Title: Choices
Status: WIP
Rating: 12
Pairing: Nine/Rose
Notes: General spoilers for the end of the episode ‘Bad Wolf’ and the start of ‘Parting of the Ways’ (I know I’ve paraphrased some of the dialogue from PotW - I was doing it from memory, and it doesn‘t need to be accurate, anyway). There are also faint references to a couple of the Ninth Doctor novels.
This chapter’s secondary title is ‘Back to the Future’, because even though I’m going into Rose’s past, it’s all technically in the future. Heh - the dilemmas of writing across time and space!
Credit to: Helen (LJ name: lovepollution) for Hope’s name. Because it is perfect.

“It means no.”

“But she will be destroyed.”

“NO!”

The Doctor could be seen shooting onto his feet through the flickering mage of the communications channel, his eyes fixed on the Dalek challenging him. Rose Tyler was the subject of debate, and was currently in a rather uncompromising position, surrounded by Daleks on the flagship of their fleet, and helpless to intervene as the Doctor, back on the Games Station, parleyed across the wide expanse of the Milky Way with her Dalek captors.

“Because this is what I’m gonna do,” the Doctor continued, “I’m gonna rescue her. I’m gonna save Rose Tyler from the middle of the Dalek fleet and then I’m gonna save the earth, and then, just to finish off, I’m gonna wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!”

The opposing Dalek was unable to comprehend this. “But you have no weapons, no defences, no plan,” it said.

“Yeah!” the Doctor rejoined with a manic smile, “and doesn’t that scare you to death?”

The Dalek remained silent.

The Doctor then finally turned his attention to Rose, who was stood there alone and terrified amidst the Dalek throng. “Rose?” he said.

“Yes, Doctor?” she called, taking a step toward his image.

He smiled. “I’m coming to get you.” And then, with a flick of his sonic screwdriver, his image fizzled away and Rose was left, once again, alone in the lion’s den. But she had, at least, been given hope, and was now praying that the Doctor would indeed be able to achieve his goals.

The Daleks, in contrast, were suddenly alarmed by the Doctor’s vows, especially the fact that he was planning to come in person to the heart of their fleet. Knowing full well that this Time Lord was a bringer of misfortune for them, they realised that they had to act fast.

“The stratagem must advance!” one Dalek reminded his comrades. “Begin the invasion of earth!”

“The Doctor will be exterminated!” another resolved.

And so they began to initiate the final stages of their long-brewing plan, bursting out in choruses of “Exterminate!” as they did so; the Doctor had pushed all the wrong buttons, and they wanted him to know about it.

The ensuing minutes crawled by like the trickling of a viscous syrup for Rose, and she could feel her heart pounding harder and harder in her chest as every second passed and excited Daleks swarmed all around her. Her eyes consistently scoured the extravagant interior of the Dalek ship, examining every nook and cranny over and over again for any sign of the TARDIS or of the Doctor.

It felt like forever until Rose finally heard it, that unmistakable blaring of sound that announced the TARDIS’s arrival. Her eyes darted left and right as she felt torrents of air blasting into her, and the infamous blue box materialised just a short distance away. Little did she realise that it had just made one of the biggest cock-ups of its career, however…

---

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor kicked the control panel and swore. “Oh well this is just fantastic!” he roared, storming around the TARDIS’s central column and flicking a few more switches; the plan had been for the TARDIS to land so as to have Rose end up inside the ship with both him and Captain Jack - but no, it had decided to fail, materialising but a few meagre metres off target, and leaving Rose out in the deadly cold…

“The force-field will hold out,” Jack said, his voice slightly downcast, as he gave his precious Extrapolator a pat. He had linked it into the TARDIS’s systems to give them some vital extra protection, and it had so far proven to be a lifesaver. “It’ll keep us shielded for a small range outside the TARDIS,” he went on, “but still…”

“It’s not enough to get to Rose!” the Doctor concluded with a disgruntled sigh. “Why now…? After all the times this machine’s got it right, why does she have to get it wrong now?!”

Jack looked equally frustrated, but was managing to keep his emotions in better check. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment, Doc’, so we may as well deal with it.”

The Doctor grudgingly conceded to this with a stiff nod. “You’re right,” he murmured, before he then turned to face the door and rolled his shoulders back. “Let’s get on with it.”

As he made his way out of the TARDIS, with Jack in tow, the Doctor knew that this was it - the final showdown. He was about to face his oldest and most hated of enemies all over again, but this time he had to win. He couldn’t afford to lose this war. He couldn’t go through that again.

As soon as he and the Captain set foot outside the TARDIS, they heard Rose scream at them from the other side of the chamber; neither of them were quite sure what she was saying, but it was doubtlessly something to do with them being crazy and telling them they should go back. Her voice was soon drained out by the chorus of Daleks, however, who simultaneously barked “Exterminate!” and unleashed a deadly volley of laser fire upon the intruders…

Rose had to turn away and cringe as she heard those death rays fly, fearing the worst, but when she heard nothing follow this but an uneasy silence, she had to look back to see what had happened, and then realised that the death-rays had simply ricocheted off some kind of invisible wall; the Doctor and Jack were still stood there, outside the TARDIS, safe and unharmed. She exhaled in relief and almost laughed, but knew that they were far from out of the woods yet.

The Doctor now opened his arms in feigned disappointment to the throng of Daleks that surrounded him, and invited them to do their worst. “Is that it?” he jeered.

The Daleks were thus rendered quiet for once, and seemed to be unsure of where to go from here, whilst the Doctor slowly looked between them all and stared right down their individual eyestalks with an audacity that would have terrified a lesser race.

Rose was expecting a speech to ensue, so was caught completely off-guard when the Doctor suddenly turned his sights on her instead. He held her gaze for a long time and, though he said not a word, Rose could see that he was trying to tell her that he was sorry. ‘Please forgive me, Rose’ said those pale blue eyes and placid features, and she felt a knot build in her chest. It was the face he always wore when they found themselves in tight spots during their adventures - down in Mr. Sneed’s dungeon, in the Cabinet Room of Number 10, during their struggle with the Dalek beneath the Utah desert - because, every time, he had felt responsible for what was happening to her, each brush she had with death making him regret ever asking her to travel with him. And yet Rose knew that he needed her, and so, every time he became so repentant, she had to remind him that he had made the right decision in bringing her along. And so she gave him the brave face now, just as she always did, and tried to communicate to him that, no matter what happened, she would never have passed up the opportunity to be with him, and, if this was the end, then he mustn’t blame himself, because he couldn’t always keep her safe.

Once this silent conference had passed, the Doctor moved his sight again to take in the Daleks and racked his brain for a solution to this conundrum.

“I believe you have something of mine,” he growled at the Dalek horde, his eyes seeming to burn from out of his skull as he gave them each another admonishing look.

The Daleks raised their firing arms up to him out of habit, despite the fact they were currently ineffective, and they intoned as one, “Stay where you are!”

The Doctor deigned to take a step forward anyway, whilst Jack hung back and looked around, feeling more than a little inadequate at present.

“Do you know what they called me in the ancient legends of your home world?” the Doctor asked them all.

They remained silent.

“The oncoming storm.”

Still the Daleks said nothing, but Rose found the metaphor very adequate; the Doctor could indeed be a storm when he wanted to be, in those moments when he lost his self control and his rage swelled into a tempest.

“You might have had all your emotions removed,” he continued, “but I reckon there’s one tiny flicker of one left, deep down inside, and that’s fear.”

Rose looked between several of the metal totems and was certain she could discern a slight tremor of movement between them all, a slight judder of the eye-stalk or a turning of the head which indicated that maybe, just maybe, the Doctor had touched a slimy nerve somewhere deep inside their shells...

“Doesn’t it just burn when you face me?”

Rose stared hard at her Doctor again and felt that if she were a Dalek right now, she’d be very afraid of the ‘oncoming storm’ before her.

“So tell me,” he asked. “How did you survive the Time War?”

“They survived through me.”

And so the Dalek Emperor finally reared his head, a great monolith of evil that appeared like a wicked spectre from the gloom, and whose great bulk effortlessly overshadowed the tiny forms of the Doctor and Captain Jack below. Rose looked on in dismay at this terrible vision and could feel herself tremble in true terror, seeing before her a Dalek of the most ghastly proportions, a creature that was a clear God amongst its brethren.

The vast monster soon began to speak, and gloated about his survival of the Time War, of his Dalek breeding programme, and of how he had slowly infiltrated the human race over hundreds of years - but Rose didn’t hear any of it. She knew that the creature was speaking, and she could hear its words passing by her ears, but none of it registered; she was far too lost in her own thoughts and fears to be able to concentrate. Her eyes were fixed on the back of the Doctor’s head whilst the Time Lord listened to the Emperor’s every word (and intermittently interrupted), because all she could think about right now was him. She’d been on so many wondrous adventures with him, had experienced Victorian London, the end of the world, escaped the prison planets of Justicia, and battled both the Slitheen and the Blathereen by his side, but never had she felt so sure as she now did that this might be the end. It truly felt like they had gotten themselves into a situation from which they would never escape.

Rose felt a tear roll down her face as this defeat sank in - all she truly wanted at the moment was for that colossal monster of a Dalek to shut up, to just stop talking, and for the Doctor to find a solution, like he always did, and then come running to her, take her by the hand, and lead both her and Jack away to safety. She wanted him out of harm’s way, more than anything else, though - if she could just have that, then she would be happy. But who was she trying to kid…?

“I offer you a pact, Time Lord,” Rose then heard the Dalek Emperor grumble as she brought herself back to the situation at hand; “An exchange, if you will.”

The Doctor’s eyes were as cold as ice as he glared at this fiendish despot. “And what might that be?”

The Emperor paused a moment, almost as if to gloat and to savour every second of what he presumed was an impending victory. “That I shall return your accomplice to you,” he said, indicating Rose with a wave of one, slimy tentacle, “If you give up your time machine in return. The human for the time machine. A fair exchange.”

The Doctor’s mouth dropped open as he took this in, before he then turned to look at Rose, whilst, behind him, poor old Jack looked equally distraught; he hated being reduced to nothing but a helpless spectator.

“Surrender to us your TARDIS,” the Dalek Emperor stated for a second time, “and we shall spare your associate.”

The Doctor’s face paled yet further, and all he could do was stand there swaying on his unsteady feet as he pondered on the sheer magnitude of this decision. How was he meant to make a choice like this? How many times would he have to face this emotional torment? Was this why he had refused a companion for so long before Rose? Had he sacrificed his communal needs to avoid scenes like this, where he was threatened with the life of one whom he cared about so deeply?

“If I say yes,” he murmured at last, turning his eyes from Rose to stare again at the Emperor, “Then what shall you do with Rose? What shall you do with ‘my associate’?”

He and the God-like Dalek stared long and hard at each other, until the Emperor said, “We shall spare her.”

The Doctor blinked slowly. “And what does that mean?” he asked. “Will she be safe?”

The Emperor did not answer, but the Doctor could see from the glint in his great, bulbous eye that he could not be trusted.

“My TARDIS answers to me alone,” the Doctor went on. “If I gave her up, she would not operate for you.”

“Then we shall keep you alive,” the Emperor replied, with a hint of satisfaction, “so that you can make it work.”

The Doctor swallowed and heaved a great sigh, staring down at his feet.

“Doctor,” Jack murmured from behind. “You can’t--”

“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do right now, Jack!” the Doctor snapped, and the Captain was stunned into silence as he found himself on the end of one of the Time Lord’s most tempestuous glares; the man was powerful and dangerous, and it had taken Jack up until that moment to truly feel the force of that fact.

“Let me offer you a deal,” the Doctor then declared as he turned back to look at the gigantic Dalek overlord. “I’ll give you my time machine in exchange for Rose, but you must also agree to give me one final request.”

The Emperor might have smirked if he’d had a mouth with which to do so. “And what would that be, Time Lord?”

“That you let me send both Rose and my friend Captain Jack here” - he gestured at Jack - “away as well. Away through time.”

“NO!”

The Doctor didn’t turn as Rose and Jack yelled at him in unison. He couldn’t bear it.

The Emperor guffawed in the most terrible of voices. “Then I grant you your vain wish, Time Lord. Now step away from the TARDIS.”

The Doctor’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

“Our stratagem is nearing completion. I would like you to be my guest in observing this most wonderful of events, the final destruction of the earth. And then you can sit back and watch it all over again when we use the technology of your time machine to go back and destroy the human race right from the start.”

“But why? It makes no sense!” the Doctor yelled.

“It makes sense to the Dalek race, Doctor,” the Emperor hissed. “The whole of creation is now at our mercy, thanks to you. We shall soon be the sole species of the universe. Before long, there shall be only Daleks. The Time War is ours!”

The Doctor stared at this malevolent mass of raw flesh in horror, but knew that he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He could also see, out of the corner of his eye, that Rose was being threatened by the prod of a Dalek’s laser arm, prompting him to act, so he just did as he was told and paced away from his precious TARDIS, then walked to her side. As he reached her and took her hand, Jack then too began to follow, but was suddenly rounded on by a pair of Daleks and held at bay.

“Stay where you are!” they rattled at him in their staccato tones.

“Why?” Jack asked, his hands going up into the air. “What have I done?”

“You are insurance,” the Emperor’s voice sneered from the gloom. “To make sure that the Doctor doesn’t get any ideas whilst we wait. Do not worry, Doctor - it shall not take us long to reach the earth.”

The Doctor gave Jack a lingering and apologetic look, whilst Rose looked equally frightened for him, until, with a couple of insistent prods, the Time Lord and his companion were shepherded away, down corridor after corridor, and imprisoned in a small cell.

----

The door hissed shut behind both the Doctor and Rose, and he just stood there in silence for what seemed like ages until he collapsed back against the door and slid down into a resigned heap on the floor. “Oh Rose,” he lamented, the weight of the universe on his shoulders, “What have I done?”

Rose felt terrible - all this was her fault; her entire race may now cease to exist because of her. Part of her prayed that, even if she was to be ‘spared’ now, she wouldn’t live much longer to remember all this. “Why did you do it?” she asked as she sat before him on her knees and looked him in the eyes. He wouldn’t meet her gaze, though, nor would he say a word; he just looked away with a most despairing and severe expression upon his countenance.

Rose sighed and reached out for his shoulder, hoping to pacify him, but he just shrugged her off. It was a weak shrug, though, and she soon realised that he was crying; he was understandably broken and shattered within, but worse, he was reliving a Hell that he thought he had seen the back of. “All over again,” he kept whispering to himself in-between chokes and sobs, “I can’t allow this to happen again.”

He then hung his head and just let the tears come whilst Rose shifted to his side and put her arm around him. She was certain that he was talking about the death of his planet and of the loss of his people, but as much as she desired to comfort him, she hadn’t a clue what to say; what could one say to a man who had lost everything? So she just settled with holding him.

“There must be a way,” she whispered at length. “There must be something we can do.”

The Doctor managed to collect himself a little after a while, and just leant his head back against the door, angling his chin up toward the ceiling. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “I’ve been looking for a loophole in this situation since the start, and am just hoping I can get everyone out of this mess. There has to be a way, but the possibilities of succeeding are just so remote, so tiny, that…” His words faltered.

“But anything’s worth a try, isn’t it?” Rose asked. “No matter how slim the chances are.”

The Doctor’s eyes turned on her and he gave her a faint smile. “Of course anything’s worth a try. It’s worth dying for, and I shall die if it saves your people and your planet, and--”

He hesitated as he stared at her then, his mouth gaping for a second as he tried to force the words out. “And if it saves you,” he finally added.

Rose stared long and hard at him in return, feeling a thrill run through her body as their eyes connected, and yet she couldn’t help but feel a little wretched right now, too. “Please don’t send me away,” she implored, clutching at his leather jacket. “I can’t bear the thought of not being here…”

He swallowed and glanced up at the ceiling again. “I can’t bear the thought of you dying, either, Rose. You must live.”

“And what about my thoughts? My feelings? Do you think I want to leave you here, to face torture, or worse, alone?”

“I promised to protect you…”

“But you can’t protect me from everything!”

He looked back at her again and slowly shook his head. “But I can protect you from this.”

They stared at one another again.

“Please let me,” he then added huskily.

Rose could do nothing but stare back, powerless; she knew she could not sway him, and it pained her so much that she soon felt the tears come rolling down her cheeks, as her throat tightened and her heart wrenched. “But you can’t give in to them,” she cried, shaking her head and trying to wipe away the tears. “You can’t let this happen. You can’t die!”

The Doctor’s hearts filled with both pity and regret as he watched her, and he soon placed his arm round her shoulders and clasped her toward him. “I’m sorry Rose,” he whispered, before he buried his nose in her hair and closed his eyes, trying to prevent himself from thinking about the horrors which lay ahead. “Please forgive me.”

She embraced him in return and let her tears calm, before she then moved her head back to look up at him properly. Their eyes met and they were suddenly so close to each other that their noses almost touched. And so, without another word, Rose simply followed her heart, closed the gap between them, and pressed her lips against his.

The Doctor was a bit hesitant at first, and a bit shocked, though he knew this was hardly something unexpected, but it wasn’t long until he began kissing her in return. For so long they had been waiting for this, but had not allowed it, had felt the passion, but kept it contained, so that by now, when it seemed that they might never see one another again, their need to show the true extent of their affection for one another had intensified tenfold. If this was to be their last night together, then what had they to lose?

Rose groaned as she felt the Doctor’s hand slide up and down her back, and she held him as close to her as she could, snaking her arms about his neck and pressing herself against him. She soon felt herself lowered onto the floor, her back touching the cool metal beneath her, whilst the Doctor stood over her on all fours and kissed her again softly. Rose couldn’t be doing with his coyness now, though, so she reached up and pulled him gently down on top of her and then just held him there, wishing she could hold him like this forever.

After several minutes of this kissing and cuddling, the Doctor paused and, breaking his lips from Rose’s, took a few breaths and gently rested his forehead against hers. He was trying to collect his thoughts and was pondering on where to go from here, and even wondering whether he should.

Rose watched him carefully in turn, feeling one of his hands caress her belly as he thought on this. By the look in his eyes, as his gaze then met hers, and by the uncertain motion of his hands, Rose could see that he was trying to ask her a question: ‘Do you want this, Rose?’ he was saying, ‘Is this right? Can we do this when so much is at stake?’

Rose hesitated a little and glanced down, her hands roving up and down his back until she made her decision. She then looked back up into his eyes and gave him a slight smile before she tightened her grip on him and clutched him more closely into her. She felt a tremor run through his body at this point, and she knew that he wanted her, but there was still that uncertainty in his mind of whether it was right and of whether he could do this to her, could offer her the prospects of a relationship that he knew he might never be able to fulfil. He had promised to protect her after all - would this, therefore, count as acting completely contrary to his promise? Would this just be selfish?

Rose in turn knew of his dilemma and of his concerns for her, but she wanted to make him understand that there were some things that he could have no control over, and that his feelings weren’t something he should shun or curb, but embrace. She consequently reached up to stroke his cheek, and watched him as he turned his face into her hand and pressed his lips against her palm, before she gave him an encouraging smile and whispered, “I love you.”

The Doctor stared back at her again for some time as he processed this, and ran a finger down the side of her face whilst his mind battled with itself over what to do. It was as Rose ran her fingers through his short, cropped hair and he looked again into her large, brown eyes that he came to his decision.

And so the Doctor lowered his lips down to Rose’s face and kissed her again, but with much more intensity, for he had decided that it was time he showed her that he loved her, too…

----

There was no goodbye when Rose awoke, though. She had no idea how the Doctor had done it, but the next thing she knew, she was waking up in the stairwell of her block of flats on the Powell Estate. A cold wash of terror flushed through her body and she shot to her feet, looking herself over. She was fully dressed again, though her TARDIS key was gone, but--

“Oh my God…” Rose gasped as her heart made a nervous pop - it hadn’t been a dream, had it? She ran her fingers gingerly over the skin of her neck and felt a slight mark there, a red sore where the Doctor had kissed her too hard. It had happened, there was no doubt, but he wasn’t here now.

She looked around herself groggily as she took all this in, recollections of her ‘night’ with the Doctor, of the situation with the Daleks, of the fact she was back home again, and--

She heard a groan from the stairs leading down and turned to see Jack laid halfway down the next flight of concrete steps. She might have smiled if the situation wasn’t so grim.

She quickly paced down the steps and gave his body a shake. “Jack,” she said softly, wiping away the tears from her face as he stirred. “Come on, wake up.”

After a few seconds, Jack opened his eyes and looked around himself blearily before it all clicked. “The bastard!” he shouted as he leapt onto his feet, then, failing to realise he was on uneven ground, lost his balance and tripped down the stairs.

Rose paced down the steps and helped him get to his feet again from the next landing down. He then stared at her in horror. “The bastard, he did it…” he gasped, “My God, Rose, he really did it.”

They both were both filled with a helpless rage, a terrible knowledge that they could do nothing to help their greatest friend, and the tears were soon as much in Jack’s eyes as in Rose’s. “Oh Rose,” Jack sighed again. “What has he done?”

Rose shook her head and bit her lip before a choked cry escaped her, and she felt Jack’s arms come around her in a comforting embrace; both their hearts were as heavy as leaden weights, their minds two masses of confusion and loss; how had the Doctor done it? Or how had the Daleks done it? Had he really given himself up to them, along with his time machine? Had the earth really been destroyed in the far future by the Dalek fleet, and did it now look set to be destroyed all over again in the past? But surely, if the Daleks had succeeded in obliterating the human race in the past, there would be no twenty-first century right here and now? How long would it take them to do it? When would the past be changed? When would the world turn dark and everyone fade away? How would it happen? Would they all just wither into dust? Would the Reapers return to sterilise another wound in time and destroy an era that would soon never have existed? Rose didn’t know, but as she held onto Jack, these thoughts were hardly at the forefront of her mind - she soon realised that, as big as these questions were, she was only crying because she missed and wanted the Doctor.

After she and Jack had had a few moments to collect themselves, they then slowly drew apart and Rose began to lead Jack up the stairs and toward her flat…