A/N: pink. lili. flower prompted me for a fic in which Rose found the Doctor while he was still traveling with Martha. It's been done before (one of the best of them is The Long and Winding Road by Isilien Elenihin here on ) but I hope to make my own with my own twists. This will be sort of a rewrite of season 4 and I know the epilogue will touch the beginning of season 5 but I will not continue it after, just so you know. (But if someone wants to write a sequel in my stead, you're more than welcome to do so after telling me)

Chapter 1

Jumping universes was getting daunting. It wasn't even the physical side of it that was getting harder, no. It was the places Rose landed in that took their toll.

Why, just last timeline she landed in had a warped timeline in which the Doctor had died instead of meeting Donna Noble. She'd righted that world, of course, but seeing her manic Doctor, the one that bounced, the one that never ever stood still, lying so still in the UNIT morgue… well, it hadn't sat well with her. And the TARDIS, dying without her Time Lord, so tired but still trying to help.

In the timeline before that stars had been out for a while already and the Centurion she talked to (who seemed to stare at her, like he recognized her) said that time was running out of the Universe.

And the timeline before that, time had stood stagnant, all of history happening at the same time. She heard there was a soothsayer who said time was dying but she'd been pulled back to Pete's world when it got obvious this wasn't when she was supposed to be.

This time they'd narrowed the date to late May, early June of 2009, but they'd still wanted her to do recon and sent her to early May.

She landed and immediately checked the timeline she'd landed in and cursed. "What the hell is wrong with this? Why can't I get to the right timeline? Is it so wrong that I want to save every bleedin' universe? No, don't answer that," she told the closest person to her, a young black woman who was, for some reason, kneeling. "Last time the Doctor was dead because he didn't meet Donna fuckin' Noble. The time before that, time was runnin' out of the universe because apparently the universe had become a buggerin' sieve. And the time before that, time was dyin'. Now, I'm in a fuckin' paradox. At least the date's right… An' I'm on planet Earth. Whoopee."

"Rose," she heard a strangled voice say behind her and whirled around to see Jack, her Captain Jack Harkness, tied up. He was also a bit messed up, his hair in disarray and face covered in muck and he smelled like he hadn't had a shower in ten years.

"I thought you didn't like the BDSM scene," she said mildly. "What are you doin' tide up? I thought it was the Doctor who had that kink."

"It's not voluntary," he joked weakly before his eyes widened in fear. "Rose! Behind you!"

She ducked automatically and got her magnetic screwdriver out, pointing it behind her and catching whatever it was that was used to shoot her. She turned around and eyed the blond man. "Be careful! You could take someone's eye out with that. Now you just wait," she said and dropper the thing, stepping on it deliberately. "I'm busy." She turned back to Jack who was staring at her with wide eyes and slack jaw. "Why, if Sarah Jane an' the Doctor were here, I'd think this was This is My Life."

"The Doctor is here," said the black woman beside her. "He's just... not talking right now."

Rose turned to her. "Why? Is he gagged? Wouldn't be the first time someone took offence of his incessant babblin' an' gagged him."

"No, the Master," the black woman nodded to the seething blond man, "aged his body to that of all his nine hundred years," she then nodded to the cage where a very human looking Yoda stood, looking at her with the Doctor's brown eyes. His ears seemed comically large for his head and he was bald. He was still in his pinstripes but now they seemed more like pinstriped pajamas than a suit. He seemed to be leaning towards Rose slightly, and staring at her with disbelief. "And he's trying to save energy, I think."

"Well, it's good to know you'd still be cute if you aged like a human," Rose told him with a smile, "but I think I'd prefer you in a body of under sixty. Can't really run like that, can you?" She turned around to the black woman. "Now, what were you doin'? I can tell you're the new companion. What's the plan?"

"A gun," the woman said with a mysterious smile.

"What about it?" asked the Master.

"A gun in four parts?" the woman laughed and Rose got what she was on about. The Doctor would never ask someone to kill someone else.

"Yes, and I destroyed it," answered the Master, obviously not getting it.

"A gun in four parts scattered across the world? I mean, come on, did you really believe that?"

"Sounds like a plot of a classical novel," mused Rose. "The hero has to travel the world in search for the parts of a weapon that will end the unspeakable evil. Like Harry Potter, searchin' for Voldemort's horcruxes. The never endin' campin' trip all the while bein' hunted."

"Wait, is that what happens in the last book?" asked the woman, looking at Rose before remembering where they were and looking back at the Master.

"Except the Doctor would never ask you to kill someone," Rose continued. "Which makes him better than Dumbledore."

"It doesn't matter," snarled the Master. "I've got her exactly where I want her."

"But I knew what Professor Docherty would do. The Resistance knew about her son," revealed the woman. "I told her about the gun so she'd get me here at the right time."

"Oh, but you're still going to die," the Master answered with conviction.

"I'd be more curious as to hear what she was really doin', globetrottin'," said Rose thoughtfully.

The Master glanced at her. "Tell me," he demanded from the woman.

"I told a story, that's all. No weapons, just words. I did just what the Doctor said. I went across the continents all on my own. And everywhere I went, I found the people, and I told them my story," the woman said. "I told them about the Doctor. And I told them to pass it on, to spread the word so that everyone would know about the Doctor."

"Thing is, there are still probably other companions out there," Rose said thoughtfully. "An' after hearin' of what she did, they did the same, spread their own stories of the Doctor."

"Faith and hope?" sneered the Master. "Is that all?"

"No, because I gave them an instruction, just as the Doctor said," the woman said and stood up. "I told them that if everyone thinks of one word, at one specific time…"

"Nothing will happen," the Master said, tone condescending. "Is that your weapon? Prayer?"

"Right across the world, in word, just one thought at one moment, but with fifteen satellites," she declared.

"What?"

"The Archangel Network," Jack said, hands in his pockets, having picked the handcuffs.

"A telepathic field binding the whole human race together, with all of them, every single person on Earth, thinking the same thing at the same time. And that word is Doctor," she said just as the countdown hit zero.

The Doctor's cage started to glow and the small, withered Time Lord inside it started to deage.

"Stop it," demanded the Master. "No, no, no, no, no, you don't."

The humans all around the room started muttering the Doctor's chosen name, as did the crowds on the screens, and with a smile, Rose joined them, thinking of her Doctor.

"Stop this right now. Stop it!" shouted the Master, all the while humans across the Earth were chanting "Doctor."

The Doctor had deaged to looking just one hundred. "I've had a whole year to tune myself into the psychic network and integrate with its matrices," he revealed, sounding just like the Doctor Rose knew.

"I order you to stop!" screamed the Master, trying to make himself heard over the chanting.

"The one thing you can't do. Stop them thinking," the Doctor said, looking like himself again. "Tell me the human race is degenerate now, when they can do this."

The black woman ran to the other humans in the room and Rose spared them a glance, guessing they were her family from the way they hugged each other.

"No!" the master screamed in denial, reaching for something in his pocket that wasn't there.

The Doctor levitated, still encased in the energy field, looking at the Master with sad eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Kill them!" the Master screamed at the armed guards who didn't obey. He then turned to the Doctor. "You can't do this. You can't do it. It's not fair!"

"And you know what happens now," the Doctor said, ignoring the Master's words.

"No! No! No! No!" the master denied as the Doctor floated towards him.

"You wouldn't listen."

"No!" The Master stumbled down the stairs to get away from the Doctor.

"Because you know what I'm going to say."

"No," the Master denied weakly as he curled into a ball in the corner he'd driven himself in.

The energy field faded, setting the Doctor down gently and he went over to the cowering Time Lord, putting his arms around him. "I forgive you," Rose heard him say and smiled.

The Master wrenched himself away from the Doctor. "My children…"

Hurriedly the Doctor stood up. "Captain, the paradox machine!" he directed Jack.

"You men, with me!" he told three of the guards. "You, stay here!"

Rose watched Jack and three of the guards disappear to the hallway, the Doctor lunge at the Master who had something in his hands and disappear, and the woman and her family go to the bridge where the Master had stood. She didn't really know what had happened or what was going on, but at the moment everything was going to happen on the bridge, so she went there.

"The Master your husband?" she asked to woman in red, glancing at the wedding ring on her left hand.

"He was Harry," she said faintly. "I… Harry was charming, and he told me the truth. But… I didn't know how…"

"You didn't know how he could be?" asked Rose sympathetically, looking at her bruised eye.

The woman nodded.

"Psychopaths have been known to charm anyone they think they need," Rose said, ignoring the black family giving the woman in red the stink eye. "An' this psychopath happened to be alien on top of it, from a highly evolved psychic race. So, I've been out for a while, actually since the Battle of Canary Wharf. Could you fill me in?"

Just when she opened her mouth to answer, the flying thing they were in shuddered and the Doctor and the Master teleported back. "Everyone get down!" the Doctor shouted over the din. "Time is reversing!"

He then pulled Rose down with him, covering her with himself like no time had passed between them, and a small, warm smile stretched across her face. She was back with the Doctor!

After about thirty seconds, but she couldn't be sure, he'd said time was reversing and that would mess with anyone's perception of time, the thing they were in stopped shuddering and the Doctor jumped up, going over to the controls of the thing and looking out of the window.

"The paradox is broken!" he announced, twisting some of the controls. "We've reverted back! One year and one day, two minutes past eight o'clock in the morning!" He flew to a radio at the controls and tuned it.

"This is UNIT central. What is going on there? We've just seen the President assassinated!" the person on the other side of the radio said.

"You see? Just after the President was assassinated but before the spheres arrived," the Doctor said. "Everything is back to normal. Planet Earth restored. None of it happened. The rockets, the terror that never was."

"What about the spheres?" the new companion wanted to know.

"Trapped in the End of the Universe," answered Doctor.

"But I can remember it," the companion's mother said weakly.

"We're at the eye of the storm," explained the Doctor. "We're the only ones who'll ever know." Then his eyes flickered to Rose who'd stood up. In a few steps he was standing in front of her. "Rose… how…"

"Dimension cannon," answered Rose, holding up her wrist computer. "Somethin' that uses the natural tears between universes. But… I seem to have arrived too early in your timeline. You won't have a clue what I'm talkin' about when I say the darkness is comin'. You don't even have Donna Noble with you yet. But, I've missed you," she said and threw her arms around him, bringing her face to his neck. (The smell of dust wasn't the best but considering the circumstances she'd found him in, she wasn't all that surprised. She'd never been so happy for the fact that Time Lords didn't sweat before. He'd probably smell worse than Jack...)

He flinched slightly at her hug before clutching her to him desperately, returning her hug tenfold. She heard him hum contently, nuzzling the junction of her neck and shoulder. She knew someone was trying to catch their attention, but she was just too happy to hug him to pay attention.

Eventually though, Jack broke through to them. "Doctor! You can reunite properly later!"

The Doctor and Rose let go of each other but immediately held hands, not wanting to go without the confirmation of the other's presence. "Yes Jack?"

"What do we do with him?" Jack asked, a hand on the Master's shoulder.

"We kill him," the companion's father demanded.

"We execute him," the companions – sister? – said coldly.

"No, no, that's not the solution," frowned the Doctor.

"Oh, I think so," the mother said, pointing a shaking gun at the Master. "Cause all those things… They still happened. Because of him… I saw them…"

The Doctor approached her carefully, walking down the stairs slowly as not to spook her.

"Go on," the Master goaded her. "Do it."

"Francine," the Doctor said gently, "you're better than him." She lowered the gun and turned to cry into his shoulder. The Doctor wrapped his arms around her for a moment before passing her onto her daughter.

"You still haven't answered the question," the Master said, seemingly relaxed. "What happens to me?"

"You're my responsibility from now on," the Doctor said. "The only Time Lord in existence."

Jack stepped away from the Master and towards the Doctor. "Yeah, but you can't trust him," he whispered loudly.

"No," agreed the Doctor with a normal voice. "The only safe place for him is the TARDIS."

"You mean you're just going to keep me?" asked the Master incredulously.

"Doctor, have you thought this through?" Rose asked. "A pet is an awful big responsibility. You need to play with him, feed him, give him a bath every day. You can't leave him alone for a couple days if an adventure happens to stretch for some time. You can barely keep yourself functional, what makes you think you can take care of him too?"

"I've got you, haven't I?" the Doctor asked, glancing at her over his shoulder. "If someone could make him better, it'd be you."

"I have my hands full with you," Rose joked back and was about to continue when a shot rang through the room. She looked around for the shooter and found the woman in the red dress, the Master's wife, holding the gun with steady hands and a blank look on her face.

The Doctor caught the Master as he crumbled to the floor and Rose rushed to their side, ripping the Master's shirt open and putting pressure on the wound. Her field first aid wouldn't be much use for long, especially with an abdominal wound, but she knew keeping pressure was important.

"There you go," the Doctor soothed him. "I've got you. I've got you."

"Always the women," the Master joked, looking pointedly at Rose.

"I didn't see her," the Doctor said apologetically.

"Dying in your arms. Happy now?"

"You're not dying. Don't be stupid. It's only a bullet wound. Just regenerate."

"No," he refused. Then he looked at Rose. "How… how do you make the drums go away?"

Rose looked up from the wound, frowning. "'Scuse me? What drums? But if you regenerate, maybe we can find out."

"No… no, I refuse… I won't be a pet…"

"C'mon! You've got to! It can't end like this. You and me, all the things we've done. Axons. Remember the Axons? And the Daleks. We're the only two left. There's no one else. Regenerate!" the Doctor pleaded, desperation in his voice. The same desperation Rose had heard on that day at Canary Wharf when she was falling towards the Void.

"How about that… I win. The drumming… Will it stay gone?" he asked, looking at Rose with eyes the same colour as the Doctor's before going limp in the Doctor's hold.

The Doctor pulled the Master's body closer, rocking back and forth and Rose was unsure of what to do. Before regeneration the Doctor had been all hot and cold about comfort, needing it and accepting it one minute, needing and getting angry at her for it in the next. There hadn't been many instances in which he'd needed comforting after regenerating as the Time War sort of... faded into background. There had been the time with Reinette, but Rose had refused to offer comfort for that, her own feelings of hurt and pride keeping her away. Then there was the time on Krop Tor when they'd thought TARDIS lost to them forever. They hadn't really had the time then, what with the Beast wreaking havoc on the sanctuary base.

But, she concluded, it'd be better for everyone if no one tried to separate the Doctor from the Master's body and therefore she enveloped both the Doctor and the Master in a hug, just as the Doctor released a scream of grief. Rose felt the Doctor's fingers grip her jacket and his other arm moved from the front of the Master to her back, squishing them both to him. She didn't offer any platitudes, from what she'd seen the Master was a real monster, so anything good she might say would be a lie, but he was still a Time Lord, a part of the Doctor's past before the Time War.

They sat there on the floor for a long time, the Doctor gripping both of them. Ultimately Rose was the first one to draw back.

"C'mon Doctor, lets sort this out so you can give him a proper funeral," she said, making him look up at her, eyes red from crying.

He looked at her searchingly, looking for something that wasn't there and it made him relax slightly, before he nodded and stood up, the Master's body still clutched to his chest. Rose thought him lucky the Master's last self had been four inches shorter than himself or it would have gotten awkward very quickly. "I'll take him to the TARDIS," he muttered, shuffling towards the doors.

Rose watched him go, hands now rusty brown with Time Lord blood, before turning to Jack, hands on her hips and an arched eyebrow. "Explain," she said simply in an authoritative voice.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

When the Doctor returned Rose had been caught up to current events by Jack and had been introduced to Martha and her family. Lucy, the Master's wife, had been apprehended and taken into UNIT custody. After that, things began to blur together for Rose but before long the Jones family had been packed back to Earth and UNIT had some sort of understanding of what had happened. Then her, Martha, Jack and the Doctor filed into the TARDIS and sent her to the time vortex for some good, old fashioned rest.

Rose whimpered when she first entered the TARDIS and found the remains of the Master's paradox machine still wired to the console. The nerve of that Time Lord to have her cannibalized like this... why he himself must have been quite uncomfortable, both with the paradox and the TARDIS' agony being broadcasted psychically. Admittedly she'd been more aware of the TARDIS after the Game Station but she was close to psi-null with very low levels of empathy, and even she could feel the TARDIS lingering distress. On the other hand, the TARDIS had brightened her lights and hummed slightly louder when they entered and the Doctor said something about the TARDIS having missed her and welcoming her home. She could tell he was telling the truth from the mental hug she received from the TARDIS.

She made her way to her room, Martha just on her heels. Martha stopped in front of a door a couple doors before Rose's and watched her. From the corner of her eye she saw Martha open her mouth to say something when she went to open her door before she sighed and rolled her eyes, going to her own room and closing the door with more force than absolutely necessary. Rose closed her own door and leaned against it.

She was home. In the TARDIS. With the Doctor.

Suddenly she remembered her dimension cannon and she looked at her wrist computer.

A blank screen greeted her.

She... wasn't where she'd arrived, timeline wise. She'd arrived in the paradox... the paradox had lasted maximum of five minutes after she'd entered it. When it ended... her dimension cannon became confused as to where it was... became useless...

She couldn't inform anyone she'd found the Doctor and would be there when the darkness came.

The Doctor was once again stuck with her.