In Any Other World - Chapter Fifteen : The Last of the Time Lords
Title: In Any Other World
Author: staci_x2
Rating: General/Teen
Warnings: None, so far
Pairings: Ten/Rose
Spoilers: The Last of the Time Lords.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: "My name is Rose Tyler. And this is the story of how I survived." What would things have been like for the Doctor and Rose if they had never been separated into different worlds?
"At zero," he said. "To mark this day, the child, Rose Tyler, will die. My first blood. Any last words?"
Rose just smirked, showing no fear.
"I absorbed the time vortex," she told him. "I poured it into the head of the Dalek Emperor and destoryed his entire fleet. I was there at the Battle of Canary Wharf, I helped send the Daleks and Cybermen to hell."
"Well you can't stop me," the Master told her. "Bow your head."
It was three hundred and sixty-five days later when Rose Tyler returned to Britain. She had left the day she teleported off the Valiant, leaving two men she cared about very much behind. As the boat she was on sped towards the shore, she prepaed to get off it and complete her final quest. Just a few short hours and she could see the Doctor once more.
A man was waiting for her on the beach, a man who could help her finish the mission the Doctor had sent her on what felt like a lifteime ago.
"Rose Tyler," she introduced herself, and the man smiled.
"I know who you are, Rose Tyler," he told her. "You're famous."
"Oh, right, yeah."
She still couldn't get used to that.
"What's your name?" she asked, and the man introduced himself as Tom Milligan.
She told Tom as little as possible as they got into his truck and headed off to see a woman named Professor Docherty. The Doctor had taught her that the more civilians knew, the more they were in danger.
*****
The sun slowly rose as they drove away from the beach, and by the time they arrived at their first destination, it was already light, As they drove, Tom told Rose of the legends surrounding her. The whole world thought that she was the only person who could kill the Master stone dead. Rose smiled a very small smile to herself. The Doctor's plan was working.
Rose checked her watch as Tom parked the truck to find that three hours had passed since she had got into the car. The stories she had been telling of her travels around the world had made the time fly by.
Tom parked the truck and they both got out and they set off walking across a rocky valley until they could see over the rocks to a shipyard filled with rockets. The Master's plan was to go to war with the rest of the universe, to devastate the thousands of differenet civilisations surrounding the Earth.
As they stared out over the south coast of England, two Tocalfane descended from the sky. Tom scrambled to his feet, holding up his license to prove his identity as a Doctor. Rose knew what to do, she had been doing it all year long. Keep low, don't move, stay in the shadows. The perception key the Doctor had given her still kept her safe, unnoticed, if she just kept her head down.
Once the Toclafane had gone, Rose and Tom headed back to the truck and she answered more of his questions about how true the legends about her were. Although she wasn't going to tell him anything that could put him in danger, it helped to pass the time and when they got back to the truck it was almost three o' clock.
*****
When they finally arrived at Professor Docherty's, it was to find her hitting an old television in an attempt to make it work. She managed to make it work in time to see a televised transmission from the Master.
"But I know there's all sorts of whispers down there," said the Master, turning from the camera to walk away.
When he spoke again, Rose let out a gasp.
"But I ask you . . . how much hope has this man got?"
Rose reached out and ran her fingers over the part of the screen where the Doctor was now shown. The Doctor eyes looked at the screen, and Rose somehow felt like he was looking directly at her.
"Doctor," she whispered as the Master explained to the nation that he was over nine hundred years old.
"All nine hundred years of your life, Doctor," said the Master. "What if we could see them?"
Rose watched the screen in horror as the Master pointed his laser screwdriver at the Doctor, and she could hardly stand to watch as the Doctor began to writhe and convulse in pain, his horrible scream piercing Rose's heart. When the Master was finished, the Doctor could no longer been seen on the screen.
"Oh, God," said Rose, tears welling up in her eyes as the Master talked down to the Doctor's suit, crumpled in a pile on the floor.
Slowly, the fabric started to move, and Rose gasped as from the clothing rose the large domed head of an ancient looking creature with the Doctor's big, brown eyes. Before Rose could get a proper look at it, at what was now the Doctor, the Master stood in front of the camera.
"Received and understood, Miss Tyler?" said the Master, and with that the transmission ended.
"I'm sorry," said Tom, and Rose tore her eyes away from the now blank screen, a lone tear running down her cheek.
She smiled.
"No," she said. "He's alive. The Doctor's alive and that's all that matters. Let's get to work."
*****
The plan was to catch one of the Toclafane spheres to find out what they were. In South Africa, there had been a lightning strike that had brought one down, just by chance, and Rose had managed to get hold of a CD of the readings.
They found the correct readings and together, managed to recreate it. When it was time, Tom went outside and fired his gun into the air, leading a Toclafane straight into an electric field. Now they could find out exactly what the Toclafane were.
Professor Docherty set to work on opening the sphere and as the metal finally opened, she let out a gasp. Tom and Rose rushed to her side to see.
"Oh my God," Rose said, echoing Docherty as she saw the wizened human head attached to the inside.
All three of them screamed as suddenly, the sphere's lights went on and the eyes of the human head shot open.
"Rose," said the head, and Rose cautiously stepped back forward. "Rose Tyler."
The sphere knew her, it told her how she had helped them to fly, lead them to salvation.
"What are you taling about?" she demanded.
"The skies are made of diamonds," it said, and Rose felt sick as she rememebered the little boy from the rocket, so long ago.
They were humans. The Toclafane were the human race from the future, and she's known it, really, all along. She knew enough about paradoxes from the time the Doctor had let her go back and see her father, twice. Why else would the Master need a paradox machine. The last of the humans were coming back to murder their ancestors, and the paradox machine was allowing it to happen.
*****
Tom killed the Toclafane with his gun, disgusted that it thought that killing it's own species was fun. Rose walked over to him as the Toclafane died and gently pulled his arm down.
"It's alright," she said. "We're gonna make this right."
She and Tom moved away from the dead Toclafane and went to sit down with Professor Docherty, who asked Rose for the truth about the legends surrounding her. Rose began to tell them of UNIT and Torchwood, saying that they had come up with the ultimate defence against Time Lords, and reached into her backpack to produce a gun.
She told them by injecting the Master with four chemicals, which had been stored in different locations around the world, she could kill him stone dead. She said that their was only one more to find, in an old UNIT base in North London.
They would wait until morning and then set off, staying at the slave quarters in Bexley. As Rose and Tom got up to leave, Docherty asked Rose if she actually had it in her to kill the Master.
"You don't look like a killer to me," she said, and Rose merely turned and left.
*****
Tom and Rose arrived in the crowded house at Bexley to find one hundred people crammed into one house.
"Are you Rose Tyler?" one of the people asked, and she smiled.
"Yep. That's me," she said, looking around at the suddenly hopeful faces of the crowd. "Hello."
They all begn to chatter, firing questions at her about who the Master was and whether she could kill him. Tom tried to tell them to leave her alone, but Rose said it was alright, and sat down on the stairs to begin the story she had been telling all over the world, of how she had walked across the Earth.
"But it's not me who should have become the legend," she told them. "If you think what I've done is so great then the Doctor would blow your mind," she smiled fondly at the thought of him. "He's the one who sent me across the Earth, because that's what he does, he saves people. He saves you, all of you, all the time. There's so many things I've seen him do for you, for this whole planet and all the other planets out there, and you never even know he's there. The last of the Time Lords out there, in space, saving the universe time and time again without ever stopping, or staying, or even letting himself be thanked. Without him, we'd all have been dead a long time ago, but he always saves us, and now we just have to do the same for him."
As Rose finished her story, one of the women in the crowd suddenly ran toward Rose, yelling that the Master was here. Rose got to her feet. It was time.
"Hide her!" the woman shouted, passing a blanket towards her.
"No," Rose said, moving forwards to make her way to the door. "Its alright."
"Rose, you can't go out there, he'll kill you," said Tom, and she looked at him sadly.
"You heard my story, Tom, about the Doctor. He wouldn't hide and wait to be found."
Rose reached behind her neck and pulled off the TARDIS key.
"Someone's got to be the Doctor," she told him, and with that, she opened the front door and walked out to approach the man who had destroyed the Earth.
*****
The Master was standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by armed guards and several Toclafane. As Rose approached him, he commanded her throw over the bag containing the gun, which he destroyed with one click of his laser screwdriver.
"And now, good companion," said the Master. "Your work here is done."
As the Master aimed the screwdriver at her, Rose heard a bang behind her, followed by a male voice screaming the word 'no'. She turned to see Tom running towards the Master with his gun, but before he had even reached Rose, the Master shot him dead.
"Tom!" Rose gasped, dropping to her feet beside his body. "Tom, I'm so sorry."
"But you," the Master said to her, and she looked up at him with a burning glare. "When you die, the Doctor should be witness, hmm?"
The Master's guards came up behind Rose then, and she said nothing as she was pulled to her feet, away from Tom's body and into the waiting van that would take her up to the Valiant.
*****
The flight to the Valiant seemed to take no time at all, and Rose's heart raced as the guards led her all the way to the conference room she had stood in one year ago. The doors to it slid open and she walked forward alone. She held her head high as she stepped through the doorway and set off on a march towards the Master. To her right she could see Jack, his face dirty and his shirt covered in bullet holes.
She smiled at him weakly, and he tried to go to her but the guards stopped him. She turned away then, to the person she loved most in the world. The man who had been reduced to a creautre small enough to be kept in a cage. The oncoming storm, caged like an animal. She smiled at him too, and his wrinkly features attempted to smile back.
By then she had almost reached the Master, who made her hand over Jack's vortex manipulator before commanding her to kneel. Rose handed him the device but stayed on her feet, looking at him defiantly.
"No," she told him, and he looked only mildly surprised.
He walked down the steps he was standing on until they were face to face.
"Down below, the fleet is ready to launch," he announced to the room, his eyes not leaving Rose's face as he spoke. "Two hundred thousand ships set to burn across the universe," his expression turned into a glare. "I said kneel!"
Two guards came forwards as he spoke, forcing Rose to her knees when once again she refused to obey the Master's command.
*****
The Master walked over to a comm device on the wall, announcing that in three minutes, the rocket ships would launch to create war with the universe. A countdown clock appeared on the wall, and the Master turned back to Rose.
"At zero," he said. "To mark this day, the child, Rose Tyler, will die. My first blood. Any last words?"
Rose just smirked, showing no fear.
"I absorbed the time vortex," she told him. "I poured it into the head of the Dalek Emperor and destoryed his entire fleet. I was there at the Battle of Canary Wharf, I helped send the Daleks and Cybermen to hell."
"Well you can't stop me," the Master told her. "Bow your head."
When Rose didn't, the Master simply chose to ignore it, starting a speech about how he was about to establish anew order of Time Lords. Rose laughed, looking straight up at him.
"What?" he demanded, glaring at her. "What, pray tell, is so funny?"
And that's when she revealed that this is what she had been planning all along. The gun was just a story, one she had told Professor Docherty, knowing that she would report back to the Master.
"As if I would ask her to kill," said the Doctor, and Rose looked at him and smiled.
"But you're still gonna die," said the Master, and Rose laughed at him.
"I spent a whole year travelling the world, not looking for chemicals to put in a gun, but to tell my story. The Doctor's story. Travelling the continents, finding people and telling them about the Doctor. And they passed it on. Everyone in the whole world now knows about the Doctor. You forgot that the Doctor knows you, Master. He knew you'd have a great big countdown and that's how we're doing it."
"Who cares if the world knows about him? No amount of faith and hope can save you now."
"But it can," she said, still smiling. "Because you created the Archangel Network, binding the whole human race together, just one thought, at one moment, every person on Earth thinking exactly the same thing at exactly the same time," she glanced over at the clock to see that it had reached zero. "Doctor."
She looked over at the cage to see that it was surrounded with glowing rings. The Doctor's shrivelled body was expanding, growing into the elderly man that Rose had left behind, getting younger and younger until finally he was the Doctor again.
Rose laughed in delight and the Master began to back away as the Doctor rose up into the air, surrounded by a glowing blue light. The Master fired his laser screwdriver at him, but it could not penetrate the field around him.
"Then I'll kill her!" the Master yelled, but the Doctor had used the field to knock the weapon out of his hand before it could even turn to Rose.
The Master cried out that it wasn't fair as the Doctor drifted towards him, backing against the wall and cowering. The Doctor landed on the floor in front of him and the psychic field disappeared as he walked over to crouch beside the Master, wrapping his arms around him.
"I forgive you," said the Doctor, but the Master yelled out to the Toclafane to protect the paradox.
The Doctor ordered Jack to get to it and he ran from the room, the guards now obeying Jack instead of the Master. As the Doctor was distracted, Rose saw the Master pull out the vortex manipulator.
"Doctor!" she called out in warning, but he had already noticed.
His hands grabbed onto it and both men disappeared into thin air.
*****
Rose dashed to the bridge. The Doctor may have been back, but the battle was not over yet. All six billion of the Toclafane spheres were heading straight for the defenceles ship.
"Come on, Jack," Rose muttered, watching from the window as the Toclafane charged.
It wasn't until the very last second that, finally, the spheres disappeared. Rose beamed. Jack must have succeeded. The Valiant began to shake, and Rose was thrown back into familar, strong, pinstriped arms. She let out a cry of delight at the Doctor's grinning face and threw her arms around his neck.
The Doctor called out to everyone to get down, because time was reversing, and Rose let him out of the embrace so he could pull them down to the floor. They laughed together through the storm inside the ship, reaching out to tightly join their hands as the past three hundred and sixty-five days blipped out of existence.
*****
When the strom was over, the Doctor slowly helped Rose to her feet and they rushed to the bridge. The paradox was broken and it was exactly one year an a day ago at two minutes past eight in the morning, just after President Winters was killed. The spheres were trapped at the end of the universe and Planet Earth was restored to its former glory.
"Whoa, big fella!"
Rose looked up to see Jack returning to the room, capturing the Master in his attempt to escape. Once he had cuffed him and handed him to one of the guards, Rose ran to Jack and he pulled her into a hug.
"You did good, sweetheart," he told her.
"You didn't do so bad yourself," she said as they broke the hug. "Destroyed the paradox machine right in the nick of time. Very 'Doctor'."
He grinned and Rose turned to the Doctor.
"So what happens next?" she asked, and the Doctor walked slowly over to where they stood.
"He's my responsibility," he said, telling them that the only safe place for the Master was the TARDIS and looking to Rose. "We'll care for him," he said and she nodded, smiling at the Doctor in agreement.
*****
And then the noise of a gunshot sounded in the room, and all eyes turned to the Master, and then to the one with the gun, his wife. Jack went to her whilst the Doctor rushed to the Master, cradling him in his arms. Rose watched from a few feet away as the Doctor told the Master to regenerate. He refused.
"Regenerate," the Doctor repeated, his voice breaking. "Just regenerate. Please! Please! Just regenerate! Come on!"
The Master refused again, determined not to spend his life imprisoned in the TARDIS.
"We're the only two left," the Doctor begged, tears now filling his eyes and running down his cheeks. "There's no one else. Regenerate!"
"Will it stop, Doctor?" said the Master. "The drumming. Will it stop?"
And then he went limp in the Doctor's arms, and he held his body to his, yelling and crying in pain. Rose looked at Jack, tears prickling in her own eyes and he nodded once. She knew what to do. She crossed the room quietly, crouching down beside the Doctor and resting a hand on his shoulder. He was silent then, and after a few moments he lifted his head, looking at Rose with a tear stained face.
"He's gone," he whispered.
"I know," Rose murmured, and slowly his arms let go of the Master.
Rose was the one doing to cradling then, and as the Master's body went down to the floor, the Doctor let himself fall into Rose, crying once more. She held him as tightly as she could, her face resting above his head and she placed a soothing kiss on his head, rocking him gently until his crying stopped.
Cautious footsteps sounded behind her and she turned to see that Jack had approached them. He crouched down on the Doctor's other side. The Doctor looked up and out of Rose's arms then, and gazed at both of them before clearing his throat.
Rose released her grip on him and he looked away, down at the Master's body. Without saying anything, he got to his feet. Jack and Rose stood too, and the Doctor's hand found hers as he turned and lead them from the room.
*****
The Doctor said nothing else as they walked, leaving Jack in the conference room with the Master's body. When they arrived in the now-paradox-free console room, the Doctor headed for the jumpseat and they sat down on it together. After a time, the Doctor finally spoke.
"I'll need to deal with the body," the Doctor said, his voice slightly croaky from his crying.
Rose nodded and they both looked up as the TARDIS doors opened. It was Jack.
"He's ready," he told them solemnly, and the Doctor nodded, getting to his feet and moving to the console.
Jack signalled to two guards outside and they brought in a body bag before leaving the three of them on the ship. The Doctor landed the TARDIS in the place where they were to burn the Master's body, and Jack helped him carry it outside before going back to wait in the console room.
Rose wasn't sure whether or not she should go too, whether the Doctor might want to say goodbye to last of his people alone, but then he reached out to take her hand, and she gave him a weak smile as he used his free hand to light the funeral pyre.
Together they stood and watched it for a minute, the Doctor's face emotionless and staring until he turned to Rose and gave her just the weakest of smiles. Without speaking, the two of them walked away, hand-in-hand, until they were back at the TARDIS.
*****
Rose wasn't sure how long the three of them spent in the console room. If the TARDIS went by night and day she would have guessed it was the entire night. By the end of it, they were talking and laughing again, almost back to normal.
"So," said Jack, getting up from his leaning position against the console. "If you don't mind, Doctor, I haven't had a shower in over a year, and if my memory serves me well, the TARDIS has fantastic facilities."
Rose and the Doctor both smiled after him as he left, her expression turning sad as she remembered that her mother's flat had been destroyed. All of her showers from now on would be in the TARDIS.
"What's wrong?" the Doctor asked.
"Nothing, I was just thinking about the flat, that's all. Time's reversed but it's still after the explosion."
A smile made it's way to the Doctor's face and he got to his feet, setting the TARDIS in motion.
"Where are we going?" she asked, and the TARDIS landed with a bump.
"Stay here!" he told her before running towards door, his face still grinning. "I'll be back in a minute."
*****
A few minutes later he returned to the console room and set the ship in motion once again.
"What was all that about?" she asked as the TARDIS landed again.
He grinned at her.
"Why don't you go outside and take a look?"
She gave him a slightly suspicious glance before heading for the doors, opening them to step into her completely undamaged living room. She let out a cry of delight and turned to see the Doctor following her out.
"What did you do?" she asked.
"Oh, just went back in time a little and deactivated the bomb."
"But doesn't that change the past?"
"Well even if the bomb hadn't gone off we'd still have run away expecting it to. Exactly the same outcome. Aren't Time Lords wonderful?"
Rose beamed at him and thre her arms around his neck. He made a contented noise as his hands gripped her back. When he set her back down on her feet, he was still grinning at her.
"You saved the world," he told her. "Again."
"Same old, same old," she said with a laugh and he giggled.
"You are brilliant."
"Well I couldn't have done it without you," she said. "I can't take the all the credit for your idea. But anyway, since we're back home I think I'm gonna get a shower too."
*****
When Rose returned to the TADIS, fully cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes, it was to find the Doctor and Jack looking similarly clean and tidy.
"Right then," said the Doctor, standing and pulling down a lever on the console. "Cardiff."
When the TARDIS landed the three of them stepped out, and Jack took them over to the Pierhead Building, where they stood and looked out over the bay.
"Back to work," said Jack, stepping through the railings in front of him and Rose looked at him in surprise.
"What?"
"I really don't mind," the Doctor assured him. "Come with us."
"Yeah, there's plenty of room," said Rose. "It'll be just like it before."
Jack smiled sadly and stepped back through the railings to face her.
"It is just like before," he told her. "You don't need me."
"But we want you."
"And besides," he said, as though she hadn't spoken. "I had plenty of time to think that past year. The year that never was."
He turned and looked over at the water tower, and told them how he had kept thinking about his team, and his responsibility towards them. The Doctor reached out to destroy Jack's vortex manipulator with the sonic screwdriver and Rose smiled.
Before he left, Jack asked the Doctor is there was any way he could fix his inability to die. The Doctor said he couldn't. Rose felt so guilty.
"I'm sorry, Jack," she said and he shook his head, giving her a smile.
"You cared enough to bring me back to life," he said. "No need to apologise for that."
She returned his smile, and he stepped forwards to cup her face with his hands, just as he had when he had kissed her goodbye on Game Station. His lips touched hers and she smiled through the friendly kiss. He then stepped back and both of them looked at the Doctor. He was staring at Jack with an unreadable expression.
Jack lifted his hand to his head in a salute and Rose gave the Doctor a little nudge before he returned it, and Jack made to run off. The Doctor had just turned to Rose to say something when they heard Jack's voice again, and looked round to see that he had turned back to them.
He asked the Doctor what would happen if he lived for a million years, aging without being able to die. The Doctor told him that he really didn't know, and Jack chuckled at his vanity, divulging that
he had been a poster boy on his home planet, and the first ever to join the Time Agency.
"The Face of Boe they called me."
As Rose and the Doctor's jaws dropped, Jack turned away, saying goodbye one last time before running off towards the water tower.
"No way," said Rose, thinking back to when she had first seen the Face of Boe on Platform One. "No way!"
The Doctor looked at her, equally gobsmacked.
"No, definitely not. No."
They both watched him go before turning to each other and laughing.
"Nah, it'll be a coincidence," said Rose as they began to walk back to the TARDIS, hand-in-hand. "S'got to be."
"Yeah," the Doctor agreed. "No way it could possibly . . ."
Rose giggled again as they opened the TARDIS doors and stepped inside.
*****
"Right then," he said. "Off we go! The open road!"
Rose smiled at him, stifling a yawn as he described the ideas he had.
"I know!" he said. "What about Agatha Chrisitie? I'd love to meet Agatha Christie! I bet she's brilliant!"
The Doctor looked at her, and his grin faded to an apologetic smile.
"You must be exhausted," said the Doctor, as Rose tried to hide another yawn.
She smiled.
"Sorry," she said. "But I can't even remember the last time I slept in a half-decent bed."
"No, no, it's fine. You should go and get some rest," he told her and she nodded.
"See you in a bit, Doctor,"she said, turning and heading through to the TARDIS interior, all the way through to the bedroom she'd once thought she may never see again.
She lay down on her bed and let out a long sigh before she fell asleep. Rose had saved the world and her Doctor. The Earth was safe once again.
If you liked it, please leave a comment :) Comments make my day :)
Author: staci_x2
Rating: General/Teen
Warnings: None, so far
Pairings: Ten/Rose
Spoilers: The Last of the Time Lords.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: "My name is Rose Tyler. And this is the story of how I survived." What would things have been like for the Doctor and Rose if they had never been separated into different worlds?
"At zero," he said. "To mark this day, the child, Rose Tyler, will die. My first blood. Any last words?"
Rose just smirked, showing no fear.
"I absorbed the time vortex," she told him. "I poured it into the head of the Dalek Emperor and destoryed his entire fleet. I was there at the Battle of Canary Wharf, I helped send the Daleks and Cybermen to hell."
"Well you can't stop me," the Master told her. "Bow your head."
It was three hundred and sixty-five days later when Rose Tyler returned to Britain. She had left the day she teleported off the Valiant, leaving two men she cared about very much behind. As the boat she was on sped towards the shore, she prepaed to get off it and complete her final quest. Just a few short hours and she could see the Doctor once more.
A man was waiting for her on the beach, a man who could help her finish the mission the Doctor had sent her on what felt like a lifteime ago.
"Rose Tyler," she introduced herself, and the man smiled.
"I know who you are, Rose Tyler," he told her. "You're famous."
"Oh, right, yeah."
She still couldn't get used to that.
"What's your name?" she asked, and the man introduced himself as Tom Milligan.
She told Tom as little as possible as they got into his truck and headed off to see a woman named Professor Docherty. The Doctor had taught her that the more civilians knew, the more they were in danger.
*****
The sun slowly rose as they drove away from the beach, and by the time they arrived at their first destination, it was already light, As they drove, Tom told Rose of the legends surrounding her. The whole world thought that she was the only person who could kill the Master stone dead. Rose smiled a very small smile to herself. The Doctor's plan was working.
Rose checked her watch as Tom parked the truck to find that three hours had passed since she had got into the car. The stories she had been telling of her travels around the world had made the time fly by.
Tom parked the truck and they both got out and they set off walking across a rocky valley until they could see over the rocks to a shipyard filled with rockets. The Master's plan was to go to war with the rest of the universe, to devastate the thousands of differenet civilisations surrounding the Earth.
As they stared out over the south coast of England, two Tocalfane descended from the sky. Tom scrambled to his feet, holding up his license to prove his identity as a Doctor. Rose knew what to do, she had been doing it all year long. Keep low, don't move, stay in the shadows. The perception key the Doctor had given her still kept her safe, unnoticed, if she just kept her head down.
Once the Toclafane had gone, Rose and Tom headed back to the truck and she answered more of his questions about how true the legends about her were. Although she wasn't going to tell him anything that could put him in danger, it helped to pass the time and when they got back to the truck it was almost three o' clock.
*****
When they finally arrived at Professor Docherty's, it was to find her hitting an old television in an attempt to make it work. She managed to make it work in time to see a televised transmission from the Master.
"But I know there's all sorts of whispers down there," said the Master, turning from the camera to walk away.
When he spoke again, Rose let out a gasp.
"But I ask you . . . how much hope has this man got?"
Rose reached out and ran her fingers over the part of the screen where the Doctor was now shown. The Doctor eyes looked at the screen, and Rose somehow felt like he was looking directly at her.
"Doctor," she whispered as the Master explained to the nation that he was over nine hundred years old.
"All nine hundred years of your life, Doctor," said the Master. "What if we could see them?"
Rose watched the screen in horror as the Master pointed his laser screwdriver at the Doctor, and she could hardly stand to watch as the Doctor began to writhe and convulse in pain, his horrible scream piercing Rose's heart. When the Master was finished, the Doctor could no longer been seen on the screen.
"Oh, God," said Rose, tears welling up in her eyes as the Master talked down to the Doctor's suit, crumpled in a pile on the floor.
Slowly, the fabric started to move, and Rose gasped as from the clothing rose the large domed head of an ancient looking creature with the Doctor's big, brown eyes. Before Rose could get a proper look at it, at what was now the Doctor, the Master stood in front of the camera.
"Received and understood, Miss Tyler?" said the Master, and with that the transmission ended.
"I'm sorry," said Tom, and Rose tore her eyes away from the now blank screen, a lone tear running down her cheek.
She smiled.
"No," she said. "He's alive. The Doctor's alive and that's all that matters. Let's get to work."
*****
The plan was to catch one of the Toclafane spheres to find out what they were. In South Africa, there had been a lightning strike that had brought one down, just by chance, and Rose had managed to get hold of a CD of the readings.
They found the correct readings and together, managed to recreate it. When it was time, Tom went outside and fired his gun into the air, leading a Toclafane straight into an electric field. Now they could find out exactly what the Toclafane were.
Professor Docherty set to work on opening the sphere and as the metal finally opened, she let out a gasp. Tom and Rose rushed to her side to see.
"Oh my God," Rose said, echoing Docherty as she saw the wizened human head attached to the inside.
All three of them screamed as suddenly, the sphere's lights went on and the eyes of the human head shot open.
"Rose," said the head, and Rose cautiously stepped back forward. "Rose Tyler."
The sphere knew her, it told her how she had helped them to fly, lead them to salvation.
"What are you taling about?" she demanded.
"The skies are made of diamonds," it said, and Rose felt sick as she rememebered the little boy from the rocket, so long ago.
They were humans. The Toclafane were the human race from the future, and she's known it, really, all along. She knew enough about paradoxes from the time the Doctor had let her go back and see her father, twice. Why else would the Master need a paradox machine. The last of the humans were coming back to murder their ancestors, and the paradox machine was allowing it to happen.
*****
Tom killed the Toclafane with his gun, disgusted that it thought that killing it's own species was fun. Rose walked over to him as the Toclafane died and gently pulled his arm down.
"It's alright," she said. "We're gonna make this right."
She and Tom moved away from the dead Toclafane and went to sit down with Professor Docherty, who asked Rose for the truth about the legends surrounding her. Rose began to tell them of UNIT and Torchwood, saying that they had come up with the ultimate defence against Time Lords, and reached into her backpack to produce a gun.
She told them by injecting the Master with four chemicals, which had been stored in different locations around the world, she could kill him stone dead. She said that their was only one more to find, in an old UNIT base in North London.
They would wait until morning and then set off, staying at the slave quarters in Bexley. As Rose and Tom got up to leave, Docherty asked Rose if she actually had it in her to kill the Master.
"You don't look like a killer to me," she said, and Rose merely turned and left.
*****
Tom and Rose arrived in the crowded house at Bexley to find one hundred people crammed into one house.
"Are you Rose Tyler?" one of the people asked, and she smiled.
"Yep. That's me," she said, looking around at the suddenly hopeful faces of the crowd. "Hello."
They all begn to chatter, firing questions at her about who the Master was and whether she could kill him. Tom tried to tell them to leave her alone, but Rose said it was alright, and sat down on the stairs to begin the story she had been telling all over the world, of how she had walked across the Earth.
"But it's not me who should have become the legend," she told them. "If you think what I've done is so great then the Doctor would blow your mind," she smiled fondly at the thought of him. "He's the one who sent me across the Earth, because that's what he does, he saves people. He saves you, all of you, all the time. There's so many things I've seen him do for you, for this whole planet and all the other planets out there, and you never even know he's there. The last of the Time Lords out there, in space, saving the universe time and time again without ever stopping, or staying, or even letting himself be thanked. Without him, we'd all have been dead a long time ago, but he always saves us, and now we just have to do the same for him."
As Rose finished her story, one of the women in the crowd suddenly ran toward Rose, yelling that the Master was here. Rose got to her feet. It was time.
"Hide her!" the woman shouted, passing a blanket towards her.
"No," Rose said, moving forwards to make her way to the door. "Its alright."
"Rose, you can't go out there, he'll kill you," said Tom, and she looked at him sadly.
"You heard my story, Tom, about the Doctor. He wouldn't hide and wait to be found."
Rose reached behind her neck and pulled off the TARDIS key.
"Someone's got to be the Doctor," she told him, and with that, she opened the front door and walked out to approach the man who had destroyed the Earth.
*****
The Master was standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by armed guards and several Toclafane. As Rose approached him, he commanded her throw over the bag containing the gun, which he destroyed with one click of his laser screwdriver.
"And now, good companion," said the Master. "Your work here is done."
As the Master aimed the screwdriver at her, Rose heard a bang behind her, followed by a male voice screaming the word 'no'. She turned to see Tom running towards the Master with his gun, but before he had even reached Rose, the Master shot him dead.
"Tom!" Rose gasped, dropping to her feet beside his body. "Tom, I'm so sorry."
"But you," the Master said to her, and she looked up at him with a burning glare. "When you die, the Doctor should be witness, hmm?"
The Master's guards came up behind Rose then, and she said nothing as she was pulled to her feet, away from Tom's body and into the waiting van that would take her up to the Valiant.
*****
The flight to the Valiant seemed to take no time at all, and Rose's heart raced as the guards led her all the way to the conference room she had stood in one year ago. The doors to it slid open and she walked forward alone. She held her head high as she stepped through the doorway and set off on a march towards the Master. To her right she could see Jack, his face dirty and his shirt covered in bullet holes.
She smiled at him weakly, and he tried to go to her but the guards stopped him. She turned away then, to the person she loved most in the world. The man who had been reduced to a creautre small enough to be kept in a cage. The oncoming storm, caged like an animal. She smiled at him too, and his wrinkly features attempted to smile back.
By then she had almost reached the Master, who made her hand over Jack's vortex manipulator before commanding her to kneel. Rose handed him the device but stayed on her feet, looking at him defiantly.
"No," she told him, and he looked only mildly surprised.
He walked down the steps he was standing on until they were face to face.
"Down below, the fleet is ready to launch," he announced to the room, his eyes not leaving Rose's face as he spoke. "Two hundred thousand ships set to burn across the universe," his expression turned into a glare. "I said kneel!"
Two guards came forwards as he spoke, forcing Rose to her knees when once again she refused to obey the Master's command.
*****
The Master walked over to a comm device on the wall, announcing that in three minutes, the rocket ships would launch to create war with the universe. A countdown clock appeared on the wall, and the Master turned back to Rose.
"At zero," he said. "To mark this day, the child, Rose Tyler, will die. My first blood. Any last words?"
Rose just smirked, showing no fear.
"I absorbed the time vortex," she told him. "I poured it into the head of the Dalek Emperor and destoryed his entire fleet. I was there at the Battle of Canary Wharf, I helped send the Daleks and Cybermen to hell."
"Well you can't stop me," the Master told her. "Bow your head."
When Rose didn't, the Master simply chose to ignore it, starting a speech about how he was about to establish anew order of Time Lords. Rose laughed, looking straight up at him.
"What?" he demanded, glaring at her. "What, pray tell, is so funny?"
And that's when she revealed that this is what she had been planning all along. The gun was just a story, one she had told Professor Docherty, knowing that she would report back to the Master.
"As if I would ask her to kill," said the Doctor, and Rose looked at him and smiled.
"But you're still gonna die," said the Master, and Rose laughed at him.
"I spent a whole year travelling the world, not looking for chemicals to put in a gun, but to tell my story. The Doctor's story. Travelling the continents, finding people and telling them about the Doctor. And they passed it on. Everyone in the whole world now knows about the Doctor. You forgot that the Doctor knows you, Master. He knew you'd have a great big countdown and that's how we're doing it."
"Who cares if the world knows about him? No amount of faith and hope can save you now."
"But it can," she said, still smiling. "Because you created the Archangel Network, binding the whole human race together, just one thought, at one moment, every person on Earth thinking exactly the same thing at exactly the same time," she glanced over at the clock to see that it had reached zero. "Doctor."
She looked over at the cage to see that it was surrounded with glowing rings. The Doctor's shrivelled body was expanding, growing into the elderly man that Rose had left behind, getting younger and younger until finally he was the Doctor again.
Rose laughed in delight and the Master began to back away as the Doctor rose up into the air, surrounded by a glowing blue light. The Master fired his laser screwdriver at him, but it could not penetrate the field around him.
"Then I'll kill her!" the Master yelled, but the Doctor had used the field to knock the weapon out of his hand before it could even turn to Rose.
The Master cried out that it wasn't fair as the Doctor drifted towards him, backing against the wall and cowering. The Doctor landed on the floor in front of him and the psychic field disappeared as he walked over to crouch beside the Master, wrapping his arms around him.
"I forgive you," said the Doctor, but the Master yelled out to the Toclafane to protect the paradox.
The Doctor ordered Jack to get to it and he ran from the room, the guards now obeying Jack instead of the Master. As the Doctor was distracted, Rose saw the Master pull out the vortex manipulator.
"Doctor!" she called out in warning, but he had already noticed.
His hands grabbed onto it and both men disappeared into thin air.
*****
Rose dashed to the bridge. The Doctor may have been back, but the battle was not over yet. All six billion of the Toclafane spheres were heading straight for the defenceles ship.
"Come on, Jack," Rose muttered, watching from the window as the Toclafane charged.
It wasn't until the very last second that, finally, the spheres disappeared. Rose beamed. Jack must have succeeded. The Valiant began to shake, and Rose was thrown back into familar, strong, pinstriped arms. She let out a cry of delight at the Doctor's grinning face and threw her arms around his neck.
The Doctor called out to everyone to get down, because time was reversing, and Rose let him out of the embrace so he could pull them down to the floor. They laughed together through the storm inside the ship, reaching out to tightly join their hands as the past three hundred and sixty-five days blipped out of existence.
*****
When the strom was over, the Doctor slowly helped Rose to her feet and they rushed to the bridge. The paradox was broken and it was exactly one year an a day ago at two minutes past eight in the morning, just after President Winters was killed. The spheres were trapped at the end of the universe and Planet Earth was restored to its former glory.
"Whoa, big fella!"
Rose looked up to see Jack returning to the room, capturing the Master in his attempt to escape. Once he had cuffed him and handed him to one of the guards, Rose ran to Jack and he pulled her into a hug.
"You did good, sweetheart," he told her.
"You didn't do so bad yourself," she said as they broke the hug. "Destroyed the paradox machine right in the nick of time. Very 'Doctor'."
He grinned and Rose turned to the Doctor.
"So what happens next?" she asked, and the Doctor walked slowly over to where they stood.
"He's my responsibility," he said, telling them that the only safe place for the Master was the TARDIS and looking to Rose. "We'll care for him," he said and she nodded, smiling at the Doctor in agreement.
*****
And then the noise of a gunshot sounded in the room, and all eyes turned to the Master, and then to the one with the gun, his wife. Jack went to her whilst the Doctor rushed to the Master, cradling him in his arms. Rose watched from a few feet away as the Doctor told the Master to regenerate. He refused.
"Regenerate," the Doctor repeated, his voice breaking. "Just regenerate. Please! Please! Just regenerate! Come on!"
The Master refused again, determined not to spend his life imprisoned in the TARDIS.
"We're the only two left," the Doctor begged, tears now filling his eyes and running down his cheeks. "There's no one else. Regenerate!"
"Will it stop, Doctor?" said the Master. "The drumming. Will it stop?"
And then he went limp in the Doctor's arms, and he held his body to his, yelling and crying in pain. Rose looked at Jack, tears prickling in her own eyes and he nodded once. She knew what to do. She crossed the room quietly, crouching down beside the Doctor and resting a hand on his shoulder. He was silent then, and after a few moments he lifted his head, looking at Rose with a tear stained face.
"He's gone," he whispered.
"I know," Rose murmured, and slowly his arms let go of the Master.
Rose was the one doing to cradling then, and as the Master's body went down to the floor, the Doctor let himself fall into Rose, crying once more. She held him as tightly as she could, her face resting above his head and she placed a soothing kiss on his head, rocking him gently until his crying stopped.
Cautious footsteps sounded behind her and she turned to see that Jack had approached them. He crouched down on the Doctor's other side. The Doctor looked up and out of Rose's arms then, and gazed at both of them before clearing his throat.
Rose released her grip on him and he looked away, down at the Master's body. Without saying anything, he got to his feet. Jack and Rose stood too, and the Doctor's hand found hers as he turned and lead them from the room.
*****
The Doctor said nothing else as they walked, leaving Jack in the conference room with the Master's body. When they arrived in the now-paradox-free console room, the Doctor headed for the jumpseat and they sat down on it together. After a time, the Doctor finally spoke.
"I'll need to deal with the body," the Doctor said, his voice slightly croaky from his crying.
Rose nodded and they both looked up as the TARDIS doors opened. It was Jack.
"He's ready," he told them solemnly, and the Doctor nodded, getting to his feet and moving to the console.
Jack signalled to two guards outside and they brought in a body bag before leaving the three of them on the ship. The Doctor landed the TARDIS in the place where they were to burn the Master's body, and Jack helped him carry it outside before going back to wait in the console room.
Rose wasn't sure whether or not she should go too, whether the Doctor might want to say goodbye to last of his people alone, but then he reached out to take her hand, and she gave him a weak smile as he used his free hand to light the funeral pyre.
Together they stood and watched it for a minute, the Doctor's face emotionless and staring until he turned to Rose and gave her just the weakest of smiles. Without speaking, the two of them walked away, hand-in-hand, until they were back at the TARDIS.
*****
Rose wasn't sure how long the three of them spent in the console room. If the TARDIS went by night and day she would have guessed it was the entire night. By the end of it, they were talking and laughing again, almost back to normal.
"So," said Jack, getting up from his leaning position against the console. "If you don't mind, Doctor, I haven't had a shower in over a year, and if my memory serves me well, the TARDIS has fantastic facilities."
Rose and the Doctor both smiled after him as he left, her expression turning sad as she remembered that her mother's flat had been destroyed. All of her showers from now on would be in the TARDIS.
"What's wrong?" the Doctor asked.
"Nothing, I was just thinking about the flat, that's all. Time's reversed but it's still after the explosion."
A smile made it's way to the Doctor's face and he got to his feet, setting the TARDIS in motion.
"Where are we going?" she asked, and the TARDIS landed with a bump.
"Stay here!" he told her before running towards door, his face still grinning. "I'll be back in a minute."
*****
A few minutes later he returned to the console room and set the ship in motion once again.
"What was all that about?" she asked as the TARDIS landed again.
He grinned at her.
"Why don't you go outside and take a look?"
She gave him a slightly suspicious glance before heading for the doors, opening them to step into her completely undamaged living room. She let out a cry of delight and turned to see the Doctor following her out.
"What did you do?" she asked.
"Oh, just went back in time a little and deactivated the bomb."
"But doesn't that change the past?"
"Well even if the bomb hadn't gone off we'd still have run away expecting it to. Exactly the same outcome. Aren't Time Lords wonderful?"
Rose beamed at him and thre her arms around his neck. He made a contented noise as his hands gripped her back. When he set her back down on her feet, he was still grinning at her.
"You saved the world," he told her. "Again."
"Same old, same old," she said with a laugh and he giggled.
"You are brilliant."
"Well I couldn't have done it without you," she said. "I can't take the all the credit for your idea. But anyway, since we're back home I think I'm gonna get a shower too."
*****
When Rose returned to the TADIS, fully cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes, it was to find the Doctor and Jack looking similarly clean and tidy.
"Right then," said the Doctor, standing and pulling down a lever on the console. "Cardiff."
When the TARDIS landed the three of them stepped out, and Jack took them over to the Pierhead Building, where they stood and looked out over the bay.
"Back to work," said Jack, stepping through the railings in front of him and Rose looked at him in surprise.
"What?"
"I really don't mind," the Doctor assured him. "Come with us."
"Yeah, there's plenty of room," said Rose. "It'll be just like it before."
Jack smiled sadly and stepped back through the railings to face her.
"It is just like before," he told her. "You don't need me."
"But we want you."
"And besides," he said, as though she hadn't spoken. "I had plenty of time to think that past year. The year that never was."
He turned and looked over at the water tower, and told them how he had kept thinking about his team, and his responsibility towards them. The Doctor reached out to destroy Jack's vortex manipulator with the sonic screwdriver and Rose smiled.
Before he left, Jack asked the Doctor is there was any way he could fix his inability to die. The Doctor said he couldn't. Rose felt so guilty.
"I'm sorry, Jack," she said and he shook his head, giving her a smile.
"You cared enough to bring me back to life," he said. "No need to apologise for that."
She returned his smile, and he stepped forwards to cup her face with his hands, just as he had when he had kissed her goodbye on Game Station. His lips touched hers and she smiled through the friendly kiss. He then stepped back and both of them looked at the Doctor. He was staring at Jack with an unreadable expression.
Jack lifted his hand to his head in a salute and Rose gave the Doctor a little nudge before he returned it, and Jack made to run off. The Doctor had just turned to Rose to say something when they heard Jack's voice again, and looked round to see that he had turned back to them.
He asked the Doctor what would happen if he lived for a million years, aging without being able to die. The Doctor told him that he really didn't know, and Jack chuckled at his vanity, divulging that
he had been a poster boy on his home planet, and the first ever to join the Time Agency.
"The Face of Boe they called me."
As Rose and the Doctor's jaws dropped, Jack turned away, saying goodbye one last time before running off towards the water tower.
"No way," said Rose, thinking back to when she had first seen the Face of Boe on Platform One. "No way!"
The Doctor looked at her, equally gobsmacked.
"No, definitely not. No."
They both watched him go before turning to each other and laughing.
"Nah, it'll be a coincidence," said Rose as they began to walk back to the TARDIS, hand-in-hand. "S'got to be."
"Yeah," the Doctor agreed. "No way it could possibly . . ."
Rose giggled again as they opened the TARDIS doors and stepped inside.
*****
"Right then," he said. "Off we go! The open road!"
Rose smiled at him, stifling a yawn as he described the ideas he had.
"I know!" he said. "What about Agatha Chrisitie? I'd love to meet Agatha Christie! I bet she's brilliant!"
The Doctor looked at her, and his grin faded to an apologetic smile.
"You must be exhausted," said the Doctor, as Rose tried to hide another yawn.
She smiled.
"Sorry," she said. "But I can't even remember the last time I slept in a half-decent bed."
"No, no, it's fine. You should go and get some rest," he told her and she nodded.
"See you in a bit, Doctor,"she said, turning and heading through to the TARDIS interior, all the way through to the bedroom she'd once thought she may never see again.
She lay down on her bed and let out a long sigh before she fell asleep. Rose had saved the world and her Doctor. The Earth was safe once again.
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