Title: Create Myself
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: G
Length: 715
Author notes: Set after Doomsday.
Summary: Rose finds her place in Pete’s world with a little help from the Bad Wolf.



She cries. Even days after her eyes tear up. It’s like she can't stop.

She did everything - everything - to stay with the Doctor. Her mom is still upset with her over it, and Rose can't blame her. She would have cut herself off from her family to remain with the Doctor. She would have regretted it eventually, would have missed her mom terribly, but it wouldn't have mattered, knowing that Jackie had a chance at a good life now. She would have been safe and Rose would have been dancing in the Tardis, forever running from one adventure to the next.

Her mom holds her, hugs her every chance she gets, and Rose feels loved, is glad that she still has this: her mother. But she'll never stop missing the Doctor, the Tardis, the life out there. She’d never had a purpose before.

Pete – her father who is not her father – even hugs her awkwardly after breakfast, when she isn't even crying. He just does it and somehow it matters.

She can't explain that she's happy for them, but devastated, because she lost the only thing in her life that ever mattered, that ever made her matter. What had she ever been good at before she met the Doctor and the stars and time and space?

It's Mickey's idea to take her to Torchwood. Her mom thinks it grand and Pete smiles, because he can finally do something for her. So she goes. For the first time since she’d become stuck here she smiles. Her family is here and they all want her to be happy. At least she can make an effort.

That must count for something.

“What am I going to do with myself?” she asks Mickey on the car ride.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Rose. You were someone long before the Doctor came along.”

“Yeah, a stupid little shop girl.”

Mickey huffs and looks straight ahead. “You were Rose Tyler then and you were brilliant. And you're no shop girl now. Go make something of it.”

Pete stops the car and they get out. It's Torchwood. This is where they saved the world. She hasn't been back since then.

Like in a dream she follows them in and looks around. People are working. Protecting the planet. “You could work here,” Pete offers. He has offered before. There is a board where all sorts of news items are pinned that relate to unsolved cases that look suspicious. “Not very high tech,” she comments.

“We're working on that.” Pete grins and she grins back. A good deal of equipment isn’t available, because of their fight against the Cybermen. They do like each other, she and her not-exactly-father. That at least is a relief.

A young man pins a new clipping up and Rose freezes. “Bad Wolf,” says the writing “unknown powers” have left in corn field somewhere. The picture jumps out at her like a guiding light.

“Are you okay?” Mickey asks when he catches her staring and follows her gaze.

“Yeah, yeah.” And she is. For a moment it was like the floor beneath her feet had vanished, the feeling of falling you get on a roller-coaster. Now it's okay.

Bad Wolf. She left herself a message. Here. In a world that isn’t hers. The Bad Wolf reached her here, slipping through the cracks when universes touched somewhere.

“Where was that taken?” she asks.

“Somewhere in Wales,” the young man answers.

She chuckles. “Figures.”

She finds Pete. She's going to work here. She knows a lot about space and time and aliens. The Doctor has shown her so much.

Pete is glad to have her, slaps her on the back, like he’s proud of her.

Rose is glad to carve out a new life for herself. The Doctor warned her that there would always be something of the wolf in her. It sounded scary when he said it. Now it sounds like hope and focus and a future.

She's Rose Tyler. Somewhere deep down she's the Bad Wolf. Part of her knows she looked out for herself when she saw all that was ahead. Even though she doesn't remember, it doesn't scare her anymore.

She is not alone and she's never giving up. She owes that much to the Doctor and herself.