Summary: She smiles so brightly it feels like it's burning her cheeks.

She's not smart. Math makes no sense to her (just numbers trying to fill the space and make something worthwhile) Science may as well another language filled with hieroglyphics and lies (borne of primates, not meant to touch the starts –lieslies) History is a waste of her time (look to the past? no thanks, I'll stick with my head in the clouds, thank you). She's not smart, there's no meaning in what other people find solace in (in the continuity of numbers, the patterns of history, the beauty of science) but she knows things.

Knows the stars, knows how to make people love her and trust her, knows how to make them dependent on her, make her beautiful with makeup to hide the bags, she knows things about people.

She knows people only see what you want them to.

So she lays band aids over her scars and paints them the colour of lies.

He sees her sometimes, locking herself in the room that's too large for her to fill with clothes and things he knows humans love. He sees her slip in with that smile on her face, the one with her tongue between her teeth, and loves it so much that inside it aches.

Her eyes are like deep wells of black and brown, wide and gaping like the mouth of a black hole pulling him in, in; in until he's so far gone he can't believe it.

He swore he would never love again.

But this, this isn't love; this is a need, a hunger.

This is possession.

She smiles so brightly it feels like it's burning her cheeks. She smiles like she's part of the Nestene, part of the Autons, like she's plastic; but she smiles anyway.

(they can't see you're so f-f-fake, that you're just a little c-c-crazy girl-that-dreams-too-hard)

She smiles with her tongue between her teeth to hold back the screams rising in her throat like bile, like acid choking her and making her gasp inside, gasp and choke and scream – losing air faster, faster, faster – everything going black, bright black against the sky like her eyes, like her life.

She falling, burning out, just like the supernova.

She wonders what anti-plastic would feel like going down her throat.

She tells the Doctor she hears wolves.

He says it's just a joke by the TARDIS, just a prank, nothing to worry about Rose, let's just go far, far away from your delusions and play gods for just a moment, huh, Rose? Sound good, Rose? RoseRoseRoseRose.

Her name sounds like a broken record, like he's trying too hard to call her by her name and not by someone else, not by something else.

But she knows he's lying, this is no delusion, she hears it everywhere, even on planets that don't know what wolves look like.

She hears the wolf inside.

She just doesn't know what its saying.

She hears the Doctor and Jack whisper together in the Kitchen one day through the cracks of the door – hears words called neurosis and bad wolf and stagnant age; it sounds like a song for a moment. She runs back to her room and pulls out a pretty sheet of looseleaf and scribbles a wolf on it, one with big bold eyes, and lyrics too a song she knows does not exist anywhere else but her heart – she feels it beat out the rhythm against her ribcage.

she's so c-c-crazy
a girl that bleeds dreams
hearing howls in her m-m-mind
a wolf
this neurotic child of Time

The Doctor asks her to sit and let him run tests, telling her he'll stop that pesky little nudge in her mind, the one that howls and screams and writes songs on her bones.

Her heart stutters to a stop.

The Doctor gives her pills. Ruby red, butter yellow, and slate gray; when she shakes them they make music like a rattlesnake's hiss – dangerous and unknown – and she thinks they look like a rainbow when she spreads them on her bedsheet.

Jack helps her clean them up before the Doctor sees.

She lets the ones that fall roll under the covers and plays with them, contemplating the meaning of pills in her mouth when there are voices in her head.

She dreams of planets. Places she's never seen, never wants to see, some are beautiful (whispering snow falling on singing rivers), some are horrific (the machines they come up make her want to vomit out of the sheer pain they inflict), but one of them sticks out to her.

One with an orange sky and silver leaves and she sits long enough in her dream to watch a sunset that makes the forests look like they're on fire. But there is something in sky that is not the sun; it looks like a moon, like a moon she can see during the day.

She passes it off as a dream and does not think to ask the Doctor if such a place exists.

The Doctor doesn't grab her hand anymore, doesn't want to hold it, he just lets it hang limply by her side. He doesn't want to touch her, to be near her, she's contagious.

Inside her head a voice whispers, "Rose".

She shrinks into herself, hiding away from everything and everyone, and tries to beat away the voice. It grows louder and louder, swelling until it's all she hears.

"Go away! Go away! Stay away! Away!" She cries, beating at the air.

The voice does not respond and she thinks she's won, oh—

"I miss you."

–god she misses it too.

(inside her mind the bad wolf jeers)

The leaves on this planet remind them of blood and ash; things they live with everyday and for a brief moment the voice in her head is silent. There is too much pain here for it to do anything but whimper inside her mind, crying out for the planet that lost.

In her small hand Rose crumples a leaf and lets the pieces dance away in the wind.

The Doctor doesn't call her crazy. She's not neurotic to him, not insane, not schizophrenic, she's not mad, she's not a little girl screaming to the stars. She's none of those things.

But she's not Rose either.

She wakes up with the voices silent. She goes a day with the voices quiet. She goes a week. A month. A year. They are silent and soon they forget about the pills (tumbled under her bed, collecting dust) about the neurosis (hiding in the corner screaming at voices no one else hears) about the wolf inside (the paper, crumpled up in the trash).

But she doesn't age either and her tears are golden; she is more pensive now and planets are new and bright to her eyes even if she's seen them before. Even if they're in her dreams at night.

All is well.

The Doctor doesn't mention to Rose how he can invade someone's mind. How he can place blocks at certain areas, creating a pathway that they have to follow. He doesn't mention his finding the rest of the Bad Wolf and not getting rid of it because now Rose has a chance for forever.

He doesn't mention how he muzzled the Bad Wolf.

Because now all is well.

One day she meets the Master, meets another Time Lord, and he whispers about drums in his head, about rage and burning and a Vortex, but it's all about the drums, the echo in his mind.

She tells him that he's crazy.

Inside, the wolf howls again.

Aimlessly Unknown