After getting the rocket to clear space, Rose sent the TARDIS into the Vortex. She wanted to spend some time immersing herself in further study. She’d covered the basics of the sciences and though she knew she could stand to learn a lot more, she wanted to delve into philosophy for a while. Understanding a bit more about different cultures, religions, and traditions could help her out as much as knowing how to calculate quantum physics. She also took some time to study alien physiology – Gallifreyan in particular – so she could see if there was some way she could mimic the Doctor’s greater range of senses. She’d shaken her head in awe once she understood exactly what she was trying to accomplish with that. It’d probably be easier for her to create a universe using a bit of yarn and a stick of gum than to come up with a device that would mimic Gallifreyan sensory perceptions.
Rose glanced absently at the whiteboard on the wall. She’d taken to marking the days with tick marks so she could figure out just how many days – even though no time was passing when viewed from outside the Vortex – she had spent inside the Vortex. She frowned when she realized she had filled up several whiteboards. Counting the days, Rose realized she’d spent nearly three years in study this last time around. Prior to that, she’d probably been traveling for about a year on her own with breaks between to study, rest, and spend time with her sister.
“That’s five years, give or take a few months,” Rose muttered to herself. “I’m twenty-five now.” She wondered if she looked any older. The TARDIS sensed her request and created a mirror on a nearby wall. Rose glanced at it and then did a double-take, dumbstruck. Her hair had gotten longer but she had not aged a day. If anything, she looked slightly younger. “Must just be…hanging out in the Vortex, I suppose,” she told herself. “Yeah, that’s gotta be it. Well, three years sitting still and reading just about every book in the library isn’t getting much accomplished. C’mon, sister. Let’s dive back in and see what’s out there for us!”
Rose selected a time of her own. She wanted to see her mother or at least talk to her and find out what was going on in her life. No sooner had Rose taken the TARDIS out of the Vortex than her phone rang. The caller ID showed up as “Mum.” Answering it, Rose spoke with her mother, her anger growing as she listened to the story of a man obsessed with finding the Doctor. A man who had befriended her mother and had tried to seduce her all in hopes of establishing a tie to Rose Tyler and, through Rose, to the Doctor.
“I’ll take care of it, Mum,” Rose promised as she rang off. Telling the TARDIS when and where she wanted to go, Rose opened her mouth and began to sing her way back to London, England, the United Kingdom in 2006.
~*~*~*~
“It’s all right, Mum,” Rose said when she settled down on her mother’s couch. She had sorted the situation with Elton and had a feeling she’d be seeing him again in her future but his past. Just something about the things he had said led her to believe that eventually she’d be reunited with the Doctor and they would travel into Elton’s past. For now, Rose was just glad she’d been able to defeat the alien who was hunting the Doctor and save Elton’s girlfriend at the same time.
“No, it’s not all right,” Jackie muttered. “And where is that alien anyway? I thought the two of you were inseparable. Practically joined at the hip, you are. He never likes letting you out of his sight.”
“He’s doing some repair work on the TARDIS,” Rose lied. “I’ve only got a couple of hours before I need to get back to it.”
“Honestly, Rose, do you think I can’t tell you’re lying to me? I’m your mum. Now, stop lying to me and tell me what’s going on with you or else I’m going to lock you in your room for the rest of your life!”
“Mum, I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just say that he and I are giving each other some space at the moment.” Technically, that wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t entirely true. Jackie relaxed a bit at this. Maybe Rose was finally considering leaving that strange alien. Jackie knew her daughter was head-over-heels in love with the rude man but she also hated the thought of Rose never being able to settle down and have a proper life.
“He doesn’t deserve you, Rose,” Jackie muttered as she took a sip of tea. “You ought to just leave that alien to go about his life. I know he tried to save you once, sending you back here, and you being so stubborn, you had to run right back to him. I know you think you love him, but Rose…You need to start thinking about yourself. It’s no life, running around with an alien like him. If he doesn’t get you killed…”
“Mum, it’s not like that,” Rose protested weakly.
“What is it like then? Is he going to marry you? Give you children? Let you have a life of your own? Or are you always going to be in his shadow? Rose, you deserve better than him. Just stay here with me. Find yourself a good man and get married. You’re twenty-two years old. You’ve been swanning around with that Time Lord for too damned long. Stay here with me, sweetheart. You keep on running around with him and you won’t even be human anymore. Already you’re turning into something like him. Something dark and cold. Something that isn’t my Rose.”
“Mum, I’ve got to go,” Rose said firmly, setting her mug of tea down and rushing out the door before her mother could stop her. “This is my life, yeah,” she said, before she pulled the door shut. “And I’ll live it however I please.”
~*~*~*~
The TARDIS could sense Rose’s distress and upset the minute the woman walked through her doors. She tried to send comforting thoughts to her sister but Rose seemed incapable of noticing them. The eleven-dimensional creature would have winced when she realized what was going on. Her own alterations to Rose – the alterations that allowed the human to pilot her and survive – were working other changes. The Time Lords would have called it the law of unintended consequences. One of the results of Rose’s connection was a greater enhancing of her own latent psychic and telepathic abilities. And now, those abilities were forming a perfect storm that could drive her sister mad.
Stupid ape. Child. Just a serving girl. Not my Rose. Useless. Worthless. Just a serving girl. Stupid ape! Give me back the key… Expendable. Stupid, stupid ape!
Those words were things that Rose had heard from others. Words spoken in anger. Words spoken in haste. Words that were now turning into thunderbolts and striking at the woman’s soul. The TARDIS hesitated but decided to risk delving deeper into Rose’s memories. Perhaps there was something there she could use to salve the woman’s hurts. Some balm to heal Rose’s soul – even if it was only temporary.
And there she saw it. Maggie. Rose’s best friend. The only girl friend she’d had who hadn’t tried to steal her boyfriends away. The only friend who had loved Rose for who she was. The only one who had been willing to share her own soul with the Londoner. The girl who had been Rose’s sister in every way except for biology. Maggie shone brightly in Rose’s memories – a golden blonde with bright blue eyes that changed depending on her mood. Maggie had the face and build of her Choctaw ancestors but the coloring that came from the Scottish highlands. She was a perfect blending of families and history, a woman who had seen her own soul, her own history, and learned from it. No wonder Rose had been so drawn to her.
The TARDIS stored the memories away. “Rose-a-lee,” she called out, her voice matching the memory of Maggie’s lilting Southern accent, rich with the River, the malarial Cajun swamps, and a pinch of her Scottish father’s timbre, “Rose-a-lee,” she called, “come back ta me, sistah. Come back ta me. I cainna let you go like dis. C’mon, sistah. Come home.”
“Maggie?” Rose sniffled. “Maggie, is that you?”
“Ya know t’well it ‘tis, Rose-a-lee. C’mon home, sistah. Ah’ve been waiting fer ya. C’mon back and tell Maggie what’s ailin’ ya.”
“I’m nothing, Maggie! I’m nothing! Just a stupid ape! A child! A serving girl! The Doctor left me because I’m worthless and useless!”
“Didn’ I teach ya that no man’s been born wort’ sheddin’ tears ovah? C’mon, sistah. Pull it togetha, ya? Yer like me and I’m like da Rivah. We jes’ keep on rollin’ along.”
“Sing to me, Maggie? Those old songs of your people? Sing me to sleep, would ya?” Rose pleaded, slow tears trickling down her cheeks.
“’Course I will, sistah. I’ve shown ya ma soul, ma soeur. Je t’aime bien, mon ami, ma soeur. Écoute-ma bien, Rose-la-lee…Je chans la chanson le da grande père des fluves, ma soeur. Je chans…et tu réviens à moi.
“Ol’ man Rivah, dat ol’ man Rivah, he must know sumpin’ but don’t say nuttin’. He keeps on rollin’, he keeps on rollin’ alon’… He don’t plant taters, he don’t plant cotton. An’ dem dat plants ‘em is soon forgotten. But ol’ man River, he jes’ keeps rollin’ alon’…”
Rose lost herself to the swell of the old Broadway tune that had become a Southern classic. Maggie knew all the songs of her people. She shared the soul of the South, the soul that had given birth to the music that shaped the modern era – country, Gospel, rock’n’roll. She’d even taught Rose to look deep within and find her own soul so that she could sing like Maggie did. And now Maggie was holding her, singing her to sleep…
“Thank ya kindly, Maggie,” Rose muttered, her own voice taking on a bit of the Southerner’s lilt. “T’will sleep well and wake, I will.”
“Dat ya will, sistah. Dat ya will.”
The TARDIS waited until Rose’s breathing was steady and even. She could remember Maggie – Magnolia Gloria – better than Rose herself. Maggie had been a friend, an almost-sister, and the TARDIS was just as determined as that Southern woman had been that Rose would go one better, live a life that most women only dreamed of, and would be happy. Letting the physical form dissipate, the TARDIS continued to sing the songs that Maggie would have sung as she took herself into the Vortex to let her sister rest and recover from her trials.
~*~*~*~
Rose woke several hours later. She was lying on the grill floor in the TARDIS’s control room. Memories of Maggie, her best friend, flooded her mind. She could have sworn that she’d heard the girl singing to her as they sat on one of the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. Rose had been upset the first time Maggie called the Thames “a creek.” Then Maggie had taken her to see the mighty Mississippi.
Everything was bigger in America. Even the rivers.
Rose sighed and pushed herself up to her feet. The faint smell of bacon, grits, and eggs seemed to linger in the air. Maggie’s mother had always made certain the girls ate a good breakfast before she would let them out of the house. Maggie herself, in later years, had picked up her mother’s cooking skills. Rose grinned when she recalled asking Maggie why she was learning such things. The Southern girl was college-bound. She wasn’t going to wind up married too young, knocked up, and working a dead-end job.
“Well, I’ve got to catch a husband somehow,” Maggie had laughed. “Besides, men are a lot of fun.”
“What do you mean, ‘fun?’” Rose had asked.
“Weeeeeeellll,” Maggie drawled. “The way they stare at my backside and then protest that they’re doing no such thing is pretty funny. And then, when I get up in the morning after we’ve spent half the night rebuilding a transmission…and they come staggering in the kitchen at the first smell o’ breakfast…that’s pretty funny, too.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Sorta. He’s one of my pastor’s sons. Pretty boy. Josh is his name. He asked me to marry him after prom last spring. I’m half-thinking to tell him ‘yes.’”
“That would be great!” Rose had shouted joyously. “Will you invite me to the wedding?”
“Invite you? Hell, girl! You’re gonna be my maid of honor. I’ll leave picking out the dresses and all the girly crap to you. Me, I’m gonna be building the car we’ll drive off in!”
But then Maggie had died. Nineteen years old, planning a wedding, sending Rose letters every week detailing those plans. A drunk driver had smashed into Maggie’s little car – a car Rose had helped her build. By the time the fire department had cut her out of the wreckage, Maggie was dead.
Rose wished she’d been able to make it to the funeral. She’d felt terrible when she’d arrived a few months later, scraping up all the spare cash she could to get the tickets, and had nothing to look at but Maggie’s name carved into a granite headstone.
“Where are we, sister?” Rose muttered, patting the console fondly.
In the Vortex, the TARDIS replied. We’ll go someplace fun next. Some place where there shouldn’t be any danger. Some place where you can rest a bit, yeah?
“Why are you speaking with a Southern accent?” Rose wondered. She could have sworn that the TARDIS sounded like Maggie.
I’d like to be your sister. Maggie was a sister, like me?
“Yes, she was, I s’pose. Only…you’re not suddenly going to want to go out shooting clay pigeons are you? Or overhauling transmissions?”
Not a big fan of guns.
“Yeah, neither am I even if Maggie made sure I knew how to shoot one. Granted, back there, with all the rattle snakes and all… Is that what you’d like me to call you? Maggie?”
I saw her in your mind. She’s a wonderful person. Just like you. I’d be honored to share her name and her form in your mind. That is, if you think it’s alright, the TARDIS added, sounding almost afraid.
“I think Maggie would love having a ship that could travel in space and time take after her. We are talking about a girl who wanted to build a rocket and go see the moon herself.”
And you were going to ride with her. Be her copilot, the TARDIS – Maggie – laughed. Now, I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go to the Olympics. We can watch people have fun and just relax.
“How will you be watching?” Rose wondered.
I’m giving you a device you can wear. It will look like an earring. It will keep our telepathic connection strong even when you’re away from me. And, if you ever need me to come to you, I’ll be able to sense it and follow the link to you. And, if by chance, you encounter any kind of alien lifeform or technology, this link will allow you to access my memory banks and data storage without having to come back to me and spend years in the library.
Rose held out her hand and an ear-cuff with a chain linking it to an earring appeared in her hand. She fitted the cuff over the shell of her ear and then pushed the earring through the piercing in her lower ear. Once it was in place, she felt the TARDIS even more clearly than she had. The TARDIS’s song sang through her mind with Maggie’s accent. It was calming and comforting. Rose let the song ring through her and added her own voice to it as she and the TARDIS traveled to the Olympics for a bit of relaxation.
~*~*~*~
“Are all kids this confusing?” Rose wondered as she sat in the TARDIS. She was exhausted after dealing with the Isolus that had been possessing a little girl named Chloe Weber. At least now everyone was back, safe and sound, and Chloe and her mother could heal from their ordeal. “Or is it just the ones who have really bad parents?”
The TARDIS hummed uncertainly. She had no idea how corporeal beings dealt with their offspring. The Doctor had been fond of some of his descendants – namely Susan. Still, the ship was essentially childless even if there were times she thought it might be nice to have young ones on board just to get a chance to see things through their eyes.
“I really ought to go back and visit Mum for a bit. Not quite sure what she’s going to think, though, if I show up without the Doctor. Maybe if I stop off somewhere and get her something really nice, she’ll be too distracted to pry.”
Standing up and placing her hands on the console, Rose and her sister began a quick journey to an asteroid known for its market place.