letting him do that and just told him to chuck his clothes in the hamper so I could do it for him,” Rose laughed. “Mum thinks I just pop back to her whenever I need the washing done but the truth is, I pop back to her because I’m sick of doing everyone else’s laundry as well as my own.”
Patting the console fondly, Rose headed off to take a bath, change, and then hit the books. She was going to get better at understanding all of the things she needed to know. Maybe then the Doctor wouldn’t think she was just another stupid ape. Maybe then…she could be something instead of nothing.
~*~*~*~
Rose munched absently on a banana. Books covering astrophysics, cosmological mechanics, temporal mechanics, and history were spread out before her. She didn’t know just how long she and the TARDIS had been hanging out in the Vortex but she could guess that it had been a few months at the very least. Rose grinned to herself as she read through the last chapter of temporal theory. She might not have taken her A levels before, but the TARDIS assured her that, were she to return to Earth and enter university, she could easily obtain at least five doctorates.
“Yeah, but that would mean revealing knowledge the human race isn’t supposed to know for a while,” Rose muttered. “So, I’ll just have to keep this to myself.” She had carefully avoided the books on human history beyond her own era. She had, however, read up on Gallifreyan history. As she read through the accounts of the Time War, her heart broke for the Doctor. He must have been so alone after that. She couldn’t find any information on him after the Time War, though. She guessed that she must have been his first companion after that.
How she missed the first Doctor. He was all rough around the edges but she had loved him. She liked to imagine that he was still around, somewhere in the TARDIS. She would grin to herself when she imagined him coming into the library, seeing her poring over these tomes. She would be able to answer most of his questions. Then he would be proud of her. Then, he might love her back.
But no, she sighed. He would always have gone to Reinette. Reinette was elegant and beautiful and learned. Rose Tyler was just a jumped-up shop girl.
“Still, we’d better go and get him before he talks himself into a beheading,” Rose sighed. The TARDIS thrummed, disagreeing slightly. “He might be too full of cheek for his own good,” Rose laughed, “but I rather like this particular head of his. He’s got great hair.”
There was a long moment of quiet while the two girls shared silent companionship. Then Rose sighed, rubbed her eyes, and asked one of the questions that were nagging at her.
“Sister…could you make it so that I could sense when something was…off? The Doctor probably would have picked up on the Cybermen straight away. And he probably would have been able to figure out a cleaner way to deal with them. Maybe even to save them. But I couldn’t.”
The Time Lords’ ability to sense a wrongness came from their being born so close to the Untempered Schism, Rose. I cannot give you that any more than I could give him your sense of mercy and your imagination. Time Lords know much…but they imagine little. The Doctor was…is something of an exception and only because he has spent so much time on your world. Even then, he cannot dream of the things you dream of. He cannot hope the way you hope. He cannot stretch his mind out to things he believes are impossible and obtain them in spite of what he believes.
I can no more teach you to read the lines of time than I could teach him to know the true meaning of Shakespeare’s plays or feel the emotions of Edgar Allan Poe’s words. He could come to understand them in time – even find beauty in them. But your own native human understanding will always surpass his.
“But then…how am I to know what to do? The Doctor always knew what to do. I feel useless without him.”
Study and learn more, Rose. Teach yourself all that you can. And then…when you find yourself in an impossible situation…call on me, sister. Together, we can accomplish anything.
~*~*~*~
“Say, TARDIS,” Rose muttered as she went over some mechanical schematics. Her memory had begun to improve and she spent every minute she wasn’t sleeping studying. It amazed her just how much information she could retain and how quickly she was learning new things.
Yes, Rose?
“Could you help me build a sonic screwdriver?”
No need, the TARDIS giggled. The Doctor has a spare one. You should take it with you. Sonic screwdrivers can be extremely useful.
“Hope it has an owner’s manual I can look through,” Rose muttered. “The one he keeps with him has a lot of settings. Where’s his spare?”
In his bedroom. It’s in the sock drawer in his dresser. Second drawer from the top.
“I’ve never been in his room. He’ll probably go mental at me for even thinking about going into his room,” Rose frowned. “I won’t stay long, though, and I suppose he might view borrowing his spare sonic as a good enough reason. Show me the way?”
Rose followed the TARDIS’s guiding lights to a room that was just a door away from her own. She wondered if the TARDIS had moved the rooms closer together – she certainly could never recall if they had been side-by-side like this before he’d left. Not that it mattered, really. She hadn’t slept in her room in ages now. She’d considered asking the TARDIS to just delete it – the pallet she’d made up in one of the storerooms off the side of the library was sufficient for a woman of her station in life. Sighing gustily, she pushed open the door to his room and then stepped inside.
The room took her breath away. His scent filled her head. Almost, Rose could believe that he was in there taking a nap. His bed was massive with dark wood posts covered in elegant carved script. She could recognize some of it from her study. It was Gallifreyan.
Not that she was going to stand there long enough to translate it. Giving herself a shake and firmly resisting the urge to bury her face in one of his pillows just to breathe in his wonderful scent, she located the dresser. Opening the second drawer from the top, she rummaged around until she’d found the spare sonic screwdriver. Rose tucked it into her pocket, straightened the drawer, and then left the room.
“Sister,” she said quietly once back in the hallway. “Lock that door and don’t let anyone other than the Doctor in there. Not even me. Oh and…” she chewed her lip worriedly before making her final decision, “delete my room or move it to the bilge or whatever. I live in the library storeroom now. That’s more than good enough for me.”
“Now he can give Reinette the room next to his,” she thought quietly. “They’ll both like that.”