A/N - I'm gonna be honest with you. I may never get around to finishing this story, but I'm really proud of what I have so far and I think you might enjoy it. If I get a lot of reviews begging for more, I'll tackle this after I finish "The Doctor and the Wolf". In the meantime, it is what it is.

Reviews are like love. They cost nothing and make me smile. Just saying.

The ride was rougher than usual, which was saying something. Rose lost her grip on the rail and almost fell. A strong hand grabbed her arm and steadied her, and she smiled up at him. Her Doctor. "Thanks."

He grinned back. "Can't have you breaking your neck just when the fun's starting."

Rose suddenly noticed that his other hand was resting on her hip. She looked at the device she thought of as the steering wheel although that didn't begin to describe it. "You're not doing anything."

He looked offended. "I'm saving you from a tragic death. That's something."

"But Doctor, who's flying the TARDIS?!"

"She's flying herself. She's locked onto some sort of signal." Keeping her steady with one hand, he twiddled a few controls with the other. An image appeared on the scanner. It looked a bit like a sonar map with concentric circles emanating from the center and expanding outward like ripples in a pond. A dot was cutting diagonally across the circles. Rose assumed this represented the TARDIS because every time it crossed through a circle the actual TARDIS gave a massive shudder as though it was being hit with a battering ram.

"What is it?" Rose asked, clinging to the Doctor as the next shock wave nearly turned them upside down.

He twiddled more controls and unintelligible symbols began to scroll across the bottom of the screen. Unintelligible to Rose, but they meant something to the Doctor. His eyes widened. "No," he whispered. "But that's impossible."

"What? Is it bad?"

He looked at her, and it wasn't his I'm-so-sorry-but-you're-about-to-be-in-terrible-danger face. He was wearing an expression she'd only seen a very few times since she'd known him although she'd begun to see it more often after he changed his face. It was happy. Not the laughing in the face of death happiness he showed every day. This was softer, quieter, more genuine. She'd seen it sometimes when she was walking ahead of him on some brand new world and she'd look back and catch him watching her, enjoying her wonder. Whatever they were headed for, it was very, very good.

~o0o~

But when the TARDIS finally came to rest and they looked outside, the view was a bit bleak. Gray dust under a twilight sky, no stars visible. Here and there were piles of stones, too evenly shaped to be natural, and broken pillars.

"Was this a city?" Rose asked, touching one of the stones. It was cold, colder than the air around them.

"No," the Doctor said, and he didn't look so happy anymore. He looked worried. "Just a way station."

"A way station for who?"

"Time Lords."

Just then, they heard voices coming from deeper in the ruins.

"Oh, someone's home," the Doctor said. He held out a hand to her. "Shall we go say hello?"

~o0o~

Captain's log, no stardate. For us time does not exist. McCoy has gone through a time portal and changed the past somehow so that the Federation, the Enterprise, everything we know never existed. Something about this planet protected us from the changes to the timeline, but we are stranded. Our only hope is to follow McCoy back and try to undo whatever damage he has done.

"Captain," Spock called.

Kirk saved his log entry in the tricorder even though it seemed unlikely anyone would ever hear it. "Yes, Mister Spock? Have you found our entry point?"

"Not yet, Captain. The tricorder is still analyzing the data, but we have a more immediate concern. There are two life signs approaching. One human, and one of a species I do not recognize."

That got Kirk's attention. More stranded travelers? How long had they been here? Enterprise hadn't detected any other ships in orbit, but the time distortions might have hid them from the sensors.

"All right, keep your weapons holstered," he ordered. "We don't want to provoke unnecessary conflict. But be ready for anything."

The landing party moved a little closer together and waited to see what new surprises this barren little world had in store for them.

When they came walking out of the ruins, the most remarkable thing about the two strangers was how ordinary they looked. Kirk couldn't even tell which one was the human and which the alien. There was a skinny man in a long brown coat, and a girl with blond hair and a round, cheerful face. They were holding hands like two young lovers having a stroll in the park.

"Hello," the man said, grinning at the Enterprise landing party as though they were old friends. "Who're you?" He spoke perfect Federation Standard with a British accent.

"Mister Spock," Kirk said, not taking his eyes off the pair. "Are they armed?"

"Negative, Captain," Spock said at the same moment that the grinning man said, "Nope. No arms. Well, except these." He held up his hand and wiggled his fingers. "Hello."

Relieved that the pair seemed friendly, Kirk stepped forward. "I'm Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation starship Enterprise. Who are you, and how did you get here? We didn't detect any other ships in orbit."

"Yeah, we sort of skipped the whole orbiting thing," the man said, wrinkling his nose as though landing on a planet in the traditional manner was beneath him. "I'm the Doctor, and this is Rose."

The girl gave a little wave.

Rose. A human name. And the Doctor. Not a name at all. "What do you mean you skipped orbiting?" Kirk asked. Then a strange, impossible possibility occurred to him. He looked at the lopsided stone arch sitting a few feet away. It seemed to be watching them. "Did you come through the portal?" That would explain their old fashioned clothing. Early twenty first century, Kirk guessed.

The man followed Kirk's gaze, and he was no longer grinning. He let go of his companion's hand and walked slowly toward the arch. "No," he said distractedly. "We came - Hang on!" He spun around suddenly, focusing on Kirk with laser intensity. "How do you know it's a portal?"

Kirk was not a man who was easily intimidated, but that stare made him want to take a few steps back. He resisted the impulse and said, "It told us."

"It spoke to you?!"

"Yes. It said it was called the Guardian of Forever. It showed us windows onto Earth's history." Kirk hesitated, unsure if he should divulge to these strangers just how desperate his crew's predicament was.

But this doctor seemed to guess what Kirk wasn't saying. "Captain," he said in a deadly quiet voice. "Please tell me no one was stupid enough to step through it?"

"Our chief medical officer," Kirk admitted reluctantly. He felt compelled to defend McCoy's actions. "He wasn't in his right mind. He'd accidentally been injected with cordrazine."

"All right, all right, all right," the Doctor said, talking over Kirk. "It was an accident. What happened next?"

Something in the man's eyes told Kirk it would be a very bad idea to lie. "We lost contact with our ship. McCoy must have done something, changed something in the past. For all we know, the entire Federation is gone."

The girl, Rose, spoke for the first time. Her accent was unmistakably Cockney. "Hang on. Are you sayin' that rock" - she pointed to the Guardian - "is a time machine?"

The Doctor looked at her and his expression softened instantly. "Oh, you have no problem with a time machine disguised as a phone box, but a rock is too hard to believe?" he said teasingly.

She grinned and stuck out her tongue at him. "So it is a time machine?"

"No. It's a time portal. Much more complicated, and much more dangerous."

"So if you didn't come through the Guardian," Kirk said, wondering what he meant about a phone box, "how did you get here?"

The Doctor looked at him as though he was being stupid on purpose. "In a time machine, of course. Now I don't mean to be rude-"

"Yes, you do," Rose snorted.

"Yes, I do," the Doctor agreed. "That's me. Rude and not ginger. And right now I have a feeling that that lump of rock is going to be far more helpful than you lot." And he marched off toward the Guardian.

"Is he … completely sane?" Kirk asked Rose.

"No," she said matter-of-factly. "Definitely not. But he knows a lot about this stuff."

"Time travel?"

"Yep. He's the expert. He's a-"

"TIME LORD!"

~o0o~

The booming voice originated from the stone arch. It was suddenly glowing. A warm, dancing, living light was emanating from the stone, and Rose recognized it. It was the light she had seen when she looked into the heart of the TARDIS, the light that the Doctor had glowed with as he died and was reborn all in the same moment. The light of Time itself.

"WELCOME, CHILD OF GALLIFREY," said the voice, a voice that was a million voices, every voice that ever was and ever might be. "THE GUARDIAN OF FOREVER IS AT YOUR SERVICE."

The Doctor laid a trembling hand on the stone. "But … how?" he asked. "How are you here? I thought you'd all died."

"I THOUGHT THE SAME OF THE TIME LORDS," said the Guardian. The light pulsed in time with its voice. "I CALLED AND CALLED BUT THERE WAS NO ANSWER. EVEN MY BROTHERS WERE SILENT. SO I SLEPT AND REMEMBERED."

"Oh, you poor thing," the Doctor whispered. There were tears in his eyes. "All those years, centuries, not even knowing what happened. Just silence. No wonder you talked to them. You haven't had anyone to talk to for ages."

"WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?" the Guardian asked, and beneath the layered echoes, Rose thought she heard fear. The fear of a child calling for its mother but already knowing she'll never answer again. "WHAT HAPPENED? WHY ARE THEY SILENT?"

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said. "They're gone. All gone. You and I are the only survivors. Both of us, the last of our kind."

"WE LOST THE WAR?"

The Doctor bowed his head, leaning against the Guardian. He looked older than Rose had ever seen him. "Everybody lost the war," he said. "That's what war is. Losing everything."

Beside Rose, Captain Kirk had been watching the strange conversation with a mixture of pity and impatience on his face. Finally, impatience won. "Doctor," he said. "Do you know how this thing works? Can you bring McCoy back?"

The Doctor turned, and there was cold fury on his face. He crossed the barren ground in three strides and stood nose to nose with the captain who took an involuntary step back. Rose too looked at him with trepidation. This was not her Doctor. This was the Oncoming Storm. She could almost hear the thunder.

"It is not a thing," the Doctor hissed. "It is a living creature, more ancient and more lonely than you can possibly comprehend." And then the storm clouds passed, and he rubbed a hand over his eyes, wiping away the tears before they could fall. "Yes," he said. "I think I can help you bring your friend back. It'll be dangerous though."

~o0o~

They sat on the fallen stones and listened while the Doctor explained what he could do.

"A Time Lord can establish a telepathic link with a Guardian. It helps us … steer so to speak. We guide the portal to the exact point in space and time where we want to go."

"Similar to a Vulcan mind meld," Spock said.

Kirk nodded. He'd been thinking the same thing. It would certainly be a more accurate method than Spock's calculations based on the fragmented recordings of the Guardian's images.

But the Doctor was shaking his head. "No. Much more dangerous than that. Imagine creating a telepathic link with a black hole. The Guardian's mind doesn't live inside that lump of rock. That's just a transmitter to let it talk to us without telepathy. It lives inside the Time Vortex. It's mind is bigger than the whole universe. If you're not careful, you'll get lost in it, your consciousness swallowed up whole and your body left behind, empty."

Rose held up her hand. "Um, this is probably a stupid question, but why can't we just ask the Guardian where he is and then go get him in the TARDIS?"

"What's the … tardis?" Kirk asked.

"My ship," the Doctor said shortly, "and that is an excellent question actually." He smiled at Rose. Kirk had noticed that he reserved that smile only for her. Oh, he grinned at the universe in general with manic, slightly frightening enthusiasm, but only when he looked at Rose did he really smile. "But it won't work," he finished.

"Why not?" Kirk asked.

"Two reasons. One, because the Guardian can't tell us where your friend is. Not in any way we'd understand. It doesn't think in terms of calendars and clocks. It sees Time with a capital tuh. Everything that ever was, everything that never was, everything that could be and must be and never should have been. The Guardian sees it all, all at once. Picking out one specific moment would be like …" He seemed to struggle for an adequate metaphor and finally gave up.

Kirk noticed that Rose was looking at the Guardian with a strange expression as though she was remembering something very painful. "Like trying to hold a star in your hand," she murmured.

The Doctor's gaze snapped onto her. "Exactly," he said, sounding surprised and a little frightened.

"Excuse me, sir," Scotty spoke up. He and Uhura had remained silent until now, watching carefully but letting the captain and Spock do the talking.

The Doctor turned to look at him. "Yes. Hello. What was your name?"

"Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, sir."

The Doctor made a face. "Not sir. Don't call me sir. Are you from Scotland, Mister Scott?"

Scotty smiled. "Yes, s- Sorry. Doctor."

"Wonderful. Fantastic. I love a Scotsman. I was a Scotsman once. Or twice. Three times?"

"Doctor," Rose interrupted his babble gently but firmly with the expression of a woman who had to do this several dozen times a day.

"Right. Sorry. You had something to say, Mister Scott?"

"Well, si- Doctor, we don't need the portal to locate Doctor McCoy. Mister Spock's already done the calculations."

The Doctor spun around to face Spock. "Have you?"

Spock nodded calmly. Apart from Rose, he was the only one who didn't seem discomfited by the Doctor's laser stare, but then nothing discomfited Spock, and he could level a stare almost as intense when he wanted to. "I completed the calculations while you were talking."

"How accurate?"

"To within six months."

"Well, better than all of history. But we still can't use the TARDIS because, reason B, your friend changed history. On this planet we're protected. The Guardian is creating a … a bubble thingy. It's not a bubble, but think of it like a bubble. Technically, we're outside Time. But if we leave, we become part of the new timeline, and we might not exist out there. Well, I probably still do, but you lot almost certainly don't, and more importantly Rose might not which is not a risk I'm willing to take." He looked at Rose who gave him a little smile. "So we have to fix history from inside the bubble, and the only way to do that is …"

"They all looked at the Guardain. A mind meld with the whole universe, Kirk thought in wonder. Talk about a headache.