Rory was making tea. Amy was yawning, running her fingers through her rumpled hair as she tumbled out of bed, significantly later than either of her companions. The Doctor was in the console room as he always was; Amy had her suspicions about where he slept. Rory delivered two mugs of tea, one to the Doctor, and one to Amy with a swift kiss, which turned into a longer and deeper kiss, which turned into an annoyed slap from the weary woman.

Finally, Amy showed up in the console room, showered and brushed, with clean teeth. "Took you long enough," smiled Rory by way of greeting. Amy slapped him again, in an irritable mood from having woken up so early. Well, it was early for her.

"So!" shouted the Doctor, startling the couple. He ran twice around the console, then slowed, bounding with energy. "Where should we go today? How about somewhere on Mars? I'm in a Mars mood. Geronimo!"

The Ponds sighed and allowed him to do what he wanted. The TARDIS had begun making its usual scraping sound, tossing and turning like a uneasy dream, when suddenly a single deep, gong-like tone echoed throughout the vast room. It didn't seem like an alarm, for it only boomed once, and ominously, like a warning. Then it died away, and, the Ponds found after a moment, took the the scraping sound of takeoff with it. Rory looked around wildly for an enemy, while Amy wobbled precariously in the sudden stillness. The Doctor, meanwhile, stood frozen.

The humans looked to the Doctor for an explanation. But they found instead that the Time Lord was hanging onto the console for dear life as if not convinced they weren't moving, his green eyes too wide to be passed off as mere surprise. His long pale hands were shaking.

"What's wrong, Doctor?" Amy asked concernedly, her mother instincts kicking in. The ancient Time Lord looked at her helplessly, fear inscribed in the sudden lines of his face. He seemed at a loss for words. Then, out of the blue, he started speaking fast, his diction suddenly sharp as glass. "Ponds, you need to listen to me, because that bell means we have very little time. We must have come very close to a tear in the fabric of space-time, close enough to fall through. But the TARDIS stopped us, by wedging herself into the crack." he paused. "Problem is, we're being pulled in. There's something inside the TARDIS that's magnetized to the Void."

At another time, Rory might have asked what "the Void" was. But seeing the Doctor this afraid had shaken him. "Well, throw it overboard!" he yelled, placing one hand protectively on Amy.

The Doctor nodded numbly. "That's what I'm going to do," he replied shakily.

"What is it?" asked Amy, sensing that something was very wrong.

"Me."

"What?!" cried Amy in horror. Rory opened his mouth to do the same, closed it, raised a hand, and dropped it, all with an expression of shock that actually rivaled Amy's on his suddenly white face.

"But - but you can't - we - that's - that's not -"

"What the hell are you thinking?" exploded Amy. "We're not going to let you throw yourself through a rip in time, you big idiot. What makes you think that's gunna happen, huh, Raggedy Man? We're not going to let you!"

The Doctor leveled the full intensity of his thousand-year-old gaze on the motherly Scottish redhead, and she trembled despite herself. "Yes, you are," he said quietly. "I'll input a program which will fly the TARDIS home. London, 21st century, nice boring life, everything you want. Live a good life. Because I am not letting you two die here."

The Ponds watched helplessly as their friend approached the TARDIS doors, trying and failing to conceal from his human friends how badly he was shaking. He reached for the door handle.

Amy's fingernails tightened on Rory's arm.

Rory's eyes widened as he realized what she was about to do. "Amy, don't you dare."

Too late. The redhead sprung forward. Everything went into slow motion as Rory reached out to stop her, panic in his eyes. Amy escaped his grasp and shoved the Doctor out of the way. He let out a surprised oof as he tumbled over the railing, then sat up, and terror filled his eyes. "NO!" he screamed as Amy stumbled, swayed, tripped, and fell. Out into the darkness, out into the nothingess of the Void. "NO!" he screamed again, unable to move. Amy's fingers scrabbled at the TARDIS floor, lost their grip, fell.

The shriek that tore itself from Rory's throat was primal, coming from the reptilian depths of him, from his very DNA. The Last Centurion charged towards the love of his life, dove for her hands. He caught her by her wedding ring. A moment of relief was felt, and then Rory tumbled over the edge, both Ponds falling into oblivion.

The TARDIS doors closed.

The Doctor moved numbly, without intent. His legs carried him to the console, where his hands used the unexpected leverage given by his companions' sacrifice to escape the Void. To run away. His eyes stared, empty. It was not until he had landed, where he knew not, that he slid down to the floor and sobbed without restraint.

Rory Williams and Amy Pond fell through darkness, through the absence of space, for no time at all. They held each other, the shorter woman's head buried sadly in her tall husband's heaving chest. They didn't know when or where they would land, or if they would land at all, but they did know that they were together. Amy's tears floated up behind them like the last notes of a dirge. Rory held her, his warm arms growing less warm as they plummeted away from every law of physics they had ever known.

Rose Tyler pressed the large yellow button on her recharged dimension cannon, and zapped into the Void. She screamed across the emptiness like a comet across the sky, on her terrible way to yet another universe. She was expecting to be in the wrong one again. She was expecting her insane flight across the Void to be excruciating painful, again. She was expecting the stars to continue going out.

She was not expecting to collide head-on with something warm and human.

Three yells of surprise echoed across a place not used to sound. Three heads knocked together, and there were three moans of pain, and three resounding thumps as the three humans landed with a crash on the streets of an alternate universe.

Rose scrambled upright instantly, a gun almost as big as her whipped out and at the ready. Her eyes flashed gold for a brief instant as she instantly assessed the situation.

The time traveler blinked as she saw two humans about her age, weaponless, groaning on the unfamiliar street. One was a short, redheaded girl with curves and freckles, a round face, and startling eyes. The other, who was holding onto her as if afraid of losing her - Rose immediately took notice of the wedding ring glinting on her finger - was tall and thin, with stubble and average hair. (Rose had a fleeting moment of disappointment and anger at his average hair. This was ridiculous, and probably caused by the injury to her head. But she developed an instant dislike for his hair anyway.) His nose was disconcerting.

Amy groaned and pushed herself upright; her first instinct was to check if Rory was all right. He was out cold when she first looked at him, but he let out a long slow groan soon after, rubbing his face and mumbling, "Hand laser... got to... protect..." She slapped him.

"Ow! What was that for?" he yelped, waking up fully. He sat up, then mewled in pain. "Ow... my head... what happened?" Rory asked. "We were in the TARDIS, and then-" The Last Centurion, the companion of the Doctor, Rory Williams, Nina, whatever you want to call him, looked up - and froze as he took in his surroundings for the first time.

They were sitting on a wide but apparently empty cobblestone street, only the 'cobblestones' were green and slightly spongy. The buildings that surrounded them were low and wide. People bustled along a street visible to them, but none turned. Signs on the buildings advertised things like "Old Lindon Resturant," and "Lindon Tourism." The signs were in English.

Standing above them, eyes wary, was a girl. She looked like she'd been without a hairbrush for a very long time, and she was thin and lean, almost gaunt, with signs that she usually wore a great deal of makeup. Her eyes were deep brown with flecks of gold, and they were old, old and sad and full of great and terrible things. She was young, blond, and wearing jeans and a T-shirt: clothes that screamed "21st century, Earth." But both Ponds got a deep, instinctual sense, felt mainly in their knees and the roots of their teeth, that they were in the presence of something ancient, powerful, and not entirely human. This instinct was so troubling that it took the Ponds at least a minute to realize she was also carrying a huge, very dangerous-looking, and very non-terrestrial gun.

Rose had lowered her gun when she heard the tall nosey one with the average hair say the word "TARDIS." Her mind was tumbling in an unbelievable mixture of emotions. Her excitement and relief almost overpowered the others: disappointment, bitterness, and anger at having been replaced, worry about whether she was too late, and a million other thoughts that raced through her mind. The Bad Wolf in her was rearing its head, calculating every possibility, probability and eventuality, accounting for temporal feedback, checking for fixed points, scanning her two confused 'guests' for signs of time travel, and doing a thousand other things a human brain shouldn't have been able to do, a billion times faster than a human brain should not have been able to do them.

Suddenly, the short redheaded woman seemed to notice her gun. She jumped up, shoving her husband behind her, and glowered at Rose with a ferocity that surprised her. "Who are you?" she demanded, her thick Scottish accent startling the dimension traveler. "What the hell is this place? Where have you taken us?"

"You're Scottish," was all Rose could think to say.

"Yes, I'm bloody Scottish! Who are you?" Sudden panic seized her. "Where's the Doctor?"

"I don't know," said Rose, and burst into tears.

The Doctor was curled up under the console, pressed into the TARDIS coral as if seeking comfort from his oldest friend. He couldn't stop shaking, his thin gangly frame racked with sobs. It wasn't fair. Why did everyone have to die and leave him alone? He wanted his mother. The TARDIS increased her hum, trying to comfort him.

Then suddenly the console beeped. A transmission was incoming. The Time Lord curled up tighter, pressed his hands over his ears. "No," he mumbled in Gallifreyan. "Leave me alone." He began crying harder. "Leave me... so alone..." Then it just slipped out. "I want my mother!" The thousand-year-old Lord of Time buried his head in his chest and rocked himself back and forth, beginning to make a grief-stricken mewl that sounded like he was dry heaving.

Rose flinched hard with his every sob. Had he cried this hard when she had left? And although she really didn't want the answer, the Bad Wolf replied, Harder. The dimension traveler reached out and touched the screen of the communicator, some small, stupid part of her really thinking she could touch him. Amy looked at her strangely from where she was hooked up to the device. (Amy's recent contact with the TARDIS had left a special signature that Rose could track back.) Rose swallowed and said hoarsely, "Doctor... it's me."

The Doctor lifted his head slightly at the sound of that familiar voice, a fresh sob dying in his throat. More tears slid silently down his gaunt cheeks. "Am I dreaming again?" he asked the stillness, just as hoarsely.

Rose felt her heart catch in her throat. He had dreamed about her? "No, Doctor," she said softly. "It really is me. And I found your..." She jerked her head towards the two people with her. "Scot and nosey one."

The Doctor stopped crying altogether.

He told his heart to stop leaping like that, and his breath to come in a little slower. He often hallucinated that his former companions were with him, when he was alone. This wasn't possible. Rose was trapped in an alternate universe... And the Ponds fell through the Void, a small whiny voice in his mind said. Maybe the universe is being fair for once. Don't we deserve it?

He barked out a bitter laugh, but the childish little part of him that still believed in the universe's essential fairness made him scramble to his feet, tears still dripping from his prodigious chin, and pull a screen to him to check the transmission.

Approximately forty-five seconds passed before the Doctor realized his respiratory bypass had engaged.

"Rose?" he whispered, unable to believe it. His pale face was torn by emotions. But then, a slow, bubbling smile overpowered everything else. He trembled with excitement, and then:

"FANTASTIC!"

He jumped as high as he could, reaching up as if he could touch the TARDIS ceiling, then ran around the console multiple times. "Rose and Ponds!" he bubbled, his whole body twitching like it tended to do when he was excited. "Absolutely fantastic! Nothing like companions meeting with no fighting! No fighting whatsoever! I hate fighting, you know. Reminds me of the time Martha and Donna met. Say, Ponds, did I ever tell you about Donna? She was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. There was this one time when..."

Rose let him chatter on, feeling slightly dizzy. Her face had fallen when she saw her old friend's unfamiliar face. He's regenerated, she thought, and even though she knew he was the same person, it still hurt her battered heart.

It took him a long time to calm down, but finally he turned to grin widely at her, his limbs still buzzing with energy like an excited cicada. "So, what's the story?" he asked in a voice like a child's. "How are you back?"

"Doctor..." her voice sounded unsure. She stared at his young face and wondered if the new Doctor would have the same abilities as hers. Would he even be able to help? There was a pause that was at least six months pregnant, and then she nearly whispered, "The stars are going out."

The Doctor stopped in his tracks, facing away from the transmission screen. His face was stony. The Time Lord clenched both fists, plus his toes, and took deep calming breaths, forcing himself not to scream, or break something, or burst into tears again and crawl somewhere to hide - preferably somewhere claustrophobic and pitch-black, like a cave. But one single, whispered "No." slipped past the choked dam in his throat, and there was more force and danger in that whisper than in a planet full of screams.

Rose took a step back. He had never spoken that way to her. She knew, of course, how dangerous he could be. She knew more of his insanity than perhaps he knew. But he had never turned the full force of his age on her. To see it now was disconcerting.

"What is it?" she asked as quietly and calmly as possible.

A choked sob died kicking in his throat, just at the sound of her voice. He let out the longest, deepest, darkest sigh he ever had, the kind of sigh that could let out his soul through his windpipe. When he spoke, it was with dismal calm.

"You've come too late, Rose."

"What?!" she almost shouted.

Hastily he raised his hands, but she was already off in a panic. "I walked universes to get to you!" she shrieked. "I've torn apart my body and my mind traveling through Void after Void after Void, I've been in more danger than you could possibly imagine, I've been just ahead of the darkness, and you fire a Scot at me and then say I'm too late, just like that?!" Her usually deep and honeyed (smoky had been the word Jack had used to describe it) voice was shrill and adenoidal with hysteria. The Doctor shh'd and made patting motions in the air, trying to calm her down, but her face was white and the area around her lips was beginning to tinge blue. All the panic she had been stuffing down for so long was bubbling up inside of her, and she felt like she was choking on it.

Rory laid a hand on the girl's arm. She turned to look into his practically colorless eyes, and felt a quiet deflation in her fear despite everything. Amy smiled; she recognized her husband's nurse persona. With his innate kindness and quiet, staunch, invisible determination, he was the kind of man that the afraid and hopeless listened to.

"Listen," he said. "In about five minutes, the Doctor is going to come up with some insane, ridiculous, totally brilliant plan to save us all. You know him, you know that. So come on. Take a few breaths."

Rose Tyler stared into the mild-mannered nurse's grey eyes, surprised by his kindness. The traveler felt her dislike for his hair dissipate.

Slowly, she smiled. "Thanks," she said appreciatively, her panicked voice dropping back into that comfortable husk she usually had. "I guess I needed that."

"Yes, as I was trying to tell you," the Doctor said peevishly, slightly upset that Rose had listened to Rory and not him, "that's not what I meant at all." His forehead creased again, and he said more slowly, "What I meant was, you've come too far along in the timeline. You're supposed to meet me again long before this." He paused and did some math on his fingers. "About three hundred years ago, by my calculation."

Rose's deep brown eyes widened, but she nodded carefully, wondering, Am I dead? Did I die of old age? Then, with a sudden, paralyzing fear, Did he have to watch that? "Well," she said quietly. "See you three hundred years ago, then."

A slow smile overtook her features, her tongue poking out from between her teeth, like it always used to. Her deep brown eyes expanded to hold whole universes, sinking into infinite depths and growing darker as they turned over and over like a swimmer in deep water, darker until they were the deepest black the Doctor had ever seen, the black of infinite empty void. Those eyes grew into her head like a tunnel in a dream, and then, there came a light. At the very vertex of the distance, a tiny lantern of gold was lit, and then it rushed, rushed beyond all light into the most dazzling burst of gold any living eyes had ever seen, and the Doctor threw himself backwards, covering his eyes, as the light of the BAD WOLF overwhelmed the transmission screen, the TARDIS, and the universe.

The Doctor came to slowly. He blinked, and found himself staring down into the grating of the TARDIS console room. His head was aching. Bit by bit, he curled himself into an admittedly difficult sitting position. He rubbed his face, which was covered in red welts from lying face down on the grating for so long... how long had it been? He was shaken with the knowledge that Rose had commanded the power of the time vortex. More, she had continued to contain the power of the Bad Wolf - and not told him.

Wait, had she told him?

His head was fuzzy. He seemed to have two different sets of memories - one, in which he had never known about her newfound power, and another, in which she had told him shortly after they had saved Earth from a Dalek invasion. It seemed like a reasonable conclusion that, apparently, the timeline had been rewritten as a result of this little episode. He smiled to himself and shrugged. No fixed points, no paradoxes, nothing wrong. Everybody lived.

The Doctor smiled to see Amy and Rory standing on the floor he was currently sitting on, looking disoriented. Then his eyes widened. "What are you wearing?"

Both companions looked down at themselves. To Amy's surprise, she found herself wearing a long red coat with a hood over a short white frock and petticoats, and carrying a basket full of freshly made cake. Rory was less surprised at his own outfit, but then, Rory was unflappable. He was wearing a a forest green coat and brown trousers - with suspenders! - a hat with a feather in it, and carrying an axe.

"I look like Little Red Riding Hood," Amy stated.

Rory's lips twitched upwards. "Someone's got a sense of humor."

It was then that, for the first time in a very long time, the Doctor remembered that Rose had been given the happy ending she deserved. He had always been grieved for having left her. Now he remembered the joys they had had together, the cherished memories that spanned the Void in connecting them, and the forever he had given her.

"Rose Tyler, I love you," he whispered to himself, to late for her to hear, again. But he knew that didn't matter. She knew.