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The moment she opens her eyes, Rose knows where she is and where she isn’t.
The corridor is familiar. Endless and twisting, it could only be the TARDIS.
Before she has even taken a step though, she knows this isn’t real. The coral is dying and grey, clinging to the wall like it’s haunting the place rather than growing there. Dust mites hang in the air, unmoving and unnatural. If she couldn’t hear the distant hum, she would fear the TARDIS had died.
Her beating heart is the only thing reassuring her that she hasn’t met the same fate.
She starts walking.
If her mother has taught her anything, it’s that you have to keep moving, no matter what.
She carries on for hours or minutes or days. Maybe even all three. It doesn’t matter. Time isn’t real in dreams. It can’t be manipulated or run out or change.
Things happen. Some are remembered. Some become feared. Others are forgotten as though they never existed.
Like people.
Her fear of being lost to time spikes and a face appears on the wall to her left. Pete Tyler’s. Young. Smiling. The image comes to life and follows her down the corridor, cradling his newborn daughter.
“Dad?” she whispers. She’s surprised how normal her voice sounds.
Pete ignores her. The child is gone, vanished like she never happened. Rose watches his hairline recede and wrinkles mar his skin. His tracksuit becomes a suit.
“Dad!” Rose jogs to keep up with him. “Dad, wait. I-”
The whole corridor becomes the bank of the Thames and Rose stops running.
She catches her breath while the dad she always wanted proves he doesn’t want her.
On her right, she spots Mickey, the boy she could always depend on, leaving her as well.
Rose keeps walking. She has to keep moving.
With every turn, the TARDIS corridor paints her history like a mural. A beautiful piece of artwork of ugly decisions and selfishness. Anything good is left behind and mistreated, destroyed by the person that connects it all.
Rose blinks back tears. Childhood indiscretions and life or death mistakes are played out on all sides so she can’t turn away or deny them. Jimmy Stone’s laugh rings out loudly over her mother crying.
The thought of running is easily quashed as she has no idea if this labyrinth goes on forever. The TARDIS is infinite and, now she’s forced to think about it, so are her flaws and mistakes.
She starts to reason with the images. After all, so many of them happened long ago. She isn’t the same sixteen year old child who broke her mother’s heart. She’s grown and changed and is so much better now.
The Doctor’s furious face looms in the distance and shame swells within her. Perhaps her old self has simply morphed into something else. Something smarter but just as terrible. A weak child, clinging onto the coattails of someone greater.
He may not have been what she thought the man of dreams would be but he certainly ticks all her other boxes. He’s dangerous, wrecks her home life and is certainly less into her than she is him. She can dress it up all she wants but he’s going to break her heart in the end. She’ll patch it up using the kindness of others, then cast them aside when she finds her next mistake.
Really, she hasn’t changed at all.
Giving up all pretence of calm, Rose sprints down the corridor. She finds the answers to questions she could never bring herself to ask but the questions she’s been screaming her entire life remain painfully in the dark, hidden just out of reach.
Rose runs around a corner and comes to an abrupt stop. It’s a dead end.
There’s a spark, followed by a flicker, and then a fire roars to life inside an ornate fireplace.
“Of course,” Rose mutters under her breath.
Wearily, she edges up to it, eyes locked on the silhouette in the mirror above it. She hopes it’s her reflection, but knows she won’t be so lucky.
The figure takes shape, blonde hair and fair skin. Rose allows herself to believe and only then does she make out the features of Reinette Poisson.
She studies her face, jealousy burning in her veins like she’s never known. It doesn’t seem fair that she could see into the Doctor’s head, taking his thoughts without permission, when she has waited so patiently for the same thing.
Reinette was looking into his eyes in search for her angel. Rose looks for him, the real him. The scared boy running away from home. The miraculous man he became on the way. The friend she wants to hold until he feels he doesn’t have to anymore.
Rose closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. If this is her head, then she’s in control. She has to know how to leave the maze if she’s the one who built it.
Mind over matter.
The Doctor would be proud.
Slowly, she squints to see if the fireplace has disappeared and sees something in its place. It takes a moment for it to take shape but, once it does, she wonders why it took so long for her to see it.
A wolf.
At the heart of all her dreams, is the same wolf. Waiting.
A warm breeze blows around the corner and Rose sighs in relief. Whatever was chasing her, whatever she was running from, it’s gone now.
The wolf watches her, fur flecked with gold and eyes shining. Rose stares back.
“You’re her, aren’t you? The TARDIS?” Rose doesn’t get a reply but in her head she knows she’s right. It’s as though the knowledge is seeping through her pores. She’s inside the TARDIS, but the TARDIS is inside of her as well.
The breeze ruffles the wolf’s fur and it approaches Rose. Its paws don’t make a sound on the grating. As it gets closer, the coral along the walls comes to life again. The golden reef creeps along the walls and ceiling and Rose smiles.
The TARDIS is the ship of dreams. The first place she felt like she was living and not just boring herself to death or existing into the grave. Together they have saved worlds and species and one lonely Time Lord that owes them more than he will ever say.
This ship has seen her at her rawest - has been her when she was most scared. She is the secret diary and best friend Rose didn’t know she was missing.
“You’ve been here before. In my head,” Rose says and the wolf tilts its head. “That stuff back there… Is it true? Any of it?”
The wolf blinks at her.
Rose kneels on the floor and reaches out a tentative hand. She waits until the wolf closes its eyes to stroke it behind the ear.
“Please say it’s not,” she whispers. “Ple-”
Her voice chokes and fades. She’s begging her own head to tell her what she already knows to be false. It’s hard to accept the truth that she’s a little girl whose dreams are too big but will still walk over anyone she can to reach them, but she has to. She has to or she is doomed to repeat the mistakes until she will spend eternity walking down the corridor painted with her disasters.
Without warning the wolf begins to fade under her touch. The soft fur turns to a gold mist and expands until there is only a cloud in front of her. Rose tries to clutch it, but it slips through her fingers. She gasps and inhales the light.
The minute it happens, Rose understands that it’s the wolf - the TARDIS - in her lungs, coursing through her system. She closes her eyes as everything that was or ever will be flashes before her and she fights the urge to be sick.
Just when she thinks her head will combust, the feeling stops, leaving her with a sense of calm she can’t ever remember knowing.
Beneath her, she can feel the turn of the Earth. Around her, she can sense the passage of time.
Her heart swells as visions of Christmas and her friends and gymnastics practises and leather jackets and beaches and childhood games bombard her senses. The faces she sees fill her with a sensation she can’t describe. It’s like the knowledge that she loves them is amplified by how she is loved in return.
It’s disorientating, but not unpleasant.
In fact, she feels untouchable.
“Bad Wolf,” she breathes, but straight away she knows she’s only almost right.
If it isn’t the TARDIS, then it must be-
She opens her eyes and the feeling retracts until it’s locked in her heart. Looking down, she’s surprised she can’t see the gold light burning through her chest.
It’s then she notices the cold breeze and tries to work out where she’s standing. It’s outside. Somewhere open.
She hears water.
And then she sees him and it doesn’t matter so much.
His outline is fuzzy, like he’s being broadcast through a broken aerial, but everything from the hair to the suit and the trainers is him.
“Rose Tyler.” His voice echoes with an odd metallic quality to it.
She can conquer every demon she’s ever known, but she doubts she will ever be strong enough to not react to way he says her name.
This thought aside, she pushes past every doubt she possess and walks up to the ghost of the man she wishes could solidify. She grips his lapels as he tips his head tantalisingly close to hers.
“You know. Don’t you? You feel the same. Or at least similar,” she amends when he doesn’t react. The light in her chest pulses and she pulls him closer. “I know you do.”
Their open mouths are so close to each other that they share breaths. The pair of them are almost one, clinging to one another in the grey. Out of everything, they are the only thing that makes any sense.
Rose wets her bottom lip. “Why can’t I ever just tell you?”
He looks at her with a profound sadness she never wants to understand.
“Does it need saying?”
There’s a knock at her door and Rose sits up in bed. She pushes her hair out of her face and searches her room for any sign of this not being reality.
“Rose? It’s me,” comes the Doctor’s voice through the door. “Can - er - can we talk?”
She invites him in, agreeing to talk, though she doubts, no matter how much she believes in herself or him, that they will ever say anything.