Author's Note:

I do not own Doctor Who or Criminal Minds.

Rated T for mild violence and discreet references to adult situations.

About Me: I don't want to be wrong again. Just once. I have had a very hard week and I really need to feel like I am doing something I love and I am doing it well. If you follow me, I promise I'll come back to my last story. I'll need a breather from this one soon and as I don't have it fully mapped out. In a perfect world I'd have started it May when school ended, not when my back is up against the wall with school work. But I need to escape for a while and I need to now.

About the Story: I am an American so my readers from "across the pond" will have to muddle through my mistakes. I am using a set of core characters that to my knowledge can move about freely in the universe. Clara will not play a major role in the story. I will be messing with Doctor Who cannon and some of his technology. The prologue is going to be intense, so you might want to have a box of tissues ready. And my grammar will be messy as I haven't written fiction in a long time.

When One Heart Isn't Enough

Prologue:

"Ask me tomorrow"

The last words he heard from Clara. His newest companion and his newest favorite mystery. These were the last words from his current companion that the Doctor could focus on as the Master tortured him into regeneration and his howls of pain reverberated through the TARDIS.

His skin radiated a shimmering gold energy beneath his tweed while he writhed in unspeakable agony. His body was strapped to the console unit he used when he needed to rid his body of his Time Lord DNA. The Master laughed as he continued to shoot him with some sort of laser gun that was forcing his regeneration at an unimaginably fast rate.

All the while three of his former companions stood rooted to the spot to witness the ordeal. His wife River Song, Martha Jones, currently a consulting intergalactic law enforcement agent, and Captain Jack Harkness, who the Doctor didn't quite know what he was up these days. The Master seemed to have teleported them from their different places in the universe and had they bound them to railing of his TARDIS while the walls on all direction began to fall with bursts of fire.

The horrible trick was though was that the binding wasn't hard to break. All River needed to do was grab hold of both Jack and Martha and they could escape using her wrist-mounted telaporter. Something The Master conveniently chose to ignore when he confiscated their weapons.

Please. He strained to look at them as his eyes began glow out of his sockets. Please Go! He urged with all of what was left of his mental bearings.

"No Doctor!" River screamed. "I can't leave you behind!" Tears streaked down her face freely. "Til death do us part, remember?"

"Not including them!" he managed to shriek with a burst of rage.

Martha struggled hard with the bindings. She no longer shared River's intimate love for him. But she spent a long time fighting to save the world with him.

"I don't want to leave you either," she whimpered.

The Master stopped laughing for moment and leaned into his shrinking body. "Oh Doctor, your pets are still loyal to a deadly fault."

His head was barely above the collar of his tweed now. He reached out to his immortal associate.

"Jack, a little help here!" he said tartly as he forgot the rest of the names of his friends. His memories from nine were still lingering.

Jack turned to the women. "Girls we can't help him now. We need to escape."

"But he's going to die!" Martha cried.

"I doubt it," Jack said with the cool calm concentration of a military leader. "If the Master wanted him dead he would be dead by now. We need to leave and find way to save him once we're safe."

"But what will he be?" River said, knowing that the regeneration might change the persona of the man she loved.

Please! He said in one last thought as his body shrank completely into a golden-shaped sphere beneath the fabric.

The Master remained peacefully oblivious to the conversation of the Doctor's companions. River grabbed onto Jack's wrist harshly. "Promise we'll find a way to save him," she said fiercely.

"Promise," Martha said in the same tone as she grabbed his wrist also.

"Together we will," Jack said firmly. Though deep down he had no idea how he could. He was prepared to let River lead as she was the man's husband had some Time Lord DNA in her.

Another wall of the TARDIS crashed down into flames dangerously close to them.

"Good-Bye sweetie!" River sobbed as she began to enter coordinates into her device.

But the Doctor did not understand her. He had lost all understanding of any language.

With a zap sound his companions who witnessed his regeneration that had come to resemble degeneration disappeared.

Though the Master was well aware of the fact that the rapidly shrinking ball of light had fully lost any sort of comprehension, he nonetheless spoke to some parts of the universe that might hear: "Though you shall live Doctor, you shall not live as a Time Lord. You will not be able to manipulate the universe to your whims as you once could. There will tears throughout the galaxies. And that makes me happy."

The master stepped away from the Doctor as the TARDIS became increasingly unstable. He had rigged it to explode and the core was doing the rest of the work for him. It seemed to also weep the loss of it's controller.

As he set up his own mechanism for escape, the Master turned to look at the rustling of clothes one last time. "I have no doubt we shall meet again Doctor. And when we meet again I will be curious to see what you have become. Maybe something weaker or maybe the man I know you are deep down: A murderer."

And with one final step the Master vanished and the TARDIS exploded.

…

The Master was indeed correct in his inference that the universe would mourn the man who so many had come to see as their protector. As someone who came and brought a little chaos at first that resolved in a better situation for all.

Planet Earth had also changed. Though his many actions that resulted in the savior of the earth remained intact, the memories of his heroism were almost completely forgotten. It was as if the people of the world never knew how many times they so came close to being killed or enslaved.

Martha, Jack, and River spent countless amounts of time trying to track the whereabouts of the Doctor. They chased after the Master as well and could not find him either. They searched the far corners of the universe and could not find any trace of the Doctor. In the end they realized the only thing they could do was wait him to reach out to them.

It was River's idea to set up a safe house in the now-abandoned Demon's Run of all places. River's used some of her essence to create a beacon of sorts that would lead him there. As they continued their own separate efforts to protect the universe, they waited for the signal that the Doctor had indeed returned. They all privately grew skeptical, particularly Martha as she knew well how all it could take was the feeling of true love for the him to question why he should return to being a Time Lord.

…

Also as a result of that particular event a few other things happened that were not noticed. A beautiful hand-crafted silver pocket watch appeared in a highly unusual place among them.

And thirty-one years before what is considered present time, a man and a woman in Las Vegas were engaged in what they believed in their drunken state was the best intercourse of their lives. Neither also thought anything of the moment when the earth seemed to shake and what sounded like a car backfiring was actually the sound of a sonic boom. This also went largely unnoticed by a universe where the gravity of the loss of such a powerful being echoed louder in the worlds where he was remembered and deeply mourned.