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A/N: Welcome back to the universe of The Perennials! This is a series of stories I used to post under the name "Ancalagar the Dragon Lord," but undergoing an extensive revision. Unlike the last major revision, this one has some significant changes to the plot and is considerably longer. For the first part of the revision, I merged "Eve of the Eternal" with a later story which I used to call "Retribution." It will be considerably more action-packed than it originally was. A lot more will be at stake this time.

Update: I've made some modifications and corrections in the prologue through Chapter Four. Will provide relevant commentary for each chapter.

Prologue
Junctions

"Gallifrey didn't fall?" The Eleventh Doctor's face broke out in amazed joy. "It worked? It's still out there?"

The Curator's already failing hearts nearly broke at the hope in his voice, but laying aside timelines, he couldn't ruin that hope as soon as it had started. "I'm only a humble curator, I'm sure I wouldn't know," he replied, shrugging.

"Then where is it?" his much younger self asked.

"Where is it indeed?" the Curator answered. "Lost. Shh!" He cut off the Eleventh Doctor's response. Then, taking a deep breath, he whispered, "Perhaps… Things do get lost, you know." He swallowed as a terrible ache throbbed in his chest, and he leaned more heavily on his cane, bloody thing. But he didn't want to revisit yet another old favourite, not yet, not in front of his younger self. Needing to get away soon, he said, "And now, you must excuse me." Seeing the continued hope and happiness in Eleven's face, he sighed, "Oh… you have a lot to do."

He started to turn away, but Eleven eagerly asked, "Do I? Is that what I'm supposed to do now? Go looking for Gallifrey?"

Looking back, the Curator told him, "That's entirely up to you. Your choice, eh? I can only tell you what I would do. If I were you… oh, if I were you…" His voice broke for a moment, as he looked as his past self, so much younger, a formerly bitter incarnation now full of so much hope, the sight of which nearly brought tears to his eyes. Instead, he forced himself to chuckle. "Perhaps I was you, of course. Or perhaps you are me." He reached out and shook his younger self's hand. A paradox of sorts, but then again, Time Lord…. He kept a note of good humour in his chuckling, but couldn't help but choke out a subtly embittered, "Congratulations."

The Eleventh Doctor didn't catch onto this, simply laughing, "Thank you very much."

The Curator looked back at him, "Or perhaps it doesn't matter either way. Who knows?" He laid his hand across his chin in a thoughtful expression, remembering this exact moment, remembering that he, Eleven, wouldn't and couldn't understand just yet. Then his hearts gave another painful throb, and recognizing that it was time to go, he emphasized, "Who knows?"

Then he turned around and began to walk away, using much of his remaining energy to ignore his aching joints and his protesting hearts, determined to walk normally, to give the younger Doctor no hint (though, in retrospect, it should have been obvious), of what he was witnessing.

As the Curator turned a corner, he heard the engines of a Tardis from ages past rev up, and then slowly fade away, a sound that was as much a part of his life as he was himself, and then he felt a tear escape his eye, when nobody was watching. He then walked down another hallway and stopped in front of an office, which remained locked when he was working. The Curator reached into his pocket and withdrew a card key with his shaking hands, and clumsily swiped it in the lock, which gave an audible click, and he swung the door open.

There, deep within the headquarters of UNIT, stood the Tardis, which, like him, was showing signs of decay, its doors remaining open for him, so he wouldn't continually have to unlock it with his arthritic fingers. Stupid, useless, aging body, he cursed inwardly; but it was a fate all Time Lords eventually had to face, once their regenerative abilities were spent. He was not immortal, and never had been.

He hobbled inside the Tardis, and this time he closed the door knowing it would never open again, not by his doing. He slowly locked it, finalizing this reality. Like him, the Tardis was shedding its many forms, regressing, though it didn't really have to. Perhaps she, the old, kind girl, his only constant companion in this long journey of his life, merely wished to show him solidarity, spending her last gasp of energy on this. He couldn't help but be touched, but seeing her stuck in the particular form that his Tenth self inadvertently blew up in an unusually violent regeneration, with her lights dimmed, and nothing but the faintest blue glow in the Time Rotor, hurt him as much as anything. She gave a small, mournful hum as he looked up at the Rotor, leaning against the console.

"That's that, then," he sighed, feeling the finality of it. Even as he spoke, he felt his fourth face melt away, and he looked down at the mirror he had placed on one of the console panels. Third. Regressing. It was why he had to get away quickly… what he meant by revisiting the old favourites. A last process that Time Lords went through when they reached the end of their last regeneration. And yet it was different, because even the once younger-looking faces looked aged. It was especially odd seeing his tenth face, when he regressed to that, which looked similar to what the Master had once aged it into.

Were he not already regressing, he thought that the heartbreak as he watched his tenth, eleventh, and warrior forms discuss the fate of Gallifrey, and their hope that it had been saved… he thought the heartbreak might undo him then and there. And it had been saved, yet, in the very end, their hope had come to nothing. But he held in his despair, because he remembered what he had to do, his last task. Tie the last loose end, and remember…

His war form, doing all he could to do what was right, even though such a decision was hell to consider, let alone implement. But he was, perhaps, the greatest and bravest of all his many forms. Poor soul, making the decisions that had to be made for the sake of creation itself…

His eleventh form, full of bitterness and cynicism, who had faced his own potential death at Trenzalore, and won, but nearly losing Clara in the process… who had to endure the deaths of the Ponds, and who fulfilled a strange destiny with River Song (one that, in retrospect, the Curator now found a rather bizarre story, even for him). But all his companions' journeys eventually came to an end.

His tenth form, the incarnation with so much regret and sadness welling in his hearts that the Curator couldn't bring himself to face him, knowing what would become of him. The Tenth Doctor had tried so hard to do what was right, making self-sacrificing decisions, yet always losing, even those who promised to stick by him. Martha, who left of her own accord, had the best of the deal, and he even considered going to visit her once before he died… but then he realized that he'd already done so, and he wouldn't do that to her again. Donna, who had perhaps the worst fate of any of his companions, who, in order to live, had to forget all she had become. For a shining moment, Donna Noble went from having the lowest self-esteem of any of his companions, to the most confident and self-assured of them, and though it had nearly destroyed him to do so, he was forced to take that from her. And Rose… dear Rose… one of the companions who had meant the most to him, because she had saved him from himself, his grief-stricken ninth self, so soon after the Time War; the extraordinary Earth girl who swallowed time itself to save him; yet he never learned how it ended for her; he could only hope, and it was entirely his fault that he could only hope; but he'd had to break her heart for a future that he would never witness, and could only hope for.

They all left him in the end, always to a scene so much like this one, and the Curator swallowed back a bitter sob. Looking up at the glass column in the centre of the console room, he choked out, "What hurts me the most, though, at this moment, is the fact that most of my life looked like this exact scene, alone in the Tardis, always wandering but going nowhere, always returning to the exact same point." He leaned heavily on his cane, and then turned around, looking around the room, wishing with all his hearts that someone could be there with him… but they all left him in the end, and this was his end.

Even as he watched, his third face faded from view. Second. It wouldn't be long now.

"Funny," he remarked, whether to himself or to the Tardis even he didn't know. "Most of my life looked exactly like this. I was always wandering but going nowhere, always returning here, alone."

The Tardis could only give a quiet hum in response, but he could feel her sorrow.

He thought about his many companions again, and then remarked stoically, "Humans can live life to its fullest in a short hundred years, but I can't even live my life that fully in a few thousand." His voice grew bitter again. "How did that happen, eh?"

His angry tears fell upon the Time Rotor. I don't want to go. The last words of his tenth form echoed back to him, and welled within his heart, stronger than ever. His knees buckled beneath him, and he slid to the floor, sobbing, haunted by all that he had gone through, and all he wished he had gone through. His cane clattered away, and then, unsure of how long he'd sat there, he felt his second face regress again. First.

His first and last form. How fitting.

He could feel his last reserves of energy start to leave him, and he looked up, thinking about his eleventh form, the last man he spoke to before this.

"But we tried to save it, didn't we?" he pled to no one. "Isn't that what counts?"

Then he heard it, a light step on the grating of the Tardis, and he looked aside to see a young woman standing before him, a golden-haired girl with an ethereal glow around her. His mouth fell open in surprise, but besides that, he didn't move, and he said nothing.

"Why should you be so surprised to see me?" the girl asked. "You saved Gallifrey. Gallifrey didn't fall, so the Moment wasn't destroyed."

The Doctor stared at her for a moment, and then it all came back to him, memories long suppressed. Oh, Bad Wolf girl, I could kiss you!

Only this time, he remembered her voice deadpan, "Yeah, that's gonna happen."

"No," he whispered. "I remember now. I remember you." She sat down beside him, a strange smile spanning across her face as she looked at him. "I didn't save Gallifrey," he remarked. "You did."

The Moment shook her head. "The Time War ends," she observed, and a gold glow appeared in her eyes for the briefest moment, one he recognized from ages past, the Earth girl who swallowed time itself.

"Tell me," he asked quietly, "why did you take that form?"

The Moment looked somewhat confused by the question. "I chose a form from your past, especially for you," she told him again.

"No." The Doctor tried to force himself in a more upright position. "Why did you take that form? Why did you choose to take the likeness of Rose Tyler?"

"I took the form of Bad Wolf," the Moment corrected him.

The Doctor shook his head. "Bad Wolf is Rose Tyler," he retorted.

She raised an eyebrow, and commented, "I'm glad to see you've finally acknowledged that."

The Doctor looked away from her at that, guilt bubbling in his dying hearts. Why here? Why now?

Angrily, he bit out, "Rose Tyler is from my past, yes, but she is a thing of my past. She's not part of my life anymore. She hasn't been for a very, very long time."

The Moment looked neither cowed nor apologetic as she stepped in front of him. She crouched down, and the took his hand. A strange burning but painless sensation, an invigorating sensation, coursed through his arm and then his body, and he looked up and saw that her eyes were glowing bright gold. Then, to his shock, she pulled him to his feet, and he found himself with the strength to remain standing, his cane forgotten on the floor.

The Moment then released him, and asked in a stern voice, "Why should you be so upset to see me in her form? But you need not answer that. I hear you. I know what's inside your head, and you're afraid to look Rose Tyler in the eye. Why is that?" She held his gaze, the glow in her eyes fading, but in that moment he couldn't look away. "Why should you feel guilty about Rose Tyler?" she asked in an eerily gentle voice. "You did what you thought was best for her, did you not?"

His frown deepened.

"Looking out for her, yet pushing her away, making sure she couldn't get too close…"

"Stop it," he bit out.

"…afraid of what would become of you if you gave her your hearts, only to watch as she withered away before you…"

"Stop it," he pled.

The gentleness faded, leaving a merciless glint in her golden eyes. "…making decisions that were rightfully hers…."

"STOP IT!" the Doctor shouted, now that his newfound energy permitted him to. "Have you come here, on the last day of my life, only to taunt me with my mistakes?"

The Moment didn't so much as flinch. Instead, she merely tilted her head, her expression thoughtful. "You know, in a way, I truly am Bad Wolf, the very same entity pushing myself into the interface of the most powerful weapon ever created. I saved Gallifrey, I ended the Time War, and to finish the job I saved you."

The Doctor's guilt ebbed away, forced out by an equally powerful emotion: for the first time in many years, he felt fear.

"You're projecting yourself from the very moment Rose first absorbed the Time Vortex," he realized in disbelief. "You're still spreading that message, after all this time."

Bad Wolf's eyes glowed again. "I never stop spreading that message," she told him firmly.

The Doctor felt his limbs begin to shake, but it wasn't from his frailty. "What do you want with me?" he asked, his voice quivering.

Bad Wolf continued to scrutinize him. The glow faded from her eyes, leaving an expression of almost child-like curiosity. "Look at you," she said coolly, "no longer the last of the Time Lords, the man who saved and restored Gallifrey, the man who survived Trenzalore and crossed all the universe just to run as he always had from the moment he looked into the Untempered Schism so long ago, running, running, running, always running from who you are…"

The Doctor's eyes widened in astonishment. She had him pegged, where no one else had. "How could you know that?" he whispered as another word, another name, rose to the forefront of his mind to haunt him.

"Because I hear you," Bad Wolf told him impatiently. "I hear your deepest thoughts. I know who you are, and yet here you are, dying alone, an old man filled with regret."

The Doctor sighed. "I was never meant for a happy life," he told her miserably. "If you know who I am, then you know that more than anyone."

"Not so. Do not forget, I am the Moment," she told him gently. "I am the most powerful weapon in the universe. And I am Bad Wolf, the Time Keeper. I see the whole of time and space, and I know that this was not set in stone, not for a single second."

Like that matters now. "There was only ever one thing set in stone for me," he retorted, scowling.

The impatience returned to Bad Wolf's eyes. "How differently would you think if you know about her?"

"What do you mean?"

"Rose Tyler," she clarified. "The very thing you were most afraid of at one time, the possibility of watching what would become of her. Shall I tell you?"

Fear returned to his hearts again, and he shook his head fervently. "Don't. I don't want to know."

Bad Wolf ignored his plea completely. "Oh, her future was never set in stone either. There really isn't such a thing as fate—not until you reach it, anyway—but with Rose Tyler there were any number of ways her life could have turned out differently." A stoic expression now filled her eyes. "But after she disappeared into the parallel world the second time, there was an infinity of courses her life could have taken. Unfortunately, the greater part of those timelines ended with her in much the same boat as you: dying an old woman filled with regret."

"What do you mean?" he asked, feeling the old guilt again.

"If you could do it all again, would you?" asked Bad Wolf.

"Sorry?"

"If you could live your life again, and change something to lead you somewhere else, would you?"

The Doctor thought about this. "That depends on where I would end up."

"And if it led you to a place you never thought you'd be, a place where you are at peace with yourself?"

"Of course I would change it," the Doctor told her quietly.

"Then why don't you?"

The Doctor stared at her, not expecting a question like that from the Bad Wolf, an entity born of time, the Time Keeper herself, and he feebly protested, "I can't afford to change my personal history. You know that. There are too many variables. They could lead to any direction."

Bad Wolf clambered back to her feet, and looked aside. He watched her, wondering what she was getting to, as she stared thoughtfully into nothingness. Then she looked back at him. A look of intense sadness appeared in her face, and then it was never more clear to the Doctor who Bad Wolf really was underneath it all, and when she spoke, she confirmed it. "I am also Rose Tyler. You said it yourself. Bad Wolf is Rose Tyler. You took the Time Vortex from her, but Bad Wolf never truly left her. Living in the parallel universe, living a normal life, wasn't bearable for her."

He swallowed, but was unable to say anything.

"Before she absorbed the Time Vortex," Bad Wolf continued, "it would have been. Being human, living as a human, was possible for Rose Tyler, but it wasn't possible for Bad Wolf, and Bad Wolf never left. I, she, was always meant to be something greater, and though she couldn't remember, she could sense it, even if you couldn't."

"What has she done?" he asked nervously.

"Usually nothing, and that's exactly the point." She sighed regretfully. "Your human counterpart really was there to help her temper the wolf inside her. Her relationship with him varied in the splintering timelines. Sometimes happy, sometimes neutral, sometimes going badly. No matter what happened, her life was imbued with regret. He regretted that she had been likewise imprisoned, and she regretted that she would never know if she actually chose him. Trapped in a world that was never meant to exist, they both longed to be part of something greater, something they both were meant to be."

Her words pricked the Doctor's conscience, and he choked out, "But she did choose him."

"Because you made it impossible for her to do otherwise," Bad Wolf shot back, and for the first time, she looked angry. "'Does it need saying?'" She snorted contemptuously. "You know that that was nothing more than a backhanded way of telling her you were leaving her there whether she liked it or not, but that was rightly her decision to make. But you, the man who makes people better, stole that decision from her and unjustly imprisoned her with the positively stupid excuse that your human counterpart needed her supervision."

How desperately in that moment did the Doctor want to argue back, to defend his actions, to tell Bad Wolf that she was wrong. But her words ate at his heart, renewed his guilt, and for the first time since he'd left Rose he considered the possibility that he might have been wrong to imprison her there. Was he really the arrogant, cowardly hypocrite Bad Wolf was telling him he'd been? He didn't like to think it; but Bad Wolf was certainly right about one thing: Rose had done nothing to deserve her imprisonment.

"You chose him for her," Bad Wolf continued relentlessly, "and she had to live with that for the rest of her life, not knowing if he really was her choice. That is why she nearly always died in regret, Doctor just like you are now." She looked at him, both regretfully and accusingly, before she concluded, "So yes, you are right to feel guilty about her."

The Doctor lowered himself into his seat. Anger and frustration at himself and at Rose and at Bad Wolf welled within his hearts, and in a final effort to defend himself, he finally bit out, "Why torment me with this now, when there's nothing I can do to reverse it?"

The sadness disappeared from her eyes, and to his surprise she looked pleased that he asked. "I see everything," she reminded him. "All that is, all that was, all that ever could be, and all that ever could have been. There is one timeline, Doctor, that could have led you to a different ending, to your life ending in peace without regrets, and that timeline begins with a single moment."

Confused, the Doctor thought back over their whole conversation, and then asked, "To do with Rose Tyler?"

Bad Wolf shook her head. "No, to do with Pete Tyler. The moment which would have changed everything had it gone differently." The golden glint reappeared in her eyes, and she told him firmly, "I know that moment. I am the Moment. And I can change it. So are you willing to do it?"

The Doctor could only stare at her.

"Are you willing to take that chance?" she asked him, her voice growing intense. "To make the one change that will completely pivot your timeline?"

"At what cost?" he asked.

"It will not be easy," she warned him. "There will be problems you never faced, trials that will either make or break you. You will suffer trauma of all calibres. You will feel heartbreak, grief, fear and uncertainty. Your most cherished beliefs will be challenged. You will be running a gauntlet, but if you run well, you will emerge with few regrets, stronger and better than you ever were in this fading timeline."

The Doctor looked away, thinking it over. It was, after all, very tempting. "A chance to do it all again…"

"To change your personal history."

"To run blindly into an unknown future."

She shrugged. "It's what you've always done. Your future was never set in stone."

"To take a leap of faith." He paused. "I'm not very good at that."

"I can do it," she repeated. "Are you willing to take that chance?"

Reality caught up with him then, and he looked back at her sadly. "It's a very tempting thought. But I can't… there are so many variables. If I were to take that chance, and it led me to something like this again, or worse, then what would have been the point of it all?"

This was it, the crux of the matter. Bad Wolf didn't look upset at his words, and she had a response to this. "Because if it works, then you will find the answer you've sought your whole life, the answer to that question, not merely who you are, but why."

He gasped. No one, no one, not River Song, not Sarah Jane Smith, not Clara, not Romana, not even Susan, had ever understood this. None of them had ever comprehended that his whole life he'd been running from an answer not to who he was, but why he was what he was. That had always been a stunning and a frightening prospect. Looking back at Bad Wolf, he opened his mouth to speak, though he hardly knew what to say, but once again she cut him off.

"There is more to it than you know," she said, and in that moment the Doctor thought she'd never looked more stern or more serious than she did now. "I see everything, including that which you cannot see, which not even the Time Lords ever saw. There's far more at stake than you or Rose, things which I know but can't divulge."

"Can't, or won't?" he asked apprehensively.

"Can't because it would disrupt the causal nexus," she answered solemnly, "and won't because you're not ready." Her expression was adamant, and he knew he'd get little more from her. "Nonetheless, it has been happening right in front of you, right under your nose and you never saw it. The Convulsion is coming."

"Convulsion?" he repeated, perplexed. "I don't understand you. And I don't say that often."

Bad Wolf shook her head. "It is coming, no matter what direction time takes. It's outside time. It's beyond you, Doctor. It's unstoppable. All that's happened in this timeline was its delay. But there was one moment in your past which could change that"—

"And you're asking me to let you change it," he finished her statement.

She nodded. "What I'm asking of you will make it possible for the Convulsion to end, but only if that one moment, fixed on Pete Tyler, changes. I know that moment. The Moment is me. You have to decide."

The Doctor stared at her, wondering what she was talking about, and feeling a bit exasperated and resigned to the fact that she wasn't going to explain further. Still, it almost made him smile to think that an action committed by one human, Rose Tyler's father, would make all the difference to some cataclysm that even the Time Lords never saw coming. If it was inevitable in all time lines, then all his instincts screamed at him to do whatever it took to end it; and if his reward for doing so was to be at peace with himself, possibly even happy…

Could he do it? Cheat death once again for this one chance?

The Doctor drew a rattled breath, and then, making either the most courageous or most cowardly decision of his life, looked up at Bad Wolf. "It's selfish. It's wrong, and incalculably dangerous." She didn't look fazed by this, and the Doctor suspected that she knew what he was saying, and he continued, "But I'm dying, with a chance to live again. Who gets that?" He smiled at her. "Why not? But it's on your head."

The brilliant smile of Rose Tyler appeared on her face, and the golden glow about Bad Wolf strengthened, and her eyes glowed again. She reached out, and placed a hand on the Doctor's shoulder. In an instant, he felt the golden warmth spread throughout his body, filling him with new energy, new youth. A brightness filled his vision, blinding him, and he heard a powerful singing, the song of the universe, the Time Vortex, and the Tardis, which he'd only heard once before, on the very last day of the Time War… the day Rose saved him, and he sacrificed one of his lives to save her.

When it faded at last, he found himself looking at his own hands in a totally different room, arms wrapped in the sleeves of a pin-striped suit, hands gripping the black handle of a device emblazoned with the Torchwood insignia.

Horror filled the Doctor's hearts as he, restored to his tenth form, found himself in a white room, a terrible white glow emanating from the adjacent wall. Time was frozen, leaving him to look at a few immobile Daleks in mid-fall, and directly across from him, he could see Rose, also clinging to a black Magnaclamp, reaching in vain for a lever that had been knocked offline.

"No!" he yelled, even as Bad Wolf appeared before him, looking at the scene resignedly. "Nonononono!" He looked at her pleadingly. "Not this! Not here! Please, not this!"

Bad Wolf shook her head. Her earlier sadness returned to her eyes. "It's too late," she told him. "The change has been made. When I leave, you won't remember your past life."

"No!" Tears now stung his eyes, fearful, regretful, terror-stricken tears. "You said it yourself!" he shouted. "This moment is fixed on Pete Tyler! There is only one alternative!"

"I warned you that it wouldn't be easy," Bad Wolf coldly reminded him.

"Is that it, then?" the Tenth Doctor cried. "My life changes for the better if Rose Tyler dies? Because if that's the great secret, then I don't want it!"

Bad Wolf stepped before him, and her eyes narrowed. "That's it? Are you giving up already? You once took a leap of faith. You thought for certain Rose Tyler was going to die then too. I heard you." She looked at her other self, suspended in time, about to live her last moments. Without looking at the Doctor, she concluded, "But you will survive the most courageous decision you've ever made, because if there's one thing you believe in, just one thing, you believe in her."

With that, Bad Wolf faded from before his eyes.

In that moment, all the Doctor's memories from this moment on, Rose's entrapment in the parallel world, his meeting with Donna, his travels with Martha, Jack's return, the Master's reappearance in his life, his travels with Donna, Rose's return, Davros and the Daleks, Rassilon's attempt to destroy time, his regeneration, and all that followed… all the memories, one by one, flashed before his eyes, and vanished.

Finally, his final meeting with Bad Wolf, and the very end of his life…

The Tenth Doctor blinked, and for a moment, he could have sworn that he saw the visage of Bad Wolf flicker in front of him, and vanish, and his mind returned to the present… what just happened? It felt as though he'd lived whole lifetimes in a moment, but he couldn't remember…

Rose jumped from her Magnaclamp, and began reaching for the lever, and the Doctor watched in stupefied fascination, then horror as what he was seeing truly hit him.

"I've got to get it upright!" she told him. Then she forced the lever back in place. But of course, the moment she did, the Void's pull returned to its full strength, leaving Rose stranded, unable to return to her previous, safer position.

"Rose, hold on!" he cried out.

It was a useless shout, of course, but he couldn't help it. On average, the human hand could grip something for approximately two and a half to three minutes, before the tendons were forced to give way; but the Void was pulling on Rose, and her fingers were holding back her entire body-weight, which would cut that time by at least half, if not more. If it didn't close soon…

Even as he watched, he could tell that Rose was losing this battle, and he reached out vainly, and she looked at him miserably. Her expression was nearly his undoing, because he could see the hopelessness in her eyes, the knowledge and fear of what was about to happen, but more importantly, terrible regret that she could never fulfil her promise of forever… She was embracing her fate, and he was powerless to stop it.

Then, finally, after what seemed an eternity, she surrendered, and fell.

The Doctor screamed in anguish.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought he could hear a wolf howling.

Wednesday is a central point in a cycle of human time-telling, named after Odin, the Norse god of victory and of death. Each week has a Wednesday, the year fifty-two, and wars an indefinite quantity. But this war had only one day, and that was Wednesday.

On this Wednesday

Adeola Oshodi met her cousins Martha and Leticia Jones for lunch. The hour following was enjoyable but perfectly ordinary. Adeola ordered a ham sandwich and a small salad. Martha opted for some soup. Tish gagged on a bitter piece of Gorgonzola cheese that wasn't supposed to be in her wrap. She also had overslept that day and was a bit grumpy because of it. A man sat nearby reading a newspaper: a British soldier had died in Baghdad; the new Harry Potter book had sold more copies in two weeks than Gone with the Wind had in decades. A man named Harold Saxon had started a campaign for Prime Minister. The front page was ordinary, on a perfectly ordinary day.

Martha had found an internship at the Royal Hope Hospital, and would be working and training there for the next two semesters. Tish was about to apply for a job at a research laboratory. Adeola had just found a new boyfriend named Matt, but didn't say much about her new job. She simply told them that she was a secretary at Canary Wharf.

At ten past, they went their ways. The ghost shift would come on in ten minutes.

Adeola went back to work.

She and her boyfriend sneaked into the office renovations for a snog.

She never came home.

On this Wednesday

Yvonne Hartman watched excitedly as a blue box materialized before the soldiers in the storage unit. After more than one hundred and twenty years of study, tracking, and waiting, he had come. Queen Victoria's institute had finally tracked down the Doctor, the enemy of the state, and it was under Yvonne's leadership. If it's alien, it's ours. Some would question her motives, but in time she and her colleagues and their predecessors would be viewed as heroes of the Second British Empire. After this day, those who threatened Earth, human or alien, would not dare to fight Torchwood One any longer. She waited with baited breath as the Tardis finally shifted into full view. It was August 8th, 2007. It was Torchwood's finest hour.

On this Wednesday

Jack Harkness monitored the energy readings of the Cardiff Time Rift, but something about the date bothered him, something that brought his mind back to the history textbooks of his home century, but he couldn't remember the significance of August 8th, 2007. He alone remained concerned about the ghosts pressing themselves into the world, but he had no evidence of their hostile intent, so he could only watch.

He shook his head absentmindedly. A few days earlier it was Hiroshima day; perhaps that was what he was thinking of. He remembered that day too. He would never forget this day.

A ghost appeared in the room.

It shifted into clearer focus. A metal hand suddenly grabbed Jack's shoulder, and he blacked out.

On this Wednesday his misgivings proved to be fatally correct. When Jack came to, all of his colleagues, except Suzie Costello, were dead.

On this Wednesday

On this sunny, summer day

On this bright, summer day, it was silent in London for the briefest moment, when smoke slowly rose into the air, carrying with it the ashes and blood of the dead, before the cries of terror and grief penetrated the shock of battle.

On this Wednesday, August 8th, 2007,
Five million Cybermen invaded Earth.
Twenty million Daleks escaped the Time War.
Three hundred thousand humans died all across the world, and
On this Wednesday, Rose Tyler fell into the Void.

A/N: I have made a few small changes in this chapter, mainly to the dialogue: Bad Wolf is a little harsher to the Doctor this time, and makes a few points I didn't have her make originally.