#TSP is next I just need to take my brain out of my skull and put it in a bowling ball polishing bag

[anto-pops]

Anyone order love confessions and first time smut ?? No ????

[hellostarlight20]

I Will...7/10

Ten x Rose Rated T Telepathy (telepathic marriage bond) Angst Fluffy laughter Not exactly a rewrite Dimension Hopping Rose JE fixit Happy ending! Beta’d by the ever fabulous MrsBertucci, without whom this chapter wouldn’t exist AO3 and TSP and on Tumblr Chapter 1 (the corrected!) 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Part of the The Adventures of Bad Wolf and the TARDIS…and their Doctor series 

Warning: Mentions of rape (the Master and Lucy)

…protect you with my last breath

Rose rubbed her temples. Her head pounded and her brain felt as if it tore in two—the Doctor landed in one time and Martha used the TARDIS to communicate with her in another time. And that was something else; the TARDIS sounded sickly, off. Wrong. Rose didn’t understand and though the TARDIS tried to let her know, their bond didn’t work like that, with words and phrases.

Maybe it had to do with the image Martha described, the broken, dark interior of the ship.

“You have the watch?” Rose asked, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. It didn’t help her head. “Take the knife from the Doctor’s tool bag and scrape a little of the coral from any of the TARDIS’s struts.”

“This isn’t going to hurt Her?” Martha asked, voice shaking.

“It’s Her plan,” Rose tried to assure her friend. “Whether it does or not, I think it’s necessary.”

“What’s wrong?” Martha asked though the TARDIS assured Rose she did as instructed. “You don’t sound well. Are you sick?”

Rose snorted but it hurt and ended on a gasping moan of pain. “Headache. You and the Doctor are in different times, and you’re both trying to talk to me at once.”

“Does it have anything to do with the TARDIS and why She looks like this?” Martha sighed. “There. I have TARDIS coral scrapings in the watch. This’ll help me communicate with you, yes?”

“According to the TARDIS.” Rose whimpered and tried to block out the Doctor while she spoke to Martha, or telepathically spoke to her, but he insisted she stop speaking to Martha and take care of herself. “Hold on.”

Even gritting her teeth ached, and Rose carefully focused on her husband, whom she really wanted to hit right then, and tried to reassure him.

“Stop screaming,” she snapped, or snapped as well as she could considering the pain in her head. “The TARDIS and I are trying to help Martha.”

“Why didn’t she jump with us?” he demanded, but softened his voice and withdrew slightly from her head. It didn’t ease the pain, but Rose appreciated the effort.

“I don’t know!” She stopped and tried to relax her shoulders and neck, but the pain remained. “It was the TARDIS. She wanted Martha someplace else and that someplace else was in Her a couple days in your future.”

That sounded dirtier than she meant. Oh well. Rose didn’t have the energy to even snicker.

“The timelines are all messed up.”

Rose could see him running his hands through his hair. Any other day, she’d want to do that. Today, she just wanted to stop talking to so many people in her head. Two was bad enough, adding Martha in and Rose wasn’t so sure she’d survive.

“Not messed up, but in flux.” The Doctor blew out a breath then winced. “And it’s not just Jack’s presence that is causing that.”

However much she wanted to ask about that—what happened to Jack, what she’d done to him—Rose had other concerns. “If Martha looks at the TARDIS databanks, can she tell you what happened and you can fix it?”

“No. The TARDIS is there, in that timeline, and since She specifically rerouted Martha there, it means the timelines are set.”

“Like a fixed point?” Rose asked her husband. Then, to Martha, “Don’t open the doors. Not yet. I’m trying to figure this all out.”

“What am I supposed to do then? How am I supposed to protect my family?” Martha snapped. “Sorry.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault.” But she paused. “Is it?”

“I’m in another universe,” Rose shot back. “I wish we could create a three-way so I didn’t need to switch back and forth.”

Martha laughed. “Sorry, but I don’t see the Doctor like that.”

Rose did snicker then, the Doctor, on the other hand—she felt his blush through their link. “Oi! I’ll have you know, I’m very foxy.”

“I meant,” Martha inserted, “because you and the TARDIS are connected.”

“Oh.” Rose paused, but she couldn’t think and really just wanted to cry. “Don’t think so. But if the TARDIS interfered with your jump, then She knows something. Look around, is anything out of place?”

“No, well, nothing more than what I already told you.” Martha blew out a breath and Rose knew she wanted to check on her family. She wished there was a way to reassure her friend, but Rose was trapped in another universe. “Looks like someone went through Her pretty badly, tore apart Her center console and reconnected it in a hodgepodge of wires.”

“Check the other rooms. Yours, the library, the wardrobe room, the kitchens. If the Master did something to the TARDIS, She might’ve protected other areas, kept them from him.” Rose wasn’t sure how, but it was her best guess based on the single fact Martha now stood in the TARDIS and not three days ago with the Doctor and Jack.

“Let me know what you find.” Rose blew out a breath. “Now. Doctor. Let’s work this out.”

“Close your eyes, Rose.” His voice lowered, layered with that extra haunting bit she always associated with their telepathic world. “Imagine our bedroom, the view of the galaxy out the windows.”

Rose did as he instructed and when she opened her eyes, he stood behind her. His long fingers dug into her shoulders and back, easing the knots there.

“How does this work?” She sighed into his touch. “However it does, I don’t care. Just don’t stop.”

He kissed the back of her neck. “Jack and I are going to try and stop the Master and whatever his plan is. But I don’t think it’ll work, since the TARDIS interrupted our jump and took Martha.” He blew out a breath but didn’t stop her massage. “If She did that, then whatever we do here doesn’t work.”

“Martha’s searching for clues as to what the TARDIS wants from her. Or wants her to do.” Rose whimpered again, flashes coming through even as the TARDIS tried to stop them. “Oh.”

The Doctor’s fingers stilled. “Oh?”

“She’s trying to tell me something—or hide something from me.” Rose frowned but it hurt too much so instead leaned against her husband’s stomach. “Don’t stop.”

He obediently resumed his massage, long fingers pressing to strategic parts of her skull. “Your bond with Her might be strained, I’m surprised it hasn’t given you migraines before now.”

“It’s not that.” Rose sighed. “Not only that. I think—I think the Master tried something.”

Once more the Doctor’s fingers stilled. His entire body did. “What?” he demanded, very soft and very deadly.

“I think he tried to open the Heart of the TARDIS.”

The Doctor’s fingers clenched on her head and Rose whimpered. “Sorry.” He dropped a kiss on her head and cradled her to him. “I’m sorry, my hearts.”

She reached up and clasped his hand. “What was it you about a Time Lord absorbing the Vortex?”

“He’d become a god.” Behind her, the Doctor shuddered. “An angry god—vengeful.”

“How do you know? Has it happened before?”

They moved, how exactly Rose didn’t know. Usually they moved in their telepathic grotto the same as in real life, physically switching position or walking to a new room or something else completely physical. But one minute she rested her head against the Doctor’s stomach, the next he held her tightly on their bed, cradling her.

Taking comfort from her.

“Doctor?”

Her head eased, and when she met his gaze Rose saw absolute terror in his eyes. “Rumors. Myths. Legends. The Other—” his voice caught and he shuddered at the mere name— “The Other ran experiments. Not much of his work remains—” another shudder— “but what little does implies those experiments have to do with the absorption of the Vortex.”

“So a Time Lord did absorb the Time Vortex.” Rose combed her fingers through his hair, hoping to focus him and calm him. If his mind calmed, hers would as well. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. Nothing exists on the outcome, nothing really on the experiment itself, it was millennia ago.” He met her gaze and shook as if to dispel those thoughts. Or were they memories? There was something in his mind… “Just rumors around the creation of Time Lord society, about the Other’s role in it and how he stopped Rassilon.”

“And you think the Master tried to replicate this mythological experiment?” No, there was something more there, something nagging at the back of her head.

“I don’t know. He knows those rumors as well as I do, and now that he knows a human absorbed the Vortex and lived to tell about it—” the Doctor shrugged, a restless, uncertain move. Rose held him closer.

“I only survived because the TARDIS allowed me to open Her Heart. We merged, there was no take over or anything like that.” It niggled there, trying to push to the forefront of her mind, but Rose couldn’t quite grasp it.

“He’s found us.”

Rose shot up. No longer did they lay in their bed but the real world bled through their bond. Martha screamed for her attention and the Doctor kissed her hard before disappearing. Rose whimpered and rested her head on her pillow. She wanted a hot compress for her eyes, but hadn’t the strength to stand and get it herself.

Shame her mum couldn’t read her mind and get one for her. Then again, it was probably for the best—Rose didn’t want Jackie reading her mind at all.

**** The Master may have caught him and Jack, but the Doctor knew Martha had managed to escape. In fact, judging by the sickly sound of his beloved TARDIS, he suspected She intercepted Martha to land in the exact moment the Master brought them to the Valiant. The Doctor didn’t know why and it probably did matter, even if the TARDIS rarely did anything without reason.

He tried to communicate with his ship, but their bond didn’t work like that. He didn’t want to ask Rose what happened with Martha, her headache had worsened and despite the desperate situation, he didn’t want to add to her pain.

“I love you, my Rose.”

Her presence in his mind strengthened until he imagined she stood before him. “Doctor, what are you doing?”

The Doctor didn’t look from the Master, despite the looming, if metaphorical, countdown. “He knows about you. Tried to destroy the TARDIS to open Her Heart, then tried to break into Her databanks and find out what happened to you.”

“He’s going to use me to get to you.” Her voice wavered then strengthened in righteous fury.

“He’s an expert manipulator, very good at telepathy, too.”

“Mesmerizing his victims, you mean,” Rose spat. “Let him try. If he couldn’t break through the TARDIS’s walls, he sure as hell can’t break through mine.”

“No, my hearts.” The Doctor used all his remaining strength from his aged body and stood before her as he was meant to look. He framed her face and kissed her softly. “But he can mine.”

“Don’t,” Rose snapped. “Don’t you dare!”

“I have to. I’ll keep you safe no matter what I have to do, you know that, Rose.”

“Doctor.” Her voice broke and he kissed her again.

“I love you. Keep Martha safe. Make sure she knows the plan.” He stepped back and grinned, heart breaking, mind already protesting. “I love you.”

With that he closed their bond. Hot needles tore through his mind, shredding each thought and he screamed in pain. Noise on the flight deck halted, replaced by the Master’s cursing. Good. That meant his old friend knew what happened and hadn’t counted on the Doctor shutting down his marital bond with Rose.

“Doc!” Jack called, frantic. “Doc!”

“What have you done?” The Master screamed.

“You won’t get to her,” the Doctor gasped, old fingers digging into his scalp. “You’ll never get to her. I won’t let you.”

The Master stormed over and kicked him. Well that was sure to bruise. “Let me in.” His fingers dug into the Doctor’s temples, but he was just strong enough to keep the Master out.

Funny, centuries of being in control of his own mind yet allowing space for the Time Lords vanished. An eternity of wishing they spoke in his mind again and now that one crouched before him all the Doctor wanted was to keep him out.

“I win,” the Doctor hissed.

**** “The stars are going out,” Rose told her friend.

Martha trudged across muddy French fields, long abandoned, a fierce wind slicing through her clothes. Rose felt her cold as if it were her own and wondered if that was the TARDIS’s doing or her own imagination.

“What do you mean.” Martha looked up and opened her mind enough to show Rose the sky above her. fires burnt in the distance, glowing along the horizon and an eerie silence settled over the fields. But the stars still shone from the night sky, same as always. “Is the Master destroying the stars, too?”

“I don’t know. But a couple amateur astronomers noticed it last week. Flooded the internet with their theories, started a panic.”

“Is that possible?” Martha huffed but kept walking. “I can’t feel my toes.”

“Find shelter, an abandoned house or cave.” Rose pleaded with the TARDIS to widen their connection so she could see what Martha did, but the watch didn’t work like that. It barely allowed them to communicate and then only like a faint phone connection. “If he used the TARDIS to create a paradox machine like the Doctor thinks, maybe he found a way to punch through dimensions.”

“And if he did that without another TARDIS,” Martha finished, “then he’s destroying not only this universe but all of them.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with the Doctor.” Rose laughed but her throat ached. She missed him desperately, and her head continually screamed at her that part of her had died. But she hadn’t been able to break through the barriers he’d erected.

Yet.

Martha snorted. “I’ve been listening to you and Mickey talk too much,” she corrected. “I don’t know how to shut off this connection unless I don’t physically touch the watch, and I’m terrified I’ll lose it if I don’t always have it on me.”

“Sorry.” Rose cringed. “I don’t know how to strengthen our connection so I can see more of your surroundings, and I sure don’t know how to turn off my outside conversations.” She looked at her friend, frowning at the computer screen, and grinned. Mickey looked up and blinked at her for a few moments.

“Martha?” He asked. Rose nodded. “Tell her hi.” Then went back to work.

To Martha she telepathically said, “Mickey says hi by the way. If we ever figure out how to jump into your universe without destroying the fabric of reality, we’re all going for drinks. Doctor’s treat.”

Martha laughed and finally spotted the looming shape of a chalet. “Always wanted to stay in one. Fancy French food, gilt mirrors, a staff waiting on me.” She snorted. “Hopefully it’s deserted. Maybe they have extra blankets.”

“Be careful,” Rose said and turned back to her own calculations. “The Master has to have his own soldiers running around, searching for you.”

“I’m sure he does. But he’s not getting between me and a warm blanket.” Martha sighed. “Not today at least.”

“Good luck, Martha.”

**** Rose meditated, listening to the silence of her breathing, the steady thump of her heart. She slowly pushed Martha’s connection into a closet and, with a silent apology, closed the door. Hopefully nothing happened while she locked Martha in her metaphorical closet.

Martha stayed with a resistance group in Paris, hiding in a World War I bunker beneath the Champ de Mars. Currently asleep, Rose hoped her friend’s rest was nightmare free.

For the innumerable time since the Master aged the Doctor two months ago, Rose focused on the frayed tendrils of their bond. She carefully wove the strands together, elongating them with each pass. Well, it looked more like a braid than an unbreakable piece of rope, but she did her best.

Head throbbing, eyes aching, Rose worked, uncaring what happened around her. She’d taken to sleeping at Torchwood in a small, soundproof room off her lab. She couldn’t bear the ride to and from the building any more. The distance between her flat and Torchwood was too far—even at 3.5 kilometers—for her to survive.

Car rides made her nauseous, the moving scenery pierced her brain like hot pokers. Walking any distance longer than from the kitchen to loo weakened her. The Underground just hurt. Everything. Even her hair.

Rose didn’t know if it was the severed bond that made movement ache, or the length of time she and the Doctor had been separated, or something else altogether. But since the Doctor severed their bond, only cool, dimly lighted places eased her pain and then only slightly.

Now, she put all that behind her and concentrated on reconnecting them.

There.

A pinprick of light guided her way, and she gently worked the strands of their bond towards it. Rose knew the Doctor waited on the other side of that light. So did the Master. She’d be careful, she promised herself, the Doctor, the TARDIS, and just to be safe Martha and Mickey, too.

Rose didn’t know how powerful the Master’s telepathy was and had no desire to find out.

**** The Doctor gazed passively at the Master. Nearly four months passed since finding him again. Four months for him at least. The Master seemed to have made quite the name for himself in London in the last twenty-two months.

Rage burned through him, but he merely stared at his old friend. Enemy. In the past, it’d been easier to separate that line. Now, it blurred, and the Doctor found himself firmly on ‘the enemy’ side.

The Master increased Torchwood’s funding. When he’d found out about their charter to capture their most hated enemy, he’d increased their funding tenfold. That was how they’d been able to open the Void. He’d been, at least partially, responsible for the Battle at Canary Wharf.

“No? Nothing?” The Master sighed, his dramatic breath of air and flopped in the seat beside the Doctor’s wheelchair. “You used to be much more fun. Entertaining at least.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Oh, but I’m sure Rose will.” He grinned, and it turned the Doctor’s stomach. “I’m close, you know, to breaking through your little barriers. Really, Doctor,” the Master tutted. “You ought to have been more careful. Why anyone could read your mind with those flimsy things you call telepathic walls!”

“You’ll never find her,” the Doctor said confidently.

He felt Rose, though. Stronger with each passing day, and knew she worked to repair their bond. He loved her all the more for that, even if knowing once she did so she’d be that much closer to being a pawn of the Master’s. The Doctor couldn’t stop her, though. He hadn’t the strength to deny her that which they both longed for.

Completion.

The Master surged forward, hands braced on the wheelchair arms. “I will,” he spat, spittle coating his lips. “I’ll find her and break her.” He stood and smiled, gaze sliding over poor Lucy who looked more beaten down daily. “Maybe I’ll even punch through the dimensional walls and bring her back here.” His grin widened and the Doctor wanted to vomit. “And show her what a real Time Lord can do.”

An unnatural calmness settled over him, erasing his fury and soothing his mind. The Doctor smiled. “Try.”

Eyebrow quirked, the Master eyed him—caution, disdain, curiosity in his gaze. “Oh, I intend to!”

His smile pulled the aged skin of his face and the Doctor nearly laughed. “Other than the fact it’ll destroy both universes and start a chain reaction that could, conceivably, destroy the entire multiverse—including you and we both know how you value your own life—you don’t know who you’re dealing with. Master.”

Leaning forward, his vow not to speak to the Master forgotten in the face of his threat to Rose, the Doctor laughed. It sounded weak to him, but something in it changed the way Koschi looked at him. Good.

“But please. Try. It’ll save me years of calculations.”

There.

He felt her right there on the edges of his consciousness, growing stronger even as he taunted the Master. The Doctor’s grin widened. Koschi stepped back.

Coward—any day. He may have once said that to the Dalek emperor, but the truth was the Master was far more the coward than he. The Doctor ran toward trouble, the Master away at the slightest hint his plan didn’t go the way he wished.

“Doctor?” Her voice came to him as if through a vast chamber, echoing repeatedly.

“I’m here, my Rose.” The Doctor settled back into his wheelchair and closed his eyes, effectively dismissing the Master. “I’m here my hearts.”

**** “The stars are going out.”

It’d taken her another two weeks, her time, before Rose managed to strengthen her end of the bond enough to telepathically talk like they used to. She hadn’t figured out how to exclude Martha from the conversation, but the Doctor said that was because he wasn’t in the watch to buffer them.

Either way, Martha already knew about the vanishing stars. She had her own job and currently trudged across Eastern Europe, or what remained of Eastern Europe, spreading her story.

“What do you mean?” he demanded, alert as always.

“Where’s the Master?”

“I—I don’t know,” the Doctor lied.

Rose huffed. “He’s with Lucy, isn’t he.” Her voice hardened. “He’s raping her.”

“Yes.”

She felt his sickness over their bond as if it was her own, and bile coated the back of her throat. “How’s—how’s Jack? And Martha’s family?”

“Alive.”

“I’ll tell her when she wakes,” Rose promised, swallowing hard against the sickness and helplessness.

“What’s this about the stars?”

They weren’t in their telepathic haven, it was more a conversation across a static-y mobile line than anything, but he assured her the stronger their bond became the easier it’d be to share what they once did.

Good—Rose had a lot to yell at him for. Jack, breaking their bond, treating her like a liability instead of an asset. Jack.

“They’re vanishing. We don’t know why or what’s happening, even some of our allies are worried. No one knows what’s happening.” Rose blew out a breath. “With the stars disappearing entire systems are as well. Millions of beings—gone.”

“How is that even possible?” he demanded. “Stars don’t just vanish. They age and explode, or implode I guess. But the point is they don’t disappear! How do you know that’s what happened? That they vanished instead of burning out?”

“We didn’t at first,” she admitted, rolling her shoulders and relaxing now that the worst of her headache vanished. It was always easier when they were together. “But it’s happened to too many, too fast. One eighth of Earth’s sky is black now, starless.”

“How’s the jumper coming along?”

“Changing the subject?” she teased.

“No. Yes. I need to think about this. Stars don’t vanish, they don’t disappear, and they don’t do it as quickly as you said.”

“Could it be connected to your trip to Utopia? You said there weren’t any stars in the sky there.”

“The end of the universe.” The Doctor shook his head, she felt it rather than saw it, and wanted to run her fingers through his hair, just to feel him again. “Malcassairo. That was the name of the planet. One of the last habitable places according to the people there.”

“Does it have anything to do with the Paradox Machine?” Rose shuddered.

That was another aspect of her headache, the way the Master defiled the TARDIS. Luckily, he hadn’t realized how close she and the ship were, or Rose knew he’d have found another way to get to her besides trying to break through the Doctor’s telepathic barriers.

“Show me what you have. If the paradox is causing this, it’ll change some of your formulae. Is Mickey about?” The Doctor sounded chipper now, more involved. The last months had been hard, waiting for others to do what he knew needed to be done. “I’ll need him to run another test on the Cardiff rift, see if the readings have changed.”

“I’ll get him. He’s—he’s not too far from me these days.” Rose didn’t tell the Doctor how Mickey had all but moved into the lab as well, leaving for lunch and dinner with his Gran, who still stayed at the mansion, and doing that only when Jake or Malcolm Taylor could stay with her.

She appreciated their concern, and Jackie’s frequent visits, but hated being so weak. Hated the constant pounding headache, the vast emptiness still echoing in her head. The loneliness.

“We’ll figure this out,” the Doctor promised. “There’s got to be a way. I need you home, Rose.” His voice broke. “I miss you so much.”

“I’ll come back, Doctor,” Rose promised. “I swear.”