Calufrax

Story: Unless, Perhaps, Someday, A War
Author: haveloved
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 6,080
Author's Summary: She has realized since that forever is fragile. Forever can be taken away. But the fight cannot be taken out of Rose Tyler. Rose, as the dimension cannon is built and she finds herself working through the Doctor's timeline and trying to figure out what exactly is the mystery behind Donna Noble.
Characters/Pairings: Rose Tyler, Pete Tyler, Donna Noble, The Doctor (10th), Rory Williams, The Doctor (8th), Grace Holloway
Warnings: Mild Swearing

Recced because: The quotation that gives the title its name sets the tone for the story:
“Probably we’ll die without ever seeing each other again.”
“Yes, probably. Unless, perhaps, someday, a war…”
- Hiroshima, Mon Amour

It is war and destruction that brings Rose Tyler back, not her belief in forever, but it is because of who she is that she comes back at all. One of the wonderful things to me about Doctor Who is its concern with who we are--the people we choose to be and the people we become through the choices we make, often in impossible situations. We cannot control the world around us or what other people choose, much of the time, but what we can choose is how we respond. It is these choices that make us who we are, and when everything else is so fragile, perhaps that is what matters the most.

Rose knows this already by the time she gets trapped in the parallel world--indeed, it is perhaps the reason she does get trapped in a parallel world--but when she returns, years have passed for her, and she has grown and changed yet again. This fic bridges the gap between the Rose Tyler we last saw saying good-bye to the Doctor on Bad Wolf Bay and the Rose Tyler who uses the dimension cannon to get back to the Doctor. I have always been fascinated by dimension cannon stories and by what Rose must have experienced en route to her return and how she must have changed, and this is my very favorite.