There was silence as he walked through the halls of the highest building in the citadel: the grand palace of the High Council of the Time Lords.

Well, not quite silence. His boots made an ominous clicking noise against the ancient marble floor, but other than that, there we no sounds. Outside, the sky was burning, the orange turned nearly black with smoke. A million Dalek ships littered the ground, but more were on their way. The city was breached; the great dome was shattered in five different places and great swathes of the citadel had been leveled over the course of the war. As Frey set in the north, Pogar was just beginning to lighten the sky over Mount Perdition. The quiet was eerie, even preternatural.


In the innermost sanctum, they were preparing.

He walked through countless doors, down many flights of stairs. He hurried as well as he could in his old age, all too conscious of the approaching Dalek fleet and, worse, the Time Lords' plan. He passed not a soul on his way down; they were all gone. They would be voting now, he imagined. He had at best another six hours before it was too late. By the time he had reached the right level, Frey had set completely and Pogar was turning the southern sky a bright blue color. It was the first day of summer, and the daisies were just beginning to bloom on the slopes of the Never-Ending Mountains of Solace and Solitude. They were the daisiest daisies he'd ever seen.

At last, he came to the final door. It was unlike the others — imposing and gray, it bore no elegant writing to state its purpose. The door itself sufficed to say that you did not wish to venture beyond it.

A simple wave of the sonic screwdriver sent it creaking open. The inside was dark — the only light was a faint bioluminescence from the moss on the walls and that which streamed in now through the open doorway. But the man recognized the silhouette within nonetheless. She had changed her face, but it mattered not. He'd seen that silhouette countless times in the darkness, pressed his nose to her hair and inhaled in great, deep breaths. Her scent was still the same as the day he'd first met her. She was weeping, and he felt the pain in each of his hearts.

"Romanadvoratrelundar," he said. "Or do you still prefer Fred?"

She did not turn around to face him. She merely stayed as she was, simply stating, "Doctor."

There was a long and heavy silence. It weighed on the room like a guilty conscience.

Eventually, she continued.

"Did you come here to torment me again before you use it? Have you not already made enough of a mockery of everything we did and stood for?"

The Doctor stood there, motionless. In his hand was a gun. The gun. It was a simple little thing — small, black, fit perfectly in his hand. But then, the most horrible weapons were always the simplest ones.

"I do what I do without choice," he said simply.

Her shoulders slumped. "It doesn't have to come to this."

The Doctor was silent again for a very long time. Finally, he said, "Romana, come away with me. Live! You aren't like them, you're not— you haven't—"

Quite suddenly, she turned and stared into his face. Her eyes gleamed with a mad light. She was still in her ceremonial regalia — the High Council had not even bothered with removing her vestments before deposing her in favor of Rassilon, resurrected from his eternal sleep.

Her voice was as cold as ice.

"No, Doctor, but you have. What gives you the right? Simply pull the trigger and that's it. The Time Lords cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, all gone. And we will vanish into the darkest recesses of history. Thousands of generations will live in total ignorance, never even know the word 'Gallifrey'. What gives you the right?"

The Doctor's expression hardened, and he turned away. The click of his boots on the floor filled the silence again as he walked away from the room.

"I do this in the name of peace and sanity."

Before he turned the corner, the last words he heard from her were these.

"If you do this, then you will become like them. You'll be no better than the Time Lords."