Chapter 4

Of course something happens on the day Rose is seeking out a relaxing day rather than an adventure. She lands on an abandoned planet which the Doctor told her years ago has calm and relaxing beaches and not even ten minutes later there is a strange crack on the side of the tall mountain. Though slightly tempted to just hop back into her TARDIS and leave this problem for after she actually relaxed, she not only knows she can't simply pass up an opportunity for a strange new adventure, but something familiar seems to be calling out to her from the light coming from the crack. It's as if she is meant to go through it. So instead of choosing the relaxing option, she decides to walk towards the light.

Once she is closer to the crack, she hears the TARDIS' melody. Not her TARDIS, the one the original Doctor gave her and late husband, but the original TARDIS. Her call is too intense for her to simply walk away from so she sends a mental apology to her own TARDIS and steps in the crack.

OoOoOoOoO

The heat is intense and it hurts so much. It feels as if a part of her is exploding. She wants to go back, but no; this may lead her back to the Doctor, to her universe. If she could scream she would, but she doesn't think she can. Or maybe she is screaming; she doesn't know. With every agonizing step she takes, though, the beautiful song of the TARDIS grows stronger in her head. She's almost there, she knows it. Just a few more steps and…

She tumbles out of the crack with a gasp and the frantically crawls away from the heat. 'Blimey, that was rough,' she thinks to herself. She sadly realizes that she can no longer hear the TARDIS. Looking around she seems to be in some sort of forest, but she hears a subtle rumble of an engine of sorts so she knows she's actually on a ship. It's not flying, however, and much of the power seems to be out, so perhaps it crashed. After a few breaths she gets up and starts to walk around.

It wasn't even two minutes of walking when she sees a redheaded woman trip and fall. The woman is surrounded by angel statues, but Rose knows they aren't just typical statues: those are Weeping Angels. She and the Doctor ran across them a few times back in Pete's Universe.

Instantly Rose starts to run to her. "Hey, are you alright?" She calls out to her. The girl unsurprisingly jumps at her voice.

"Who are you?" She's Scottish, Rose notes. The Scottish girl is frantically moving her hands on the ground looking for something, presumably the communicator that is near her. "Tell me who you are?" She demands, her voice a tad more fearful.

"It's alright, I'm here to help. Just tell me where you need to go and I'll make sure you get there safely," Rose says and she helps the girl to her feet. "We have to be quick, though." She notices that the girl is keeping her eyes shut, but Rose doesn't comment on it. She figures she has her reasons for keeping her eyes shut around Weeping Angels and, honestly, the reasons are not that important right now.

"Wait, I need the communicator. I don't know how to get there," the girl replies frantically.

"Amy? Amy, are you there?" An unfamiliar male's voice suddenly comes from the communicator. "Amy!" For some reason, though, despite never have hearing the voice before, it makes Rose's heart skip a beat. She takes a quick second to look at the girl, Amy, and sees she is wearing twenty first century clothing and she is starting to get more hopeful. Rose quickly returns her gaze towards the Angels.

"We have to go, Amy. Don't worry, I'll help you. You'll be safe, I promise." If Amy is who she thinks she is, if she is indeed one of the Doctor's companions, she will be damned if anything happens to her. She takes Amy's hand in hers and runs straight ahead. "Tell me where we are going."

"The, uh, the Primary Flight Deck," Amy says. Rose doesn't really know where that is so she just runs forward. She isn't paying attention to her surrounds other than what is in front of her and Amy, so she doesn't see the tall, gangly man coming from their right slightly ahead of them causing them they collide and tumble down.

"I'm so sorry!" she says as she bolts up and helps both him and Amy up to their feet and then grabs Amy's hand again intending to keep running. When she looks up at the man, though, she finds him staring at her with hope and disbelief in his eyes and his mouth hanging wide open. Another look at his eyes and she knows. She knows this is him: this is the Doctor. "Doctor?" She says lightly with a small smile.

"Doctor, is that you?" Amy says with hope and Rose feels Amy's hand twitch in hers. This shakes Rose out of her wonder long enough to remind her what was going on.

"Right then, off we go!" Rose says and grabs on to the Doctor's hand. She hears him gasp a little and Rose notes how their hands seem to still fit perfectly together. "I assume you know the way?" Rose prompts.

"Right! The Angels. Don't want to be killed by the Angels. That would be bad. Very not good, indeed," he says as he takes off in the correct direction. Rose was close in where she was originally headed, she notes to herself. She just needed to go a tad bit more to the right and she would've made it; lucky guess, that was. The Doctor shows them a little hatch in which they are supposed to go through and they all crawl in: Amy first, then the Doctor, and finally Rose.

"Oh, thank God, you're alright," she heard a woman's voice say after Amy crawls in. When she gets inside and closes the hatch behind her, Rose stands up. The woman who spoke before takes a sharp inhale when she sees Rose.

Rose grins at her, "I'm assuming you've met me before, then, yeah? Time travel, it's tricky business with meeting people." Rose winks at her. This really is pushing on that thought that she was meant to go through that glowing crack in the mountain, that she was meant to be back here with her Doctor.

"Oh, sweetie, you have no idea," the woman says with a grin.

"I have a feeling I'm going to like you," Rose says.

"River Song," she says holding out her hand. Rose instantly recognizes that name from one of the Doctor's stories: this is the woman from the library.

"Rose Tyler, though you already knew that," Rose replies, shaking River's hand.

"Rose Tyler?" Amy suddenly cuts in. "Doctor, isn't that the name you brought up when I said-"

"Quite right, Amy," the Doctor interrupts, stilling looking at Rose with amazement. "Quite right, indeed."

"Oi," Rose goes over to him and lightly smacks his arm for his interrupting Amy. "Still rude, I see. Also not ginger yet, huh?" Rose gives him a tongue touched grin. "Though I am loving the bow tie," she adds, tweaking it a little. "It's very cool."

The Doctor gives her a large, joyful grin, "Yeah! It is, isn't it? I thought so as well."

Suddenly alarms start to go off. "We'll catch up later, yeah?"

"Oh, definitely," the Doctor replies with grin firmly in place.

"What's those alarms?" River says, directing them back to the task at hand. The Doctor's face instantly goes a bit grim.

"The Angels are draining the last of the ship's power which means the shield's going to release." As he says this, the Doctor goes to stand closer to the shield, facing it. Rose takes a few steps to stand beside him and takes ahold of his hand, causing him to glance at her with a smile before facing the shield again. As the shield rises, they could see many angels standing in front of it. "Angel Bob, I presume," the Doctor says, taking one step closer.

"The time field is coming. It will destroy our reality." The voice seems to be that of a normal man's but it was coming from an Angel, the one holding a communicator to be exact. Rose obviously missed a lot and decides to ask about parts she's missed later when they were all back and safe on the TARDIS.

"And look at you all, running away. What can I do for you?"

"There is a rupture in time. The Angels calculate that if you throw yourself into it, it will close and they will be saved."

"Oh, like hell he will," Rose practically growled at 'Angel Bob.'

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, could do, could do that. But why?" The Doctor asked the Angel.

"Your friends would also be saved." The Doctor glanced at Rose.

"Well there is that."

Suddenly, River comes up to them and says to the Doctor, "I've traveled in time. I'm a complicated space-time event, too, throw me in."

"Oh be serious. Compared to me these angels are more complicated than you and it would take every single one of them to amount to me, so get a grip."

"How about me?" Rose suggests. Though she would really, really not want to end her adventure with this new Doctor now, she will not let him do whatever they were talking about. It seems as though it will kill him and she won't stand for it.

The Doctor's head snaps towards her. "No."

"Think about it. Whatever is going on, they need a 'complicated space-time event,' and what's more complicated than me, yeah? I've traveled through time and space for years, I've been in and out of parallel universes, multiple times might I add, and I've taken in the Time Vortex. I'd say I'm pretty complex." The Doctor's eyes widened at the Vortex thing and Rose knows it's because she isn't supposed to know about it. She doesn't actually remember any of what happened when she was filled with the Vortex. The Doctor just briefly explained to her what happened when they noticed she wasn't aging when everybody else was; he believed it may have something to do with her taking in the vortex all those years ago.

"The Angels say she would suffice," Angel Bob tells them.

"No. You are not going in and that's final," the Doctor says to her sternly. "Now get a grip."

"Doctor, if you think for one second that I would let you-"

"No, I mean it, Rose, River, Amy, get a grip."

River seems to know what he means as she says, "Oh, you're a genius." She then heads back to Amy and holds onto her and the panel. Rose then catches on and gets a strong grip on the bar beside her and the Doctor. She doesn't know why yet, though.

"Sir, the Angels need you to sacrifice yourself or your friend here now."

"The thing is, Bob, the Angels are draining all the power from this ship, every last bit of it. And you know what? I think they've forgotten where they're standing. I think they've forgotten about the gravity of the situation." Ah, so the ship must've crash landed in a way that when the artificial gravity turns off, everything falls into that crack she came from. 'Clever thinking, Doctor, as always' she thinks to herself with a smile. "Or to put it another way, Angels…"

A beeping starts up to signal the failing gravity and Rose hears River tell Amy, "You hold on tight and don't you let go for anything."

"Night-night," the Doctor says and grabs on to the bar as well.

Suddenly, their feet are pulled off the ground and the gravity is trying to pull them to the light. Rose's mind is suddenly elsewhere, in a place she hasn't thought of in ages. Instead of Weeping Angels being pulled into the white light, it's Daleks and Cybermen being sucked into the white light of the void. Rose's breath is suddenly caught in her throat and she can hardly breathe well anymore.

"Hold on!" She can hear the faint cry of the Doctor in her memory. "Just hold on!"

"I don't want to leave again," she whispers out loud in reply to the memory. She feels wetness on her face and assumes she is crying. She feels the Doctor, the current Doctor, look at her, but she is too wound up in her memory. If she loses her grip Pete won't be there to save her this time. She will fall into the void. It seems to last forever, but eventually the crack closes and she is free from the horrid memory.

OoOoOoOoO

"Rose?" The Doctor asks timidly as Amy says her goodbyes to River on the beach. "Are you alright?"

"I'm f-fine," she replies, but no sooner than she says this does she start to sob. The Doctor hesitates with his hand, seemingly unsure of what to do with them, but then wraps his long arms around her making Rose feels practically instantly comforted.

"When the Angels weep, she will return and she, too, will weep for the only way to survive will bring back memories of the day she died," Rose hears the Doctor mutter to himself as if he is quoting somebody. Rose leans back a little to give him a questioning glance to which he replies, "It's something Ood Sigma told me right before I regenerated." Rose nods in understanding and rests her head on his shoulder. She wants to ask the Doctor about his regeneration and about how long it's been for him, but for now she just takes a couple moments to calm down while in the Doctor's arms.

After she feels calm enough, she takes a step back from the Doctor and wipes her eyes with her sleeve. "Sorry 'bout that. I'm not sure why it got to me that hard. It's been well over eighty years since my reaction was that bad." The Doctor's eyes widen.

"Wha- eighty?" At that moment, of course, is when River decides to come up to say goodbye to the two of them.

"It was nice meeting you, River," Rose says when River is beside them.

"And it was nice seeing you, Rose," River replies.

"I hope we get to see each other again soon."

"Likewise," River replies with a grin.

"No, sorry, hold up, did you just say eighty?" The Doctor interrupts. "Eighty years? As in eighty Earth years?"

Rose gives River a final smile, squeezes the Doctor's hand once and says, "I'm going to go over by Amy to give you two time to talk and say goodbyes and such. Afterwards, we are going on the TARDIS and you and I, mister, will have a nice long chat about all this, yeah?"

"Yeah, alright. A nice long chat. We have much to chat about, you and I," the Doctor rambles, still looking shocked. Rose giggles at this and makes her way to Amy who is sitting on a rock with a blanket wrapped around herself.

"So, an Angel was in your mind, then? That's why you had to keep your eyes closed?" Rose asks when she got to Amy.

"Yeah. It's strange, the Doctor says it's gone, that it's never existed because it fell into that light, whatever that was, but I still remember it all," Amy tells her. "Why didn't I forget like the clerics all forgot each other?"

"Well, it's like the Doctor said: you're a time traveler now. You have a different perspective. It's sorta like how once I went back in time to meet my father, he died when I was a baby. I wanted to just see him, to be there for him when he died since my mum always told me he died all alone, but I saved him instead. It caused a paradox, but in the end I was there for him when he did end up dying. I remember both stories my mum told me: the one where he died alone and the one where he died with a blonde girl holding his hand." Rose pauses for a second. "Well, I guess it's not that similar to what happened here, but I hope you get my point," she finishes with a grin.

Amy tilts her head a little, "So who are you? You and the Doctor seem to know each other quite well. Are you his ex or something?" Amy asks this with a hint of jealousy, Rose realizes. Rose is a bit hurt that Amy doesn't seem to know at least of her since this implies that the Doctor has never mentioned her before. Obviously he hasn't forgotten about her, but still. She's a bit like Sarah Jane now: never mentioned until she shows up and is forced to be mentioned. But then again, Amy seemed to have recognized her name earlier.

"Of sorts, I guess," Rose replies. "I used to travel with him a long time ago, but things happened and we sort of got split up. Though I would have absolutely love to have stayed with him back then, now I don't think I would trade it for the world. I've had a nice life so far. More or less, anyway."

"Alright," the Doctor says coming up beside her, giving his hands a single clap. "On to the TARDIS we go so Amy can rest up and you and I, Rose Tyler, are going to have that chat about how you're here and, well, the eighty thing. Alright, off we go, then," he says as he leaps his way to the TARDIS.

Rose instantly felt the ship nudge her mind in a welcoming. "Oh, I've missed you, too, old girl," Rose says as she steps onto the ship. She is home once more.

Notes:

Writing this was a journey! Honestly, I went over this so many times editing it, but every time I edited it I added more so I had to re-edit it. It was practically an endless cycle. I had to watch a few episodes with Rose to help get her in character at least a little bit (though I don't think I did too well on that, sorry), but that caused me to have the Doctor more like Ten rather than Eleven so then I had to watch some Eleven episodes as well.

I hope you enjoyed the lengthy chapter and I hope you don't mind that I strayed away from the original script quite a bit (maybe that's a good thing, though? I'm honestly not too sure). I'm sorry to say that as of now I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up seeing as this coming week will be quite busy for me, but I'm hoping it won't be too long. Stay tuned!