Doctor Who: Fanfic: A map of your heart

[m_findlow]

Title: A map to your heart
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Rose Tyler, Nine/Ten
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,101 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Doctor Who, Ten/Rose, The Bad Wolf stretching all across time" at fic_promptly
Summary: Rose will always find a way back to her Doctor

She felt so totally stupid she was beginning to wonder why The Doctor bothered with her at all. Here she was at the other end of the universe, sitting around eating chips with Mickey and her mum, feeling sorry for herself, whilst they discussed the relevant merits of one take out shop over another. She didn't care what Mickey or her Mum had to say about The Doctor, and how dangerous it was travelling with him. She wasn't stupid. She knew it was a little bit scary sometimes, but it was also brilliant and fun and crazy and wonderful. It had opened her eyes to things she'd never even begun to imagine, and she had been beginning to think that this was what she'd been destined for. Yes, the wasted years in school and the crappy jobs selling socks and hamburgers were just a temporary calm before the storm. The Doctor had meant to find her here, wasting away on Earth in boring, mindless monotony. She was meant for something more than this. She was meant to travel the universe with The Doctor and Jack, having adventures, helping people who needed helping, and stopping the bad guys from ruining it all.

Or so she'd thought.

Then The Doctor had pulled a one-eighty on her. She knew things were bad, with the daleks coming after them, killing everything in their wake, but it didn't matter. The Doctor had a plan and she and Jack were doing their utmost to help him. It wasn't over until The Doctor had given up hope, and The Doctor never gave up hope. Not ever.

Perhaps she should have known he'd try to save her. Perhaps he'd known that the plan was futile, or completely suicidal, but that didn't mean he had to send her away. She'd rather have died there with him than to come back to this boring existence. She loved her mum, but how could she sit there and say she was glad that The Doctor had saved Rose? Somewhere two hundred thousand years in the future The Doctor was in trouble, and there was nothing she could do. The Doctor had locked her out of the TARDIS controls, ensuring she was stuck here, insisting she let the TARDIS die and forget all about him.

Oh, but she'd been wrong. She hadn't opened her eyes and seen the signs. When they'd come back to Earth the last time, stopping the Slitheen from using the nuclear power plant to blow up Cardiff. It had been called Blaidd Drwg. He'd said it meant Bad Wolf. Then when they'd been stuck on the game station, it had been run by the Bad Wolf Corporation. And now, here she was, standing in the middle of an abandoned playground, with the words Bad Wolf painted in huge letters right across the ground. It was no coincidence. It was a sign. A sign meant for her, to tell her that there was a way back to The Doctor if only she could figure it out. Someone had spread the words across all of space and time to let her know.

Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf... but what did it mean? What was it trying to tell her exactly? When had she first seen the words? Margaret Slitheen. Maybe she knew, but she was nothing more than an egg now. She'd looked into the heart of the TARDIS and...

That's it! The Doctor might have locked the controls on the TARDIS, but he couldn't lock away its heart. Maybe if she could look into its heart the way Margaret had done, the TARDIS would know what she'd seen, know that she was meant to be with The Doctor and take her right back. It would know how much she loved him.

The heart of the TARDIS was so beautiful. It was like all of the life in the entire universe wrapped up in one glorious wash of light. It filled her so full she thought she might explode from it, but all the while, the TARDIS had looked inside her and seen how much she loved The Doctor, and how much she wanted to save him. The TARDIS could do that for her. Now it wasn't just the Bad Wolf stretching across time. She was the Bad Wolf. She saw the whole universe and she knew what she had to do, leaving herself little signs all throughout space and time so that she would always be able to find her Doctor. She would spread the words so that The Doctor would know she was there, always watching over him.

She returned to her Doctor just in the nick of time, seeing the horror of what was to become if she did nothing. She had the power, power that she had lead herself to, knowing that she had to use it to save them all. With barely a thought, she saw the daleks not as machines, but tiny little atoms; millions and billions of them. How could something so ugly as a dalek be so beautiful once you broke it down into all those tiny little fragments of life? This was the purpose they were meant to serve, to be reincarnated into something new, something good. Something her Doctor would be proud of.

Then she found Jack. His life force had been spent, but she had life - so much life - she could give it back to him, so that he could be whole again. The daleks had brought nothing but death, so she would bring nothing but infinite, wonderful life.

Then just as suddenly, all the light inside her began to burn. The Doctor was there in front of her. She'd found him and come to save him, but the pain was so much. How could anything so wonderful hurt so much?

'You looked into the time vortex. You can see everything all at the same time... That's what I see all the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?'

Yes, she could see it. Every moment she'd had with her Doctor, and every moment they would have for all of time. They were meant to be together, but she could feel the light draining out of her; all of time and space disappearing before her eyes.

She didn't remember any of it, but now she was standing here, and where her Doctor - her brilliant, wonderful Doctor - had been, stood another man. She'd followed all the Bad Wolf signs halfway across the universe and back again to save him and now he was gone. Or was he? She supposed only time would tell.